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Speaker 1: first Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer. Okay, we're recording in Sonora, Mexico,
Speaker 1: but I need to start. I need to start the
Speaker 1: show with with distressing news from the United States of America,
Speaker 1: which is only fourteen miles away. Yeah, so it's comforting
Speaker 1: in some way covering American news from Mexico. Here's the
Speaker 1: headline from the New York Times. Biden moves to end
Speaker 1: donnut lures and other bear hunting tactics in Alaska. This
Speaker 1: is the story that never goes away. One might see
Speaker 1: that and think, uh, well that sounds horrible. Don't ut lures,
Speaker 1: I don't like that, um, and then be happy about
Speaker 1: what's going on. This this story we have reported on.
Speaker 1: This is one of those seesaw stories that comes up
Speaker 1: as as administrations change. Um. It's also one of the
Speaker 1: stories I always feel like that I should I should
Speaker 1: get to be the one that writes the article because
Speaker 1: I would write it different than everybody else. Let me
Speaker 1: back up to explain what's going on up until no
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of how far back to go.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go pretty far back. When Alaska became a state. A.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get into great deal detail on this,
Speaker 1: but people can go look into this. When Alaska be
Speaker 1: am a state, an issue a negotiating point was wildlife
Speaker 1: management in Alaska okay um, meaning Alaska want to hang
Speaker 1: onto its wildlife management and Alaska has some management issues
Speaker 1: in the state where they have a thing called subsistence hunting. Okay.
Speaker 1: When Alaska looks at the finite resource, which would be
Speaker 1: fishing game, Alaska always will favor subsistence practices. Okay. If
Speaker 1: you are a person like me who lives in the
Speaker 1: lower forty eight and goes into Alaska to hunt, you
Speaker 1: are the lowest priority in in Alaska wildlife management. The
Speaker 1: highest priority in Alaska wildlife management is subsistence users. Next
Speaker 1: to that, sitting below subsistence users are certain commercial practices. Okay,
Speaker 1: So like commercial fishing, um, the guiding industry. Okay, they're
Speaker 1: gonna get it. So let's say you have a finite
Speaker 1: resource like salmon is a finite resource. Top of the
Speaker 1: stack are going to be the needs of subsistence users
Speaker 1: who rely on phish and game for the for to
Speaker 1: eat for sustenance. There they get first DIBs. Second DIBs
Speaker 1: would be the commercial industry. Third DIBs would be recreationalists. Okay,
Speaker 1: most states that that that don't have that subsistence thing
Speaker 1: will look at it'll be it'll be commercial, recreational and
Speaker 1: those are the competing interests. But Alaska, you have a
Speaker 1: third competing interest, which is subsistence. So keep that in
Speaker 1: the back of your head as you hear we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Alaska uses predator management, as do many states in lower
Speaker 1: forty eight. Alaska uses predator management on the apologetically two
Speaker 1: increase and hold stable populations of big game. And they
Speaker 1: don't do this like it's a naughty little secret. It's like,
Speaker 1: in my view, in Alaska's view, there is absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with saying we would like to have we would
Speaker 1: like to increase big game numbers at the expense of
Speaker 1: some predators in order to be able to provide big
Speaker 1: game resources to subsistence users too, guides and outfitters to recreationalists.
Speaker 1: They look, and it's like there's a lever that you
Speaker 1: can move, you can reduce predators, big game populations. It's
Speaker 1: it's a thing that they do in order to reduce
Speaker 1: predator numbers. They have a number, they have things at
Speaker 1: their disposal. It could be it could hiring people to
Speaker 1: go into airplanes an airplane gun for wolves. I remember
Speaker 1: that because when when when Palin? How do you feel
Speaker 1: about Palin? When Palin really became in the spotlight as
Speaker 1: John McCain's running mate under her governorship in Alaska, they
Speaker 1: had done aerial wolf shooting as a predator management tool,
Speaker 1: and I feel like a lot of Americans got the
Speaker 1: idea that that Sarah Palin herself was the wolf gunner.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like really laid on her doorstep.
Speaker 1: But this is a historic practice that that long predated Palin. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the thing that since since aircraft came into being,
Speaker 1: they have been using aircraft to control wolf numbers. Another
Speaker 1: thing they'll do to control predator numbers is rather than
Speaker 1: have it be a state sponsored activity paid for by
Speaker 1: the state, you can control old predator numbers through the
Speaker 1: lever of subsistence hunter practices, recreational hunter practices guiding outfitter practices,
Speaker 1: meaning you can make predator hunting easier and more productive
Speaker 1: by having certain management strategies in place. Now, some of
Speaker 1: these management strategies people find distasteful when they hear about
Speaker 1: them out of context and in isolation. For instance, if
Speaker 1: I told you Um about going that someone was gonna
Speaker 1: go in den dig for black bears, you would be, oh,
Speaker 1: how heartless and horrible. Well on the Koyukon people Um,
Speaker 1: who are from the vicinity of the Koyakok River which
Speaker 1: flows into the Yukon, they felt uh when the anthropologists
Speaker 1: Richard K. Nelson spent time with them. They had explained
Speaker 1: to Richard K. Nelson that they felt that it was
Speaker 1: unethical to kill a bear otherwise than to dig it
Speaker 1: out of its den. That the shooting up and out
Speaker 1: of the ground was not acceptable. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: hunt bears, you went to You knew through ancestral knowledge
Speaker 1: and through your own discoveries. You knew where bears denned,
Speaker 1: You knew den sits, and when you went out for bears,
Speaker 1: you went in the winter and you crawled into bear
Speaker 1: dens to check if they're being occupied. And that is
Speaker 1: how a real hunter hundred bears. And a thing that
Speaker 1: we all know now and like it has broader and
Speaker 1: broader buy in is that you do not go in
Speaker 1: in uh. You know, there's there's this sort of de
Speaker 1: facto reverence for hunter gatherer practices, like it was how
Speaker 1: it was done. Okay, So in Alaska there are places
Speaker 1: historically where it has been legal two den dig for bears.
Speaker 1: It was legal ton dig for bears. It was a
Speaker 1: customary practice to den dig for bears before there was law,
Speaker 1: before there was state law or federal law. People were
Speaker 1: den digging bears. That's how they were doing it. There's
Speaker 1: another management practice in Alaska that gets a lot of criticism,
Speaker 1: and this is the practice of shooting swimming animals. Okay,
Speaker 1: in a lot of states, you simply cannot shoot a
Speaker 1: swimming animal. However, there are areas in Alaska that are
Speaker 1: extraordinarily remote and you can only get to them by
Speaker 1: air or by boat, and subsistence hunters have historically hundred
Speaker 1: in some of these areas by going into these areas
Speaker 1: and penetrating these areas the only way one can, which
Speaker 1: is by boat. And the caribou hunting practice would be
Speaker 1: that you would go to these known crossings during caribou migrations,
Speaker 1: and you would take boat there and set up a
Speaker 1: camp at a cariboo crossing, and you would hunt caribou
Speaker 1: as they were crossing the river out of boats. It
Speaker 1: had been done prior with at laddles and spears. As
Speaker 1: firearms came into being, it made it became the practice.
Speaker 1: You can't get them any other place than to catch
Speaker 1: them crossing the river in a vast wilderness. So, prior
Speaker 1: to law, prior to state law, prior to federal law,
Speaker 1: it was a practice in certain places to hunt caribou
Speaker 1: that were swimming because you're killing them at fords. And
Speaker 1: it's how indigenous hunters had done it, and other people
Speaker 1: that followed in their path had done it, and they
Speaker 1: that practice had become codified into law because it was
Speaker 1: historic use. What's another one we covered den dig and Oh,
Speaker 1: another one would be um that when you're trying to
Speaker 1: lower wolf numbers in order to increase cariboan moose numbers,
Speaker 1: that you might allow the killing of wolf pops. Okay,
Speaker 1: because from the manager's perspective, you're trying to raise prey numbers,
Speaker 1: you're trying to raise meat for humans and in order
Speaker 1: to raise meat for humans. As the level you can
Speaker 1: pull is killing wolves. I guess looking at it, the
Speaker 1: wolf that's getting killed in predator control um doesn't feel
Speaker 1: better or worse about his death, knowing what his ages meaning.
Speaker 1: A five year old wolf isn't like, oh, I understand,
Speaker 1: shoot me, I'm five, but a one year old wolf
Speaker 1: would be like, oh, the horror and sin. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's you're you're reducing wolf numbers and you're just gonna
Speaker 1: do it the most productive way you can think of,
Speaker 1: which should be reduced wolf numbers. So these practices are historic.
Speaker 1: Practices have always been in place in Alaska. I'm getting
Speaker 1: to the part that burns my U. We haven't got
Speaker 1: there yet. Well, no, because this is the thing Like
Speaker 1: like everyone that writes about this, every I haven't even
Speaker 1: gotten to the to the whip saw. I haven't even
Speaker 1: gotten to the whipsaw. Party joined a Day by Jason Phelps,
Speaker 1: Clay Nwcomb, Clay Newcomb, Nwcomb, Bridget Newton in first, like
Speaker 1: Matt Cook, who's been on the show before, it has
Speaker 1: yet to speak, but he has a question. I have
Speaker 1: a question, and for the first time, Jason Bergsman, the
Speaker 1: last of the old Kusman. You have a question just
Speaker 1: on what it covered. Do you have a question. I
Speaker 1: haven't got to the part, but go ahead. I have
Speaker 1: a question. We're laying the ground. How does a rancher
Speaker 1: who you know, has predation problems and poisons like a wolf,
Speaker 1: how does that fit in two that that's a that's
Speaker 1: a non thing. Okay, yeah, that's a non thing. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were to go and read, if you were
Speaker 1: going to read um Alaska's Wolfman, about one of the
Speaker 1: first wolf guys that went up into Alaska. I think
Speaker 1: he became active in the twenties. UM. And at the
Speaker 1: they were they were there's this there's this book, Alaska's
Speaker 1: wolf Man. It's it's a fascinating read. And he goes
Speaker 1: up and he goes out to work for the state
Speaker 1: of Alaska on wolf control, typically in areas where caribou
Speaker 1: herds have been greatly depleted, and later in areas where
Speaker 1: they were doing economic development and they were going to UM.
Speaker 1: He spends a bunch of time up by cots of
Speaker 1: you whereas an economic development plan they were trying to
Speaker 1: get Native Alaskans set up in the reindeer herding business. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: they were trying to stabilize food resources and get them
Speaker 1: set up to be reindeer herders. But they would bring
Speaker 1: in these reindeer herds and they would just get decimated
Speaker 1: by wolves. Then in Alaska's Wolfman, he goes from being
Speaker 1: just a gun hunter, like doing wolf control with guns,
Speaker 1: and then he gets do poisons. And I think he's
Speaker 1: he's getting into poisons even in the nineteen fifties, and
Speaker 1: just how amazingly effective that's yeah, Like he talks about
Speaker 1: just how astonishingly effective the poisons are. Like he'll go
Speaker 1: he he talks about going into an area this is
Speaker 1: near costs Abue. He goes into an area with poison
Speaker 1: pellets and he would just go out and shoot something
Speaker 1: and lace it. And he gets to where he feels
Speaker 1: he's killed every wolf. There's no wolves left. A guy
Speaker 1: reports to him they saw like seven gray wolves and
Speaker 1: two black wolves come across the ice, come across some
Speaker 1: bay and get into the area he's in. And he's like,
Speaker 1: sure enough. A couple days later, he goes to one
Speaker 1: of his bait stations. There's seven gray wolves and two
Speaker 1: black wolves laying dead at his bait station. Like astonishingly effective.
Speaker 1: When we talk about wolfers in the lower forty eight
Speaker 1: they were poisoning wolves, not as predator control, I mean
Speaker 1: they did eventually, but the first guy's poisoning wolves, and
Speaker 1: even starting in the eighteen sixties, they were poisoning wolves
Speaker 1: for the wolf hide trade. And they would use strict nine.
Speaker 1: You would shoot an animal, gash it, cut gashes in it,
Speaker 1: and mix of just like an infintestinal amount of strict nine.
Speaker 1: I think they would mix it with water and scatter
Speaker 1: it on the carcass, and then you'd wait a while
Speaker 1: and go and pick it up. In Life, and there's
Speaker 1: a book, Life and Death of the Mouth of the
Speaker 1: Muscle Shell, which is a guy's journal, and he'll talk
Speaker 1: about going and checking his bait stations and coming back
Speaker 1: with with forty wolves. He also talks about I can't
Speaker 1: remember which tribe, but the tribe a tribal representative coming
Speaker 1: into his establishment at the Mouth of the Muscle Shell
Speaker 1: where the muscle shell flows into the Missouri's underwater now
Speaker 1: because the Fort Peck Reservoir. A guy comes in and
Speaker 1: it has a gripe about the wolf baiting practices because
Speaker 1: they were traveling through the area and lost twenty four
Speaker 1: of their dogs to these guys strict nine baits. So
Speaker 1: they were wolfers, and they wolfers because at that time
Speaker 1: there was a fad that when you had a wagon,
Speaker 1: there was a it was fashionable to have a wolf
Speaker 1: pelt blanket, got it for your guests in your wagon.
Speaker 1: So on a cold day, you get into your wagon,
Speaker 1: you'd want to be able to have your guests cover
Speaker 1: up with a wolf pelt blanket. And that drove the
Speaker 1: wolf for poison trade, and then in time it became
Speaker 1: um they were poisoning for for predator control. And then
Speaker 1: eventually the practice of poisoning wolves was eliminated. But they'll
Speaker 1: still in place, they'll still use this little gun was
Speaker 1: that you know the name of that thing. Basically, a
Speaker 1: coyote takes a bait and it have you heard that
Speaker 1: the capsule delivers it. But it has to be like
Speaker 1: you're not just lacing baits. Alaska's wolfman, he'll talk about
Speaker 1: going into his laced baits and he's got birds, he's
Speaker 1: got wolverines, he's got is everything scattered around dead? Uh,
Speaker 1: But that's not that's not a thing they're doing right now.
Speaker 1: And I would also argue if if if they were
Speaker 1: using poisons right now in Alaska for predator control, you
Speaker 1: would lose the ability to talk. What I was just
Speaker 1: trying to do is laying out that these are historic
Speaker 1: use practices that if if we're gonna go look, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna go look in wild game management and you're
Speaker 1: gonna go look at like what's ethical, what's not ethical? Um,
Speaker 1: it's all it's so arbitrary and so personal. I think
Speaker 1: that that Alaska's I think Alaska is great about acknowledging
Speaker 1: and protecting traditional use practices, even if even if preserving
Speaker 1: traditional use practices might come at the expense of allowing
Speaker 1: new technologies. They were one of the first states. I
Speaker 1: think they might have been the first state I heard
Speaker 1: of that with drones. They were done with drones before
Speaker 1: other people started to address the question. Someone could correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, But I think that they might
Speaker 1: have been the first state and then and then like
Speaker 1: a bunch of Western states followed. They might have been
Speaker 1: the first state to be like no on drones. So
Speaker 1: it's not that like Alaska doesn't have a come one,
Speaker 1: come all, kill them all by any means necessary policy.
Speaker 1: They follow traditional use practices. It's not you know, and
Speaker 1: the new stuff they might go and get rid of.
Speaker 1: So they were like early on guys, you could you
Speaker 1: could use you can picture how clay, you could picture this,
Speaker 1: how effective drones would be for hunting moose. You're in
Speaker 1: willow flats, everything's twelve feet high. You have this big
Speaker 1: black animal. You know what's right. It's got to be
Speaker 1: right around you in a willow flats, the paddles. It's
Speaker 1: not like you're not it's not gonna hide from a drone.
Speaker 1: And they right away were like, no on drones. But
Speaker 1: but in places you can take a bear out of
Speaker 1: its hole. But this get this gives me the second
Speaker 1: part of what burns masks about this whole thing that
Speaker 1: was the first. No, just that's just background because I'm
Speaker 1: trying to establish. Keep in mind these management practices that
Speaker 1: Alaska has. Okay, now let's look at the restraint with
Speaker 1: which they will exercise them. Okay, go to Region two
Speaker 1: of Alaska. In Region two of Alaska, which is Prince
Speaker 1: of Wales Island. Get Unit two or whatever the region
Speaker 1: I think they call the units unit to Prince Wales
Speaker 1: on Alaska. Black bears a predator. Okay, you can't hunt
Speaker 1: it from not only like, you can't hunt it from
Speaker 1: a boat. You cannot legally that the ruthless state of
Speaker 1: Alaska that just wants to kill all the predators. If
Speaker 1: you're in Prince Wales Island, you have to have your
Speaker 1: feet on the ground. You cannot shoot a black or
Speaker 1: from a boat. You cannot shoot a saw. You can't
Speaker 1: shoot cubs. You can't shoot a saw with cubs. You
Speaker 1: have salvage requirements always the skull meet in the spring, meeting,
Speaker 1: hide in the spring, hide in the fall. You have
Speaker 1: a permit draw where if you're a nonresident, you have
Speaker 1: about a chance of getting an opportunity to hunt one
Speaker 1: of these predators at all. No den digging. Okay. Because
Speaker 1: they have a management practice in their toolbox does not
Speaker 1: mean they universally exercise it. Okay, It's just a thing
Speaker 1: they have the ability to do. But generally, all of
Speaker 1: these practices that I'm naming out, generally you can't. Generally
Speaker 1: they don't in places they do. During the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: the Feds came to say to Alaska, they came and
Speaker 1: made this this this this this like like very arbitrary
Speaker 1: seeming designation where the national like through the National Parks
Speaker 1: or if they come and said, we're gonna eliminate Alaska's
Speaker 1: ability to exercise certain practices that they may or may
Speaker 1: not currently be exercising on refuge land, on federal refuge land.
Speaker 1: So here you have a state that has game management
Speaker 1: authority in their state. The Feds manage a ton of
Speaker 1: land in Alaska. But that's that's always like, that's the
Speaker 1: system of checks and balances that exists all over the US.
Speaker 1: You have tons of federal land on which the wildlife
Speaker 1: on that land is managed by the state. It's it's
Speaker 1: a phenomenal system. I never credit like like I love
Speaker 1: federally managed managed land. I'm suspicious of federal wildlife management
Speaker 1: when it supersedes a state's management decision, especially in the
Speaker 1: case like Alaska's where they still have grizzly bears across
Speaker 1: like of their historic range. We in the Lower forty
Speaker 1: eight can't say the same thing we have. We we
Speaker 1: wiped them out in Lower forty eight. They didn't wipe
Speaker 1: theirs out. They have wolves across the entirety of their
Speaker 1: historic range. Do we know they didn't wipe theirs out?
Speaker 1: They have their entire suite of megafauna still intact. We don't.
Speaker 1: They haven't wiped theirs out. So when you go and
Speaker 1: look and be like, oh, Alaska needs have changed their ways,
Speaker 1: by what evidence, they haven't. They haven't committed any sins
Speaker 1: against God in terms of eliminating animals from the landscape.
Speaker 1: So to go and and and and and to go
Speaker 1: to them and say to them, oh, your management practices,
Speaker 1: what you may or may not be doing right now,
Speaker 1: can no longer be applied on refuge lands. And under
Speaker 1: Obama they made it be the on percent of the
Speaker 1: state is what it winds up being. In our efforts
Speaker 1: to save the world, We're going to tell Alaska, cent
Speaker 1: of their state, they no longer have authority to do
Speaker 1: management practices that they may or may not be exercising
Speaker 1: him Obama brought that in. So Obama interrupted over a
Speaker 1: hundred years of practices that just that worked. That that
Speaker 1: we have the evidence that they were sorry, not not
Speaker 1: what the hell they become a state? Okay? So now
Speaker 1: I was wrong, not a hundred years what Okay? So
Speaker 1: the state had been an entity in and of itself.
Speaker 1: It had been a state and with a game and
Speaker 1: they had a game agency prior to statehood. But like
Speaker 1: whatever you had statehood, Alaska Department of Fishing Game comes
Speaker 1: into being. They have predator management, but they still have
Speaker 1: intact predator the completely intact menagerie of predators still occupying
Speaker 1: the entirety of their historic landscape. But the Feds say,
Speaker 1: you can't do these things that you may or may
Speaker 1: not be doing on little chunks of land where we
Speaker 1: oversee the land designation. Obama does that. Now Trump undoes it.
Speaker 1: So Obama upset a long history of status quo and
Speaker 1: the way this was treated in the press when Trump
Speaker 1: undid it. All Trump did is Trump undid a very
Speaker 1: short thing. But how was it treated in the press.
Speaker 1: It was like it was in the press. They treated
Speaker 1: like Trump decided one day he woke up and said,
Speaker 1: I think I think that in Alaska they should start
Speaker 1: digging wolves out of their dens in and digging bears
Speaker 1: out of their dens. I think that that's what it
Speaker 1: should be. And so he simply undid a a a
Speaker 1: prohibition that was still in its infancy, or turned it
Speaker 1: to what it was four years ago exactly. But it
Speaker 1: was treated like Trump administration decides to allow bears to
Speaker 1: be dug from their den The horror is that not
Speaker 1: just like a classic virtue signaling. Not to use a
Speaker 1: political hot button word, but I mean, like the former
Speaker 1: administration shutting that down just because they didn't like the
Speaker 1: idea we're looking for something to grab onto that just
Speaker 1: would get a rise out of people. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like virtue signaling. I I'm like, maybe one of
Speaker 1: the only few people on the planet. Um, No, there's
Speaker 1: a couple more they can be like, uh, the con
Speaker 1: sort out, you know, because like a lot of things, like,
Speaker 1: no matter what Trump did, a lot of people they're
Speaker 1: just gonna hate it mm hmm. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are just gonna love it right, they're
Speaker 1: they're pre wired, and you're one of the few people
Speaker 1: on the planet that can sort that out navigating. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm I feel like I have an extraordinary
Speaker 1: ability to look at record issue by issue and divorce
Speaker 1: the policy from the noise. Yeah, and all the guy
Speaker 1: did was he said the guy before me overreached. It
Speaker 1: was contentious. It was an insult to Alaska ficient game,
Speaker 1: it was an insult to the state of Alaska. They
Speaker 1: should not have done that and put it back to
Speaker 1: the way it was. But now Lo and Behold, here's
Speaker 1: the final thing that was the backstory to this. Here
Speaker 1: we are Biden moves to end donut lures, like like
Speaker 1: the Times suddenly interested in like a specific strategy. Like
Speaker 1: they're like, like, they're gonna end donut lures. Okay, they're
Speaker 1: gonna end the placing of donuts for bait, which leave
Speaker 1: like a guy who let's say that there's a guy
Speaker 1: using dog food coded in molasses? Is he at home going?
Speaker 1: I guess I'm safe. No, they're ending donut lures. It's
Speaker 1: like the Times all of sudden becomes interested in like
Speaker 1: the specificity of the date of the bait. Why because
Speaker 1: this sounds particularly egregious. They're not ending the use of donuts.
Speaker 1: It's baiting. Yeah, I was gonna say that, Like where
Speaker 1: does the interest in debit item come from? And why
Speaker 1: did they not say Why did they not say moves
Speaker 1: to end, burnt honeycomb moves to end. So that's not
Speaker 1: a joke, salmon carcasses, doughnut lures. The Times is focused
Speaker 1: on the use of donuts. Biden moves to end donut lures.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard that term before? Never know what
Speaker 1: just placing of donuts. If they had said, Biden moves
Speaker 1: to end the baiting of bears. But it's like they're like,
Speaker 1: how could that doesn't sound bad? It doesn't sound as
Speaker 1: bad as I would like. But there's something that sounds
Speaker 1: especially naughty about, don't I think? I think they're trying
Speaker 1: to like portray like just a big overweight barry, just
Speaker 1: like non on donuts, like you want to paint that picture.
Speaker 1: And then in the grasping and people's grasping of like
Speaker 1: why should this be bad? I understand why is it bad?
Speaker 1: They point out that where's my little Ben Franklin glasses here?
Speaker 1: They point out that, um, all the so they begin
Speaker 1: so dateline Washington or you know, place line. The National
Speaker 1: Park Services moving to prohibit hunters on some public lands
Speaker 1: in Alaska from baiting black bears with donuts, just donuts,
Speaker 1: and using spotlights to shoot hybridating bears and cubs in
Speaker 1: their dens, techniques allowed by the Trump administration but considered
Speaker 1: inhumane by conservationists. Um, and I don't, I don't And
Speaker 1: and still pinning it back somehow on Trump. Do we
Speaker 1: know for sure what the definition of doughnut is? I mean,
Speaker 1: does it have to be pastry with a whole. That's
Speaker 1: like John's our long John's in could you bait could
Speaker 1: with a donut hole? Yeah? Yeah, donut hole is the
Speaker 1: opposite of a donut. A doughnut hole is what makes
Speaker 1: a donut. It's absence makes a donut. Or think about
Speaker 1: a Danish. Sure, my minors stay like Basically, it's like,
Speaker 1: it's like I would love to see the legislation because
Speaker 1: I beat in the legislation, there's no mention whatsoever of
Speaker 1: a donut. But to somehow do you think they're actually
Speaker 1: trying talking about specifically not baiting bears using food lures,
Speaker 1: But but they this journalist, this writer, I think, seems
Speaker 1: to think that like it just sounds especially naughty. That
Speaker 1: would be some good clickbait for his sounds unnatural and
Speaker 1: naughty if it's a doughnut. So when you're reading this stuff,
Speaker 1: when you're reading this stuff, this is just a couple
Speaker 1: of things I would like to keep you to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that that the mentions of Trump allowing it,
Speaker 1: it had already been allowed. A Uh, let me find
Speaker 1: this quote from someone, Um, here's your No, I don't
Speaker 1: eve need his quote cause I'll just paraphrase the quote. Uh,
Speaker 1: all these articles come out about this thing. Now it's
Speaker 1: been three times. It was when Obama did it, he
Speaker 1: was him saving the world by banning it. When Trump
Speaker 1: ruined the world by putting it back the way, it
Speaker 1: was Biden saving the world by banning it. And all
Speaker 1: these readings, you'll find that they're gonna represe. And it
Speaker 1: is though someone in Alaska feels like just adamant that
Speaker 1: they're like it's presented like Alaskans just want the right
Speaker 1: to do the most atrocious stuff imaginable to wildlife. That
Speaker 1: they're actually just defending the use of donuts in and
Speaker 1: of itself, that they care so much about being able
Speaker 1: to place donuts and be mean to bears, that that's
Speaker 1: what they're defending. And you do not And I read
Speaker 1: all these articles. I'm a sucker for articles about the subject.
Speaker 1: No one ever takes point to clarify the contentious issue
Speaker 1: is it's not the They're not focused on the practice.
Speaker 1: They're focused on how are you justifying usurping our rights
Speaker 1: to manage wildlife as we see fit. They're not in
Speaker 1: love with defending donuts. They're in love was saying you
Speaker 1: don't have a place, you don't have a justification and
Speaker 1: in some people's argument, you don't have the legal pathway
Speaker 1: to come in and interrupt our game management practice. And
Speaker 1: I think they can say that from a legal standpoint,
Speaker 1: as I made clear that it's like it's it's a
Speaker 1: federal overreach and it's a it's a usurpation. Is that
Speaker 1: a word, Jason, usurpations? You know, we recently covered a
Speaker 1: word that um you know, like um uh flatulence familiar.
Speaker 1: Do you know there's a word for the actual like
Speaker 1: substance flatal? I did learn something today like the miasma
Speaker 1: is like flatal Uh? What was I talking about? Usurpation?
Speaker 1: It's a usurpation of their things and they would be
Speaker 1: just as mad if it was anything else, they would
Speaker 1: be Alaska might be just as mad if the FEDS
Speaker 1: came in and said we have decided that he let me.
Speaker 1: Let me put this forward because this is a good
Speaker 1: this is a great way to explained this. I think
Speaker 1: let's say the FEDS came Let's say the Feds are
Speaker 1: completely different people and they came forward and said on
Speaker 1: refuge land, you can hunt moose of the drone because
Speaker 1: we hate moose. I think Alaskaa be pissed, right, they'd
Speaker 1: be pissed. Mm hmm. Why is there a hesitation not
Speaker 1: to regard that their practices are working? I mean what why?
Speaker 1: Because is that not talked more about the abundance of
Speaker 1: game there and how the lower forty eight could be
Speaker 1: learned a thing or two? Yes, why why is that not?
Speaker 1: I don't know? Because they're using words like inhumane. They're
Speaker 1: using like even like I even object to their word
Speaker 1: of conservationists. Conservationists find it inhumane. Those aren't the those
Speaker 1: are pulled. Those two terms are pulled from completely different dictionaries.
Speaker 1: Conservationists find it inhumane. Conservationists if you like, if you
Speaker 1: look at what a concert, how a conservation is defines
Speaker 1: there concern list. They're not concerned like I don't know
Speaker 1: conservations that are concerned with what's humane. They might be
Speaker 1: concerned with how do we preserve intact ecosystems? That would
Speaker 1: be a thing that I would agree with, But I
Speaker 1: don't think Eldo Leopold woke up in the morning wondering
Speaker 1: what's humane? He woke up in the morning wondering how
Speaker 1: can I save wilderness? Well, I mean wolves, like I
Speaker 1: don't know. You if you want to go on YouTube
Speaker 1: and watch them harrowing ship. You should go watch grizzly
Speaker 1: bears dig black bear cubs out of their dens and
Speaker 1: eat them. Thought about it, they'll curl your hair. Uh
Speaker 1: that's I don't know, is it like, is the prep
Speaker 1: does the bear cub who's getting dug out of his den?
Speaker 1: Is he like, oh, I was nervous because I thought
Speaker 1: it was a person, But it's just a bear eating me.
Speaker 1: I feel better about it now. Or does he think, like,
Speaker 1: my gosh, this is inhumane. I'm just a cute little
Speaker 1: bear cub. It's it's there. They're they're they're combining words
Speaker 1: that don't belong together. If they said regarded by animal
Speaker 1: welfare activists as being inhumane, I like, that's that's good reporting.
Speaker 1: That's great animal well for activists think it's inhumane, Okay,
Speaker 1: at least paint it that way. It's so manipulative. I
Speaker 1: was talking with Jason their day about every time you
Speaker 1: read an article about something you let me rephrase this.
Speaker 1: Remember this conversation with hand. When you're reading articles about
Speaker 1: stuff you have no idea about, you're thankful for the article.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, that's cool. I didn't understand any of that. Now,
Speaker 1: I understand it pretty good, thank you. But every time
Speaker 1: you read an article about something that you know well,
Speaker 1: you're pissed about how it was presented, which then makes
Speaker 1: you wonder what you just got wrong? But you didn't
Speaker 1: know enough to know all the ways it was whacked out,
Speaker 1: to which Jason said, I've observed that before and wanted
Speaker 1: to say, so, who who were the forces? Who are
Speaker 1: the interests that we're lobbying for this band in this legislation.
Speaker 1: My guess is it is animal welfare activists pressuring the
Speaker 1: administration and they have it's a be in their bonnet,
Speaker 1: and it's been to be in their bonnet since the
Speaker 1: Obama administration, and they are saying whatever through through however,
Speaker 1: uh whatever, perfectly acceptable practices happen in American politics where
Speaker 1: you back a campaign, you're back it financially, you back
Speaker 1: it with your followers, and then a while later you
Speaker 1: go and say, hey, remember how you know there's we
Speaker 1: got a real problem. Uh. We saw it happen with
Speaker 1: with Murphy, the governor of New Jersey. He ran under
Speaker 1: like he would actually talk about it. He ran a
Speaker 1: campaign and one of the planks in his platform was
Speaker 1: ending the bear hunt in New Jersey? Was that coming
Speaker 1: from his mind? I can't accept that it was. It
Speaker 1: was someone, And I'm not saying that these deals are bad,
Speaker 1: because these deals happen in our favor all the time.
Speaker 1: Like I'm on a board, I'm on a I'm a
Speaker 1: board member of TRCP. We don't like, you don't know
Speaker 1: when uses the term like they're proud of it. But
Speaker 1: TRCP lobbies at a federal level for conservation, So I
Speaker 1: get it. You know, you send your emissaries to politicians
Speaker 1: and you're like, here's the thing that burns my ass,
Speaker 1: and then you hope that they serve your bidding. But
Speaker 1: I don't think when when Biden, um, you know it
Speaker 1: is out checking on his camaro and his classified documents
Speaker 1: in his garage, I don't think. I don't think that
Speaker 1: he's like, man, you know what burns my ass is
Speaker 1: the bear digging in the laud someone like planted it.
Speaker 1: Put it, planted it in there mind. And the only
Speaker 1: place they can possibly pull it off is on refuge land.
Speaker 1: So the the bigger intent may have been too band
Speaker 1: bear hunting altogether, but they can't do that. But this
Speaker 1: policy was a scrap to throw. Sure as sure, let
Speaker 1: me say something about baiting bears. Just this is off
Speaker 1: the real topic you're talking to. Baiting bears allowed. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, anywhere that you can bait bears, it
Speaker 1: is a management tool by the agency to take out
Speaker 1: the number of bears they need to in that region.
Speaker 1: Like heavily forested regions, you can't spot in stock bears
Speaker 1: and effectively kill them. So it's a management tool. Number one.
Speaker 1: Number two, it allows for selective harvest, like we can target,
Speaker 1: and generally people do this. Generally bear hunters would be
Speaker 1: they would put up a bear bait, they would have
Speaker 1: they would know what bears were coming in, and they
Speaker 1: would select for older mature males to take out. The
Speaker 1: least selective hunting that Clay Newcomb does for bears is
Speaker 1: spotting stock hunting, which would be going to some state
Speaker 1: glassing up a bear on the hillside. You've been hunting
Speaker 1: for three days and you've seen two bears, and you
Speaker 1: go shoot that bear and and then you got a
Speaker 1: ground check them. That's right, and so baiting is actually
Speaker 1: a very high quality management tool for bear managers. For instance,
Speaker 1: in the state of Arkansas twenty two years ago, they
Speaker 1: decided we're going to manage our bears by using bow
Speaker 1: hunters over bait on private land, like very thought out,
Speaker 1: very strategic, and they have a quota, and so man
Speaker 1: baiting bears. Don't let anybody Jason Phelps tell you that
Speaker 1: it ain't cool, because it's cool. It's a great way
Speaker 1: to manage bears. And but it's so like this is
Speaker 1: the way I describe it is that in one sentence
Speaker 1: you can can you could relay a story of Hey,
Speaker 1: these crazy rednecks want to put out donuts and kill bears,
Speaker 1: and you if you have no context, no historic context,
Speaker 1: you don't live in bear country, that equates too bad.
Speaker 1: It's about a three or four step conversation for you
Speaker 1: to understand why it's actually really good. Like we have
Speaker 1: expanding black bears are doing better than almost any other
Speaker 1: big game on the continent every yea, every population of
Speaker 1: bears on this black bears are expanding, and we're not
Speaker 1: getting any more wilderness. We're not increasing the amount of habitat,
Speaker 1: we're decreasing it by you know, encroachment of civilization, habitat, fragmentation,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. And so if there was ever a
Speaker 1: time in North America for there a need for really
Speaker 1: strategic bear management. It's now and then these folks come
Speaker 1: in thinking that they're doing something good and are actually
Speaker 1: getting it completely wrong, and so it's it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just one of these things that's just backwards. But it
Speaker 1: takes it would take somebody listening to you for more
Speaker 1: than one sentence to be like, oh, I get it. Here.
Speaker 1: Here's a full page ad that was just taken out
Speaker 1: in the Seattle Times. A friend of mine sent it
Speaker 1: to me. Full page ad. It's from an organization called
Speaker 1: Washington Washington Wildlife First dot org. Full page ad. It's
Speaker 1: a picture of a wolf. The main text is Washington
Speaker 1: wildlife management is much scary year than the big bad wolf.
Speaker 1: Ask Governor j Insley to make Washington safer for wildlife.
Speaker 1: And they go on to say fish and wildlife policy
Speaker 1: has been set by two people who hunt. Now the
Speaker 1: governor is making three appointments to the Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 1: Commission that could transform Washington wildlife management. Please join us
Speaker 1: and asking for commissioners who will prioritize conservation over consumption
Speaker 1: and be a voice for the values and interests of
Speaker 1: all Washingtonians. So what you're having here is they want
Speaker 1: to have wildlife commission's inners that are like a zookeeper,
Speaker 1: a wild they've commissioner that's an animal rights activist in management.
Speaker 1: At the top of the page there's text, there's like
Speaker 1: the the atrocities beavers are trapped and drowned for their
Speaker 1: for one, let me tell you one thing. Beavers are
Speaker 1: not viewers are not hunted. So it's they're they're regulated
Speaker 1: as a fur bear with like very tight restrictions and
Speaker 1: very tight gear restrictions. Okay, but you don't hunt for him.
Speaker 1: That's the only way they're done. Uh. Cougars are hounded
Speaker 1: and shot out of trees. Wolves are slaughtered for the
Speaker 1: livestock industry. It's it's just a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: wildly different worldview. And when you get into wildlife management,
Speaker 1: like you have to become a believer in the slippery
Speaker 1: slope because the conversations that are happening out of your view.
Speaker 1: The conversations is we would like to see an end, absolutely,
Speaker 1: we would like to see an end of consumptive use
Speaker 1: of wildlife across the board. How do you do that?
Speaker 1: Death by a thousand cuts, because you can still go,
Speaker 1: you can still go to Americans and pull Americans and
Speaker 1: say do you believe in regulated hunting? Do you support
Speaker 1: regulated hunting and fishing? Overwhelmingly higher now than it wasn't
Speaker 1: the eighties. We'll say yes. The minute you put particulars
Speaker 1: to it, the number goes down. The minute you put
Speaker 1: particulars to it. You could go and do a pole.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen this one necessarily, but you could go
Speaker 1: do a pole and say, um, do you do support
Speaker 1: regulated hunting and regulated hunting fishing? Yep? Do you support
Speaker 1: the practice of having a dog chase a birden flush
Speaker 1: it so that amand can slaughter with a shotgun? Well? No,
Speaker 1: not that. Would you support someone sitting on the edge
Speaker 1: of a field so that when a deer comes out
Speaker 1: to get its first little bite of food in the evening,
Speaker 1: a man you know, like, oh no, that sounds So
Speaker 1: what does that tell you though? Does that tell you that?
Speaker 1: So if if people who have no understanding of hunting
Speaker 1: arts and support of it, then that that means that Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're in support of it, then let then let
Speaker 1: the people who actually know what's going on, know what
Speaker 1: it takes to manage wildlife, know what it takes to
Speaker 1: manage to land have control of of making rules and regulations.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, what's the point of what? What's your
Speaker 1: takeaway from what you're saying about. There's overwhelming support of
Speaker 1: it until you get to the granular stuff that when
Speaker 1: you go after it, it's easy to go out when
Speaker 1: you when you go after it, you go after the
Speaker 1: lowest hanging fruit and the thing that sounds more atrocious
Speaker 1: because you're not going to be able to go after
Speaker 1: the thing in and of itself. Washington eventually, will California
Speaker 1: eventually will California is based there. I had a very
Speaker 1: high years ago, I had a very high level person
Speaker 1: at California Fishing Game predicted me that they would lose
Speaker 1: the whole thing in twenty five years. He thought it
Speaker 1: was gonna be archery, next the whole thing, eventually the
Speaker 1: whole he said from where he was sitting that day, said,
Speaker 1: I think we'll lose the whole thing into only five years.
Speaker 1: Archer will be the next thing we lose. Then it
Speaker 1: will be a thing about, you know, the maiming of
Speaker 1: or humanity of it. There's there there's a justifiable there's
Speaker 1: there's a position when it comes to these debates that
Speaker 1: that I think that very intelligent, well meaning people put
Speaker 1: this idea forth that hunters need to aggressively police their
Speaker 1: own actions to make it that there is no low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit, that we would self eliminate all the low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit. That you'd say, Okay, I'm gonna quit hound
Speaker 1: hunting because that gives us all a black eye. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quit. You should quit baiting because that gives
Speaker 1: us all a black eye. And they think that you
Speaker 1: would clean it up so much that an animal rights
Speaker 1: person would look and say to themselves, well, now the
Speaker 1: they've made themselves as peers, the driven snow, and I
Speaker 1: have no more desire to mess with them, because I
Speaker 1: really was just interested in trapping. Um. There are people
Speaker 1: that think that that's that that that's the approach that
Speaker 1: you should be. That you should never um display talk
Speaker 1: about anything. If you take a picture of a you
Speaker 1: and a deer you killed, you should look really sad.
Speaker 1: That you should never have bloody hands, You should never
Speaker 1: drive with a with a deer in the back of
Speaker 1: your truck that someone might see. You should never do
Speaker 1: any practice that might irritate animal rights activists, and that
Speaker 1: then we'll live in perpetuity for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: That's like I I regard it as a like, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a nonsensical position. I just think
Speaker 1: that I've come to think more and more that that's
Speaker 1: wrong and stupid. Yeah, there after the low hanging fruit
Speaker 1: because it's but as soon as that's gone, the next
Speaker 1: level they're never going to go away. You know. It
Speaker 1: feels like it's really it's an issue of identity, like
Speaker 1: in a real big macro scale. It's like who are
Speaker 1: we as really even as Americans? And it's like, this
Speaker 1: is who we are, and this is our track record
Speaker 1: with wildlife. We have the most abundant big game wildlife
Speaker 1: conservation practices in the history of the planet. Our our
Speaker 1: success has been so good here and this is who
Speaker 1: we are. This we're hunters, we eat meat, We deeply
Speaker 1: value culturally these animals. And it's like they're trying to
Speaker 1: take that away from us because they don't understand it.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a viewpoint I have that that I
Speaker 1: almost shouldn't make. Is gonna just in the in the
Speaker 1: in being um just in the spirit of honesty on
Speaker 1: my good there's an argument like in the abortion debate.
Speaker 1: There's in the in the abortion debate, there's an argument
Speaker 1: like like hands off, like hands off my body, right,
Speaker 1: Like don't tell me what to do with myself. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's one of the leading arguments to be like it's
Speaker 1: it's like when it comes to contraception, when it comes
Speaker 1: to abortion, there's there's an an argument that people make
Speaker 1: that that's me and that's my business. And it's sort
Speaker 1: of like it's like ending the argument. You're trying to
Speaker 1: end the argument was saying like it's me, don't tell
Speaker 1: me what to do because like I live in America,
Speaker 1: and I have uh self agency to make certain decisions,
Speaker 1: and these are my innatible rights and and that's the
Speaker 1: end of it. I'm not here to like hash this
Speaker 1: out with you for a long time. Right, it's a
Speaker 1: way of handling it. I sometimes I feel that that
Speaker 1: a little bit, like I feel that there is a legacy,
Speaker 1: there's a legacy of hunting and fishing and interaction with
Speaker 1: while life in America that has made it in some
Speaker 1: respects the philosophical um the spiritual property of a discipline
Speaker 1: in the lifestyle. I mean, there's a discipline in the
Speaker 1: lifestyle that has a established a sense of ownership over
Speaker 1: a renewable resource, and and in all fairness, to have
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't interact with the wildlife, who doesn't understand
Speaker 1: it well, who views it only as a thing that
Speaker 1: they watch on television or that they see out of
Speaker 1: their window when they drive through Yellowstone once in their life. Like,
Speaker 1: I feel like their imposition on this whole thing that
Speaker 1: that they're an intruder into a world that they don't understand.
Speaker 1: And it would be like these two different things. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna like there, there's two different viewpoints take take it.
Speaker 1: In voting, some people think that just your mere presence
Speaker 1: in America gives you the right to vote here legally
Speaker 1: or not. Your mere presence in America should allow you
Speaker 1: to cast a ballot. There's other people that think that
Speaker 1: will know. I think that you should be a citizen.
Speaker 1: I think that you should not be a felon. I
Speaker 1: think that you should have a address by which I
Speaker 1: can identify that you are who you say you are,
Speaker 1: and that under those conditions you should be able to
Speaker 1: pick the leaders of the country. Two different worldviews, Like
Speaker 1: when when it comes to fish and wildlife, I'm more like,
Speaker 1: instinctively I'm more like the person who would want you
Speaker 1: to have to jump through more hurdles and understand what
Speaker 1: you're talking about and know the history before you weigh
Speaker 1: in on ship. M hm. But it doesn't really work
Speaker 1: that way. Well, going back to the Washington Commissioners thing,
Speaker 1: Jason was telling us about how there's this idea that
Speaker 1: the commissioners, the people that are making wildlife based decisions,
Speaker 1: would be outside of the historic genre of people that
Speaker 1: we pick, like like, you know, let's put an animal
Speaker 1: rights activist on the game commission just so that we
Speaker 1: have this diverse spread of people. You could do that,
Speaker 1: but that's not the way we've done it. And what
Speaker 1: we've done has been highly successful. So I think that's
Speaker 1: the statement that you're making is like, yeah, we could
Speaker 1: like totally change the way that we're doing this, but
Speaker 1: if you want to do something that's predictable and stable
Speaker 1: that has worked in general, and and and and some
Speaker 1: people have bones to pick with their wildlife agency, which
Speaker 1: is kind of I mean, yeah, whatever, but in general,
Speaker 1: macro squad macro scale wildlife management and this continent has
Speaker 1: been phenomenal, Like since the Garden of Eden, it hadn't
Speaker 1: been this good and so I think what we're saying
Speaker 1: is that, yeah, you could do it that way, that's
Speaker 1: way different and what we've done has worked extremely well.
Speaker 1: And you know, typically guys that are on commissions that
Speaker 1: are making decisions, or people that are historically culturally vested
Speaker 1: in wildlife from a hunter manager, you know position. I
Speaker 1: think that Jason was talking about this the dr and night,
Speaker 1: and you should make your own point about it. But
Speaker 1: there's this idea. You live in Washington, there's an idea
Speaker 1: that you're gonna throw out a desire to throw out
Speaker 1: a very effective system as measured by how successful it's been,
Speaker 1: um and replace it with not quite sure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean being from Washington and kind of seeing what's happening. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, most of North American's big game is managed
Speaker 1: by the North American model of wildlife. And one of
Speaker 1: our commissioners might not be quoted perfectly, but to this sense,
Speaker 1: it no longer works because it does. It no longer
Speaker 1: has an emotional or social um emphasis there. There's no
Speaker 1: way to now categorize and balance that with the the
Speaker 1: idea of how do we manage the wild life? We
Speaker 1: need to look at now the the social impact that
Speaker 1: these seasons these you know, quotas, whatever they may be,
Speaker 1: and then we also need to look at the social um.
Speaker 1: So it's emotional and social components are not included in
Speaker 1: that model. Therefore we just need to undo everything. But
Speaker 1: they don't have a model to replace it with. So
Speaker 1: now it's like they've now used this no model to
Speaker 1: go to that that just remove spring bear season. So
Speaker 1: it's just it's just low hanging fruit instantly being taken off.
Speaker 1: And these I don't this might be a point that's
Speaker 1: a little bit outside, but these people are so uneducated
Speaker 1: on our hunting seasons. You know, we we just went
Speaker 1: through this whole um spring bear ondoing that we've had forever.
Speaker 1: One of the new commissioners, I don't know which one
Speaker 1: it was, I thought at the same time, we should
Speaker 1: take out spring wild turkey seasons because if a spring
Speaker 1: bearer comes out of his den lethargic and is more
Speaker 1: vulnerable than by all means of spring turkey had to
Speaker 1: be And that's that's what we're dealing with. Like we're
Speaker 1: to the point where these people have no understanding on
Speaker 1: why seasons are set when they're set, and why we
Speaker 1: pursume at certain times. And you're just to the point
Speaker 1: of just in that article alludes to it like they're
Speaker 1: gonna replace three commissioners because some of our UM commissioners
Speaker 1: that did have fishing and hunting backgrounds were so frustrated
Speaker 1: with some of the recent stuff. They've all resigned and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, now we're going to go from you know,
Speaker 1: what was kind of a mixed board to just a
Speaker 1: lopsided Um. Yeah, you guys, E want to like Pamela
Speaker 1: Anderson on your commission. It's not gonna be good. Uh,
Speaker 1: but I'll take the task. Even what he said about
Speaker 1: the he probably doesn't know anything about the North American
Speaker 1: model of while the conservation because him saying that there's
Speaker 1: no social and cultural component. It's made up of seven tenants.
Speaker 1: One of the tenants is democratic allocation. That feels pretty
Speaker 1: cultural and social to me, Democratic allocation of resources, a
Speaker 1: waste component. There's a tenant about waste non frivolous use.
Speaker 1: There's a tenant about international cooperation that all feels very
Speaker 1: cultural and social to me. It's it's it's it's like
Speaker 1: he he's a technic thing he doesn't understand. Yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: what's the what's the response for for hunters? To this, Steve, Like,
Speaker 1: so what we're talking about, We're we're talking about these
Speaker 1: big things that are going on not totally outside of
Speaker 1: our control. But what's the message to the hunting community?
Speaker 1: You know, my mind remains unchanged. Um, the two party system,
Speaker 1: it's kind of miserable for hunters. Uh. There needs we need,
Speaker 1: like a new one that's pro hunting and pro habitat.
Speaker 1: You're talking you gotta strategically shop. You get culture, you
Speaker 1: get hunting defense and cultural defense from the right, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times you get pretty good environmental habitat
Speaker 1: stuff from the left, and there's nowhere to turn. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's like who do you feel like? You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's who at any given moment is less likely
Speaker 1: to screw you mm hmm, And to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: like right now, like with cultural stuff going on, like
Speaker 1: the right right now is a lot of elements of
Speaker 1: the right right now are less likely to screw you.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. It's like becoming such a clown car mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I would with some of the stuff, like like you know,
Speaker 1: I remember Insley got in and he was one of
Speaker 1: the first, Like I said, he's like one of the
Speaker 1: first guys to bail on the deal. But in my
Speaker 1: head I already knew, like with already knew with like
Speaker 1: certain wildlife issues. I was like, man, not the guy
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, extreme, but probably has a great habitat record,
Speaker 1: I guarantee it. He Yeah, like the amount of tax
Speaker 1: just to save some you know, the orcas, and it's
Speaker 1: it's nuts. Like I mean, it's it's a good it's
Speaker 1: a good idea, but it's just like the at the
Speaker 1: expense of of you know, Washington citizens. He's I would
Speaker 1: consider extreme. Like you know, I think, what is it
Speaker 1: a National Wild Turkey Federation. Isn't it defend the habitat,
Speaker 1: defend the hunt. Isn't that they're like part of their
Speaker 1: slogan taglines, do that, I'll send n WTF a bunch
Speaker 1: of money. It's like here, here's what I was is
Speaker 1: gonna say at a at a more granular? Can I
Speaker 1: answer one more time? Because I just thought have a
Speaker 1: better one, not better, not better than defend the habitat,
Speaker 1: defend the hunt. Think about what's built into t RCPs
Speaker 1: thing guaranteeing Americans quality places to what hunt fish, hunting fish.
Speaker 1: So I shouldn't say like I'm the one that's gotta
Speaker 1: figured out a lot of people gotta figured out. Defend
Speaker 1: the habitat, defend the hunt guarantee Americans quality places, not
Speaker 1: shipped up places, quality places to hunt fish. So the
Speaker 1: the public sector is all over this. Aspects of the
Speaker 1: public are sorry. Aspects of the NGO, you know, the
Speaker 1: NGO private sector is all over this. But in the
Speaker 1: in the political atmosphere, it's like you're always someone's always
Speaker 1: screwing you and in some respects always helping you out.
Speaker 1: Some people are always helping you out on somethingunn you
Speaker 1: happen to help a finger. Let me let me say
Speaker 1: this because this is I wanted to hear what you
Speaker 1: had to say about that, and that was like a
Speaker 1: like a I would say a big macro like call
Speaker 1: to action for people and give them some understanding. If
Speaker 1: we were to have a family meeting as hunters, if
Speaker 1: we were all like, okay, boys, come inside, everybody's sent
Speaker 1: the couch. We gotta have a little talk, I would
Speaker 1: say what we need to do is we've got to
Speaker 1: Maybe this is overdone, but I think there's things that
Speaker 1: I can do that would in my own life that
Speaker 1: would help me be better. But we really have to unify.
Speaker 1: And that's an overly stated word, but what that means
Speaker 1: is when you tell your kid how dumb crossbow hunters are,
Speaker 1: you are? No, I pointed Steve when I said, Bridget,
Speaker 1: when you tell your something, no, when you there's things
Speaker 1: that we do all the time that infuse division inside
Speaker 1: of people that are really on our team, Like and
Speaker 1: I've experienced that massively inside of when I ran Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting magazine. I mean it was like just baiting bears
Speaker 1: and all this controversial stuff. All I'm saying is, if
Speaker 1: there's somebody that does something different than you, because I
Speaker 1: gave ron t you you do stuff different in Montana
Speaker 1: than I do in Arkansas. And the way I view
Speaker 1: hunting is different than the guys out west. You're treading
Speaker 1: into dangerous territory right now, we're going do you think, so,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you are? Well, I I just I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: don't we're so divided amongst ourselves. Like I'm okay with
Speaker 1: the way that Jason hunts, and if it's inside the
Speaker 1: laws and the and the boundaries of legality where I live,
Speaker 1: and I can run run bears with hounds, and I
Speaker 1: can trap, and I can you know, shoot squirrels to
Speaker 1: the end of February and then like just be okay
Speaker 1: with that, Just be like, good job, Clay. You go,
Speaker 1: here's where, Here's where you're you're here's where you're you're
Speaker 1: you're playing checkers when you should be playing chess. Game managers,
Speaker 1: even if there was no radical animal rights agenda whatsoever
Speaker 1: in this country, game managers would still need to wrestle
Speaker 1: with emerging technologies you have. You would agree that wildlife
Speaker 1: is a finite resource, okay, right, wilde a finite resource.
Speaker 1: You want to maximize people's you want to maximize your
Speaker 1: populations opportunity to try to get a share a portion
Speaker 1: of this finite resource. In order to maximize participation and opportunity,
Speaker 1: you need to do things that control efficacy rights. Just
Speaker 1: I know where you're going with this. Well, let's say
Speaker 1: people don't. Let's say you have five years from now.
Speaker 1: Let's say you have a population of you have a
Speaker 1: mountain range, and and you're you're very well intentioned game
Speaker 1: mant pro hunting game managers are like, we can pull
Speaker 1: a hundred elk off that mountain, no problem, hunterd elk
Speaker 1: off that mountain. There's a let's say I'm I'm using
Speaker 1: not real numbers, but there's a thousand elk on that mountain. Okay,
Speaker 1: that mountain has historically had about a thousand elk on.
Speaker 1: It can hold about a thousand elk. Um, we can
Speaker 1: kill a hundred in the fall, and you know what,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain again
Speaker 1: next year. That's just how it goes. You could kill
Speaker 1: none and you're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain.
Speaker 1: You could kill a hundred and you're gonna have a
Speaker 1: thousand elk on that mountain. Because that mountain is gonna
Speaker 1: hold about a thousand elk, it gets much more. They
Speaker 1: tend to they tend to starve off, it gets much more.
Speaker 1: Predation shoots through the roof whatever. It's always got about
Speaker 1: a thousand. We're gonna kill a hundred. Now we could say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna let we're gonna kill a hundred. You can
Speaker 1: use a helicopter, you can use thermal, you can use
Speaker 1: night vision explosives. Okay, how many tags are you going
Speaker 1: to give out? Hundred tags? Probably because everybody's going to
Speaker 1: get the elk. Or you say, here's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do instead, you can use a bow, you can't hunt
Speaker 1: at night. How many tags are we going to give
Speaker 1: out a thousand to kill a hundred? No, you know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna give out is you're gonna have success rates,
Speaker 1: so you can give out five hundred tags. That is why, like,
Speaker 1: you know, deeper into the weeds than what you're proposing
Speaker 1: that you're proposing of. You're you're tiptoeing around, proposing a
Speaker 1: philosophy in which everything is great and cool. And just
Speaker 1: because I hunt out of a helicopter with night vision,
Speaker 1: I think I think he's taken the extreme of what
Speaker 1: I was even you tiptoed into dangerous territory. This is
Speaker 1: all I was saying, was like, don't hate a guy
Speaker 1: because he uses hounds. It's just like historic use practice.
Speaker 1: Just be okay with it. You don't have to kill
Speaker 1: a mountain lion over hounds, but that's the way we
Speaker 1: do it. If you're not defending your point's well taken up.
Speaker 1: But you can even shoot holes in my point. Here's unification, Steve,
Speaker 1: We're on the same side, bro the cross bowl thing
Speaker 1: kind of because here's the deal. When you get an
Speaker 1: individual I'll argue policy a crossbows. Well, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that in Montana. Yeah, right now, archery season in Montana,
Speaker 1: the state where I love archery season Montana, you can't
Speaker 1: ult with a cross bowl. However, crossbow hunters be like,
Speaker 1: why are you discriminated against us? We count No, you
Speaker 1: can hunt with a cross bowl. You can hunt with
Speaker 1: a cross bowl more than you can't. You can hunt
Speaker 1: with a crossbow all through spring bear season, no problem,
Speaker 1: six weeks of general firearm you can hunt with a crossbow.
Speaker 1: Don't say you can't hunt with a crossbow. You can't
Speaker 1: hunt with a crossbow during archery season, just as I
Speaker 1: can't hunt with a gun during archery season. I would
Speaker 1: never come and say there's no chance to hunt with
Speaker 1: a gun. They would be like, well, no, sir, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of chances to hunt with a gun. You
Speaker 1: hunt with a gun all through spring bear season, you know,
Speaker 1: with a gonna all through general firearm season. You can
Speaker 1: hunt with a gun all through the extended seasons. But
Speaker 1: you can't hunt with a gun during archery season. A
Speaker 1: crossbow you can have had it, you know, hut your
Speaker 1: ass off with a crossbow. You just want to do it.
Speaker 1: The one time you can't who doesn't If you want
Speaker 1: to ask any individual, be like, would do you do
Speaker 1: you think it should be cool? Like should we let
Speaker 1: you hunt with your gun during archery? I'd be like,
Speaker 1: you mean, just me sure, I think that's a I
Speaker 1: think that'd be a phenomenal idea. Yeah, great point. But
Speaker 1: here's where my point falls apart. Just in all fairness,
Speaker 1: I think that management agencies need to protect traditional use practices.
Speaker 1: Someone might say why would Someone might point and be like,
Speaker 1: one of the oldest strategies that we know was occurring
Speaker 1: on this continent. Two old strategies were the buffalo jump
Speaker 1: and fire. You would light ship on fire and kill
Speaker 1: the stuff that ran out. So if you want to
Speaker 1: defend traditional use practices, are you saying that hunters should
Speaker 1: have uh carte block to go and burn thickets to
Speaker 1: flush out game. So it all gets a little complicated.
Speaker 1: In traditional use, you have to like draw line in
Speaker 1: the sand, like on this day in nine seven is
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you couldn't you can, I mean
Speaker 1: go back as far as you can, and then with
Speaker 1: the you know, with things improving, it's like traditional use,
Speaker 1: where do you draw the line a cree beaver hunting
Speaker 1: strategy was that you just remove the damn, drain the
Speaker 1: whole pond out, and then go around to all the
Speaker 1: dens and stuff and dig them out and club the beavers.
Speaker 1: In most dates now, especially states that have a deep
Speaker 1: tradition of contemporary fur trapping, you can't destroy the damn
Speaker 1: because you're chopping down the apple tree. You want people,
Speaker 1: if you want people to be able to pick the apples,
Speaker 1: don't cut the damn tree down. So all this stuff
Speaker 1: is a little tricky. Speaking, which the second thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to cover. It was a great intro. That's a
Speaker 1: great intro to the podcast. Welcome to the met Eater podcast.
Speaker 1: I was on I was hacking on Michigan because our
Speaker 1: our our friend and Zuck I wasn't hacking on Michigan.
Speaker 1: Our friend of Michigan. Guys are Matt's personal MAT's personal friend.
Speaker 1: That's how I know guys are Matt Cook's friend. Was
Speaker 1: sent me a note. Uh he was very concerned about
Speaker 1: the fall turkey hunt in Michigan and I had spent
Speaker 1: some time. I didn't criticize the state. I said I
Speaker 1: would love to hear the justification for why they're there
Speaker 1: having it be that that one guy can in in
Speaker 1: in a certain area in Michigan, that you could that
Speaker 1: you could buy tag after tag after tag in the
Speaker 1: fall and kill turkeys and now that but shoot hands. Okay,
Speaker 1: basically got areas where you can just keep buying them
Speaker 1: till they're you know, and some guy he knows guy
Speaker 1: killed five gobblers off public way and fall turkey hunt.
Speaker 1: And I was saying, I will say not that it
Speaker 1: was wrong. I was saying, I think that people need
Speaker 1: to be cautious with turkeys. And I think that if
Speaker 1: you're gonna look and be like like and and let
Speaker 1: me back up once, like a guy wrote in all
Speaker 1: bent out of shape, like, how can you support the
Speaker 1: shooting at does and fawns but you don't support the
Speaker 1: shooting at hands. That's not my gripe. My gripe, isn't that?
Speaker 1: My statement was simply that that as we're as we
Speaker 1: know from Missouri, as we know from Kentucky, as we
Speaker 1: know from South Carolina, you can't take turkeys for granted,
Speaker 1: talk about what's going on when you're at Yeah, in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: we've lost in the last ten to fifteen years, we've
Speaker 1: lost sixty of our population. So when I was in
Speaker 1: high school, you know, twenty years old, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, we had a pretty great turkey hunting and
Speaker 1: today it is Arkansas turkey hunting is very, very difficult,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's death by a thousand cuts in
Speaker 1: terms of why turkey populations are declining. But it's happening
Speaker 1: all over the South, the Southeast, and there's guys that are,
Speaker 1: you know, dedicating their careers to try and understand why.
Speaker 1: But they're just a you know, a ground nesting bird man.
Speaker 1: You can't can't put your faith in him because they're
Speaker 1: extremely vulnerable. Yeah, ground clad said one has never falling
Speaker 1: love with the ground nesting learning that from my grandpa,
Speaker 1: who was a who was a quail hunter. For really
Speaker 1: it's kind of a joke, but my grandfather was a
Speaker 1: big time bird dog trainer, Bob White quail man. In
Speaker 1: the last twenty years of his life that I spent
Speaker 1: with him, he bemoaned the passing of the Bob White
Speaker 1: quail I mean we went quail hunting literally knowing we
Speaker 1: weren't gonna find quail, but he just wanted to work
Speaker 1: as dogs and we wanted to go through the motions,
Speaker 1: and so I quail hunted my whole youth, like basically
Speaker 1: knowing we were after something that for the most part
Speaker 1: didn't exist. And his stories of man Clay at one
Speaker 1: time found nine covees on that single hill right there,
Speaker 1: and today there's none. And so you know that kind
Speaker 1: of stuf. Then you go and say, well, why is that?
Speaker 1: And the answer is where do I begin? Right? Fire
Speaker 1: ants changing at your cultural practices, um changing the fire
Speaker 1: management practices, cheat, grass invade. You know, it's like all
Speaker 1: that ship even if you removed one and probably still
Speaker 1: be happening. But with turkeys, you have like there's this
Speaker 1: thing with there's this phenomenon like the founder effect. I
Speaker 1: shouldn't call a phennen because it might be a sort
Speaker 1: of like a somewhat of a scientific principle. The founder effect.
Speaker 1: When you bring it, when you introduce a new species
Speaker 1: on a landscape, it kicks ass for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: They're exploiting. They're exploiting a resource base that hasn't been touched,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna like fill a niche, and the niche
Speaker 1: hasn't been manipulated, had have been Uh, it hasn't been occupied,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't been exploited at all. Okay, So let's
Speaker 1: say you were to go to some landscape that had
Speaker 1: never had you, some prey rich landscape that had never
Speaker 1: had a coyote on it, and you're like, it just mages.
Speaker 1: Some magical island full of rabbits and ground nesting birds,
Speaker 1: never had a kyote on it. You dumped some kyote
Speaker 1: flues on it. What do you imagine is gonna happen?
Speaker 1: Booming popular shiploads of food. The rabbits have never seen
Speaker 1: it before, and they're like, hey, what's that? And it
Speaker 1: gets eaten. UM ship that eats coyotes hasn't figured out
Speaker 1: how to exploit, just as the rabbits haven't figured out
Speaker 1: how to um prevent themselves from They haven't learned to like,
Speaker 1: not lay out in the open at night, because they've
Speaker 1: never needed to worry about laying out in the open
Speaker 1: at night. But now they've got to realize, Man, you
Speaker 1: can't lay out in the open at night anymore, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. And something that might be like a kyot
Speaker 1: would be good to eat. He hasn't figured out how
Speaker 1: to deal with them yet. Maybe it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to kill. But if we put our heads to get
Speaker 1: will figure out how to kill Kyles and we'll eat him.
Speaker 1: But they haven't figured that out yet. So here the
Speaker 1: coyotes are eating tons of rabbits, tons of ground nesting birds,
Speaker 1: having tons of babies. Nothing's killing their babies, and you'd
Speaker 1: be like, man, this is the Kyle hunting paradise. Fast
Speaker 1: forward twenty years. They've clipped, they've pulled off the cream
Speaker 1: of the crop of the rabbits. Rabbits have gotten very paranoid.
Speaker 1: They conduct their daily existence very differently. Some other big
Speaker 1: bad thing has been like you know, uh, I figured
Speaker 1: out that I can go out to that place and
Speaker 1: killed shipload of kyotes and I like to eat coyotes,
Speaker 1: right and over time, it's not that way turkeys were reintroduced,
Speaker 1: but it's like they were so eliminated from the landscape.
Speaker 1: The turkeys when they were reintroduced, they had a new
Speaker 1: founder effect and everybody, like every state that went through
Speaker 1: it had the same thing, like my dad, Like they
Speaker 1: happened in Michigan right when I moved out of Michigan.
Speaker 1: I left Michigan and I finished school and left Michigan,
Speaker 1: and my dad started just slain in turkeys he didn't
Speaker 1: even need to do anything mhm right, And it was
Speaker 1: just this came in and they were they were clueless,
Speaker 1: exploding in numbers, and everybody got to be like, this
Speaker 1: is just how it is now. We have shiploads of
Speaker 1: turkeys all the time, kill them all. And my my
Speaker 1: only thing with that stuff is like I would be cautious.
Speaker 1: M I would be cautious. And when they when Michigan,
Speaker 1: the representative from Michigan Fishing Game responded, and they're viewing
Speaker 1: it like they're viewing these high take areas, they're viewing
Speaker 1: it as population control. And then you'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: who the hell is saying there's too many agricultural interests?
Speaker 1: Not me. I've never had a turkey hunter bitch to
Speaker 1: me about too many turkeys. Ever, So when someone says
Speaker 1: turkeys are overpopulated, I'm like, by whose measure? Not mine? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just be careful. That's mostly take on him, and
Speaker 1: it's it's like, it's not immoral, it's just like be careful.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting because when you have these big booms
Speaker 1: of of well, particularly with turkeys the seventies, eighties, and nineties,
Speaker 1: there's a thirty year period which is a pretty long
Speaker 1: period and a human lifespan, enough time to really build
Speaker 1: a norm and build culture. That's when all the call
Speaker 1: companies rose up, Like there were no big major like
Speaker 1: turkey call companies and turkey call accessories, and in the
Speaker 1: nineties those things really peaked and kind of and that's
Speaker 1: when turkey hunting media started. And so it was kind
Speaker 1: of like there was a flag stuck in the ground
Speaker 1: in the nineties in America about turkey hunting culture, and
Speaker 1: then that became the norm. And then today we're like,
Speaker 1: dad gum, why can't it be like the nineties. And
Speaker 1: that's also when there was some great turkey poachers that arose,
Speaker 1: like Charlie and Louis del Edwards. Clay gets into this
Speaker 1: in a series of bear Greese podcasts and you should
Speaker 1: you should expand them this a little bit and in
Speaker 1: a series of bear Grease podcasts about turkey poachers, a
Speaker 1: bunch of different turkey poachers and that these guys are
Speaker 1: they call it preseason honey, Yeah, guys that are killing
Speaker 1: twenty five turkeys, fifty turkeys, seventy five turkeys because turkeys
Speaker 1: are everywhere. Yeah, they you know, if you're season bag
Speaker 1: limits too, and you have you're in a place with
Speaker 1: a ton of turkeys. I mean for people with with
Speaker 1: without the the the backing to want to obey the law.
Speaker 1: I mean, killing two turkeys just wasn't enough. And these
Speaker 1: guys hunted from the time they started goblin til the
Speaker 1: time they stopped. You know, get it when it's getting good.
Speaker 1: Another piece of feedback that came from the Michigan Michigan's
Speaker 1: you know, the State of Michigan's Fishing Game Department, is
Speaker 1: this trend that I first heard about from Robert Abernathy,
Speaker 1: who's a turkey researcher in South Carolina, and it's that
Speaker 1: and looking at how are we going to continue to
Speaker 1: hunt turkeys and continue to have a lot of turkeys.
Speaker 1: You may in your state see a shift away from
Speaker 1: killing turkeys early. We sometimes they're killing turkeys in the
Speaker 1: snow in spring season. It's because hunters want to hunt
Speaker 1: them when they're goblin. They want to hunt turkeys when
Speaker 1: when you make a call, they're coming. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of emerging should say a lot, there's some emerging
Speaker 1: research and emerging suspicion that when you're killing gobblers pre nesting,
Speaker 1: you're you're damaging a you're you're damaging the social hierarchy,
Speaker 1: and and and and interfering with breeding. And then it's
Speaker 1: like kill all the gobblers you want, and may don't
Speaker 1: kill them so bad in April you're busting them up
Speaker 1: at the wrong time. And and then there's also a
Speaker 1: fear that when you're hunting these winnering flocks and stuff
Speaker 1: like pre nesting, that you're you're having a lot of uh,
Speaker 1: you're having a lot of collateral damage by running shotgun,
Speaker 1: by running shot come patterns into in the groups of
Speaker 1: turkeys rather than working individual birds later on in the
Speaker 1: later on in the cycle. Mhm. Groundness and birds are
Speaker 1: just extremely complex. I think that's what we're learning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, when I interviewed Mike Chamberlain, it's like the
Speaker 1: list of uh, you know, what's affecting you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of it. You talked early which a lot of
Speaker 1: states have their youth season and they talk about easy
Speaker 1: now I know, I know, but like I think there
Speaker 1: was a study a study down in Missouri were like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a huge percentage of the overall birds,
Speaker 1: but they equate like that of the birds that get
Speaker 1: killed has like just as much of effect as the
Speaker 1: other you know of the birds that get killed and so,
Speaker 1: but it's not he was quick, you know, Mike was
Speaker 1: quick to say, it's not just youth seasons, it's habitat,
Speaker 1: it's this, it's this. It's just a very and and
Speaker 1: on a on an animal that has, you know, on
Speaker 1: a max of four year life cycling and then get
Speaker 1: older than that. But if we just say four years
Speaker 1: is kind of then the road for a turkey, you know,
Speaker 1: living through three with something with that quick at turnaround.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a slippery slope of Michigan. It's just
Speaker 1: very the populations like clay it's at, can shift very
Speaker 1: very quickly. When you're only dealing with a three or
Speaker 1: four years. You know, you get one or two bad
Speaker 1: springs and you're down to thirty three percent of your birds.
Speaker 1: If we're going on and it's just a very very
Speaker 1: complex issue. I don't think we have figured out yet.
Speaker 1: There's another aspect of turkey season. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I enjoy youth turkey season. Um, and it gets into
Speaker 1: that kind of like not in my backyard, like don't
Speaker 1: mess with me right, Like I'm I'm talking out of
Speaker 1: both sides of my mouth on one hand saying there's
Speaker 1: a lot of respected turkey researchers are like, we got
Speaker 1: caught stock killing birds so early. And then I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm already playing. I'm already playing in the Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: You know. We we go to Wisconsin for youth turkey.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite time of year. Last year we killed
Speaker 1: zero turkeys. Um, but that was not our intent, right,
Speaker 1: Our intent was to get a couple. So I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. And yeah, maybe you know there will
Speaker 1: be a time when you have to, you know, question
Speaker 1: that and make that sacrifice. But generally, what you're looking
Speaker 1: for is you're not looking for You're looking for not
Speaker 1: individuals uh making like self proclamations. You're you're looking for
Speaker 1: agencies to codify regulations right and and basically have that
Speaker 1: be you know, people be like, how do you be
Speaker 1: how do you become an ethical hunter? But here's of it.
Speaker 1: Follow the law. We'll get you pretty much all the
Speaker 1: way there. Follow the law. Um in the law right
Speaker 1: now is you know the youth turkey thing. And and
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have I'm not hacking on any
Speaker 1: guy that goes out in Michigan and the fall and
Speaker 1: you know, the only the only have they got way
Speaker 1: less than half as many tagholders in the fall, in
Speaker 1: a way lower success rate in the fall. They they
Speaker 1: view it as like it's like a negligible harvest. But
Speaker 1: I don't know, Man, the good days of turkey you know,
Speaker 1: I hate say it, but in some respects the good
Speaker 1: days of turkey hunting could be winding down. Would you
Speaker 1: be as cautious about going to two birds? You know,
Speaker 1: tag for two birds limit versus one before you would
Speaker 1: you know, open up the fall like in Michigan even
Speaker 1: one bird limit? Would you would you rather see them
Speaker 1: going to two birds and not do the full If
Speaker 1: I was the TSAR, if I was America's wildlifs Are,
Speaker 1: that'd be a good position for that would be You're
Speaker 1: the only one in this country that can sort through
Speaker 1: bipartisan politics America's wildlifs are, And I could just do
Speaker 1: what I needed to do and I would even have
Speaker 1: to hear any complaints. Right, there's no way to even
Speaker 1: get a hold of me. And I'm the wildlifs Are
Speaker 1: and no one even knows that I'm the wild LIFs Are.
Speaker 1: You're the man behind the curtain. I'm the man behind
Speaker 1: the curtain and I can do stuff and I don't
Speaker 1: need to hear about it from my friends. No one
Speaker 1: would know I did it, but it would be done.
Speaker 1: In that scenario, I would be like, I would go
Speaker 1: to my Turkey guys and I'd be like, Okay, what
Speaker 1: are we looking at? All the states, all the game
Speaker 1: management units, like very detailed level, what are we looking at?
Speaker 1: Give me the harvest numbers that we can withstand. I
Speaker 1: would say, great, let's shoot for that in the spring.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of other stuff to do in the fall.
Speaker 1: Let's make let's make a big robust spring season. If
Speaker 1: we need to cut out April a bit, if we
Speaker 1: need to eat into April, let's give it back twice
Speaker 1: folding may Well, that's what that would probably be my
Speaker 1: my edict. As turkeys are, that's what they're doing a
Speaker 1: lot in a set like in Arkansas, that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They've bumped our season dates back to the late teens
Speaker 1: of April usually, and man, by then it's it's pretty tough.
Speaker 1: And I used to it opened like the first Saturday
Speaker 1: in April, you know, when I as a kid. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they're doing that. Let me tell you who let me
Speaker 1: tell you a Turkey guy that you need to have
Speaker 1: on this podcast. And I'm gonna be so bold as
Speaker 1: to do this on the air. Number. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: you might be doing yourself a disservice because if you
Speaker 1: do that and then he winds up on all kinds
Speaker 1: of other podcasts, then it won't be as fun for
Speaker 1: me to have him on this podcast. Got you well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you there's a Okay, I'll tell you everything,
Speaker 1: but the guy's name. There's a guy in Tennessee that
Speaker 1: you really should have on the Medeor podcast. Great guy,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's got a little different angle than some
Speaker 1: of the some of the other the turkey apologists that
Speaker 1: we've had floating around. I view myself when it comes
Speaker 1: to Turkey stuff like I'm not making this stuff up.
Speaker 1: I view myself as basically like I view myself basically
Speaker 1: as a UM A person who listens to Mike Chamberlain.
Speaker 1: I mean, Mike Chairman told me something like crazy, I
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't. I mean, like generally, it's like I don't
Speaker 1: you know we talked about earlier, like what's the motivation?
Speaker 1: Guy loves turkey hunting, dedicated his life's turkeys, loves turkey hunting.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to see turkey hunting go away. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I agree. Like that guy, Robert Abernathy, dude lives the
Speaker 1: hunt turkeys. He's a turkey researcher. I know that his
Speaker 1: heart is pure. And I'm like, if that guy likes
Speaker 1: the hunt turkeys as much or more as I do
Speaker 1: like the hunt turkeys. Guy lives on hunt turkeys. And
Speaker 1: when he's talking, he's talking about how we're gonna keep
Speaker 1: hunting turkeys. That's the guy I want to listen to,
Speaker 1: no doubt. Uh, I'll tell you, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to say that this happened to helfle Finger,
Speaker 1: but super funny. Huffle Finger used to be a dear
Speaker 1: guide and um, he's guiding on a place in Texas.
Speaker 1: So it's a ranch owned by a ranch owner and
Speaker 1: they did guided hunts on it. And half a Finger
Speaker 1: has a client who's a guy in ecologist and he
Speaker 1: rattles in the big bart for the guy, and the
Speaker 1: guy that owns the property comes and suggests that affle Finger,
Speaker 1: because this client suggests a Hefflefinger, that perhaps helfle Finger's
Speaker 1: wife should start seeing this gentleman. He's got like, I
Speaker 1: gonna leave that up to her. M hm, that's the
Speaker 1: funniest story. He's like, yeah, yeah, the pass on that suggestion.
Speaker 1: Oh how did that story come up? I'm he emailed
Speaker 1: about a broader suite of things, but then just threw
Speaker 1: that in there as a little tibit. The greatest emails.
Speaker 1: He'll know, he'll tell you something and then but there's
Speaker 1: like four other things that like he was because we
Speaker 1: were he was we were talking about exotics and Texas,
Speaker 1: and he was introducing me to a word I hadn't heard,
Speaker 1: which is texotics, the exotics industry of Texas. So he
Speaker 1: had some comments about texotics um, which leaves me Another
Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about is in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: cops responded to a shooting and while they're like responding
Speaker 1: to a shooting, another shooting, like an adjacent trailer happens,
Speaker 1: like another shot is fired. They find a blood trail
Speaker 1: from a person, track the blood trail into another building.
Speaker 1: And what's in that building a Bengal tiger a pet.
Speaker 1: So did the Bengal tiger have anything to do with
Speaker 1: the crime. No, he's just an innocent bystander. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but they hauled it away. Oh they weren't supposed to
Speaker 1: have it in there. No, they had a Bengal tiger
Speaker 1: in a dog box. Wow. Wow. I think about that.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the story you told about the
Speaker 1: guy in Vietnam. Oh yeah, I feel like it's sad
Speaker 1: a story I tell. It's just interesting about dog ownership. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so Jason, do you might know you know
Speaker 1: how to talk at all? Jason's like the interesting man
Speaker 1: in the room from Matt, I mean, aside from Matt
Speaker 1: and everybody else. Well, Jason got his second big game animal.
Speaker 1: Do you mind just giving giving listeners sort of a
Speaker 1: high level you know? Uh? Um, we're hunting Cou's deer
Speaker 1: like a high level newcomers you know. Uh, yelp review
Speaker 1: if you will of Cou's your hunting. I learned a
Speaker 1: lot over the course of the last six seven days
Speaker 1: down here in Mexico. Um. Really grateful to you, Steve, Clay, Jason,
Speaker 1: Bridget the whole Meet Eater team for having me join
Speaker 1: you guys, at the risk of disgracing the entire pursuit
Speaker 1: of hunting. I hope that I did not do that. No, no,
Speaker 1: it was great. But with you know, with a mentorship
Speaker 1: of Steve and Clay, I gain a lot, certainly in
Speaker 1: appreciation of the the patients, the athleticism, the endurance of
Speaker 1: a cou'se deer hunt, the strategy that's required to to
Speaker 1: get it right, to get success. Uh. I learned what
Speaker 1: to do and what not to do at a Mexican
Speaker 1: border crossing. Very valuable, life less great cross greater length here. Um.
Speaker 1: I learned that there's a healthy debate around the origin
Speaker 1: of the term refried beans. So some would contend that
Speaker 1: refried beans is very literal in that the beans are
Speaker 1: being fried again and again and again and again, whereas
Speaker 1: others would say that there's just one Uh, there's one
Speaker 1: one fry, one pot to which beans are just continuously added,
Speaker 1: like an infinite bottle of refried beans. I don't know
Speaker 1: where I sort out on that yet. Um that to
Speaker 1: the Google that I feel is knowable. Were we to
Speaker 1: have Internet access, but yeah, yeah, no internet access. I
Speaker 1: learned that I like not having internet access. It makes
Speaker 1: mysteries linger a little longer. Yeah. Uh. I learned that
Speaker 1: after seven consecutive days wearing the same pair of first
Speaker 1: Light long underwear, they do not smell. And then overall,
Speaker 1: my suite of first light gear uh is is durable
Speaker 1: and comfortable and highly recommendable. Oh that's great, thank you. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it's been uh it's been a great time, been
Speaker 1: a great experience. You learned how to take a very
Speaker 1: quick showery very quick. Yeah, yeah, twenty seconds is really
Speaker 1: all that. It takes it out. Yeah, get freshened up.
Speaker 1: What was your impression of, um, the amount of that
Speaker 1: that the primary thing you do is looking through binoculars.
Speaker 1: Well that gets to the patients. Yeah, um yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's real acquired skill. I mean, these these these coups,
Speaker 1: they're they're hard to find. But you got I felt
Speaker 1: you got good at it. Over a couple of days,
Speaker 1: I got better at it. I got better at it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that's fun to watch, is and I know it
Speaker 1: will happen. Is. I know the people on the first
Speaker 1: day be useless and that, let me say, a couple
Speaker 1: of days later, a couple of days later, they're all
Speaker 1: sudden spotting stuff. It's fun. It's like a very quick
Speaker 1: you learned the basics pretty quickly. Steve's favorite day of
Speaker 1: the coup's hunt is the first night after he takes
Speaker 1: new people, because he's like, man, I was out there
Speaker 1: and it was like I didn't even have any help
Speaker 1: at all. Man, I was spotting all of there, and
Speaker 1: I don't even know what Clay and Jason did. Steve
Speaker 1: all of a sudden became southern. And then and then
Speaker 1: the next day it's like, how did y'all do? It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we probably spot as many as Steve, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I knew they'd come around. Well, it's after that first
Speaker 1: day when you are able to discern the certing, the
Speaker 1: difference between a cow and a deer, that things really
Speaker 1: take off, you know. So that came a long way. Anybody, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, one more thing I want to touch on,
Speaker 1: and then I want to I also want to thank
Speaker 1: I want to thank Jay Scott, Jay Scott Outdoors, Um
Speaker 1: Colburn and Scott Outfitters and Jay Scott. Uh put so
Speaker 1: much work into has put decades of work into having
Speaker 1: built a UM not only a guided but to do
Speaker 1: it yourself. COO's to your hunt in Mexico. You can
Speaker 1: work with him too, to do and we've done it
Speaker 1: many many times now. UM, if you really want to
Speaker 1: learn it. Go with Jay, you'll learn. I still look
Speaker 1: forward to that day. I haven't done it yet, but
Speaker 1: look forward today of like actually hunting with with Jay
Speaker 1: and and learning everything he knows. If you really want
Speaker 1: to learn that, you can go with j But also
Speaker 1: j Um helps facilitate do it yourself stuff where he
Speaker 1: he gets you hooked up with the information you need
Speaker 1: and everything, and and you kind of get cut loose
Speaker 1: on him, you know, cut loose on your own chunk
Speaker 1: or ground hunt and it's it's a it's a blast,
Speaker 1: and always thankful for him for putting that together. Um undertaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does such a good job with very well organized
Speaker 1: but uh, one thing I want to cover off on
Speaker 1: is is the saga of Jason's buck, which died not
Speaker 1: by his hand, so we're already calling it Jason's bud.
Speaker 1: Let's just be clear, this is just why do you
Speaker 1: so you want to tell about finding the buck? Where
Speaker 1: did you find him? How big a story do we
Speaker 1: need here just that found it and how he turned
Speaker 1: up on a different mountain. So I'll kick it off
Speaker 1: and you can finish it. So it's kind of the
Speaker 1: way it happy first morning we go out and find
Speaker 1: a good buck and bridgets able to get it killed,
Speaker 1: and we we go out and start glass and it
Speaker 1: gets too warm. We take it back to camp. Hey,
Speaker 1: that was a really good valt. We're gonna go back. Um.
Speaker 1: We're sitting down there glass and and it was like
Speaker 1: that magical last forty five minutes. Deer start popping out everywhere,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to keep track of them all. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a dough, there's a spike chasing a dough,
Speaker 1: and you're kind of going back and forth all your
Speaker 1: different groups of the dear well the spike that it
Speaker 1: chased it dough over. I turned around. I'm like, whoa,
Speaker 1: that's a lot bigger buck. And uh in the same
Speaker 1: view of my spotter, he had a real wide um
Speaker 1: short time three points. So we're like back and forth.
Speaker 1: I said that bottom buck is a as a stud,
Speaker 1: but I said, I think his right side is broken,
Speaker 1: like something doesn't look right, not adding up, and he's
Speaker 1: kind of you know, he's broadside to us, and at
Speaker 1: first he goes to take off, you know, goes to
Speaker 1: run that dough, and I'm like, holy, holy smokes, he's
Speaker 1: got like a big long time. I thought he had
Speaker 1: a drop time. Something just looked weird. Um, and then
Speaker 1: he finally slowed down. We were able to like, man,
Speaker 1: he's got like two fourteen inch points that comes straight up.
Speaker 1: You've got a big oldye guard. Looks like something going
Speaker 1: on funk at the base. And he was a real
Speaker 1: solid eight on the left. And um, we come home
Speaker 1: like me and Matt run up there, try to get
Speaker 1: we close the distance of three hundred and um, nothing's
Speaker 1: left there beside the spike. Every he kind of rund
Speaker 1: the dough off and we're excited, like, oh, we gotta
Speaker 1: play for tomorrow. Um, we're gonna kill that buck. And
Speaker 1: so we we go there in the morning, end up
Speaker 1: getting at his buck. And uh so I said, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna I'm gonna climb up there. So I'm in
Speaker 1: that three unit yard spot. I'm gonna kill this buck tonight,
Speaker 1: you know, because um, hey, and what did I tell
Speaker 1: you that night when you came home talking about this
Speaker 1: really unique you know, wild racked you know, basically a
Speaker 1: buck with one normal side and then on the double
Speaker 1: main beams and an eye guard just really you know,
Speaker 1: just one of those once in the lifetime bucks I
Speaker 1: would love to have killed and I said, man, you
Speaker 1: need to spend all weeks. Yeah, so I think Clay
Speaker 1: secretly knew that wasn't his home range and was trying
Speaker 1: to throw me up. So that night I climb up
Speaker 1: in there, um glass and you know, just gonna pound
Speaker 1: that and then uh, I get you know, Steve and
Speaker 1: Clay and Jason are on a different mountain, and I
Speaker 1: real faint radio reception. I think we found well, I
Speaker 1: don't remember how it came across. I told you, Hey,
Speaker 1: the buck that you're trying to get, we found him
Speaker 1: on a totally different mountain in this room, and you
Speaker 1: try to defend your You try to be like, well
Speaker 1: you know where where I'm at, Like I'm no, Like
Speaker 1: I mean a totally different different mountain. Well, it was
Speaker 1: so we you had described this buck, and we were
Speaker 1: so far away from you that the Steve actually said,
Speaker 1: we've got a chance to see in that deer, but
Speaker 1: on the other mountain, like out of play, Like we
Speaker 1: had a chance of glass in the deer, like maybe
Speaker 1: a mile away, So we weren't hunting that deer, and
Speaker 1: we had we had made a big loop. We decided
Speaker 1: we had gone five or six miles since daylight we'd
Speaker 1: been out all day and had made a made a
Speaker 1: big loop and had had a pretty rough day of
Speaker 1: of hunting, hadn't seen many deer. It's a long story.
Speaker 1: We did see one buck that we didn't get, but
Speaker 1: late in the evening we were on a high knob
Speaker 1: and we had all been glassing for a pretty long
Speaker 1: time and it was just one of those deals where
Speaker 1: this buck was. He was in a very thick area,
Speaker 1: very steep area, but he was within four hundred and
Speaker 1: forty yards of us when I arranged him. But on
Speaker 1: a on a micro level, he was in the wide open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was out of the wind, in the brushy he was.
Speaker 1: He was in a brush choked hellhole out of the wind.
Speaker 1: But he was sitting in a spot about as big
Speaker 1: as this living room. That was. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: just laying there, bedded. And the second I saw him,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's Jason's buck. And I sneak over
Speaker 1: the hill and give the you know, the cou's deer
Speaker 1: eyes and hand motions to Steve like big buck over here.
Speaker 1: And so they come over and we glass the deer.
Speaker 1: It's a deer we want to shoot, and we slip
Speaker 1: into three thirty yards and uh, and you know, we
Speaker 1: were hunting in in a in a team, me Steve
Speaker 1: and Jason berg bergsman, and um, it's complicated how who
Speaker 1: gets to take the shot? Because when Jason was gonna shoot,
Speaker 1: if if it was inside a three yards, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's kind of where we were at. And it was.
Speaker 1: It was it was very windy, and I knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna be close. Yeah, and so Jason was the shooter,
Speaker 1: but when it was going to be a further shot,
Speaker 1: it all of a sudden, I was a shooting. You
Speaker 1: were the Feds, Yeah, and Jason was Alaska. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: that's like that. Yeah. And so we slip into three
Speaker 1: thirties shooting across the canyon pretty pretty still. I would
Speaker 1: say a ten mile pro across wind. That's what I believe.
Speaker 1: It was pretty stiff cross wind. And uh, but I
Speaker 1: argued that it wasn't all the way. I didn't quite
Speaker 1: understand that, but I'm with it wasn't where he was
Speaker 1: because he was out of It's something to get super
Speaker 1: tricky about wind and ballistics. Man, you're on some peaky
Speaker 1: and you're in ten mile our cross wind, but you're
Speaker 1: shooting across the canyon and around the side of a hill.
Speaker 1: He's in he's in potentially a zero mile an hour
Speaker 1: cross wind, or he's in the winds wrapping around the
Speaker 1: hill and in the winds blow in the opposite direction,
Speaker 1: or it's blowing down or up. Like everyone wants to
Speaker 1: take like what's going on with them in mountainous train
Speaker 1: and then act like that's a constant. Right in certain situations,
Speaker 1: you could be like, I assume that between me and
Speaker 1: my target, that wind is the same all the way across.
Speaker 1: But in this kind of stuff, it's not. It's hard
Speaker 1: to like, it's hard to hold for it. So when
Speaker 1: then when you get into like extreme long range stuff
Speaker 1: and people are I calculated for the dude, you're when
Speaker 1: your bullet passed through five different wind circumstances over the year,
Speaker 1: eight yard shot like the it was, it's been subject
Speaker 1: to all kinds of stuff you can't even begin to
Speaker 1: understand between here and there. So we get a really
Speaker 1: good rest. I used Steven's tripod, and I've got to say,
Speaker 1: had I know what it feels like to be nervous
Speaker 1: for a shot, which I would be, my heart rate
Speaker 1: would increase, breathing would increase, I'd be nervous shooting it
Speaker 1: a big deer that I think it's like a once
Speaker 1: in a lifetime in couse buck. But I also had
Speaker 1: the chemical jitters because of a Monster Energy drink that
Speaker 1: I had drank like an hour and a half before,
Speaker 1: which I don't drink a lot of Monster Energy drinks ever,
Speaker 1: but I drank one because we were on the Death
Speaker 1: March with Steve and and so I'm serious. When I
Speaker 1: pulled the gun, like walking down there, I was like,
Speaker 1: my heart is doing stuff that usually doesn't do, and
Speaker 1: so I wasn't you know, I had a good rest,
Speaker 1: YadA YadA, using my patented shooting platform. Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1: It was good. And I shoot the first time and
Speaker 1: missed the buck. We think the buck stands up runs
Speaker 1: maybe thirty ft. And I had a very difficult time
Speaker 1: finding him again in the scope because now he's in
Speaker 1: the brush and I shoot the second time. Problem Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Steve was like he's standing there, he standing, did you
Speaker 1: not see him shake like he shook, well, he jumped
Speaker 1: up and he and he shook like a dog like
Speaker 1: trying to get water off his hide, you know. And anyway,
Speaker 1: when we went up there I realized that I had
Speaker 1: shot the non typical horn off of the deer. The
Speaker 1: first shot had missed high, high and left and had
Speaker 1: shot off Jason's beautiful fourteen age spike. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think the deer had felt a like an unusual jar
Speaker 1: to its head, went out there and kind of gave
Speaker 1: a little shake and uh, and then the second shot
Speaker 1: I hit him and does it. It's been struggling for
Speaker 1: the right word because I was saying, it's not irony,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's like the thing he's known for, the
Speaker 1: thing I wanted the most, get the shot off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't think of that. There's the gap in the
Speaker 1: English language. Yeah, we need for what happened? Good point. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But in the end, I'm very very
Speaker 1: thankful you because where you killed him was his home
Speaker 1: range I would still be to this day. They were
Speaker 1: sitting in that one little drainage waiting for him to
Speaker 1: repay it. So you know, Jason ended up killing an
Speaker 1: even bigger dear two days later, just in the like,
Speaker 1: almost within sight of where I killed this deer. And uh,
Speaker 1: Jason and I, being old cous deer man like we are,
Speaker 1: we decided that if you're gonna kill a big cous dear,
Speaker 1: you need to be close to a red and white
Speaker 1: radio tower. Because every big cousier we've ever killed, it's
Speaker 1: been right by a big red and white radio tower.
Speaker 1: So that's our tip of the week. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: think if you if you're gonna market you know, a
Speaker 1: cous deer hunt was Stephen Ronella and the Metiator team.
Speaker 1: It's not a big market. This is an exclusive event,
Speaker 1: which I'm very appreciative for, but I think I would also,
Speaker 1: you know, describe it as you know, it is a
Speaker 1: team effort. I had no idea that you would break
Speaker 1: into groups. I envisioned myself alone on a mountain making
Speaker 1: poor decisions. We're having to having to make judgment calls
Speaker 1: that I'm you know, we're would be questionable. So with
Speaker 1: Bridget and Jason Phelps and I, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: truly a team can all in team effort, and we
Speaker 1: each spotted each other's deer, which I think is a
Speaker 1: cool dynamic. Um, it's as much strategy as it is
Speaker 1: you know, making plays and and uh, there's so much
Speaker 1: risk in every decision you make and so many opportunities
Speaker 1: for things to go sideways. Um, we even had. You know,
Speaker 1: Bridget could tell a story. Bridget had a mountain lion
Speaker 1: siding that came down and ran right across our field.
Speaker 1: One bride, badass. Let me hand. We were Matt and
Speaker 1: I had already tagged out. So we were on a
Speaker 1: mission for Phelps to find him a big buck that day,
Speaker 1: and we did. Jason found a giant buck that day.
Speaker 1: Beautiful time point, I think. And at the time I
Speaker 1: pulled up my range finder because I wanted to see
Speaker 1: how far it was. I'm looking at all this through
Speaker 1: my range finder and I panover to find the buck
Speaker 1: and there's a mountain lion in the same view and
Speaker 1: no one else has said anything. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I told these guys had zero chill. It's like, turns
Speaker 1: a mountain lion, what are you looking at? And he
Speaker 1: was stalking the book that Phelps was after. And so
Speaker 1: I actually watched this what I believe to be a
Speaker 1: huge tom stalk and chase off his book. Change tactics
Speaker 1: followed dough and do like a double arm swipe at
Speaker 1: this dough. She just tucked her button got away. How
Speaker 1: much did he miss? By? And this was he was
Speaker 1: size bigger than the deer noticeably bigger than the deer.
Speaker 1: And this this was on in the spand longer and
Speaker 1: thicker than broad from tip to tail. And because these
Speaker 1: deer these does especially under a hundred pounds. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: small deer, but the entire hillside lit up. It was
Speaker 1: like they were like thirty deer. We didn't know that
Speaker 1: suggestions and the cat stuck around for a little while too,
Speaker 1: so these guys finally spotted it. And we're watching all
Speaker 1: this from about four yards and then he continued to
Speaker 1: make plays continue like I'm sure he was like Jason
Speaker 1: on the mountain. When I told him I killed his buck,
Speaker 1: cat just like stood around. We went back to cat
Speaker 1: Hill and that's where ultimately Phelps killed his buck. It's nothing,
Speaker 1: you guess. It was interesting is there were some cattle
Speaker 1: that never even lift their heads so unfaced. The cat
Speaker 1: ran right past him. They just kept feeding, scrambling a
Speaker 1: everywhere and nuts. Because Bridget when she was range finding,
Speaker 1: had lost a buck until we like I got her
Speaker 1: back on. He's up by the dead yucka and in
Speaker 1: that view was my buck or that buck a cow
Speaker 1: and then the cougar and that that cow did not
Speaker 1: care that buck. He was out of there. He just
Speaker 1: it ran by him two yards away. The cowboys here, uh,
Speaker 1: we were asking about the you know and very very
Speaker 1: broken Spanish. Um. We hacked our way through figuring out
Speaker 1: that there are a problem only on the caves on
Speaker 1: the calves, not a problem on the grown ups. I
Speaker 1: had a very good moment with with the with the
Speaker 1: cowboy out here though, telling them about your story of
Speaker 1: the mountain line. Oh, he understood it completely. I was like,
Speaker 1: Poma vanana, big hand motions, banana. And then I said,
Speaker 1: but he didn't get it, you know, And I was
Speaker 1: like like, oh, it's very cool. It was one of
Speaker 1: the coolest things I've seen in the woods, you know what.
Speaker 1: We everybody good, Yeah, thank you in the awesome trip. Thanks,
Speaker 1: it's been good alright, everybody, thanks for joining