Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear for
Speaker 1: every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. All right,
Speaker 1: we got a lot to cover today. Uh the honest
Speaker 1: is here. I'm gonna do intros the opposite way we
Speaker 1: normally do him. So I'm gonna start with Yoanny except
Speaker 1: so happy to see him. Yanni's here, Sam Laurie's here.
Speaker 1: You would know if you listen to uh um Are
Speaker 1: Close Calls series, he tells the tremendous the mud Puddle
Speaker 1: story called the Mud Puddle Former game Warden. Yeah, get
Speaker 1: way closer to that, Mike. I guess I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: acknowledge it. Yeah, I know you'd say something like, oh,
Speaker 1: good to be here. Oh Steve, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: There you go. Well, we'll get to you in greater
Speaker 1: detail later on. He's here, Crans and the lazy boy
Speaker 1: with a crazy ass shirt on. Um, Yeah, what what's
Speaker 1: what's that kind of animal? Yea, it's got a like
Speaker 1: a cosmos pizza slice, sloth shirt, love that uh phills here,
Speaker 1: Paul Lewis from f HF. This is the first time
Speaker 1: you been on the show now, Yeah, first time? Is it? Really?
Speaker 1: You look familiar over here with those headphones. Ve never
Speaker 1: been in You've never done it before? Sure, yeah, I
Speaker 1: only live a few blocks away, it seems like. But
Speaker 1: the first time in here is Yeah, something about you
Speaker 1: in the headphones seems familiar. It's probably shying off my head.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You send Rick down here now, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, Rick comes down a lot. Rick Hutton. So
Speaker 1: Rick Hutton who you've seen and he's been on the show.
Speaker 1: Rick Hutton's like, I don't know, boss, Yeah, he likes
Speaker 1: to think, so Paul, it was. And then we have
Speaker 1: a special guest, Ray Lockhart. Ray. So, if you paid
Speaker 1: attention a long time ago, we did UH fundraiser for
Speaker 1: the local public school and uh Ray won that one
Speaker 1: the chance to come to the studio. Is it everything
Speaker 1: you dreamed of? So far succeeded my expectations. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he started. Yet this guy's already happy. UH quick announcement
Speaker 1: the fuds. So this is an internal explanation. This is
Speaker 1: I'll give you some production thing. Have I explained this before, Gran,
Speaker 1: Like what s R M E means and all that,
Speaker 1: I don't believe. So you've mentioned it briefly just in passing.
Speaker 1: I think okay. In the production world, UM, I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is across the board, but in the
Speaker 1: production world that I'm accustomed to, you come up with acronyms.
Speaker 1: When you're packing boxes like production equipment, you use acronym acronyms.
Speaker 1: So in the ZBZ offices in the old days we
Speaker 1: operated out of there, we'd have like if our show
Speaker 1: was going out on the road, the pelican cases would
Speaker 1: all have masking tape on and it would say s
Speaker 1: R M E. So it'd be like Stephen Ronella me
Speaker 1: either beyond the things, and then it was um A
Speaker 1: B N R would be a bunch of pelicans, and
Speaker 1: that would be Anthony Bourdain, no reservations and not and
Speaker 1: on and on. So we've adopted that a little bit.
Speaker 1: The Floods calendar is the funked up old deer stands
Speaker 1: calendar is bag in stock. It might be sold out
Speaker 1: again aggressive order this time. Phil Yes, speaking of like
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, we're recording this several days before. You
Speaker 1: will hear it, and the calendars are back in stock
Speaker 1: there on sale, but moving at an astonishing clip. Yes,
Speaker 1: so there is a small chance a by the time
Speaker 1: you hear this, they will not be in stock anymore,
Speaker 1: but you should try your luck and check it out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those things they do, like
Speaker 1: on the radio and stuff, where they'll say like they're
Speaker 1: going fast so act Now I'd always ask myself, well,
Speaker 1: if they're going fast, why are they buying an advertisement? Do?
Speaker 1: I mean? Like I like, I felt like I was
Speaker 1: being manipulated. They weren't really going fast. They're not like
Speaker 1: worried about you getting one, but these but to beyond
Speaker 1: and all. Honestly, these are moving like hotcakes. It's just
Speaker 1: like the vindication. The vindication keeps flowing in. Um, it's
Speaker 1: gonna give me more. I feel like it's gonna give
Speaker 1: me more leverage to do the Chetiquette book, which is
Speaker 1: Chester around Etiquette. Know about this, Johnnie, Yeah, so Chester
Speaker 1: wants to do a book. Oh, he was telling us
Speaker 1: about fishing etiquette needs bigger. He wants to do a
Speaker 1: fishing etiquette book. I think it needs to be the
Speaker 1: Chetickutt Book of Outdoor Etiquette and it's Chester on all
Speaker 1: things outdoor etiquette. So even would include we're gonna start
Speaker 1: doing where he's gonna start. We just today Krand and
Speaker 1: I are emailing about he's gonna start doing little guest
Speaker 1: segments so you can sort of test the appetite public appetite. Uh,
Speaker 1: he'll do guest segments in which he'd explain like, you're
Speaker 1: on a trail and you're walking and here comes a rider,
Speaker 1: a horseman. Is that a good term for that? A horseman? Yaman?
Speaker 1: What's etiquette? Right? Um, you are walking down a trail
Speaker 1: and there's a biker. Let's say you're the biker and
Speaker 1: you're biking and you're coming up behind someone, what's etiquette?
Speaker 1: I like it? And usually they're screaming on your right,
Speaker 1: on your right, and you're so confused you let go
Speaker 1: right or you know, like so this whole the whole
Speaker 1: world of cheticuott outdoor etiquette. STEPID that include a chapter
Speaker 1: on fishing against ducks, sprinklers, and yep, he'd get into
Speaker 1: all that floating etiquette. Yeah, doc etiquette. Yeah, he needs to.
Speaker 1: He needs to start thinking big. He wanted to just fishing,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a great idea outdoor etiquette. And
Speaker 1: then I think there's a lot of regional like there's
Speaker 1: like regional specific etiquette things. Probably remember when you were
Speaker 1: down in uh, hunting ducks in North Carolina, all that
Speaker 1: craziness about the blinds. Oh yeah, like we can't even
Speaker 1: really get into it time. Um. I saw quite a
Speaker 1: few comments after when on Instagram when we announced that
Speaker 1: these calendars are back and stop, quite a few people
Speaker 1: were writing to say that, man, would be great if
Speaker 1: you guys just did like a like a big coffee
Speaker 1: table book. There's people that refused to buy the calendar
Speaker 1: because they're waiting for the book. And this is all
Speaker 1: leading up to the book. Good. I think Ross is
Speaker 1: into the book. Idea to anyone who's gonna send in
Speaker 1: more pictures of their tree stands, give us some background.
Speaker 1: We need a story with that stand when you send
Speaker 1: in your submit, Yeah, that would help a lot, because
Speaker 1: we just had to make up stories for all you.
Speaker 1: We did some dig and as much as we can,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we we got creative with some some of them. Well, no,
Speaker 1: you guys did a good job because one of well
Speaker 1: it was a Christyl photograph, but it was from my
Speaker 1: family's property. In Wisconsin and yeah, high stand and you
Speaker 1: guys did a good job because without knowing the background,
Speaker 1: you guys did a good job of you know, painting
Speaker 1: a good Yeah. But we we'd love to have the
Speaker 1: real info. Uh another thing, no small Yeah, so so
Speaker 1: those are back in stock. Another another small announcement, Uh,
Speaker 1: Waterfowl season kickoff. We have a um a new episode
Speaker 1: up out on YouTube. And this is good because this
Speaker 1: is if if you've been here, you know, everybody always
Speaker 1: hears Krine's voice. This is a chance to see Karin
Speaker 1: in the goose woods. Uh. It is a goose film,
Speaker 1: a speckle belly goose hunt between three women that work here.
Speaker 1: So Hillary, it was her first time ever hunting. Samantha Bates,
Speaker 1: who's a producer on our Netflix show Grinch Schneider producer
Speaker 1: is hunting along with Jonathan Wilkins of Black Duck Revival.
Speaker 1: So you can go check that hunt out now. Plug
Speaker 1: at CRINT say something like maybe people sell people on it.
Speaker 1: It's a standalone We don't normally do that here. It's
Speaker 1: probably one of the first standalone videos we've got. We
Speaker 1: normally have stuff in series and so uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we had a fantastic time with Jonathan Um. He
Speaker 1: was really sensitive and solid mentor for all of us.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful landscape. I don't think anything at meat eater.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've had any meat eater hunts filmed
Speaker 1: involving the spec goose species. Do you think we have
Speaker 1: have we speckle bellies? Can you make the noise of
Speaker 1: the speckle belly? Nah? That was close work that in.
Speaker 1: You get some gun playing on that episode, grin, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how many shotgun shells did you shoot? You can
Speaker 1: see the trials and tribulations of our of our two
Speaker 1: day hunt. Uh. There's some funny moments and some poor
Speaker 1: shooting form, and then you can see the failure and
Speaker 1: then the turnaround and then the success. Are you one
Speaker 1: of those kind of goose hunters who when everybody shoots,
Speaker 1: you're like, I got that one. Actually, that was one
Speaker 1: of the most challenging parts of the hunt. Um. We
Speaker 1: We're in Arkansas and December and in order our camo
Speaker 1: was like these white uh suit exactly the white painter suits,
Speaker 1: and we were kind of in a in a long
Speaker 1: row of folks. UM, and you kind of sit up
Speaker 1: like you just use your abdominal muscles to sit up
Speaker 1: and really quickly like when you pop up, rest your
Speaker 1: put your gun butt into your shoulder and pick one
Speaker 1: goose out and shoot. And I was terrible at that
Speaker 1: because there were I mean, it was really there are
Speaker 1: so many birds in the sky. It was incredible, incredible
Speaker 1: and they were so loud, but there are so many
Speaker 1: and to just like identify one and then to follow
Speaker 1: it and do that like paint brush technique that you've
Speaker 1: mentioned to me a couple of times. And like, I
Speaker 1: think after my major failure the first day, I called
Speaker 1: up Yanni and I was like, what do I do?
Speaker 1: I'm like aiming at the ass of the animal and
Speaker 1: I'm missing, and so he's like, you gotta aim like
Speaker 1: in front of it, and like where you know you
Speaker 1: want to you want to greet him with the shot. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a quail hunting thing, like aim at them all
Speaker 1: you're getting on want to get to. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: damn true. So I don't do what you asked because
Speaker 1: I failed a lot, but then like had a success
Speaker 1: which was fun. But yeah, go check it out on YouTube.
Speaker 1: What's it like, what's the best way to find it?
Speaker 1: I got just go to our YouTube channel. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: go to our YouTube channel. It's I think it's the
Speaker 1: most recent thing that we've released. It's called Speckle Belly
Speaker 1: Goose Hunting with Jonathan Wilkins. Just that pretty straightforward. So
Speaker 1: go watch it. Enjoy um auction House of Bodity. So
Speaker 1: phase one is over? What do we what do we calm?
Speaker 1: It'n't that phases there? Uh? Groups? The group one auction
Speaker 1: is over. So around with the group to auction. Do
Speaker 1: you know how much my pheasantil went for? Yeah? Do
Speaker 1: you know? I saw some random numbers that were thrown around,
Speaker 1: but then people were wondering if it was real or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's absurdly high. It's now I feel like I
Speaker 1: should have held onto that because who knows what it
Speaker 1: could have been worth in another five years for guys.
Speaker 1: Pheasant first peasant tail. Hey, I might shoot another pheasant
Speaker 1: this year and then we can auction off my second
Speaker 1: more maybe. Uh oh. This auction group, this includes the puppy,
Speaker 1: Danielle's puppy, an actual live puppy. It is a yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and you do you like dogs more than I do?
Speaker 1: It's a draft hour, the Deutsche Draw Hour of course
Speaker 1: all draft hours are Deutsche. So Danielle Prufe, our Wild
Speaker 1: Foods editor, is contributing this puppy an offspring over her dog.
Speaker 1: So this is a high test. Damn dog. Oh they
Speaker 1: do it all, including the fox in the box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can uh and Danielle's then they come in
Speaker 1: the house, they turn off the hunting and they just
Speaker 1: become couch lap dogs and just family dogs. We interviewed
Speaker 1: her at length about this dog, but she's gonna have
Speaker 1: the dog. We'll probably get around and talk some more
Speaker 1: about the dog. We should do that, cran have her
Speaker 1: come in and talk before it's too late. Have we
Speaker 1: talked more about the dog, like again, just to drive
Speaker 1: up the bidding. I remember all like when when you
Speaker 1: go to the auction house of Bodity is all the money.
Speaker 1: All the money goes to the two our land access initiatives.
Speaker 1: So it's not like you're giving us the money. You're
Speaker 1: giving the money for us to do the land access
Speaker 1: initiative projects. We got a handmade river hawk knife. Oh,
Speaker 1: here's another one. Are remember the Gnome project where we
Speaker 1: had the Gnome packing out. It was my brother's vision
Speaker 1: of a Gnome packing out a unicorn in his backpack.
Speaker 1: So we commissioned that with an artist. He's we're auctioning
Speaker 1: off his original Gnome sketch signed by the illustrators. So
Speaker 1: this is like the ancestral original sketch of the Nome
Speaker 1: with a severed unicorn's head in his backpack. So in
Speaker 1: his bow, he's got his crazy Nome bow and he's
Speaker 1: walking through the woods there. The original artwork is for
Speaker 1: sale at the auction hous of ooditys Oh. Now, we
Speaker 1: got a collection of prototypes, so we just did a
Speaker 1: new uh desk skull mount like for putting freedom mounts
Speaker 1: if you want to like formerly known as a uro amount,
Speaker 1: but you want to put a freedom out on a
Speaker 1: stand on your desk. All the prototypes that went into
Speaker 1: making that one we got. Brody's got a black bear baculum,
Speaker 1: also known as a pecker bone. It's a drink stir
Speaker 1: do whatever you want with it. Man bro does a
Speaker 1: Carrot's your it's your packerbone. What's the largest vaculum of
Speaker 1: a mammal in the world? I know what the walrus
Speaker 1: is big enough to use as a cane. Is it
Speaker 1: the biggest in the world? You know how you can
Speaker 1: estimate estimated a bear's rough size by the width of
Speaker 1: its pad. Yeah, I think it's the same thing with
Speaker 1: length of the baculum. Is that true? I don't know
Speaker 1: it was with this one. Oh, like you measured the
Speaker 1: vacuum and added an inch. Oh, you've got an add
Speaker 1: an inch. Then it's when you measure a bear's footprint
Speaker 1: you add an inch to get squared. No, I'm not right.
Speaker 1: Which is pretty damn reliable. Like a five foot bear
Speaker 1: is going to have a four inch wide pad. This
Speaker 1: one is very reliable inches defeat. It was a good match.
Speaker 1: I feel like by the time you get your hands
Speaker 1: on the baculum, you probably know how big the bear is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. It's a good point. But if
Speaker 1: anyone wants to know how big the bear was, that's
Speaker 1: an excellent point. But it is, like it's still a
Speaker 1: good little trivia bit. Yeah. My boy, my six year old,
Speaker 1: the other day, we were talking about what all had
Speaker 1: backul limbs and didn't have bacul limbs, and he said,
Speaker 1: people do oh boy, stop me for a mix. I
Speaker 1: was like, should do that? And I'm like no, I
Speaker 1: definitely did the conversation end there he was very Adam
Speaker 1: and they had a pecker ball. Um. Oh so anyways
Speaker 1: we announced last week is it like so in the
Speaker 1: first round of the Auction House of oodity is when
Speaker 1: you you could go in and sign up to get
Speaker 1: that bottle of skunk Essence that we extracted from Skunks
Speaker 1: no more. That's gone. The new free thing, the new
Speaker 1: free sign up item at the Auction House of Bodies
Speaker 1: is a chance to come to the studio to participate
Speaker 1: in trivial tribute. That not trivia pursuit, that's someone else's game.
Speaker 1: What's our thing called trivia Media to trivia. You get
Speaker 1: to come and play media or trivia with us. That's
Speaker 1: the new thing. You can win. Um. That would be
Speaker 1: the second time ever we've ever allowed someone to come
Speaker 1: in here. The first time is today with our friend Ray.
Speaker 1: So starting today as you're listening this, if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this on launch day, starting today through Halloween, you
Speaker 1: can bid on all these items, including the new dog
Speaker 1: and everything um and then for free you can sign
Speaker 1: up for a chance to come hang out with us
Speaker 1: in the studio to play me Eater trivia with Spencer
Speaker 1: new Heart. Right. We've had a lot of listeners on
Speaker 1: this podcast reach out to us about donating items, which
Speaker 1: is very generous of you. So we've had like the
Speaker 1: NFL dudes with the jersey, We've had Major League Baseball
Speaker 1: dudes with other stuff. Artists what all lots of stuff,
Speaker 1: a lot of artists. I want to donate stuff to
Speaker 1: the auction house of Oodities and uh, if you want
Speaker 1: to do that, here's what you need to do. You
Speaker 1: just email, just email met eater at the meat eater
Speaker 1: dot com and then uh in the subject line do
Speaker 1: auction donation and uh, Corey'll get you squared away and
Speaker 1: sent over the right person. Am I saying that? Right? Grint? Okay, Steve.
Speaker 1: If I wanted to donate a signed book of game
Speaker 1: Board entails and to have you guys signed it as well,
Speaker 1: would that be of interest? Yeah, and you don't even
Speaker 1: need an email that email. I'm not gonna make you
Speaker 1: jump through. I brought it right here today. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna make you jump through who you can just do it.
Speaker 1: We'll just do it right now. Oh that's a hardcover.
Speaker 1: That that's the quality one. Most people buy that one.
Speaker 1: Oh really a little joke. No, we'll do that for sure.
Speaker 1: We'll that's perfect uh So, anyways, Ray Lockhart is here
Speaker 1: all the way from Maine. He won the Hawthorne Elementary
Speaker 1: School auction that we put on earlier. Welcome. Thanks. Uh
Speaker 1: do you have any messages you want to broadcast with
Speaker 1: the broader world? Um, like I say something your mom?
Speaker 1: Uh no, not really. I'm not on any social media
Speaker 1: and the kind of stuff I specifically stay off of
Speaker 1: their trying to keep myself but just excited to be
Speaker 1: here and uh, yeah this is uh, this is really cool,
Speaker 1: really really like the brand and been following you guys
Speaker 1: for a long time. So do you more power to
Speaker 1: you on social Do you stay off social um just
Speaker 1: because you haven't gotten around and gotten onto it? Or
Speaker 1: do you hate it? Uh? I just never felt like
Speaker 1: it was something I wanted to It was really probably
Speaker 1: staying away from some of the family that I didn't
Speaker 1: really want to connect with on Facebook. You know, they'll
Speaker 1: find yeah their arms length and then they then they
Speaker 1: come and find you friends the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: I got a circle of friends that have a hard
Speaker 1: enough time keeping up with as as it is. So
Speaker 1: I am a consumer obviously for your guys stuff and
Speaker 1: things like that. But it turns out to be one
Speaker 1: of the better decisions I made, because I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a rabbit hole it's tough to pull out of
Speaker 1: once you're done. So yeah, good, thank you. Did you
Speaker 1: let the kids do it when they were growing up?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean my wife, and my wife does
Speaker 1: all the all that stuff and just feeds it to me.
Speaker 1: So I get at arms length, you know, feedback off
Speaker 1: of social media. But I have an a buffering system
Speaker 1: in the so you know that some friend of yours
Speaker 1: you haven't seen for twenty five years got a new
Speaker 1: dog in the family, all that stuff. I get it
Speaker 1: all filtered and the report report out and that's it's
Speaker 1: a lot more efficient that way. Uh. Here, here's a
Speaker 1: note that came in uh through TRCP, and it was
Speaker 1: why it was wildly broadcast as well. But TRCP has
Speaker 1: been pretty focused on c w D. Uh. This is
Speaker 1: these these new like major outbreaks c w D outbreaks
Speaker 1: going on chronic waste and disease, which, if you're late
Speaker 1: to the game, is a I'm not too far off
Speaker 1: when I say it's like the deer and elk version
Speaker 1: of mad cow disease. UM. New outbreaks in Texas, new
Speaker 1: outbreaks in Pennsylvania, one just recently occurred in Wisconsin, including
Speaker 1: it's one of the most, if not the most extensive
Speaker 1: web of dear shipments from a c w D positive
Speaker 1: facility on record. According to industry officials, there's a deer
Speaker 1: farm in Taylor County that sold three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: seven deer to forty facilities in seven states. Since that
Speaker 1: we're in infected with c w D. Unbelievable. Do you
Speaker 1: still and no one wants to do anything to curb it,
Speaker 1: like anything meaningful, that something that's got to change. The
Speaker 1: deer farmers have power. Yeah, but how are they finding
Speaker 1: out there positive? So there's testing involved? Is it after
Speaker 1: the fact? I don't know so. I mean I would
Speaker 1: have imagine they get tested when they're shipped across state
Speaker 1: lines or there's got to be some kind of protocol
Speaker 1: that's going on for that, But that doesn't come in
Speaker 1: before they're sent out. In other words, there's not a
Speaker 1: there's not there's not a gating item to let him
Speaker 1: out of the state before. They don't know they're going
Speaker 1: to a facility and have a percent in faction rates
Speaker 1: inside of facility, and then you go look at where
Speaker 1: that facility is sent to m Yeah, I'm just wondering,
Speaker 1: how do you that that'd be a way to get
Speaker 1: in front of it. It's like they do with other things,
Speaker 1: get to get the test back before you green lit
Speaker 1: the ship. And well they're in the captive they're letting
Speaker 1: the captive deer industry. And it's like it's not even
Speaker 1: uh it's it's you know, in quotes, it's like captive
Speaker 1: deer hunting. It's not this is not like agriculture. It's
Speaker 1: not like supplying like venison. Okay, so I thought I'll
Speaker 1: hear something like this is this is mostly this is
Speaker 1: mostly like deer breeders sending around animals for like captive herds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that will be used in a sort of quasi make
Speaker 1: believe hunting scenario. And they just keep grinding and grinding it,
Speaker 1: and people keep relying on the industry to self police.
Speaker 1: But they're overseen by the Department of Agriculture, not not
Speaker 1: fishing game. So yeah, and most people who are most
Speaker 1: people who are watching to give the U. S d
Speaker 1: A a pretty a failing grade on their willingness and
Speaker 1: ability to get out ahead of this and stop having
Speaker 1: these like captive deer breeders corrupt wild herd the Joe
Speaker 1: blow America hunts for from getting an infectious disease from
Speaker 1: captive deer. Right, I gotta think it would be handled
Speaker 1: differently if it was US Fish and Wildlife Service. Well,
Speaker 1: there's are the captive deer of native origin or their
Speaker 1: white tail or so you'd think there would be some
Speaker 1: jurisdictional responsibility of the state overseeing those that. There's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been efforts on that behalf. Some states you can
Speaker 1: do it, some states you can't. But they the captive
Speaker 1: deer breeders are those herds fall under like an egg.
Speaker 1: Those herds fall under like an agricultural administration and are
Speaker 1: regulated through an agricultural industry rather than through wildlife. Even
Speaker 1: though these are like these are a native wildlife species
Speaker 1: that give an infectious disease too. Wild animals is still
Speaker 1: on a on an interstate federal level. They're oversaw U
Speaker 1: s d A, not not wildlife organizations. It's a mass man.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, we have if they come in. We're talking about,
Speaker 1: say George, because we're doing this. We talked about this
Speaker 1: call we're doing with with Phelps Game calls where we
Speaker 1: cut down a black walnut and O s A George.
Speaker 1: We're gonna make about a thousand turkey calls out of
Speaker 1: that walnut tree and about a thousand strikers out of
Speaker 1: the S. A. George. And we're talking about how that
Speaker 1: tree has so many damn names. Um, we're talking about
Speaker 1: burdock or like some people call it burdock. But it's uh,
Speaker 1: you're saying. Bow dark is a term for O. S
Speaker 1: A George And it comes from the French like bow
Speaker 1: to arc. You notice word anyone when you see O.
Speaker 1: S A George boa arc, it's like, uh bow you know,
Speaker 1: basically it's like bow wood that you'd make bows from
Speaker 1: bow dark and it's a derivation of that French word
Speaker 1: boat dark. No, I don't know, but both but like
Speaker 1: the derivation is boa dark. So when you hear like
Speaker 1: we're talking about how people would call it, I don't know,
Speaker 1: boat dark or burdock or whatever the hell. Um, this
Speaker 1: guy was just writing in like what you're what you're
Speaker 1: trying to say. What you're getting at is it's a
Speaker 1: you're you're sort of butchering a French word bow. It's
Speaker 1: like bow bo I asked d hyphen A r c
Speaker 1: here looked us up. Look tell me what looked us up.
Speaker 1: I've seen it spelled that way because it didn't, didn't Boone?
Speaker 1: When Boone moved to Missouri, didn't he live right now?
Speaker 1: On like the boat dark river? Why dark the common name?
Speaker 1: It's French from bow. Would I told you so? I said, right,
Speaker 1: bad Art, you knelled it would of the ark? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like like a boat or the flight of an arrow.
Speaker 1: That's good man. These turkey calls are getting cooler by
Speaker 1: the minute. Broughty brought Broughty do the book report Forest
Speaker 1: about the uh, what's going on? The latest, the latest
Speaker 1: twist and turn on on what America loves to call
Speaker 1: Yellowstoness wolves. Yeah, I like to call Wyoming's in Montana's wolves.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk about them, but you can't talk about
Speaker 1: them without talking about what's going on in a couple
Speaker 1: other states too. But anyway, late September, uh, northern border
Speaker 1: of Yellowstone Park, so just south of here a little ways,
Speaker 1: three wolves from Montana's from Yellowstones Junction, butte pack got
Speaker 1: killed on private land, um, which hit the news. It
Speaker 1: was two female pups and one female yearling. Um. So
Speaker 1: you know, people were kind of up in arms when
Speaker 1: the news hit about it that some of Yellowstones wolves
Speaker 1: got killed because the junction Buttepack is uh the most
Speaker 1: viewed wolf pack in the world, and they only spent
Speaker 1: about five two probably the other the other ones in
Speaker 1: the park. Um. But they they then right next to
Speaker 1: like a major road, so they're like seeing all that time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you ever drive through the park and all those
Speaker 1: people standing up around uh Lamar Valley standing around there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what That's what they're trying to get a gander at.
Speaker 1: So but you know, wolves don't know there's a border there,
Speaker 1: some line drawn on a map. So they spend about
Speaker 1: five percent of their time outside the park, usually in
Speaker 1: late fall. And uh until recently that part of Montana, UH,
Speaker 1: the the state Fishing Game Agency limited the number of
Speaker 1: wolves that were taken from that area adjacent to the
Speaker 1: park's and northern boundary. But they recently changed the rags,
Speaker 1: loosen them up, UM and lifted restrictions on the number
Speaker 1: of wolves that can be taken there. And H part
Speaker 1: of those loosening of restriction changing of regulations was authorizing
Speaker 1: baiting from private property. But you know what you can bait.
Speaker 1: I just said this big argument yesterday because I thought
Speaker 1: I had I thought, I came up with like a
Speaker 1: secret idea. You can you can bait on public. You
Speaker 1: can bait wolves on public. You can't night hunt or
Speaker 1: use thermal vision to hunt wolves after dark on public.
Speaker 1: It's in the rags. I'm not doubting you, but I'm
Speaker 1: just I ran around. I read this thing that you're
Speaker 1: talking about, and I ran around. First off, that had
Speaker 1: a genius idea occurred to me when I'm not being
Speaker 1: that genius, because I thought it was like only private
Speaker 1: land baiting, which you mean basically, take could you find
Speaker 1: a deer to get hit on the side of the
Speaker 1: road and drag it out and into a good spot
Speaker 1: and sit there. Uh. And when I thought it was
Speaker 1: private only, a light bulb went off in my head.
Speaker 1: But then uh, Garrett Long pointed out in the actual
Speaker 1: rag you can bait public or private. You cannot night
Speaker 1: hunt on public. Can. I think probably the reason the
Speaker 1: private property thing came up is, uh, about a third
Speaker 1: of that northern boundary of Yellowstone borders private property, and
Speaker 1: these wolves were shot on private property. I'm assuming they
Speaker 1: were baited across the border where which maybe where they
Speaker 1: chasing livestock. You know, they were shot by hunters. It
Speaker 1: was you know, the wolf season had opened and they
Speaker 1: were shot by hunters. Um As as angry as some
Speaker 1: people got about this, it was all completely legal, right, nothing,
Speaker 1: no laws were violated. Um And I think what a
Speaker 1: lot of people forget is, you know, there's twenty seven
Speaker 1: wolves in that pack. Yeah, there's only twenty four now.
Speaker 1: But if they're managed as a renewable resource, those those
Speaker 1: three are going to get replaced, even though you know,
Speaker 1: some people think it's the end of the world for
Speaker 1: you know what the number one cause of death is
Speaker 1: for wolves. The number one cause of death is that
Speaker 1: a wolf gets killed by wolf. Yeah, yeah, how much
Speaker 1: I forget what she said now, her name's uh, Diane,
Speaker 1: Diane Boyd Right. How much? What percentage of the population
Speaker 1: dies off every year? It was a lot. So like
Speaker 1: if there was a hundred wolves in the yellow Stone
Speaker 1: Greater ecosystem, it would go down to something like fifty
Speaker 1: and then the next year and then the next year
Speaker 1: be back up to a does that every single year?
Speaker 1: And I think if this hadn't been wolves from that junction,
Speaker 1: beaute pack, they're just wolves from the middle of Montana somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, it would have never made the news, but
Speaker 1: the media is pretty focused on Montana and Idaho's war
Speaker 1: on wolves these days. Yeah, and then there's the reporting
Speaker 1: problem that happens in the news all the time that
Speaker 1: I think is they're always using like, no matter where
Speaker 1: it happens, it's always yellow Stones wolves. So there was
Speaker 1: a story where our governor um killed the wolf, and
Speaker 1: I look at the headline, it's like Montana's governor kills
Speaker 1: Yellowstone wolf. I was like, that's so weird that our
Speaker 1: governor would go into Yellowstone and kill but lo and behold,
Speaker 1: it's not. Yeah, it was in Montana. There's no fences.
Speaker 1: He did kill one. Yelso's you could say he killed
Speaker 1: the Montana wolf. But they This is why this is
Speaker 1: this is partly fueling my thing where part of my
Speaker 1: life goal um is to get Yellowstone turned into a
Speaker 1: desert to a wilderness area like rip out, all the infrastructure,
Speaker 1: leave the highway is in place, it becomes a wilderness
Speaker 1: area that will give it enhanced protection, no motorized use.
Speaker 1: It's more protected. And then while the management goes to Montana,
Speaker 1: whelming you can have a raffle for the Yellowstone supertag
Speaker 1: go get them all like ten super tags, and it's
Speaker 1: like more protected, more pristine, less human involvement, restore human
Speaker 1: predators to the landscape. It's like better for everybody. It
Speaker 1: will never happen, Steven, You're gonna have torat a way
Speaker 1: to replace those tourist dollars that are gonna be cut
Speaker 1: out super tag lottery. I think that will do it,
Speaker 1: So I got to think on it. Over in Idaho,
Speaker 1: the Department of Fishing Game entered into an agreement with
Speaker 1: a nonprofit hunting group to reimburse hunters for the expense
Speaker 1: of a proven wolf kill holdment. What now, well, they're
Speaker 1: calling it a reimbursement program. Oh okay, I'm reading that
Speaker 1: as bounty on wolves, which you know whatever. Um. The
Speaker 1: Foundation for Wildlife Management is a hunting group that describes
Speaker 1: its mission as protecting deer and elk. So they coughed
Speaker 1: up two under grand to reimburse hunters for the expenses
Speaker 1: they incur while killing wolves. UM, two thousands you to
Speaker 1: turn in receipts. I'm assuming you got to bring a
Speaker 1: dead wolf. I don't know, but they have like here
Speaker 1: you go, two thousand per wolf and hunting units where
Speaker 1: fishing games as predators are keeping elk below objectives a
Speaker 1: thousand per wolf in the northern tip of the state
Speaker 1: and five hundred elsewhere. So this is getting attention is
Speaker 1: last wasn't It wasn't even last year when it was
Speaker 1: like i'd ho was killing of their wolves, which wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, even close to the whole whole story. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of people that are irritated about this, uh,
Speaker 1: this bounty system they got going on. They're not calling
Speaker 1: it a bounty, No, it's like an expense reimbursement brom huh.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're like that's got to be intentional
Speaker 1: that they're not. So they've got two grand, they're gonna
Speaker 1: dish it out in two thousand dollar increments two thousand,
Speaker 1: a thousand, or five hundred, depending on, yeah, where it is.
Speaker 1: But you know, like bounties don't usually work well for
Speaker 1: like coyotes and smaller predators. But I could see that
Speaker 1: that kind of money motivating some wolf unders. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I can see why people will be a little that's
Speaker 1: like a hard one on optics, man. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a hard one to manage right there. Well, once you
Speaker 1: put a dollar sign out there, then you have some
Speaker 1: motivation for an unethical behavior. Yeah, that's right. I can
Speaker 1: see it triggering it. Yeah. Yeah, because you see guys
Speaker 1: who mess with coyote bounties by like bringing them from
Speaker 1: other areas, other states, you know whatever. Yeah, I get
Speaker 1: I get what they're getting at it. I gotta I
Speaker 1: gotta think about it. I gotta sleep on that one.
Speaker 1: I knew that that was I knew that that I
Speaker 1: knew heard of that happening. I come here if I
Speaker 1: heard it in the Idaho Panhandle or something, or maybe
Speaker 1: Diane Boyd was talking about that program. That's a tricky one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it, but I I just I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think about how to how to market that one, how
Speaker 1: to how to sell that one. So then finally over
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, I'm sure everyone remembers last year, they had
Speaker 1: their first wolf hunt in a while. The quota was
Speaker 1: a hundred nineteen wolves, and they exceeded that by about
Speaker 1: a hundred wolves and a couple of days, I think
Speaker 1: it was. It's very quickly and the and the hunt
Speaker 1: got shut down. Um this year, there's a citizen panel
Speaker 1: that recommends h quotas for game animals, and that citizens
Speaker 1: panel recommended three hundred wolves this year. The d NR
Speaker 1: didn't listen to them and went with one thirty UM,
Speaker 1: which you I'd assume that they're thinking they had to
Speaker 1: react to what happened last year and avoid over harvest UM.
Speaker 1: And something I learned that that I did not know
Speaker 1: is half of those tags go to the Jibwe tribe
Speaker 1: and which and the and they have historically chosen not
Speaker 1: to use those tags. So essentially there's gonna be sixty
Speaker 1: five tags available to hunters this year. You know that
Speaker 1: that that resource split is something you see around the
Speaker 1: country on different wildlife issues. Like when I was living
Speaker 1: in Washington, we would do a lot of clam dig
Speaker 1: and and they would have on some of those beaches
Speaker 1: on the Olympic Peninsula, there'd be a there'd be a
Speaker 1: biological assessment that was done in tandem between the tribes
Speaker 1: and the state, and they would do, like let's say
Speaker 1: they're looking at razor clams. They would agree on a
Speaker 1: razor clam abundance, right, they didn't agree on like what
Speaker 1: total harvest should look like. And then they whatever that
Speaker 1: total harvest should look like for the year, they just
Speaker 1: split it fift so went to the tribes and the
Speaker 1: tribes could conduct their own thing, do commercial digs whatever,
Speaker 1: they had their end of it, and then the state
Speaker 1: would deal with their half. However, they dealt with their
Speaker 1: half through you know, recreational clam digging. So like that,
Speaker 1: that concept of doing a tribal state resource split. But
Speaker 1: it does get a little skewed when it's gonna go unused.
Speaker 1: But if it goes unused, then you imagine the next
Speaker 1: year's recommended that the next years recommended harvest might be higher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and interestingly, the a Jibware currently suing the federal or
Speaker 1: there let's see, yeah, federal lawsuit to cancel the wolf
Speaker 1: Fund altogether, arguing it violates their treaty rights. Um, they
Speaker 1: don't harvest wolves because they view them as family. But
Speaker 1: they also believe that Wisconsin failed to use sound biological
Speaker 1: principles in the past. You know, when setting these quotas,
Speaker 1: We'll see where that goes. It's a tricky one all around, man,
Speaker 1: because the minute you start talking about how you believe
Speaker 1: in wolf harvest, people think you're anti wolf. I'm like anything,
Speaker 1: but anti wolf. Like I don't think I don't like us, uh,
Speaker 1: just me speaking personally. I don't think that humans are
Speaker 1: really in a position to decide that certain wildlife species
Speaker 1: should be like eliminated from the earth. That's like a
Speaker 1: level you know, we have I think a moral ethical
Speaker 1: responsibility to keep native wildlife on the ground, but I
Speaker 1: also think that they should be manage and hunt for.
Speaker 1: I agree, and and like, if if the last decade
Speaker 1: or longer has taught us anything, is that you can
Speaker 1: absolutely have wolf hunting and wolves. Because we've got wolf
Speaker 1: hunting now for years, and we got more wolves than
Speaker 1: we have when we started. So you will fun plan,
Speaker 1: don't you know? You Oh, just messing around. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got well, I got a couple of irons in the
Speaker 1: fire them the new snowmobiles burned, burned a hole in
Speaker 1: my pocket. Oh yeah that Um no, we got a couple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I gotta I gotta make a couple of phone
Speaker 1: calls and the people I've been very interested, uh and
Speaker 1: predator calling four of them, h which is a little
Speaker 1: bit tricky. There's these I don't want to see what
Speaker 1: these boys are doing because I haven't like tested it
Speaker 1: myself yet. There's an emerging strategy. I've been catching windows.
Speaker 1: This is unredated. When I thought I had that little
Speaker 1: break through his road kill deer. But I haven't done that. Uh, alright,
Speaker 1: So continuing on with continuing on with the I think
Speaker 1: we've been exploring lately, which is fisherman harrassment, Which how's
Speaker 1: that even the thing? But like hunter har askedment, I get,
Speaker 1: you know, like whatever you're out duck hunting, some person
Speaker 1: comes out freaking out on you. But fisherman harassment is
Speaker 1: we We've got a lot of stories for listeners about
Speaker 1: being out fishing and having dock owners come out and
Speaker 1: try to scare the fish away from their dock area,
Speaker 1: scared fishing her ass, shoot garden hoses at fishermen and
Speaker 1: whatever you can do to like ruin their fishing, which
Speaker 1: is illegal. But this one came in from Acosta County,
Speaker 1: and uh that that holds a special place in my
Speaker 1: heart because I grew up south of there and I
Speaker 1: used to Uh, I used to trap in Mosquegon County,
Speaker 1: Diego County, but then for a bunch of years in December,
Speaker 1: late December January, we would trap up in Macosta County.
Speaker 1: So we go up to Macosta County and trap through
Speaker 1: the ice for beaver and muskrats. Now it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the highlight of the trap and you I used
Speaker 1: to love hanging out up there. Um, and these guys
Speaker 1: run into They've had this, uh a lot of encounters
Speaker 1: with an anti angler. What's the world coming to it?
Speaker 1: Was the anti angler. He would uh used to go
Speaker 1: down and if you tried to fish his docks. So
Speaker 1: if you're going along and you're pitching jigs under his dock,
Speaker 1: this dude to run out yell at you. But recently,
Speaker 1: this guy is out doing yard work and you had
Speaker 1: one of those backpack leaf floors, like a like a
Speaker 1: leaf flower strtus back and as they're coming by trolling,
Speaker 1: he runs down to his dock and starts leaf blowing
Speaker 1: the water, blowing the water every which way in the
Speaker 1: effort to spook off fish. Um. So this is interesting.
Speaker 1: We have two uh, two law enforcements. Forward, I should
Speaker 1: I should call you guys are law enforcement who can
Speaker 1: speak freely because you're a former correct, So now you
Speaker 1: can tell people what you really think. So Paul was
Speaker 1: a former regular policeman, sheriff's deputy, sheriff steputy. That's not
Speaker 1: a regular policeman, I mean, not a game ward, not
Speaker 1: a game warden. Correct. Sheriff's deputy. Yeah, and Sam was
Speaker 1: an Arizona game warden. Correct. So I want to ask
Speaker 1: each you guys, you get a call from an angler
Speaker 1: who says, I'm out fishing right now, and I'm coming
Speaker 1: by a dock and there's a man blowing his leaf
Speaker 1: blower around in the water to scare fish away. Um,
Speaker 1: do you like turn the sirens on and race over?
Speaker 1: Like what would be your attitude? Yeah, there's certainly no sirens.
Speaker 1: Uh my, my first thought would be to call the
Speaker 1: game warden because it's obviously uh wildlife related. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: in Montana, at least, you know, we've got a whole
Speaker 1: set of rules that fit under game laws. If they
Speaker 1: weren't available, it would be just under normal laws, would
Speaker 1: be disorderly conduct, which everybody calls disturbing the peace and
Speaker 1: kind of the catch all, or you might you might
Speaker 1: get a disturbing the peace type situation going potentially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be the that would be where it would
Speaker 1: fall under in Montana if it if the game warden
Speaker 1: wasn't there to write wildlife ticket. Yeah, And that was
Speaker 1: often the case where the local sheriffs or police department
Speaker 1: would get ahold of us when it was a wildlife
Speaker 1: related thing, and vice versa. When we got into drugs
Speaker 1: and drunk drivers, we got ahold of you guys. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to deal with it. The first thing it
Speaker 1: hits me is, you know, is there any way I
Speaker 1: could deescalate that thing. Sometimes these people out trying to harass,
Speaker 1: whether you're a hunter and angler, want the publicity out
Speaker 1: of it and make a big issue out of it.
Speaker 1: And in fact we had when you're saying, the harasser
Speaker 1: wants broader attention, wants the attention. And the next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, next weekend there's three people out with leaf blowers.
Speaker 1: They started movement. Yeah that's the leaf blowing program. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I would if I received that call. There's nothing on
Speaker 1: the books from a game and fish at that point
Speaker 1: dealing with harassing anglers. It was literally hunters and hunter
Speaker 1: harassment um, which which we did find many many times
Speaker 1: where they just sought publicity. They just wanted officers to
Speaker 1: show up and and make their case and it was
Speaker 1: on the news, and so you de escalate it. So
Speaker 1: that's what I would have certainly done in this case.
Speaker 1: What does walk me through it? What does that wind
Speaker 1: up looking like? Well, I probably get ahold of in
Speaker 1: how many geese did you shoot? And so if I
Speaker 1: got a call, obviously there was a person that called
Speaker 1: the dispatch, and I would get in touch with them
Speaker 1: and see if I can meet them, and go all right,
Speaker 1: here's this guy. He doesn't want you. You don't want
Speaker 1: to meet with the fisherman? Yeah? Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: there's this whole agg here. This guy obviously doesn't watch
Speaker 1: you out here. The more you make an issue out
Speaker 1: of this, the more likely he's probably going to get
Speaker 1: somebody's doing it too. Just back out of there, really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then i'd probably go talk to the guy. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just say, come on here, let's try to reach
Speaker 1: some kind of a balance. Why are you doing this? Well,
Speaker 1: every time I go down there and try to read
Speaker 1: my book, here's some guy and one time he almost
Speaker 1: hooked me in the air. Okay, I can understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, And but let's think of some other options.
Speaker 1: You know, this guy had a kid with him, he
Speaker 1: wanted to introduce him to fishing, and how his whole
Speaker 1: day was Ruined's let's talk it out. Yeah, no tickets, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd agree with that therapy session. That's what you know
Speaker 1: you feel better already in readings saying so we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk more about Sam's book. Sam's book is our stories
Speaker 1: of the past in Arizona game range of remembering the outlaws,
Speaker 1: and the thing that strut me most in the book
Speaker 1: is you aren't. Um. You don't wake up in the
Speaker 1: morning wanting to bust someone's balls. Only a few people
Speaker 1: that was generally like a generally lenient Yeah, no, lenienst
Speaker 1: the right word. Um, like you, uh you didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't seem to have real acts to grind well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like I think I told career. You
Speaker 1: know these people that uh, well well, let's just say this.
Speaker 1: For those of us that are actively involved with hunting
Speaker 1: and angling, I mean almost avid, and that means greedy.
Speaker 1: If you haven't violated a game and fish regulation, I'd
Speaker 1: be surprised. And so mistakes happen all the time. And
Speaker 1: you look at the people out there. Of them are
Speaker 1: are good, you know, conservationist, enjoying recreation and passing on
Speaker 1: a tradition, and accidents happen. Certainly you recognize those kinds
Speaker 1: of cases and walk into it gently. But the real
Speaker 1: bad guys, darn right, I stayed awake at night. I
Speaker 1: wanted those guys and I was going to put them
Speaker 1: out of business. Uh, some of those stories are in there.
Speaker 1: Can I get squeezing? A follow up siren question? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: How how how civilians use it to mean the lights? No? No,
Speaker 1: go ahead? No different? So everybody's seen it. I think
Speaker 1: when you're driving along and all of a sudden, like uh,
Speaker 1: some sort of law enforcement officers next to you, and
Speaker 1: lights come on and they buzz down whatever X road
Speaker 1: or highway for seemingly a shorter distance, and then the
Speaker 1: lights go off, and then he just continue about that happens.
Speaker 1: That happens all the time. That's what I think is
Speaker 1: going on. Okay, please, I think that they got an
Speaker 1: emergency call and then someone called sit there mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's a he is like, I gotta get home
Speaker 1: real quick because I gotta go number two. See. Is
Speaker 1: I gotta another errand to run? Or indeed, is I
Speaker 1: have this power? I'm just gonna like a little bit.
Speaker 1: Why do you do that? I'd say, sometimes all of
Speaker 1: the above could be true. That's a diplomatic answer. I've seen.
Speaker 1: I've seen guys, you know, after leaving I don't know
Speaker 1: the taco joint. You're like, I need to get back
Speaker 1: to the office right now, um and uh and and
Speaker 1: use the old lights and siren. Yeah. I mean that's
Speaker 1: usually night shift thing, but the more often than not,
Speaker 1: it's something that is like an emergent call but not
Speaker 1: necessarily worth risking anything for. And you just catch a
Speaker 1: red light and you're like, man, I'm gonna sit here
Speaker 1: for five minutes or I'm gonna get through this one
Speaker 1: and keep rolling. That's probably the most common instead of
Speaker 1: causing all the chaos of going down the street. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know how hard it is that drive, even
Speaker 1: through Bozeman, much less a big city, um in rush
Speaker 1: hour traffic, and you just sit there for hours. And
Speaker 1: so sometimes a call comes up that you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I just you know, I could be there and in
Speaker 1: well in Gallanton County and be there in ten minutes,
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna not be three blocks yet in ten minutes.
Speaker 1: So you get through it, just kind of get through
Speaker 1: the the cluster and move on. We should do a
Speaker 1: whole we should do a show like a weekly show
Speaker 1: called Ask a Cop and get a whole panel of
Speaker 1: cops and you ask them like why do you guys
Speaker 1: always you know, I know a couple. Did you ever
Speaker 1: get involved with any um montannas stream acts like access law? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's. Because I'm obviously worked in this area, I
Speaker 1: have to be careful who I talked about. But the
Speaker 1: um you know, there's several landowners I'm reading between the
Speaker 1: lines on that one nearby here, um nearby, you know
Speaker 1: in Bozeman, being a big fishing community has got you know,
Speaker 1: just loads of people parked all the way down around
Speaker 1: all the bridges, and we have guys who have you know,
Speaker 1: cameras out ready to you know, if you take one
Speaker 1: step above high water mark there they have motion activated
Speaker 1: cameras and alarms on their phones and they're calling and
Speaker 1: they want everybody sided. And it's typically I'm sure Sam
Speaker 1: can can relate, and then it's typically spurred on by
Speaker 1: somebody and you know some fishermen with bad behavior causing
Speaker 1: them to get a burn unto their saddle about it.
Speaker 1: But we've had cases where you know, bridges, there's not
Speaker 1: really great parking areas, and we suspect the landowners who
Speaker 1: typically would call every day with with fishing or you know,
Speaker 1: access issues. Those are the bridges. We would show up
Speaker 1: and there'd be you know, create a nails spread around
Speaker 1: in the ditch, so everybody who parked ended up with
Speaker 1: flat tires and limited the numbers of people who would
Speaker 1: go out there and try and park in the ditch.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we dealt with it fairly often. And then
Speaker 1: you know a lot of times. You know, I had
Speaker 1: a guy who he's a young college kid. He was
Speaker 1: trying to do the right thing. There was a bank
Speaker 1: in the river that he couldn't stay in without swimming,
Speaker 1: and he was outside of the bank. Now maybe it
Speaker 1: was just a couple of feet he had to he
Speaker 1: had to go around a rock to get around, and
Speaker 1: he came. You know, the guy had the motion activated
Speaker 1: alarm on his phone, had the recording by the time
Speaker 1: I got there, and everything on camera, and said, I
Speaker 1: don't care he was trespassing. I want him sighted. And
Speaker 1: he's dealt with it enough that he just he he
Speaker 1: hasn't signed very well. The guy. You know, if he
Speaker 1: had known the law, I'm sure probably would have avoided
Speaker 1: that whole side of the river. But yeah, written a
Speaker 1: few tickets that I've almost like I needed to apologize for.
Speaker 1: He's gonna wear kid's gonna wear that river bank out well,
Speaker 1: you know, good for nothing anymore. After he comes walking through.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, guy wrote in here's another like, this is
Speaker 1: an access question. So he's talking about legally accessing landlocked
Speaker 1: public land. This is this is a good topic of discussion. UM.
Speaker 1: Landlocked public land is like where you have state or
Speaker 1: federal land and it's surrounded on all sides by private land.
Speaker 1: There's no public access road cutting through it, which makes
Speaker 1: it sort of like de facto private land. Um. More
Speaker 1: and more people are using helicopters to access that stuff
Speaker 1: if the land management agency that holds the land allows
Speaker 1: you to land a helicopter on it. But this guy's wondering, Um,
Speaker 1: why can't you parachute onto the land? I see, of
Speaker 1: course you can extraction, just throw a military term at
Speaker 1: it becomes an issue. But remember that John Wayne movie
Speaker 1: Green Brays and they caught that like high profile target
Speaker 1: and green and a cook that dude to those balloons,
Speaker 1: and that plane came by and hits the string and
Speaker 1: pulls the guy into the back of the plane. You
Speaker 1: gotta get a rig like that in a long time.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so you can parachute in I don't know
Speaker 1: how you can get out of there. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you gotta hire that helicopter short haul your way out
Speaker 1: of there with a long line. If you can't land, yeah,
Speaker 1: or if you're just moving there, I guess you could
Speaker 1: parachute in. And what's what's the attentionve? What do you after?
Speaker 1: You hunting or fishing? Uh? He does? I'm assuming he
Speaker 1: saw about honey he wants to go hunt it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess good after it and then have a pickup.
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna get into this a little bit,
Speaker 1: this parachuting on the places. I just get to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get out. That's a good idea. It's
Speaker 1: a great question. But yeah, I don't see, and it
Speaker 1: would because a lot of stuff you can't because you
Speaker 1: cannot land the aircraft on it. But there's no thing
Speaker 1: with you just landing there in your boot. But you
Speaker 1: still gotta get picked up. Can't you jump out of
Speaker 1: a helicopter? You know that? That's another good question. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing there's some like if you're if you go on
Speaker 1: unlet's see, you're going on to a part of a
Speaker 1: land agency that says no landing helicopters. I wonder how
Speaker 1: they view. I'm sure we can get a concrete answer
Speaker 1: to this. What what the airspace implication is? Because you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be like cute and have it be that
Speaker 1: the helicopter never touched and you just hopped off. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that they're gonna there's a point at which they're
Speaker 1: gonna not really care about how clever you are that
Speaker 1: it's like it didn't actually touch. Yeah, I did that
Speaker 1: watch and I forgot to take my helmet off with
Speaker 1: the mike oh jumping off the skid and right at
Speaker 1: the end, I remembered I still had that help. That
Speaker 1: would have been stupid. Um. Yeah, that's a great question, man,
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting to think about. And uh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how it would go,
Speaker 1: Like just to jumping out of a helicopter, I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that you have to stay that that thing has to
Speaker 1: stay a certain distance above what does it? Like parks
Speaker 1: have it right, like National parks You fly helicopter over park,
Speaker 1: but you have to do a ceiling and you can't
Speaker 1: go on even shoot video or you know whatever commercial
Speaker 1: pictures in the wilderness out of a helicopter. You cannot
Speaker 1: Oh really really. I just remember that because a guy gosh,
Speaker 1: I think it was this guy named Chris Davenport, a
Speaker 1: skier that skied all in Colorado's fourteeners and he had
Speaker 1: a bunch of images and I think video that was
Speaker 1: or he had maybe even done some accessing through helicopter.
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly what by know that they shut
Speaker 1: him down for the helicopters use stuff. We had an
Speaker 1: interesting thing coming into uh. Last note, A guy was
Speaker 1: a guy named Gilbert. That's probably first dude named Gilbert
Speaker 1: right us. Guy named Gilbert road In. He's hunting in
Speaker 1: Illinois this weekend and discovered an interesting regulation. This is
Speaker 1: a quote road to kill deer may only be claimed
Speaker 1: by those individuals who are residents of Illinois and are
Speaker 1: not delinquent in child support payments. Very specific. I think Sam,
Speaker 1: you'll be able to speak to this. But isn't it
Speaker 1: true that in a lot of states you can't hunt
Speaker 1: and fish and have a hunting license and fishing license
Speaker 1: if you're delinquent? I believe so. I think it's getting
Speaker 1: more and more. When we used to sell fishing licenses,
Speaker 1: there's a question on you. Are you delinquent? You have
Speaker 1: to be a citizen Illinois. So the driver a driver
Speaker 1: hits a deer, the driver says, I don't want the deer.
Speaker 1: The next guy in line can't be from Wisconsin. He's
Speaker 1: gonna be from Illinois, and he's got to be up
Speaker 1: on his child support. Good. He could be like, well,
Speaker 1: I murdered some people, but I'm cool on child support
Speaker 1: and be like, well, go ahead, or at least he's
Speaker 1: getting a process and delivering it to his child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe he's like, no, no, no, you don't get it, man,
Speaker 1: I'm giving the deer too much. Cut your break here,
Speaker 1: all right, bumping down, I'm gonna talk more about Paul Louis. Paulows,
Speaker 1: you're cool with me dropping that motor off? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have had it. We gotta show roomy. You can
Speaker 1: fill up as much as you want. Just put stuff
Speaker 1: in there and leave it there. It's like a big
Speaker 1: storage in it for you, you know you. So here's
Speaker 1: the thing I wanted to one of the things I
Speaker 1: want to talk about. So Paul is the founder f HF.
Speaker 1: So when you see us on the show running around
Speaker 1: with um a vinyl harness m that's an f HF
Speaker 1: binal harness. I first I don't know if I've ever
Speaker 1: even told you the story. I first my late friend
Speaker 1: Eric Kern, who died years ago. Now I remember he
Speaker 1: was the first person that made me wear of your
Speaker 1: products a long time ago. Yeah, and yeah, back then
Speaker 1: I was doing basically all custom stuff. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember I got asked the question before how
Speaker 1: how that first interaction happened. I don't, like I remember
Speaker 1: getting an email from Joe Rogan, who was introduced to
Speaker 1: it through you guys, but I don't. I think I
Speaker 1: got a random phone call from which I don't answer
Speaker 1: a lot of phone calls. I don't know the number for.
Speaker 1: There's a Bozeman numbers. I answered it, you know, for me,
Speaker 1: it's like, hey is Steven Ronella. I'm like, you're bullshit. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that's how it was there it was. It
Speaker 1: might have been an email and and yeah, so we
Speaker 1: as I made you a couple of custom ones early on.
Speaker 1: And uh, because you were a stitching vinyal harnesses that
Speaker 1: just on your free time as a a cop. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I was sidegig trying to make a little extra money,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, I started doing custom work. Uh, like
Speaker 1: I said, kind of a hobby and then and just
Speaker 1: to pay the bills, and and kind of caught on
Speaker 1: being in Bozeman. I was doing a lot of tactical
Speaker 1: gear initially, you know, first SWAT team buddies, and then
Speaker 1: you know, had kind of involved in some online forums.
Speaker 1: You know that we're doing tactical gear stuff, and but
Speaker 1: being Ambozement, Oh my hunting buddies. And then there's a
Speaker 1: couple out or jobs in Bozeman, so there's a few
Speaker 1: people that hunt around here, and that is sort of
Speaker 1: what took off. Were Yeah, when you were out doing
Speaker 1: uh all your police duties, were ever wearing your own
Speaker 1: accessories that you made for yourself, not on patrol. But
Speaker 1: originally when I first started, actually that's that's actually how
Speaker 1: I started. As I was too cheap to buy something
Speaker 1: because I was on our swat team as well, and
Speaker 1: you know, we have a part time team, and I
Speaker 1: was too cheap to buy something and figured I could
Speaker 1: make it, so um, and that led to making stuff
Speaker 1: for teammates. And I there's one guy at work. His
Speaker 1: nickname for me was either zippers or pockets or something,
Speaker 1: because I always had if I needed a something, put
Speaker 1: something in a pocket. I'd make a pouch for it.
Speaker 1: Did you always have a sewing machine kicking? That's the
Speaker 1: same question. No, I I took seventh grade home eck
Speaker 1: and I made a Fannie pack. Yeah, I did too,
Speaker 1: and uh those were cool in the eighties or nineties, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I skateboarded all around Councilzoo, Michigan wearing that thing, and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I Uh I had been able. I had
Speaker 1: just enough skill. I felt like to, you know, repair
Speaker 1: something if I had to, And uh, my wife had
Speaker 1: a sewing machine, and so I figured I could make
Speaker 1: this thing that I was too cheap to buy. And
Speaker 1: that just led me to buying more materials and more
Speaker 1: machinery and more of everything. And it just kind of
Speaker 1: I feel like, you got to be a real confident
Speaker 1: in your masculinity. When yeah, it helps that I sell
Speaker 1: camouflage things rather than lacey things. You still feel like
Speaker 1: you still feel manly, right, yeah, try to and it's
Speaker 1: like ballistic nylon, right, but it's like curting you both,
Speaker 1: you know, very manly individuals. But there's like there's a
Speaker 1: point where I think a lot of people are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not messing with the soule machine. It's just too dainty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my wife has one. I don't want to be a seamstress.
Speaker 1: And we got you know, I got that from guys
Speaker 1: I worked with, like oh yeah, you know, giving me
Speaker 1: that snicker and you're selling again. But you know, when
Speaker 1: I really occurred to me if I would, I wish
Speaker 1: I could have a soul machine and knew how to
Speaker 1: use it. Mad be selling all kinds of jump. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that tune change. You know, you start making more
Speaker 1: money on your side, um, than your main job than
Speaker 1: they're like, wait a minute, maybe it is worth doing.
Speaker 1: So you uh, how did it be that you went
Speaker 1: to school for wildlife management way back in the day. Well,
Speaker 1: it's I had I was going to be a game
Speaker 1: biologist and you want yeah, that's where I was aiming.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, my junior year and in college, after
Speaker 1: spending all this time and money on classes, they came
Speaker 1: in and said, you will never get a job as
Speaker 1: a biologist, so find something else that you specifically at
Speaker 1: the time, And it was a no. It was a big,
Speaker 1: full on classroom. They came in and said, you know,
Speaker 1: here's all of your chances of getting a job as
Speaker 1: a biologist, even with a PhD. It was slim to none.
Speaker 1: And I had been doing some internship work, um with
Speaker 1: like student security and and m s U. Like I
Speaker 1: dispatch for m s U p D just because it
Speaker 1: was usually pretty slow and I get a lot of
Speaker 1: study and done at night. And but I got to
Speaker 1: know those guys had some interest in enforcement. And then, um,
Speaker 1: when I realized that being a biologist was going to
Speaker 1: be a lot of work, and you know, I had
Speaker 1: this plan to be able to travel around and be
Speaker 1: a a tech and take side you know, short short
Speaker 1: term jobs all over the country and do studies and
Speaker 1: realized that probably wasn't gonna work as a an adult
Speaker 1: trying to be trying to you know, be responsible. So uh,
Speaker 1: one of the game wardens came in and gave a
Speaker 1: talk in the same class and said, you know, we're hiring,
Speaker 1: and you know, we give you a truck and a
Speaker 1: four wheeler and horses, and you know you can be
Speaker 1: outside all day and and you don't need more than
Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree in a related field. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I think that's probably what I might look at. So
Speaker 1: so I started aiming for that direction. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: did internships with the wardens here, worked in the Wildlife Lab.
Speaker 1: Did you know? That's when right when I graduated college,
Speaker 1: I end up taking a job as a security officer
Speaker 1: up on the Flying d and thinking that was as
Speaker 1: close as I could get to UH job experience, and um,
Speaker 1: when I graduated, they did a hiring freeze here and
Speaker 1: weren't hiring any wardens. So I took the written test,
Speaker 1: which happened to me. I was on search and rescue,
Speaker 1: a volunteer for search and rescue with the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: and they were hiring. They take the same written tests,
Speaker 1: the police standard police test, and I applied really just
Speaker 1: canda to see how I would do on the test,
Speaker 1: and they ended up hiring me. And I realized they
Speaker 1: at the time at least paid better than the state.
Speaker 1: They got to stay in Bozeman and still getting shipped
Speaker 1: to who knows where in Montana, and it's a lot
Speaker 1: easier to get time off during hunting season when you're
Speaker 1: not a game warden. So that's uh, that's what I did.
Speaker 1: How many years have you spend on that, uh with
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office? I did my full twenty retired with twenty
Speaker 1: year retirement. I got a friend I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want to see what town he's in. But I got
Speaker 1: a friend who grew up in a town um and
Speaker 1: did all the bunch of professional things around construction, and
Speaker 1: then I guess, probably late in life for police work,
Speaker 1: but late in life went to academy and became a
Speaker 1: city policeman in his hometown, and it radically transformed his
Speaker 1: idea of the town that he lived in. Where he
Speaker 1: said he had no idea. Yeah, and I had no idea.
Speaker 1: That's true here. I didn't grow up here. I mean
Speaker 1: I went to college here. But I think for the
Speaker 1: most part, people are you know, Bosman is a nice
Speaker 1: place to live, but you know, we as law enforcement
Speaker 1: and there you certainly stay busy, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: more going on here than people realize. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: astounded by the child abuse, the spouse abuse. It's like,
Speaker 1: how do you live your whole life somewhere and have
Speaker 1: like an impression of it, and then you get a
Speaker 1: look under the you know, and and and you look
Speaker 1: onto the covers, and he's like, it just mortified him.
Speaker 1: It changes you're outlooking. I worked six years straight at
Speaker 1: night shift and you aren't dealing with your general population
Speaker 1: three in the morning. Um, you're you just you're seeing
Speaker 1: people at their worst. You know, even if they're good people,
Speaker 1: they aren't. You know, it's not normal to be having
Speaker 1: one on one dealings with the police at three in
Speaker 1: the morning, and so your outlook on life sort of changes.
Speaker 1: And that's when I started this side gig. It was
Speaker 1: one of those things that really helped me kind of realize,
Speaker 1: you know, because you know, it's hesitant to meet people
Speaker 1: customers having gear built. You know, I'm like, I'll meet
Speaker 1: you in a parking lot somewhere and I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: tell you where I live. Yeah, I my only friends
Speaker 1: were other cops, and you know, night shift cops because
Speaker 1: you know, we had our barbecues at seven in the
Speaker 1: morning instead of normal times. And uh, um it uh.
Speaker 1: Having this side gig come up really kind of helped
Speaker 1: me realize that there were still decent people in the world,
Speaker 1: and especially hunters and anglers as a general rule, is
Speaker 1: kind of much better people than I was used to
Speaker 1: dealing with. When you when you started building FHF, did
Speaker 1: you uh did you get like a guilty conscience that
Speaker 1: you had that you weren't like hunter? You know, I
Speaker 1: guess you still aren't you're still doing your shift. But
Speaker 1: I mean, did you feel bad like you were betraying
Speaker 1: your occupation or something? Um, in what way? What do
Speaker 1: you mean, like like that you had another love, right? Um?
Speaker 1: Not really. I mean I was able to kind of balance,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I ended up. I was in
Speaker 1: charge of our detective division, and you know, that was
Speaker 1: my main job. But definitely all of my off time
Speaker 1: was spent as this. As FHF kind of grew, I
Speaker 1: never planned it to grow as quickly as it did.
Speaker 1: In fact, I tried to slow it down several times
Speaker 1: because I was so busy and I was, you know,
Speaker 1: doing everything myself. Um, But it just kind of took
Speaker 1: on a life of its own. And so you know,
Speaker 1: by the end, I was, you're trying to hang on
Speaker 1: to make my twenty years and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd say there are times where I probably gave a
Speaker 1: little more attention to that to my side gig than
Speaker 1: I probably should have. But I tried really hard to
Speaker 1: not not let it affect my day job. Um. On
Speaker 1: the like the gradual path to binal harnesses, we like
Speaker 1: in the old age, we put like a pair of
Speaker 1: bonn oculars around our neck, right on a rigid strap.
Speaker 1: I remember getting I wish I still had to sing,
Speaker 1: and maybe I do. But we started inexpertly sewing stuff
Speaker 1: and I remember taking um taking a cutting a strip
Speaker 1: off of a pair of neoprene waiters, old neoprene waiters,
Speaker 1: and made my next strap of a neoprene waiter stitch piece,
Speaker 1: and then stitched strapping to that. Did hooked the key
Speaker 1: rings that were in the tethers, like in the fastening
Speaker 1: points on my binoculars, and then we'd take a piece
Speaker 1: of bungee cord and fastened one end of the bungee
Speaker 1: cord to the binocular to that key ring running around
Speaker 1: behind your back, and to the other key ring. You'd
Speaker 1: have a piece of para cord in which you tie
Speaker 1: up prusick right and tie the prussick around the bungee.
Speaker 1: You follow me, so as you shed layers, you could
Speaker 1: like tighten the prusi up on the bungee. It was
Speaker 1: to have the bungee so when you put your binoculars up,
Speaker 1: you'd have the resistance of the bungee for stability, and
Speaker 1: then when you're belly crawling, that bungee suck him up
Speaker 1: to your chest. I like it, Yeah, we should hire
Speaker 1: you as a designer. I don't remember exactly, but I
Speaker 1: don't think I invented this. I think this is just
Speaker 1: like looking at stuff and doing if I remember that
Speaker 1: dude Eric Current being like, oh no, man, there's this
Speaker 1: guy in Belgrade. It like makes these whole things. You
Speaker 1: gotta te him what you got, you know, and he
Speaker 1: makes it all And it was funny. Is at the time,
Speaker 1: like no one really knew about that stuff. And and um,
Speaker 1: we get the biny harnesses. And remember camera guys, so
Speaker 1: we we had a lot of dealings with production people.
Speaker 1: Um no interest hunting at all. I remember one of
Speaker 1: our camera one of our longtime camera guys. I don't
Speaker 1: know how many episodes of mo film like being like
Speaker 1: they carry all their batteries and media everything in there.
Speaker 1: You know, he'd run around being like, I can't believe
Speaker 1: my whole life, I wasted this real estate. And he'd
Speaker 1: even be going like he'd be shooting Bourdain show. You know,
Speaker 1: they'd be whatever, like Singapore shooting Bourdain show. And those
Speaker 1: dudes that all have bought your bino harnesses on with
Speaker 1: their like camera equipment and stuff in there. You know
Speaker 1: they loved it. Man and they're all wearing the chest rick.
Speaker 1: Now yeah, now they got Yeah, they don't have to
Speaker 1: stick in the buyo pocket now because now there's like
Speaker 1: an actual chess rig. This more excess rise. But that
Speaker 1: was this big things, like this whole life. He'd wasted
Speaker 1: this this space where who knows you could keep all
Speaker 1: your stuff here? Paul, when you came up with like
Speaker 1: that by no harness design, what were you seeing that
Speaker 1: you didn't like, you know, in the other options that
Speaker 1: were out there. Um, well, it's funny because there weren't.
Speaker 1: I have to admit I hadn't actually researched making it
Speaker 1: based on what you didn't like about other ship. The
Speaker 1: first one was actually made for a custom order for
Speaker 1: somebody else, um and you know who had had a
Speaker 1: bunch of elks scared away by Um he had one
Speaker 1: of those early magnetic ones that stayed open. The wind
Speaker 1: caught it, popped it shut and made a huge noise.
Speaker 1: Elk got scared away, and he's like, I want something
Speaker 1: without a magnet. So that was the first first one
Speaker 1: I started making. I made a few for you know,
Speaker 1: a few other friends and customers. Went to Uh. Actually,
Speaker 1: one of Randy Newburgh's really early like get togethers, and
Speaker 1: came away from there with a bunch of orders and
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and I had been wearing just
Speaker 1: the the old elastic crooked horn um by guy, you know,
Speaker 1: and I had had my own issues with that. You know,
Speaker 1: you're hiking around and bouncing, hitting in the waste or
Speaker 1: you know, lower if you weren't lucky, and sometimes well
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I tried to jump over a stream
Speaker 1: one time, and you know, I jumped and ended up
Speaker 1: hitting the other bank buy knows went one way and
Speaker 1: came back and hit me right in the nose, end
Speaker 1: up standing in the creek, bleeding, and like, there's gotta
Speaker 1: be a better way to do this, And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of how it started and just kind of
Speaker 1: evolved from there. You know, it hasn't changed a whole
Speaker 1: lot um. It just kind of added a few features
Speaker 1: here and there over the years. And you know, now,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I got so busy as the company
Speaker 1: grew where I was running kind of day to day
Speaker 1: business stuff all the time and really had very little
Speaker 1: opportunity to update products or even design new ones. And
Speaker 1: now we're finally getting to a point where I feel
Speaker 1: like we're moving forward on all sorts of new stuff.
Speaker 1: When you started your when you start your business, will
Speaker 1: being a full time police officer, what was the how
Speaker 1: many years did you do it before you did it?
Speaker 1: A year where you're like I had a profit, Like
Speaker 1: realize that you had an actual business. Um, it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I actually started. We we ended up working with
Speaker 1: a company to help so gear for me, so like
Speaker 1: certain things that I would have a list of. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many years it was into it,
Speaker 1: probably probably two or three where you know, I was
Speaker 1: just sewing everything myself. And I am one of those
Speaker 1: people who are like, that's not worth that, you know,
Speaker 1: give me five bucks for that. I'll you know, it's
Speaker 1: probably not worth that much. And so I look at
Speaker 1: some of my early stuff, I can't believe people paid
Speaker 1: for it, but um they like when I found a
Speaker 1: company that helped me, like my most requested products I
Speaker 1: just had made for me, and um, that's when I
Speaker 1: started seeing a profit because it was just the time
Speaker 1: of actually sewing. I could just sell those things, um,
Speaker 1: one after the other instead of spending you one by
Speaker 1: an artist would take me four and a half hours
Speaker 1: to make by myself. You know, that's when I was
Speaker 1: selling them all the time and felt good at it.
Speaker 1: And so you know, at the time I was probably
Speaker 1: selling them for sixty bucks. It's hard to make a
Speaker 1: profit at that rate. Well, when you were early on,
Speaker 1: are you tempted to not stick to having everything be
Speaker 1: American made? UM, just as you could have gone and
Speaker 1: had like hundreds of them maid and just have it
Speaker 1: all be like No, I've pretty much always stuck to
Speaker 1: that that I try and source everything I can, both
Speaker 1: materials and obviously labor um in the US and UM.
Speaker 1: It's kind of been one of the things throughout the
Speaker 1: whole history that have stuck to and kind of built
Speaker 1: a customer base around and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people appreciate that. UM. And early on, you know, I
Speaker 1: was I didn't want to invest too much money into
Speaker 1: something and you know, going overseas you have to do
Speaker 1: huge orders and wait a long time. And it's been
Speaker 1: nice with US production is that you know, if I
Speaker 1: have a change, I can make that change and have
Speaker 1: a turnaround pretty quick versus a two year planning process
Speaker 1: to try and you know, get something made overseas. Uh,
Speaker 1: you don't know they want I want to ask you
Speaker 1: do you have how many how long has been since
Speaker 1: you retired? Uh, since two thousand eighteen. Do you have
Speaker 1: a lot of days where you uh I wish you
Speaker 1: hadn't done that and stayed in it. No. Um, A
Speaker 1: lot of the guys still there. I still see and
Speaker 1: I recommend retirement to them every day, especially so you're
Speaker 1: like the opposite of a recruiting force. Yeah. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I missed the people. I missed the work. Um. Sometimes, UM,
Speaker 1: I miss being in the know what's going on in
Speaker 1: the valley and in the news, and but I don't
Speaker 1: miss the stress and the politics and uh, the bs
Speaker 1: that you have to deal with every day. I mean
Speaker 1: I don't. I haven't been shot at yet since I retired,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of nice. Yeah. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: whatever kind of Um, I don't mean to like I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to lay a diagnosis on here anything like that,
Speaker 1: but whatever sort of I don't know, Like PTSD is
Speaker 1: ship happens to you from being like the first on
Speaker 1: a car crash, Like yeah, you're just like you right right,
Speaker 1: You're running into like like dead people become a part
Speaker 1: of life in some way, like this inescapable part of life.
Speaker 1: Like most if you went out and pulled Americans like,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen have your like been in proximity
Speaker 1: to a dead person? I feel like at this point
Speaker 1: in human in American history, a majority of people would
Speaker 1: have a no answer outside of a funeral home, you know,
Speaker 1: something like like you know that you like encounter in
Speaker 1: close proximity a dead individual, not not in a funeral home.
Speaker 1: Like I think that a vast majority of Americans would
Speaker 1: say no, I have not right, Like it's just out
Speaker 1: of whatever it is societally, we've gotten cleaned up. Like
Speaker 1: you're talking to my dad and he's a little boy.
Speaker 1: It seemed like you couldn't turn around without being a
Speaker 1: dead guy laying there. But like nowadays it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But then you're forced in that line of work. It's
Speaker 1: just like a thing. It has to have a new impact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it does. I actually like read something once
Speaker 1: from a law professor who talked about you know you
Speaker 1: kind of you get used to it, or you never
Speaker 1: get used to it, but you get to see it
Speaker 1: so often. They talk about grains of sand where you
Speaker 1: it's something that you don't realize it's irritating you, but
Speaker 1: it is irritating you every call you go to. It's
Speaker 1: all those things. And I think many in law enforcement,
Speaker 1: any emergency service, they kind of the this analogy that
Speaker 1: was made by this law professor was, you know, we
Speaker 1: all learned to like build a pearl around those grains
Speaker 1: of sand and polish him up. And you know a
Speaker 1: lot of that polish has dark humor in it, and
Speaker 1: you know you just kind of you try and find
Speaker 1: what's funny and what you can laugh at later and
Speaker 1: vent your stress that way do you find it getting
Speaker 1: out of it? You start uh, drifting back to whatever
Speaker 1: you were pre I don't know if I'll ever get there.
Speaker 1: I still have that yeah, yeah, I definitely. You know,
Speaker 1: I still can't go in eat at a restaurant without
Speaker 1: sitting with my back to the wall somewhere. Seriously. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't what is your concern? I don't know the
Speaker 1: guy you coughed and stuffed, it's gonna come up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you just kind of you learned to always be ready,
Speaker 1: and you know, driving around a patrol car, you're you're
Speaker 1: always thinking what could happen next, What if this happens?
Speaker 1: You know, kind of the what if scenarios, all the time,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, luckily of the time it's pretty boring,
Speaker 1: but that one percent of the time when it's not,
Speaker 1: if you're not ready for it, it's it could be
Speaker 1: real trouble. And that's you go out to eat and
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, what if somebody comes in to
Speaker 1: rob the place? What if somebody I know, you know,
Speaker 1: or arrested or whatever comes in and recognizes me or
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I just don't want to
Speaker 1: be hitting the back of the head. I'd rather see
Speaker 1: what's coming right now. Yeah, he said, yeah, he said,
Speaker 1: in the back corner, watching the What are the type
Speaker 1: of what let me rephrases. Uh, it's from a night
Speaker 1: shift going back into obviously working with more of a
Speaker 1: day shift operation and any of the residual health pieces
Speaker 1: of that. And how did that unwind, you know, from
Speaker 1: trying to change your basic I don't know. So I
Speaker 1: worked nights. I was luckily I was a lot younger
Speaker 1: than I can tell. As I got older, things got harder.
Speaker 1: Um to stay awake all night. Um, I remember I
Speaker 1: went through a full year. I learned to tie flies
Speaker 1: on night shift. And you know, because you wouldn't your
Speaker 1: days off you'd stay awake, you couldn't sleep. Really. Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't have kids yet early on, and my wife
Speaker 1: at the time worked night shift, and so it just
Speaker 1: were like the vampires of the neighborhood. And so you
Speaker 1: stay on the you stay on the regis, stay on
Speaker 1: my schedule, and you know, made a lot easier on
Speaker 1: the work schedule to go back to the night shift
Speaker 1: and I tie flies, and I remember that's when I
Speaker 1: finally decided, you know, I probably had to get off
Speaker 1: a night shift when I had so many flies done
Speaker 1: because I never fished. Yeah, it was dark out, so
Speaker 1: I had so many flies tied up. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: I'd never gonna get to use it if I don't
Speaker 1: get off this shift. Um. And then I went through
Speaker 1: a long period where like I had a hard time
Speaker 1: having kids, you know, not you know, I was used
Speaker 1: to hibernating for twelve hours during the daytime and you know,
Speaker 1: blocking out the lights and turning the A C on
Speaker 1: and you know, just I did great on nights. But
Speaker 1: then when I had kids, it was pretty tough to transition,
Speaker 1: you know, and realize my life now revolved around their
Speaker 1: schedule and not not my own. Uh, you know that
Speaker 1: jumpiness you're talking about. Uh do you feel that you
Speaker 1: do you make your kids jumping? Um? Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say whether I cost to hear that,
Speaker 1: but you sense that at them that they pick up
Speaker 1: because they they're they're like they pick up a lot man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. They had a teenage daughter who and
Speaker 1: it's pretty oblivious to anything but her phone, So I
Speaker 1: think she's not like a gunfighter. No facing the door.
Speaker 1: Do do you ever look back? I wish you hadn't
Speaker 1: gone into that work? Um? Yeah, Uh, like what because
Speaker 1: primarily what like what is the main thing? I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's hard. It's like I'm torn because
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the work. I actually when I got hired,
Speaker 1: I never planned to go into that that line of work,
Speaker 1: and and honestly, when I got hired, it was like,
Speaker 1: I'll try this for a few years and see what happens. Um,
Speaker 1: but I had fun. I think the people I worked
Speaker 1: with are genuinely, you know, some of the best people
Speaker 1: I've ever met. They always would have my back. They um,
Speaker 1: you know, we come came to rely on each other.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's similar to I'm sure what I'm
Speaker 1: sure I wasn't in the military, but similar to and
Speaker 1: we hired a lot of veterans and and that same
Speaker 1: mindset came with them, and it was different in that,
Speaker 1: you know, I worked with i'd say, the same core
Speaker 1: group of people for twenty years doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: and you just get to know those people, and so
Speaker 1: I wouldn't give that up for anything. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, I'm sure, like you said, I'm
Speaker 1: there's some scars there. I'm sure that will always be there.
Speaker 1: But you know, I guess that's who makes me me
Speaker 1: so hurt, what makes me me and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: it'd be nice to not have them, But at the
Speaker 1: same time, they're there. And I think I've learned from
Speaker 1: a lot of things, and I was very naive when
Speaker 1: I got hired, and I feel like, hopefully I'm not
Speaker 1: not so anymore. I'm guessing that's probably accurate. Well, I
Speaker 1: appreciate the service to the community, you know, that's what
Speaker 1: I really I don't know if you feel that yourself.
Speaker 1: I think that's like a something that I'm feel like
Speaker 1: I'm missing sometimes. You know, it's kind of an adult
Speaker 1: in their prime, and I'm always thinking like man, how
Speaker 1: could I do more just around, you know, to help out?
Speaker 1: But like that that weighs on your honest and legitimate way, man, Well,
Speaker 1: and it does for me too. I want to get
Speaker 1: more involved with some of the conservation stuff now that
Speaker 1: I'm out. You know, I'm just used to being um.
Speaker 1: You know, I try and help with cleanups and different
Speaker 1: things around the community. But yeah, there are times where
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I wish I could get more involved.
Speaker 1: When I was in law enforcemately, you know, it was different.
Speaker 1: But it's funny you bring it up and kind of
Speaker 1: tie what Steve said earlier about getting in later. Like
Speaker 1: when I first got hired, I was twenty one years old,
Speaker 1: and you know, I wasn't thinking about just starting drink. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: yeah right, And m I p s to people that
Speaker 1: I'm like, would have partied with a few weeks earlier.
Speaker 1: Last night, I've been with you. Um. But you know
Speaker 1: when when you're young, and you know, maybe not everybody's
Speaker 1: like this, but I didn't realize really what I was
Speaker 1: getting getting into, or maybe what the what effect I
Speaker 1: could have, you know, And of course then you get
Speaker 1: into that and I think Sam talked about it at
Speaker 1: some point where you get into feeling like I can
Speaker 1: clean up this community, I can fix everything, and you
Speaker 1: realize that that's not possible either. You go through a
Speaker 1: phase where you're you know, nobody can clean up this
Speaker 1: community and screw it all um. And then as you
Speaker 1: get older, and I saw it with older hires, you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned somebody else getting into it later in life.
Speaker 1: You I think those were some of the best hires
Speaker 1: we had because you had guys that already knew what
Speaker 1: was going on in the community, what they'd like to
Speaker 1: see changed. They had community connections. You know, I was
Speaker 1: a college kid basically, you know when I got hired,
Speaker 1: my connections were, you know, what bar are we going
Speaker 1: to go to? Um? You know, it's just it's a
Speaker 1: different outlook on life and being involved, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it was good when we hired, and you know, the
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Office here did a really good job of hiring
Speaker 1: and picking those people that wanted to be involved. So
Speaker 1: it was you know, by the end, you know, certainly
Speaker 1: I was at a place where that was one of
Speaker 1: the best parts of it, where you got to go
Speaker 1: talk to kids and you know, help out at different places.
Speaker 1: You were out of the game when it happened to
Speaker 1: you a goal. But when you saw stuff like when
Speaker 1: you read like defund the police and stuff that that
Speaker 1: hurts that that's staying a little bit. Yeah, definitely. I
Speaker 1: feel bad for the guys you know, that are still
Speaker 1: working that I have to put up with. You know
Speaker 1: that what I hope is kind of the vocal minority
Speaker 1: of people that you know have that hatred. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, not to say that there isn't room for
Speaker 1: improvements in certain places, but um, you know, I have
Speaker 1: my whole I go on for hours about that, but
Speaker 1: I won't. But they you know, there are certain things
Speaker 1: that could be done to help I think improve the
Speaker 1: outlook of the public and the police working together, and
Speaker 1: I think defund the police is certainly the wrong message
Speaker 1: to send out there. I just read an article in
Speaker 1: the in the Times the other day about the radical
Speaker 1: reversal of that movement and it looked I think it
Speaker 1: was the most particularly looking at like Dallas or Houston,
Speaker 1: I remember, and he was like that they had stripped
Speaker 1: overtime funding for a while and then all they're back
Speaker 1: in with more overtime. People are like, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: really mean that, you know, And it's like a widespread
Speaker 1: sort of movement away from thinking that that's actually not
Speaker 1: the plan, like that's not the path towards more peaceful neighborhoods. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a tough, tough topic to cover, and
Speaker 1: you know, obviously every other area the country is different.
Speaker 1: I was lucky I worked in Bozeman, Montana. There's worse
Speaker 1: places to work, um, you know, so I have a
Speaker 1: limited perspective from that end, but you know, it's still
Speaker 1: you know, I've worked with a lot of guys who
Speaker 1: moved here from Bozeman or sorry, from big cities, you know,
Speaker 1: d C, Dallas, different places, and they moved to Bozeman
Speaker 1: to get away from the crime and the lifestyle, and
Speaker 1: they wanted the Bozeman lifestyle. And they realized, well, you
Speaker 1: guys don't have very many people, and so you're still
Speaker 1: dealing with almost the same number of calls every night,
Speaker 1: same number of you know, deaths. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: have the homicide rate of Chicago or something, but um,
Speaker 1: you know, we were small enough. We don't have the
Speaker 1: gang problems and different things, and but we're still dealing
Speaker 1: with a lot of the same stressors. And it's just
Speaker 1: fewer people to deal with calls. And so your your
Speaker 1: ratios are still yeah, yeah, the travesties per person. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still there. Um, what tell us about what's coming
Speaker 1: up at FHF at your at your at your now business. Um,
Speaker 1: you're now not You're now not as traumatic business. Um.
Speaker 1: Although I joke when people ask if we're staying busy,
Speaker 1: I say, I don't get to take as many coffee
Speaker 1: breaks anymore. So I think I'm busier now, Um, but
Speaker 1: I don't know it. Just don't call um a whole
Speaker 1: another story about where where your food comes from and
Speaker 1: not eating at restaurants and uniform and only uh yeah,
Speaker 1: yeahs you've usually arrested most of the cooks. Um. But um,
Speaker 1: so starting in November, we're gonna launch a bunch of
Speaker 1: accessories to our chest rig kind of that that launches,
Speaker 1: you know, limited items that were built to accessorizes the
Speaker 1: chest rig and make a little more versatile, more modular.
Speaker 1: Um should start seeing that stuff trickling out. Yeah, explain
Speaker 1: the chest rig. It's like it's like it's like a
Speaker 1: imagine a binal harness, but it's just like a rig
Speaker 1: like a carrier, and you can do like fishing parts,
Speaker 1: other kinds of inserts, you know, like a zip top
Speaker 1: pouch that you you wear on your chest. It's not
Speaker 1: waste in real estate. Yeah, and not wasting real estate.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'd make made a fishing chest rig
Speaker 1: for years, always with the plan I built it with
Speaker 1: velcro inserts so that you could customize it to how
Speaker 1: you wanted. And I always had plans to do a
Speaker 1: bunch of inserts for it and different accessories. Never had
Speaker 1: the time and until recently and finally we kind of
Speaker 1: reworked a little bit and started so calling it bare
Speaker 1: and then have a fishing kit that you can set
Speaker 1: it up for fly fishing or you can set up
Speaker 1: for um turkey hunting. UM. We're one of the things
Speaker 1: we'll be coming out with is UM some water fell stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: Just some options to make it a little more versatile Carrey,
Speaker 1: So if you don't want to wear it on your chest,
Speaker 1: you don't have to. Um you think about making a
Speaker 1: beaver trapping insert, I I would if I had some
Speaker 1: had some insight, I'll get Rick on that. I'll talk.
Speaker 1: It needs to have a little liner so that the
Speaker 1: cast or lure doesn't do you have at least ten customers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got mine rigged up for coon and lion hunting. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We've been talking to Clay quite frequently about potential upgrades
Speaker 1: we could do for for him hunting down there. He's
Speaker 1: really loving for Oh yeah, ius, get all the whatever,
Speaker 1: GPS ship and all that. Yeah, you got a leash
Speaker 1: in there, and you still got to have a skin
Speaker 1: a knife. And he's not wearing the big buyos you
Speaker 1: know all the time down in that country, So he's
Speaker 1: got the real estate. I just tucked my little eight by,
Speaker 1: which are like the best gear kind of thing I've
Speaker 1: done in the last year. You gotta get a pair.
Speaker 1: You just don't understand Turkey season with those things. I'm
Speaker 1: a ten. I can see it. I can see it.
Speaker 1: Check try him out. But yeah, we'll have a better
Speaker 1: way to carry some smaller buyos. Um. But hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: have a lot of that stuff out in November UM,
Speaker 1: and then our next big launch probably won't be coming
Speaker 1: until spring. UM. Some of that stuff. My wife Jen
Speaker 1: runs our marketing side of things and brand management, and
Speaker 1: she'd be upset if I tell you all this. But
Speaker 1: you know what, I can't believe you want just talk
Speaker 1: about what I'm most excited about, you the rifle sling.
Speaker 1: This you already put it on the instant. But this
Speaker 1: thing is no No, I didn't get in trouble um that.
Speaker 1: I think it's the coolest thing. I think it's gonna
Speaker 1: The feedback on it so far has been really good. Um,
Speaker 1: everybody's been out testing it. Um to what degree can
Speaker 1: I explain it? Well, you already explained it pretty strongly
Speaker 1: in the Okay, So picture you know when you got
Speaker 1: your backpack on, how you can't get your I'm talking
Speaker 1: to you the audience, not you, Paul, necessarily, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're a wear of this when you got your
Speaker 1: backpack on and your rifle sling, and your rifle sling
Speaker 1: will stay put. I've in the pound, if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen this, I've in the past taking a big gass
Speaker 1: button off an old coat and sewing that big gass
Speaker 1: button to the top of my shoulder strap so you
Speaker 1: had a place to hook your sling. So I sold
Speaker 1: it to the top of my backpack shoulder strap and
Speaker 1: you can like tuck your sling into that button. You
Speaker 1: picture what I'm saying, Um, which kind of works. But
Speaker 1: either way, it's a pint in the ass. But this
Speaker 1: thing you have, there's like an attachment clip, like what
Speaker 1: do you call a normal buckle, Yeah, side release buck
Speaker 1: where you pinch it that the female end of that
Speaker 1: hooks to your backpack strap. And then the male end
Speaker 1: of that is just on your sling. What was the
Speaker 1: vice personal on the sling? Okay, females on a sling,
Speaker 1: the males on the backpack. So when you put your
Speaker 1: rifle over your shoulder, you can just take one hand
Speaker 1: and and that's some bitches clicked two Like the top
Speaker 1: of your sling is clicked to your pack and you
Speaker 1: can do any amount of crick crossing, log jumping. No slippage,
Speaker 1: that's the worst thing about it. And then when you
Speaker 1: want it down, it's just like you just reach up
Speaker 1: and it's free in your hand or this is our thing.
Speaker 1: You can like actually hook it to the bottom your
Speaker 1: waist belt too. But that thing just man like going
Speaker 1: up sheep hunting, going up and around junk all the time.
Speaker 1: I just kept it clicked in because the other thing
Speaker 1: is you don't you're not like looking for a pull
Speaker 1: cord raining. It's just like right there, just reach up
Speaker 1: very very fast and you can walk without holding your
Speaker 1: sling the whole time. You need to hold your sling
Speaker 1: the whole time. You can hold your track and poles.
Speaker 1: Tell you what, man, it's like Nobel Prize. I hope
Speaker 1: there's like a Nobel Prize and rifle sling making no offense.
Speaker 1: But that's such a simple innovation that's gonna I'm like,
Speaker 1: add a cart. I'm ready to push the button because
Speaker 1: I've struggled with that same thing. And just as you're
Speaker 1: describing it, it's like, where's that been all my life?
Speaker 1: Pull up a prepay for ray here, Matt. He's ready
Speaker 1: to go. He's ready to make a pen working on
Speaker 1: the website. The no, it's like, man, it's like, you
Speaker 1: guys got some other cool stuff that I've had. I've
Speaker 1: been pretty to you, but I don't want to like
Speaker 1: spill the beans and know all the stuff like it
Speaker 1: might change. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all production dependent, but
Speaker 1: we're hoping it all shows up and we'll we'll be
Speaker 1: ready to go by early spring. And a lot of
Speaker 1: that stuff, and like the sling, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: we're we have it with a bunch of guys here
Speaker 1: at Meat Eater, and we're all using it and making
Speaker 1: sure there's not any last minute changes before we you know,
Speaker 1: pull the track around a full production run. But you know,
Speaker 1: I just heard you today about you know about like
Speaker 1: you're talking about like businessmen people in manufacturing, like having
Speaker 1: all these problems with like shipping and all that. Right now.
Speaker 1: I heard today that this thing that there's a huge
Speaker 1: like just like there's a shipping crisis in this country,
Speaker 1: particularly import export, but even even domestic there's shipping issues.
Speaker 1: And they're saying that when the um Infrastructure Bill passes
Speaker 1: that they're anticipating um it. Actually this is just this
Speaker 1: is and I'm not like a subject matter expert on this.
Speaker 1: If when the infrastructure Bill passes, the amount of like
Speaker 1: shipping and trucking resources that will go into construction because
Speaker 1: the money is so much better that it's gonna worsen
Speaker 1: and that you haven't even this is the good old
Speaker 1: days right now, and shipping and transportation in in context
Speaker 1: of what the next couple of years could look like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've heard that, like no one's like, oh, we're getting
Speaker 1: out of it. We've heard that that we should prepare
Speaker 1: for some some uh some of that those issues. Although
Speaker 1: it's weird because We've gone the last ten years with
Speaker 1: not being able to keep anything in stock, and right
Speaker 1: now we have a pretty good We're opposite. You're sucking
Speaker 1: the trend, all right, man, next time you come out,
Speaker 1: we got we gotta talk a whole bunch about we
Speaker 1: were gonna do it. I don't know what happened about
Speaker 1: the big horn. Yeah, I thought about bringing that head
Speaker 1: in and listen to the honest bringing his in. What
Speaker 1: you do with the hide on that thing? It's actually
Speaker 1: I so I tried to do a full cape. I
Speaker 1: was by myself full body mount. My wife suggested I
Speaker 1: do a full body mount, which I was going to
Speaker 1: take her up on, and um ended up being by
Speaker 1: myself and in a bad position and ended up doing
Speaker 1: three quarters, but brought it out. It's all tanned up.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a pedestal mount with the reproduction and
Speaker 1: then you owe the freedom mount. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: get one of these, uh, one of these uh desktop pedestal.
Speaker 1: Oh you know it won't work. I was gonna ask,
Speaker 1: are they That's the only thing I found? Like, I
Speaker 1: won't hold a musk ox and want the Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: it'll hold a doll sheet. What am I saying it holds,
Speaker 1: It holds the sheep. But see those big horns are
Speaker 1: so heavy, it won't hold the musk ox. I know
Speaker 1: that I put. Okay, our desk amount that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you can put. I've put everything from prong horn, we
Speaker 1: put white tails of all shapes and sizes, mule deer
Speaker 1: of all shapes and sizes. It holds everything. I put
Speaker 1: doll sheep on it. It holds a doll sheep beautifully.
Speaker 1: But the big horns like got a little more, a
Speaker 1: little more gir but you should throw one on there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't see what happens, but yeah I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I feel optimistic that it will hold it. We'll try
Speaker 1: it out and then you have it on your desk.
Speaker 1: That's what I want. Okay, shifted gears. Here minute, we're
Speaker 1: talking to another law enforcement from the Fish and Game
Speaker 1: fish Cops, fish foze. What do you guys call yourselves?
Speaker 1: Fish fuzz fish fuzz fish cops, fish falls. So let
Speaker 1: me reintroduce Sam. Here is an interesting story I found
Speaker 1: out about Sam because when we're working on our Close Calls,
Speaker 1: we're like casting, for lack of a better word, for
Speaker 1: our Close Calls series and um, I was talking to
Speaker 1: someone I can't remember who else talking you now, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, Oh, there's this guy. He's got
Speaker 1: this crazy story about the mud puddle story. Then like
Speaker 1: he's alive today. I don't Wane gives you a detail
Speaker 1: away on that one. Then we played the whole damn
Speaker 1: thing on the show. So yeah, you heard so if
Speaker 1: you listened to the show Reggae, they already heard Sam's
Speaker 1: mud puddle story. But anyways, I found out about him.
Speaker 1: Someone told me this story was like but they didn't
Speaker 1: know who it was, and I think they said something
Speaker 1: like whoever was I can't remember his name, but I
Speaker 1: think he went to work for like Pheasants Forever or
Speaker 1: something like that. So I send out a text to
Speaker 1: a few of my colleagues are pretty well connected, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, guy, Arizona game Warden, something new with
Speaker 1: the mud puddle and pheasant is Forever. And like thirty
Speaker 1: seconds later I get like a thing like Sam Laurie,
Speaker 1: you know, And we got in touch and we recorded story,
Speaker 1: and then the process of doing that, we kept talking
Speaker 1: about that you had completed a book of like a
Speaker 1: really good book of game Warden stories and you call
Speaker 1: it remembering the Outlaws, and uh, I don't even full title.
Speaker 1: It's stories of the Past. So this is from two
Speaker 1: thousand four an Arizona game ranger remembering the Outlaws, and
Speaker 1: basically and read it that that was funny. Is um
Speaker 1: uh it's almost like you can correct me on this,
Speaker 1: but it's almost like remembering them fondly, like you have
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of Uh you got a
Speaker 1: real soft spot for the Outlaws. Yeah. I think each
Speaker 1: one of them kind of left a little notchuring me somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean there was a lot of personalities
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah. Uh. You know I used to tell
Speaker 1: a lot of these stories two friends and my kids
Speaker 1: and things, and I always say, Dad, you got to
Speaker 1: write those down. And uh. So it's actually when I
Speaker 1: was working for Friends forever, because we were traveling all
Speaker 1: over the country and at meetings and evenings at the hotels,
Speaker 1: I'd write rather than go down to the watering holes.
Speaker 1: And yeah, fell more productive and uh but only you
Speaker 1: know I as Paul was saying, you know, he had
Speaker 1: a desire to become a wildife a game officer. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I spoke to the University of Montana Tuesday wildlife class
Speaker 1: about careers and wildife, and I said that to of
Speaker 1: them that when I went to school. Uh the professor
Speaker 1: stood up and said, two of you out of this
Speaker 1: class of a hundred will become biologists. The rest of
Speaker 1: you are going to be car salesman's or lawyers or whatever.
Speaker 1: And uh so I was strictly a biologist. I wanted to.
Speaker 1: I was a waterfowl nut. I went to work for
Speaker 1: Northern Prairie while I've researched station study and pintails, and
Speaker 1: my whole life was ducks. And I had a move
Speaker 1: to Arizona, where I ended up doing more work with
Speaker 1: some big game animals. And a buddy of mine said,
Speaker 1: you have to go out for the wildlife officer of
Speaker 1: the game warding jobs. And I didn't want to be
Speaker 1: a game ward and I thought that's beneath me, and
Speaker 1: but no I did. I went to the academy, ended
Speaker 1: up hiring on and uh. You know, as you've probably
Speaker 1: heard a lot of people refer to the game warding
Speaker 1: job as the most dangerous law enforcement job there is.
Speaker 1: I think yours was, Paul. I mean, we deal with
Speaker 1: people with guns all the time, but I don't have
Speaker 1: to do that stuff you guys did all the time
Speaker 1: with real crime. I guess if you call it so
Speaker 1: so anyway, yeah, uh, as the unit manager there, you're
Speaker 1: also the biologist, so we had to do all the
Speaker 1: wildlife surveys and fisheries management and all that. But you're
Speaker 1: in charge of a big geography um as also the warden.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's where those tales started. I I got
Speaker 1: a real interest in interview and interrogation. I became kind
Speaker 1: of a specialist. And yeah, there's a lot about that
Speaker 1: in the bookman like kind of like like your approach,
Speaker 1: like you don't come in hot, I want I want
Speaker 1: you to kind of I guess, uh, well, I just
Speaker 1: want to get the truth out of you. And uh
Speaker 1: and at the end, I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: times people pretty much told the whole story and thank
Speaker 1: me for because they needed to get it off their chests.
Speaker 1: One of the things I like about the book too, is, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe you're able to do this because you've got enough
Speaker 1: distance from it now, but you kind of lay out
Speaker 1: It's a bold move because in the beginning you kind
Speaker 1: of lay out your sort of violator credentials, which which like,
Speaker 1: like you said, earlier. Man, if you're a passionate hunter
Speaker 1: and anger like you just have, you've broken laws, and
Speaker 1: you talk about being a kid, and I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: more we talked about being a kid and like an
Speaker 1: uncle saying, don't cross the river. You know, we're not
Speaker 1: allowed to hunt outside of the river. And how at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, sure enough you're on the
Speaker 1: other side of the river, and it's just right. And
Speaker 1: I think that that that you tell them that story
Speaker 1: about yourself and kind of that you know, in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, you're a product of generations ahead of you,
Speaker 1: you know, And and I wrote about it one of
Speaker 1: my books. Man, I mean, um, we like I grew
Speaker 1: up around a lot of game law breaking. There were
Speaker 1: certain inviable things, like there's certain things you just would
Speaker 1: never do, Like no one in my family would ever
Speaker 1: go jack lighting deer, like, but you would definitely. Um,
Speaker 1: it was just they people don't even go out of
Speaker 1: their way to like hide it. That modu a dough tag,
Speaker 1: which means that everybody has a dough tag until Mak
Speaker 1: comes out and puts the dough tag on a deer.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't even like and it wasn't even like
Speaker 1: when I was looking at it wasn't even like a
Speaker 1: s It was just just it took me a long
Speaker 1: time to realize that somehow you weren't supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: And I think you kind of acknowledged in little ways
Speaker 1: of having like some of that in your upbringing, which
Speaker 1: probably leads to that thing of how you had a
Speaker 1: little bit of you never had hate for hunters and anglers. No,
Speaker 1: And as I said, I think the far majority of
Speaker 1: them were all, you know, good people and ethical users
Speaker 1: of the resource. I can't tell you how many how
Speaker 1: many times if you know, this book focuses on a
Speaker 1: lot of bad guys, um, but that was one tenth
Speaker 1: of one percent of one percent of all the people
Speaker 1: I contacted. And when you saw, you know, they're what
Speaker 1: I call opportunistic poachers. They didn't leave the house that
Speaker 1: morning to violate a game law, but they got a
Speaker 1: situation where they're excited and they shot the wrong animal,
Speaker 1: or they they shot one in a unit they weren't
Speaker 1: supposed to be in. And and those guys, uh, they're
Speaker 1: like a dime a dozen, you're gonna run into it
Speaker 1: all the time. What I kind of focused on was
Speaker 1: what are what is that one percent. I had a
Speaker 1: guy tell me once that every small town or every
Speaker 1: town has a one percent poacher, the real bad guy.
Speaker 1: And those are the ones you kind of want to
Speaker 1: focus on and spend a lot of attention on trying
Speaker 1: to to put out a business. If you have you
Speaker 1: heard the turn of the criminologist who had a term superpoachers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess like a form of sociopath seeing those people.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not bothered at all by their activities
Speaker 1: on the resource. I mean there's one guy that I
Speaker 1: don't know if you read the one about the the
Speaker 1: the lion guy like setting those baited hooks out I
Speaker 1: mean trouble hooks with meat on him on steal leaders
Speaker 1: to catch anything he could. Yeah, I'll guarantee you that
Speaker 1: guy is still alive. He's doing something wrong right now
Speaker 1: for a while. Guarantee there's no no I got you,
Speaker 1: you know. And and I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that that I hope people that read this book
Speaker 1: might just have a little more inclination to say, you
Speaker 1: know what, maybe I won't put up with no one
Speaker 1: old Bob doing what he's doing and and give a
Speaker 1: call and well that that's like there's a certain egregiousness.
Speaker 1: And you pointed out in that story about the guy
Speaker 1: with the bated trouble hooks where it's like and you
Speaker 1: describe going on the scene and you can tell where
Speaker 1: he's caught somehow, I've gotten a line in one and
Speaker 1: he's got just like junk out and like meat scraps
Speaker 1: and and just it almost like the way you describe it,
Speaker 1: it's almost like walking and it's like kind of like
Speaker 1: an insanity that someone's dealing with. It was and I
Speaker 1: can tell you this, that was way way in the backwood.
Speaker 1: I mean we we took a four wheel drive probably
Speaker 1: three and a half hours before we trailered and got
Speaker 1: horses and went. We were actually doing a deer survey
Speaker 1: at the time. And when you come across something like
Speaker 1: that that far out into Buddhi's the guy had no
Speaker 1: concern at all that they were going to be caught.
Speaker 1: I mean there it was such such an egregious act
Speaker 1: that I mean, those are the ones that bother you.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure Paul you you can remember the cases
Speaker 1: that bothered you a lot of times. With you guys,
Speaker 1: it's it's people, it's children, and from a wildlife officer
Speaker 1: when you see just an absolute disregard for critter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this guy, you know, the arrogance. I can remember
Speaker 1: interviewing him, you know, for me to you, and this
Speaker 1: guy was kind of like the old sociopath and looked
Speaker 1: right through you. He didn't give a yeah what you
Speaker 1: were about to talk to about? You can tell him
Speaker 1: your stories. A lot of the guys, um, they they're
Speaker 1: they're good enough where they immediately go into a game
Speaker 1: like as you interview in them, it becomes like everyone
Speaker 1: in the room knows but you the way you describe
Speaker 1: how also their wheels are turning and they're like this
Speaker 1: guy knows, he knows what I did, but I like,
Speaker 1: here's I'm already playing my defense. I mean like he's
Speaker 1: already in the courthouse, do you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: And they're they're not like, oh you got me, and
Speaker 1: they don't break down in tears, you know, but they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I can play this game with you. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it was was always funny to me, is, uh, let's
Speaker 1: just say Steve did something wrong. And Paul called me
Speaker 1: up and said, hey, Steve shot a deer out of season,
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'll tell you what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do to gather a little bit of information. But I
Speaker 1: want to go talk to Steve. And I pick up
Speaker 1: the phone and I call you, Steve Sam Laurien with
Speaker 1: Game and Fish Department. Hey, I just wanted to know
Speaker 1: if I meet you this afternoon, kind a few things
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you. Um, yeah, I guess after work.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that'd be fine. Show up there and I'd
Speaker 1: come up and Steve, do you have any idea what
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about? And they'd say, well, no,
Speaker 1: Well the person that was innocent would always say on
Speaker 1: the phone, what is it about? Oh, the bad guy
Speaker 1: already knew what it was about, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk to him. So the first chink in the old
Speaker 1: interview process happened before I even got there. He just
Speaker 1: gave that away. Yeah, I've got a kind of a
Speaker 1: good little one. You shouldn't revealed that. There's so many
Speaker 1: more though, for my brothers and sisters that are out
Speaker 1: there still enforcing while if flaws and other laws, you'll
Speaker 1: replace that check with another trainers and many many more.
Speaker 1: There's a funny story you got here where you're out checking,
Speaker 1: you're like working along the shore of a lake checking
Speaker 1: licenses and you get your guy and he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't have my license on you, and so um you
Speaker 1: kinda you're trying to give them the benefit of doubt,
Speaker 1: and you're like, hey, just leave your gear here and
Speaker 1: just go get your license, you know. And a while
Speaker 1: goes by, he's like, the guy never comes back. The
Speaker 1: guy never comes back. Guy never comes back. Eventually you
Speaker 1: gather up his gear and tell about how you caught up.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you how you caught up with the guy.
Speaker 1: So there was that's what we call furtive gestures. This
Speaker 1: win here, you're shaking you. If someone asked you for
Speaker 1: your fishing or hunting license today, you're gonna be shaken
Speaker 1: when you get it out of your wallet, no matter what,
Speaker 1: no matter what, because I don't know, maybe I did
Speaker 1: something wrong and you love it. I just love it. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding on that. So there was furtive gestures,
Speaker 1: a little bit of excess with this particular guy. And
Speaker 1: I thought, boy, there's something wrong here, and the old
Speaker 1: warrant is what's hitting me in the hand. And he
Speaker 1: has a warrant. That's what I'm thinking out because there's
Speaker 1: more to this than blah blah blah. So yeah, he
Speaker 1: says it's in his glove box. And there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of other fishermen on the shore. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just continue I'm checking these guys and and then
Speaker 1: I'll i'll you could come back here and leave your
Speaker 1: gear here. Well, he never came back. So I gathered
Speaker 1: up his gear and started walking back to my patrol truck.
Speaker 1: And at the trail, I go on a little branch fell.
Speaker 1: I looked down on the ground a little five inch
Speaker 1: hunk of oak leaf, and I could kind of what
Speaker 1: the heck. And I looked up there and there he was.
Speaker 1: He was hanging on that like a gibbon. I can't
Speaker 1: remember his name, but I summoned him to come on
Speaker 1: down out of that tree. And this is just a
Speaker 1: fishing violation, you know, and and uh, I don't want
Speaker 1: you to fallow it out of Yeah, I think long
Speaker 1: story shore. I think he did have a warrant and
Speaker 1: he I think he got a little ride. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's bad. Yeah, another I'm gonna lay out another
Speaker 1: game warding trick, you guys got. I guess he told
Speaker 1: the books. I can tell it, uh that when this
Speaker 1: kind of surprised me a little bit when game draws
Speaker 1: come out so limited tag draws that you like to
Speaker 1: go one, you go see if you got anything, and
Speaker 1: then you like to see did any do do our
Speaker 1: known violators? You are one percenters? Have our one percenters
Speaker 1: drawn any tags? But of more interest you is have
Speaker 1: our have our one percenters had a mother who drew
Speaker 1: a very coveted big game tag. Yeah, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I just have a feeling it's not his mom. But
Speaker 1: in Arizona mom could have given to him. Right. No, No,
Speaker 1: you have to shoot the animal with the tag, and
Speaker 1: there's no there's nobody hunting transferable way. Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: think I know a lot of people who's who have
Speaker 1: their spouses apply when they get enough points and they
Speaker 1: just chant the kids. There might be some new regulations
Speaker 1: associated with kids or something. But well, the reason I
Speaker 1: think that he was right at the time is he
Speaker 1: tells the whole damn story and then arrested the guy. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have these, yeah, you have a few red flags.
Speaker 1: But I remember this is some time of co where
Speaker 1: you know, you look at an officer's car now and
Speaker 1: there's a laptop there. You know, we had this hard
Speaker 1: print out. Then you'd go through it and find, oh,
Speaker 1: there's so and so's grandma and and uh you'd pull
Speaker 1: into camp and you know there's no Grandma to be found,
Speaker 1: you know. And so yeah, you kind of push it
Speaker 1: a little further. And you know, I mean everybody says,
Speaker 1: so what a minute, just buddy hunting. They allow that
Speaker 1: in all kinds of states, and but where they don't
Speaker 1: allow it, you know, and you could get into this.
Speaker 1: It's based on the models for for genuinating the permit
Speaker 1: numbers and and it's based on the harvest. And if
Speaker 1: you're just an outstanding hunter and you can shoot five elk,
Speaker 1: that's going to disrupt the model that they're putting together
Speaker 1: that generates the permit number. And so you need to
Speaker 1: you need to follow the follow the law in those
Speaker 1: cases outstanding hunter or unethical hunter who shoots five right,
Speaker 1: And I think you know this is you know, a
Speaker 1: pitch if I will to to to all of your listeners.
Speaker 1: Is as you know, there's little teeny pieces of information
Speaker 1: that come across to wildlife officers or law enforcement officers
Speaker 1: in general that you might not think as much. I
Speaker 1: pulled into a gas station last night and I noticed
Speaker 1: there were some blood on a bumper. It's not hunting season. Well,
Speaker 1: the either guy did something wrong, uh you know, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe did something to his a human or there's some
Speaker 1: kind of wildlife in fraction. Try to license number down
Speaker 1: and just call and and uh, you know, there were
Speaker 1: many cases that we made that we were looking for
Speaker 1: the shooter of an animal and LOI behold, someone called
Speaker 1: and gave us just that little piece we needed. And
Speaker 1: I think if more people did that, uh, you'd see
Speaker 1: a little bit less of some of the things going on.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I have to say too,
Speaker 1: and this goes back to that whole thing with law
Speaker 1: enforcement and and the feelings about law enforcement these days,
Speaker 1: and in order for people to come forward and say, hey,
Speaker 1: so and so did this, they have to trust you
Speaker 1: and and so the rewards both male and female. A
Speaker 1: wardens out there really have to build that community trust
Speaker 1: so that you will go talk to them and know
Speaker 1: that that's not going to come back to haunt you.
Speaker 1: And I think they do a great job at that.
Speaker 1: And my hat's off to all the the wildlife enforcement
Speaker 1: officers nationwide that go out there every day and try
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. Because as you know, all
Speaker 1: of you from meat Eater, the seven principles of the
Speaker 1: North American model. I can't name them all, but I
Speaker 1: know i'm aware of them. Number one, well, let's just
Speaker 1: go to number four is allocation by law, and so
Speaker 1: the permit structure is allocated and regulated by law. And
Speaker 1: obviously it's a public trust all that information to other pillars.
Speaker 1: But if you take that one pillar away, the models.
Speaker 1: So it's just as important as game populations need to
Speaker 1: be managed by science, right, It's just important as equal
Speaker 1: opportunity for all. It's just important there's no commercial harvest
Speaker 1: that will impact the population. So don't break the pillars down.
Speaker 1: That's what I told people. There's an interesting story, uh
Speaker 1: that has to do with those I was reminded of
Speaker 1: it when you're talking about the subtle queues. I remember
Speaker 1: you're talking to a guy and you just notice that
Speaker 1: blood under his fingernails as you're talking to him, Like,
Speaker 1: why is this guy got blood under spirals? And I
Speaker 1: think it's the guy that turned into These guys had
Speaker 1: this huge bear, huge they killed illegally, and what as
Speaker 1: funny is your you confiscate the bear and their last
Speaker 1: requests that can they get a quick griffin grin and
Speaker 1: you let it, and I'll guarantee you that picture is
Speaker 1: sitting somewhere on somebody's wall. It's like, just can we
Speaker 1: just please get a gripp and grind? All right? To
Speaker 1: get a grip and grind, then I'm out of here
Speaker 1: with your finger. You got you gotta do that, because
Speaker 1: how are you gonna load a four pound bear? You know,
Speaker 1: they had to help me before, I like you, because
Speaker 1: the guys like it was just an explanation for his actions.
Speaker 1: It was just so big. It ran across the road
Speaker 1: and we had to shoot it. It was just do
Speaker 1: you feel a little like they got what they wanted
Speaker 1: out of the deal with by getting a picture? Did
Speaker 1: they really want to hide in the meeting? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: wanted that trophy, and who knows they wanted to vaculum
Speaker 1: to boot, but they want but a little trophy. And
Speaker 1: these guys there, those are some of the ones that
Speaker 1: you can actually look back and laugh because they weren't
Speaker 1: a threat to me or they probably weren't going to
Speaker 1: ever do it again, but they got caught. So it
Speaker 1: was just so big, so big. So one of the
Speaker 1: easiest ways that I see these these dumbasses getting caught Today?
Speaker 1: They posted stuff to social media, so it doesn't take
Speaker 1: a lot of detective work to see a guy post
Speaker 1: him with a you know, uh, what was maybe you know,
Speaker 1: in the days, you probably were coming in on very
Speaker 1: much the beginning points of any kind of a flip phone,
Speaker 1: you know, people taking camera stuff like that. What was
Speaker 1: sort of the dumbass approaches to getting caught? You know,
Speaker 1: you were doing some detective work there with blood of
Speaker 1: the fingers and things like that. You had you had
Speaker 1: to be sort of aware of your surroundings. But what
Speaker 1: were the egregious ways that people tried to get caught? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was just they couldn't keep quiet, and
Speaker 1: you know, you'd you'd, uh, in certain instances, you'd work undercover,
Speaker 1: unmarked and go to a couple of different taverns and
Speaker 1: get right in there amongst them. Spend an evening at
Speaker 1: a popular bar with hunters. Yeah, and you start, you know,
Speaker 1: throwing out bear hunting and guiding or I want to
Speaker 1: get into this, and oh, you need to talk to Bob.
Speaker 1: You know, what do you guys doing here? We're looking
Speaker 1: we're real estate folks from California looking for some property
Speaker 1: to invest in and and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you started hearing all kinds of stuff. Back then, you
Speaker 1: you really imagine that being the pathway into hearing all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. I mean, I know you mentioned that
Speaker 1: the story that you when you're undercovered, but well, if
Speaker 1: you're if you, I mean a lot of those undercover
Speaker 1: ones in the book were specific I was working a guy. Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so your story is Taylor do it? Yeah. But if
Speaker 1: if you were you know, let's just say living in
Speaker 1: a small town and you had suspicions about you, but
Speaker 1: I knew you hung out at whatever two lanes, I'd
Speaker 1: send an undercover officer in there to work. You find
Speaker 1: out what he's all about. Uh. You know. An other
Speaker 1: funny thing is you guys had that deal where you're
Speaker 1: working an illegal reptile enthusiast had like all these illegal
Speaker 1: snakes and stuff hiding his walls and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But it was funny that he It's like a very
Speaker 1: small detail you mentioned the book because he kept his
Speaker 1: weed in a break open shotgun. That was like his
Speaker 1: his hiding place was in his gun, right, So it's
Speaker 1: just like such a weird place to hide your weeds.
Speaker 1: So you break over the shotgun, it's all in the barrel.
Speaker 1: Will never look here. You go into a search warrant.
Speaker 1: You make the place safe, right, So the first guys
Speaker 1: through the door, we put this guy in a handcuffs
Speaker 1: and he was in his bikini underwearld or forget that.
Speaker 1: A sickening site. But then we had to make the place.
Speaker 1: He's like, you're gonna go grab and check the guns, well,
Speaker 1: just everything, you're looking for everything, you know, And and
Speaker 1: here's this gun leaning against the bed and we've cracked
Speaker 1: it over to make sure the shell in the chamber,
Speaker 1: and what's that baggy in there? And that was just dope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a bizarre one. Now you talk about strange, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like tell people about what he had. So
Speaker 1: he had u just five different kinds of reptiles and
Speaker 1: I'm not a reptile guy, and all the food for
Speaker 1: him and everything. Man, when you walked in out house,
Speaker 1: your eyes burnt from the ammonia from all the mice
Speaker 1: that he was feeding these critters and h Anyway, we
Speaker 1: had some undercover officers work him that he had to
Speaker 1: gaboon vipers, which are nicknamed the one step snake. They
Speaker 1: bite you you get one step and you're done. And
Speaker 1: so I was the search team lead on that one,
Speaker 1: and I had four or five officers in there, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want any of them getting bit by one
Speaker 1: of these dark things. And and we couldn't find him.
Speaker 1: We had fishing poles, we were flipping out dirty clothes.
Speaker 1: And for some reason, Paul, why were the search warrants
Speaker 1: always in the worst places You can imagine? It's I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it's just what they do. They're awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even know. Every search warrant we did, it
Speaker 1: was like another set of gloves on top of my gloves.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, gloves, gloves and gloves and both their houses
Speaker 1: and their cars. Oh, just terrible. We who are inclined
Speaker 1: to have a search warrant issued for them tend to
Speaker 1: be messy, I'd say, on a more than general rule, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very so. Did you enter a really plush place and
Speaker 1: they bring there and they bring their sex toys everywhere?
Speaker 1: That's why would you would you? When you're right through warrant,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're pretty wide open in the areas
Speaker 1: that you can search, And of course for a while,
Speaker 1: if you're you're specific I'm looking for an elk or
Speaker 1: I'm looking for these snakes. But you also are looking
Speaker 1: for records and photographs. And when you when you start
Speaker 1: looking through the photographs and and things of that nature,
Speaker 1: you see exactly what Paul is talking about, some of
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, especially with a snaker. Well, then
Speaker 1: you probably wind up I want to get back to
Speaker 1: the story, but you probably wind up with like collateral damage, right,
Speaker 1: because you're in looking for snakes, but you can find
Speaker 1: certain crazy ship that all sudden becomes like its own thing. Right,
Speaker 1: So if it's in plain view right when you walk in,
Speaker 1: here's a big bowl of pot back, then anyway that was,
Speaker 1: you know, you could collect that with the with the
Speaker 1: search warrant. If I'm looking for records and I go
Speaker 1: through whatever his desk and find something, then if it's
Speaker 1: you know, let's just say it looks like a big
Speaker 1: baggy of dope, I'd stop and go have one of
Speaker 1: you guys for that. We even did the same thing.
Speaker 1: If you came across something in a place you could look,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't what you were looking for, we would
Speaker 1: stop and get a separate search warrant. So this guy
Speaker 1: you use that as your probable cause or whatever the hell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Once we're in the door and it's written down in
Speaker 1: a reasonable place to look for it, that's open um.
Speaker 1: But Sky's caboon vipers were nowhere to be found. And
Speaker 1: there was a Tucson Police Department officer there with arms
Speaker 1: about the size of an oak tree. And I walked
Speaker 1: up to the the bad guy and I said, look,
Speaker 1: and I got a bunch of officers in here. We're
Speaker 1: looking for these snakes. We know they're here, and I
Speaker 1: need you to cooperate with us. Where the snakes? I'm
Speaker 1: p and Mr nice guy again, And the oak tree
Speaker 1: guy came up and grabbed him by the head and
Speaker 1: gave him a little encouragement, and he said, there behind
Speaker 1: the dresser in the bedroom, there's a hole in the wall.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, we moved the dresser and here was
Speaker 1: a little round piece of plywood and you could spin
Speaker 1: it to the side, and there's a hole in the
Speaker 1: wall of the drywall, and that's where he keeps them.
Speaker 1: That's the weirdest. And we had a herpetology. Do you
Speaker 1: think he threw them in there when someone banged on
Speaker 1: the door? Was that like their high that's where he
Speaker 1: had because there was droppings and all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: in there. It seems like they could get yet night.
Speaker 1: But I, I literally said, okay, that's really well. Herptologists
Speaker 1: grabbed asked for a mirror, and he gets a mirror
Speaker 1: in a flashlight and he looks and low there they are.
Speaker 1: They're beautiful, and oh my goodness. And and I said, what,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to get them out of there pretty
Speaker 1: darn quick, or I'm taking a sledgehammer knocking this wall
Speaker 1: down and we're gonna get rid of these things. Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: give me a chance. Long story short. He he asked
Speaker 1: for a couple of white mice and started dangling him
Speaker 1: by the tails in the hole, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden he's and I was holding the mirror, and here
Speaker 1: they come. They're coming after those mice, and he had
Speaker 1: the tongs and just snagged them up. In that in
Speaker 1: the book, and there there's a picture of me walking
Speaker 1: out with a box with those two gaboon vipers. And
Speaker 1: I don't want to see. He was getting in trouble
Speaker 1: just for like illegal wildlife traffic. So they they were
Speaker 1: he was selling, uh, you know, commercialized trafficking of not
Speaker 1: only a dangerous species, but prohibitive wildlife, and it was
Speaker 1: it was really important they got these gaboons because they're
Speaker 1: from South Africa in a very similar climate and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they could have been all over Arizona, who knows.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was a creepy one. Uh. One more
Speaker 1: I got. I got a couple more, just general questions,
Speaker 1: um about how advice from you two hunters and anglers
Speaker 1: about how to interact with game words I think we
Speaker 1: should talk about. But I want to bring up one
Speaker 1: thing is you, Uh you talk a lot about experiences
Speaker 1: with like robot deer and robot turkeys and whatnot, which
Speaker 1: seems like a help of a lot of fun. You know,
Speaker 1: I told you earlier I was an avid duck hunter
Speaker 1: and sitting in a blind watching a decoy is better
Speaker 1: than shooting ducks. Uh. So we had turkeys, and we
Speaker 1: had elk, and we had deer, and it would we
Speaker 1: we always put them out in areas where it was
Speaker 1: just gonna be a no brainer that you had an
Speaker 1: intention to illegally take this credit and and so the
Speaker 1: unit was closed for example, two turkeys, and we put
Speaker 1: a turkey out and we had robotics in them. So
Speaker 1: you could move them with a little you know, gyro
Speaker 1: and truck comes by and comes to. Sounds like it
Speaker 1: would be like when you set these things up, it's
Speaker 1: like the first set of headlights, here comes one. Sure enough.
Speaker 1: It was pretty predictable. It was pretty predictable. And you know,
Speaker 1: and I think you the scary part of that was
Speaker 1: what we found, which actually we kind of got a
Speaker 1: policy out to all the wildlife agencies. That is what
Speaker 1: I want to ask about. The decoys were new, we
Speaker 1: were we were one of the first agencies to use them,
Speaker 1: and you know, there was we had to go through
Speaker 1: all the county attorneys and judges to to make sure
Speaker 1: it wasn't considered entrapment. Yeah, you know, let me because
Speaker 1: I feel like I didn't set this up problem just
Speaker 1: real quick. What we're talking about is they can take
Speaker 1: so let's say it's illegal to hunt deer at night.
Speaker 1: These guys will take a decoy and they'll actually make
Speaker 1: it robotics, so it's heddle moving stuff and you just
Speaker 1: set it out. So you just wait for some guy
Speaker 1: to come out and start shooting at the deer at night,
Speaker 1: or you go to an area that you can't hunt turkeys,
Speaker 1: but let's put a turkey decoy out and wait for
Speaker 1: some guy to drive down the road and try to
Speaker 1: kill the thing. And um, and then yeah, speak to
Speaker 1: the entrapment things. I always feel like it's a little
Speaker 1: bit like you're kind of like tempting people, right. So
Speaker 1: the courts and the county attorneys were were they encouraged
Speaker 1: us highly. Don't put a big rack on a mule deer.
Speaker 1: Don't make it a trophy, because now you're crossing that
Speaker 1: line of possibly in trapman. God, it's the biggest deer
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my life. I had to shoot it.
Speaker 1: So we would use little forked oors um and and
Speaker 1: really the few cases that I actually went to trial
Speaker 1: on always came out there. We didn't put the gun
Speaker 1: in your hand. If I stood there along the road
Speaker 1: and said, look at that, it's a buck and a gun.
Speaker 1: Here's my gun, now, you know, clear in travement. But um, yeah.
Speaker 1: We were doing a night deer operation one evening and
Speaker 1: up in the White Mountains, and it was on you
Speaker 1: put these decoys on a turn of the road, so
Speaker 1: when the headlights came around in ninety degree turn, the
Speaker 1: illumination of the ice hit you have to place it
Speaker 1: so you had a good backdrop backdrop you didn't, and
Speaker 1: you do a lot of recon to make sure there
Speaker 1: were no camps around or ricochet bullets could hit a
Speaker 1: trailer or whatever, and picked the spot and then set
Speaker 1: the set the decoy up, and we'd have a blind
Speaker 1: right where you suspect to. The vehicle would stop on
Speaker 1: the other side of the road so you can hear him,
Speaker 1: and then we'd have a patrol rig ready to go
Speaker 1: to uniformed officers about a quarter of a mile away
Speaker 1: hidden ready to respond to the vehicle. So we're watching
Speaker 1: this truck parks and these guys get out and we
Speaker 1: in this case, there was the blind with the people
Speaker 1: observing him, and then me and this other officer were
Speaker 1: about a hundred yards away. Actually we were with that
Speaker 1: the vehicle to catch them, and but we're looking at
Speaker 1: him with binoculars and we can see this guy coming
Speaker 1: towards the decoy and it's dark, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm looking and my partner's looking, and I say,
Speaker 1: good God, Kim, he's aiming at us. And when the
Speaker 1: store case was all done and we apprehended them, we
Speaker 1: asked him and he said, yeah, there was a pair
Speaker 1: of deer eyes on the other side the road too. Reflec. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we immediately got out of thing to all the
Speaker 1: agencies saying, no binoculars on nighttime tecoy operations. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see that being a little dicey. Yeah, tell about
Speaker 1: the guy you had, The guy you had that was
Speaker 1: approaching the turkey when the turkey's head flew off. So
Speaker 1: that was funny that the guy actually responded when we
Speaker 1: stopped him. We were whoever was running the decoy was
Speaker 1: a little bit vigorous and knocked the head off the decoy,
Speaker 1: and the guy stopped and he was in pursuit of it,
Speaker 1: and we started approaching him. Hey, hold game and fish.
Speaker 1: And the guy look, hey, Sam, is that you said? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you don't in a small town, I knew most
Speaker 1: of the people. What do you what do you do? Oh?
Speaker 1: I knew it was a decoy and was, well, you
Speaker 1: got a shotgun in your hand, Oh, it's not loaded.
Speaker 1: And he leans down. He's got leading right on his toe,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, let's just make sure unlow peppoo
Speaker 1: that goes off gravel shoots everywhere. And so that and
Speaker 1: the guy was a hunter safety. It was kind of bad.
Speaker 1: So you rent into a ball So, uh, what like,
Speaker 1: based on all your experience doing that, UM, give us
Speaker 1: tips hunters and anglers, tips for how to how to
Speaker 1: engage with uh, how to engage with wardens in a
Speaker 1: way that just makes d you know, decreases tension like whatever.
Speaker 1: Like if you had to give people some advice you
Speaker 1: get your license checked. Here's a couple of pieces of advice.
Speaker 1: Good question. Uh. Number one, I would just say, know
Speaker 1: that that officer put on underwear of the morning the
Speaker 1: same morning as you did. Here's a human being and
Speaker 1: they're out doing a job, and it's okay to be
Speaker 1: a little nervous because everyone is. Even if I get
Speaker 1: pulled over on on the streets and I'm looking for
Speaker 1: my registration or something, I'm fidgety, So it's okay. But
Speaker 1: just recognize that they're out there, um, and they're they're
Speaker 1: human being just like you. So it's okay to be nervous,
Speaker 1: to be you don't take nervousness as a sign that
Speaker 1: like you, don't take nervousness as a sign that they
Speaker 1: must be guilty. I almost looking at the opposite of
Speaker 1: your two cocky something's wrong you know or or but
Speaker 1: a lot of people are pol I know you've seen
Speaker 1: it where they're they're they're calm with you. They've been
Speaker 1: through at a time or two, and this is nothing
Speaker 1: new to him, where you know, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I don't know, how have you ever been checked by
Speaker 1: a game officer? Right? Not in a long time? But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: were you nervous? Uh? Yeah? I was in my twenties,
Speaker 1: so it was quite nervous, even though I hadn't done
Speaker 1: anything wrong. I mean at that age, you like when
Speaker 1: you see a coffee, like turn the radio down, right,
Speaker 1: Like you're just generally nervous, right, but you know, you
Speaker 1: you try to calm your nervousness. I'd say they're human beings. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're not doing anything wrong, there's nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: How how do you feel about the guy that when
Speaker 1: you pull up, he's already got his license out. Well,
Speaker 1: he's either been through the routine a couple of times. Uh.
Speaker 1: For example, if you check a common lake and you
Speaker 1: see a bunch of fishermen that you park and start
Speaker 1: walking down there, there were people that literally would have
Speaker 1: their license and you don't take that as a sign
Speaker 1: of something or not. You're good, you're good. I didn't
Speaker 1: even look with binoculars. We pull up on watercraft and
Speaker 1: come to the shore and just look at alder license
Speaker 1: up and you're good. But you saw me approaching, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden your chair folded up and you
Speaker 1: started going up the hill. That's the way he matches.
Speaker 1: This is our trick. He talks about coming onto a lake.
Speaker 1: He's always real curious and who has to get to
Speaker 1: the rod very quickly? But we don't always we don't
Speaker 1: always take a don uniformed warden. But if there's a
Speaker 1: row of a hundred fishermen, non uniformed officer would go
Speaker 1: down on the other end, just a lot, just ship there,
Speaker 1: just to see who really needs attend to the rod.
Speaker 1: And now I come out and I make a big display.
Speaker 1: I pulled right up onto the boat ramp. Get out,
Speaker 1: start walking. Here's three or four you gotta go. I
Speaker 1: just called. Uh So, the funny thing about getting your
Speaker 1: license out is you want to get it out. But
Speaker 1: then I always think that the war is gonna be
Speaker 1: like why do you think I need to? Like like
Speaker 1: it's a little presumptuous, Like how do you know that's
Speaker 1: what I want how do you know? So then you
Speaker 1: stand there like should I offer it? Do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? It's just like it's also awkward man. Well,
Speaker 1: and if a lot of it has to do with
Speaker 1: the communication of the officer, right, you always immediately it
Speaker 1: come down and whole you're gonna say, how's it going today?
Speaker 1: Nice day out here? In it? You want to hear
Speaker 1: that from a person, Yeah, talk to him a little bit.
Speaker 1: If you walk up and it's an immediate you know,
Speaker 1: I need to see your license what we're saying. You'll
Speaker 1: ask them how it's going, sturn out, talk to him
Speaker 1: a little bit and how's it going to see you
Speaker 1: got a couple of fish there? Does a warden want
Speaker 1: the hunter angler to be chatty? At times? You're pretty
Speaker 1: lonely out there, so it doesn't you know, So if
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, how's it going, that doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: set off a red flag. No, I mean you can
Speaker 1: detect if there's something not quite making sense here. This
Speaker 1: is a little false. Yeah, you could feel it. What
Speaker 1: was your attitude towards self reporting? We did you were you?
Speaker 1: Did you actually? Were you actually able to be lenient
Speaker 1: to people that would self report absolutely, so what what
Speaker 1: And And again even with that note, you know, if
Speaker 1: if you make a mistake out there, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: turn yourself in. It's it's the way to go there.
Speaker 1: There might be a couple of horror stories out there
Speaker 1: where uh you wish you hadn't. But if if the
Speaker 1: officer finds out some other way and that you shot
Speaker 1: the wrong deer or you you did whatever you did,
Speaker 1: and then things are going to go a little harder.
Speaker 1: We had the luxury at least to work with our
Speaker 1: county attorneys and in many cases we just had jps
Speaker 1: that we could talk with justice to the peace was
Speaker 1: the judge, and we could go in and see the
Speaker 1: judge and go I want you to know this was
Speaker 1: an accident, um, and the person called me, I showed up,
Speaker 1: We got the animal salvaged and and you know donated. Um.
Speaker 1: So I just want you to know that I didn't.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of times they'd ask you, well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? What do you think
Speaker 1: the right? Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, even
Speaker 1: on my side over there, that the same way if
Speaker 1: somebody self reports something or have an accident, was cooperative
Speaker 1: and just want to do the right thing. Even if
Speaker 1: a ticket got written, you had those conversations with the
Speaker 1: prosecutors and the judges and say, this is not the
Speaker 1: guy that needs to, you know, have the book thrown
Speaker 1: at him. We need to And a lot of times
Speaker 1: they just get you know, dismissed or or you know,
Speaker 1: if you're don't get in trouble for six more months,
Speaker 1: it'll go away. Um. So yeah, by far, the best
Speaker 1: way to deal with it was just to be upfront
Speaker 1: about it. Sam. You're telling their story where this has
Speaker 1: a little to do with like like discretion or or
Speaker 1: you know, individual by interview, I was not thinking the
Speaker 1: right way to put it. But um, where you're able
Speaker 1: to take like a level of subjectivity to what's going on,
Speaker 1: and you talk about going into uh I think it's
Speaker 1: an antelope poaching incident. We're going into a home and
Speaker 1: extreme poverty, no food already ate the thing like that.
Speaker 1: You ended up approaching that a little bit differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's funny because um, as we said,
Speaker 1: a lot of times, when you conduct a search warrant,
Speaker 1: the places are less than let's just say, the nicest
Speaker 1: places you've ever seen. And yet I didn't have that
Speaker 1: kind of feeling when I was issuing a search warrant
Speaker 1: um in the in the case you're referring to, it
Speaker 1: was an antelope that was allegedly poached. And when we
Speaker 1: got to the location, I mean, these people were hurting,
Speaker 1: said no running water, and they were cleaning a jack
Speaker 1: rabbit the sink. There were there were flies all over
Speaker 1: the kitchen and about four jack rabbits in the sink
Speaker 1: and uh no running water, kids outside playing in dirt.
Speaker 1: The meat that we found was wrapped in more of
Speaker 1: an ice box. It wasn't you know, kept fresh. So
Speaker 1: whatever they killed, they're gonna eat probably that week. So
Speaker 1: you gotta make a call to yourself. Am I getting
Speaker 1: out of am I writing a ticket? You know? Or
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do here? And it was also
Speaker 1: a young kid. I remember you just telling the mom
Speaker 1: like you gotta talk to your boy. I don't want
Speaker 1: to come back out here. I don't want to you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're leaving, but I'm gonna put you in touch.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of programs out there that can help
Speaker 1: you people, and programs that can give you food. And
Speaker 1: you know, the wildlife resource out here is sparse, and
Speaker 1: you can't do what you're doing, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to come back. You know that we do. We understand
Speaker 1: each other. Are we good? And it's kind of it
Speaker 1: was a touching story, man, Oh I was that was? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you went home that night and hunt your kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good man. So tell people how to tell people
Speaker 1: how to find the book. Well, it's funny because when
Speaker 1: I did the bud Puddle story for the Campfire Tales,
Speaker 1: Savannah told me to give her my Instagram. I said,
Speaker 1: I bought my wife an insta pot. I don't know
Speaker 1: what an Instagram is, so my daughter set up an
Speaker 1: Instagram account. Is it properly? It says at Sam Lowry
Speaker 1: and on there is a link, so you wind up
Speaker 1: getting at Sam Lawry. Someone else didn't have that. No,
Speaker 1: I got it. That's cool. Yeah, I think have you
Speaker 1: ever checked it out? Yeah, he'll check for us Sam
Speaker 1: Laury and it s a M L A W R
Speaker 1: Y So that's on there. Uh and and and she
Speaker 1: told me to say you can find a link on
Speaker 1: there to buy it. Uh. These proceeds from anything I
Speaker 1: make on this this go to my kids because she
Speaker 1: did the pencil drawings in it, and my daughter put
Speaker 1: it together through that account those third project. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: my stories are out there and I hope people enjoy
Speaker 1: it and if they want to get it for a
Speaker 1: stocking stuffer, go for it. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: So again the title Stories of the Past an Arizona
Speaker 1: Game Ranger Remembering the Outlaws by Sam Laurie and of
Speaker 1: course also Paul Lewis support. Paul go to f HF Yeah,
Speaker 1: fish on fight, Yeah, American made accessories, all kinds of
Speaker 1: cool ship. More stuff coming out any else. Y're on,
Speaker 1: You're good, feeling good. I'm good? Thank you? All right,
Speaker 1: everybody take care. Thank you,