Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f h
Speaker 1: F Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: that's designed to be as rugged as the place as
Speaker 1: we explore.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: We are on a special bear Grease droplake. We're giving
Speaker 1: the people what they want more. I'd say, the people
Speaker 1: say more, we give them more.
Speaker 3: We say how much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is gonna be a good episode.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: We've got with us multiple special guests. But Dan Gates
Speaker 1: from Colorado's for Responsible Wildlife Management, You've been on here before,
Speaker 1: friend of ours and uh, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about this Colorado Mountain Lion deal. So welcome. Sure coming
Speaker 1: to Arkansas. Appreciate thanks for the global headquarters.
Speaker 3: It's it's amazing me. Well, everybody knows who Clay nucom
Speaker 3: is down here.
Speaker 2: I know that well.
Speaker 1: In some spots, in some places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: He's definitely a legend here within the you know, one
Speaker 4: hundred yard Radio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got Baron Newcomb. Good to see you. Bear
Speaker 1: glad to be here. Yeah, probably need a haircut, Lake
Speaker 1: Lake pickle with on ax, moving on Lake. Tell us
Speaker 1: what you do? I know what you do, but tell
Speaker 1: the world what do you do for?
Speaker 5: So I'm like, I guess the easiest title to put
Speaker 5: on it is, I'm like, I'm a marketing manager. I
Speaker 5: work a lot on the waterfowl side and then work
Speaker 5: pretty much on our social media strategy and our YouTube
Speaker 5: and everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're not from Missoula, Montana. I'm not. You
Speaker 1: are from a state that starts with an M.
Speaker 5: Though, I think that's how I confused him. I just yeah,
Speaker 5: it's just the M. I kind of threw them off
Speaker 5: for a second. But yeah, no, it it's been fun.
Speaker 5: I've been with ONEX for a little over two and
Speaker 5: a half years now.
Speaker 1: Okay, yep, lakes from Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Right right in the center of it.
Speaker 5: I will say when I got here is the first
Speaker 5: time I met Bear in person, and his hair over
Speaker 5: social media it's not done justice to He's got like
Speaker 5: a main it's.
Speaker 2: Impressed, like a groomed lion.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was a little envious, right man, that's impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh, we've got josh Lanbridge filmmaker. Good to see you, Josh.
Speaker 1: Here we got Brent Reeves. Good to see man. I
Speaker 1: like that this country life shirt.
Speaker 7: I had to get up for breakfast, come up here
Speaker 7: to day Yeah yeah, early start.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Man, these things the people really digging them. Yeah they
Speaker 7: look good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I got mine without the muscles.
Speaker 3: With Dan.
Speaker 1: I saw an interesting headline today in the New York
Speaker 1: Times about a group of the fox hunters in in
Speaker 1: England are petitioning the government. There's a there's a lobbyist
Speaker 1: group of of the hunters that are fox hunters, which
Speaker 1: fox hunting was banned in England in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: just like straight up band the wild fox hunts. Now
Speaker 1: they they still got dogs over there, and they do
Speaker 1: like scent drag hunts. And this is the kind of
Speaker 1: hunt like in my picture up here on the ceiling,
Speaker 1: you know, where they're using horses and following the dogs.
Speaker 1: It's like very traditional European hunt and the and this
Speaker 1: guy is building a really strong case that the world
Speaker 1: is kind of perking up their ears towards about how
Speaker 1: they are basically a cultural not an ethnic group, but
Speaker 1: a but a but a people group that have this
Speaker 1: deep cultural heritage that should be protected like many of
Speaker 1: these other very protected classes of people with specific beliefs,
Speaker 1: which I've actually said something similar to that for a
Speaker 1: while that I mean like all over the world and
Speaker 1: these modernizement we're protecting everybody. I mean, like, if you
Speaker 1: have a belief, don't mess with me about my belief,
Speaker 1: my my faith and whatever.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's like, uh, I thought it was pretty interesting
Speaker 1: and uh and and they didn't laugh him off the stage.
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't know the specifics, but it
Speaker 1: was in the New York Times recently. Have you heard
Speaker 1: about any of that?
Speaker 3: I have. And there's there's been a growing enthusiasm to
Speaker 3: be able to turn around and categorize ourselves in some
Speaker 3: classification that you know, we are who we are from
Speaker 3: a cultural tradition and heritage perspective. And when you start
Speaker 3: talking about that, people start to pay attention. On some
Speaker 3: sides of the aisle. Now that the antis are never
Speaker 3: going to pay attention to that, you know, the extremist,
Speaker 3: but other.
Speaker 1: They're interested in protecting everybody else exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but other groups are like I never really thought
Speaker 3: about it like that. I didn't really understand it. It
Speaker 3: was cultural to you that was from your background or
Speaker 3: your your family tradition and genealogical heritage. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: it's something to where it'd be interesting to see how
Speaker 3: they look at it over there. I know that it
Speaker 3: gains traction over here as soon as you start mentioning
Speaker 3: a specific ethnic group. But you know, in Colorado we're
Speaker 3: being attacked at different levels right now on what we
Speaker 3: have a fur band that is a ballot initiative, and
Speaker 3: the thing that's been centric to people to pay attention
Speaker 3: is the Native American side of it. And as soon
Speaker 3: as you mentioned Native American, they're like, don't mess with
Speaker 3: the Native American. But when you just mentioned fur, they're like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, get rid of fur, right. And then you said,
Speaker 3: well it has to do with cowboy hats. Well well, okay,
Speaker 3: well there's an exception. Well it has to do with
Speaker 3: fishing lures. We should mess with a fisherman. As soon
Speaker 3: as you mentioned Native American, all of them are on board.
Speaker 3: They say nobody shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Mess with it.
Speaker 1: Just yesterday, I was doing some research for something and
Speaker 1: was reading a source material document by a guy named
Speaker 1: John Lawson that was written in seventeen oh nine published
Speaker 1: in seventeen oh nine, you know, two hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, and he was he was get him on
Speaker 1: the podcast. He was talking about bear hunting with hounds
Speaker 1: in Virginia. I mean, like very it was very detailed,
Speaker 1: and I mean that was seventy years before America was America.
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's deep, deep, deep cultural heritage for
Speaker 1: hunting with hounds and hunting predators on this continent that
Speaker 1: is undeniable. And to this day we still have all
Speaker 1: these predators in especially in the West, with lions with
Speaker 1: thriving numbers. I mean, I think we, I really think
Speaker 1: that that's a direction that we should go as a
Speaker 1: hunting community, and the specifics of it. We're not an
Speaker 1: ethnic group, it's not and that's not what these guys
Speaker 1: in Europe are trying to do, but a protected class
Speaker 1: of people with specific beliefs that are congruent with just
Speaker 1: their identity.
Speaker 7: Well, it's interesting, it's interesting that you say that about
Speaker 7: You think about what you said, Dan, about how as
Speaker 7: soon as Native Americans are mentioned, it's its hands off,
Speaker 7: when one hundred years ago it wouldn't.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like that, right, one hundred and fifty years ago,
Speaker 2: we were they were absolutely they didn't care what they thought.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so there, I think there's room from what you're
Speaker 7: talking about there, if we can get enough folks together,
Speaker 7: maybe we can have that same level of respect. And
Speaker 7: I'm not comparing hunters to Native Americans what happened to
Speaker 7: them by any means. I'm just saying, obviously there is
Speaker 7: room for change. If we can do that and see
Speaker 7: Natives in a different light than what they were seeing
Speaker 7: one hundred and fifty years ago, maybe there is.
Speaker 3: Room for Well, look what they just did last year
Speaker 3: in New Mexico. The New Mexico legislature banned the use
Speaker 3: of traps on public land except for Native Americans. Now,
Speaker 3: I mean, we're not talking about reservation land. We're not
Speaker 3: talking about anything other than wildlife management and the opportunity
Speaker 3: to go out and harvest game by a particular method
Speaker 3: of take. When they gave an exemption to a cultural
Speaker 3: component ethnic otherwise right, but to public land, well, the
Speaker 3: public land is public. But to specify who can use
Speaker 3: the public is where you know, the NTA and the
Speaker 3: f TA and Sportsman's Alliance and those guys are looking
Speaker 3: at lawsuits but and trying to figure out how to
Speaker 3: do that. But but to your point, you know, considering
Speaker 3: people's perceptions about the way things should be done. But
Speaker 3: as soon as you throw in a specific culture, a
Speaker 3: specific sector, then it starts to you know, I guess
Speaker 3: get attention of a lot of other people out there,
Speaker 3: and I don't see why the sportsmen and women and
Speaker 3: hunters and anglers can't turn around and do the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the way I think about it is
Speaker 1: is should the earth persist? I think about generations and
Speaker 1: new combs down the line, and it's like, could you
Speaker 1: be could you be a new com and not have
Speaker 1: access to the kind of hunting that we have today?
Speaker 1: Like it feels like it's that important to our culture,
Speaker 1: to my culture, you know. And I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think I think we need something.
Speaker 4: It's not just a recreational issue.
Speaker 3: It's a life, it's it's it's what we've expressed to people.
Speaker 3: And I've gotten on a hot mic in front of
Speaker 3: commissions and legislators and and say it's not what I do,
Speaker 3: it's who I am. And I live it and I
Speaker 3: breathe it, and I eat it and I sleep it
Speaker 3: and I drink it, and it's everything about me. That's
Speaker 3: who I am. And when they when you say that
Speaker 3: to them, you can see that there's a light bulb
Speaker 3: that comes on and they're like they just thought it
Speaker 3: was something you did occasionally, and it's it's we do everything.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's look at this.
Speaker 2: Room here, it's not playing tennis or golf. No. No, Well, the.
Speaker 5: Way the way that I think about it is is
Speaker 5: like a lot of those species, especially game animals, the
Speaker 5: reason that they persist today is because of the sustainable
Speaker 5: practices that were put in place. And now you look
Speaker 5: at something that threatens it, looks at sustainable hunting as
Speaker 5: a reason that it's going to get wiped out. It's
Speaker 5: just not doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just hadn't done their homework. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's hard. It's hard for me to sit and try
Speaker 3: to not argue, but educate a specific sector of our
Speaker 3: population that is not familiar with our lifestyle, and I
Speaker 3: say our lifestyle as consumer sportsmen, I mean anymore, to
Speaker 3: be legal in the United States, you have to buy
Speaker 3: a license to be able to go do something. But
Speaker 3: that's the funding component of the North American model of
Speaker 3: wildlife conservation, and every game agency has that component available
Speaker 3: to them. The average person, that middle of the road sector,
Speaker 3: that eighty percent, some of them don't even realize that
Speaker 3: we have to purchase licenses, that we have to have
Speaker 3: hundred education, that they're special permits and their special seasons
Speaker 3: and methods of take and quotas and restrictions, and a
Speaker 3: lot of they just don't realize because they've been force
Speaker 3: fed this lies and these fallacies in this smoke and
Speaker 3: mirror game. We are the enemy, We're the evil. We're
Speaker 3: out there just creating vast destruction on the landscape and
Speaker 3: landscape and extra paytent every species become in contact with.
Speaker 3: At the late eighteen hunters, early nineteen hundreds, that was
Speaker 3: the case, but that wasn't a regulated hunting structure. That
Speaker 3: was individuals trying to supply a market. Hence one of
Speaker 3: the tenants of them clearly, yeah, and that was for
Speaker 3: a food source to be able to turn around and
Speaker 3: supply food to the general public. With a vast expansion
Speaker 3: to the west, the general public. That eighty percent sometimes
Speaker 3: don't realize that, and if they do, they don't fully
Speaker 3: comprehend it because they don't understand. One hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: five years to get to where we're at, right now,
Speaker 3: and the transition to be able.
Speaker 1: To do that, and that transition is one of the
Speaker 1: most remarkable things for sure in terms of animal management
Speaker 1: on planet Earth since time began. Because usually when people
Speaker 1: make big mistakes, they never recover from it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you look at the other continents and you look in
Speaker 1: other places that one hundred and twenty five years of
Speaker 1: conservation where we absolutely turn the tables on market hunting
Speaker 1: over extension of killing animals, habitat destruction, I mean, like
Speaker 1: the voracious appetite of America for westward expansion. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: that was still going on, that's bad. But but that
Speaker 1: that switch, and I think that's something that most most people,
Speaker 1: most hunters don't realize, is that for human nature to
Speaker 1: be able to revert and fix some of these big
Speaker 1: time errors that we've had as civilizational errors is so incredible.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's just it's it's a story.
Speaker 1: It's a story that ought to be celebrated by by
Speaker 1: all and now you know the thing, the component of
Speaker 1: that story that is hard for people is the killing
Speaker 1: of animals, right, I mean, that's just it. It's like
Speaker 1: and but again that goes back to just golly, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is a movement I think in the world today
Speaker 1: where even non hunting, non rural, urban people are beginning
Speaker 1: to understand, you know, where meat comes from, that animals
Speaker 1: have to be farmed, animals have to be killed. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so there, there is, there's logic and reason behind
Speaker 1: what we're doing. And I mean, I think we've got
Speaker 1: a leg up in society, maybe more than we ever have,
Speaker 1: and it just feels like we've just got to keep
Speaker 1: telling a people story that shows a culture. Like that's
Speaker 1: a deep passion of mind inside of what I do
Speaker 1: with the Bear Grease podcasts, a it's a people podcast really.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this overlap of humans and wild places
Speaker 1: and wildlife and rural living, and it's like telling this
Speaker 1: story of yeah, this is a deep, deep culture that
Speaker 1: is positive, you know, and it's powerful stuff to me.
Speaker 3: Well, when you can look back, you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty five years at the beginning of the early
Speaker 3: nineteen hundreds and look at just a human population and
Speaker 3: then you know, fast forward to now and look at
Speaker 3: the amount of people on the landscape, the way cities
Speaker 3: are growing that you know, the urban rural divide, the
Speaker 3: habitat loss and we still have more wildlife now and
Speaker 3: better manager wildlife than what we did as we started.
Speaker 3: Then some of that was from the decimation of the
Speaker 3: western expansion, but if you look at what we've accumulated
Speaker 3: and what we've accomplished Canada and the United States combined,
Speaker 3: the North American model, I mean it wants to be
Speaker 3: emulated around the world. You know, other organizations and other
Speaker 3: countries and other provinces are trying to do something in
Speaker 3: different capacities. But we have the best model and it
Speaker 3: has worked so efficiently and effectively that if you could
Speaker 3: just get that point across to what we have now
Speaker 3: is a lot better than what it was, and it's
Speaker 3: continually getting better with less and less habitat, more and
Speaker 3: more restrictions and prohibitions on the landscape, and more people.
Speaker 3: We're not going to keep breed, We're not going to
Speaker 3: quit reading as far as people, but we still have
Speaker 3: the wildlife resources that we didn't have. But the Roosevelts
Speaker 3: and those guys trive to turn around and recover.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what's been your biggest what is do you have
Speaker 7: three points that have been the biggest hurdles to overcome
Speaker 7: and explaining getting somebody a non hunter or somebody that's
Speaker 7: not familiar with our way of life or our culture
Speaker 7: to get them to understand the importance of it. Can
Speaker 7: is there anything that you could name that would this
Speaker 7: may be too It may I may yeah, well no,
Speaker 7: it may I may need to narrow it down some
Speaker 7: What questions or what concerns do you get the most
Speaker 7: from people who are against it? Is it the idea
Speaker 7: that we're killing animals? Or is it this is not
Speaker 7: culturally important enough? They don't see it the way we
Speaker 7: see it.
Speaker 3: I think that the biggest and I appreciate that question
Speaker 3: because so many questions that we asked from the media
Speaker 3: and from some of our opposition and some of the
Speaker 3: unknowing general public. But a lot of times one of
Speaker 3: their biggest questions is or statements and then a question, right,
Speaker 3: we don't need to be barbaric any longer we've gotten
Speaker 3: out of that culture. Well, depending on how you look
Speaker 3: at it, whether it's from domestic or wild, there's a
Speaker 3: component of ignorance from the general public because they weren't
Speaker 3: raised around it. I don't know if you guys know
Speaker 3: a gentleman by the name of Craig O'Gorman. He's a
Speaker 3: big trapper in eastern Montana o' gorman enterprises, and Craig
Speaker 3: has a different philosophy, and I really appreciate his perspective
Speaker 3: on things, but looking from a trapping side and the
Speaker 3: predator hunting and the fur harvesting side of things. You know,
Speaker 3: Craig mentioned the difference the way society changed from the
Speaker 3: Great Depression into World War Two and then how it
Speaker 3: started to expand out from the industrialized side of things,
Speaker 3: the recreationalized side of things, the entertainment side of things,
Speaker 3: and it became more politically oriented about nineteen fifty to
Speaker 3: you know, nineteen seventy, and then it just expanded on
Speaker 3: all levels. The average person that went to war in
Speaker 3: World War Two, they remember, if they weren't intimately involved,
Speaker 3: they went to Grandma's house on Sunday and they went outside,
Speaker 3: grabbed a chicken and they killed it for dinner. They
Speaker 3: went out and grabbed the eggs, they milked the cows.
Speaker 3: There was still this connection point when you got out
Speaker 3: of World War Two. There was still a hunting deal.
Speaker 3: But that's when like your sport's a field, outdoor life,
Speaker 3: fur fishing, game field and stream magazines came out and
Speaker 3: become more of a recreational deal. When you started taking
Speaker 3: the life side out of these components of daily life,
Speaker 3: like living breathing life out of daily life, you started
Speaker 3: to see a cultural change. With the way Craig explained
Speaker 3: it to me, and this is probably fifteen years ago,
Speaker 3: the average person before World War Two understood death for
Speaker 3: human subsistence and destruction. I mean, our lives depended on
Speaker 3: destroying something else so we could survive off of it,
Speaker 3: whether it's a cow or a chicken, or a pig,
Speaker 3: or a deer or a turkey. By the time you
Speaker 3: got into the seventies and then you had the Vietnam
Speaker 3: War that most of those guys that were involved, the
Speaker 3: first thing that they ever had to do with death
Speaker 3: is a person standing in front of them. They didn't
Speaker 3: know a lot of that stuff that was going on.
Speaker 3: And then there's our population. Our human population grew substantially
Speaker 3: by the time you get into the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 3: And we talked about this the last time I was
Speaker 3: here in June that in nineteen hundred, there was ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the population that lived rural landscape type of life,
Speaker 3: ten percent lived in the city. By nineteen fifty, it
Speaker 3: was a fifty to fifty split, and by the year
Speaker 3: two thousand, ninety percent of the people turn around and
Speaker 3: live in the city and ten percent live in the countryside.
Speaker 3: When you talk about a food source, whether it's for
Speaker 3: somewhat recreational but lifestyle living what we do, or you
Speaker 3: talk about domestic side of it, that's a big In
Speaker 3: one hundred years, that's a major change in philosophy about
Speaker 3: where your food comes from and how you supply something.
Speaker 3: Because people can't connect the dots. We have people that
Speaker 3: move into Colorado, for instance, which you know, Colorado has
Speaker 3: expanded from two point nine million people the last time
Speaker 3: we had a ballot initiative that took anything away to
Speaker 3: five point nine million people this go around. Don't understand
Speaker 3: that without snow, we have no water. We don't drill wells.
Speaker 3: It all comes from the top, not from the bottom.
Speaker 3: And they say, well, you have all these water commissions
Speaker 3: and these water boards and water rights, and you fight
Speaker 3: over water and there's water courtners all of this. It's
Speaker 3: because water is a valuable resource. In other parts of
Speaker 3: the country is just as valuable, but people just take
Speaker 3: it for granted because you don't get snow where it
Speaker 3: comes off or something. You actually get it out of
Speaker 3: the ground, or it comes down from some river from
Speaker 3: some other place that likely had snow. The same with
Speaker 3: our food source. The general public doesn't fully comprehend holistically,
Speaker 3: not just where domestic food comes from, but they darn't
Speaker 3: sure don't understand it where wild food comes from.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's interesting too that it's mentioned. You know,
Speaker 4: we don't we don't have to be barbaric anymore. Take
Speaker 4: someone to a slaughterhouse, yeah, I mean, take someone to
Speaker 4: the stockyard and say, you know, this isn't barbaric.
Speaker 1: Chicken slaughter plant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, foods is up here.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 7: They don't take them to a farm where they're spraying
Speaker 7: for bugs. I mean they're killing millions every day.
Speaker 1: Dan, give us a give us an intro to what
Speaker 1: just a lot of people that would be watching this
Speaker 1: would know it, but some don't like what's going on
Speaker 1: in Colorado with this?
Speaker 3: With this?
Speaker 1: Uh, just just give like something like we didn't even
Speaker 1: know it even existed. Surprised, Just hold on, you'll be
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh. The the current the current issue is Initiative ninety one, which,
Speaker 3: as I preface this in the earlier conversation. It won't
Speaker 3: be this in several weeks. By the time this ERRS
Speaker 3: hopefully will have a number from the Secretary of State,
Speaker 3: it'll be propositions something or other. But we're reading for
Speaker 3: the Secretary of State to give a number. But what
Speaker 3: it is, it's an attempt to ban the harvest of
Speaker 3: Mountlon's bobcats and land and links are federally in state protective,
Speaker 3: so you can't kill them anyway. But they threw that
Speaker 3: in there is a cats phrase as a talking point
Speaker 3: to make sure and as they said in their testimony
Speaker 3: during the Supreme Court hearing, if links ever become delisted
Speaker 3: and harvestable, we don't want them to. And so they're
Speaker 3: already preemptively thinking down the road if they were, which
Speaker 3: they probably won't. But it's an attempt to ban the harvest. Now,
Speaker 3: when we've started this process, it was a trophy hunting ban,
Speaker 3: but we got trophy hunting out of it, because trophy
Speaker 3: hunting is defined in the measure as intentionally killing, wounding, stalking, pursuing,
Speaker 3: or entrapping a mountain lion, bob, ket or links. Well,
Speaker 3: intentionally killing, wounding, stalking, pursuing. I don't know anybody that
Speaker 3: wound hunting. Yeah, it's hunting. That's the definition of hunting.
Speaker 3: That's what pursuing wild game is. But they defined it
Speaker 3: in the measure, but we did get it taken out
Speaker 3: of the title itself. So in several weeks, about seventy
Speaker 3: five days, the general public will vote on a hunting ban,
Speaker 3: and it is a total hunting ban. The caveat to
Speaker 3: that is to get people to understand because it is
Speaker 3: a hunting ban and because of the statutory definition and
Speaker 3: the precedent the case law it could set, you could
Speaker 3: take mountain lions and bobcats out, put mallard ducks and
Speaker 3: elk in because of the previous court rulings or applications
Speaker 3: of the language. Those are the things that we're trying
Speaker 3: to convince the general public about that whether you're a
Speaker 3: bird hunter, you should not vote for this, whether you're
Speaker 3: a deer hunter, you should not vote for this. And
Speaker 3: even if you're a non hunter, you shouldn't vote for
Speaker 3: this because it's not about mountain lions and bobcats. It's
Speaker 3: about seventy eight game species in the state of Colorado
Speaker 3: and most other states that can turn around and have
Speaker 3: interpretation of that law, and we're fearful that if it passes,
Speaker 3: it'll be the catalyst or a preemptive strike from the
Speaker 3: opposition to go, well, we got it over here. How
Speaker 3: they're going to argue it over here, because there's no
Speaker 3: way they can, because we already set the precedent. We
Speaker 3: already made our preemptive strike. The ballot. The election is
Speaker 3: November fifth. If it goes into effect, which we're trying
Speaker 3: diligently to make sure it doesn't, but if it goes
Speaker 3: into effect January first, everything will be banned in the
Speaker 3: state of Colorado when it comes to mountain lions and bobcats.
Speaker 3: There's been language within the legislature that we've already defeated
Speaker 3: multiple levels at the Colorida General Assembly and the Colorida
Speaker 3: Parks and Wildlife Commission. But some of those legislators that
Speaker 3: we've defeated previously said on a hot mic that if
Speaker 3: this goes through, it's our opportunity to turn around and
Speaker 3: try to do something legislatively as well. And what they've mentioned,
Speaker 3: although there's not been a bill drafted as of yet
Speaker 3: to the best of our knowledge, what they've mentioned is
Speaker 3: maybe we should go after the banning of cow elk
Speaker 3: and doe deer because of the potential orphaning of calves
Speaker 3: and fawns, because that language is in this measure about
Speaker 3: how we're orphaning kittens and cubs and mountain lions and bobcats.
Speaker 3: It's a camel nosed under the tent, is what it is.
Speaker 3: And once you explain a lot of these caveats and
Speaker 3: new to the general sportsmen because they think, well, already
Speaker 3: you know gates, already, I already harvested my mountain land,
Speaker 3: or I don't want to harvest a mountainline, or I
Speaker 3: don't think you should harvest a mountain land. Whatever they
Speaker 3: might be. These are licensed buying women and men and
Speaker 3: women sportsmen. But when you explain and say, just read
Speaker 3: this read about the dogs. It doesn't say hounds. It
Speaker 3: talks about electronic collars, tracking devices, gps is. They don't
Speaker 3: want you to use any of it. Those are things
Speaker 3: that people don't read into it because they see the title.
Speaker 3: But then they get into the two and a half
Speaker 3: page language in the measure, and it's easily decipherable that
Speaker 3: you could take any one of those things out and
Speaker 3: put it into some other category, just like what those
Speaker 3: legislators are talking about now for Kyle Elkin.
Speaker 2: Do deer.
Speaker 1: What I'm trying to put this into context for myself
Speaker 1: just to understand, because what remains a mystery is how
Speaker 1: to really engage and uh get other people interested in
Speaker 1: stuff that's not directly, directly first hand applicable to them. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like like how do we get how do
Speaker 1: we truly unite the sportsmen of America, Guys that will
Speaker 1: never mountain lion hunt in Colorado? How do we get
Speaker 1: them to be you know, engaged in this? And Bear,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here looking at my son Bear Bear, what
Speaker 1: if they what if there was right now a ban
Speaker 1: on hunting squirrels with dogs in Arkansas or or coon
Speaker 1: hunting And here we have built all this and and
Speaker 1: and it's just something we love. And it's like, literally,
Speaker 1: on January first, we may never be able to do
Speaker 1: this again the rest of our life legally. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like that to me just feels like it just
Speaker 1: culturally it would be a butcher knife to the to
Speaker 1: the lineage of something. And it's just I mean obviously
Speaker 1: that we think that because we love these things, but
Speaker 1: I mean, I just I implore all of us to
Speaker 1: like think about like what this would be like, because
Speaker 1: I mean every you look generationally and every generation has
Speaker 1: had stuff taken away, and I mean there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that you could it's it's time just rolls
Speaker 1: by and we don't realize what we've lost.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately that the folks that are hearing this, the
Speaker 2: people that are against it, they this.
Speaker 7: Is not going to We're not to the choir. We're
Speaker 7: not going to tell them. But the folks that can
Speaker 7: do something are the folks that are hearing this that haven't.
Speaker 7: That's where it's got to come from. It's got to
Speaker 7: come from. I may be the only guy in here
Speaker 7: that plays softball. Nobody else plays softball, but they're fixing
Speaker 7: the band softball with all you guys like sports, you
Speaker 7: like to watch it, like should I get involved or
Speaker 7: should not? Shall I help him out? Because y'all like soccer,
Speaker 7: which I'm pretty sure you do, but.
Speaker 3: Weirdough But just by looking at you, just by looking
Speaker 3: at him.
Speaker 7: But I mean, it's all the same thing. We all
Speaker 7: got to do it. It's like squirrel hunting and in
Speaker 7: mountain lion hunting. It's hunting and if they can ban one,
Speaker 7: they can get the other. But if all of us
Speaker 7: get together, the folks that are listening, like, well, that
Speaker 7: really don't affect me because I live in Louisiana and
Speaker 7: I'm not going to be able to hunt mountain lines.
Speaker 7: Or I live in Arkansas where I live and I'm
Speaker 7: not gonna be able to hunt mountain lines. It will
Speaker 7: affect you eventually down the road. It's the low hanging
Speaker 7: fruit thing. Ye.
Speaker 3: Well, and there's two organizations so cats aren't trophies. Is
Speaker 3: the state organization, it's the State Issues Committee, but it
Speaker 3: was formulated by out of states non residents. But the
Speaker 3: two national organizations that are supportive of this, that are
Speaker 3: both run by former hs US Humane Society of the
Speaker 3: United States Wayne Piselli. The one is Animal Welfare Action,
Speaker 3: which is a five oh one C four, which is
Speaker 3: just like our organization, the Colorado's for Responsible Widlife Management.
Speaker 3: But then the Center Few for a Humane Economy is
Speaker 3: their five oh one C three. Those are based out
Speaker 3: of Maryland. They are they are national, but they went
Speaker 3: to Colorado because the legislative and political landscape is more favorable.
Speaker 1: They're looking for a crack in the armor where they
Speaker 1: can put their tentacles in that they'd come here if
Speaker 1: they could.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and they.
Speaker 1: Can probe my five squirrel dogs out of my cold.
Speaker 3: Put that on our T shirt, Stave Ranella. But that's
Speaker 3: the thing. People say, well, who are these people? Well,
Speaker 3: they're all out of staters, they're all non residents because
Speaker 3: they have a favorable landscape in our state to be
Speaker 3: able to turn around and try to move maneuver through
Speaker 3: the minutia and get what they want. People don't realize
Speaker 3: that this is not anything other than a national movement,
Speaker 3: and when you get the former hs US CEO, who
Speaker 3: for a variety of reasons is no longer there with HSUS.
Speaker 3: This is an attack that they can gain ground, gain
Speaker 3: significant relevance, potentially gain a victory, gain some funding, and
Speaker 3: move to the next level. Now is the next level
Speaker 3: in New Mexico, we don't know yet, or is it Iowa,
Speaker 3: or is it Montana. But they have sectors placed in
Speaker 3: every one of these states, building a repertoire up in
Speaker 3: some street cred and they're just trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how they can manipulate it enough to where they get
Speaker 3: a victory and then they turn around and continue moving
Speaker 3: forward and maybe Colorado's again on the shopping block but
Speaker 3: they build strength in numbers and money with the success,
Speaker 3: and then they move to the next level.
Speaker 1: Well what gets me is that this is a business.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know specifically about this group, but
Speaker 1: in general, I mean it's not even I mean, there's
Speaker 1: some of these people, these anti hunters that that probably
Speaker 1: truly are passionate and are working from a position that
Speaker 1: they really believe in their mission. I mean, I assume
Speaker 1: a lot of them. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: a very profitable business to be in the game of
Speaker 1: being anti hunting. Oh yeah, I mean, it's an incredible
Speaker 1: way to tap into you know, to expel, you know,
Speaker 1: expose a philosophy about and it's just it's so trendy
Speaker 1: to be on that bandwagon and to get people's money.
Speaker 3: Well, it's easy for them to do because they lie.
Speaker 3: If you say enough lies, people start to believe it
Speaker 3: because they didn't hear anything else. When it's like in
Speaker 3: our case and in most cases with the State Game
Speaker 3: Management Agency, you know, people are griping and complaining why
Speaker 3: didn't Clorida Parks and Wildlife coming out. It's because they
Speaker 3: work at the pleasure of the governor, and the governor
Speaker 3: is an animal rights extremists, and he said, don't say anything.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the way most states operate. They're not
Speaker 3: independent entities that they can turn around and just say
Speaker 3: what they want, no matter if they have the facts
Speaker 3: or not. They've got a plethora of different studies that
Speaker 3: have come out, They've got a ton of different information.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the first documents that came
Speaker 3: out ten months ago versus the documents that are out now,
Speaker 3: the agency changed those documents because the governor's office, the
Speaker 3: administration said, cross this, strike this, put this in. Don't
Speaker 3: get rid of the science, but the perception or the
Speaker 3: opinion you can alter that. You don't have those opinions,
Speaker 3: and that's why they forced them to take no position,
Speaker 3: not a neutral position, no position. So there's no pro
Speaker 3: no con no, none of that. And the average person
Speaker 3: doesn't fully understand the manipulation that happens from the top
Speaker 3: to the bottom. And then when you turn around and
Speaker 3: throw in special interest groups and so forth, it makes
Speaker 3: it a lot easier for them to accomplish what they
Speaker 3: want to go go with because they got people on
Speaker 3: their side helping them run the government side of it,
Speaker 3: not color to parks of wildlife. But through the Department
Speaker 3: Announced Resources and through the governor's administration and cabinet. Those
Speaker 3: are how they get so much significant traction because we
Speaker 3: don't have anybody to turn around and say anything unless
Speaker 3: we're going to say it to ourselves or every other
Speaker 3: conservation group is going to do it.
Speaker 7: Well, it's Colorado. Were they the perfect storm. We're having
Speaker 7: a liberal administration as far as the governor's views on
Speaker 7: hunting and the huge influx of people that were.
Speaker 1: Not new people to Colorado.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they moving into Colorado that had no idea of
Speaker 7: the culture or the legacy or his.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're starting to see a little bit of
Speaker 3: a change of that. But Colorado is one hundred percent
Speaker 3: blue state. I mean, you know, we're out numbered in
Speaker 3: the legislature as far as Democrats and Republicans forty nine
Speaker 3: to sixteen in the House and twenty three to twelve
Speaker 3: in the Senate. Every elected office is blue unless it
Speaker 3: happens to be a county commission somewhere. But the governor's
Speaker 3: appointments to different commissions and boards and stuff are ninety
Speaker 3: nine percent. I mean, he might pick somebody that's more pink,
Speaker 3: purple or red on one side, but knowing full well
Speaker 3: they don't have a voice because they're one of ten,
Speaker 3: or they're one of eleven or whatever, and so there's
Speaker 3: a statutory obligation that they have to adhere to. But
Speaker 3: it's gotten to the point where you just look at
Speaker 3: who they pick to make sure they always have the
Speaker 3: balance of power or at least perception. And those are
Speaker 3: things that other states need to recognize. I mean, I've
Speaker 3: got guys at Wyoming and Montana and Idaho going, you know,
Speaker 3: it can never happen here. This is what they said
Speaker 3: ten years ago. Now they're looking and going, you know,
Speaker 3: we got more Democrats moving into the state than we
Speaker 3: ever thought we would. And if you look at the
Speaker 3: makeup some of those states, it wouldn't take very much
Speaker 3: to change them, just because of the population breakup and
Speaker 3: the dynamics of different states. I mean, Wyoming's got six
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty thousand people. Look at representation for the
Speaker 3: state of Wyoming, specific sectors or districts would not be
Speaker 3: hard to change just because of the population makeup. Look
Speaker 3: at the amount of people moving out of Colorado or
Speaker 3: to go across the border to Cheyenne. They're still Democrats.
Speaker 3: They're still more liberally minded, but they got away from
Speaker 3: this because it was just so progressive. But they take
Speaker 3: those ideologies and values into Wyoming, even though they're living
Speaker 3: there and working in the Colorado. It's a hard thing
Speaker 3: that we're going to have to deal with in some
Speaker 3: capacity nationwide, and I honestly believe that sportsmen and women
Speaker 3: are up to the task if they pay attention, if
Speaker 3: they understand the intricacies of what it takes to manage
Speaker 3: our wildlife resources and the general public that eighty percent
Speaker 3: in the middle they care deeply about it. They just
Speaker 3: don't know, so they're more likely to check a box
Speaker 3: when it's the wrong box is supposed to be an
Speaker 3: educated to check the right box.
Speaker 4: The problem is is that that it feels like the
Speaker 4: key players in this thing are making decisions based out
Speaker 4: of preference and opinion, not based on science. No, it's
Speaker 4: because I mean, you think about if you're going to
Speaker 4: ban predator hunting, what happens to the predators. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just basic, But that's what they want logic, yeah,
Speaker 4: they I mean, look at our wolf introduction. I mean,
Speaker 4: we just put wolves on the ground last December. They
Speaker 4: voted on it in November of twenty twenty, and it
Speaker 4: was fifty point nine percent that they ended up winning by.
Speaker 4: I mean it was fifty point nine to forty nine
Speaker 4: point one. I mean that that's a good math.
Speaker 3: I'm following you. I was already sitting here math like.
Speaker 5: That acts and not without a calculator.
Speaker 3: But no, we we lost that Wolf deal by such
Speaker 3: a minimal margin. It was something like thirty three thousand
Speaker 3: votes in the state that's got five point nine million people.
Speaker 1: So there's some there's some people there that are voting.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a there's a yeah, there's a chunk
Speaker 1: of people there that.
Speaker 3: Like this is eighty to twenty or anything. I mean,
Speaker 3: this is this is very very close. But the funny
Speaker 3: thing that I see, Clay, is if you look at
Speaker 3: most national elections pertaining anything, unless it just happens to
Speaker 3: be so right or so left one way or the other,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of fifty two forty eights and fifty
Speaker 3: three forty seven's and forty nine to fifty one. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot of that. I mean, we are divided
Speaker 3: as a country, and it's not because it's republican Democrat.
Speaker 3: It's because it's republican independent, and Democrat and the registered
Speaker 3: Independence are growing substantially because they don't want to be
Speaker 3: affiliated with the wackos on the left or the idiots
Speaker 3: on the right. They just want to have their own group.
Speaker 3: But they still lean one way or the other. We
Speaker 3: call them the end the wind crowd. They just blow
Speaker 3: around like packeting peanuts and the windstorm, and they're trying
Speaker 3: to catch up with the catcher's myth. I mean, they
Speaker 3: just listen to the first guy. They just listen to
Speaker 3: the first guy that resonates with them, or they listen
Speaker 3: to the lie after lie after lie after lie because
Speaker 3: they don't hear any rebuttals. And when you have game
Speaker 3: management agencies that don't rebut because they're told not to,
Speaker 3: that's hard to realize and justify that. That's science, that's
Speaker 3: expert data collection. That's twenty five fifty one hundred years
Speaker 3: of compilation of studies and information.
Speaker 7: It's so easy to find something that you agree with.
Speaker 7: If you don't like a news story, if you don't
Speaker 7: like a slant on the news story, change the channel.
Speaker 7: Somebody else will tell you the same story, and they'll
Speaker 7: tell it the way you want to.
Speaker 5: Hear it to your point. So I'm sure you've seen
Speaker 5: it already, but I saw it circulating around. There was
Speaker 5: a like CBS Colorado and there's a study that came out.
Speaker 5: Have y'all seen this The study that came out that
Speaker 5: said that potentially they're basically saying the premise that study
Speaker 5: was that mountain lion hunting was excelling the spread of
Speaker 5: CWD in Colorado.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that just came out, and that's and actually
Speaker 3: that study was done by the Animal Welfare Action and
Speaker 3: the Center for a Humane Economy. By the by the.
Speaker 7: Two groups explained what were the findings of the I mean.
Speaker 5: So CWD and it's so basically it was like if
Speaker 5: you kill mountain lions, mountain lions are predatory animals, and
Speaker 5: so you're taking out predators, so they're killing less of
Speaker 5: your elk and deer and so it's.
Speaker 1: It's a legitimate scientific stuff that.
Speaker 3: Was done by those two groups that are that are
Speaker 3: running this catch trophy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So my question was, is, like, I know, the research
Speaker 5: I had done, is there's been a regular, you know,
Speaker 5: a regulated mountain lion hunt in Colorado since like nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty five, Yes, it was. Is the population since then grown?
Speaker 5: Is it stays thirty thirty times, so it's grown thirty times.
Speaker 5: So it was regulated, honey. So the point is like,
Speaker 5: how in the world is it excelling the spread of
Speaker 5: CWD if the population of mountain lions is grown?
Speaker 2: What you bring common sense into the sargeant? How dare
Speaker 2: you like? Well?
Speaker 3: And I think that that's you know that that you'
Speaker 3: And that's one of our our biggest concerns. As you
Speaker 3: start to see more and more lies and shell games
Speaker 3: and smoking mirrors and I and I see it in
Speaker 3: other states as well. And I'm sitting there going to somebody.
Speaker 3: Somebody needs to turn around and come up with something,
Speaker 3: but they're not on the ballot.
Speaker 1: We need our own lies, Dan, Yeah.
Speaker 3: We got to get that's your job. You start seeing.
Speaker 4: Stuff, fight lies with lies.
Speaker 2: Dan.
Speaker 5: I want to ask you a question earlier when you
Speaker 5: were talking you refer to you basical said that the
Speaker 5: eighty percent left of the general public that's more likely
Speaker 5: to check no than yes. Why do you think that
Speaker 5: that is? Why do you think that they're more tending
Speaker 5: to go the wrong direction of what you're.
Speaker 3: Wanting a lot of times historically on when ballots come
Speaker 3: up and there's either too much on the ballot, too
Speaker 3: much information for the one person to decipher. They either
Speaker 3: check the wrong box because they assume that that's the
Speaker 3: right way. They have to have some time to be
Speaker 3: able to educate themselves and to check the right box,
Speaker 3: which in our case would be to vote no, not
Speaker 3: vote yes. Most of those people don't do their homework
Speaker 3: until they open up the ballot and they go yes, no, yes, oh, Trump, Biden, Harris, whatever,
Speaker 3: and they jump on the key phrases, the stuff that
Speaker 3: they haven't paid attention to. They just don't pay attention to.
Speaker 3: And I think that that's a detriment to us. Is
Speaker 3: a you know, a republic, a democracy that is available
Speaker 3: to us to be able to turn around and say
Speaker 3: we're going to vote, and we're going to vote the
Speaker 3: right way. The blue Book the last language of the
Speaker 3: blue Book, which is I think in Arkansas's ProAb of
Speaker 3: the same way, but you get a book that explains
Speaker 3: all the measures or the judges or the ballot. We
Speaker 3: just went through the final draft of the blue Book
Speaker 3: last week and that was sent to the Secretary of
Speaker 3: State through the Legislative Council Legislative Draft analysis. The language
Speaker 3: that's in there is available to anybody to read. But
Speaker 3: it's a two and a half page synopsis for the
Speaker 3: general public to be able to decipher about this specific measure.
Speaker 3: Two and a half pages.
Speaker 1: Five percent of people are going to read that, yeah,
Speaker 1: if not less exactly.
Speaker 3: And so when you're looking at states, and that's a
Speaker 3: great point, Clay, when you when you look at states
Speaker 3: that are fifty one to forty nine or fifty three
Speaker 3: to forty seven, that five percent that you give them
Speaker 3: the facts that they really want to sit down and
Speaker 3: get into the nut cutting on stuff and make sure
Speaker 3: that they know exactly why and how to do it.
Speaker 3: Those are the five percent that we're really concerned about
Speaker 3: because they could sway this half a point or a
Speaker 3: whole point one way or the other. That they just
Speaker 3: educate themselves and look at the facts.
Speaker 7: When you only got thirty three thousand and I had
Speaker 7: a five million plus voting too, I mean there's and
Speaker 7: there is a sea of folks to educate your.
Speaker 3: Well, and we've had we've had a tremendous amount of
Speaker 3: people because of the Wolf deal. And one thing that's
Speaker 3: going in our favor, even with all the lives and
Speaker 3: the fallacies and falsehoods out there. There's a significant amount
Speaker 3: of buyer's remorse on what they did on the wolf deal.
Speaker 3: Everybody thought that, oh, it'd be cool to hear a wolf.
Speaker 3: I heard a wolf and Yellowstone. I didn't know it
Speaker 3: was going to be on my back porch and eat
Speaker 3: my neighbor's calves. But yeah, so they turn around and voted,
Speaker 3: but they didn't vote very much fifty point nine percent.
Speaker 3: And so there's a certain amount of buyer's remorse because
Speaker 3: wolves are in the news every single day in Colorado,
Speaker 3: that they're creating more depredation, they're creating more instances of havoc.
Speaker 3: CPW can't do what they want to do at this
Speaker 3: point in time. They can't talk about it unless it
Speaker 3: happens to be able the science that the governor who's
Speaker 3: agreed with with the governor's spouse, the first gentleman. They
Speaker 3: can't they can't do what they need to do to
Speaker 3: get the point out. I mean, CBW didn't want wolves.
Speaker 3: It's just that the voters voted on wolves, and CPW
Speaker 3: has to uphold the law what the voters want, and
Speaker 3: then the governor helps accentuate and enhance that position. But
Speaker 3: the buyer's remorse is another component on top of that
Speaker 3: five percent to read the blue book that you look
Speaker 3: at and go, well, if you get a tenth of
Speaker 3: these guys and two tents of those guys, and maybe
Speaker 3: we actually make a point and get two tents of
Speaker 3: these guys. Pretty soon we're to present ourselves and the
Speaker 3: voters of people. The people of Colorado would have spoken
Speaker 3: at that point in time, because that's all we've heard
Speaker 3: for the last four years. The people have spoken, and
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, not all of them did.
Speaker 7: And what.
Speaker 1: Can we what would be a meaningful thing that people
Speaker 1: can do? Because all this stuff I think part of
Speaker 1: the gap between action and inaction with people that aren't
Speaker 1: in Colorado. Like if I lived in Colorado, I know
Speaker 1: what I could do. I could vote right, I could
Speaker 1: talk to my friends. Yep, we can't vote there. What
Speaker 1: is really meaningful that we could do?
Speaker 3: I think the thing that we're trying to do. And
Speaker 3: I've been working with Charles and Mike at how for
Speaker 3: a Wildlife. You know, I've been on this is my
Speaker 3: seventy second, seventy sixth podcast since January first, and you
Speaker 3: guys have allowed me to come on twice. I was
Speaker 3: on Metiater guys twice the message. The reason that we're
Speaker 3: talking to the choir to the general public, sportsmen and women,
Speaker 3: is because it's coming to your state. We need your
Speaker 3: help to help defeat it there. And to do that,
Speaker 3: the biggest thing people can do is to get online
Speaker 3: and share the message. You know, when we get something
Speaker 3: that Cameron Haynes comes to our event and does something
Speaker 3: and there's one hundred and eight thousand people that watch
Speaker 3: it in three days, and there's twenty seven people that
Speaker 3: share it. But the message that he said, they all
Speaker 3: listened to it, but they didn't expand it out. We
Speaker 3: have the power of social media before us to be
Speaker 3: able to get people to understand this isn't about Colorado,
Speaker 3: not just about mountain lines and Bobcats. I don't know
Speaker 3: anybody body in the country has been dumb enough the
Speaker 3: last ten months to turn around and run around and
Speaker 3: try to dedicate their life to podcasts. I mean, or really,
Speaker 3: that's my son. I've got better things to do because
Speaker 3: of our business. But we needed to be able to
Speaker 3: get the message. We need to be able to feed
Speaker 3: off of everybody else's coattails, and we need the help
Speaker 3: to be able to expand that message, because I would
Speaker 3: venture to say that there's a large percentage of every
Speaker 3: one of those podcast listeners that either hunt or apply
Speaker 3: to hunt in the state of Colorado. So you've got
Speaker 3: skin in the game. What are you going to do?
Speaker 3: You can You probably know people in Colorado, just like
Speaker 3: you're talking about Johnny Hamilton, which all asked Johnny to
Speaker 3: give me a plug when he comes on sometime. But
Speaker 3: there's an opportunity there to continue message building, continue ambassadorship,
Speaker 3: to make sure that we are part of the solution
Speaker 3: and not part of the problem. If you ignore it,
Speaker 3: I don't care if you're an Arkansas or Michigan or Maryland.
Speaker 3: If you ignore it, you're part of the problem. And
Speaker 3: the more states that they knock off for, the more
Speaker 3: groups that they knock off for, the more individuals that
Speaker 3: they get to be done trodden and just say I'm
Speaker 3: not doing it anymore. Pretty soon our rank and file
Speaker 3: on our forces become smaller and smaller and smaller. We
Speaker 3: have a message capability in our social media outreach and
Speaker 3: the branding that we've got and the visualization and the
Speaker 3: optics that we've created in a hunting and fishing community
Speaker 3: to build something that is the most epic, monumental anti
Speaker 3: anti hunting component you could possibly get, but we don't
Speaker 3: do it very well. A lot of people want to
Speaker 3: grip in grand they want to show their white tail,
Speaker 3: they want to show their big fish. People share that
Speaker 3: all over the place. If I was a really good
Speaker 3: looking that nineteen year old girl and had peanut butter
Speaker 3: in my belly button, the dog was looking it out,
Speaker 3: there'd be nine million people sharing that damn thing. But
Speaker 3: they're not going to do it for me. But they're
Speaker 3: not going to do it with me because I'm an
Speaker 3: old white guy who's trying to profess about hunting, trapping,
Speaker 3: heritage tradition, and it's the livelihood of what we all
Speaker 3: believe in. But it's a lot harder for somebody to
Speaker 3: turn around to make a comment or to share on
Speaker 3: top of that the biggest trials and tribulations that we've had,
Speaker 3: even though it's been monumental as fundraising, you have to
Speaker 3: be able to fight the antis lies dollar for dollar,
Speaker 3: punch for punch, and tit for tat, And to be
Speaker 3: able to do that, people have come out of the woodwork.
Speaker 3: I mean, I told you guys in June fifty States
Speaker 3: We've gotten contributions and donations from We've got organizations and
Speaker 3: entities and businesses that are building up either T shirt
Speaker 3: sales or knife sales. You saw the thing that outdoor
Speaker 3: EDGs did for us. I mean, I mean they sold out.
Speaker 3: They're reordering because the general public said I want to
Speaker 3: do that. Now they get a knife in return for it.
Speaker 3: But they can be part of the solution as opposed
Speaker 3: to be part of the problem. If you know people
Speaker 3: in Colorado, talk to them, because there's a we got
Speaker 3: five point nine million people in the state of Colorado,
Speaker 3: eighty four million annual visitors. The majority of people that
Speaker 3: are listening to this have been or know somebody in Colorado,
Speaker 3: or they hunt, are they vacation, or they do business,
Speaker 3: or they have a second home, or they ski. Even
Speaker 3: though you can't vote somewhere, do a little bit of
Speaker 3: effort and just say, hey, Joe, you live in Longmont,
Speaker 3: what do you think about this mount?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I know some people. I know some people. I'll
Speaker 2: tell them, yeah, I mean, but.
Speaker 1: It's are there any Are there any scheduled events coming
Speaker 1: up this fall, like public events.
Speaker 3: The biggest ones we've got actually coming up this week,
Speaker 3: and it'll be it'll be I guess a week and
Speaker 3: a half or two weeks before this actually airs. Where's
Speaker 3: where in Denver and Robbie Kroger with Blood Orgs is
Speaker 3: premiering the Lionheart documentary about hound hunting, and that's at
Speaker 3: the Paramount Theater in downtown Denver.
Speaker 1: Really yeah and tell yeah, tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that so that, So that would be a
Speaker 3: couple couple of days a week before this actually airs.
Speaker 2: Shoot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's it's something. Those are the type of
Speaker 3: things Robbie went out on a limb, turns around and
Speaker 3: gets the Paramount Theater has twelve or fifteen hundred tickets available.
Speaker 3: That's a red carpet deal. The media is supposed to
Speaker 3: be there. They're feeding Wild Game as a as like
Speaker 3: an order of deal, and there's going to be some
Speaker 3: silent bus and stuff. But that shows part of what
Speaker 3: I'm trying to talk about as far as.
Speaker 1: We should go to that brand.
Speaker 2: Yeah for real.
Speaker 3: I like Robbie, it's a community building and messaging and
Speaker 3: ambassadorship to say it's not my fight unless it's your fight.
Speaker 3: And if it's your fight, it better darncher be your
Speaker 3: fight and be your fight because they're going to do it.
Speaker 3: It's some look. They're going after lead weights on fishing,
Speaker 3: they're going after lead shot on shotguns. They're going after
Speaker 3: pinned bird hunts. For training your dogs. They're trying to
Speaker 3: get you not to be able to use tools to
Speaker 3: train your dogs. They're trying to get you to be
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what it is. It's just that whatever
Speaker 3: they can get at whatever level they find the weakest
Speaker 3: chink in the armor in any single state, in any
Speaker 3: single level, that's what they go after. And that's the
Speaker 3: hardest thing to get people to understand is just step up.
Speaker 3: Just do something. Write a letter. If you read an
Speaker 3: op ed instead of turning around in which people get
Speaker 3: like you was talking about the New York Times, the
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal. People see something and they don't agree
Speaker 3: with it. Just try john a note to the editor
Speaker 3: instead of saying did you see that? And they talk
Speaker 3: about it for twenty, you know, twenty minutes or ten
Speaker 3: different people. Just jot a note down. See if you're
Speaker 3: going to do this, you know, very unbiased. Make sure
Speaker 3: you cover both sides of the story, and you don't
Speaker 3: take a study from the people who are trying to
Speaker 3: take away the hunting who are who's that's the team
Speaker 3: of the study. There's there's tools available to us, and
Speaker 3: I don't think that we've done a very good job
Speaker 3: even though we've got the tools available now.
Speaker 1: What has happened though, has been pretty remarkable. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: the support that you guys have had, led by you
Speaker 1: one hundred percent and others too. But I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this is the first time in the last last
Speaker 1: decade at least, that I've seen the eyes of the
Speaker 1: hunting community really pop open about a predator issue, which
Speaker 1: I think is incredible, at least at this level.
Speaker 3: Do you agree with Yeah, it's it's something to where
Speaker 3: you know, I mentioned the guys at Howl for Wildlife
Speaker 3: and when I when I and a friend of mine
Speaker 3: started this organization CROWM in twenty sixteen, we did it
Speaker 3: with the idea that we were probably going to get
Speaker 3: a very unfavorable gubernatorial administration in twenty eighteen, just the
Speaker 3: way the makeup of the land was. We didn't know
Speaker 3: we were going to get you know, the anti the
Speaker 3: anti hunter supreme. But starting starting preemptively at that point
Speaker 3: in time is the only thing that got us to
Speaker 3: the level to where we can be today. And seeing
Speaker 3: the support and seeing the outreach and seeing the messaging
Speaker 3: and seeing the funding and seeing what people are trying
Speaker 3: to do at every single level. It's inspirational. It's admirable.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I know that we're carrying a lot
Speaker 3: of the heat on that, but I mean still, you've
Speaker 3: got to be able to motivate people to be able
Speaker 3: to turn around and do it well enough. And I
Speaker 3: don't care if it's a hounds organization in Ohio or
Speaker 3: Michigan or somebody in Arizona or in California. They're all contributing.
Speaker 3: I don't care if it's a trappers association where they're at.
Speaker 3: I don't care if it's a bow hunter association, fishing associations,
Speaker 3: individual businesses, you know, tackle shops, kids would lemonade stands.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, there's not an exaggeration, but ninety
Speaker 3: eight hundred individual contributions this year, not counting what we
Speaker 3: did latter part of last year and September through December.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's a lot, especially when you start talking
Speaker 3: some of those are one hundred thousand dollars and some
Speaker 3: of them are twenty dollars. It takes millions of dollars
Speaker 3: to fight extremism. You can't do it cheap, and you
Speaker 3: darn sure can't do it on a presidential election year
Speaker 3: when everybody else is buying this for fifty dollars and normally,
Speaker 3: well you could buy it for twenty five. Now it
Speaker 3: cost you one hundred and fifty because of the political scale,
Speaker 3: and so it cost you more money to be able
Speaker 3: to do it. But the more negativity And you mentioned CBS,
Speaker 3: so a CBS in Denver that covered it on that
Speaker 3: study with a chronic waste and disease, they won't sell
Speaker 3: the advertising that we need unless it's at a very
Speaker 3: higher premium because the yep, because they see election exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there's there's so many moving parts of this whole thing, Clay,
Speaker 3: that that the average guy doesn't understand because it's not
Speaker 3: in their wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: I mean, just like you were talking about, you know, softball.
Speaker 1: Harris and Trump both wanted to be here today and
Speaker 1: I told them no because we only had six hook
Speaker 1: upside on this one.
Speaker 2: He won't let anybody else sit on his saddle.
Speaker 1: We put either one of them right there. Do you
Speaker 1: have any questions?
Speaker 6: Do you do?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 6: What do they need for the mountain lion Man to
Speaker 6: go into effect? Is it votes or signatures?
Speaker 3: They need votes At this point in time, they turned
Speaker 3: in the appropriate amount of signatures, even with our decline
Speaker 3: to sign campaign. But they turned into the signatures July third,
Speaker 3: they were certified on July thirtieth, and now we've been
Speaker 3: in that weight game of waiting for a number to
Speaker 3: come up. And so it's going to be on the ballot.
Speaker 3: We just don't know exactly what number. And by the
Speaker 3: time that this podcast airs will probably have an idea,
Speaker 3: if not no specifically what ballot number it is.
Speaker 6: Okay, so what are like, how many do you have
Speaker 6: an idea of how many votes they would need for
Speaker 6: it to go into effect.
Speaker 3: Well, depends on the registered voters. But if you go
Speaker 3: anything off the Wolf deal from twenty twenty, you figure
Speaker 3: that I mean, you're fighting for you're fighting for hair
Speaker 3: on the on somebody's chin at this point in time,
Speaker 3: or maybe hair on their head, depending on you in
Speaker 3: your case, but you you're fighting for very few follicles
Speaker 3: of hair. Because when you start talking about thirty three
Speaker 3: thousand out of five point nine million with four point
Speaker 3: one million registered voters, it doesn't take long to say
Speaker 3: this is not insurmountable. Yeah, it's just that you have
Speaker 3: to have the people show up. And we've heard stories
Speaker 3: from around the country, not just in Colorado, but two thousand,
Speaker 3: for instance, that two thousand and twenty twenty two, from
Speaker 3: two thousand to twenty twenty, that the sportsmen and women
Speaker 3: vote has declined almost fifteen percent. That's not because they've declined,
Speaker 3: it's just that they opted not to pull the trigger.
Speaker 3: They opted not to vote. So from twenty twenty to
Speaker 3: twenty two that stayed pretty close. If we have fifteen
Speaker 3: percent of the sportsmen and women in the country that
Speaker 3: are really not voting at all because they don't think
Speaker 3: it's worth it, well, how does that, especially when you're
Speaker 3: losing by a half a percent or a percent, If
Speaker 3: you get those fifteen percent just to show up, even
Speaker 3: if they didn't all vote the same way, because they'd
Speaker 3: all see the same thing.
Speaker 2: A call.
Speaker 7: When you call somebody to action, they say, especially digitally,
Speaker 7: you go past one or two pokes with your finger
Speaker 7: and you've lost everybody. Yep, they're not going to go
Speaker 7: beyond that. I'm talking to everybody out there and everybody
Speaker 7: in this room except Dan, because I know you're going
Speaker 7: to do it. But we got to just decide we're
Speaker 7: going to put in the effort and take this thing
Speaker 7: back because it's laying there.
Speaker 2: We could do it.
Speaker 7: It could be an absolute overwhelming smash by our side
Speaker 7: to take this back, if enough folks would just take
Speaker 7: get the gumption to get up off the couch and
Speaker 7: get it done, take the initiative.
Speaker 3: I had more people in twenty twenty that have told
Speaker 3: me since then that they didn't vote in twenty twenty. Ranchers, farmers, outfitters.
Speaker 3: You got to stop and think about two things that
Speaker 3: our side doesn't think about often. And November fifth is
Speaker 3: right in the middle hunting season. It's right middle of
Speaker 3: shipping season for cattle. It's getting out of high country
Speaker 3: and going to the low country, and it's getting ready
Speaker 3: for winter. And it's too it And I had and
Speaker 3: in Colorado, you don't go to the pole. It's a
Speaker 3: mail end ballot. It's sent to you. All you got
Speaker 3: to do is fill it out and put it in.
Speaker 3: You don't have to drop it off anywhere. It doesn't
Speaker 3: cost you anything to be able to turn around to
Speaker 3: do it. But I had many many people since that
Speaker 3: time that said, yeah, if I know it was going
Speaker 3: to be that close, I would have voted, and you
Speaker 3: know how hard it is for me not to turn
Speaker 3: around and grab somebody by the neck. And but you
Speaker 3: hear that over and over and over, and you're thinking,
Speaker 3: if that's just the people I'm hearing it from, how
Speaker 3: many people actually didn't do it? Because I'm not talking
Speaker 3: to everybody, but I understand how busy people can get
Speaker 3: or I forgot or I just didn't get to it,
Speaker 3: or I was waiting for my wife to bring it out,
Speaker 3: or we were going to sit at the table and
Speaker 3: then something came up. I tell you what. Those are
Speaker 3: the things that the opposition, the extremists are capitalizing on
Speaker 3: because they know that we're not as concerned about it
Speaker 3: as as what we allude and we're not going to
Speaker 3: turn around and step out and gripe and complained about
Speaker 3: it until it's done it over with.
Speaker 5: So going into this one at this point, just talking
Speaker 5: about you know, the residents of Colorado, do you how
Speaker 5: do you feel about it? I mean, do you are
Speaker 5: you seeing still some apathy? Do you think they're motivated?
Speaker 5: What are you feeling around home?
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you some statistics you because I
Speaker 3: like statistics. But I'll tell you back and back in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, the first pole that came out on the
Speaker 3: Wolf issue, there was a sixty eight percent favorability rating
Speaker 3: that the Wolf issue was going to pass by the
Speaker 3: time that the company that we've hired now actually went
Speaker 3: through the trials and tribulations of that whole campaign with
Speaker 3: their poles and everything, and they finally went to the ballot,
Speaker 3: they knocked off seventeen points, so it went from sixty
Speaker 3: eight percent to fifty one percent, and that's exactly where
Speaker 3: it ended up as fifty point nine. The biggest problem
Speaker 3: is they didn't have enough money from the sportsman community
Speaker 3: and that were agriculture community descend it across the finish line.
Speaker 3: They just ran out of money. We've raised three and
Speaker 3: a half times more money to date than both of
Speaker 3: those anti wolf campaigns did combine in the entire time
Speaker 3: that they were doing stuff. That's a giant win for us.
Speaker 3: But if you remember sixty eight percent to start with
Speaker 3: on that pole, the pole that we did on this
Speaker 3: last November when we started this campaign was fifty four
Speaker 3: percent favorability rating, fourteen points different than what the Wolf
Speaker 3: deal first came out at the poll that we got
Speaker 3: back two weeks ago indicated that it's forty five four
Speaker 3: forty four against and twelve points undecided. That's a that's
Speaker 3: a major hit on the opposition. It's a major gain
Speaker 3: on our part because there's so that twelve percent is
Speaker 3: what we're looking at right now. We know that there's
Speaker 3: forty five to forty four. We're looking at that twelve,
Speaker 3: but we don't we don't need all twelve. We need.
Speaker 3: All we need is seven of the twelve, and so
Speaker 3: that's more math.
Speaker 2: Just you know, you guys are killing all.
Speaker 3: Right, I'll mess up somewhere.
Speaker 1: Do you think about me and Brent on the freeway
Speaker 1: in Denver with big.
Speaker 4: Signs, sandwich boards on the street.
Speaker 3: I'll get I'll get you a room. You tell me
Speaker 3: when you want to be there.
Speaker 1: Dude, we should do a live podcast from the freeway
Speaker 1: the state capitol holding our signs, I.
Speaker 3: Mean live Mountain Lion on a chain. Brent's kind that
Speaker 3: sign around like, yeah, yeah, we should have we should
Speaker 3: have had.
Speaker 2: Mountain Lion hide laid out here. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: We just we need as much help as we can
Speaker 3: get from people that don't think that they can do anything,
Speaker 3: and just because you don't vote in Colorado, and is.
Speaker 1: It not it's not too late. This is coming out
Speaker 1: in September night, Like these last two months are really.
Speaker 3: Critical actually because we haven't had a number that's being
Speaker 3: given to us. You can't tell people to vote knowing
Speaker 3: whatever it is, because we don't have a number, even
Speaker 3: though people are still using the ninety one. It was
Speaker 3: Initiative ninety one. But once it becomes a proposition, that
Speaker 3: number will change. So that's why you haven't seen any
Speaker 3: direct advertising, subliminal message in on our part, you know,
Speaker 3: don't allow the hunting band to happen. Make sure you
Speaker 3: support you know, science based wildlife management and the North
Speaker 3: American model. But that's still for the most part, talking
Speaker 3: to our audience. Once they start seeing the negative and
Speaker 3: the display of the lives and the falsehoods from the opposition,
Speaker 3: and then we come up with the science based stuff
Speaker 3: and you know, the lions attacking dogs and the lions
Speaker 3: attacking people, and the lions decimating deer and elk populations
Speaker 3: and not just taking the sick CWD deer out. Oh
Speaker 3: you know, I mean it's like they just pick them out.
Speaker 3: I mean it's like it's like that one right there,
Speaker 3: let me swap your nose. I mean, you know, and
Speaker 3: I always I always wonder, I said, and of course
Speaker 3: I'm in so darned many meetings anymore, but I always
Speaker 3: wonder that that what if they what if they run
Speaker 3: out of chronic waste of disease deer, I mean, what
Speaker 3: they don't eat?
Speaker 2: No, then they're eating toddlers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I mean you know, I think.
Speaker 1: Uh a point that's just as strong. And again we're
Speaker 1: preaching to the choir. But but I think about this
Speaker 1: with with predator hunting issues, is that like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can make a case of all the negative stuff that
Speaker 1: lions are doing, you know, predating upond livestock and all
Speaker 1: this different stuff. But to me, the most positive argument
Speaker 1: is that we've been hunting them pretty hard for fifty
Speaker 1: sixty years and the populations are still very strong. So
Speaker 1: the the you know, sport hunting is really pretty inconsequential
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, thriving mountain lion populations. Now, I mean,
Speaker 1: would you agree.
Speaker 3: With that, well, yeah, one hundred percent, because when when
Speaker 3: if you listen to some of the oppositions spokespeople, if
Speaker 3: we keep and I've got recordings of it, it's on
Speaker 3: some of our social media stuff. If we keep hunting
Speaker 3: mountain lands at this rate, they're going to become extinct. Okay, well,
Speaker 3: we've been hunting that at this rate since the last
Speaker 3: fifty five sixty years and we've we've increased our populations thirty.
Speaker 1: Fold, and so so that's the message.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we ain't keeping in check or dumb people.
Speaker 3: Well then okay, you don't want to come to Colorado
Speaker 3: with a sign, then we're just we're we're up against
Speaker 3: the wall. To the point of the last sixty five
Speaker 3: seventy five days of this campaign, that's when it's really
Speaker 3: going to get into the weeds. You're going to see
Speaker 3: a lot of name calling from both sides, and you're
Speaker 3: going to see a lot of facts from our side,
Speaker 3: a lot of data from our side, a lot of
Speaker 3: criticism from our side, and just lies in fallacies and
Speaker 3: falsehoods from the opposition. That's just that's the way they play,
Speaker 3: and they play it. It doesn't matter whether you want
Speaker 3: to talk about raccoon hunting in Pennsylvania or you want
Speaker 3: to talk about coops deer hunting in Arizona. That's the
Speaker 3: way they play. Every single level of it. It's and
Speaker 3: they always come out with something that is more sensationalized
Speaker 3: than the last time that they did it, because they
Speaker 3: realize that their supporter is the one that turns around,
Speaker 3: doesn't know, has no clue whatsoever. And as I've often said,
Speaker 3: if you've got ten percent on the top that support
Speaker 3: hunting avid hunters, and you've got ten percent that are
Speaker 3: avid anti extremists, you don't need to convince that eighty percent.
Speaker 3: You need to convince forty one of that eighty that's it,
Speaker 3: because you're just trying to get to fifty one. It's
Speaker 3: fifty plus one or fifty point, you know, fifty plus
Speaker 3: point one or whatever. The average person doesn't understand just
Speaker 3: the intricacies of wildlife management. And I don't know what
Speaker 3: you got in Arkansas, but in Colorado we've got nine
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty one species of wildlife and seventy eight
Speaker 3: of those are game species. Those are so well appropriately managed.
Speaker 3: And have been saying that again, nine hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: one species of wildlife and seventy eight game species. Now
Speaker 3: that's that's toads and salamanders, everything, that's seventy eight game species.
Speaker 3: So you figured, you know, ducks and squirrels and fur
Speaker 3: bearing animals and big game in small game, and all
Speaker 3: the stuff that's combined. Seventy eight of those species, the
Speaker 3: licenses and the permits that go along with them, pay
Speaker 3: for the management of nine hundred and sixty one other species,
Speaker 3: including the flipping wolf. I mean, you know, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to be politically, is okay?
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I think, I think and this is
Speaker 1: kind of a broader appeal, which I think is a
Speaker 1: narrative that's stronger now in the hunting community that it's
Speaker 1: ever been. But there is a real need for for
Speaker 1: hunters to be evangelical in a sense of just like
Speaker 1: think about if if if every hunter was sharing wild
Speaker 1: game with their non hunting friends and neighbors that wanted meat,
Speaker 1: and and all of a sudden, these eight or ten
Speaker 1: people have a totally different opinion about hunters than they
Speaker 1: ever had before when they when they understand that their
Speaker 1: neighbor is a hunter and how they're using this meat
Speaker 1: and how how wonderful it is, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's groups of people today, groups of hunters today
Speaker 1: that talk about how that you know this, uh you
Speaker 1: know that we shouldn't be trying to spread hunting. We
Speaker 1: shouldn't be trying to to grow the hunting community. We're
Speaker 1: putting excess, excess stress on the resource and stuff. And
Speaker 1: I just think it's just so that is a perfect
Speaker 1: way for hunting to be dead in a generation. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's for us to all to you know, to
Speaker 1: hunt quietly.
Speaker 3: And and.
Speaker 1: I just I respect the passion that that group has.
Speaker 1: I just think it's dead wrong. And I and I
Speaker 1: think about like even in the future as we continue,
Speaker 1: and this won't go away. I mean, like if we
Speaker 1: beat this, it's like the next thing is going to
Speaker 1: come around. It's like this, this is a way of life.
Speaker 1: If we want to maintain this way of life in
Speaker 1: North America, we have to build a fighting culture.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: When I first got into the national bear hunting scene
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, uh, growing up in a in a
Speaker 1: state that's very favorable to hunting and rural culture and living. Uh,
Speaker 1: I was exposed to the Michigan Bear Hunters Association of
Speaker 1: the Michigan and went up there and did a film
Speaker 1: with them, Like I made a film for them, and man,
Speaker 1: they raise their whole just inside their hunting culture. If
Speaker 1: you're a bear hunter, you're politically politically active, and you're
Speaker 1: a fighter. Like that, those two things go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: You're you're a member. There's multiple great bear hunting organizations
Speaker 1: up there, and uh, it's just part of the culture.
Speaker 1: I mean, their kids grow up knowing that, Yep, we're
Speaker 1: bear hunters, we're members of the association, we go to
Speaker 1: the banquet, we vote, and uh, that has to become
Speaker 1: something that's stronger everywhere, not just in places, and in
Speaker 1: Michigan specifically, it's a you know, they have a referendum
Speaker 1: government where you can just with the amount of signatures,
Speaker 1: like Colorado, you can get stuff on the ballot. That's
Speaker 1: not an every state. And they just know that they
Speaker 1: have to fight, they have to raise money and so powerful.
Speaker 1: And I just think about how just as we continue
Speaker 1: to go forward, you know, we just have to be
Speaker 1: and I think evangelical is the right word, stealing that
Speaker 1: term from you know, like in a religious sense.
Speaker 3: But you also have to be you also have to
Speaker 3: be meticulously calculated on how you do that. And I
Speaker 3: say that because from twenty nineteen, twenty and twenty one,
Speaker 3: we beat these attempts to take away the pursuit and
Speaker 3: the harvest of these animals through the Colorida Parks and
Speaker 3: Wildlife Commission. We beat them unanimously with this Governor's Commission,
Speaker 3: and in twenty twenty two they went to the General
Speaker 3: Assembly for the voter for the legislature to turn around
Speaker 3: and vote on it, and we beat them there. So
Speaker 3: we beat them in all forms of government. This is now.
Speaker 3: They didn't like the former government side, so now they
Speaker 3: turn around and go to the general public side, thinking
Speaker 3: that they can, you know, be fuddle and blindfold the
Speaker 3: general public to override two different entities of the government government,
Speaker 3: one from the governor's particular appointments and one from a
Speaker 3: very democratic blue side of the legislature. If you're out
Speaker 3: numbered with those colors twenty three to twelve in the
Speaker 3: Senate and forty nine to sixteen like I mentioned, and
Speaker 3: you still win four to one in the committee, you
Speaker 3: won with those Democrats, and then at the commission you
Speaker 3: beat them eleven zero eleven to zero eleven zero. They
Speaker 3: didn't like those things, so now they're turn around and
Speaker 3: going this way. That's part of the fight that the
Speaker 3: general public needs to be aware of because in twenty
Speaker 3: six states where you do have the ballot initiative capabilities
Speaker 3: like what we have in Colorado, and some of that's good.
Speaker 3: It just that there has to be some sideboards and
Speaker 3: blinders put on it. But you can't have you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want the general public voting on brain surgery.
Speaker 3: I don't want them, you know, I just you know,
Speaker 3: I just don't think that that would be a good idea.
Speaker 3: And we're talking about science, and to me, wild life
Speaker 3: management is just like brain serve. You have to have experts.
Speaker 3: And we've got three hundred and fifty bonified scientists out
Speaker 3: of twelve hundred employees in our Game and Fish parts
Speaker 3: of wallet department. Three hundred and fifty scientists, not some
Speaker 3: lunatics that just turn around and did a study for
Speaker 3: the Animal Action Institute or Animal Wellness Action and the
Speaker 3: Center for Humane Economy. We can all commit if we're
Speaker 3: going to do that, we can all sit around here
Speaker 3: and do a report and study on our own and
Speaker 3: then turn around and release that and we should be
Speaker 3: the experts on it. Well maybe we would be, but
Speaker 3: I don't think that that's the case. When we're turned
Speaker 3: around and trying to take things away, and I think
Speaker 3: that that shows that shows the deceit and the lives
Speaker 3: of the opposition. We don't like the experts that are
Speaker 3: doing this stuff, so we're just going to turn around
Speaker 3: and come up with our own stuff. Although we have
Speaker 3: no backing, no money, no science to turn around and
Speaker 3: do it. We just say it.
Speaker 2: We just come up with a bunch of stuff and
Speaker 2: say it.
Speaker 1: Then, should people give money to the Colorado's for responsible
Speaker 1: wildlife management?
Speaker 3: You've got two options that they can do it. And
Speaker 3: because in Colorado you have to have an issues committee formulated,
Speaker 3: which we've done. The issues committee which is actually running
Speaker 3: the grassroots part of the campaign is Colorado Wildlife Deserve Better.
Speaker 3: They can go to Wildlife Deserve beetter dot com. They
Speaker 3: can donate there while Life Deserve Better dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And then if they don't want to do that, and
Speaker 3: they're already used to doing the save the Hunt side
Speaker 3: of things for the Colorado It's responsible wildlife management, then
Speaker 3: they can go to Save the Hunt Colorado dot com
Speaker 3: and donate there.
Speaker 1: Now you said the other one first, is the other
Speaker 1: one better?
Speaker 3: The other one, the other one is the one that
Speaker 3: has to do every single thing over the next seventy
Speaker 3: five days. The crowm save the hunt is the one
Speaker 3: that supports and creates all the working nuances. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the one that paid for me to turn around
Speaker 3: and come here. That's the one that turn around and
Speaker 3: does the outside messaging primarily to the stakeholder, to talking
Speaker 3: to the choir. The Wildlife Deserve Better is the one
Speaker 3: that we have to have to be able to talk.
Speaker 1: To the That's where we want to direct people to
Speaker 1: go Life Deserve Better. Wildlife Deserve Better dot com. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: Wildlife Deserve Better dot com.
Speaker 3: Man go in.
Speaker 7: First person that sends me proof they donated one thousand dollars,
Speaker 7: what are you gonna do for them?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna send them a case pocket knife.
Speaker 1: No way under more than fifty bucks though, First person to.
Speaker 7: Send a receipt that they gave a thousand I'm gonna
Speaker 7: send a case pocket knife.
Speaker 3: Did you hear that?
Speaker 4: Folks with an autograph letter of authenticity?
Speaker 1: Sure, first person that proves the Brent Reeves that they
Speaker 1: donated one thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Two wildlife.
Speaker 1: Dot com gonna get a case knife from Brent Reeves.
Speaker 5: So then one quick question other than the donation, is
Speaker 5: there any like a short list of things of say,
Speaker 5: like a guy like me and Mississippi or somebody that's not.
Speaker 5: Is there a short list of actionable things somebody could
Speaker 5: do that's not living in Colorado that could be impactful.
Speaker 3: I think the biggest thing that I can see is
Speaker 3: if you're following us on Instagram or Facebook, or you're
Speaker 3: seeing comments from other forums and other venues on any
Speaker 3: one of that social media outlets, is as opposed to
Speaker 3: just reading it and going on and scrolling through it,
Speaker 3: look at look at what it is, and if you
Speaker 3: believe in that, then turn around and make a comment
Speaker 3: and share it and try to repost share it online. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it has to be. It has to be more expansive.
Speaker 3: It's got to be more institutional. It's got to be
Speaker 3: more in our community that I heard what Lake said
Speaker 3: or I heard what Clay said, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: turn around and try to promote that message. I mean,
Speaker 3: if if a tornado is coming and you know that
Speaker 3: the neighbors down the road, I can speak about this
Speaker 3: in Arkansas.
Speaker 2: I guess our language.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the language.
Speaker 3: Exactly if you if a tornado's coming and you hear
Speaker 3: the siren and you know the guy down the road
Speaker 3: can't hear the siren. Because he's deaf, you're just going
Speaker 3: to watch his house blow away. I think that's where
Speaker 3: a lot of sportsmen and women are deaf.
Speaker 2: Do we like that fellow down the road? Yeah? It
Speaker 2: shouldn't make a difference, and in any case, it didn't,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: I think I think that we're to a point to
Speaker 3: where it's upon ourselves to make sure that we lock arms.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we talk about a well regulated militia.
Speaker 3: We talk about you know, seeing an eye to eye
Speaker 3: and making sure we support our neighbor and stuff. That's
Speaker 3: what we've been doing. It's just that I think we've
Speaker 3: got away from a lot of that because it's easy,
Speaker 3: because you can click a button, you don't have to
Speaker 3: worry about it. It's more important now to make sure
Speaker 3: that we're all we're all part of one community, and
Speaker 3: that's the sportsmen and women community to support hunting and
Speaker 3: fishing and conservation and the science based wildlife management.
Speaker 2: M hm, that's good.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming down man. Your I commend your energy
Speaker 1: and your just all the work you've done last years.
Speaker 1: It's inspirational to us, inspirational to me to see somebody
Speaker 1: that's putting their life behind their words. You know you're
Speaker 1: out there doing it and so yeah, man, I just
Speaker 1: want us to find tangible ways to support and help
Speaker 1: this thing because it is bigger in Colorado.
Speaker 2: When we win.
Speaker 3: On November fifth, the thing that I'm already been asked
Speaker 3: by different groups and organizations is will you come speak
Speaker 3: here and will you come present here different conventions or shows.
Speaker 3: When we win, it'll be a culmination of a playbook
Speaker 3: and a roadmap that was created from some guys in
Speaker 3: California with hol for Wildlife and ourselves and creating a
Speaker 3: bond and then outreach into every single person that we
Speaker 3: could possibly outreach too that has a voice and a message,
Speaker 3: and that'll create the playbook on funding, on messaging, on outreach,
Speaker 3: on networking, on strategy building, the legal side of things,
Speaker 3: the logistical side of things. And that's something that we've
Speaker 3: missed from a nationwide perspective. Some states have been able
Speaker 3: to fight some of this stuff off. But when we win,
Speaker 3: we want to be able to turn around and take
Speaker 3: that playbook and hand it to somebody else in Arkansas
Speaker 3: or Washington and say this is what worked, and it
Speaker 3: didn't work on just a state level, worked on a
Speaker 3: national level, on the regional level, on the local level,
Speaker 3: and this is how you can build an armament to
Speaker 3: future victories.
Speaker 2: It's good.
Speaker 1: Great Blake, thanks for coming up from Mississippi.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me here.
Speaker 1: Yep, appreciate it. Everybody else, thanks for being here. And
Speaker 1: don't forget about Brent's case knife, going out to going
Speaker 1: out to the Thanks guys, very much.
Speaker 2: Appreciate it. Thanks