Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear. Listening to podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
Speaker 1: for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: we got a ton to cover today. Papa Yanni's in town.
Speaker 1: Jannice is dadd Yannese is in town, and uh, how
Speaker 1: are you doing over there? What are you doing in town?
Speaker 1: Why are you in town? I came to visit my
Speaker 1: grandkids and my son daughter in law, kind of check
Speaker 1: out things. I'm getting ready to move here, hopefully within
Speaker 1: the year. Yeah, I'm trying to sell my house. I
Speaker 1: told Katie that the house will be up for sale,
Speaker 1: so you guys, if you want to move back to
Speaker 1: Michigan places. She liked the house, and she told me
Speaker 1: about a lot of times that she was there that
Speaker 1: I wasn't there. Do you wind up oh like partying
Speaker 1: over there? That you can't have the same house now
Speaker 1: that my wife used to party and that as a
Speaker 1: high schooler, I think so, yeah, more than what actually
Speaker 1: two houses? Why? Because I mean, I think it was
Speaker 1: more at his other house, his house prior to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she was telling me about being out on the
Speaker 1: pond with you in the paddle boat we used to fish.
Speaker 1: He lives on like a I don't know, ten acre, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a good large amouth bass fishing. So you
Speaker 1: knew Steve's wife in high school. That's why I'm here today. Uh,
Speaker 1: like if you had when So when you're hanging around
Speaker 1: Johannest and his lovely children, right, are you all the
Speaker 1: time kind of like like biting your tongue because you
Speaker 1: don't like the job he's doing, you know, and you
Speaker 1: do it different or do you kind of like how
Speaker 1: his whole families grew. He's going to go into the
Speaker 1: spield to congratulate you guys on ten years. That's a
Speaker 1: big deal in business. Oh yeah, But I want to
Speaker 1: talk about his job as I think he's doing a
Speaker 1: great job. So when you're over there, you're digging what
Speaker 1: you're seeing in terms of how he's running the whole
Speaker 1: program with the family and everything. Oh with the family,
Speaker 1: I thought you were talking about meat eater. No, the family, Oh, absolutely, absolutely?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think uh I even get some tips
Speaker 1: from him on like, you know, don't leave the male
Speaker 1: thing out of it. So you do you feel that
Speaker 1: he is uh doing better than you did? Oh hundred
Speaker 1: some really? Oh yeah, because is red right now. He's
Speaker 1: literally turning red. He's gotten bared, he got embarrassed twice already.
Speaker 1: But the reality is, when you're going through divorce, it's
Speaker 1: really tough on the kids, and it's it's equally as
Speaker 1: tough on the parents because you know, you're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, like, Okay, where am I going to fit in?
Speaker 1: How am I gonna make this work? And so we
Speaker 1: each have our own sort of approach and guess what,
Speaker 1: you get that approach from our parents, Right, So some
Speaker 1: of the things that I picked up from my parents,
Speaker 1: or specifically one of my father we're not the way
Speaker 1: to raise kits. And so you go through this journey
Speaker 1: of learning, hey man, don't do that. That's stupid. That's
Speaker 1: bad for you, it's bad for the kid. And eventually
Speaker 1: you get to a point where you go, hey, I
Speaker 1: think I got part of this figured out. So I
Speaker 1: would say all of my children are light years ahead
Speaker 1: of where I was as an adult trying to raise kids. Wow.
Speaker 1: So the world's not going to ship. Oh no, not
Speaker 1: at all. And the other thing he's has the best
Speaker 1: news I've heard all week. I mean, there's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just about raising the kid, it's what the
Speaker 1: child is exposed to write that environment, and that the
Speaker 1: child knows that you care about them, you know, like
Speaker 1: giving them limitations. You can do this. I want you
Speaker 1: to be adventurous. I want you to explore, but you know,
Speaker 1: here's the limit. You can't go beyond that. That's really important.
Speaker 1: I can't let your brother on fire now that you
Speaker 1: can try. So what I see them doing, you know,
Speaker 1: not just your honest but Jennifer there, they make a
Speaker 1: really good team. And you know, I would assume that
Speaker 1: if I went to your house that I would probably
Speaker 1: see the same thing, just your own version of it,
Speaker 1: you know, your adaptation of how that works. That's good here. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you should be lapping us up, Yanni. You
Speaker 1: look like you're not You're not. This is not many
Speaker 1: guys ever get praised by their father in front of them.
Speaker 1: You think most people your dad's job is to take
Speaker 1: you down and take down that's what he does. Now
Speaker 1: he takes his own Manda joined also by nif Cole,
Speaker 1: Dave Wilms. We met because you guys used to be
Speaker 1: whatever the hell this means advisors two former Governor Matt
Speaker 1: Mead of Wyoming. That's right, was very well light. So
Speaker 1: they must have done a good job. It's the best
Speaker 1: politician in the history of America. But he threw in
Speaker 1: the towel, and he threw in the towel and doesn't
Speaker 1: want to run for president. No, he crushed it for
Speaker 1: eight years and then deservedly did what every good politician
Speaker 1: should do, which is he he said, I've I've I've served.
Speaker 1: He did my job, and now he is lifting weights
Speaker 1: at Gold's gym right now. Probably why while we speak.
Speaker 1: He's he's much thinner, he's tanner, he's buff again, he's
Speaker 1: playing a lot of golf. None of those banquet meals.
Speaker 1: Every time I think he should, I think he should
Speaker 1: do like a if. There's probably a lot of strikes
Speaker 1: you get and I don't know, because Cheney was from Wyoming.
Speaker 1: You can be from Wyoming and play on the play
Speaker 1: on the main stage. Actually Wyoming. This is like we're
Speaker 1: gonna go down rap hole. But there you get actually
Speaker 1: a lot of uh outsize political clout when you're from Wyoming,
Speaker 1: because because there's some interesting stuff that we've done. First
Speaker 1: of all, we keep the population very low, so we
Speaker 1: have two senators and five thousand people, so your ratio
Speaker 1: of senators to people in Wyoming is better than it
Speaker 1: is in any other state. And the math one time
Speaker 1: and figured out voting rates, So like Wyoming's population, how
Speaker 1: many what percentage of that population is voting age, what
Speaker 1: percent actually votes? Basically like six dudes can send you
Speaker 1: to the governor's mansion. That's about right, and the third
Speaker 1: of the populace is right here and U Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you don't get elected, you still get to be
Speaker 1: a policy advisor. That's how it works. That's great. So
Speaker 1: that's nice, But now you don't do that anymore. So now,
Speaker 1: nif I you've been on the show too or three times?
Speaker 1: Two times? Dave and I have both been on here
Speaker 1: together twice, but the first time, um, Dave just listened
Speaker 1: to a football game on his iPhone the entire time.
Speaker 1: But well, in my defense, no, I don't have a defense.
Speaker 1: I mean I think I was actually kind of following
Speaker 1: a Broncos game at the time. You sports fan, I
Speaker 1: am a big sportsman, but also like Governor Mead was
Speaker 1: your guest and we were on there as well, and
Speaker 1: he was so good at everything. I just sat back,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna need to say anything on this podcast
Speaker 1: because this guy, like he knows his stuff, he knows everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so I can just follow a football game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty fun. We picked you up at the
Speaker 1: airport in Denver and we record at like some kind
Speaker 1: of sports stadium. Now we went that was different time
Speaker 1: we went to We went to p F Chains for
Speaker 1: lunch and uh, and then we with with Rourking some
Speaker 1: guys from Magpole and the Magpool guys came down. We
Speaker 1: all had lunch together and we drove down to the
Speaker 1: Governor's mansion and rolled in there and sat down the
Speaker 1: giant circle and ye fight or something because I know
Speaker 1: because you were hunting afterwards. You were going anilop hunting.
Speaker 1: That's what it was. You were going anilop hunting up
Speaker 1: in Wyoming. You flew in for the animal punt. Janice
Speaker 1: drove a pickup in with all the stuff in it,
Speaker 1: and then you guys met at the Governor's mansion and
Speaker 1: then he picked you up and you guys drove up
Speaker 1: to Casper, where I'm pretty sure you stayed at the
Speaker 1: I don't remember he stayed. I'm a little disturbed, Steel Trap,
Speaker 1: like they haven't impressed. I mean I remember this, stay
Speaker 1: right kidding? I mean I remember the stadium right, because
Speaker 1: you came a second time for Stage Grouse Hunt, and
Speaker 1: we were, in fact, the second podcast to do with you.
Speaker 1: You were like, we kicked on the lie to the
Speaker 1: football stadium because we want to make a pitch where
Speaker 1: people should go, because you always talked about going to
Speaker 1: the University of Montana, and so we're like, well, let's
Speaker 1: take him to the football stadiums. We went to the
Speaker 1: Wildcat or suite, turned on all the lights. While we're
Speaker 1: sitting in that suite open, They've filled the fridge full
Speaker 1: of adult beverages and whatnot. And Josh Allen was actually
Speaker 1: under the lights out on the field throwing passes to
Speaker 1: some of his uh to some of his teammates. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, I wasn't the same guy for everybody
Speaker 1: who I still don't quarterback in Buffalo Backs. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: So now he's like really good, well yeah, but we
Speaker 1: were sitting up there talking about stage ground. I think
Speaker 1: do you think that he had all that success because
Speaker 1: of the podcast that night. I'm sure it was piped
Speaker 1: through the stadium speakers. He's like, now there are some
Speaker 1: boys to take their job seriously. That's right. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take a dial out of that, poky uh nify. Now
Speaker 1: is the n s s F Director of Government Relations,
Speaker 1: State Affairs and ss of being National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Speaker 1: What states? I cover the Rocky Mountains and the Upper Midwest,
Speaker 1: so um, you know it's not the I love those states.
Speaker 1: And then I do all the interactions with governor's offices
Speaker 1: and then so I go to Republican governors and Western
Speaker 1: governors and all that. And then I do also association
Speaker 1: fish and wildlife agencies, so all the interaction with like
Speaker 1: the uh you know, conservation partners at those things, all
Speaker 1: the you know, the directors of game and fish agencies.
Speaker 1: Those are my people too. So I'll go to all
Speaker 1: those meetings and I interact with those guys on behalf
Speaker 1: of awesome. NSSF is the Firearms Trade Association of America.
Speaker 1: So for people that don't know, UM, we represent the
Speaker 1: nine thousand manufacturers and retailers of firearms, ammunitions, optics, UM,
Speaker 1: A lot of clothing manufacturers in the outdoor space. So
Speaker 1: some of our members. A lot of your sponsors are
Speaker 1: members people like weather be Bench, made Um, Vortax, absolutely,
Speaker 1: UM conservation groups like uh Rocky Mountain, Elk Foundation, Mule
Speaker 1: Deer Foundation. So those are members. Just nine thousand different
Speaker 1: entities that are members. It's not people. We represent entities
Speaker 1: like corporate entities, nonprofits. So do you when you say
Speaker 1: Republican governors, do you just not even getting to foot
Speaker 1: in the door with the Democratic No, we go to
Speaker 1: the Democratic Governors associations. Well, yeah, absolutely, and you'll get
Speaker 1: a one on one meeting or now absolutely, We've had
Speaker 1: some great conversations with there's a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: there's great So this is again going down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can classify good or bad politicians
Speaker 1: based on party. I think you have to really look
Speaker 1: at the individual and see if those individuals are looking
Speaker 1: at facts, if they're trying to find things out. In general,
Speaker 1: I think that human beings are smart and if people
Speaker 1: are objectively looking at facts, are going to come to
Speaker 1: They're gonna make good decisions. And I don't they don't
Speaker 1: just instinctively slam the door in your face. That they
Speaker 1: don't want to hear about it. No, I mean, I'd
Speaker 1: be lying if I said it wasn't more difficult in
Speaker 1: some offices than others. Because you know, if you know
Speaker 1: Dave and I like, you know, you've you've got a
Speaker 1: whole group of people. Sometimes you have to trudge through
Speaker 1: to be able to talk to the guy who's in charge.
Speaker 1: And with that comes a lot of opinions, It comes
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, comes a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: history and life history and background thoughts and levels of
Speaker 1: experience and levels of education. And so when you're working
Speaker 1: with um you know, political figures, and this goes for
Speaker 1: everybody listening. You have to be cognizant of that, and
Speaker 1: you have to be respectful of that. If you're trying
Speaker 1: to talk to a guy and convince him of something,
Speaker 1: you've got to try and understand where he's coming from
Speaker 1: before you throw your idea out there on the table
Speaker 1: and demand that he believe as you believe. You have
Speaker 1: to work your way into that. And and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm lucky that I work for an organization where I
Speaker 1: think we are doing the right things, and so it
Speaker 1: makes it very easy for me to be able to
Speaker 1: you know, walk through what I believe to be truth
Speaker 1: and what I believe to be facts, and then to
Speaker 1: walk people into what I think is, you know, the
Speaker 1: the right decision based on truth and facts. And I
Speaker 1: think that's you know, I mean, that's why I feel
Speaker 1: lucky to work where I work. Working for Governor Mead
Speaker 1: was the same way. When you work for a politician
Speaker 1: who you believe in and you believe he's doing all
Speaker 1: those things for the right reason, it makes it very
Speaker 1: easy to go to work every day and to feel
Speaker 1: good about yourself at the end of the day when you,
Speaker 1: you know, turn off the computer. Can you give us
Speaker 1: an example of like something an idea you might pitch
Speaker 1: when you go into these offices. Um, yeah, let's see,
Speaker 1: there's tons of them. Uh. Constitutional right to hunt and
Speaker 1: fish in Utah. So Casey Snyder. We visited with Representative
Speaker 1: Snyder when he just got into the legislature. And so
Speaker 1: that's one of the legislatures that I work. And so
Speaker 1: when I say I work legislatures, I means, you know,
Speaker 1: from January till April, I'm traveling around all these different
Speaker 1: states and I'm meeting with lawmakers constantly to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, things that we believe our priorities. Every legislature
Speaker 1: and the country is going to have, you know, five
Speaker 1: hundred plus bills every year or someone who's gonna be
Speaker 1: trying to change some piece of law. And so my
Speaker 1: job is to try and look through those and make
Speaker 1: sure that I'm catching if there's something that's negatively affecting
Speaker 1: hunting and shooting, sports, wildlife issues and things like that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try and you know, analyze every one of
Speaker 1: those things, try and figure out whether or not, you know,
Speaker 1: we we we have a position as an organization that
Speaker 1: we can take um if we don't, if we can
Speaker 1: make one and then we share with you know, to
Speaker 1: go back and educate those lawmakers as as best as
Speaker 1: possible on what we think the facts are and why
Speaker 1: we think that. You know, I think people should vote
Speaker 1: a certain ways. So, for example, the right to hunt
Speaker 1: and fish in Utah Representative Snyder, we visited with him
Speaker 1: about it. Um. He believed it was important. The debate
Speaker 1: on both sides that will be some people will say, well,
Speaker 1: you don't really need to, you know, have a constitutional
Speaker 1: right to hunt fish in the state constitution. Who would
Speaker 1: take away the right to hunt and fish and so
Speaker 1: then we would respond to that. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: visit with that lawmaker and say, well, look, you know
Speaker 1: in California they've already outlawed bear hunting. There's places, you know,
Speaker 1: in in Nebraska they tried to outlaw you know, this
Speaker 1: is what I worked on. Also, they tried to outlaw
Speaker 1: hunting cougars um. They've you know, in every state you
Speaker 1: get these different rules, rags, laws that come up. And
Speaker 1: so I'm talking with him about this and say, this
Speaker 1: is why you need to have the state have a
Speaker 1: uh a constitutional right that says no, we believe, even
Speaker 1: in hunting and fishing as regulated by our game and
Speaker 1: phish agencies, that that's an individual right that should be
Speaker 1: protected under the state constitution. Because if you don't, it's
Speaker 1: it's not fake that people will come in and they
Speaker 1: will use they'll chip away at that individually. They'll find
Speaker 1: excuses for why you shouldn't be able to trap with
Speaker 1: this kind of trap in this area, and you know
Speaker 1: they'll they'll whittle away at that. And that's not I'm
Speaker 1: not making that up. That's happening today. And so what
Speaker 1: we do is we try and convince those lawmakers to
Speaker 1: pass legislation or to defeat legislation that would you know us,
Speaker 1: you know, take those things away. And so that's what
Speaker 1: I do for a living, is lobbyists and naughty word
Speaker 1: and your crew. No, not really, No, I'm so I'm
Speaker 1: of because people love to hate lobbyists, but they don't
Speaker 1: realize that, you know, and I'm a I'm a registered
Speaker 1: lobbyists in a couple of different states, I'm not you know,
Speaker 1: but you don't, you know, depending on the laws of
Speaker 1: each state, it's totally different. I mean, it's such a
Speaker 1: you know, you throw that word out there. It means
Speaker 1: different things in different states based on different you know,
Speaker 1: legislative priorities and different rules and rags. Again. And so
Speaker 1: in some states, I have little teams of guys that
Speaker 1: I work with, UM that have some fantastic people that
Speaker 1: I work with that that you know, I won't mention
Speaker 1: their names. But in Colorado, in places like that where
Speaker 1: they have those existing relationships, so you might have individuals
Speaker 1: that are super passionate about wildlife and sportsman's issues in Colorado, UM.
Speaker 1: And some of those guys are Democrats, some of those
Speaker 1: guys are Republicans, and depending on who's in office, you
Speaker 1: need to know those people because you have to be
Speaker 1: able to get through the door to talk to that
Speaker 1: decision maker. And if you have put yourself in the
Speaker 1: position of alienating all the people that you need to
Speaker 1: work with when something big comes up, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be effective. And so for us, that's why we,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to make sure that we nurture
Speaker 1: relationships and we care about people regardless of political party
Speaker 1: and all those different states where we work because firearms issues,
Speaker 1: sportsman's issue, they're not Republicans or Democrats. They are you know,
Speaker 1: these issues, these things we care about, these things that
Speaker 1: are important, they're a political and so if you allow
Speaker 1: yourself to be just lost in this you know, idea
Speaker 1: that everything has to be associated with an R or
Speaker 1: a D next to it, that's real tough position to
Speaker 1: be in because you know, ultimately then you put yourself
Speaker 1: at the whim of whoever you know you made enemies with.
Speaker 1: It's impect you want to like, periodically you're gonna get
Speaker 1: locked out of certain states for eight years or twelve years,
Speaker 1: and it makes no sense perpetually. Perhaps, yeah, because as
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's I don't know, you probably know this. Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's Michaels. I watched the last dance, well Michael Jordan's,
Speaker 1: you know, and everybody said they wanted him to respond
Speaker 1: on something. He said, Hey, Republicans buy sneakers to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's a there's a lot to that.
Speaker 1: You know that. You know what that applies to hunting
Speaker 1: in the shooting sports. It's like these things they are
Speaker 1: they cross political divides. Uh. Dave Wilms now National Wildlife
Speaker 1: Federation Senior Director of Western Wildlife. That's a big title,
Speaker 1: and acting VP of Public Lands. Yeah, yep, yes, so
Speaker 1: something just yeah, give us a sports scores and then
Speaker 1: tell us a little b about what that means. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: um so when I left governor means offside join the
Speaker 1: National Wildlife Federation. Uh. And I think the easiest way
Speaker 1: to describe it for folks that aren't familiar with the
Speaker 1: National Wilife Federation is you heard a Ranger Ricky. That's us, right,
Speaker 1: So that's our flagship publication. So the National Wildlife Federation
Speaker 1: was Ranger rick still out. Oh yeah, can you get
Speaker 1: my kids a subscription? You can? I can? I can.
Speaker 1: I always got Ranger rick as a kid. I thought
Speaker 1: Ranger Rick was dead, not a ranger. Rick is alive
Speaker 1: and well doing doing great. Oh yeah yeah, uh still
Speaker 1: still our flagship publication. We also have a couple of
Speaker 1: other publications out there. Really you can still get man,
Speaker 1: because my kids right now are getting the Week for Kids.
Speaker 1: I don't like that. No, no, go get Ranger Rick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now we'll talk after. I was a big boys life guy?
Speaker 1: Did you did you get boys life? I don't know
Speaker 1: boys life? Boy scouts? Wasn't a boy scouting? Oh yeah?
Speaker 1: Are you were? You? Were you an eagle scout clad?
Speaker 1: Hold up, now we got a topic. Yeah, because we
Speaker 1: got were a lot of we got a lot of right, right,
Speaker 1: so this is still those interductions. Right. So National Wildife Federation,
Speaker 1: Ranger Rick. National Wildife Federation was founded, uh back in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six. Right, So nineteen thirty six, President Roosevelt
Speaker 1: in risk you know, not Teddy obviously, but uh D
Speaker 1: r Yeah, in response to a bunch of conservations from
Speaker 1: all over the country, UH convened this conference that still
Speaker 1: goes on today at the North American Wildlife Conference, which
Speaker 1: has held every March every year. UH convene this big
Speaker 1: conference brought everybody to get there, to have a big
Speaker 1: conversation about like the idea was there are there are
Speaker 1: hundreds of these sports and organizations, conservation organizations working on
Speaker 1: the local level, doing a lot of great things, but
Speaker 1: there was nothing bringing them all together to advance federal
Speaker 1: policy to help wildlife recovery across the country. You know,
Speaker 1: there was this recognition at the time we were still
Speaker 1: dealing with the fallout from the market hunting and you know,
Speaker 1: and the expansion west and just wiping out all these
Speaker 1: herds of all these animals all over the place, you know,
Speaker 1: all the different wildlife that we maybe take for granted
Speaker 1: a little bit today. And so so we gotta convene
Speaker 1: this group, bring everybody together. And and this guy by
Speaker 1: the name of Ding Darling, who was actually a cartoonist,
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist from a newspaper in Iowa. He
Speaker 1: was a political satirist, right right, Yeah, exactly so, And
Speaker 1: there's a he has a big wildlife refuge named after him.
Speaker 1: He does. He actually he actually designed the first duck stamp,
Speaker 1: federal duck stamp too. He was the head of uh
Speaker 1: what used to be the the preceding organization to the
Speaker 1: Fishing Wildlife service. He's also the first president of the
Speaker 1: National Wildlife Federation, and he was Yeah, he was the
Speaker 1: one that can help convene this uh, you know, working
Speaker 1: with the President and others, convene this big conference bringing
Speaker 1: I think two thousand people attended at the Mayflower Hotel
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And at the end of this conference,
Speaker 1: what they decided is we needed a large federation. We
Speaker 1: needed a wildlife federation that brought together all of these
Speaker 1: interests from all over the country. Uh, to take all
Speaker 1: these local interests and and and really focus the efforts.
Speaker 1: You're one of the things that we're talking about at
Speaker 1: the time is the same thing you hear about today, right,
Speaker 1: is we don't have enough funding for wildlife management. Right.
Speaker 1: We you know, everybody wants to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Everybody recognizes that wildlife are struggling, but we don't have
Speaker 1: the funding to put into it. And so this was
Speaker 1: one of the first things that happened so that this
Speaker 1: conference convenes creates the National Wildlife Federation. Now that this
Speaker 1: conference and one of the first things that the National
Speaker 1: Wildlife Federation does is helped pass the Pittman Robertson Act,
Speaker 1: the big you know, this big piece of federal legislation
Speaker 1: to figure okay, how do we at a federal level
Speaker 1: help get resources on the ground for wildlife recovery, so
Speaker 1: that the roots the history of our organization is, you know,
Speaker 1: with the this big tent idea of bringing together everybody
Speaker 1: from you know, egg interests and bird watchers and hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers and everybody that that can say, Okay, we
Speaker 1: might not agree on everything, but let's really work on
Speaker 1: the eight percent of things that we agree on, and
Speaker 1: let's try and improve the situation for wildlife and habitat
Speaker 1: on the ground. And that's been the mission really of
Speaker 1: the National Wilife Federation ever since. So today, you know,
Speaker 1: fast forward eighty years, where we are one of the largest,
Speaker 1: if not the largest um conservation organization organization of the country.
Speaker 1: We have six million members and supporters. We have an
Speaker 1: additional two million members through our affiliate network, which is
Speaker 1: made up of fifty two affiliates from all over the country.
Speaker 1: So we're here in Montana. The Montana Wildlife Federation is
Speaker 1: one of our affiliates. Our affiliates in these fifty two,
Speaker 1: more than half of them are what you'd call your
Speaker 1: traditional hook and bullet clubs right there. They're founded on
Speaker 1: really the hunting and angling principles. And and then we
Speaker 1: have a couple of dozen, right that are that are
Speaker 1: more of the UM they aren't really that are more
Speaker 1: of the environmental type of group. Right. You got so
Speaker 1: you got some of the groups that are just that
Speaker 1: that that aren't They don't they're not have a struggle
Speaker 1: in here, they don't have a stated anti hunting position,
Speaker 1: but you get the sense that they they're private conversations
Speaker 1: are very anti hunting, sort of like like Center for
Speaker 1: Biological Diversity. Are they in your group or no? UM,
Speaker 1: not that I've run across. No. And what's interesting about
Speaker 1: the way we operate as a federation is so at
Speaker 1: the National Wilde Federation are affiliates actually set our policies
Speaker 1: and you know, our direction organizational directions. So you have
Speaker 1: on one side of the coin you have your traditional
Speaker 1: hook and Bullet that view as maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: more conservative, right, and then on the other side you
Speaker 1: have more of your traditional environmentalists I'm using very broad labels,
Speaker 1: but that tend to be more left leaning. And they
Speaker 1: them together at our annual convention every year, and they
Speaker 1: set our policies and so they have to agree. And
Speaker 1: what that usually means is we come in right down
Speaker 1: the middle on things and we aim to be a
Speaker 1: nonpartisan organization that really just wants to make sure wildlife
Speaker 1: and people thrive in an ever changing world. That's our
Speaker 1: mission statement. So we're a big tent organization, UM. But
Speaker 1: we have of our membership UM I believe the last
Speaker 1: I saw nearly two million of them are identify as
Speaker 1: either hunters or anglers. Like they are hunters or anglers
Speaker 1: or are interested in hunting and angling. That makes us
Speaker 1: a pretty significant player in the hunting and fishing world.
Speaker 1: But we also have this other side of our organization
Speaker 1: that you have your you know, backyard gardeners and you know,
Speaker 1: you know, we have you know, your folks in the
Speaker 1: city that want to do you know, do right by
Speaker 1: wildlife in their backyards. And we have a Garden for
Speaker 1: Wildlife program where you can you know, have a yeah
Speaker 1: habitat in the yard uh recognized for doing good things
Speaker 1: for wildlife, for pollinators, whatever. So it's just a big, big,
Speaker 1: diverse tent. And then so my my niche within that
Speaker 1: is right now leading our public lands program, which is
Speaker 1: primarily focused in the western United States on public lands issues,
Speaker 1: although we do some in other places where there are
Speaker 1: public lands UM and a lot of Western wildlife issues,
Speaker 1: which actually turns out there's an awful lot of overlap
Speaker 1: between those two, I can imagine. So we're gonna hang
Speaker 1: you in a minute here, we're gonna hit you with, uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hit you with the thing we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about that's gonna have a lot of touch points view
Speaker 1: boys Wyoming public lands. So you're gonna like it, looking
Speaker 1: forward to it. Quick note, Dave and I actually still
Speaker 1: work together a ton on issues. Dave's organization and my
Speaker 1: organization both sit on a w c P American Wildlife
Speaker 1: Conservation Partnership and uh, interestingly enough, you know we were
Speaker 1: joking about this when we both nuts on a dog
Speaker 1: man you just can't get, can't get. In fact, he
Speaker 1: was talking about Pittman Robertson UM. Our organizations are members
Speaker 1: where the folks that worked with NWF at the time,
Speaker 1: and of course, you know, we want to make sure
Speaker 1: people know like our membership are the guys that stroke
Speaker 1: the Pittman Robertson check. You guys should get a little
Speaker 1: duplex and just live there and we may have them.
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about it. Do you guys
Speaker 1: influence the legislation as in lobbying for what happens in
Speaker 1: the United States Congress? Uh? Yeah, so for both of
Speaker 1: our organizations have a government affairs I don't do that personally.
Speaker 1: We have a government affairs team that works with with
Speaker 1: Congress and d C our affiliates do the work in
Speaker 1: at the at locally at the state level, and I'm
Speaker 1: I work more on the advocacy policy legal side and
Speaker 1: and help provide those folks with the right information right
Speaker 1: when they need it to to to ask make the
Speaker 1: right asks. And occasionally, yeah, occasionally I'll go to I
Speaker 1: don't go to a Republican Governments Association meetings. We'll go
Speaker 1: to Western Governors Association and uh go to a lot
Speaker 1: of the left conferences where state wildlife agencies come in.
Speaker 1: Really it's important to have those relationships with state wildlife agencies.
Speaker 1: In particular, I've had exposure to state legislatures in Michigan
Speaker 1: as a home inspector. I was president of the association.
Speaker 1: Not to bogus thing down, but it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: how stupid and I don't have any other word. State
Speaker 1: legislatures can be that's about bringing out laws that you mentioned.
Speaker 1: I think they're extremely intelligent, and every state legislator is handsome.
Speaker 1: These guys are just throwing out nothing but olive branches
Speaker 1: over here. Anyway. Well, I'm just speaking from my experience,
Speaker 1: and it's a different. Yeah, I've been in hearing where
Speaker 1: I have and some of these legislators, now are you
Speaker 1: know and senators they went from state legislatures to the
Speaker 1: federal level. And I'm thinking, this person has no clue.
Speaker 1: And I always I'm amazed that how are they there?
Speaker 1: How do they do what they do and not know
Speaker 1: what's going on around them? Bad lobbying, that's why. Because
Speaker 1: if you're a good because uh, for here's the thing this,
Speaker 1: this would be a good one for you because uh,
Speaker 1: our our our colleague Sam James, say hello everybody, Sam, Hello, everybody,
Speaker 1: to everybody. What you do around here? My role here
Speaker 1: is the general merchandise manager, UH. And what I do
Speaker 1: is UH I build and cultivate an assortment of products
Speaker 1: for the Mediator web store. And this assortment of products
Speaker 1: is based on the products that our team of content
Speaker 1: contributors uses in their pursuits. Whether that's our hunting team
Speaker 1: or fishing team, and our culinary team. So I work
Speaker 1: very closely with our content teams and then are My
Speaker 1: goal is to provide the product, bring the products to
Speaker 1: the people so that you can uh for our followers,
Speaker 1: our listeners and our viewers, they can learn about the
Speaker 1: products that our team is using and then come to
Speaker 1: our site and uh and understand why we use that product,
Speaker 1: why we think it's the best and and um and
Speaker 1: why they should consider buying it for their own purposes.
Speaker 1: But today Sam is here, He's gonna tell us about
Speaker 1: I don't know how I found out about this. Sam's
Speaker 1: great great uncle Otto yep invented a this. I gotta
Speaker 1: know if when if I knows about this invented and
Speaker 1: promoted a instead of a ground a triangle bullet, a
Speaker 1: triangle shaped bullet which I which never took off. Correct
Speaker 1: Now you say it never took off? Over multiple meanings
Speaker 1: on that. No, No, I guess I'm guessing it took off.
Speaker 1: It flew, but it flew but didn't take off it
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, what walk us through it here? This
Speaker 1: is this is a good story. So my great great
Speaker 1: great grand uncle, his name is Otto Schnaylock, he was
Speaker 1: one of So he was a great great great grand uncle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that you could probably him without even getting in
Speaker 1: trouble like that distant the brother of my great great
Speaker 1: great grandfather. So oh that makes sense. I believe that's
Speaker 1: called a grand uncle. Um Otto Schneylock was his name,
Speaker 1: and he was one of three boys. Their parents were
Speaker 1: killed in a runaway carriage accident in Germany in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds made they were made orphans, and they
Speaker 1: traveled each individually carriage at Yeah, that's that's part of
Speaker 1: the research that I did for today. They were killed
Speaker 1: in a runaway carriage accident. Both the parents tragically killed.
Speaker 1: The boys were made orphans along with their sister in
Speaker 1: each one of them. Were they in the carriage too?
Speaker 1: That's a good question, I assume not. Mm hmm. Man.
Speaker 1: That might be a good time machine token right there.
Speaker 1: If I had like a lot of tokens, I might
Speaker 1: take one to go see that happen. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: If I had one token, That's not what I would
Speaker 1: do with it. We you do. Oh, I'd go back
Speaker 1: to see the first Americans enter the Western hemisphere, and
Speaker 1: I'd ask him some questions. That sounds great and maybe
Speaker 1: the next time I'd go find out what happened on
Speaker 1: that with that runaway carriage accent. Well, the three boys
Speaker 1: and their sisters were made orphans. They eventually all came
Speaker 1: to America independently, and the three boys, Auto, Hugo, and
Speaker 1: Emil began working in the firearms business. And Otto was
Speaker 1: the inventor. He was the one. Did you say already
Speaker 1: what year they came? Uh? They came around, uh, eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties. So German orphaned kids. German orphaned kids. Um
Speaker 1: and the three boys. So Otto is my great great
Speaker 1: great grand uncle, and his brother Hugo is my great
Speaker 1: great great grandfather. Now, Otto was the one who patented
Speaker 1: the three oh seven triangular round and revolver, and Hugo
Speaker 1: interestingly as well, he worked for the Winchester Company in
Speaker 1: New Haven, Connecticut for fifty years, and he is said
Speaker 1: in our family lore to be the designer of the
Speaker 1: Winchester Model ninety four. Now that's not what's in in
Speaker 1: in the history books and online, so I don't want
Speaker 1: to mistake, but that's what's said the family lower family records. Ye, Man,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you a quick story about that. My
Speaker 1: one of my childhood mentors, my dad's close friends with
Speaker 1: a fellow name Eugene grons Uh. He had in his
Speaker 1: place he had built these overhead gun racks, and he
Speaker 1: had he liked to have a gun for every year
Speaker 1: he'd been alive. I like this guy. So yeah, he's
Speaker 1: like in his eighties, you know, and the guns just
Speaker 1: like the roof is like I want to say, it's
Speaker 1: the ceiling is basically carpeted in firearms. But he one
Speaker 1: day I was too young to realize how what an
Speaker 1: act of generosity is he one day in my presence,
Speaker 1: when I was turning legal firearm age, which is twelve
Speaker 1: in Michigan, he one day, Uh acts as though he
Speaker 1: just made a discovery that he's eighty but there's eighty
Speaker 1: one guns. Could I do him the favor? I've taken
Speaker 1: one of them, and he gives me a uh model
Speaker 1: with a peep site, And I went out to shoot
Speaker 1: not a bunch, I want to went out to shoot
Speaker 1: deer with this thing. And then one day took it
Speaker 1: down to the wood stove store which had like a
Speaker 1: gun counter, and sold that son of a bit man
Speaker 1: for three d fifty bucks. You couldn't buy it now
Speaker 1: for you if you wanted to go find that gun again.
Speaker 1: I want that one back. I'm just saying, like, when
Speaker 1: you find that gun, because somebody's got that somebody listening
Speaker 1: to this, Like somebody listening to this podcast has that gun.
Speaker 1: Twin Lake. I think it was called I can't remember
Speaker 1: as a wood stove gun store in my hometown's going
Speaker 1: by three. It was the best selling high powered rifle
Speaker 1: in history. I think they sold over seven million of them.
Speaker 1: So they're out there. So your family needs a good
Speaker 1: lawyer to get some of that money back. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in family they're like so they're like yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The history books say one thing, but everybody knows that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Apparently Hugo was according to our family history books, Uh,
Speaker 1: he was hired by Winchester in his mid twenties. He
Speaker 1: was a gunsmith in New Orleans at the time. Um,
Speaker 1: and he was brought onto to be to Winchester to
Speaker 1: become their chief of design. That's what's in the history
Speaker 1: book in family history book. Excuse me, but but if
Speaker 1: you look it up, it was um John Browning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy in the Browning left. Yeah, it's as soon
Speaker 1: as he said that I was gonna ask, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that I recognized another name associate with that,
Speaker 1: and Browning of course is amazing. I have not heard
Speaker 1: of the triangular bullet. Um. I saw first pictures of
Speaker 1: the patents yesterday. They Karine shared him with me. So
Speaker 1: it's very interesting. And uh yeah, it's interesting how some
Speaker 1: of that stuff. There's some really fascinating stuff out there.
Speaker 1: When you go back in history and look at some
Speaker 1: of the firearms in history. Um, some of the other
Speaker 1: you know, Lewis and Clark just comes to mind immediately.
Speaker 1: No packing around him, BOLTI shot air gun exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: in the early you know, things like that that people
Speaker 1: would just never imagine we're invented. It's just really fascinating.
Speaker 1: I agree, we'll get to auto, all right, get to
Speaker 1: auto or whoever whatever then you got it. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: the focus of auto snails eight seventy two triangular bore
Speaker 1: triangular revolver invention was to create a more effective personal
Speaker 1: protection firearm because the public at that time was becoming
Speaker 1: increasingly interested in in carrying their own pistol for personal protection,
Speaker 1: and the battlefield weapons of the time were too heavy
Speaker 1: and too large for concealed carry, and so the major
Speaker 1: gun manufacturers started designing and developing personal protection revolvers, and
Speaker 1: most of them, I believe. The first one was created
Speaker 1: by Um Smith and Wesson their Model one, and it
Speaker 1: was a twenty two rim fire pistol revolver and it
Speaker 1: shot eight rounds eight round capacity. Ah. Eventually the public
Speaker 1: wanted to have greater firepower above and so Smith and
Speaker 1: Weston created a thirty two caliber revolver, but it only
Speaker 1: held six shots. And then the the public wanted The
Speaker 1: challenge became that the public wanted higher capacity revolver with
Speaker 1: greater stopping power, with greater bullet um bullet weight. So
Speaker 1: Um this was where Snail came in. He wanted to
Speaker 1: create a revolver that had heavier bullet and also had
Speaker 1: the higher capacity. So his triangular idea triangular bullet idea
Speaker 1: was basically like if you cut an orange in half
Speaker 1: and you look at the sections in the orange, the
Speaker 1: nature of the triangular bullets, they fit together in a
Speaker 1: tighter cylinder within that revolver. Oh that's what he was
Speaker 1: driving at. Yeah, So he could wasn't like lining up
Speaker 1: a bunch of circles. Was just touched edge to edge
Speaker 1: and create a lot of metal exactly. So his concept
Speaker 1: in the invention was he took the same cylinder out
Speaker 1: of a twenty two revolver and was able to fit uh,
Speaker 1: seven thirties I believe it was seven thirty two caliber
Speaker 1: bullets within the same cylinder as a twenty two caliber.
Speaker 1: So what was previously the twenty two revolver shot eight bullets,
Speaker 1: the the existing thirty two caliber revolvers from Smith and
Speaker 1: Wesson shot seven. He could he could shoot eight of
Speaker 1: the same caliber in the smaller package if they were
Speaker 1: shaped like a triangle. If they were shaped like a triangle,
Speaker 1: and uh, it never really got off the ground. He
Speaker 1: got the patent, and interestingly, he got a secondary patent
Speaker 1: a few years later for an improvement on a breech
Speaker 1: loader gun, and that patent was about UM creating an
Speaker 1: attachment to go within the breech loader that could adapt
Speaker 1: the breech loader to shoot rim fire bullets because they
Speaker 1: were just center fire at the time. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting too. So do you guys have around
Speaker 1: in any of these old triangle pistols and triangle ammal
Speaker 1: I don't, we don't. UM to my knowledge, there's only
Speaker 1: one that exists. That's that's got the triangular boar as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but um that I'm not sure about. Um that the
Speaker 1: word from my grandmother that she knows at one point
Speaker 1: there was one person who had bought this revolver and uh,
Speaker 1: they're looking for it. But but beats me, did you
Speaker 1: guys have this conversation just to make me happy? Because like, honestly,
Speaker 1: like I'm such a geek about this kind of talking
Speaker 1: about this for a long time, and I thought you
Speaker 1: might enjoy it. No, it's awesome. It's super super interesting
Speaker 1: because like you look at the advancements that people were
Speaker 1: making in like the eighteen fifties and some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that you were talking about, and then the technology
Speaker 1: at the times, how they basically I mean you just
Speaker 1: described firearms design and changes in farms, and I mean
Speaker 1: you're talking about eighteen fifties. You could have been talking
Speaker 1: about any time in the last two hundred years, because
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's that is the like, that's how
Speaker 1: it works in this country. Like it's typically a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know, but innovations and firearms designs almost
Speaker 1: always come from the civilian market and it's driven by
Speaker 1: people who have real world concerns and real world needs,
Speaker 1: and then it goes back to some engineer who's a
Speaker 1: guy who's working at a company like Browning or like Winchester,
Speaker 1: or or like Cult and then they're faced with trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, why Stephen Ronnella wanted this
Speaker 1: thing in his gun, and then figuring out a way
Speaker 1: to make it work. And then they test it and
Speaker 1: then they roll it out to the public and they
Speaker 1: see who likes it, and then you know, uh, somebody
Speaker 1: does like it, and then it becomes popular and then
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, like a lot of times you hear people
Speaker 1: think that like these advancements come from kind of this
Speaker 1: military direction and they drive down the civilian market. That's
Speaker 1: just not the case. It actually goes the other direction.
Speaker 1: It's civilians like was Lewis and Clark who come up
Speaker 1: with you know, the Hawkins rifle, you know, better guns,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately, you know, these things are proven out
Speaker 1: that their workable technologies, then they make their way the
Speaker 1: other direction to where you know, military guys will will
Speaker 1: start using some of those products to improve the stuff
Speaker 1: that they have access to. And it's just it's really
Speaker 1: a fascinating aspect of American firearms culture. This back and
Speaker 1: forth in interaction that's always occurred in our country since
Speaker 1: a guy, you know, put rifling in a in a
Speaker 1: long rifle on the banks of Wylom Missing Creek, you know,
Speaker 1: in the six hundreds. Uh, we'll come of Uncle Otto.
Speaker 1: Did he ever, like come up with the great idea
Speaker 1: and struck it rich? You know what happened? He was
Speaker 1: actually killed in a shooting competition by a careless companion.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, he really Yeah, And you guys might find
Speaker 1: this interesting that after he after he enlisted in a
Speaker 1: two year term in the Union Army as a volunteer,
Speaker 1: and he got through the war, wasn't injured. So civil
Speaker 1: War veterans Civil War veteran the n r A was
Speaker 1: starting upright about the same time, I believe that was
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eighteen seventy one, and a couple of years
Speaker 1: after they founded d n r A, they started holding
Speaker 1: shooting competitions and he got into these and um, according
Speaker 1: to n r a's annual reports from eighteen seventy three
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy six, Otto did pretty well in these and
Speaker 1: even one of the one one of the Sportsman's competitions.
Speaker 1: So he was a competitive shooter and it was actually
Speaker 1: lie Um it was it was competitive shooting that was
Speaker 1: ultimately his demise. He was killed on the shooting range
Speaker 1: accidentally shooting. Like, uh, firearms accidents and firearms incidents seemed
Speaker 1: to be so much higher in those days. When you
Speaker 1: read Life and Death at the Mouth of the Muscle Shell,
Speaker 1: which I recently read, I mean people just I think
Speaker 1: it's like people just trying to figure stuff out. But
Speaker 1: man shooting themselves on accident, shooting each other on accident.
Speaker 1: A lot of the things you take for like, a
Speaker 1: lot of the sort of behaviors we take for granted
Speaker 1: around safety just was not baked in the hunter. Safety
Speaker 1: wasn't around yet. No, it's like it's interesting today it's
Speaker 1: shooting sports are safer than any high school sport that
Speaker 1: you can pull up, Safer than soccer, safer than softball,
Speaker 1: safer than you name it. You know where it lines up.
Speaker 1: I was looking at some statistics, Uh, billiards. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: terms of injuries per hour, it's like a right around.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of severe a lot of severe
Speaker 1: injuries on the billiards table. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons rates rates like it was like, oh like nobody
Speaker 1: blah blah, and you look at like the rates and
Speaker 1: when you get down to like rate of injury per
Speaker 1: hours spent per practitioner, I think it lines up with
Speaker 1: pool and billiards. It's super low. And that's like Jannest
Speaker 1: hit it on the nail on the head. It's has
Speaker 1: to do with I mean, it has to do with
Speaker 1: where we've come to. You know, firearms related accidents are
Speaker 1: near all time lows right now. They've um like it
Speaker 1: really is. It's it's a safe endeavor to get into it.
Speaker 1: That said, it's because people need to follow the rules.
Speaker 1: You know, there are certain rules of firearms safety. We
Speaker 1: all know what they are, right Number one, and we
Speaker 1: may talk about these again because they're super important. Number one,
Speaker 1: every gun is always loaded, even if you have decided
Speaker 1: in your head you don't think it's loaded, even if
Speaker 1: the guy that hands the gun to you says it's
Speaker 1: not loaded. Every gun is always loaded. Every gun is
Speaker 1: always loaded. You treat it like it's always loaded no
Speaker 1: matter what. Even if you just check the chamber and
Speaker 1: you think it's not loaded, you treat it like it's
Speaker 1: always loaded. You know, you know what book I bought
Speaker 1: recently I couldn't finish reading. It's that it's called Dying
Speaker 1: to Hunt in Montana, and it's a a exhaustive catalog
Speaker 1: broken down by cause of death of everyone they can
Speaker 1: find in the history who has died hunting. Here, all
Speaker 1: the people that have died from grizzly bears exposure, anything
Speaker 1: you could like the fact that someone took the time
Speaker 1: to put this together is amazing. Did they write a
Speaker 1: story about each person? And it's like two sentences. It
Speaker 1: could be longer, be really interesting if you had the
Speaker 1: whole backstory of a lot of some of them have got.
Speaker 1: But you're back in the when you're back in the thirties, forties, fifties,
Speaker 1: and you're in the hunting accident section, you can't it
Speaker 1: just like there was a sort of mental shift that
Speaker 1: occurred about um firearm handling. Well that that like that
Speaker 1: kicked in some point between then and now. We're just
Speaker 1: the amount of things we're like what what like crossing offense,
Speaker 1: crossing offense, crossing offense, handing the gun to someone under
Speaker 1: the fence, just on and on and on, and I
Speaker 1: think that there's like we've somehow got to a point
Speaker 1: where you just walk around a little more paranoid. Let's
Speaker 1: it's like, it doesn't have to be paranoia, it has
Speaker 1: to be habit And I think that that's what we've
Speaker 1: gotten into now. And to be frank, this is one
Speaker 1: of the challenges that you see, Like go to a
Speaker 1: shooting sports competition now right, you're you're your girl Taylor, Right,
Speaker 1: you watch somebody like that handle a gun at arrange.
Speaker 1: What never happens. The gun never points at anybody. Why
Speaker 1: because there's a practice. If that gun's ever pointed at anybody,
Speaker 1: if it's ever pointed in the wrong direction, you're done
Speaker 1: for the day. You're gonna go home and buy ice cream.
Speaker 1: You're not welcome here because you're you're handling practices aren't correct.
Speaker 1: Other the other things, you know, rules of firearm safety
Speaker 1: also obeyed. There's uh, you know, you never point in
Speaker 1: firearm and anything you're not willing to destroy. Why because
Speaker 1: it's always loaded. You never have your finger on the
Speaker 1: trigger and the manual safety disengaged until you're ready to shoot.
Speaker 1: Why because the firearm is always loaded, even if you're
Speaker 1: not putting anything you don't want to destroy. And then
Speaker 1: last you never ever point a firearm that's something to
Speaker 1: shoot it, put your safety off and figure on the trigger.
Speaker 1: Unless you know exactly what you're gonna shoot and exactly
Speaker 1: where the bolt's gonna go. Be sure if your targets
Speaker 1: beyond it. Why because you're responsible for every bolt that
Speaker 1: comes out of the gun. And through shooting sports, like,
Speaker 1: none of that is negotitionable. It all happens all the time.
Speaker 1: And so when you go to places where people are
Speaker 1: participating in the shooting sports, those safety things are baked in. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: if you when people become you know, if we see
Speaker 1: this actually in the hunting community way too much, where
Speaker 1: people become they can decide that they can be lackadaisical
Speaker 1: with the rules of firearm safety. Because I've been doing
Speaker 1: it since i was ten years old and now I'm
Speaker 1: you know, this age or whatever. I've always done it
Speaker 1: this way, right where guys they take shortcuts, they don't
Speaker 1: obey the rules, They put the gun, they carry it
Speaker 1: in a weird way. They think it's okay to you know,
Speaker 1: do certain things. And what you see is when you
Speaker 1: see competitors and you see you know, and I've heard
Speaker 1: had people say to some of the silliest things I've
Speaker 1: ever heard somebody say, well, look at guys who are
Speaker 1: like an elite military units, they point guns at each
Speaker 1: other all the time. No, they don't, you know, I know,
Speaker 1: you know, Kyle amb some of the best shooters, best
Speaker 1: people in the entire world. There's zero tolerance for breaking
Speaker 1: the rules of firearms safety. And it's baked in, and
Speaker 1: that's something that we need to do as sportsman. We
Speaker 1: need to bake this. We just have to insist on
Speaker 1: that because you know, you take I take, you take
Speaker 1: new guys hunting all the time. I'm sure I do
Speaker 1: the same thing. It stinks to have to yell at
Speaker 1: a guy, So first of all, don't yell at him literally,
Speaker 1: but it's not fun to have to be the guy
Speaker 1: to have to remind him the sixth time don't point
Speaker 1: that at me, you know. But through doing that, if
Speaker 1: you do that enough days in a row, guess what,
Speaker 1: he doesn't point at you, and he doesn't point it
Speaker 1: in anybody else, and then it's his turn to tell
Speaker 1: somebody else not to you know, to be to be
Speaker 1: muzzle aware. But if we don't do that as a
Speaker 1: community like it's it's that it's having, it's caring about
Speaker 1: somebody enough to make sure that they have good firearms
Speaker 1: handling skills. That has made it so that we're not
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties anymore, so that you can go to
Speaker 1: a shooting competition and not worry about your physical safety
Speaker 1: and like it's just something we have to do, oh,
Speaker 1: real quick, and they'll do this other real quick thing.
Speaker 1: I have noticed that this might be anecdotal, I have
Speaker 1: noticed in my lifetime a different attitude about chambering rounds.
Speaker 1: Now we used to change in high school. It was
Speaker 1: like part of stepping out of the truck, you throw
Speaker 1: one in the chain because no one want to be
Speaker 1: caught with their pants down, right, so it was always
Speaker 1: ready to roll and then you just have the safety,
Speaker 1: you know, standing between you. And that I've noticed in
Speaker 1: my rather extensive social circle the people are a little
Speaker 1: more deliberate about when it might make sense to rack
Speaker 1: one in and walking out and setting decoys. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: you rack it when you're all set up and not
Speaker 1: just kind of like habitually have it racked at all
Speaker 1: times during all activities. Like we're more careful about that. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get set up, you get the blind made out,
Speaker 1: then you might throw one in the tube. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not that guy you step out of the truck. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: and it's I've watched friends that do what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: Like they don't rack into the last second, like on
Speaker 1: an l count for example, And I watched him forget
Speaker 1: and pull up and just like, well there's the last
Speaker 1: second and then there's just being deliberate. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's not like I'm riding down the road racked up.
Speaker 1: But you know, like when I go set up a
Speaker 1: my I get my gun loaded, put it in the
Speaker 1: in the blind, and then I set everything up because
Speaker 1: what if something comes in in case you got a
Speaker 1: barrel rollback and probably overly cautious. Um, but all those
Speaker 1: things are gonna be like those are gonna be personal decisions,
Speaker 1: are gonna be cultural decisions, are gonna be family decisions.
Speaker 1: And the one thing I would say, because I don't
Speaker 1: think all of us here we could argue about that
Speaker 1: until we're blue in the face, obey the four Fundamental
Speaker 1: Rules of firearms Safety. If you obey the four Fundamental
Speaker 1: Rules of firearms safety, literally every other incident that you're
Speaker 1: going to talk about or imagine, your head goes away.
Speaker 1: They don't exist if you obey those four rules. Okay,
Speaker 1: are we done with Otto and the triang your bullets?
Speaker 1: The other tragedies happened in his family? Well, uh, there
Speaker 1: are actually two more things I wanted to mention. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that Auto didn't make it his
Speaker 1: his invention didn't make it as because Colt began producing
Speaker 1: the single action army revolver a K the Colt five
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy three, and that really blew up in
Speaker 1: the following years when they started creating shorter barrel options
Speaker 1: for civilian carry. So that was that was one of
Speaker 1: the big reasons, not just his death, that it didn't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. Um. And then the other thing that just
Speaker 1: to mention is that the third brother, my other great
Speaker 1: great great grand uncle, he worked for Springfield Armory in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts for fifty years. So these were three orphans from Germany.
Speaker 1: They came to America on their own independently and then
Speaker 1: ended up being innovators and UH and developers within the
Speaker 1: firearms trade in the eighteen fifties to the early bring
Speaker 1: this full circle again, Yeah, go for it. Friday, meaning
Speaker 1: the day after Thanksgiving, just a couple of days ago.
Speaker 1: My son, my eleven year old son took possession of
Speaker 1: his great grandfathers Springfield Mark one which was manufactured in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, and that now sits in my gun safe.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. That's awesome. It's got that little red
Speaker 1: red something Redfield. Little Pete he bought. So he was
Speaker 1: in Whiskey Whiskey two in the Pacific Theater and came
Speaker 1: home and just bought a gun like what he was
Speaker 1: issued when he was training in the military, and that's
Speaker 1: what he bought. He bought it used for twelve bucks
Speaker 1: and they still have the receipt. That's awesome. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: kids real fired up to shoot something with it. Real
Speaker 1: fired up. He's really he's excited. It was cool. Okay.
Speaker 1: So auction House oft is Group six again auction sty
Speaker 1: to support our access initiatives here at Mediator, we have
Speaker 1: a New York's Met a New York Mets baseball bat
Speaker 1: signed by our our buddy polar Bear, Pete Alonso, So
Speaker 1: you can go get that bat signed by him and
Speaker 1: use the thump fish in the head after you catch them.
Speaker 1: We have two Trampled by Turtle concert Trampled by Turtles
Speaker 1: concert tickets. That's Dave Simonette who's been on the show
Speaker 1: as well. So Pete Alonso has been on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Dave Simon that's been on this podcast. Um if you
Speaker 1: want to go find the one that Dave was on.
Speaker 1: It was episode called Sex, Guns and Bluegrass. So Dave
Speaker 1: has the tickets and when you buy this package, you
Speaker 1: go to the concert and you go backstage to attend
Speaker 1: the meet and greet with Dave. It will be playing.
Speaker 1: This one is good for Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheater in July.
Speaker 1: So you can get tickets for Colorado Red Rocks Amphitheater,
Speaker 1: go back meet Dave. Um all paid. Here's another weird one,
Speaker 1: uh you can get so Spencer, Seth, and Chester have
Speaker 1: all volunteered to let you pick what you want them
Speaker 1: to have tattooed on their arm. They're giving you a
Speaker 1: quarter so it's the size of a piece. They're giving
Speaker 1: you a quarter sized portion of the real estate on
Speaker 1: their arm. You pick a tattoo design, they will get it.
Speaker 1: This will be Seth's first tattoo. So you select a
Speaker 1: design and then three people, the flip Flop Flasher, Spencer
Speaker 1: and Chester the Divester all will bear your Designs says
Speaker 1: here Phil too. Oh no, no, no, no, no, Phil,
Speaker 1: that was part of the internet. Should care about conservation.
Speaker 1: We can talk about that later. But no, it was
Speaker 1: just why does it say you jumped on board? I
Speaker 1: thought it was referring to on board, like getting a
Speaker 1: tattoo train, not not this specific tattoo. What's wrong with
Speaker 1: this plan? It sounds like a great plan. I just
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm you know, I mean, those boys
Speaker 1: are gonna bring in a little bit of money sting,
Speaker 1: those boys are being like not smart. I support it totally,
Speaker 1: but come on, man, So you just explained why I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be a part of that's why. That's why.
Speaker 1: Hell no, But I'm just thinking, you know, a quarter
Speaker 1: on your arm would really bring in the box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't want a tattoo on my arm. Me
Speaker 1: and my wife are the last untattooed couple in America.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna get uh. I am gonna get that
Speaker 1: world Slam Turkey tattoo I'm talking about if you get
Speaker 1: it too, you know I'm not. I'm gonna get an
Speaker 1: outline outline of like uh, North America on my arm
Speaker 1: and then a dot where all the turkeys from my
Speaker 1: Turkey world Slam came from. And that suite my kids.
Speaker 1: When I told my little boy that, my six year
Speaker 1: old boy, he almost started to cry. He like thinks
Speaker 1: tattoos are very like just not a good idea. He
Speaker 1: doesn't understand him. What would it take? Maybe he really
Speaker 1: understand them, he might understand the better wells money would
Speaker 1: it take? Like, let's just say, if if we just
Speaker 1: had that person that could should just shell out whatever
Speaker 1: number you put you pick, probably would be real careful about. Oh,
Speaker 1: like what amount of money? Yeah, for you to do
Speaker 1: a quarter sized tattoos so that all that money would
Speaker 1: go to land access. Five thousand dollars, that's it. But
Speaker 1: how long do you have to keep the tattoos? Because
Speaker 1: I understand that thing right, So you could get the
Speaker 1: tattoos some period of time like a permanent easy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten to that level yet, but yeah they
Speaker 1: can do. So they could pull a fast one like that.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're gonna pull a fast one. And
Speaker 1: every think Spencer's getting his whole damn arm tattooed. So
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be in the midst talking else I
Speaker 1: was talking for you. I was talking for you, that's
Speaker 1: your sort of extending off what they might do for me.
Speaker 1: It would take five unless it was what I want.
Speaker 1: If they were just gonna pick what I want anyways,
Speaker 1: and I would just do it. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if I want it, Like my wife doesn't want me
Speaker 1: to my wife doesn't want me tattooed. It's like a
Speaker 1: lot of familiar resistance against this whole idea. But like
Speaker 1: our friend Pat Durkin, he started getting tattooed in his
Speaker 1: sixties because he thinks by the time he's sick of him,
Speaker 1: he'll be dead. So that dude's covered in new tattoos
Speaker 1: because he doesn't have enough time to regret it. He
Speaker 1: says he's just gonna die and think they're still cool.
Speaker 1: Who's that guy that? Uh I don't On a Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live, he's like, all he has all those tattoos,
Speaker 1: and he said he's going through the process of having
Speaker 1: them all removed right now. Yeah, and he's talking about
Speaker 1: it being like the most painful experience of it. That's
Speaker 1: one dude, I don't understand how anyone like it's baffling,
Speaker 1: Like he's the least funny person on the planet. He's
Speaker 1: like the it's like the least funny funny person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's he's dating some mega famous model, like a
Speaker 1: different one every single month. It's just it's wild. I
Speaker 1: don't understand it. How you could be that unfunny? Have
Speaker 1: you wanted? He did some roasts on on Comedy Central
Speaker 1: that we're really pretty good. I only see him coming
Speaker 1: on and like screwing up Saturday Night Live skits, but
Speaker 1: not even in a funny way. Well, anyhow, welcome to
Speaker 1: middle aged Mr. I gotta keep moving. No, it's not
Speaker 1: a middle aged thing. I think allows that's funny, just
Speaker 1: not him. Uh oh, so you get the Yeah, you
Speaker 1: pick the tattoo, they get it on their arm. So
Speaker 1: those guys are, you know, putting their arm out for
Speaker 1: access my personal spear gun, which I've been shooting for
Speaker 1: a few years now. And if you successfully uh so
Speaker 1: Season ten um our next episodes the drop for season
Speaker 1: ten on Netflix, you'll see that spear gun in their
Speaker 1: Me and Yanni's super famous spear gun YouTube video. That's
Speaker 1: the gun in there. I've used it Mexico, Hawaii, America,
Speaker 1: all over damn place. That gun is up for auction.
Speaker 1: Mark's tree saddle from back forty. So Mark kenyans tethered
Speaker 1: mantis tree saddle that he used to kill the wide
Speaker 1: eight I meetators back forty, signed and donated by Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 1: We got some arts and crafts type stuff, a lot
Speaker 1: of it, and then Karn's crystal critter collection. So they're
Speaker 1: sitting from you right now. These are handmade red squirrel
Speaker 1: sterling silver, Herkimer diamond jewelry. Set includes earrings, a necklace, pendant,
Speaker 1: and a ring, all made of sterling silver and squirrel feet,
Speaker 1: sterling silver and squirrel fast. These bad boys around, beautiful work.
Speaker 1: My daughter shitter pants. I can tell you, like legitimately
Speaker 1: right now, like this is literally I'm holding a napkin
Speaker 1: like this tissue paper, buddy, don't don't mean, don't degrade
Speaker 1: its tiny little feet. Beautiful squirrel foot earrings, all kinds
Speaker 1: of squirrel foot jewelry. Brodie's turkey foot which is flipping
Speaker 1: the bird, which is a great I love making those things.
Speaker 1: You make a little plaque, it's a turkey giving you
Speaker 1: the finger. Brody's got one of those. Now here's a
Speaker 1: weird one in the auction house of oodities, and we've
Speaker 1: I have one in my personal collection. Now you gotta
Speaker 1: hear me out because we've checked into this. This is legit.
Speaker 1: It's a brick, Okay, Red You look at these bricks
Speaker 1: and you know these sons of bitches are old. It's
Speaker 1: a brick from the general store that Jim Bridger owned
Speaker 1: in Kansas City, Missouri. We have three of them. I
Speaker 1: rad hold one way. It's in my it's on display
Speaker 1: in my house. I rad hold one away me. Spencer
Speaker 1: has one, and Spencer has given the third brick from
Speaker 1: Jim Bridgers General Store in Kansas City, Missouri in the
Speaker 1: auction housbodies and you can check into the pedigree of
Speaker 1: this brick and everything is legit. Check this one out.
Speaker 1: Here's a good item. A guided tour of the Duran
Speaker 1: family farm. You get to go spend the day doing
Speaker 1: a tour. I think Duran is gonna donate four hours.
Speaker 1: You spend four hours touring Dug with Doug Durn, getting
Speaker 1: a tour of Doug Durn's farm, to talk about wildlife management,
Speaker 1: habitat management, how a family farm pays the bills and
Speaker 1: provides access and does the right thing by wildlife. You
Speaker 1: talk about all this with Doug. I could spend four
Speaker 1: years driving around with Doug talking about stuff on Doug's farm.
Speaker 1: He's a wonderful tour guide. Um, He'll take you to
Speaker 1: get some cheese kurds. He will even throw in a
Speaker 1: whole jar of Buckman juice. You do not need to
Speaker 1: worry about the authenticity of the Buckman juice because you
Speaker 1: can watch Doug. Dog is willing to let you watch
Speaker 1: him emit the de Buckman juice throughout the four hours,
Speaker 1: and he will fill that jar up. Take across the
Speaker 1: line here. That's a that's a wonderful idea if you're
Speaker 1: into his Buckman juice. But I've got even a maybe
Speaker 1: a better idea. I think we should go national with that.
Speaker 1: I think you could have a Wisconsin version of Buckman
Speaker 1: Juice and then you could set up franchises all over
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, but they have to like, like do whatever.
Speaker 1: They'd have to have the same diet as Dug. Dougget
Speaker 1: has to lay out a regiment for them of how
Speaker 1: he produces such a potent juice. I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: the Latinan Eagles version works too well. I mean, you
Speaker 1: feel like you got I don't know a lot of
Speaker 1: deer came by my stand this we are in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Well that's true. What we'd have have to do is
Speaker 1: put up a trail cam. You take a whiz on
Speaker 1: a tree, and Doug takes a whiz on a tree,
Speaker 1: and then we wait and see it would be continent revenue.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying, oh no, yeah, because because the problem
Speaker 1: with Buckman juices is not scalable, but we don't know
Speaker 1: that we haven't tested it. If it has to market
Speaker 1: and it's all over, and someone starts to get to
Speaker 1: calculate and how much year in one man can produce,
Speaker 1: it might be like an expose Like do you remember
Speaker 1: when there was an expose on dough and heat urine
Speaker 1: and someone went and looked at and all the sporting
Speaker 1: stories around the country how much dough and heat urine
Speaker 1: was for sale. And then they went and looked at
Speaker 1: how many captive does are there? How long is a
Speaker 1: dough and heat for? How much does she urinate while
Speaker 1: she's in heat? And they're like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff out there that says do and heat urine that
Speaker 1: there's no way is urine collected from a dough in heat?
Speaker 1: I agree, And that was like a big scandal. So
Speaker 1: if we do Buckman Juice and someone gets doing some math,
Speaker 1: it might turn out that they're like, you know, buck
Speaker 1: Man juice. Let me just introduce the next level, and
Speaker 1: that level is that you go to all these you
Speaker 1: make it Buckman brand, but then you have localized versions
Speaker 1: of it and you go to all these small breweries.
Speaker 1: You know, you just have a thing aside. Hey, like
Speaker 1: we'll pay you, and juice becomes like a brand. There's
Speaker 1: like sick dog signature, like the Doug signature lying and
Speaker 1: then yeah across stop peeing in the alley and pee
Speaker 1: in this cut. That's good. There could be a legal
Speaker 1: aspect to it, though, because if you turned it over
Speaker 1: to the cops, you know, I feel like it's going
Speaker 1: to hurt the value of the though if your original
Speaker 1: you're trying to oh yeah, but here's the deal man,
Speaker 1: this this is going on now and that so like
Speaker 1: if you want to get on the ground floor, you
Speaker 1: can get your during family farm tour, this farm tour
Speaker 1: with Doug during Dude, it better go for high dollar.
Speaker 1: I met. I became friends with Doug during because a
Speaker 1: long time agoen I didn't get a lot of mail.
Speaker 1: I got a letter from Dug, and the letter was
Speaker 1: so touching, and I was so drawn to him and
Speaker 1: so moved by his story of his family's property that
Speaker 1: I went out and visited him. He could have chopped
Speaker 1: me up and buried me in a hole, but he didn't.
Speaker 1: We became like friends, and I'm one of his biggest cheerleaders.
Speaker 1: And to go and spend time talking about landscape and
Speaker 1: in relationships with the land with Doug during is a
Speaker 1: um quite a prize. There's a here's the free item giveaway.
Speaker 1: So this way all this other junk we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You got a bid on, like you want those squirrel feet, jewelry,
Speaker 1: you got a bit on you want to hang out
Speaker 1: with Doug. You got a bit on it. This is
Speaker 1: for free. It's a giveaway item. Soft sided yetie cooler,
Speaker 1: so yettie hopper, signed by a bunch of folks. Here
Speaker 1: at meter, stuffed to the gills full of merch, tease caps,
Speaker 1: cup spices, et cetera. We also got a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff, lots of art, a guided fishing trip in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: Genuine gator scoots, so cured taxidermied gator scoots that you
Speaker 1: lay out on the counter, which I kind of want
Speaker 1: a bid on myself. Check it all out. It's all
Speaker 1: on the auction block. All right, you boys ready to
Speaker 1: get get brass tacks on some Wylming public land stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Okay, we're gonna avoid rabbit holes on
Speaker 1: this one and lay the groundwork right. Well, Yanni's gonna
Speaker 1: lay the groundwork first, Yanni explain for the eighteenth time. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about corner crossing so much that
Speaker 1: there was a Yellowstone Public Radio story that someone sent
Speaker 1: to me and then laying out when trying to like
Speaker 1: define corner crossing, the journalists pointed out that we talked
Speaker 1: about it all the time on this podcast. What does
Speaker 1: that make this podcast in the place where people talk
Speaker 1: about corner crossing all the time, but it's like reference
Speaker 1: material you might know it from this pop is like
Speaker 1: a popular Bowsman based podcast where they're always yam or
Speaker 1: on about corner crossing. So layout for me, so I
Speaker 1: can drink my coffee. What it means, what it means,
Speaker 1: Why it's why, why it matters succinctly. Yeah, out West,
Speaker 1: a lot of places we have what's called checkerboarded lands.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get into how they got that way
Speaker 1: because I'm doing the abridged versions that okay, but it
Speaker 1: is a good story. It is I don't worry about.
Speaker 1: But basically, if you think about a checkerboard, and if
Speaker 1: all the black pieces were public and all the red
Speaker 1: pieces were private, and you were able to hunt the
Speaker 1: public just the black pieces, you would have to hop
Speaker 1: corner to corner to make it across the checker field
Speaker 1: and access all of the public land that technically you
Speaker 1: and all of us here owned and should be able
Speaker 1: to hunt. But because of rules and states basically saying
Speaker 1: that the landowners that own the adjoining land the red pieces,
Speaker 1: when they come to a corner, they own that air
Speaker 1: space above their two corners as well. So even though
Speaker 1: you don't touch their land as you cross over from
Speaker 1: corner to corner, you're trespassing through the air space above
Speaker 1: their land, thus making it illegal. Let me ask you
Speaker 1: a question, Johnnie, what would you imagine? Would you imagine
Speaker 1: that they're not actually concerned about your shoulders passing over
Speaker 1: their airspace? What do you think they really are after
Speaker 1: control of said public lands? Like it's just it's all
Speaker 1: for you, So it's like a proxy. Is this airspace issue. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's like Tom, I'm worried about my
Speaker 1: air sprace. I think they're like, man, I'm worried about
Speaker 1: a bunch of holders walking through land at time. Immemorial
Speaker 1: has just been available to me in my family. Nay,
Speaker 1: taxes on a very small rabbit hole. I apologize. Why
Speaker 1: is there so much checkerboarded land? Because they when they
Speaker 1: put the railroads in, that's how they gave away the land.
Speaker 1: The railroads would encourage settlement and they did all kinds
Speaker 1: of transaction through land. So the railroads come in and
Speaker 1: to incentivize railroad construction, they would give like for every
Speaker 1: t as as the as the railroad company was laying track.
Speaker 1: They were subsidized by land grants. Okay, so you would
Speaker 1: get like it could be different deals. You might get
Speaker 1: fifty miles on either side of the train tracks if
Speaker 1: you build the tracks. Then those people needed to encourage
Speaker 1: settlement to have something, to to have freight. I'm just
Speaker 1: going very general here. The railroad companies wanted to encourage settlement,
Speaker 1: and they had the land. They could dispose of what
Speaker 1: they will, But oftentimes they would give them every other
Speaker 1: section and they issued it out on these corner to
Speaker 1: corner touching pieces. So in some areas it's literally like
Speaker 1: you might look at an area that you might look
Speaker 1: at an area that could be let's say a township size,
Speaker 1: so thirty six square miles. The entire thirty six square
Speaker 1: miles might be like literally checkerboarded miles squares touching on
Speaker 1: the corners, maybe two million acres. Sometimes you'll get into
Speaker 1: a situation like this where let's say you have a
Speaker 1: chunk of BLM. We'll just take BLM for instance, because
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna get to I think is a BLM story.
Speaker 1: But let's say have a chunk of BLM and there's
Speaker 1: a road cut through it. So there's a county road
Speaker 1: and you have access to that BLM. If you could
Speaker 1: jump one corner, it might not just open up a
Speaker 1: bunch of more checkerboard, it might open up a huge
Speaker 1: contiguous block. There are areas where jumping one corner, the
Speaker 1: ability to jump one corner would open up ten thousand
Speaker 1: contiguous acres of land. So there's some boys in Whiloming
Speaker 1: that are in trouble right now because lot of states
Speaker 1: like it's unclear in a lot of states, like what
Speaker 1: the actual thing is Montana. They've often recommended against it.
Speaker 1: Their policy is, we recommend against it. We recommend that
Speaker 1: you get landowner permission because of the airspace issue. Four guys,
Speaker 1: they were non residents. I feel like they should have
Speaker 1: been residents. Four non residents in Wyoming right now are
Speaker 1: up for criminal trespass because they corner hopped. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of interest in these fellers prevailing because if
Speaker 1: they prevail and they're found not guilty of criminal trespass
Speaker 1: for corner crossings precedent, people would be less likely. Dave
Speaker 1: shaking his head vigorously. No, yeah, that's why you're here, Dave.
Speaker 1: Oh no, No, it's not your turn yet. Dave says,
Speaker 1: no that I'm to say, like, we got to take
Speaker 1: a lawyer from Wyoming. He's got to take off his
Speaker 1: professional hat really quick. So this doesn't represent as Dave,
Speaker 1: you go talk to us. All talk to you is Dave,
Speaker 1: old Dave. Dave. Let me tell you something I have.
Speaker 1: Of all the names I have the best luck with,
Speaker 1: Dave's an incredibly long line of Dave's that i've we
Speaker 1: go back generation are names I have trouble with. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say him and so forth. There are
Speaker 1: names I have trouble with historically, and there's names I
Speaker 1: do well with historically. And Dave, And whenever someone's having
Speaker 1: a kid and they say like, we can't think of
Speaker 1: the name, I'm like, I'll tell what your name is, Dave,
Speaker 1: because then I'll be friends with him. So I'm trusting you,
Speaker 1: and I want to hear from Dave, not some crazy
Speaker 1: asked lawyer. All right, what if I'm both not some
Speaker 1: tight ass lawyer. So let me lay a little more groundwork. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure in your answer or in your analysis of
Speaker 1: this situation. Oh, at first I got to get into this.
Speaker 1: There's a go fund me to help these to help
Speaker 1: these fellers fight their legal battle. Where is that? What
Speaker 1: is the fund? Keep finding? Oh? Holy count like all
Speaker 1: go fund me, it's like horrible, uh www dot go
Speaker 1: fund me, dot com, slash f slash, corner dash crossing
Speaker 1: dash legal dash fee fundraiser. But I bet if you
Speaker 1: typed in a bunch of stuff like go fund me
Speaker 1: corner crossing fundraise, that you will find the thing, which
Speaker 1: is people raising money to help these corner crossers with
Speaker 1: their legal fees. Here's my the final thing I canna
Speaker 1: say about this with corner crossing, I personally, personally and
Speaker 1: professionally would love to see a solution to corner crossing
Speaker 1: where uh we could work out a way for people
Speaker 1: to corner cross but it would need to involve some
Speaker 1: like careful survey work, and it would need to involve
Speaker 1: like I've seen that actually seen in some places. A
Speaker 1: imagine two adjoining step ladders that had so you pick
Speaker 1: these these like key areas, survey them, mark it out.
Speaker 1: You have two adjoining step ladders, so people are able
Speaker 1: to go up a step ladder laying on a platform,
Speaker 1: walk across the platform down the step ladder, and sportsman,
Speaker 1: I'm sure would I would. I would. I would take
Speaker 1: every dime we raise with our Access initiative, that's to
Speaker 1: check with cal By bet Caldy into it, and we
Speaker 1: would put all of the money we raised with our
Speaker 1: Access initiative, if cal is okay with it into said
Speaker 1: surveying and said step ladder apparatus is in strategic locations,
Speaker 1: we would pay for all of that and start strategically
Speaker 1: going in and being like, here's another thousand acres for
Speaker 1: public hunters, here's another two thousand acres. Here's another five
Speaker 1: acres survey it mark the corner, put the step ladders
Speaker 1: in if we could resolve the airspace issue. So, now, Dave,
Speaker 1: what comes to your mind when you hear all this? Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'll start with I like that throat clear, sorry
Speaker 1: that we're gonna get it right. Yeah. Um, so I'll
Speaker 1: start with this. I don't know the particulars of this case.
Speaker 1: Forget that this particular Um no, I mean to forget it,
Speaker 1: but it can inform it. But let's just talk about
Speaker 1: it in general, just corner crossing genil. So, because this
Speaker 1: is Wyoming, I'll talk to you in the context of Wyoming, right,
Speaker 1: but I can I can be a little bit broader,
Speaker 1: right like, So for example, let's start with with the
Speaker 1: basics of there's no law at the federal level that
Speaker 1: specifically allows or disallows corner crossing. So there's no there's
Speaker 1: no statute on the books. What would a law like that,
Speaker 1: say it would if you were to have one that
Speaker 1: allows it or disallows it? I mean like what, yeah, like,
Speaker 1: what would the law be? You know it would it
Speaker 1: be like an airspace issue or so? I it might
Speaker 1: be right like, so right now, the FA it controls
Speaker 1: the airspace and navigable air space and it and the
Speaker 1: way that that the f A defines it is, you know,
Speaker 1: in urban areas, the navigable airspace, which is the public
Speaker 1: domain for air space, starts at a thousand feet. In
Speaker 1: more rural and unpopulated areas, it's at fiet um. That's
Speaker 1: the f A A right. But there's been some some
Speaker 1: Supreme Court case law that actually has said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that actually extends even closer to the ground than that.
Speaker 1: Um So, but you know, at the time those regulations
Speaker 1: were started, I don't think people we really thinking about
Speaker 1: corner crossing for hunting, your accessing public land. So so
Speaker 1: you'd write a law that if you were doing at
Speaker 1: the federal level, that says, you know, for purposes of
Speaker 1: accessing used BLM, for example, you know that it would
Speaker 1: be legal for for stepping from one corner at a
Speaker 1: survey pin right cut stepping over the survey pin to
Speaker 1: another UH piece of adjacent UH federal land. That's very simple.
Speaker 1: So you could be like nuts and bolts about it.
Speaker 1: For a purpose of public foot travel, public access, it
Speaker 1: is legal to blank yep, absolutely, you could do something
Speaker 1: like that. Um Okay, So the federal level. At the
Speaker 1: state level. Now, this is where I'll get a little
Speaker 1: uh may get out of my lane just slightly, because
Speaker 1: I haven't done a survey of every state, right, but um,
Speaker 1: and I might. So I'm because I know, like in
Speaker 1: I might get this wrong because in like South Dakota, right,
Speaker 1: you can walk section lines, uh, and that's a means
Speaker 1: of access. But places like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Uh,
Speaker 1: some of those inner Mountain West states that you think
Speaker 1: of with the big chunks of public lands, there's no
Speaker 1: I don't know if any law on the books in
Speaker 1: those states that either permits or specifically prohibits corner crossing.
Speaker 1: So you start with this fundamental premise of there's actually
Speaker 1: no law on the book that expressly prohibits that activity
Speaker 1: or expressly permits it. So then you have to dive
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper to figure it out. So here's
Speaker 1: here's Wyoming, for example, And so that's where I'll go
Speaker 1: to Wyoming because it's sort of what I know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what this cases cases. Right. So in Wyoming,
Speaker 1: we do have a law on the books, uh, and
Speaker 1: it's ten four Wyoming Statute ten dash forward dash three
Speaker 1: O two uh and three oh three, which defines the
Speaker 1: ownership or gives the ownership of the space above the
Speaker 1: lands and waters of the state. It's vested in the
Speaker 1: owners of the surface beneath that air. So basically, you
Speaker 1: own the surface, you own the air above it. And
Speaker 1: there's an exemption carved out for aircraft so long as
Speaker 1: it's not so low that it interferes with the existing
Speaker 1: use of the land. So theoretically it could come pretty
Speaker 1: low if you're not interfering with the existing use or
Speaker 1: enjoyment of the private land. Uh. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: scaring the hell out of someone's cattle, that might be interfering.
Speaker 1: Might be interfering. Yeah, exactly, so, So that's where the
Speaker 1: art you hear that the argument come up at. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: if you own everything, if you have a law in
Speaker 1: the books that says the lander owns everything from the
Speaker 1: the ground up, and you have these and you have
Speaker 1: laws of surveying, right that the principles of surveying property
Speaker 1: lines says you have a your property line is infinitely
Speaker 1: thin that when you get to these corners, there's no
Speaker 1: way of actually stepping across a corner, even if you
Speaker 1: know the survey pin is there without to your point,
Speaker 1: without your shoulders entering the airspace? Where which is where
Speaker 1: the argument is that you can't corner across because you
Speaker 1: have this law on the books saying they own the airspace.
Speaker 1: I think, and I'm not taking like, I don't take
Speaker 1: a position right, I'm like not taking a huge position here.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to lay out with the So here
Speaker 1: are a couple of supposed to be Dave, let me
Speaker 1: ask you this. Okay. Let's say our whole system of
Speaker 1: government and rules and everything changed. It just became where now.
Speaker 1: And then we decide that we're just gonna ask Dave
Speaker 1: if it's okay, and that becomes the rule of the land.
Speaker 1: And we come to you and we're like, this one's
Speaker 1: in your court, Dave. It's corner crossing okay or not okay?
Speaker 1: What would you say, as do I want it to
Speaker 1: be okay? Or is it legally? You get you're the
Speaker 1: man you're putting on putting me on it. Man, the
Speaker 1: final the constitution needs this. It's like the Constitution says
Speaker 1: on this issue, Dave will decide, Yeah, I want us
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to be able to access
Speaker 1: our public lands. Right, and and so that it's evasive.
Speaker 1: But you're there, yeah, I'm feeling. So there are here
Speaker 1: two examples i'd give you of where this if there's
Speaker 1: a principle in the law when you're interpreting a statute,
Speaker 1: so I look at this one of ownership of airspace.
Speaker 1: There's a principle in the law called, uh, you know
Speaker 1: when you're doing statutory construction, which is, you know, a
Speaker 1: court is interpreting a statute, and you you start with
Speaker 1: the plane meaning of the words on the page. You
Speaker 1: start with, Okay, what's the plane meaning of the law, say,
Speaker 1: and if plain meaning is clear, you don't go any farther.
Speaker 1: That's what you apply. But there's another principle in statutory
Speaker 1: construction that says you can't read a statute to create
Speaker 1: an absurd result. Uh that yep, yep, and so and
Speaker 1: so I'd like so i'd propose this. Here's two examples
Speaker 1: i'd proposed to you that I throw that I'd throw
Speaker 1: out there in Wyoming right of examples where if you
Speaker 1: read the letter of the law, you'd be trespassing every time.
Speaker 1: But I've never heard of anybody's sided for trespassing. These
Speaker 1: two examples because it would be an absurd result. One
Speaker 1: of them is if the property line is infinitely thin.
Speaker 1: We have laws for for building fences. For example, if
Speaker 1: you put a fence up on your property line that's
Speaker 1: not infinitely thin, you are by definition trespassing on your
Speaker 1: neighbor's property by putting up that fence. But we allow
Speaker 1: you to do that, and we want, we encourage people
Speaker 1: to do that. Um. And in fact, we're a fence
Speaker 1: out states. So if you don't want neighbors livestock coming
Speaker 1: onto your property, you're encouraged to put up a fence
Speaker 1: and keep them out right. UM. So there's an example
Speaker 1: where I have never seen somebody sided. You follow the
Speaker 1: statute for how to construct a legal fence, and as
Speaker 1: long as you do that, you can put a fence
Speaker 1: on a surveyed property line that's your property line, and
Speaker 1: even though that fence is half half on their property,
Speaker 1: it's not a trespass. You can do that can give
Speaker 1: you an example. I was good. So here's my second
Speaker 1: example before I forget it because I freaked. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: My second example is so in Wyoming, water is the
Speaker 1: properties of the state, and it's if you want to
Speaker 1: float on. So the landowner may own the In Wyoming,
Speaker 1: they may own the bed and the banks of the river.
Speaker 1: You can't put your foot on the on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the river and you're trespassing. But as long as
Speaker 1: you're on that water, you're not trespassing. So you're sitting
Speaker 1: on public water but over private land, therefore in private airspace.
Speaker 1: But I've never heard anybody gets sited for trespass. You're
Speaker 1: floating along in your tube, right, You're technically everything underneath
Speaker 1: you is private land. Yeah, why don't they make the
Speaker 1: airspace argument there? I've never heard it made, right because
Speaker 1: I think it would be an absurd result. We said
Speaker 1: those are navigable waterways, and that the public is entitled
Speaker 1: to use those navigable waterways as long as they don't
Speaker 1: put their anchor down or or or get out and
Speaker 1: wait on the That's the first time I've ever heard
Speaker 1: that point raised, because you haven't talked to me about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a good attorney. You're floating in shallow water. You're
Speaker 1: closer to their land than you would be stepping over it. Right.
Speaker 1: What I was a good point out was, let's say
Speaker 1: you get out to take a leak on the side
Speaker 1: of the road and you walk down and you point
Speaker 1: out something over the fence. You're never gonna get a
Speaker 1: ticket for your arm pointing over the fence, right, I
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna say, and you have a little bit
Speaker 1: of wind draft with your pee. I was saying like like,
Speaker 1: if you're staying there, and I'm like, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: I jest you're over fence and someone says I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you a citation for having your him over
Speaker 1: that offense, there's no way you're gonna wind up walking
Speaker 1: out of that courthouse. So to find like you're you're right,
Speaker 1: my arm waved over the fence, so you can can
Speaker 1: I make a couple of other points on okay, so
Speaker 1: so you get to let me let me talk about
Speaker 1: this specific point because I think you're honestly you were
Speaker 1: making that when you're introducing this, you're saying, well, maybe
Speaker 1: it'll set a precedent or something. The way that the
Speaker 1: judicial system works. So this is in a circuit court, right,
Speaker 1: it's a misdemeanor offense. The penalty for a criminal trespassing
Speaker 1: wyming is maximum seven fifty dollars and up to six
Speaker 1: months in jail u for for this misdemeanor. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna origin open jail. Yeah, Like if I could pick
Speaker 1: between these two seven fifty bucks sounds better, it's yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: So it's a misdemeanor offense. Right if if the defendants
Speaker 1: here are are acquitted at the circuit court level, there's
Speaker 1: no legal precedence set so that because it's just just
Speaker 1: down that the facts of the situation showed there there
Speaker 1: either wasn't enough to convict, there wasn't enough to show
Speaker 1: that they actually trespassed, or or the facts show that
Speaker 1: they in fact did not trespass. But there's not a
Speaker 1: legal interpretation of uh in that situation about whether that uh,
Speaker 1: whether the application of like ten four three oh two
Speaker 1: the airspace law, whether that creates this uh, whether they
Speaker 1: breached the invisible barrier, And there's no interpretation as a
Speaker 1: matter of law. They're on a on an acquittal. Now,
Speaker 1: if they're found guilty, then there is a process to
Speaker 1: appeal that to the district court and the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and then at that point they could make arguments on
Speaker 1: matter of law and do this this interpretation and talk
Speaker 1: about you know, maybe you're you're creating an absurd result
Speaker 1: here or whatever, and then you could potentially get to
Speaker 1: the point of having um something that sets precedent. But
Speaker 1: if at the circuit court level, if if they aren't,
Speaker 1: if they are not convicted at the circuit court level,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not going to can you can you
Speaker 1: plead guilty and then if you wanted to advance, like
Speaker 1: let's say you really wanted to push for a test case,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work that way. You can't plead guilty and
Speaker 1: then appeal. No, you just plat out. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not a criminal lawyer. I remember. This reminds me of
Speaker 1: another wildlife issue that I used to follow. There was
Speaker 1: a on the Flathead Reservation in northwest Montana. There was
Speaker 1: a rule that, like UM, at some point in time,
Speaker 1: tribal members were able to sell land to non tribal members.
Speaker 1: So you had a lot of non tribal members who
Speaker 1: owned land within the reservation boundaries, but because they weren't
Speaker 1: tribal members, they didn't enjoy certain hunting privileges on their
Speaker 1: own land because it was governed. The hunting was governed
Speaker 1: for tribal members. Remember this guy when I was when
Speaker 1: I was living over that neck of the woods, this
Speaker 1: guy would make a big scene out of every year,
Speaker 1: inviting a bunch of people out to do a pheasant hunt.
Speaker 1: And he'd always be come arrest me, please, because he
Speaker 1: wanted to get it pushed to the right court. And
Speaker 1: he would be frustrated because they wouldn't do anything, and
Speaker 1: he just wanted to get it to a point where
Speaker 1: it could be clarified law. He wanted to challenge the law,
Speaker 1: but they never would take de bait with him because
Speaker 1: they knew what he was after. Is there a chance
Speaker 1: that someone would just be like, Okay, you're not guilty
Speaker 1: in order to not do precedent or does the world
Speaker 1: not working like conspirators conspiratorial ways like that, you know?
Speaker 1: And I don't know the answer to that. I'm not like,
Speaker 1: that's not something I could speculate about. I would hope
Speaker 1: that I would hope that our judicial system works in
Speaker 1: a way, um that the facts of the situation in
Speaker 1: the law are applied fairly to everybody and nobody's trying
Speaker 1: to use it as a way to game a system, right,
Speaker 1: especially in the criminal context, which this is, you know,
Speaker 1: in the civil context, I've definitely have seen exam pults
Speaker 1: of trying to to game figure out a way to
Speaker 1: gain this instant but in the criminal context, I really
Speaker 1: hope that that I really hope that doesn't happen. So
Speaker 1: does it seem like the go fund me is getting
Speaker 1: ahead of itself, like they should maybe not fund these
Speaker 1: feathers yet so they don't have like like have them
Speaker 1: going with a poor legal defense. They get convicted, then
Speaker 1: you pour the money to them and they go to
Speaker 1: the next state supreme US Supreme Yeah, it wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: It would go state Supreme Um. It's a state statute
Speaker 1: and so never wind up. It could never go to
Speaker 1: a it could never go to a federal thing. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't think they'd be making a constitutional argument here.
Speaker 1: I suspect that this stays at an interpretation of state law,
Speaker 1: and it it would go to the state Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and that would probably be the end of it for
Speaker 1: that because we're talking about the application of of a
Speaker 1: of a state statute, criminal trespass statute. Are you tempted
Speaker 1: right now to do like um? You know, sometimes like
Speaker 1: big shot lawyers come in and do like so they
Speaker 1: do some grand standing by doing like a pro bone
Speaker 1: o deal and all that are you is that? Are
Speaker 1: you drawn? Are you are you feeling there's a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases, a lot of situations like this that
Speaker 1: are tempting. Yeah, for sure, tempting just to get in
Speaker 1: there and see what's going on. I haven't been asked, right,
Speaker 1: I haven't been asked. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: be asked, but uh, yeah, it's interesting there. It's there
Speaker 1: are a couple other things on this that I think
Speaker 1: are worth knowing, right as far as why I'm in
Speaker 1: specific law and corner crossing, so this they're they're being
Speaker 1: prosecuting it, or criminal trespass statute. We have two different
Speaker 1: We always several different trespass statutes. The criminal trespass is
Speaker 1: one that, uh, the only way you get cited for
Speaker 1: that is if you know you have so either the
Speaker 1: landowner themselves or law enforcement UM have told you you
Speaker 1: can't be here, you're trespassing, you can't be here, or
Speaker 1: the landowner has posted signs making it very clear that
Speaker 1: you are not allowed to be there um. So it's
Speaker 1: it's incumbent upon the landowner to notify the person potentially
Speaker 1: entering the property that it's uh that they're violating. You know,
Speaker 1: that they don't want them to trespass in that case
Speaker 1: they can be cited in Wyoming, just his corner fence
Speaker 1: isn't enough. There might there might not have been a fencer.
Speaker 1: So what I understand my understanding of this particular one,
Speaker 1: and I might have the facts around, but I've been
Speaker 1: briefed a little bit on it, right, was that there's
Speaker 1: a survey pin but no fence, and that he actually
Speaker 1: used a step ladder like you're talking about right, uh,
Speaker 1: and so never touched the ground on that's yeah, supercrafty, right,
Speaker 1: And if it's the spot I think it is. There
Speaker 1: there had been some tea posts jammed into the ground
Speaker 1: with no no trespassing on the private side to make
Speaker 1: it impossible to squeeze through, so you actually the only
Speaker 1: way you could do it was to go over the top.
Speaker 1: So it was actually it may have taken a little
Speaker 1: forethought to to do this. Um, but why do you
Speaker 1: seem like you seem mildly uncomfortable? Are you just not
Speaker 1: at all? I love it? Like you're like you're so
Speaker 1: you've dealt a lot with water stuff. Yes, okay, hit
Speaker 1: me with the water thing that like floating down the river. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's it's different in every state. No, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: stick with Wylming. What you do? You do a lot
Speaker 1: of water rights issues. So why has no one ever
Speaker 1: since my disclaimer, I can't speak on behalf of like,
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm not on Turney. Second of all,
Speaker 1: like as I can give you opinions, let me ask
Speaker 1: you some yes or no questions. Okay, are you or
Speaker 1: are you not an expert in water rights? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: say no, bullshit? Man. You know I actually I actually
Speaker 1: practiced water loft for like eight years. But I thought
Speaker 1: that your whole deals that'sfferent rights. That's different like waters
Speaker 1: of the US and things like that. I can talk
Speaker 1: about waters of the state, waters the US, I can
Speaker 1: talk about the arguments in but when you're talking about
Speaker 1: water rights, you're typically talking about an individual's right to
Speaker 1: pull water. That is that what I meant? I meant
Speaker 1: floating down the river? Yeah, no one's challenged. Why has
Speaker 1: no old landowner said, um, those people coming down my
Speaker 1: river are in my airspace. Please give them a ticket.
Speaker 1: Why have they not done? What I think has happened
Speaker 1: is I think we've carved out an exception the way
Speaker 1: we did for that the f a A A did for
Speaker 1: for navigable airspace and we did the same thing for
Speaker 1: navigable water, so we've effectively created an exception navigable waters.
Speaker 1: They belonged to the waters of the US, and we've
Speaker 1: the reason that we've made that hook is the fact
Speaker 1: that they are navigable waters. Could you really say, well,
Speaker 1: we're calling them navigable waters, but we're gonna tell you
Speaker 1: can't navi I'm saying that that little lens of water
Speaker 1: negates the little lens of water you're in the waters airspace.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, Right, that's that's the theories. But but right,
Speaker 1: could you say, could you say there that there is
Speaker 1: he was being coy. He doesn't know a thing. The
Speaker 1: thing is Dave, Honestly, Like I'll say this, Dave is
Speaker 1: better at the stuff than anybody I know on Earth.
Speaker 1: And like there's some of these issues that like you
Speaker 1: haven't even touched on yet that I'm hoping, like I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here with a kind of a grand waiting for
Speaker 1: the chance to get you to talk about a different
Speaker 1: legal issue in Wyoming that Dave is really really good at.
Speaker 1: But like, Dave is the man on this stuff, and
Speaker 1: so I could I can tell you what I think
Speaker 1: and what I know and half of what I know
Speaker 1: comes from sitting in a car and with Dave talking
Speaker 1: about suppressors while he tells me about trespassing. Do you
Speaker 1: guys do it at the same time? Basic probably just
Speaker 1: talking right over each other, all right, So go on,
Speaker 1: all right. So the last piece I was gonna say
Speaker 1: is Okay, so water, we've created this exception for navigability,
Speaker 1: like this navigable waterway, right, that creates an exception. We've
Speaker 1: done it for airspace. Um, there's a quite there's still
Speaker 1: a question about how far that air space comes down, right,
Speaker 1: And you know there's some Supreme Court case law from
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, uh that that kind of suggests that.
Speaker 1: And it's specific to airplanes, right, but as long as
Speaker 1: you don't and I mentioned it earlier, as long as
Speaker 1: you don't disrupt the enjoyment of that private land, meaning
Speaker 1: you're not harassing livestock or you're causing major problems uh
Speaker 1: to the landowner. Uh that if you're in that airspace, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're not violating that property. Right now, that hasn't been
Speaker 1: fully played out. This was very specific to airplanes. That
Speaker 1: wasn't to foot traffic, and it was you know, seventy
Speaker 1: five years ago. UM. But I do have a question
Speaker 1: that I think and I don't have an answer to this,
Speaker 1: but like we've carved out a space for airplanes for
Speaker 1: navigable water or for air we've carved out a space
Speaker 1: for navigable water. Um, we haven't talked about foot traffic
Speaker 1: as a means of navigability of public of a public
Speaker 1: trust resource. Because what we're talking about here is a
Speaker 1: public trust resource of airspace to move commerce and so forth,
Speaker 1: a public trust resource of water, uh to move on.
Speaker 1: And we have a public trust resource of land uh
Speaker 1: so air water and land, and we haven't decided that
Speaker 1: land piece yet. UM. But it gets back to the
Speaker 1: sort of come back to that, you know, interpret a
Speaker 1: statute with absurd results. And I you know, if if
Speaker 1: I were making an argument and I'm not providing right,
Speaker 1: I'm not providing legal advice or just having a conversation
Speaker 1: about you know what ifs right? Uh, which is another day,
Speaker 1: but yeah, just another day. But I'd consider making that
Speaker 1: case that uh, it's another form of navigability of a
Speaker 1: UM of a public resource, right of a public trust resource.
Speaker 1: I want people to understand. I want to put I
Speaker 1: want to put some superlatives on here. Sure this is
Speaker 1: not to degrade or de mean any of the work
Speaker 1: done by conservation pro access organizations that do a lot
Speaker 1: of great land acquisitions. Like in a minute, need I
Speaker 1: was going to tell us about this eight thousand acre
Speaker 1: property in Utah, which is super cool. Okay, um, Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain ELK Foundation is set aside. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: the hell they at now. I mean absurd millions numbers
Speaker 1: of acres that the Rocky Mountain Olk Foundation, Yeah, has
Speaker 1: like raise money to bo I and to open to
Speaker 1: public access ducks unlimited enormous amounts of acreage that they've
Speaker 1: bought and handed over to public access. Like all that's
Speaker 1: that's great, But in terms of a single act that
Speaker 1: would increase public access, there's nothing that would come close.
Speaker 1: In the next ten generations of humans, Nothing would come
Speaker 1: close to a broad scale clarification of the ownership of
Speaker 1: that airspace. In terms of foot traffic, you would be
Speaker 1: opening up literally hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of acres,
Speaker 1: millions literally millions of acres. You just have to find
Speaker 1: the right person and the right case. You have to
Speaker 1: find the right opportunity, the right attorney, right person, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: There's another issue a lot like this in Wyoming. Go on, Well,
Speaker 1: in Wyoming, you can't hunt willderness areas if you're not
Speaker 1: a president without a guide. Oh man, I got a
Speaker 1: lot to say on that. We've covered that one and
Speaker 1: I've even explored it with Dave, but not not on
Speaker 1: your podcast. No, I know. But you know what I did.
Speaker 1: I summed up a thing you explained to me once
Speaker 1: I was asking you. We talked about this recently and
Speaker 1: I mentioned I don't think I mentioned you by name.
Speaker 1: I mentioned something you explained to me where I was
Speaker 1: always going to like with certain rules, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: why what were the arguments for and against? And you
Speaker 1: had explained to me that when it comes to legislative action,
Speaker 1: they don't memorialize all of the wise then memorialize the outcome.
Speaker 1: But no one like puts down like here's the pros
Speaker 1: that someone so raised and here's so when you go
Speaker 1: back to something that's been in existence for a long time,
Speaker 1: you don't have an accurate record of who argued, what point,
Speaker 1: and what were they really getting at. It's just you
Speaker 1: just know what they came up with. I was explaining
Speaker 1: that might I might mutilated that that's right because I
Speaker 1: was asked you like, why what was the argument for
Speaker 1: and you're like, I can't go tell you the arguments. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did talk about that at some point. If you want,
Speaker 1: we can talk about what I think the legal vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: to that law are. I know you think it's vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I've I've got a couple now, I think I've talked
Speaker 1: to you before about at least one. But I know
Speaker 1: if I've got a couple of legal vulnerabilities to that law, um,
Speaker 1: explain the law. When do you explain the law? And
Speaker 1: then when you explain the vulnerable be done with corner
Speaker 1: crossing if you are I mean, I was trying to
Speaker 1: lay a huge superlative on it. Yeah. Oh. The other
Speaker 1: part is they're there. They are partly that I think
Speaker 1: that that the the the sporting community, the access community
Speaker 1: needs to be prepared for, is they need to be
Speaker 1: prepared for the fact that UM fences are often laid
Speaker 1: down in terms of people eyeballing things. They're laid down
Speaker 1: in terms of convenience. You might if you have like
Speaker 1: a finger ridge coming off a ridge hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, some guy might have run his fences down
Speaker 1: the finger ridge because it was an approximate, It was
Speaker 1: approximately right, and it was a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of easier than running it down some rocky you draw
Speaker 1: where you couldn't put a post in. Uh, if this
Speaker 1: became a thing, we need to be prepared for, like
Speaker 1: I said, and overcoming a lot of issues around like
Speaker 1: marking surveying. It doesn't mean that you just jump up
Speaker 1: to any two fences that come together. Those fences could
Speaker 1: literally those fences could be a hundred feet off. So
Speaker 1: it's not just a matter if you hopping fences everywhere.
Speaker 1: It would take some like educated doing to avoid conflict.
Speaker 1: That was my last point I was gonna you made that.
Speaker 1: It made me think of something that would create I
Speaker 1: can create a little hyperbole out of this something. Uh
Speaker 1: if you do this, you said, we'd go out there
Speaker 1: and survey every corner and we know right. Um. One
Speaker 1: consequence of that is when you do when you just
Speaker 1: described what you described of all of these fences running
Speaker 1: in different places, like you may just open a can
Speaker 1: of worms on adverse possession claims and just pitt like
Speaker 1: just people fighting over like hey, you know what your
Speaker 1: neighbor is grazing section, Like you start doing that and
Speaker 1: find out where these corners actually are, like like just
Speaker 1: can open worms everywhere across poem about the dudes building
Speaker 1: the fence, it's called fence building or something. There's two
Speaker 1: guys like did it come together every year and rebuild
Speaker 1: the stone fence between their properties. People should revisit that
Speaker 1: poem in the line he's like old stone. He like
Speaker 1: basically they're like friendly thing. And as you get into
Speaker 1: the poem, it's like he he puts it like these
Speaker 1: old stone savages still out there, you know, wielding their
Speaker 1: stone weapons. But yeah, fence building. Anyways, there could be
Speaker 1: a lot of people who got over it a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, and then you'd reinvigorate the dispute. The only
Speaker 1: the very last thing I'd say is at least in
Speaker 1: wy I mean, and I think Montana tried this two
Speaker 1: years ago. Legislature actually tried to introduce a bill to
Speaker 1: legalized formally legalized teen in Montana. Um both failed. Both
Speaker 1: efforts failed. There was a reverse effort effort in Wyoming
Speaker 1: at one point to formally ban it, to make it illegal.
Speaker 1: That also failed. So everybody's everybody's like, we don't don't
Speaker 1: really politically nobody wants to touch it. If that came back.
Speaker 1: If that came back up now in this state, I
Speaker 1: bet you could tip it the other direction because it
Speaker 1: was that voting like in the legislature was it wasn't
Speaker 1: a ballot and ship not every state has access to that,
Speaker 1: and even then it could be very problematic to pass
Speaker 1: them through the ballot initiatives. You could tip it through
Speaker 1: public education because you have a lot of people who, um,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people who are deeply incentivized
Speaker 1: financially and otherwise that they want that land for themselves.
Speaker 1: And I can imagine if something like that came up,
Speaker 1: you'd have a lot of people who were felt like
Speaker 1: acutely very personally threatened, and a lot of other people
Speaker 1: who were sort of vaguely supportive. But you're gonna have
Speaker 1: people who are really gonna want to fight because they
Speaker 1: might be um basically running you know, outfitter businesses on
Speaker 1: what would be public land because they no one can
Speaker 1: get to it except them because they lease a joining parcel.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have some people they're gonna fight tooth and
Speaker 1: nail to block that, and you're gonna have a lot
Speaker 1: of hunters who are just sort of like, oh, that'd
Speaker 1: be cool, like a corner hop, but I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: get all involved. Yeah, and that's a hard thing to
Speaker 1: do to write. You're you're talking about something that is
Speaker 1: going to inherently put the hunting community against the landowner community,
Speaker 1: where the hunting community in most of the country really
Speaker 1: depends on the landowner community for accessing opportunity. And even
Speaker 1: in the West where you have a lot of public land,
Speaker 1: still some of the best places can be on private
Speaker 1: lands too, and you depend on those relationships. And you're
Speaker 1: you're talking about something that is some of the best places,
Speaker 1: I mean the best place well yeah, yeah, right, And
Speaker 1: so you're it goes to that, You're I think there's
Speaker 1: some political reluctance to do that because you're you're creating
Speaker 1: attention with those that you want to be natural allies.
Speaker 1: You want the lander community of the hunting community be
Speaker 1: on the same page with conservation and land owners to
Speaker 1: be supportive of hunting and allow access an opportunity. And
Speaker 1: you could be putting this, you know, creating a situation.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying, there's
Speaker 1: that's why, that's why people are afraid. I think afraid
Speaker 1: to afraid is not the right right word, but maybe
Speaker 1: it is. It's there's a discomfort with taking on that
Speaker 1: issue at a legislative level. Oh, I feel I feel
Speaker 1: uncofortable talking about it. And the reason I feel uncomfortable
Speaker 1: talking about it um and I had and I have
Speaker 1: to like psyche myself up to talk about it. The
Speaker 1: reason I feel uncomfortable talking about it is I have
Speaker 1: um cordial, very respectful relationships with a lot of landowners
Speaker 1: who would look at that and probably feel threatened. And
Speaker 1: so I'm like, man, I don't want to Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: that dude's a good dude. Let's it's on his place.
Speaker 1: I don't want to piss them off by talking about it.
Speaker 1: But I also feel like in terms of if I
Speaker 1: have like an obligation to um, if I have an
Speaker 1: obligation to my audience, it would be to um explain
Speaker 1: to them things that are that matter to them a lot.
Speaker 1: And and I feel like I have an obligation to
Speaker 1: talk about it. But it's Thorny's ship. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a question, and I don't know that it directly relates
Speaker 1: to this, but I noticed that on X, which we
Speaker 1: use a lot of in Wisconsin, and I use it
Speaker 1: in Michigan for hunting. Why is it that the on
Speaker 1: X map, which I assume is very accurate up to
Speaker 1: a meter or less, shows that where the property lines were,
Speaker 1: they are no longer Because I noticed that some of
Speaker 1: our property has expanded and on one of our neighbors
Speaker 1: who used to have thought he had ten acres now
Speaker 1: has like seven point four acres. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: a so I mean that pre political world, Like I
Speaker 1: actually worked doing mapping work for U s c A,
Speaker 1: n RCS for a long time and that's like my background.
Speaker 1: And the reality is because on X isn't perfect, and
Speaker 1: so when you look at on X, what you're looking
Speaker 1: at is on X goes out when they get that
Speaker 1: mapping information. They're collecting that mapping information from a host
Speaker 1: of different entities, people, counties, federal agencies. And what ONYX
Speaker 1: did that's magical is they're putting it all on one database.
Speaker 1: So you can pull it all from one database. But
Speaker 1: you can't. And this is the other problem. You can
Speaker 1: assume that that database is right because it isn't. So
Speaker 1: it's not reliable. It's not foot I'm putting my left
Speaker 1: foot on public in my right foot is not. So
Speaker 1: that's what people to think that that's the issue is
Speaker 1: it has to do with the accuracy level of the mapping.
Speaker 1: And that's the other problem with this is because even
Speaker 1: your phone, unless you have a like a base station
Speaker 1: in a pickup truck that's kicking out sub you know,
Speaker 1: inch level accuracy, your phone is going to be off
Speaker 1: by a couple of meters. The guy who went out
Speaker 1: did the map may have been off by a couple
Speaker 1: of meters. So it's not just the map, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the map could be totally accurate, map could be
Speaker 1: a hundred like make this assumption. The map could be
Speaker 1: a d accurate, but the satellites aren't. Ye. The satellites
Speaker 1: telling you where you are on that map might be
Speaker 1: within a meter whenever you look at the six inches
Speaker 1: you need to be. Every map is an abstraction of reality,
Speaker 1: right though the Earth is a circle with hills and
Speaker 1: everything else like that on and you're getting a different
Speaker 1: called a projection of that. Every time you're you're looking
Speaker 1: at a map, you're looking at a false representation of
Speaker 1: what it really exists in reality. And that's why this
Speaker 1: gets to like all these infinitely, like you just can't
Speaker 1: be perfect, and that's why you've got to really watch yourself.
Speaker 1: You can't just be like, oh, yeah, I've got this
Speaker 1: handheld unit now, so I must be fine. So you
Speaker 1: tell the game warden, I'm okay to be here. I've
Speaker 1: got my GPS unit. You can't do that because how depends.
Speaker 1: So that's the next question. We're actually corner pretty act,
Speaker 1: they're pretty good. Everything's gonna everything has. Any landownership claim
Speaker 1: is going to default to something. So if it's like
Speaker 1: survey and you put a corner pin, there has been
Speaker 1: like a baseline understanding which you can stop arguing when
Speaker 1: your legal descriptions are based on a professional survey. Like
Speaker 1: the legal descriptions that you put in the contracts when
Speaker 1: you sell a piece of property are based on the
Speaker 1: surveys that are done out in the pin that's stuck
Speaker 1: in the ground and the projection that that pin was
Speaker 1: basing all in there, and so it's all part of
Speaker 1: legal d The problem is, like when you get it
Speaker 1: on your phone, you're not often working in the same project.
Speaker 1: You're not. It's just an assumption. We'll have to realize
Speaker 1: that in this world where we think everything is your fingertips.
Speaker 1: It's not as cut and dried as you appreciate that answer,
Speaker 1: because that's always puzzled me. And I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to tell the neighbor. I said, well, you just lost it,
Speaker 1: you know on fence thing. Uh, we're recently out on
Speaker 1: the place a rancher, I know when he's got I
Speaker 1: know he had two fences with his boundary with the neighbor.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's like six ft apart for long
Speaker 1: ass ways. And I later said to him, Uh, what's
Speaker 1: what's up with you in your neighbor having the double fence?
Speaker 1: This is a trivia question. Why do you think they
Speaker 1: got a double defence? It was because of the Eastman
Speaker 1: or because they could drive cattle on mortar more easily,
Speaker 1: bulls breeding cows through the fence. Oh well, and they
Speaker 1: needed six ft of space. I didn't know. I didn't
Speaker 1: go over there and measure it, but I was like,
Speaker 1: why do you guys have Like did you like each
Speaker 1: put your own? Like what what's up with that? And
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, no, it was an issue with they
Speaker 1: were putting whatever and I had I traditionally ran my
Speaker 1: one or the other, like I ran my bulls and
Speaker 1: they had something going on over there, and blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and they just put a buffer there to reduce some
Speaker 1: of the tensions, the tensions between the herds like neighbors
Speaker 1: right there. All right, if I break down this, there's
Speaker 1: we started with a sad story where people are in trouble.
Speaker 1: Now we'll start Now we'll move to a happy access story. Access. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, hunter's access is the number one the
Speaker 1: number one thing and petty impeding people from participating in
Speaker 1: hunting or the shooting sports is access even shooting sports,
Speaker 1: nowhere to shoot, Yes, nowhere to shoot. So you don't
Speaker 1: have access to either the expertise, you don't have somebody
Speaker 1: to teach you to do it right. That's a huge impediment.
Speaker 1: You don't have access to a community to be involved in.
Speaker 1: That leads people to leave it. So you may, you know,
Speaker 1: live in a community like you're you're the guy outside.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes you anymore. Um. Access is access to ranges,
Speaker 1: access to ammunition, access to you know all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in Utah, kind of a good access story. Um,
Speaker 1: same guy that we worked with to do the US
Speaker 1: right to hunt fish, he also Casey Snyder last year
Speaker 1: did a random bill to um make it illegal debate
Speaker 1: big game animals on public lands. Awesome, Billy, Yep, he
Speaker 1: crushed it, and he had lots of support from a
Speaker 1: variety of public lands. So in Utah until last year,
Speaker 1: it was legally you could take a box of apples.
Speaker 1: You could throw it on the ground in the middle
Speaker 1: of the sage brush in Utah, you could set a
Speaker 1: trail camera over at the talk to your cell phone.
Speaker 1: You could sit there and wait for animals to show
Speaker 1: up at that bait site and then go out and
Speaker 1: shoot the animal this is a mule deer or a
Speaker 1: trophy elk. And at the same time you could also
Speaker 1: sell that location information and so trade. You know. Casey,
Speaker 1: to his credit, took on a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of flak and interest. No, dude, he is
Speaker 1: he is a he's the man. He's a real champion
Speaker 1: those issues. Well, he also took on in Utah this
Speaker 1: eight thousand acres. So the use of state lands is
Speaker 1: a big issue. You know, are they public lands? Aren't
Speaker 1: they in a variety of states, And in Utah they
Speaker 1: faced a lot of challenges there and they had a
Speaker 1: eight thousand acres in the Cinnamon Cree Drange is what
Speaker 1: it was called, and it's one of the few real
Speaker 1: public accessible areas in northern Utah. It's in Casey's district.
Speaker 1: Was going up for at least sale and quota, and
Speaker 1: Casey was able to put together a to work with
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people, including the Department of Natural
Speaker 1: Resources there in Utah, to um win that lease so
Speaker 1: that eight thousand acres now will be a wildlife management
Speaker 1: unit that where people can where the public can go hunt.
Speaker 1: When you say at least how long is the lease,
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that question. I'd be speculating. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, so I'm not going to but they're
Speaker 1: still working on the issues. It's you know, so for
Speaker 1: people who live in Utah and who are interested in
Speaker 1: these issues, they need your support at the legislative level.
Speaker 1: And so this is a pitch is a lobbyist, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a lot to people, which is, if
Speaker 1: these are issues you care about, respectfully, call your legislators
Speaker 1: and talk with them respectfully about these issues, because you know,
Speaker 1: nothing poisons your issues more than calling and yelling at somebody,
Speaker 1: and nothing helps them better than hearing that you have
Speaker 1: actually care and you know that they're a real person
Speaker 1: and for in this case that you know as cases
Speaker 1: putting together the stuff to you know, carry this through
Speaker 1: the legislature in the spring, you know, call your legislators
Speaker 1: and tell them to support you know, that effort, support
Speaker 1: those bills. Here's who all kicked in significant funding meal
Speaker 1: to your foundation, Sportsman for Fish and Wildlife, Rocky Mountain,
Speaker 1: Elk Foundation, Nature Conservancy, State of Utah, and US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service. Pretty cool. So if you live in Utah, congratulations. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, okay, here's one for you. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you want to answer this as your job or
Speaker 1: answered as you well, so we'll see what it is
Speaker 1: first and then we'll later on I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: you want it was after I get in trouble for
Speaker 1: it or don't. Yeah, so next next week I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, that was ni Fi. Yeah, has nothing
Speaker 1: to do In fact, it wasn't. It was some other guy,
Speaker 1: some guy like them. Uh. What was your being into
Speaker 1: the firearms industry um and working on policy and also
Speaker 1: you know, public opinion? What was your take on the
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin movie set shooting? I mean it was stretched
Speaker 1: in every imaginable What a terrible tragedy direct, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the most the thing to say, is what a
Speaker 1: terrible tragedy? Uh, none of us, I don't think sitting
Speaker 1: around this table certainly know all the details. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that it's an ongoing legal issue with lots of stuff
Speaker 1: going on there, and I think that everybody ought to
Speaker 1: be able to just step back from that and say, like,
Speaker 1: what a sad thing that changed a bunch of people's
Speaker 1: lives permanently. And I think the best thing that you
Speaker 1: can possibly say about it is there are rules of
Speaker 1: firearms safety, and if everybody obeys those rules, this doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: And that's just reality, and you can just take that
Speaker 1: to the bank. You know, there's a level of education
Speaker 1: there and I'm not saying these you know everybody that
Speaker 1: was there was or was not educated. I have no idea,
Speaker 1: But what's the first rule of firearm safety? Every gun
Speaker 1: is always loaded. You never point a firearm at anything
Speaker 1: you're not willing to destroy. You keep your finger off
Speaker 1: the trigger. You don't shoot unless you're sure of what
Speaker 1: you're shooting at and what's beyond it. And so I
Speaker 1: think that rather, you know, if there's I can't say
Speaker 1: anything about that situation because I don't know all the particulars,
Speaker 1: but I can say for everyone listening, for all of
Speaker 1: us involved, no matter what we're doing with guns, obey
Speaker 1: the safety rules. And this has been thing, you know,
Speaker 1: a big thing NSSF. You know, if if I could
Speaker 1: brag about us just for a second, like safety issues
Speaker 1: are things that were huge on Project Child Safe Operations,
Speaker 1: secure store, own it, secure it, respect that those are
Speaker 1: all these are all initiatives that we have where we
Speaker 1: put big time work and money into trying to educate
Speaker 1: people on firearms, safe be on safe stories, on all
Speaker 1: these things because really, uh, we all ought to be
Speaker 1: able to play in this firearms space safely. And that's
Speaker 1: we've demonstrated it since the nineteen fifties or furies, whatever
Speaker 1: you said, Like you can see it in the rates
Speaker 1: of how we've gotten better at this and we can
Speaker 1: continue to do that if we're all willing to just
Speaker 1: you know, have a discussion about it, an educational discussion
Speaker 1: about it. It's you know, absent the political undertones, and
Speaker 1: so you know, it's again super sad, and it's ought
Speaker 1: to be an example to all of us to take
Speaker 1: a look at what our everyday practices are and just
Speaker 1: be better. I was surprised that that in those scenes
Speaker 1: you're using functioning firearms, and even that the same firearm
Speaker 1: might be used like for real and then later that
Speaker 1: day used as a prop. I you know, I can't
Speaker 1: And there are guys who are experts in the industry
Speaker 1: who have talked about this and have didn't articles about
Speaker 1: all that says naught. Yeah, and it is one of
Speaker 1: those things again, like you know, I'm not exactly sure
Speaker 1: other than hearsay like exactly what happened on that set.
Speaker 1: But I do know the industry honestly has best practices
Speaker 1: that mirror what we're talking about with the with the
Speaker 1: rules of firearms safety. They obeyed those rules in the industry,
Speaker 1: they obeyed best practices when you go to the right
Speaker 1: sets with the right people. And so I don't think
Speaker 1: it would be fair. You know a lot of people
Speaker 1: have been like, oh, they need to quit, they need
Speaker 1: to use cartoon guns and stuff like that now, And
Speaker 1: I just think, you know, I'm not enough and an
Speaker 1: expert to say, uh, what everybody should or should not do.
Speaker 1: But I can certainly say that you know, there's a
Speaker 1: reason that you know, they have really good armors that
Speaker 1: they have. You know, a lot of these movies like
Speaker 1: you know, dudes who are like former guys from you know,
Speaker 1: the highest and military, or they're doing on site making
Speaker 1: sure that people are following these rules, and so I
Speaker 1: just think, like all of us just again, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to criticize you know, what happened there, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to say, like it's for me, I have to
Speaker 1: think about, Okay, how do I work with the firearms
Speaker 1: that are in my safe, around my kids, around my friends,
Speaker 1: around my job, around the things that I'm doing, and
Speaker 1: just make sure that I'm doing the best practices that
Speaker 1: I can when I'm doing that. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of turmoil on that movie set aside from the day
Speaker 1: like there are walk offs and in the days before,
Speaker 1: like corners are being cut everywhere. It was just a
Speaker 1: horrible commation of things that came together in that one moment.
Speaker 1: But Steve that what you said, how you know guns
Speaker 1: are used for you know, shooting real bullets with like
Speaker 1: casings and powder and actual projectiles are then brought to
Speaker 1: a movie set to be loaded with blanks, and somehow
Speaker 1: there was a live round with a casing and a
Speaker 1: bullet and powder in there. I that's that's how. I
Speaker 1: don't understand how that happened at all, it seems because
Speaker 1: normally they use blanks with with you know, a casing
Speaker 1: and powder that but no projectile and I I've used
Speaker 1: those on in movies and plays before. Well, reading about that,
Speaker 1: there's like a roll in tray that had AMMO plus
Speaker 1: unidentified AMMO, loose AMMO and a Fannie pack in the
Speaker 1: just like no. I mean some people know now because
Speaker 1: they're investigating it, Like I don't want to come in
Speaker 1: and like comment like this, that and there, I think,
Speaker 1: but the impression one gets from reading about it from
Speaker 1: a law enforcement perspective, there were plenty of reasons to
Speaker 1: come in and say no harm it what like that
Speaker 1: seemed to be kind of them. From the people that
Speaker 1: I saw speak about it, We're like, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to untangle what exactly was going on here and with
Speaker 1: what was being used, how it was being managed, a
Speaker 1: lot of questions. But I have like two things. One
Speaker 1: I felt that I had some commentary on two ways
Speaker 1: it was received. I think that maybe we're at a
Speaker 1: safe distance now. I was alarmed by the way in
Speaker 1: which the victim, someone would like a mother and husband
Speaker 1: died who had nothing to do in any of this
Speaker 1: ship right, are you talking about the cinematographer, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: director guy hit in the shoulder. He survived though, well okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying he a mother like young children
Speaker 1: was killed. So it's like to me in a way
Speaker 1: when when everyone when it became so politicized, I looked
Speaker 1: at it and I kept thinking like, man, this there
Speaker 1: is not enough space. The way it was being utilized
Speaker 1: and weaponized. I felt people weren't taken the time to think, like,
Speaker 1: here's a person like at work for a paycheck who
Speaker 1: has young children who just died, and I don't know
Speaker 1: what her opinions are about any of this, but that
Speaker 1: needs to be paid attention to. Um. The other thing
Speaker 1: is I found on the other side of stuff? Is it?
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people had a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were struggling with why all this this from
Speaker 1: from the gun rights community, Why all this kind of
Speaker 1: you know, vehemency toward uh Alec Baldwin or towards the industry.
Speaker 1: It would be a little bit like I kind of like,
Speaker 1: in some ways like demonstrated hypocrisy where you have someone
Speaker 1: who questions, why why is anybody need these guns? Anyways?
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, unless they're making a movie, then it's cool, right,
Speaker 1: but then you would have one for something else is ridicular,
Speaker 1: You don't people don't need those things? Why do they
Speaker 1: need these things? But oh but no, I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: movie maker. It's it's fine for us, storyteller. That's good
Speaker 1: for us. People. We gottam laying out. We got somebody
Speaker 1: laying around. We don't know what the hell they are. No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: That was a little I think that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of that just that's where a lot of that frustration
Speaker 1: came from. Was sort of there's that's kind of like
Speaker 1: glaring hypocrisy, which in people don't like there couldn't have
Speaker 1: been an easier target than Alec Baldwin either, like couldn't
Speaker 1: have been like a more so it's like for both
Speaker 1: both sides, it was just in insanity. Yeah, setting setting
Speaker 1: you know, that specific situation aside, like hey, teach your
Speaker 1: kids firearm safety, you know, don't don't hide from that,
Speaker 1: you know, take the opportunity to not just and you
Speaker 1: should be you know if you've got young kids in
Speaker 1: the home, you know, get a safe and if but
Speaker 1: also teach them firearms safety, you know, talk about these
Speaker 1: things and have a real discussion because um, not a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the world today want to do that.
Speaker 1: You know, these you know, guns are tabboo. We're not
Speaker 1: going to talk about guns. You know, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: deal with that. And like, the more we can do
Speaker 1: to like have you know, conversations that are intelligent about
Speaker 1: firearms and firearms safety, like we're just every day we
Speaker 1: do that, we live in a better country. I just
Speaker 1: finished a book like it's done done now about kids.
Speaker 1: Like it's called Outdoor Kids, Inside World, So it's about
Speaker 1: raising outdoor kids. And in the hunting section, I'll talk about, um,
Speaker 1: how you communicate about guns with kids. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that uh, I've just really strive to do
Speaker 1: is we have never taken the attitude that these are
Speaker 1: that that guns are like these magical things. Right, They're
Speaker 1: they're not capable of magical acts. It's like it's a
Speaker 1: thing you can understand very well, and we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about how they function, how you handle them safe. We're
Speaker 1: not going to create like they're not fetishized. They're not
Speaker 1: attributed with magical powers. If you look at them wrong,
Speaker 1: something will happen. It's like like a functional, practical understanding
Speaker 1: of what it is, what's safe, what's not safe. How
Speaker 1: it would be that you would hurt someone with one,
Speaker 1: and talk about in a very realistic sense. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: I have an eight year old and eleven year old,
Speaker 1: both little boys, and both you know, have been to
Speaker 1: the range so many times I can't even count, and
Speaker 1: have been. You know, my eleven year old now has
Speaker 1: gone on his first hunts, and you know, like those kids,
Speaker 1: like they know, and so it makes it much easier
Speaker 1: because they've got that familiarity and they've seen what a
Speaker 1: firearm can do, and so this, you know, they know
Speaker 1: when they go to somebody's house, like it's much easier.
Speaker 1: They've had those conversations. They know why they're supposed to
Speaker 1: walk away, they know why they why these things aren't toys,
Speaker 1: they know why they call grown ups. They know all
Speaker 1: those things, And I just think those are healthy conversations
Speaker 1: to have. They shouldn't be we shouldn't hide from them. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do uh, We're gonna jump into some quick
Speaker 1: hitter stuff. Not everything we're gonna bring up as quick
Speaker 1: hitters is as important and warrants as much discussion as
Speaker 1: we've already done anyway. But just an interest of time,
Speaker 1: I want to do some quick hitter stuff. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: bounce some more ears to the other. There'll be contests
Speaker 1: who can do it quick as hit ni fi? What? Why?
Speaker 1: Why is there no AMMO? Yeah? Is a giant? Is
Speaker 1: it a vast conspiracy? Twelve million people bought fire arms
Speaker 1: for the first time since the beginning of that have
Speaker 1: never owned a gun before in their entire lives. They
Speaker 1: tend to train more than people who traditionally owned guns.
Speaker 1: And if those twelve million people each bought a box
Speaker 1: with a hundred rounds of ammunition, and that's a billion
Speaker 1: new rounds of ammunition in demand on the market in
Speaker 1: the last two years that didn't exist before. The reason
Speaker 1: you can't find AMMO is because America changed significantly in
Speaker 1: the last two years, and the and the people that
Speaker 1: bought those guns were increasing minorities, women, they were Republicans,
Speaker 1: they were Democrats, and it's changed, and it's taken the
Speaker 1: company's time to be able to to to ratchet up
Speaker 1: to match to match the demand. That was phenomenal. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get you another quick hit, okay, but I have
Speaker 1: a question on that. How many people buy six at
Speaker 1: least look at looking around the table, because here's here's
Speaker 1: what's been explaining. Let me do, let me try, and
Speaker 1: then you tell me where I'm right and wrong. This
Speaker 1: doesn't kind of gets my time, do you don't? Ammunition
Speaker 1: manufacturer needs to tool up and they run runs of
Speaker 1: certain loads and calibers, calibers and there's like huge demand
Speaker 1: and huge deficits and certain things, and so they're running
Speaker 1: those things that have the greatest need from the greatest
Speaker 1: amount of retailers. People are clamoring for it, and it
Speaker 1: makes it that you don't have the luxury of stopping
Speaker 1: to tool up for what might be regarded as a
Speaker 1: more esoteric round. How is that very good? If you
Speaker 1: want to know what guns Americans own, look at the
Speaker 1: shelf and the ammal you can see back on the shelf.
Speaker 1: That's what guns Americans is, not what they don't own.
Speaker 1: You want to look like, why is no one by?
Speaker 1: Why why can't I find Wheeland? Nobody has a thirty
Speaker 1: six anymore? I haven't been I haven't seen one of
Speaker 1: those on the shelves, And like, my kid just took
Speaker 1: possession one on Friday. You guys grainy ammo to use
Speaker 1: with it. We're worried about that, but he's got some
Speaker 1: um okay uh the next one, Dave, Oh, I had
Speaker 1: a like a second second, well, I had kind of
Speaker 1: another quick hitter. Am a quick hitter thing. Never mind,
Speaker 1: it's too it's too well, Okay, you open up around.
Speaker 1: Is there a worry that if they do all the
Speaker 1: steps to ramp up production that the market will drop
Speaker 1: out and they'll be left like with this new facility
Speaker 1: that's half finished. I can't answer that question. I think
Speaker 1: yes and no, Like they're there. They are ratcheting, get up,
Speaker 1: but there like is this for real enough? Or we'd
Speaker 1: go and build a new plant. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you that they are building the
Speaker 1: new plants, Dave. Uh, big infrastructure bill. Everybody fighting about it,
Speaker 1: getting mad at each other. They won't vote it if
Speaker 1: they can't vote for this, and they won't vote if
Speaker 1: they can't vote for that. But in the end, the
Speaker 1: infrastructure bill, I gather people in the conservation world had
Speaker 1: some cause for enthusiasm and excitement about the infrastructure bill.
Speaker 1: Wildlife enthusiasts they did. Why, uh, well, this is a
Speaker 1: quick hitter, right, So not to say that these aren't
Speaker 1: rich issues, but just in the interest of time, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so their biggest things. So this passed, right, be
Speaker 1: clear that the infrastructure Bill was bipartisan and it passed
Speaker 1: UH in November, sometime in November, right, so it's it's done,
Speaker 1: it's happening. One of the biggest things in there is
Speaker 1: it created a grant program million dollar uh federal grant
Speaker 1: program for wildlife crossings, so competitive grant program around the country.
Speaker 1: States can use too. You know. So many states have
Speaker 1: been identifying places of get us like three crossings. Well
Speaker 1: so a crossing, so crossings can be underpasses, overpasses, and
Speaker 1: I believe overpasses are in that twelve to thirteen million
Speaker 1: dollar range apiece roughly now, so it actually gets you
Speaker 1: quite a lot um. Some overpasses cost a lot more.
Speaker 1: There's one that we're working on organizationally in California in
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles area, uh, for mountain lions actually, because
Speaker 1: there's this urban lion population. Calan's favorite subject, right, they
Speaker 1: get smacked by vehicles there. So fundraising for that right now.
Speaker 1: But but this will create resources for projects all over
Speaker 1: the country. UH. There's also a lot of of money
Speaker 1: available for forest restoration projects. So think about cheat grass
Speaker 1: and forest grassland UM sage brush, right, so cheat grass mitigation,
Speaker 1: UH forest uh you know, fire mitigation and things like that.
Speaker 1: A lot of money for that. UM there are there
Speaker 1: were things like UH force Legacy Road program funded. So
Speaker 1: there's money now to maintain forest roads, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the two track inventory roads that are out there.
Speaker 1: There's also money to decommission roads and restore that habitat.
Speaker 1: There's also money for culverts. And you don't think you think, well, culverts,
Speaker 1: what does that do well? Creating fish habitat and and
Speaker 1: helping fish movement. There's millions of dollars in there for
Speaker 1: culvert removal and replacement to allow in its particularly targeting
Speaker 1: fish movement UH too for largely for threatening endangered species
Speaker 1: fish species that have had their uh their movement cut off,
Speaker 1: but also for other UH species of fish as well
Speaker 1: game species that we might like to catch. Right that
Speaker 1: that that program is there for. So there's there's just
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of stuff that's as quick as I
Speaker 1: can be without going into lots of details, but there
Speaker 1: there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in
Speaker 1: the infrastructure package that go back directly to projects on
Speaker 1: the ground that will benefit uh, wildlife habitat and opportunities
Speaker 1: for hunters and anglers. Yeah, the next time you're sitting
Speaker 1: there making blanket statements about how terrible lobbyists are, keep
Speaker 1: in mind that when they were debating that bill, wildlife
Speaker 1: people were in the room saying, I understand, you need
Speaker 1: to cut a bunch of stuff out, but here's why
Speaker 1: you can't cut out the fish and wildlife stuff. Don't
Speaker 1: touch the fish and wildlife stuff. This is why it's important.
Speaker 1: If not if no one was putting a bag in
Speaker 1: their ear, they would have acted it. They would have
Speaker 1: acted and in favor of whoever was putting a bug
Speaker 1: in their ear about some other aspect that they cared about.
Speaker 1: And it was a lot of bugs in a lot
Speaker 1: of ears, right, I mean it was. It was the
Speaker 1: entire not just the hunting and fishing community, but the
Speaker 1: broader conservation community. Everybody rallied around this idea, especially around
Speaker 1: wildlife crossings, but a lot of these other pieces too. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was an economic thing for wildlife crossings,
Speaker 1: like it was costing. I think the last report I
Speaker 1: saw was vehicle collisions with wildlife for costing the economy
Speaker 1: something like six billion dollars a year. So just from
Speaker 1: an economic standpoint of three fifty million dollar investment in
Speaker 1: addressing a six billion dollar annual problem makes good business there.
Speaker 1: But also when you look at the sheer numbers of
Speaker 1: animals vehicle collisions that animals lost, you know, you think
Speaker 1: about that from an opportunity standpoint. As a hunter, you
Speaker 1: can't help but think, well, you know that Ford tourist
Speaker 1: smashed that deer, and then it goes some opportunity for
Speaker 1: somebody right to um food on the table, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So really, really some good stuff in
Speaker 1: that bill. So whether you they're gonna be, it's like
Speaker 1: any legislation that has a lot of things, and if
Speaker 1: they're gonna be things that make people angry and things
Speaker 1: that make people happy. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the beauty of the bipartisanship is like, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't like this bill, but I like of it, so
Speaker 1: I'll support it. Then a lot of people get a
Speaker 1: lot of things out of it. Uh, need five. What
Speaker 1: will Pittman Robertson funding? Was that going to come in at?
Speaker 1: And like how long does that money take to hit
Speaker 1: the ground. Uh, it's gonna be a lot this last year.
Speaker 1: The money that we're getting at the end of this
Speaker 1: year is going to be over a billion dollars just
Speaker 1: from firearms and ammunition. It's the first time that doesn't
Speaker 1: include the Dingle Johnson stuff. It doesn't include anything but
Speaker 1: the firearms supportion. Over one billion dollars from from yes
Speaker 1: and so the and and and again. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: from this, can you imagine if it was all manage,
Speaker 1: if the shells are fully stocked. Did you know the
Speaker 1: largest contributor to Pittman Robertson is federal Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the federal federal premium. Man. Yeah, I'm sorry the Feds
Speaker 1: not They're just huge and it's but yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: federal ammunition for sure. Yeah, it's it's over a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That The big challenge is going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: for fish and wildlife agencies is going to making sure
Speaker 1: that they can meet the match because people always forget
Speaker 1: about this. So that money that comes in, that billion
Speaker 1: dollars eighty percent of that is from non hunters. It's
Speaker 1: from people who are buying who are sports shooters and
Speaker 1: people who are buying a defensive handgun just like they
Speaker 1: did in the eighteen fifties. And so those triangle shape bulls,
Speaker 1: triangle shape of the market are those folks. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that like, that's an interesting point we've
Speaker 1: talked about before. We're hunters almost like to over recognize
Speaker 1: their pr contributions, and when you get down to like
Speaker 1: where that money is coming from is coming from shooters.
Speaker 1: But the caveat is that hunters or the match because
Speaker 1: you have to match that money. So hunters also by tags.
Speaker 1: So are you and I make up a smaller portion
Speaker 1: maybe as hunters we may make up You may make
Speaker 1: up a small portion state matching portion, yes, because you've
Speaker 1: got to bring for that billion dollars if we want
Speaker 1: to see that billion dollars on the ground, and conservation
Speaker 1: states have to pony up a billion dollars, they have
Speaker 1: to come. You have to get somebody else. You know,
Speaker 1: all of us at this table have to get one
Speaker 1: of our friends to buy a tag, whether or not
Speaker 1: they feel it or not, because if we want that
Speaker 1: money to then be able to be used that federal money.
Speaker 1: You got to match it, and there's some states that
Speaker 1: have done that in other ways. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be licenses, right, you can pass you know, Missouri has
Speaker 1: a one percent um sales uh. You know there's a
Speaker 1: tax that they put towards conservation recreation issues. So there
Speaker 1: are other ways to do it um. But states need
Speaker 1: to be really inventive and they need to get on
Speaker 1: the ball because we don't see that it hasn't slowed down. David,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna let you pick a pick and choose here.
Speaker 1: Do you want to do a quick hit on restoring
Speaker 1: America's Wildlife Act? Which one is more more titilating to
Speaker 1: you that or revisiting legal issues around wolves and bears,
Speaker 1: or you could do it too for it too for.
Speaker 1: I'd love to touch on both of them. So recovering
Speaker 1: America's Wildlife Act, we're talking about Pittman Robertson. And you
Speaker 1: know I told you about at the very beginning this,
Speaker 1: I told you about the founding of of National Wildlife
Speaker 1: Federation and how one of the first things was addressing
Speaker 1: this need for more resources to help him these species
Speaker 1: that were struggling well, the refrain, you know, eighty years
Speaker 1: later is it's similar. Right, we have Pittman Robertson and
Speaker 1: we have license fees, and we still have twelve thousand
Speaker 1: species of what are species of special concern that I
Speaker 1: I had been identified by states through what are called
Speaker 1: State Widelife Action Plans, where every ten years they're identifying
Speaker 1: the species in their state that are of the most concern,
Speaker 1: that need the most investment, and and where you can
Speaker 1: do some conservation work to to help support those species.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean they're threatened or endangered or threatened with becoming
Speaker 1: endangered a federally listed species. It just means the state
Speaker 1: views them as at risk and there needs to be
Speaker 1: an investment. Well, we don't have the money for sports.
Speaker 1: Sportsmen and women are been paying Pittman Robertson fees for
Speaker 1: UH for eighty years, right, and and we don't have
Speaker 1: the resources you know that that that's supposed to go
Speaker 1: to not only the species we hunt and fish, but
Speaker 1: everything else. Right, So enter Recovering acas Wildlife Act, which
Speaker 1: the idea was to amend the Pittman Robertson Act to
Speaker 1: create this new fund UH that would be used to
Speaker 1: help states implement those uh state wildlife action plans to
Speaker 1: help conserve the non game species. And then so that
Speaker 1: would free up a bunch of money, uh for hunter
Speaker 1: and angler dollars to put, you know, to take out
Speaker 1: of that pot potentially that right now we're paying to
Speaker 1: manage all species through our hunter tags. And maybe now
Speaker 1: that'll come back in and be able to dump more
Speaker 1: into mule deer and pronghorn conservation, moose conservation, and then
Speaker 1: you know, we have this new pot of money that
Speaker 1: could be used for uh, everything else, right and uh
Speaker 1: and so right now, like in the Senate, it's been
Speaker 1: it was this bill was introduced earlier this year in
Speaker 1: the Senate. It has thirty two co sponsors right now
Speaker 1: as we're talking, sixteen Republicans, fifteen Democrats and an independent
Speaker 1: and you listen. Is one of those cases where with
Speaker 1: Fosberg from TRCP is explained to us during like highly
Speaker 1: partisan nothing can get done times, sometimes real good common
Speaker 1: sense conservation work gets taken care of because it lets
Speaker 1: you have it gives them a chance to have a win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is a the biggest hang up on this,
Speaker 1: I think for the longest time on getting this passed
Speaker 1: was how are we going to pay for it? And
Speaker 1: I think there's identified in a way to pay for it,
Speaker 1: which uh, which comes out of UM federal revenues generating
Speaker 1: from violations of environmental and natural resource laws and regulations.
Speaker 1: So it's so it's programs administered by the e P
Speaker 1: a environmental protection agency, you know, they levy fines for
Speaker 1: for violations environmental violations, goes into this big pot. And
Speaker 1: now we're saying we're gonna take part of that that's
Speaker 1: not already going to the general treasury to funds you know, schools, highways, whatever,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna say, you know what, maybe what this
Speaker 1: should be used for. They created the problem by violating
Speaker 1: the law and creating these cleanups that we need to
Speaker 1: do it. Maybe maybe having some of that money diverted
Speaker 1: to going back into wildlife conservation isn't a bad way
Speaker 1: to do this, right, So that's sort of the the
Speaker 1: pay for and and it seems to have pretty broad support.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have real politically diverse senators that have
Speaker 1: signed onto this UM, and like I said, it's got momentum,
Speaker 1: it's got you equal number, you know, the one independent
Speaker 1: typically caucuses with with Democrats. So you really have sixteen
Speaker 1: and sixteen, you have this. This really it's as bipartisan
Speaker 1: as you can get. And so the question is it
Speaker 1: is it going to happen? And Uh, hopefully, like you said,
Speaker 1: maybe one of these common sense things that just lines
Speaker 1: up and happens. And and uh that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that we we've been working on as an organization
Speaker 1: for years and and a lot of other organizations, you know,
Speaker 1: I know uh ni FIS with National Shooting Sports Foundation
Speaker 1: has been engaged in this too, and they're like that
Speaker 1: this is something that the entire UH conservation community, from
Speaker 1: the sporting groups to trade associations to broader conservation organizations
Speaker 1: that like they're they're all rallying around this. It's in it.
Speaker 1: It'll be a game changer, an infusion of something at
Speaker 1: one point four billion dollars a year into UH into
Speaker 1: the States to manage these species that right now are
Speaker 1: just woefully underfunded. Yeah, bears and wolves, bears and wolves.
Speaker 1: So how do we want to talk so that there's
Speaker 1: just a lot going on around that right now, right
Speaker 1: that could that could just open up rabbit holes. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the so you've got the state
Speaker 1: of Wyoming's petitioned now to delist grizzly bears in the
Speaker 1: in the Greater Yellstone area. Um, well, this is yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think this is the first time they've actually
Speaker 1: formally petitioned. Every other time it was the Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service that initiated a rulemaking process and formally proposed delisting. Uh.
Speaker 1: In this this is the first time that what happened
Speaker 1: that the State of Wyoming has actually taken the initiative
Speaker 1: to petition the Fish and Wildlife Service. So there's two ways,
Speaker 1: the petitioning the Fish and Wilife Service to do something
Speaker 1: that the Fishing Walafe Service already tried to do twice.
Speaker 1: They tried to do the health differences that make that
Speaker 1: you petition to do it. They already tried to do it.
Speaker 1: I agree. I'm just no, I I agree, uh right.
Speaker 1: But perhaps the maybe the state was thinking, we don't
Speaker 1: know if this administration is going to try again. And
Speaker 1: the only two ways under the Act to to start
Speaker 1: a process are either on the initiative of the Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Service or somebody some geting a petition that
Speaker 1: requires the Subfishing Walize Service to act. And so if
Speaker 1: they suspected that the Fishing Wilife Service wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be interested in doing it, or what might delay might
Speaker 1: take a long time. Maybe the state said all right,
Speaker 1: well we're going to do it and force them to
Speaker 1: do something. All right. The other thing that could you know,
Speaker 1: there's a legal calculus to it. Right, So in the past,
Speaker 1: when the Fishing Wilife Service does it, it means that
Speaker 1: any lawsuit arising out of that is typically filed in Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Or in Montana. It goes to that court
Speaker 1: in Missoula, which will yeah, yeah, right. So so here
Speaker 1: the state of Wyoming submits the petition, if their petition
Speaker 1: is declined, then maybe they initiate the lawsuit in Wyoming
Speaker 1: Federal District court. Friend and who right, because the judge
Speaker 1: of Missoula always like they always find a way to say, ah, right,
Speaker 1: that seems to happen. Strange seems to happen. So that's
Speaker 1: the that's sort of where we are with Grizzly Bears.
Speaker 1: I'm just should you see that big list of that
Speaker 1: letter that went to um Deb Island and it was
Speaker 1: signed by what it was, Bernie Sanders is on there,
Speaker 1: I don't know, sixteen seventeen senators signed a letter calling
Speaker 1: for like instant re enlisting of the Gray Wolf. The Wolf. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that. That's happened before. I know. I sent
Speaker 1: it to someone who kind of analyzes that stuff, and
Speaker 1: he said, I'm sure they're currying favor with the animal
Speaker 1: rights community who donated some money to them, and they're
Speaker 1: doing like a pointless thing that will lead nowhere so
Speaker 1: they can be like, see, I tried, I tried. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, that's happened before. There are other times where
Speaker 1: you know, members of Congress have done that. A little
Speaker 1: surprised to see old burn on there, man like being
Speaker 1: from like Vermont and everything. Really, she seems like you
Speaker 1: were really wasn't cretic wants to get Bernie Sanders on
Speaker 1: the show. And I'm like, tell me why and we'll
Speaker 1: do it. And maybe now she's got her in because
Speaker 1: he's on this letter. H that's funny. Uh. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's a ton going on with wolves though, right, And
Speaker 1: that's sort of a weird one to un weird web
Speaker 1: to unravel about all the different things going on with wolves.
Speaker 1: Uh you have so you have, uh, all the different
Speaker 1: state laws that are getting a lot drawing a lot
Speaker 1: of attention in Montana and Idaho on wolf hunding. Right,
Speaker 1: they're gonna kill them? Yeah? Right, that in your journal,
Speaker 1: I don't It's not like and then come back to
Speaker 1: it in a year too. We've covered it. We've covered it.
Speaker 1: We've covered quite heavily the discrepancy between what the rules
Speaker 1: are and how one would sum them up in a
Speaker 1: headline on USA Today. Right, So you've been through all
Speaker 1: that we've covered. Yeah. Um, but what you do have
Speaker 1: is like this now a really interesting situation where wolves
Speaker 1: in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, Panhandle of Utah, like,
Speaker 1: that whole population was delisted prior to the prior administration
Speaker 1: doing a nationwide delisting rule that effectively delisted everything else nationwide, right,
Speaker 1: except for those that were already delisted in Mexican wolves
Speaker 1: and red wolves, but delisted everything else. I think that
Speaker 1: what that did is it created a little bit of
Speaker 1: an opening here. Uh. And so now you have this
Speaker 1: petition to relist gray wolves in the Western United States.
Speaker 1: Only instead of calling them a like right now, they
Speaker 1: were delisted as a distinct population segment in those in
Speaker 1: that area geographic area. I described. Since then, you've had
Speaker 1: movement of those wolves. Those wolves are you know, genetically
Speaker 1: you can find genetic connectivity between those wolves and wolves
Speaker 1: in western Oregon. We just got killed on I five
Speaker 1: after he walked across the Golden Gate Bridge in California
Speaker 1: near Yosemite, right like fifteen miles north of Yosemite National
Speaker 1: Parks something like that. Like these you're having this genetic interchange,
Speaker 1: be mixing up two wolves. There's a famous wolf running
Speaker 1: around California's got hit on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: That's the one I'm talking about. Um So, but what
Speaker 1: you have now is at the time wolves are reintroduced
Speaker 1: to Idaho and Wyoming, Central Idaho and Wyoming, like there
Speaker 1: was no genetic connectivity between any other worlds because there
Speaker 1: weren't wolves other places. Now those wolves have dispersed, You've
Speaker 1: had some other wolves dispersed from Canada, and you have
Speaker 1: these more genetically connected population and so now this petition
Speaker 1: to to realist is saying, you can't draw this distinct
Speaker 1: population segment the same way. It can't be Wyoming, Idaho, Montana,
Speaker 1: Eastern Oregon, and eastern Washington, northern Utah. It can't be
Speaker 1: that anymore. It has to be the west and by
Speaker 1: the way, when you draw that big, it hasn't recovered westwide.
Speaker 1: And so by delisting them nationwide actually created this opening
Speaker 1: to make a push to relist wolves in the entire
Speaker 1: Western United States. Um, and they can use your success
Speaker 1: again right right and then, and so what you're left
Speaker 1: with is, okay, so you have a petition out there,
Speaker 1: and the Service has to act on it in with
Speaker 1: any year under the endangers you sees act And so
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, right If what's gonna happen is
Speaker 1: whether they say yes they're warranted for listing or no,
Speaker 1: they're not warranted for listing. There's going to be a
Speaker 1: lawsuit filed. So next year this time, that's this you
Speaker 1: can write in the journal too. There's now going to
Speaker 1: be a lawsuit in the forum of whomever is choosing,
Speaker 1: whoever is filing it in somewhere in the Western United States,
Speaker 1: maybe Montana, to say you say that service says not warranted,
Speaker 1: that lawsuit will be filed in front of judge of
Speaker 1: their choosing, and we're just we just hit the reset
Speaker 1: button on wolves. My my opinion is we've hit the
Speaker 1: reset button on wolves and we're looking at probably in
Speaker 1: you know, another decade long fight. Uh, we'll see, we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll see. That's my crystal ball, like you know, crystal
Speaker 1: ball and tin tin hat at the same time. Right,
Speaker 1: it is sort of what I'm thinking we're looking at
Speaker 1: with That was one of the primary um we talked
Speaker 1: this last week where I was just talking about the
Speaker 1: the EBB and flow of things and like the ways
Speaker 1: of which is hard to find a win because I
Speaker 1: was disappointed when President Trump removed um the role this
Speaker 1: rule for tongas and opened up more of Congress National
Speaker 1: Forest for road building. I was disappointed by that, and
Speaker 1: I was happy to hear that the Biden administration is
Speaker 1: putting those rules back into place. At the same time.
Speaker 1: One of the things I've worried a lot about the
Speaker 1: Dan Biden administrations. I've worried that just some crazy wolf
Speaker 1: bear stuff is gonna come down. Um. But then other
Speaker 1: people say, like, well, it's not really like the way
Speaker 1: that those rules work. It's not really susceptible to four
Speaker 1: year administration changes. It plays out in a more slow way.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that that's safe to say or not
Speaker 1: safe to say, or let me let you put it
Speaker 1: in a more clear question, does having like if you
Speaker 1: have like Democrats hold Senate Democrats all the White House,
Speaker 1: is it a foregone conclusion that they're gonna walk back
Speaker 1: state management of wolves and bears or is it not
Speaker 1: something that they can just put their hands on the dial.
Speaker 1: I don't think, because it's so rarely happens. I don't
Speaker 1: think that Congress jumps in here and does anything. I
Speaker 1: think you have. You'll you'll see political statement bills that
Speaker 1: you've already seen. You'll see political statement bills saying grizzly
Speaker 1: bears should be delisted, you know, a grizzly Bear Delisting Act,
Speaker 1: and you'll see statement bills of a grizzly Bear Protection
Speaker 1: Act that that would be along the lines of a
Speaker 1: bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. I don't think under
Speaker 1: the current current construction of Congress, even with with Democrats
Speaker 1: controlling both bodies of Congress, that either like that that
Speaker 1: effort could go anywhere, or if Republicans took control, that
Speaker 1: that effort could go anywhere. The place where where I
Speaker 1: think you have to watch it's what happens at the
Speaker 1: administration level. So and that process can play out quicker
Speaker 1: because you have timelines prescribed in the Endangered Species Act
Speaker 1: to respond to petitions, and then you have litigation. That's
Speaker 1: the part that gets protracted. But you have a petition,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration, by law, is required to respond to
Speaker 1: that petition in a statutorially prescribed period of time and
Speaker 1: do an analysis best based on the best available science
Speaker 1: as to whether wolves should be listed or not. And
Speaker 1: they'll have to answer that question, and that answer half
Speaker 1: of the people really like in the other half won't.
Speaker 1: And that's going to create a fight. And that's just
Speaker 1: that's just how our system works and why we have
Speaker 1: these perpetual fights about predators and almost no other federally
Speaker 1: listed species. It's always the charismatic species and typically predators.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, so that's kind of where I think
Speaker 1: we are. I will tell you we should talk again
Speaker 1: in a few months, right because I'm finishing up a
Speaker 1: helping somebody write a book, and I'm finishing a book
Speaker 1: chapter where it's called Dave on wolves. No, it's on
Speaker 1: grizzly Bara. No, it's it's a it's a it's an uh,
Speaker 1: it's an analysis of My contribution to it is is, uh,
Speaker 1: how to use the Act in a different way to
Speaker 1: empower states or encourage states to be able to take
Speaker 1: on more of a leadership role in managing threatening endangered species.
Speaker 1: Um and uh, like my case study is grizzly bears,
Speaker 1: and I propose a solution for how you get grizzly
Speaker 1: bears back in state management even if they're listed. Okay,
Speaker 1: one last quick hit for you fellers. Uh your mountain
Speaker 1: podcast hit. Oh my goodness, Yeah, there is. For the
Speaker 1: next hour. This is what we're gonna talk. We were
Speaker 1: gonna be able to hide all of that. No one
Speaker 1: was ever going to find it, and it was gonna
Speaker 1: be to our better men. Know what better teaser, What
Speaker 1: better teaser than what we've been doing. Yeah, No, that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty much what Sonifine I and another buddy of ours,
Speaker 1: Mike McGrady. You know, three years ago, just just because
Speaker 1: we were leaving the Governor's office, we've been listening to
Speaker 1: a bunch of different podcasts and we thought, you know,
Speaker 1: there's one they're all STUDI right, No, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of great podcasts out there. Um,
Speaker 1: but we actually did feel like there was one space
Speaker 1: that that wasn't completely occupied where we we could step
Speaker 1: in and provide value. And that was really providing from
Speaker 1: from a boots on the ground, like a guys in
Speaker 1: the trenches kind of approach of let's talk about the
Speaker 1: law and policy around a lot of these conservation issues
Speaker 1: at a state level and federal level. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: we we created this. You know, basically our tagline is,
Speaker 1: you know, every day things happen that affect your land,
Speaker 1: water and wildlife, and you should know about them. And
Speaker 1: that's where we come in and talk about all the
Speaker 1: policy nuances. So it's really kind of a walkout kind
Speaker 1: of nerdy podcast called Your Mountain. And I don't know
Speaker 1: why we keep doing it. And yeah, you were gracious
Speaker 1: enough to be our first guest on that podcast three
Speaker 1: years ago and forty we've done a hundred forty plus
Speaker 1: now geez, yeah, we've we have as many episodes as listeners. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're moving up those charts. Available everywhere, come out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the deal, available everywhere. When someone gives you a
Speaker 1: chance to plug yourself that. Yeah, it's been super fun.
Speaker 1: It's given us an opportunity. Before we left the Governor's office,
Speaker 1: we said, like, we want to stay in touch, we
Speaker 1: want to keep doing stuff together. And so this has
Speaker 1: been an excuse for us to sit down in a
Speaker 1: in a you know, in an office once a week
Speaker 1: at night and like spend an hour talking about like
Speaker 1: we had a whole episode you talked about corner crossing
Speaker 1: and it's kind of funny, Like we had an episode
Speaker 1: one eighteen we spent an hour in like forty minutes
Speaker 1: talking about that specific issue, you know, the wilderness rule.
Speaker 1: We talk about, you know, breaking down, pr breaking down,
Speaker 1: wot's breaking down, you know, E s A and in
Speaker 1: you know, four different episodes and stuff like you're welcome,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's it's been super it's been super
Speaker 1: fun as friends to be able to I'm sure you
Speaker 1: get it. Like if you want to become the kind
Speaker 1: of person when you're driving down the road with your friends,
Speaker 1: you can be like, no, that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: Listen to your show, that's what you should do, and
Speaker 1: then you can tell people that's not what happens. Man.
Speaker 1: What happens is this first, it goes to the Supreme Court. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: if you want a nerdy podcast, this is understand trying
Speaker 1: to make it seem nerdy. I'm trying to make it
Speaker 1: to understand the nuts and bolts of everything, like that's
Speaker 1: that's what. It's a deep dive into the nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts of law and policy. Rather than being the kind
Speaker 1: of person who's like, well, no, they wanna it was
Speaker 1: like home, who who's they? It kind of gives you
Speaker 1: like an understanding of what is the what? It's been
Speaker 1: super fun and you were super cool, like it was
Speaker 1: funny you've been here ten years like it was again,
Speaker 1: it's just super it's been super fun for us to
Speaker 1: have that friendship and keep that connection. And you know,
Speaker 1: graciously you were, like Dave said, like our first episode,
Speaker 1: we flew out to visit you and we're like, we
Speaker 1: think we're going to do this podcast. Would you would
Speaker 1: you be our first guest? And so we went and
Speaker 1: sat down. That was very kind of you. And it's
Speaker 1: been how many years ago? Was at three and a
Speaker 1: half three and a half. I think three and a half.
Speaker 1: We started here left in me we started in May
Speaker 1: of nine. I don't even know. It's been three over
Speaker 1: three years now. So your Mountain podcast, Availa where podcasts
Speaker 1: are given away, that's right, Spotify, guys on Spotify. We
Speaker 1: are everywhere too. We're on Yeah, you should definitely subscribe
Speaker 1: to it no matter what, because that's really good for
Speaker 1: our egos. We don't monitor, so we do it for
Speaker 1: no monetization, zero zero. I'm gonna subscribe. What. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's I think it's great America. Actually, for
Speaker 1: for all you lawyers listening out there, there are a
Speaker 1: number of episodes where if you're a lawyer in Wyoming,
Speaker 1: you can get a CLI, a continuing legal education credit
Speaker 1: for your live license, exactly right, and you could probably
Speaker 1: apply for those in other states as well. A former
Speaker 1: senator used to make his staff listen to our podcast.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and we've got we've got different Senate offices,
Speaker 1: or we know there are folks in the office that
Speaker 1: that listen to our podcast. Dare I say it's an
Speaker 1: insider's look? You may, you might, you may? You guys
Speaker 1: need to get you guys, Gonna put that, By the way,
Speaker 1: we're terrible marketers. If we knew how to market, we
Speaker 1: would we would say we would quote you now like
Speaker 1: Stephen and Ranella. Dare I say, dare I say an
Speaker 1: insider's podcast? But we haven't posted anything on our end
Speaker 1: of our social channels, and we don't even know I
Speaker 1: don't know who the passwords are. Forgot. It is there.
Speaker 1: It's up every wee there. We check it and we
Speaker 1: respond to all the emails and everything we get. But
Speaker 1: it's there almost every week. We've been kind of busy.
Speaker 1: Your Mountain podcast. Yeah, I appreciate that last thing. Next week,
Speaker 1: so listen, I know what happens to you people Christmas
Speaker 1: holiday because they're not you're not at work and all that.
Speaker 1: You don't listen to your podcast. But next week is
Speaker 1: our Christmas Holiday Extravaganza Extraordinary episode. So Christmas time all hectic,
Speaker 1: everybody's unhappy, arguing, trying to get your kids in the
Speaker 1: car to go see Grandma. Listen, don't forget us. We're there.
Speaker 1: Our Christmas gift to you. We have a Christmas gift
Speaker 1: to you. We're doing a double episode drop where you
Speaker 1: get your regular podcast, which is the Christmas Extraordinaire. But
Speaker 1: then we're gonna we're gonna throw down and have a
Speaker 1: Monster Trivia showdown episodes. Right, I can't wait. Episode It
Speaker 1: means two episodes, two episodes in one week. Phil, he's
Speaker 1: not gonna have any time. I guess Spencer's running trivia.
Speaker 1: Spencer gonna run trivia. Wow, and you're we have a
Speaker 1: special guest Matt Runella for the Christmas specially Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he might be in on trivia. I don't know. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna debate social media, so a family argument, eggnog, ohole,
Speaker 1: kid caboodle. I can't wait, seem