Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, this is the Meat Eater Podcast. We're recording
Speaker 1: out of Bozeman, Montana. Sunny, beautiful, very dry right now
Speaker 1: bos and Montana. I'm joined by Long tong ANEI frequent guests,
Speaker 1: the Lavian Lover, maker of Hunt Eat t shirts. UM,
Speaker 1: if you haven't bought one the Honest T shirts, go
Speaker 1: do it now. It's the only thing he gets out
Speaker 1: of this. Also by uh Land Tawny of back Country
Speaker 1: Hunters and Anglers, which is a group I have a
Speaker 1: conservation organization that I have admired the work of over
Speaker 1: the last few years because I find that they're their
Speaker 1: mission aligns well with with my uh take on conservation
Speaker 1: issues and my take on hunting and fishing in public lands.
Speaker 1: And along with a handful other conservation groups that I
Speaker 1: like a lot. There you know one that I m
Speaker 1: M try to be supportive of and encourage. You'll be
Speaker 1: supportive of um Land. Like we have a long time
Speaker 1: of talk right now, but I want you to in
Speaker 1: super quick way. They got two questions for you kids,
Speaker 1: that which one I want you to do first? First,
Speaker 1: giving your hunting and fishing background, sure quickly don't two two?
Speaker 1: UM explain b h A the mission of b h A.
Speaker 1: You can dovetail two into one or you can just
Speaker 1: do one then two. I'll do one and two, but
Speaker 1: making my elevator speech on number two, so it's quick, okay.
Speaker 1: So fifth generation Montana grew up hunting fishing, so that
Speaker 1: that's back like seventies, eight seventies. First family members born
Speaker 1: in Stevensville, Montana eighteen seventy two, so that was they
Speaker 1: were incorporated as a town for their like in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, and my first family member was born there.
Speaker 1: You know what, your coster died, uh eighteen seventy What
Speaker 1: June eighteen seventy six. Okay, yeah, that's wild man. So
Speaker 1: we have a family cabin that's down the East Fork
Speaker 1: of the Bitter down there. It's been in the family
Speaker 1: for a hundred years. It's awesome. But so I grew
Speaker 1: up on the East Fork fishing like Sam fly hatch there,
Speaker 1: um Sam fly hatch on the Bighole River. Very lucky.
Speaker 1: We spent a week down there. My father, uh knew
Speaker 1: some folks outside of Yellowstone Park on the Cinembar basin,
Speaker 1: and so he used to hunt elk down there, and
Speaker 1: I would I know, yeah, like Cindambar Mountain and stuff
Speaker 1: and uh and so I would that later became like
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff some National Forest and something
Speaker 1: belongs to Cut, right, Yeah, Cut bought some of that,
Speaker 1: I mean that, and now Cut has transferred that over
Speaker 1: to the Elk Foundation. Was then transferred over to the
Speaker 1: National Forest so we can all hunt it now, Church
Speaker 1: Universal Triumphant. It was a cult of sorts. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like an apocalyptic colt based around what was her name,
Speaker 1: like Mary Profit or something like that. And then her
Speaker 1: husband got busted running guns from Idaho to Montana. They
Speaker 1: had big, huge, uh silos full of all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff for Armageddon. They were like a post apocalyptic outfit.
Speaker 1: But down there, I mean I grew up hunting behind
Speaker 1: my dad where he'd be hiking up these steephills in
Speaker 1: the snow, and literally I had to take, you know,
Speaker 1: steps in his footsteps where I would not make it
Speaker 1: because that was so small. And then my other favorite
Speaker 1: thing I think growing up was duck hunting. And so
Speaker 1: we had a place south of Missoula in the bed
Speaker 1: Route Valley tell her wild left reff uge that my
Speaker 1: dad helped set aside, and I put conservation he's been
Speaker 1: on and when it got cold, that place was just
Speaker 1: having for ducks. I mean they would you know, the
Speaker 1: river freezes over and the only thing open the spring creeks,
Speaker 1: and so you just have ducks piling in there. And
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid, we'd show up and you know,
Speaker 1: the whole there'd be a thunderous kind of awakening of
Speaker 1: the marsh. They'd take off and then they come back
Speaker 1: in fives and sixes and tents. And just watching my
Speaker 1: dad work and the dog work was amazing. And he
Speaker 1: let me bring my baby gun along and I think
Speaker 1: I'd have a chance, but never would happen. So it's
Speaker 1: been instilled to me at a young age. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, growing up, I think, uh I probably got
Speaker 1: away from hunting a little bit in high school just
Speaker 1: because things got crazy. I was playing soccer in the fall,
Speaker 1: and uh I was chasing girls. And then you know,
Speaker 1: now song keepers, no keepers threw them all back. Um,
Speaker 1: my wife's gonna love that, and uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: but now, I mean, I think, you know, my late
Speaker 1: like mid twenties, late twenties really started getting into hunting
Speaker 1: fishing a lot more. And that's where you know, I
Speaker 1: my father passed away when I was twenty and so
Speaker 1: I was out in Seattle actually going to Seattle University,
Speaker 1: and I came home and after my dad passed away,
Speaker 1: and it was like this awakening again, you know, like
Speaker 1: the outdoors and like figuring out that's what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do in conservation and so um that hunting kind
Speaker 1: of brought me there. And then my dad was the
Speaker 1: the lawyer for the Elk Foundation when the first started
Speaker 1: in the eighty five up in Troy, helped bring them
Speaker 1: to Missoula. Was their lawyer until he passed away in
Speaker 1: nine and then he was involved in conservation easements and
Speaker 1: so that's definitely with the Elk Foundation, but also with
Speaker 1: real quick explain conservation ease. I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of people they hear that, but they don't really know
Speaker 1: what that means. Yeah, so it's on private land. Uh.
Speaker 1: Private land owner decides that they want to protect the
Speaker 1: resources on their on their private land, whether that's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the ranching culture or just the kind of
Speaker 1: wildlife habitat. So they work with a lawyer to draw
Speaker 1: up what the covenants for that property can be, and
Speaker 1: they could do it in perpetuity. So like my grandfather
Speaker 1: that lives just outside of Missoula. He has about twenty
Speaker 1: acres and they put a conservation eastment on there to
Speaker 1: where he can't build any more houses on that land
Speaker 1: and it can't be subdivided. And so no matter what,
Speaker 1: when he you know, he's in his mid nineties right now,
Speaker 1: when he passes away, and whoever that's passed on to
Speaker 1: or sold to, that conservation easement goes along with him.
Speaker 1: But they incentivize that with some tax credits. Yep. So
Speaker 1: it's not I mean, it's not just one sided. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest thing though, I mean, the tax benefits
Speaker 1: are great, but that's not what makes the deal. I
Speaker 1: think what makes the deal for people is that, you know,
Speaker 1: they we all see development happen all over this country,
Speaker 1: and I think it breaks people's hearts over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. And that ability to be able to
Speaker 1: pass that on and know what's gonna be there far
Speaker 1: into the future, I think it's what really sells that.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. Man, if you've got a place you're
Speaker 1: in love with, you just hate to think of it
Speaker 1: just getting trash later on in life. And I think
Speaker 1: you know, again, we've probably all seen places you know
Speaker 1: that we used to hunt or used to recreate on
Speaker 1: that are now subdivided, and you know you're never gonna
Speaker 1: get that back. So what I like about those things is, uh,
Speaker 1: you hear so much from opponents of conservation that anytime
Speaker 1: you set land aside, it's like, oh yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: the government cramming it down. You throw It's like ahead,
Speaker 1: tell to these dudes, man, right their own private property. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a private property, right, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean they have the right to do that, and nobody
Speaker 1: should tell him not to. So you know, well you
Speaker 1: mentioned bitter. Like the way the ducks come in there.
Speaker 1: We used to end at the end of duck season's
Speaker 1: like December and January, when that rivers would start to freeze.
Speaker 1: We'd float it in canoes and just sometimes I mean
Speaker 1: it'd be like ridiculous. But you get those mornings where
Speaker 1: uh was super cold, and so you get so much
Speaker 1: steam coming off the river. You know, the air is
Speaker 1: so much colder than the river, and like you pull
Speaker 1: up on him because steam like it was so thick,
Speaker 1: you know, and all of a a sudden you realize that
Speaker 1: you're sort of in the midst of it, like a
Speaker 1: bunch of cann of the geese heads that some gravel
Speaker 1: bar man. I just love doing it, but I know
Speaker 1: that I don't tell her. That's still I mean, it's
Speaker 1: still called tell her Wild. My dad helps set that
Speaker 1: aside with Auto Teller and they put together about a
Speaker 1: thousand acres there in the Better Root. It's pinched up
Speaker 1: a couple of other big landowners and so it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very special place. Yeah, alright, so haunting vision background.
Speaker 1: You've been in mountain of your life all my life.
Speaker 1: I went to Seattle for a year and a half
Speaker 1: and uh, great town. But it's gonna be hard to
Speaker 1: take him out of the state. So give me how
Speaker 1: you got into like like telling what b h A is.
Speaker 1: So b h A. Uh. We're a national organization and
Speaker 1: we started around the campfire eleven years ago in Oregon.
Speaker 1: Basically some people got together and said there wasn't an
Speaker 1: organization focused on public policy around public lands and so
Speaker 1: where the sports and voice for a wild public lands,
Speaker 1: waters and wildlife. And what that means that it's kind
Speaker 1: of separates us from everybody else is we're strictly advocacy
Speaker 1: and strictly advocacy on public lands. We there's kind of
Speaker 1: five buckets that we look at, and it's access and
Speaker 1: opportunity is the first one, and so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of different things that come into that, Like the sail
Speaker 1: of public lands kind of falls under that piece. Trying
Speaker 1: to get access to public lands that are isolated as
Speaker 1: another one you're talking about there, you're talking about land
Speaker 1: lock chunks of public land exactly. That's the thing that Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about all this stuff, but explain
Speaker 1: that real quick. So can I just real right correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong? Sure, there are big chunks of
Speaker 1: publicly owned land. BLM, I don't think any national force.
Speaker 1: Is there any national force, some national force where all
Speaker 1: the land around it's privately help and there's no easement
Speaker 1: to it, right uh Um, it's open, should be, it's
Speaker 1: available to the public. If you came in on a helicopter,
Speaker 1: you can go in there, but there is no way
Speaker 1: to get to it. So it's like we the people
Speaker 1: own land that we don't have a way to get to.
Speaker 1: That's the fact though. Private land is what it is.
Speaker 1: And I think so that you describe that kind of
Speaker 1: the don't in effect what you just did. But then
Speaker 1: there's also a ton of land in Montown that's checkerboarded.
Speaker 1: So you have you know BLM private BLM, and it's
Speaker 1: all a checkerboard. And there's a big question of whether
Speaker 1: you can cross corner hop corner crossing right and so
Speaker 1: you know, supposedly our shoulders when we cross that corner
Speaker 1: are violating airspace and so we're trespassing. Now, if you
Speaker 1: talk to some wardens, they're not going to mess with you,
Speaker 1: but you talk to some private land hunters and they will,
Speaker 1: you know, go after you for trespass. So we've we've
Speaker 1: always not corner hopped. It's that's a yeah. So corner
Speaker 1: hop will be like let's let's say you're looking at
Speaker 1: are looking at a map and you're looking at sections. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I mean it doesn't always fall that cleanly, but
Speaker 1: you have two corner sections, or you have two squares
Speaker 1: of land, and they and they brought up only on
Speaker 1: the corners. Now, if you have a GPS unit or
Speaker 1: if the lands fence, then you can see the defence lines.
Speaker 1: You can theoretically have one ft in the corner of
Speaker 1: a section and then step over and place your other
Speaker 1: foot in the corner of the other section. And be like,
Speaker 1: I never stepped on private land. Correct, I corner hopped.
Speaker 1: The argument is in some people's eyes that you did,
Speaker 1: like your body passed your body even though your feet
Speaker 1: never touched, your body passed through this person's space. So
Speaker 1: there's an ongoing debate about whether you're corner hop or not.
Speaker 1: A lot of the stuff that we hunt kind of
Speaker 1: like one of our hunting strategies in checkerboarded areas, which
Speaker 1: when we're saying as even that you have mixed land ownership,
Speaker 1: is to use maps to find areas of public land
Speaker 1: that have very convoluted paths into them, where maybe you're
Speaker 1: walking and you're walking on quarter sections and half sections,
Speaker 1: a little weird strips of land and maybe caught into
Speaker 1: a state chunk to get to chunks of land that
Speaker 1: are not easily accessible by other mugs. Oftentimes you'll see
Speaker 1: these big chunks of land that no mugs can get
Speaker 1: too because there's no way into it. And so you're
Speaker 1: talking about finding ways, whether it's cash or whatever incentives
Speaker 1: to open those up or making the case that those
Speaker 1: should be accessible to the public. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: first thing is is willing seller willing buyer, right, I
Speaker 1: mean nobody wants to force anybody into anything, and so
Speaker 1: you know, using the land of Water Conservation Fund, using
Speaker 1: easements or even fee title, you know, to get access
Speaker 1: to a certain area. I think when we look at
Speaker 1: corner crossing, that's one that I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: incentives out there. You know, we had the stream access
Speaker 1: law and the and the bridge access that got added
Speaker 1: to that, which was definitely a help for landowners and
Speaker 1: for like the users, and maybe we can figure something
Speaker 1: like that out for corner crossing that would be beneficial
Speaker 1: to both. But that's a that's a much tougher, tougher
Speaker 1: thing when you think about it, just because of the
Speaker 1: amounts of areas that are checkerboarded in this state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you got guys and and like you've got guys
Speaker 1: who are like, sure, it's public, but why would I
Speaker 1: want to, like I can just treat it like my
Speaker 1: own little private area. Why would I want to let
Speaker 1: you go on the land that I sort of claim
Speaker 1: as my own, even though I don't pay ship for
Speaker 1: taxes on it. You know, I feel like when you
Speaker 1: say checkerboard two, it just sounds it's like a usual
Speaker 1: loosely but in Montana, especially because I hunted in Colorado
Speaker 1: for a dozen years and there are spots that you could,
Speaker 1: you know, you apply that term as well. But in Montana,
Speaker 1: literally you can open up pages of the gazetteer and
Speaker 1: look at it and it looks exactly like a check
Speaker 1: it's yeah. And so my question, did you know, like
Speaker 1: the history or the or like the genesis, how that
Speaker 1: came to be where it was just so perfectly checkerboard
Speaker 1: between private and public. A lot of that I think
Speaker 1: was was back to like the railroads. That's when the
Speaker 1: roads came in there, they gave them so much property
Speaker 1: and like to actually put the railroad through Montana, they said,
Speaker 1: here's you know, here's an incentive for you, and so
Speaker 1: you're gonna get some of this private land and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a public land. You know, so you
Speaker 1: get a certain amount. And I don't know the exact
Speaker 1: details of that, but I'm pretty sure that it was
Speaker 1: because of the railroad and in some areas they just
Speaker 1: went literally like public private public, All right. So that's
Speaker 1: the that's bucket number one. That's h Bucket number one
Speaker 1: is access access an opportunity. The second one would be
Speaker 1: back country conservation and so that's like at a national level,
Speaker 1: making sure that we have public policy that protects back
Speaker 1: country areas. So when you think about like role this areas, um,
Speaker 1: trying to protect those places um with with law UM.
Speaker 1: When you think about that's like where we work on
Speaker 1: this national legislation, like the Land and Water Conservation Fund,
Speaker 1: like just protecting and promoting like I guess, back country
Speaker 1: at a federal level, which is a big, huge bucket,
Speaker 1: which I could talk about a lot of things that
Speaker 1: we're doing there, but then it goes into like the
Speaker 1: third bucket would be kind of place based back country conservation.
Speaker 1: So if you think about, you know, uh in Colorado,
Speaker 1: be like Brown's Canyon, Montana, the Rocky Mountain Front, Idaho
Speaker 1: Clearwater Basin Collaborative that we're working on the Clearwater Basin there,
Speaker 1: And so that's more like places based stuff. And so
Speaker 1: you look at a watershed, let's say, and I'll take
Speaker 1: the clear water in Idaho. We worked with a TV users, loggers,
Speaker 1: county commissioners, other conservation organizations and said, here's this huge landscape.
Speaker 1: How can we get a path forward that maybe not
Speaker 1: be perfect for everybody, but it's a path forward for everyone.
Speaker 1: And so in that circumstance, we've come up with a
Speaker 1: tentative agreement that has five hundred thousand acres in new wilderness,
Speaker 1: two hundred miles of wild and scenic river, two miles
Speaker 1: of the longest continuous a TV route in the west,
Speaker 1: and then increased timber harvest in the front country. Again,
Speaker 1: is that perfect for everybody? Probably not, But does it
Speaker 1: gives certainty and a path forward? Yes? And so this
Speaker 1: has been, you know, a ten year process. We've been
Speaker 1: engaged from the very beginning. And now that's kind of
Speaker 1: moving to the Senator creepo and they're probably is going
Speaker 1: to be legislation is introduced, actually codify that and and
Speaker 1: so that's that kind of place space, like really boots
Speaker 1: on the ground kind of you know, this is why
Speaker 1: we want to do it here. So I would be
Speaker 1: that third bucket. How many places would you say you're
Speaker 1: looking at in in in the sense that it's like
Speaker 1: been identified, that's on your radar for the place based stuff,
Speaker 1: um and dozens or is it? So this last I
Speaker 1: mean it was dozens and then this last fall the
Speaker 1: Defense spending bill had a public lands package on it.
Speaker 1: We're about six of the places that we were working
Speaker 1: on actually got put into that bill and passed, and
Speaker 1: so I'd say it's cut in half now when we're
Speaker 1: about six seven. But we're always I think there's a
Speaker 1: place like we're looking at the boundary waters right now,
Speaker 1: there's a proposed mine, soulified mine, and the boundary waters
Speaker 1: right now, which would you know obviously potentially have huge impacts.
Speaker 1: What do they want to go after? So well, you
Speaker 1: know what the hell is so fed it's like it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's a certain kind of mineral and exactly
Speaker 1: what it's used for. But it's like, um, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty aggressive mining. I guess what they would do.
Speaker 1: And you know they talk about how that the clean
Speaker 1: water would not be affective, but um, I don't think
Speaker 1: there's a mine that you look at, even modern mining
Speaker 1: that doesn't affect clean water. And so um that's the
Speaker 1: bounty water is a place that we're looking at trying
Speaker 1: to protect, right and and our members have identified because
Speaker 1: that's a place where they still have that back country experience.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of protections in place of body
Speaker 1: waters here there is, but this will be on the
Speaker 1: outside of it, and so the potentially could actually affect it. Um,
Speaker 1: so i'd say, you know, a dozen to seven or
Speaker 1: half a dozen to a seven or eight. But um,
Speaker 1: you know we're always looking at areas and and not
Speaker 1: necessarily does that have to be protected by wilderness, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's other ways of protection. Like the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain Front right now. Um, they got protected. You know
Speaker 1: that that had different kind of protections that kept it
Speaker 1: the way it is. And I think what we're trying
Speaker 1: to protect and promote through these place based campaigns is
Speaker 1: that experience and that salted the challenge and kind of
Speaker 1: just that that type of hunting. You know that that
Speaker 1: you could do anywhere, Um, if you protect those places
Speaker 1: and that and I want to say anywhere. I mean
Speaker 1: I was just in the east and you know they're
Speaker 1: back und He looks way different than what we have
Speaker 1: here in Montana. In Alaska looks way different than what
Speaker 1: we have here in Montana. But what that binding kind
Speaker 1: of factor is that saltitude and the challenge of the hunt,
Speaker 1: right and if you can protect and promote those places,
Speaker 1: that's what we're trying to do. So I wish that
Speaker 1: the kind of I know, we still got buckets four
Speaker 1: and five to go. But I wish that the the
Speaker 1: sort of land consciousness and the land ethic that fishermen
Speaker 1: and hunters have in the West, sort of a spatial
Speaker 1: awareness about their areas. I wish that that thinking was
Speaker 1: a little more contagious and spread to some areas in
Speaker 1: the East, because I think there there's this idea, like
Speaker 1: where I grew up in Michigan, there's this idea that
Speaker 1: sort of like the vestiges of wilderness that we have
Speaker 1: left and the Upper Great Lakes like you don't really count.
Speaker 1: You sort of think of him as they're just there
Speaker 1: by accident. They're just there because no one's gotten around
Speaker 1: to doing something to them yet. Do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? And people know? I just feel like, like
Speaker 1: when I say people, I'm generalizing. But growing up, there's
Speaker 1: no you never it was just not part of hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing culture to talk about, Man, we love this place.
Speaker 1: What is the story up here? Like? What is going on?
Speaker 1: What exactly is protecting this place? Do we have we
Speaker 1: taken a look at what measures we have? Could it
Speaker 1: get even better? Could we look at some areas that
Speaker 1: that are just neglected right now and sort of bring
Speaker 1: them into this wilderness area and extend this out. It's
Speaker 1: like you never hear those conversations, but I'm sure they
Speaker 1: happened to some degree. But it's not like here, It's
Speaker 1: not like in the Rocky Mountains. But it's got to
Speaker 1: be the just the amount of public land available, because
Speaker 1: when I grew up hunting, I didn't even step foot
Speaker 1: on public land until I moved to Colorado. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Michigan. Did you hunt and trap al lot
Speaker 1: on the public well? Because I grew up right on
Speaker 1: the north and the man Stee you know Maneste National Force,
Speaker 1: which you know it's a national force. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, it was like just essentially no enforcement about
Speaker 1: um a t V use, no enforcement about access. It
Speaker 1: was just like free for all stuff, you know. And
Speaker 1: it just seems that there's a much I don't know.
Speaker 1: It just seems like that people have a much stronger
Speaker 1: sense of ownership of like public ownership, where you look
Speaker 1: at public lands as being not just like something you
Speaker 1: don't really understand, but you look at public lands and
Speaker 1: being like, no, it belongs to me, man, it belongs
Speaker 1: to us, and we have the right and the obligation
Speaker 1: too as the public monitor what's going on on these lands.
Speaker 1: And I feel like in areas where I grew up
Speaker 1: around the east of like that that's that that awareness
Speaker 1: wasn't there yet. So it is good to hear that
Speaker 1: backhunt under his angers. And I'm sure you're aware of
Speaker 1: this seems like a very Western outfit. M hm. You know,
Speaker 1: it's born out of the West. It's a young group.
Speaker 1: It's like it's run out of the West. But I'm
Speaker 1: glad to hear that, like to apply that, to apply
Speaker 1: your thinking to the boundary waters, and I would hold
Speaker 1: a whole lot of other places in the eastern US. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we have a chapter in Minnesota, and that's why
Speaker 1: you know, we're able to kind of focus there. We
Speaker 1: have a chapter now in New York and in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and then a chapter of that covers the six New
Speaker 1: England states. We still want to start one in northern
Speaker 1: Michigan and the up. We're having a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about that, and I would say Steve that we've grown
Speaker 1: so fast in the last couple of years. We're trying
Speaker 1: to keep up right now. And so I mean, I
Speaker 1: think where there's opportunities and where people and we can
Speaker 1: gather together, like a place like Michigan, I think we
Speaker 1: can you know, start another chapter there, but I will
Speaker 1: tell you that we're trying to hold onto that horse
Speaker 1: right now and keep them on the track. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's which is a great problem to have, right because
Speaker 1: if we get too big too fast, which is you know,
Speaker 1: kind of good problem to have, but then you can't
Speaker 1: manage that, right. But literally, just coming back from Vermont
Speaker 1: last week where I met with those three kind of
Speaker 1: Eastern chapters, I mean we're having these exact conversations. And
Speaker 1: one of the things, you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: that map which your honest just talked about, is that
Speaker 1: you know, the West has way more public land than
Speaker 1: the East, but there is still these bastions of public
Speaker 1: land in the East that need that kind of stewardship,
Speaker 1: I think is what you're talking about, um, And and
Speaker 1: not only need that stewardship, but there's are also opportunities
Speaker 1: within like private land trust let's say, you know that
Speaker 1: that have large bodies of property out in the East
Speaker 1: that don't necessarily allow hunting, and so trying to work
Speaker 1: with them to open up places, you know where it's
Speaker 1: all walking hunting. So they still have that challenge and
Speaker 1: kind of the experience that we're all looking for. But
Speaker 1: opens up this that's private land, that's that becomes more
Speaker 1: public access to it. So um, but I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I mean, I think that it's
Speaker 1: inherent here in the West, and it's partly because we
Speaker 1: we still have public land, you know. That's that's and
Speaker 1: somebody tries to take that away, and that's where people
Speaker 1: get really fired up. Um yeah, moving out here, you
Speaker 1: get educated on public land real quick. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a big it's a big part of life. But
Speaker 1: I think that it's also I don't think it's just
Speaker 1: simply a matter of there being more public land out here,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. And then another thing that that similars
Speaker 1: where up we have like big navigable rivers, okay, in
Speaker 1: huge navigable lakes. The minute you get on those lakes
Speaker 1: and rivers, you're on public land. It doesn't matter who
Speaker 1: owns the banks, okay, so you can be on there
Speaker 1: and cruise around. Um. I think that developing the mind
Speaker 1: frame of thinking of those things, like thinking of lakes,
Speaker 1: thinking of rivers as being public land. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just like I mean, I'm not saying something concrete here.
Speaker 1: I just feel that, um, I just encourage people that
Speaker 1: hunting fish in the east, and you might be listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast in the east where I'm from. Two
Speaker 1: kind of like listen to the way you're talking about
Speaker 1: taking care of hunting and fishing land and realize that
Speaker 1: this isn't just the Western discussion, right, you know, Like
Speaker 1: the same way we might talk about a mountain range here,
Speaker 1: you can be talking about your river at home. I mean,
Speaker 1: like these same sort of ideas, the same sort of
Speaker 1: sense of ownership, the same sort of like watching your
Speaker 1: own back and seeing what has happened to the places
Speaker 1: you care about, you know, and what more can you
Speaker 1: do to help the place you care about, and not
Speaker 1: just have this attitude that when it goes to ship,
Speaker 1: that was just how the how stuff happens, how it goes,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's about a new place. You know.
Speaker 1: The reason that we have what we have here in
Speaker 1: the West is because people have been stepping up for
Speaker 1: like a hundred and fifty years and trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that we have that continuing. And I think you
Speaker 1: know that's that can be said for a print kind
Speaker 1: of conservation in general. But I think that there's there's
Speaker 1: definitely that feeling from folks in the East, but they
Speaker 1: feel like they've I think lost a lot of that.
Speaker 1: But I think you bring up rivers and stream access
Speaker 1: is such a convoluted thing and it's so different from
Speaker 1: state to state, but it is a place where you
Speaker 1: can go and uh and experience that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: that that challenge and that solitude that only like a
Speaker 1: rivers can do. You have a ringer that sounds like
Speaker 1: a mallard. Before we get to uh, buckets four or five,
Speaker 1: we'll take a quick break and'll be right back alright,
Speaker 1: so Land, give me just a recap. Now, make sure
Speaker 1: I'm paying attention. Bucket number one, Access and the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Bucket number two general, how do you how do you describe?
Speaker 1: I know Bucket number three is like specific place based,
Speaker 1: so I didn't describe too as much, but it's like
Speaker 1: backcountry conservation. So I would put like the clear water
Speaker 1: or the clean water acting ok at that right, So
Speaker 1: it's like these big, huge things that happen out in
Speaker 1: d C that that are broadly applied exactly. Bucket number four,
Speaker 1: buck number spots for Steve. Bucket number four Bucket number
Speaker 1: four would be uh illegal h v us. And so
Speaker 1: I drove my truck here. You know, I think everybody drives,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere sometime. But it's about that illegal use.
Speaker 1: I think that that gets our hackles up. And you
Speaker 1: know it's it's about l security, it's about um, you know,
Speaker 1: your security. It's about sediment and streams when illegal stuff happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's screw. It's like here now, I want to
Speaker 1: clear I'm not speaking for b h A. Okay, when
Speaker 1: I say what I'm gonna say, like I'm not. This
Speaker 1: is not Landni talking. This is Steve Ronell talking, who's
Speaker 1: not paid by b h A. I don't speak for
Speaker 1: b h A. All right, it's just me talking. The
Speaker 1: four wheelers stuff is out of control in the illegal
Speaker 1: use thing in my mind, and this argument that we're
Speaker 1: gonna run out of places to drive vehicles strikes me
Speaker 1: as being absurd. There are so many places the ride vehicles,
Speaker 1: and there are places that legally ride vehicles that I
Speaker 1: don't understand why any law abiding citizen gets irritated, any
Speaker 1: law abiding oh B user, which I would account myself
Speaker 1: as one of, Okay, why they get irritated when they
Speaker 1: hear about curtailing illegal four wheeler use. It's not attack
Speaker 1: on your quad runner. It's an attack on doing illegal
Speaker 1: ship right. It's like poaching, right, And it's like if
Speaker 1: I say we shouldn't poach, why would a dude who
Speaker 1: likes to hunt but doesn't poach get pissed? But the
Speaker 1: it seems like four wheeler folks, and again, man, I
Speaker 1: use them, but seems like four wheeler folks get like
Speaker 1: mad when they hear that someone wants to start enforcing
Speaker 1: illegal use, like it's an attack on quads. I don't
Speaker 1: think that busting poachers is an attack on hunting. I
Speaker 1: think it's helping hunting. Now Lantoni will speak about actual stuff,
Speaker 1: all right. That was not That was not Lantoni talking.
Speaker 1: That was not. But I mean I think we all
Speaker 1: shared some the same sentiment, right, I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the reasons why illegal a TV
Speaker 1: us is a hot topic is because we've all been
Speaker 1: behind the gate two hours hiking it's been dark, and
Speaker 1: that a TV comes. You hear that murmur, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there's an a TV coming up right
Speaker 1: up the trail that you just were dude, I approach them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the area we hunt turkeys, and man, I go
Speaker 1: up to him. You know, university. I don't care how
Speaker 1: many signs that there are saying it. I don't care
Speaker 1: how many signs they drove over, right, So I didn't
Speaker 1: realize always it's like, dude, I know, you know, man.
Speaker 1: And so one of the turns that we're trying to
Speaker 1: get out there is we have a reward. So you know,
Speaker 1: the penalties for illegal a TV us aren't that high.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's joke. It's a lot of times
Speaker 1: to slap on the wrist, right most guys will gladly
Speaker 1: pay double of fine to you know, be able to
Speaker 1: drive their a TV and part of doing business right
Speaker 1: like there. And so I think, you know, we're working
Speaker 1: trying to state legislature, state legislature UM to try to
Speaker 1: increase those fines or but one of the things that
Speaker 1: we're doing is providing a reward right now, So if
Speaker 1: you get if you see somebody that's doing something illegal
Speaker 1: when your turkey hunting, and you get like a license
Speaker 1: plate or you get like some kind of identification, able
Speaker 1: to turn that into the local. But yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get that, try to get that stuff. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's and it's and and and that's another one that's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting is that the um that it's fought
Speaker 1: is identical identification that you can actually see right when
Speaker 1: you when you see a boat, you know, out on
Speaker 1: the lake, they have that identification like to stick around
Speaker 1: it and you can see that from a long way.
Speaker 1: It's color coded, so you can tell if it's out
Speaker 1: the data that exactly. And so why can't you do
Speaker 1: that for a t V S and so? And I
Speaker 1: don't get it, Like I mean, I would be a
Speaker 1: good conversation to have with you know, a TV users
Speaker 1: on why they won't support, like you know, identification UM.
Speaker 1: But if you actually do UM some investigating, like you know,
Speaker 1: and are able to take some pictures or whatever and
Speaker 1: turn that person in, we'll give you a five award.
Speaker 1: We've given out four this year, so not a lot,
Speaker 1: but we get a lot of play and we put
Speaker 1: sometimes we put that in the regulation books just so
Speaker 1: people are aware of it. And so I think that's
Speaker 1: a deterrent. And then another thing that we're doing is
Speaker 1: when we do see a t V S park that
Speaker 1: the trailhead which is great, right, I mean that they
Speaker 1: use that just like I took my truck. We'll give
Speaker 1: them like a little thing that says thank you, and
Speaker 1: then i'll beer opener can opener that has a B
Speaker 1: H A signature on it. So it's like we're trying,
Speaker 1: you know, what we're doing kind of both right, Like
Speaker 1: we're we're I guess I would say three legged stool.
Speaker 1: We're trying to figure out better ways for enforcement in
Speaker 1: places where they probably shouldn't be. And then we're trying
Speaker 1: to have something to trent with that reward. And again,
Speaker 1: I think that's more a public outreach than it is
Speaker 1: actual on the ground. And that third piece is like
Speaker 1: thinking people for doing the right thing. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that it's not an issue that's
Speaker 1: gonna go away. It's probably gonna get worse. And um,
Speaker 1: I would love to see industry step up even more
Speaker 1: and talk about this responsible use. I think you do
Speaker 1: see it. Um, it's pretty prevalent. But what is different
Speaker 1: is everybody talks about doing the right thing, but then
Speaker 1: they don't want to address people doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: So when people are doing the wrong thing, we're not
Speaker 1: increasing fines Like if you had your a TV taken
Speaker 1: away from you in the woods, and it was like
Speaker 1: your third offense, let's say, by being behind the gate.
Speaker 1: That's pretty like that's that's not your slap on the
Speaker 1: wrist anymore. That's that's a that's a big thing. And
Speaker 1: so I think I found a guy who's three times
Speaker 1: been bosted with an illegal ELK. Yeah, something's gonna be
Speaker 1: in jail. Yeah. So I mean, I think that's about
Speaker 1: increasing fines. And I think a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 1: gets to a judge and he's like, seriously, this is
Speaker 1: taking my time, Like you know, I'm just gonna give him.
Speaker 1: But I think awareness needs to be creative. That's partly
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do. That's our fourth bucket. The
Speaker 1: fifth one is kind of harder to fund. I think
Speaker 1: it's different probably for all three of us in this room,
Speaker 1: and that's fair chase hunting. And I've heard it described
Speaker 1: that we all kind of we all have different perspectives
Speaker 1: on fair chase, but we all know something when we
Speaker 1: see it that isn't right. And so one thing that
Speaker 1: we've jumped on is drones. And so when you know,
Speaker 1: drones started becoming more prevalent, not just for military, but
Speaker 1: for civilian use. Uh. There started to be problems up
Speaker 1: in Alaska, Colorado, Montana where folks were using drones to
Speaker 1: track animals and then go kill them. And and so
Speaker 1: we decided to get out in front of that early.
Speaker 1: And so, UM, we started working with state fish and
Speaker 1: game agencies or state legislatures to ban these for hunting
Speaker 1: and scouting. And we've gotten We've done it in eight
Speaker 1: states now states. Um. So we've got Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon,
Speaker 1: Vermont New Hampshire, Alaska, which is seven um. And then
Speaker 1: I think we're working on it in Arizona right now.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure if it's done yet. I love because
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, yea, yeah, yeah, I love it. No
Speaker 1: states like Alaska, Montana like like great hunt states but
Speaker 1: with a very conservative minded populace. Who um, I just
Speaker 1: can see that that's not good business, right. The drones
Speaker 1: aren't good business, you know for the hunting world. Takes
Speaker 1: away of the experience of the hunt because so often,
Speaker 1: and this is something I want to talk about with
Speaker 1: you a little bit. UM. It might be uncomfortable for
Speaker 1: you to talk about, but it's so often enemies of
Speaker 1: conservation often try to paint um conservation measures as being
Speaker 1: sort of like these veiled left wing conspiracies, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean that we're like talking about hunting,
Speaker 1: but what we're really talking about is like stealing your freedom,
Speaker 1: you know, or like governments shoving it down your throat, right,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, because it's just the way they're
Speaker 1: afraid of it, and they want to beat it. Right.
Speaker 1: They don't want to have like not that they hate
Speaker 1: clean water and clean air and good land, but just
Speaker 1: that they don't want anything to stand in the way
Speaker 1: of them doing pursuing their own personal gains. You know.
Speaker 1: It's so when you see something like the drones thing
Speaker 1: come up, it's been encouraging to see the way states
Speaker 1: that on areas outside of conservation are very conservative states
Speaker 1: realizing that this like seeing that for what it is.
Speaker 1: It's not like this unwelcome intrusion of government, but just saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, that's just not for us. It's not
Speaker 1: good business. It is not good for the business of hunting.
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean, so you have drones now,
Speaker 1: but I mean that's why hunters stepped up a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago when there was market killing on I mean
Speaker 1: like this is nothing new. Hunters have continued to step up,
Speaker 1: and so I think that, yeah, it's like self there's
Speaker 1: like a there's a concept bit of self policing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that piece that you talked about how it's like
Speaker 1: kind of this veiled attempted by you know, the government,
Speaker 1: or there's green radicals like shut things down, Like that's
Speaker 1: just a tactic that's been used again for a hundred years.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's I think, you know, there's these
Speaker 1: hunter conservationists which are why we have what we have today,
Speaker 1: and and they're they're still going to be the same
Speaker 1: arguments that happened around Roosevelt's time, but they're just new now.
Speaker 1: I mean, drones is obviously a new thing. Um, But
Speaker 1: I've been I've been real pleased with our chapter is
Speaker 1: jumping on that this issue because they've they've done it.
Speaker 1: I think you know another one we're looking at right now,
Speaker 1: which is high fence hunting, and you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know how you feel about that. You know, we
Speaker 1: took care of that in Montana by making it illegal
Speaker 1: to charge for hunts. You know, they I think there's
Speaker 1: still two that are left. They're actually raising them for meat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that passed by what se keep keep Elk
Speaker 1: wild and free vote for I And I mean what
Speaker 1: a great campaign it was. It was like overwhelming. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think and so that's like you know, you
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, these honey numbers that are going down,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as the populace, but this is
Speaker 1: an area where everybody understands that that's not hunting. And
Speaker 1: you know that's a it's a long discussion about about
Speaker 1: high fences and but that's probably fair chase. Thing I'm
Speaker 1: telling you about is that that's one of our buckets
Speaker 1: that we look at, but it's really hard to the find. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me let me. I want to speak to that
Speaker 1: for me because it is complicated and this is the
Speaker 1: one bucket you have where it doesn't make me nervous,
Speaker 1: but it's to me, it's not as clear cut. It's
Speaker 1: some other issue. And and and I'll just share the story
Speaker 1: that I've told many times. I was one time in
Speaker 1: South Carolina hunting with a friend of mine who has
Speaker 1: a blind, a deer blind that they called the condo. Okay,
Speaker 1: he purchased some timber company land thick scrubby ground and
Speaker 1: put in these long four hundred yard five hundred yard
Speaker 1: long food plots that radiate out from the condo like
Speaker 1: the spokes of a wheel. The condo is at the hub. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's a big blind with rolling chairs, heaters, fridge sliding windows,
Speaker 1: lead sleds and they sit in the condo hunting deer
Speaker 1: and they got the yardage is marked out in each
Speaker 1: of the food pots. I'm up there hunt with them,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling him about how I'm gonna go out
Speaker 1: to Arizona to hunt dry ground lions with UH, a
Speaker 1: lion hunter. And there's two kind of mountain lion hunting.
Speaker 1: There's lion hunt in the snow where the snow the
Speaker 1: tracks of snow indicate the size of the cat, what
Speaker 1: direction the cat was going, and usually how long ago
Speaker 1: the cat came through. There's dry ground lion hunting where
Speaker 1: you're probably gonna find a track, there's a chance of
Speaker 1: dogs and go in the wrong direction, and it's a
Speaker 1: very difficult type of hunting. I'm explaining to my body
Speaker 1: in the condo about what I'm going out to do.
Speaker 1: He turns his UH swivel chair to me and says, now,
Speaker 1: what is the challenge? And shooting a lion out of
Speaker 1: a tree. Right. It's like your perspective on fair chase
Speaker 1: is heavily influenced by what the guys in your area do.
Speaker 1: You got guys in the South have been running deer
Speaker 1: with dogs for hundreds of years. It's a traditional use, right,
Speaker 1: just traditional hunting use. In the North, you talk about
Speaker 1: a guy sees a dog chasing deer, the dog gets shot.
Speaker 1: If you went and try to put a law in
Speaker 1: in Michigan saying you could hunt deer dogs, it would
Speaker 1: be universally despised. Okay. So there's a tremendous regionality to
Speaker 1: these issues. So when people talk about fair chase, I
Speaker 1: think we all like the idea of it, you know,
Speaker 1: but it gets really difficult to start telling people what
Speaker 1: is what and to have us all agree on certain principles.
Speaker 1: So even though I give it lip service, when it
Speaker 1: comes down to it, it gets to be very difficult.
Speaker 1: Like we used to, like when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: we'd like to cut a big hole in the ice
Speaker 1: of spearfish to the ice. You know, someone not familiar
Speaker 1: with that, it's gonna look at that practice and be like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm like, you sit there and when
Speaker 1: the fish comes down, you jab with a spear. Traditional use.
Speaker 1: You know. I keep harping on this idea of traditional
Speaker 1: use because I think that one key to sorting this
Speaker 1: out is what are traditional socially acceptable practices? You know, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you spent much time, but I
Speaker 1: spend time hunting in Texas. It's a very different situation
Speaker 1: that they're dealing with in Texas. You know, it just
Speaker 1: gets hard now. I want to say that and then
Speaker 1: let you continue out. But it's like that's one thing
Speaker 1: that I hear and I always get a little bit
Speaker 1: like wow. Because when they were just trying to ban
Speaker 1: hunting bears with dogs in Maine, what's your shot down?
Speaker 1: How are they selling it? It's not ethical town of
Speaker 1: bears and dogs? Main that was the terminology they were using.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine recently sent me a paper where
Speaker 1: this guy is pushing this idea. Let's just stop. Let's
Speaker 1: just change the terminology and talk about not fair chase
Speaker 1: or athletes were talking about fair take, you know, because
Speaker 1: the thing we get into and again I want to
Speaker 1: clear by this is not Landown any talking. This is
Speaker 1: me and I'm talking with land I don't represent b
Speaker 1: h A But the thing we get into is, um,
Speaker 1: the more we open up stuff and the more technology
Speaker 1: comes in to increase efficacy on the part of hunters.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, like you can use drones,
Speaker 1: you have a rifle that's capable of shooting a mile. Um,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff comes up. Hunter efficacy grows up.
Speaker 1: It becomes easier to hunt. Two things are gonna happen
Speaker 1: that you're improving the pump without improving the well. Okay,
Speaker 1: you gotta bucket of water. You gotta you got water,
Speaker 1: and you gotta pump. You're making the pump pump faster,
Speaker 1: but the tank of water don't get bigger. When that happens.
Speaker 1: As efficacy increases through technology or through other practices, you're
Speaker 1: gonna do two things shortened seasons or reduced number of
Speaker 1: tags generally because we're talking about shooting the same killing
Speaker 1: the same amount of stuff. Right. Um, all this stuff
Speaker 1: plays into this conversation we're having about drones or any
Speaker 1: number of technologies or any number of fair chase issues.
Speaker 1: With all that said, me like teeing that up continue
Speaker 1: the conversation, but I wanted to like demonstrate the complexity
Speaker 1: what we're talking about Yeah, So I think I've heard
Speaker 1: a fair chase describe. One way, which I think is
Speaker 1: helpful to think about, is that fair chase, Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter to the animal, right, Like the animal
Speaker 1: can be shot at five yards with a recurve or
Speaker 1: at a mile with a smart rifle. Right, I mean
Speaker 1: that animal is still dead. He doesn't really equally plausible
Speaker 1: in either case, yes, which is a good example, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But what I like when we start thinking about that
Speaker 1: fair is it fair to the hunt in the hunter? Right?
Speaker 1: And so I think you know, you're getting to that
Speaker 1: piece like where things become easy, which I think is technology.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's just the way that's the world works
Speaker 1: as you try to do things easier and faster. But
Speaker 1: are you cheating yourself out of that hunt? Right? And
Speaker 1: like what the hunt is? And I think that's the
Speaker 1: way for me to think about it. And so when
Speaker 1: you think about drones in particular, like there's nothing about
Speaker 1: fair chase and like and that being a hunt besides
Speaker 1: maybe being very skillful at flying, you're droning up in
Speaker 1: the air and finding those animals, being like shrewd and
Speaker 1: technologically savvy, being good at megan money right, right, so
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of them, you know, and and
Speaker 1: and so I like, I think it would be hard
Speaker 1: for for anybody to defend drones for hunting. And and
Speaker 1: that's why I think we've we've been able to, you know,
Speaker 1: have the success we have at this state level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like a clear that's a clear case. And it's
Speaker 1: a clear case large because it's new. It's something new,
Speaker 1: it's something new that we're looking at, like is this
Speaker 1: the director we want to take this. It's define herbal
Speaker 1: it's new, it hasn't caught on yet. It's the perfect
Speaker 1: thing for people to sort of get a grip on
Speaker 1: it because it doesn't get into traditional practice. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: another example of that was was the one attacks where
Speaker 1: they were allowing you to shoot animals through the Internet
Speaker 1: from your desk, from your desk, you know, eat very
Speaker 1: easily shot down. One that's not that's very different is
Speaker 1: like the radio use. You know, it's like say Alaska
Speaker 1: to Montana or no, I guess Montana you can't either
Speaker 1: Alaska you can't, but you can. Yeah, like in in Alaska,
Speaker 1: you cannot use two way communications of any sort to
Speaker 1: assist in a hunt. To which to mean to use
Speaker 1: it to communicate, like the whereabouts a game to get
Speaker 1: someone in on an animal in Arizona, that's become this
Speaker 1: is a bold statement. That's become like they the day
Speaker 1: factor way to hunt, multiple guys with radios talking people
Speaker 1: in the game. I remember Montana banned two a communications
Speaker 1: during a hunt at all, and then the next year
Speaker 1: adjusted it to be this, you use it up to
Speaker 1: open it up, that you could use it for safety
Speaker 1: and stuff, and just couldn't use to assist game, which
Speaker 1: seems like a very fair way to handle. I think
Speaker 1: it's a little bit. I think it's overreaching just to
Speaker 1: come in and say like you can't have to like
Speaker 1: I can't be out hunting my kid. I can't hand
Speaker 1: my kid a radio to tell me if he's got
Speaker 1: a major problem he's dealing with. There's different than me
Speaker 1: talk walking my kid up into an animal so he
Speaker 1: can kill just over that next ridge. And I got
Speaker 1: good friends, man like well meaning dudes, conservation minded guys
Speaker 1: who who in Arizona what they do all they do
Speaker 1: is warter people into stuff on radios, you know, So
Speaker 1: I think, I mean partly what we're trying to do
Speaker 1: here is creates this conversation that we're having right now.
Speaker 1: What is fair chase to you? And I try to
Speaker 1: like define that, And again, I think it's probably different
Speaker 1: for all three of us in this room. I think
Speaker 1: it's probably very similar, but probably different. We got down
Speaker 1: talking to it. Yeah, when you get down, when you
Speaker 1: get down to the when you get down to the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts, um And I think the best way
Speaker 1: to discuss it is to discuss it the way we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're like, let's sit down, talk about radios, let's sit down,
Speaker 1: talk about Jones, listen on talk offenses. Yeah, it's important
Speaker 1: to remember that it's okay to have the discussion. You know,
Speaker 1: so often I feel like now we're getting chastise for
Speaker 1: even like having the conversation. It's like, look, man, we're
Speaker 1: just talking about it. No, you know, nobody's getting mad.
Speaker 1: Like it's okay to talk. There's two ways of looking
Speaker 1: at it, um is or not. Two ways look at it.
Speaker 1: Two ways I hear it discussed. One is that any
Speaker 1: amount of like in the hunting world, any amount of
Speaker 1: internal policing, er internal talking, is tantamount to playing into
Speaker 1: the hands of the anti Yeah, we're all in this together.
Speaker 1: And like we're on this boat together, And I said
Speaker 1: another podcast, I'm like, yeah, we're on this boat together,
Speaker 1: So don't be chopping holes through the bottom of the boat. Dude,
Speaker 1: you're gonna sink the boat. So lowest common denominator, is
Speaker 1: that what we really want? Yeah? So it's like there's that,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm and I'm sensitive to that. And
Speaker 1: the thing that bothers me by a lot of these
Speaker 1: issues is it becomes a matter of terminology hunting and suthing.
Speaker 1: I care a great deal about I've written about it.
Speaker 1: I've dedicated my life to it. It's it's like outside
Speaker 1: of family matters, it's like the thing that matters to
Speaker 1: me right. Um, what I've been bothered by is when
Speaker 1: people take the terminology and take the rights of hunting
Speaker 1: and apply them to things that I clearly are not.
Speaker 1: I point out this case reason, like, my brother has
Speaker 1: some irrigated pasture. He keeps lamas for hunting. He likes
Speaker 1: to use lamas hunting out in the mountains, but he
Speaker 1: has a bunch of irrigated pasture. He's out of town
Speaker 1: a lot in order to encourage his friends to come
Speaker 1: over and check on his lamas. When he's out of town.
Speaker 1: He lets his friends run lambs, run sheep on his pasture.
Speaker 1: They come out to check on their lambs, they check
Speaker 1: on the llamas. It's this great deal. And so he's
Speaker 1: got any given time, I don't know, a dozen lamps.
Speaker 1: He gave me a lamb recently, I you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't get a way to catch the lamb. We
Speaker 1: go out and just shot the lamb. Okay, inside of fence.
Speaker 1: Was that an unethical thing to go and shoot livestock
Speaker 1: inside of a fence? No? No, we're harvesting livestock. We
Speaker 1: ate the lamb. It's like, that's it's farming, farming, ranch,
Speaker 1: whatevery wanna call it? Do I then apply the terminology
Speaker 1: of hunting to that and somehow try to drape that
Speaker 1: activity is hunting. It's like, that's nothing to do with hunting.
Speaker 1: You know. I didn't then go get dressed up in
Speaker 1: the camouflage suit and take a bunch of gripping grins
Speaker 1: with the lamb and act like something happened that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: We're shooting hot livestock. So what bugs me a little
Speaker 1: bit is like people act like they oh that you
Speaker 1: think it's It's like we're not talking about athics when
Speaker 1: we're talking about shooting stuff, shooting livestock inside fences. But
Speaker 1: why do they insist on dressing it up with something
Speaker 1: that it is not When guys do opt to go
Speaker 1: like kill you know, wildlife inside fences, why are they
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable with what they're doing that they're like hiding
Speaker 1: the fence all the time. If that's what you do,
Speaker 1: I think you take your picture up against the big
Speaker 1: damn fence, you know. That's uh, Like why I don't
Speaker 1: understand why they don't own it? Right, Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: if you like doing it, do it, dude. But again
Speaker 1: and again, I've watched shows where they're hunting on high
Speaker 1: wire and they're so embarrassed about the high wire. So
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're so embarrassed about the high wire,
Speaker 1: don't do it inside the high wire? Were you shamed of?
Speaker 1: But I think it so like it gets down to
Speaker 1: that that they want to do it the easiest, fastest way,
Speaker 1: and then they'll tell the story about something else, right,
Speaker 1: Like the guy who buys the sixteen thousand dollar tag
Speaker 1: goes and kills his big bull in Idaho, goes back
Speaker 1: to wherever he came from puts that bull on the wall.
Speaker 1: He does not tell that story that he shot him
Speaker 1: behind the fence. He tells some other story and and so,
Speaker 1: but he wants to be part of that hunting culture
Speaker 1: that you know, I shot this big ball, and that's
Speaker 1: why he does it that way because it's the quickest
Speaker 1: and easiest way to Yeah, like he admires the culture
Speaker 1: and he wants the acceptance. But just like, isn't comfortable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and I don't even know where. I don't know
Speaker 1: like what we're talking about. I don't know how it
Speaker 1: every sends in the legislation and stuff. But it's just
Speaker 1: something I see and it's something that I ponder all
Speaker 1: the time. And maybe he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to have the experiences that you and I do,
Speaker 1: like on public land, where that there is that challenge, right, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe he gets hooked up with somebody that's like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's go hunt the West, and this is that's the
Speaker 1: only thing he's exposed to and that's the only thing
Speaker 1: he knows. And so I think that that's part of
Speaker 1: a conversation like this, and probably like what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do is No, there's this other thing out there
Speaker 1: that you can still tap into the way hunting has
Speaker 1: been for eons on public land if you want to
Speaker 1: do that, And I think there's an appetite for that.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons, you know, why back
Speaker 1: country Hunters and Anglers is resonating so much is that
Speaker 1: people aren't looking for the cheapest, easiest way anymore. It's
Speaker 1: like it's about that journey that gets you there, So
Speaker 1: that challenge and that adventure, like that's more of the
Speaker 1: story than you know, that animal on the wall. You know.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to point out real quickly too,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about um fencing up servants, it's a
Speaker 1: much bigger issue. Again, this is not the Steve talking.
Speaker 1: We're talking about fencive service is a much bigger issue
Speaker 1: because I might say, deer and elk running game farms.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about like, oh, is ethical not to
Speaker 1: kill his anvileside game farms. You have tremendous disease transmission
Speaker 1: issues going on with these and proven cases where you
Speaker 1: have communicable diseases that are within domestic herds, within cage
Speaker 1: herds that are living in very close proximity to one
Speaker 1: another have been exposed all manner things, either escaping or
Speaker 1: transmitting the disease to deer and elk that can't help themselves,
Speaker 1: but to come up and stick their nose through that
Speaker 1: fence and rub noses with the tame with the domestic ones.
Speaker 1: It's not just an issue of like, it's not a
Speaker 1: morality play. It's an issue of do we value our
Speaker 1: wild deer and elk? And is a guy's right to
Speaker 1: make a few bucks selling deer and elk greater than
Speaker 1: our right to have disease free hurts? Disease free hurts.
Speaker 1: And that's also genetics, right. I mean, it's not about
Speaker 1: kind of if those animals are gonna get out. It's
Speaker 1: like when you know, and I remember cases of a
Speaker 1: guy in uh In, Idaho, Rex Rambo, who had a
Speaker 1: big game farm and big winner. A couple of fences
Speaker 1: go down. He's got Roosevelt elk now mixing with Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountain elk like right there, like during the rut, and
Speaker 1: and and and the fishing game comes in and tries
Speaker 1: to shoot them from helicopters. He's hazing them back into
Speaker 1: the woods and so that they can't be shot. I
Speaker 1: mean it's just this ridiculous thing that that yes they're
Speaker 1: shooting them there, which we've talked about, Yes there's that
Speaker 1: disease factor, but then there's also this this huge thing
Speaker 1: about passing on those genes, you know, and mixing kind
Speaker 1: of herds, which is a travesty to me. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the same issue, and we all agree on certain concepts here,
Speaker 1: like if I live on a stream, we've basically agreed
Speaker 1: that I can't go and and plow a few thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of manure into the stream of my property because
Speaker 1: it's always my property. No, because that water flows downhill, Dude,
Speaker 1: you're gonna mess up the agricultural landscape and the fisheries
Speaker 1: and stuff on the next guy down the lines land.
Speaker 1: We've all agreed on that basic premise resources. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I can't have a bunch of holes in my gas
Speaker 1: tank underground next to your drinking water, because you're gonna
Speaker 1: be really pissed when you get get groundwater contamination you're
Speaker 1: drinking water. And so to look at the fence issue,
Speaker 1: it's bigger than just like what somebody's doing on their
Speaker 1: own private land, because again and again hast been proven
Speaker 1: that it's not that way that it's like we're talking
Speaker 1: about diseases and other stuff, and it's just like people
Speaker 1: have to wake up to the complexity of stuff and
Speaker 1: realize that it's not just this constant battle of like
Speaker 1: you're my right to do this and you're right to
Speaker 1: do that. You know, it's so much bigger, like what
Speaker 1: you do on private land affects public land, and what
Speaker 1: you do with animals that are privately held effects publicly
Speaker 1: held animals. It's a it's a I feel like it's
Speaker 1: a pretty clear cut issue, but it's obviously very uh
Speaker 1: convoluted and um and there's and part of that is
Speaker 1: because there's money at stake. Um. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: money being made, whether that's with the shooting or with
Speaker 1: with you know, just for the meat, um and and
Speaker 1: breeding stock, I guess, And so I see it. I
Speaker 1: think it's something that uh that I think will evolve
Speaker 1: out of To be honest, I think that the public
Speaker 1: awareness on the disease factor in particular, but also this
Speaker 1: kind of the ethics of it. I mean, people don't
Speaker 1: accept that and when they when when people find out
Speaker 1: about it, they want to figure out how to do
Speaker 1: something about it. And so I think this will be
Speaker 1: something that we won't be talking about in the twenty
Speaker 1: five years. I was just at um you Quality Dear
Speaker 1: Management Association. There's a offshoot a q d M A
Speaker 1: and and if you haven't heard of q dm A,
Speaker 1: like q d M A is the is largely to
Speaker 1: the bank for um A movement. Now you know among
Speaker 1: private landholders almost the larger than that. They've been very influential,
Speaker 1: instrumental among private landowners to strive towards managing white tail deer,
Speaker 1: toward having for lack of their term, what we'll call
Speaker 1: like more natural population dynamic mix some white tail deer.
Speaker 1: If you live in an area where you see twenty
Speaker 1: that where you got twenty dolls for every buck, that's
Speaker 1: a manifestation of like shitty deer management of shooting all
Speaker 1: but every buck to walks in front of you kill
Speaker 1: you're not killing. Does you wind up having zero bucks
Speaker 1: that are three and a half years old the oldest
Speaker 1: of boxing gets two and a half and you get shot,
Speaker 1: and it'd be like guys not wanting to shoot doughs,
Speaker 1: shooting every buck to walks in front and sort of
Speaker 1: the changing culture we've been experienced in the last decade
Speaker 1: or longer of being more open to the harvest dos
Speaker 1: trying to allow some bucks to reach like a natural
Speaker 1: reproductive age like that's come out of q d m A.
Speaker 1: They speak larger too. They've spoken larger to private landowners
Speaker 1: because private landowners have more say in the harvest races
Speaker 1: that are going on on their land. And offshoot of
Speaker 1: that is the National Deer Alliance, which is a bunch
Speaker 1: of biologists and land managers coming to go to look
Speaker 1: at deer issues. And I heard, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm wrong on this that they're pushing for. They keep
Speaker 1: pushing for a ban on moving servants across state lines,
Speaker 1: not with an eye towards cramming it down the private
Speaker 1: man's throat, but for an eye of preventing diseases, which
Speaker 1: I mean from just inadvertently moving diseases from one end
Speaker 1: of the country to the other. Chronic wasting disease, which
Speaker 1: is all over now, is not a thing of this land.
Speaker 1: It was brought here and it wasn't from deer swimming
Speaker 1: the ocean. I mean, that's that's obviously a policy. I
Speaker 1: think that makes a ton of sense for the protection
Speaker 1: of our wild herds, and so you would think that
Speaker 1: that would be something that even um, you know, some
Speaker 1: of these private dear owners would think of them as
Speaker 1: a positive thing. I saw an interview with a guy
Speaker 1: who's credited kind of largely credit with having spawned the
Speaker 1: dear white tailed deer breeding thing. I think this guy
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, he really was. He was a dude that
Speaker 1: loved dear, guy that loved dear and um eventually had one.
Speaker 1: And it's funny about like what's funny about the deer
Speaker 1: farming and deer raising industry and and how much money
Speaker 1: is there and selling like genetic lines and bucks seaming
Speaker 1: and stuff is are there? Anybody brings us up? But
Speaker 1: if you trace it all the way back, it had
Speaker 1: to have begun with a crime, because you can't just
Speaker 1: go catch a deer and have it for yourself. With
Speaker 1: our model of conservation, deer are like public property. So
Speaker 1: I always wonder like it's almost I'm not saying it's
Speaker 1: like it's the Statue of Limitations way run out, but
Speaker 1: it always like it always strikes me as me and
Speaker 1: something that began with the wrong r. Some guys like
Speaker 1: wait till deer right. You know, some guy went out
Speaker 1: and said you know what, I'm just gonna make that
Speaker 1: mine and then from there innocently enough, you know, it's perpetuated.
Speaker 1: We've got into this thing where deer have become like
Speaker 1: for some people, it's not good enough that we have
Speaker 1: have deer as like a national as wildlife. It's like
Speaker 1: they gotta turn it into something. And it's driven by
Speaker 1: many factors. And one of the biggest thing is driven
Speaker 1: by is the desire to shoot a gigantic buck, right,
Speaker 1: um and what and you what these guys care about
Speaker 1: is just shooting a giant buck. They don't care if
Speaker 1: it's been drugged or what you know. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: just sad when you think about that. At at what
Speaker 1: cost that's gonna come to our wildlife? But do you
Speaker 1: think and I feel like that's been a trend until
Speaker 1: like the last like five ten years. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's reaches apex. And now it's like people are like,
Speaker 1: that's that's not okay. So I think we're kind of
Speaker 1: ruling back. And that's why I say I think like
Speaker 1: in twenty five years, we're probably not gonna be having
Speaker 1: this conversation. I hope, I hope you're right, because I
Speaker 1: was at as like one of those big conventions recently.
Speaker 1: I won't name the one. I mean you probably guess.
Speaker 1: And I kind of thought that like that stuff had
Speaker 1: faded out just because I wasn't seeing it. But I
Speaker 1: went to this convention and you walked down the aisles
Speaker 1: and rows and there were many, you know, in the
Speaker 1: dozens of boots that were, you know, these farms selling
Speaker 1: and you look up at these heads that they have
Speaker 1: mounted and you just like, well, they're just I don't
Speaker 1: know what they're selling. They're selling them the box or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you look at these bucks and you've never even
Speaker 1: seen anything like this. You know, I don't even know
Speaker 1: this stuff existed. And now here here there was twenty
Speaker 1: boots at this show, like selling this opportunity at you know,
Speaker 1: one of these heads, and they're just like, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: it's like an upside down stump, you know, going on
Speaker 1: top of his deer's head. And yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: that's there that we are, like I mean when you
Speaker 1: when you brought up like TV and like they're trying
Speaker 1: to keep like that stuff out of the shots. You know,
Speaker 1: for a while they didn't really care. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you'd see you see fences and I mean, same thing
Speaker 1: with like cordon feeders and stuff like you'd see them
Speaker 1: in the shot, and I feel like they're not doing
Speaker 1: that as much anymore. And it's because about that experience
Speaker 1: of the hunt, and um like people like that the
Speaker 1: cheapens that hunt, I mean in a lot of people's eyes.
Speaker 1: And so I think, you know, we'll see I mean,
Speaker 1: we're probably always gonna be those guys that want that
Speaker 1: big rack and they don't care. And I've seen videos
Speaker 1: of deer that are drugs that fall over and they
Speaker 1: have to prop them up with sticks. Then a guy
Speaker 1: shoots whatever with them. You know, it's ridiculous. So they're
Speaker 1: always going to be those kind of people. But I
Speaker 1: feel like we're turning away from him, hopefully, I hope so.
Speaker 1: And I just hope for it. Saying like if that's
Speaker 1: you know, if that's what you get off on, great man,
Speaker 1: But I don't want those practice. I shouldn't say great
Speaker 1: if that's what you get off on, and you want
Speaker 1: to do it in a way that's not it doesn't
Speaker 1: have catastrophic implications to wildlife health in the US, okay,
Speaker 1: but you better find a way to guarantee that those
Speaker 1: practices aren't like lighting sticks of dynamite underneath public wildlife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a guarantee. Oh no, all right,
Speaker 1: let's change the subject. I hate the harp the negatives.
Speaker 1: What before we started, need to start to let's say
Speaker 1: a quick break land. When you look at the future
Speaker 1: of conservation, the future of public lands, tell me um
Speaker 1: a handful of things, handful of trends that you think
Speaker 1: are detrimental two hunters and fishermen, Some things that are
Speaker 1: going on right now that that we really need to
Speaker 1: be as hunters and fisherman, that we should really be
Speaker 1: watching out for two in order to protect our rights
Speaker 1: and to like, uh, what are some of the things
Speaker 1: that you're most optimistic about that you see right now,
Speaker 1: that that that are happening, that they're good and that
Speaker 1: we can hopefully keep continuing to be good. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest threat that I see right now, and
Speaker 1: this is nothing new, but it seems to resurface every
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen years, and that's the sail of public lands.
Speaker 1: And you know that it's it's it's been guised in
Speaker 1: the transfer of public lands to the States, but really
Speaker 1: the sale of as where it ultimately ends up and
Speaker 1: that to me that we can talk about all these
Speaker 1: other issues. And I mean we've talked about already today.
Speaker 1: What makes part of the West so special is all
Speaker 1: the public lands we have, and like some of those
Speaker 1: last bastions of public lands in the East, you get
Speaker 1: rid of those public lands, which are in my mind,
Speaker 1: the cornerstone of our hunting heritage here in the United States,
Speaker 1: which makes us different than every everybody else. And you
Speaker 1: get rid of that, and we can have all sorts
Speaker 1: of conversations that we were just having that don't matter
Speaker 1: anymore because it's just that's not that's not the unique
Speaker 1: kind of American experience that we've had. And and so
Speaker 1: you know, right now or in the middle of of
Speaker 1: of we have two presidential candidates that are calling for
Speaker 1: the sale of public lands. Um Senator Cruise from Texas
Speaker 1: and uh Ran Paul just this last week was in
Speaker 1: Nevada talking about it. And it's not just like dude,
Speaker 1: like just dude, urban dudes, man, they don't get it,
Speaker 1: like just I think just like like kind of like
Speaker 1: city slickers that just have no comprehension of the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff they have no comprehension of is from Texas.
Speaker 1: How much public land is in Texas, you know, And
Speaker 1: so I mean and when I say, you know, so
Speaker 1: it's becoming more mainstream, you know, I mean it's uh,
Speaker 1: this is not something that's on the fringes um. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had a big movement here in the West that
Speaker 1: I think we've done a really good job beating back
Speaker 1: at the state level, even though at the state level
Speaker 1: there's no binding authority that they have at a state level,
Speaker 1: it's more about just kind of creating some momentum for
Speaker 1: a federal action. But you know, when you had the
Speaker 1: this is getting into the weeds. But there was an
Speaker 1: amendment this last spring that Murkowski from Alaska brought forward
Speaker 1: that would create a fund to help facilitate the transfer
Speaker 1: and sale of public lands. Now, she said it was
Speaker 1: for a small piece of in Alaska, but it was
Speaker 1: broadly written, so it was anywhere. Fifty one senators voted
Speaker 1: for that. Now, this isn't like those are. That's fifty
Speaker 1: one senators. That's a that's a big deal. And so
Speaker 1: to me, a lot of people have said, oh, this
Speaker 1: is just kind of this noise that happens and it'll
Speaker 1: go away. Well, to me, that's not just noise. When
Speaker 1: you have fifty cents for it and you have to
Speaker 1: presidential candidates one, it's a little bit more mainstream than
Speaker 1: the other. Um. But I was talking about this is
Speaker 1: my brother and he was like, I just like he
Speaker 1: was trying to he's a b h A member, but
Speaker 1: he was like, I just I try to understand the
Speaker 1: mindset of people who want to ditch public lands. He said,
Speaker 1: is it that they like drive and look at a
Speaker 1: mountain and they're like, man, I just wish I couldn't
Speaker 1: go up into that mountain. I just wish it was
Speaker 1: owned by a billionaire, Like it can't Like he was
Speaker 1: being facetious. That can't be what they think. But what
Speaker 1: is it that it's not being sold in that way?
Speaker 1: But what is it? Like? What is it? Dude? What
Speaker 1: do they really feel? I know, I feel like I
Speaker 1: know what they're actually talking about. Like what I'm always
Speaker 1: interested in is what are the secret private conversations they have.
Speaker 1: I feel that I know what the secret private conversation is.
Speaker 1: But what is really being said in the outward way
Speaker 1: about why it's beneficial to ditch public lands? So I
Speaker 1: think the private ones are like, you know, the money
Speaker 1: that's being made there right by they're not being rank
Speaker 1: and filent calling for us it's like rich people. So
Speaker 1: that's the first one. It's a hatred of government. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's what's not me it's like a um our
Speaker 1: public lands aren't being managed and in their eyes, like
Speaker 1: in a correct way, and so they have frustration aggressively
Speaker 1: for profit way. And so they have frustration. And so
Speaker 1: whether that's you know, trying to take more trees, they're
Speaker 1: trying to do more mining, whatever that is, I think
Speaker 1: that's that's that piece that people are frustrated with. Now,
Speaker 1: what they don't necessarily understand is that federal lands are
Speaker 1: managed for all of us, and that means multiple use
Speaker 1: and so that means a TV users, that means hunters,
Speaker 1: that means anglers, that means birdwatchers, that means miners, that
Speaker 1: means loggers, that means grazers. And so is that complicated,
Speaker 1: very complicated um and how to all make that work?
Speaker 1: And we talked about the clear Water Basin before, and
Speaker 1: that's that's the reason that has come up, is because
Speaker 1: federal manage mint wasn't working for that area and they've
Speaker 1: tried to do something else. Right, So I think we
Speaker 1: can agree the public land management um, it could be improved,
Speaker 1: but at the same time it's as a pretty good
Speaker 1: system where everybody has a voice at the table when
Speaker 1: it comes to the state that's managed for one thing,
Speaker 1: and that's for profit. And so like in I mean
Speaker 1: Colorado is a great example. State lands and Colorado that
Speaker 1: are open to hunting. The fishing game in Colorado has
Speaker 1: to lease those from the state to open those up
Speaker 1: to hunters. That's ridiculous, Like that's all like that should
Speaker 1: be their land. It's not least you can't even sleep
Speaker 1: on it, you can't camp on it. And like in Montana,
Speaker 1: like you can think what you can camp two days
Speaker 1: on on on state land, you can't fourteen on national
Speaker 1: forth without moving right, and so but that's all because
Speaker 1: of money, I mean, and that those lands are there
Speaker 1: to generate money. And so I think that's a big
Speaker 1: one um. And then you know, if if we have
Speaker 1: unfettered kind of development, like what kind of habitat and
Speaker 1: opportunity do you have on that land after that? And
Speaker 1: and so this is again being bred out of frustration
Speaker 1: and part of who is bringing this forward are also
Speaker 1: the people that are cutting Budge it's for the force service,
Speaker 1: and so you know the forces for service has to
Speaker 1: do less or more with less. Right, they have less
Speaker 1: money to keep roads open, like a lot of roads
Speaker 1: that are closed or because they're not being maintained. That's
Speaker 1: because they haven't got the budget up at the federal level.
Speaker 1: That isn't because you know, some environment group came in
Speaker 1: and said, no, you can't you know, hunt in this
Speaker 1: body where we're gonna shut down this road or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's because of like budgets have been coughing, because colverts
Speaker 1: get washed out and sty that becomes a liability. It's
Speaker 1: hard to maintain those roles in those kind of places.
Speaker 1: You're talking dirt roads and heavily roaded areas, and so
Speaker 1: you shut them down. Yeah, there's a lot of confusion
Speaker 1: at times about what exactly got gated up for lots
Speaker 1: of just like simply liability. It's not safe to have.
Speaker 1: From their perspective, they can't people driving around on roads
Speaker 1: that like effectively don't exist. So I think I mean
Speaker 1: that it's it's it's a little bit of frustration with
Speaker 1: public the management of our public lands. That's where it's
Speaker 1: coming from and that's how it's being sold to the public. Um,
Speaker 1: but ultimately what's where what's at stake is really money
Speaker 1: and in the big money that's behind kind of these efforts.
Speaker 1: Is that oil and gas and kind of extraction industry.
Speaker 1: And is there a total smoking gun. They're like, you know, no,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. You know, we're not that it's pretty
Speaker 1: easy to figure out, um that this is much more
Speaker 1: organized as this time, and like the American Lands Council
Speaker 1: or American Legislative Exchange Council based out of Utah. I
Speaker 1: mean that funding comes from large industry and um, you know,
Speaker 1: and so it's not that hard to make that that stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah. And they've gone after you, guys, they're
Speaker 1: going after you personally. They've gone after a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the conservation world as being like, uh, these
Speaker 1: sort of secret slide the green decoy, the green decoy,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, it was funny. But the
Speaker 1: first time I heard about that, I was coming home
Speaker 1: from actually a Bozeman there was a hunt film tour
Speaker 1: here in Bozeman that we had worked. I was coming
Speaker 1: back from Missoula. Snow was just dumping. I had both
Speaker 1: hands on the wheel and on my on my phone
Speaker 1: comes up this phone call from Louisiana. I did a
Speaker 1: lot of work down Louisiana for a while, like I
Speaker 1: don't know if I really want to talk to him.
Speaker 1: I was like, God, I but I love this guy,
Speaker 1: and I but answer. He's like, dude, I have you've
Speaker 1: seen the green decoys? And I'm like, no, tell me
Speaker 1: about him? Like are these like they have all flocked
Speaker 1: heads and they flocked bodies, Like what are they? I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, you haven't seen. And that was the
Speaker 1: first time I found out about it. And at first
Speaker 1: I would say, um that that bothered me that somebody
Speaker 1: was coming after organization to me personally about it. But
Speaker 1: the way I looked at it in that way I
Speaker 1: look at it now basically saying like, oh, those guys
Speaker 1: don't like to hunt fish. They're fake. They're fake. They're
Speaker 1: guys who act like they like a hunt. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking at the same time, they'll be like, dude,
Speaker 1: I would love to take a random sample of b
Speaker 1: h A members and take a random sample of whoever
Speaker 1: these guys regard to be real hunters and real conservations
Speaker 1: and it match them up. Tote to tote a hunting contest. Dude,
Speaker 1: it's like it would be it would be hilarious. It
Speaker 1: was just it was so outlandis to me because I bet,
Speaker 1: like I've know a lot of b h A member
Speaker 1: has been the b h A funks to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're saying those guys don't actually like the those guys
Speaker 1: like the hunt. There's morningbody. I know it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a way of life, not a pastime, right,
Speaker 1: And I got what I love thinking about is like,
Speaker 1: so it's just the firm is that's actually behind that
Speaker 1: as Berman and associates, it's out in d C. It's
Speaker 1: a PR firm. They've been called dr Evil by sixty minutes.
Speaker 1: New York Times at a big expose on him last
Speaker 1: year when Richard Berman got caught in an oil executive
Speaker 1: meeting and talking about how he's gonna use all these
Speaker 1: dirty tactics to to fight folks and um an executive
Speaker 1: push record on his phone because he didn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: he was talking about you can either win or you
Speaker 1: can either lose of being prettier, he can win being dirty,
Speaker 1: and like that's when he pushed record. Didn't like it,
Speaker 1: and so then you get out The New York Times
Speaker 1: New York Times blew it up. And so there's actually
Speaker 1: a Will Coggan who works underneath him, um, and he's
Speaker 1: just as white pasty lobbyists inside DC that I'm guessing
Speaker 1: has never set foot on public land. But I definitely
Speaker 1: know that my daughter, who's six years old, has had
Speaker 1: more blood on her hands and he had a will
Speaker 1: and so to call that fake and I think, you know, again,
Speaker 1: the reason they're calling us out is because we we
Speaker 1: we look at this land and want to perpetuate these
Speaker 1: opportunities and conservation is a big piece of that. Am
Speaker 1: I saying, Are we saying no more oil and gas
Speaker 1: development ever? No? Like we're talking about in responsible fashion, right,
Speaker 1: and we have a long track record of doing that.
Speaker 1: But I think the reason that green Decoys thing has
Speaker 1: come out is because of the success we're having talking
Speaker 1: to people. And so that's where first I was frustrated
Speaker 1: and worried about kind of what that meant for us,
Speaker 1: And since then, uh, it's it's more like a badge
Speaker 1: of honor, right, Like the reason they're coming after us
Speaker 1: because we're being effective, and like they're like the other day,
Speaker 1: we like your voice is loud, I would tell you
Speaker 1: I had a dozen people when I came out, I
Speaker 1: had a dozen people fans of Meat Eater show right
Speaker 1: or on Twitter or whatever, come on and say like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: can keep supporting you because you guys support b h
Speaker 1: A and it's always gonna link to this green decoys thing. Right.
Speaker 1: Everyone in my rote too, And I said, I invite
Speaker 1: you to do two things. Well, look into who made that, okay?
Speaker 1: And two go to PH's website or called b h A.
Speaker 1: And then you tell me one policy issue that they
Speaker 1: have that you don't agree with. Like I don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about who there did what when, but look
Speaker 1: at as an organization. You find one thing that you
Speaker 1: want to come and tell me it's bad policy for
Speaker 1: hunters and fishermen, and then let me know what one
Speaker 1: you think. I never heard back from a single one
Speaker 1: of those guys. And I think because saying look, it's
Speaker 1: not like a mysterious group. No, it's a nonprofit. No, no,
Speaker 1: we I mean all our where we get our money
Speaker 1: is all up online, like you know, all the policies
Speaker 1: that we have us up online. I mean again, I'm
Speaker 1: I think um that there there's some shadows there and
Speaker 1: these organizations that's an organization of like two that's out
Speaker 1: in d C, like the Environmental Policy Alliance or whatever
Speaker 1: they're called now, um and so, and they don't disclose
Speaker 1: where their money comes from. And it's just just like
Speaker 1: some of the things that they're causing us a ridiculous
Speaker 1: and um when I look at it again, I mean
Speaker 1: we've gotten you know this, we'll come up on a blog,
Speaker 1: right and and and partly what I think they're trying
Speaker 1: to do is trying to waste our time a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: like should they get out and so then we have
Speaker 1: to deal with it. We'll come up on a blog.
Speaker 1: And what's been great is that we don't really interact
Speaker 1: with that. There's other people either members or people that
Speaker 1: that look into it. So then that conversation happens. We
Speaker 1: get members out of that. We've gotten life members out
Speaker 1: of that, which is a great thing. Like no press
Speaker 1: is bad press, right, And I think what it fuels
Speaker 1: that fuels the people that already kind of want to
Speaker 1: think that way, like this conspiracy that oh you know,
Speaker 1: like these guys are you know, acting on behalf of
Speaker 1: this anti hunting green decoy or what you know, green
Speaker 1: kind of whatever, and so that fuels their fire for
Speaker 1: the people in the middle that investigated a little bit
Speaker 1: or or asked to investigate, and they look at it,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, these guys are like kind of share
Speaker 1: a lot of the same values. I don't gonna become
Speaker 1: a member. And then on the other side, you know,
Speaker 1: they did it. They did that video of me right
Speaker 1: before the Shot show this year, and they sent it
Speaker 1: out to all my corporate partners, and so I get
Speaker 1: to the shot Show and um, you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit nervous about how this is gonna you know, how
Speaker 1: they're gonna react to this. And two like an organize
Speaker 1: a corporation that we worked with, they were like, we
Speaker 1: saw it. We think it's hilarious that they're actually doing it.
Speaker 1: You must be kicking you know, major ass. And then
Speaker 1: three like we want to double down with you and
Speaker 1: do more with So it's like, you know, to me,
Speaker 1: like it's backfiring. And you know, I mean, we just
Speaker 1: had something pop up around the Clean Water Act. The
Speaker 1: Administration comes out clarify some rules on the waters of
Speaker 1: the US to protect for headwaters, for headwater and isolated wetlands.
Speaker 1: We come out with Trial Limited and TRCP and say
Speaker 1: thank you for doing this. And then they come out
Speaker 1: right after that and say, hey, by the way, these
Speaker 1: guys out your friends. I'm like, okay, So the prairie
Speaker 1: potholes in North Dakota where they're making all the ducks,
Speaker 1: you don't want to protect that, like that's the duck factory.
Speaker 1: Like that's the duck factory. And then here's you know,
Speaker 1: something that's gonna help protect those lands. Like tell me
Speaker 1: how that's anti hunting and it's not. And then you know,
Speaker 1: it gets down to clean water, like everybody drinks clean water.
Speaker 1: I don't carrecter, you shoot ducks or not, but those
Speaker 1: you know, marshans are important to all of us. And
Speaker 1: so like it's it's comical a little that their tactics,
Speaker 1: but it is something and it comes out of this
Speaker 1: this effort that um and that I believe you know,
Speaker 1: on this public lands effort for sure, and that they're
Speaker 1: trying to they're trying to snake oil sell this thing,
Speaker 1: and they're using tactics to try to cut down people
Speaker 1: that are trying to make sure that we keep in
Speaker 1: public hands. What's funny is now we've all like it's
Speaker 1: funny like Theodore Roosevelt. Okay, it has been deified, right,
Speaker 1: I mean he's everybody's angel, right. He's one of those
Speaker 1: guys that everyone from all persuasions wants to align themselves with.
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt. We just agreed that he was a great guy.
Speaker 1: I would love to go I don't know why I
Speaker 1: haven't done this, but to go find the rhetoric that
Speaker 1: was used to attack Theodore Roosevelt when he was trying
Speaker 1: to create a public lands system, national force system, to
Speaker 1: use the rhetoric that was used to attack him on
Speaker 1: doing something that we now universally agree as one of
Speaker 1: the greatest achievements of American politics. They were saying the
Speaker 1: same stuff then. I mean it was senators Western senators
Speaker 1: from Idaho and Montana that ultimately made it so he
Speaker 1: couldn't declare national force anymore when he did the when
Speaker 1: he did the Midnight Force and so. And the reason
Speaker 1: they did it is because they were kind of the
Speaker 1: timber bearings at the time and they didn't think that
Speaker 1: they were gonna be able to, you know, take as
Speaker 1: much timber that they wanted off of those national forests.
Speaker 1: So have they been able to continue to to log
Speaker 1: on those forests. Yes, um, and and so I think
Speaker 1: you're righting in the rhetoric. It just changes, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm in the sage brush rebellion. Then you had Congressman
Speaker 1: Pombo in two thousand five that wanted to sell off
Speaker 1: public lands, palth. The national debt like it seems to
Speaker 1: come up every ten or fifteen years, and the language
Speaker 1: never changed, just different players. And at this point, Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's been more organized and more
Speaker 1: funded this this school around. And and I think that's
Speaker 1: partly because people are frustrated with the government in general, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the federal government is just no matter what
Speaker 1: you talk about. But when you talk about public hands
Speaker 1: and staying in public hands like that still is like
Speaker 1: a seventy people want that to stay. But there's this
Speaker 1: frustration with the public or with the federal government. I
Speaker 1: think they're capitalizing on that. Well. The one thing I
Speaker 1: don't really understand why people have such a hard time
Speaker 1: grasping is I don't think that all of our public
Speaker 1: lands should need to answer for themselves at all times
Speaker 1: in an economic way, like anyone who sort of manages
Speaker 1: their own money, manages their properties, manages things at times
Speaker 1: you just you hang onto things for the future. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look now at some of the great treasures
Speaker 1: that we've created, public land treasures, we create, some of
Speaker 1: the great things we've said aside, we hold many more
Speaker 1: of those in our pocket right now that if they're preserved,
Speaker 1: will be as valued by future generations and will be
Speaker 1: as valuable. As the relative nature of landscapes change. We
Speaker 1: will continue to develop more, create more, build more roads,
Speaker 1: straight more habitat. As we do that, we are just
Speaker 1: going to increase the value of the lands that we
Speaker 1: haven't done. They will become like many more yet also
Speaker 1: national park type things, you know, as the contrast and
Speaker 1: creatures increases between wilderness and civilization. And when people now
Speaker 1: sit down and well meeting people and people a support
Speaker 1: sit down, they're always trying to demonstrate the economic footprint
Speaker 1: of hunting and fishing, justifying it through the economic footprint.
Speaker 1: I wonder, I'm like, sure, let's use that. Let's use
Speaker 1: that that justification about our humongous economic input from license purchases, travel, hiring, outfitters,
Speaker 1: all these kinds of all the money we generate and
Speaker 1: jobs we're creating, revenue we generate, why not talk about that.
Speaker 1: What makes me learly about it is to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: so it's only justifiable if I can prove it in
Speaker 1: present day it's it's value in present day dollars. Like
Speaker 1: I need to justify hunting or justify my right to
Speaker 1: have clean water and air through the economics. I can't
Speaker 1: just justify it through something that's bigger and more valuable,
Speaker 1: like more spiritual in nature than just trying to tell
Speaker 1: you in dollars what hunting and fishing is worth. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't need to justify the existence of my three
Speaker 1: children and based on how much revenue they're creating for me, right,
Speaker 1: you can just bet that. No, It's like it's beyond money.
Speaker 1: They're precious. It's like they're the things that I care
Speaker 1: about most. No one says, yeah, well show me how
Speaker 1: they're making money. No, in fact, they're costing me tons
Speaker 1: of money. Does that make me love them less than?
Speaker 1: In a weird way, it makes me love more? Do you?
Speaker 1: I mean, like, why can't we talk about public lands
Speaker 1: in that way, you know, instead of having to sort
Speaker 1: of justify their existence based out like how many jobs
Speaker 1: that it creates? All the Leopold when he wrote San
Speaker 1: Colony Almanac. He has this line there where he talks
Speaker 1: about Leopolds like the father of one of the many
Speaker 1: fathers of modern conservation. He talks about we've become like
Speaker 1: economic hypochondriacs, where we're so worried about our financial health
Speaker 1: that we're incapable of being healthy. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: see that it's that bad to have some things that
Speaker 1: maybe cost us a little money or don't generate a
Speaker 1: lot of money, because we're holding them in perpetuity with
Speaker 1: the good faith, as demonstrated through many other landscape projects,
Speaker 1: that they will continue to be of tremendous incalculable value
Speaker 1: in the future. That's national forest lands, state forests, but
Speaker 1: uniquely makes US America, right, Like, I mean, we're so
Speaker 1: different because of what you're describing, and I I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the economic argument comes up, and it's I
Speaker 1: think it's an important one because it's uh, it's it
Speaker 1: resonates out in Washington, d C. Where a lot of
Speaker 1: these policies are made. And when you think about the
Speaker 1: you know, adding the outdoor recreation industry into that piece,
Speaker 1: when you're talking to billion dollars, that's that's a big number.
Speaker 1: That's sustainable and so for some folks that don't get
Speaker 1: the intrinsic values that you're talking about, the only thing
Speaker 1: that they can think about his dollars and cents. You
Speaker 1: have to do it, But I just like it. May
Speaker 1: you have to do it. I support to him. At
Speaker 1: the same time, it makes me a little uneasy something.
Speaker 1: So what are we exactly are we saying? Did I
Speaker 1: have to look at I like to fish catfish? You know?
Speaker 1: Do I have to like look at a catfish and
Speaker 1: be like, what have you done for the economy today?
Speaker 1: You know, I just don't know that I need to
Speaker 1: hold I don't need the catfish needs to support that
Speaker 1: that burdens on his shoulders around his dorsal fin man.
Speaker 1: But I think when you do talk about it in
Speaker 1: that kind of that that value set that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like people get that piece. I mean that that whole
Speaker 1: ken Burns piece you know about national parks, Like people
Speaker 1: are proud of that we have national parks and it's
Speaker 1: that uniquely American thing, And so we need to talk
Speaker 1: about it more in the way that you just talked
Speaker 1: about it, um, because I think it resonates and and
Speaker 1: you know, and if I'm if I think about you know,
Speaker 1: the survival of these public lands. That's a big piece
Speaker 1: of it. All right, how long? How long we were
Speaker 1: talking to land? Concluding thoughts? Concluding thoughts? Um, I think
Speaker 1: that oh, it would be nice if you want to
Speaker 1: before you conclude thought, or you can use it as
Speaker 1: you're concluding thought. But the prior questions to this was, yeah,
Speaker 1: what what's what's like? Yeah, what's what's got you excited? Right?
Speaker 1: So my glass is always half full, right, you know?
Speaker 1: And I think that's the way I grew up. And
Speaker 1: if there's always opportunities and and so I think when
Speaker 1: you look at you know, hunting fishing numbers that just
Speaker 1: went up, and the reasons they went up is because
Speaker 1: people um hunting fish more and when the economy is down,
Speaker 1: so those numbers went up. But then you have this
Speaker 1: new kind of like foodie kind of movement that's helped
Speaker 1: drive that. And then women and hunting, and I feel
Speaker 1: like we've been a group of I'm forty years old now,
Speaker 1: so maybe I am one of these old white men, right,
Speaker 1: but hunting has been and yeah I'm one, so I've
Speaker 1: been one for two years. Yeah. Yet all right, we'll
Speaker 1: look forward to it like, um, he's a young white man.
Speaker 1: But it's been like this old white man kind of sport,
Speaker 1: right and and it's and and now you see uh
Speaker 1: people getting into it, you know, through the foody movement
Speaker 1: or more and more women. That's women talking to women
Speaker 1: rather than guys going, hey, you should come out and
Speaker 1: you know, hunt with me and do it that once
Speaker 1: and then call yourself a hunter. Like it's real, Like
Speaker 1: these are real women that are going out and wanting
Speaker 1: to do this as a lifestyle and and and so
Speaker 1: that to me, um, it gives me hope that that
Speaker 1: that hunting continues to stay in a mainstream kind of way,
Speaker 1: and that conservation kind of fabric that's been woven through
Speaker 1: the last hundred and fifty years has been driven by hunters.
Speaker 1: Helps carry that into the future. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: also I mentioned the outdoor industry a little bit ago.
Speaker 1: I feel like they're starting to realize, um that not
Speaker 1: only that they are a huge economic driver, but they
Speaker 1: have a huge steak in our public lands, and that
Speaker 1: they need more of a voice and and so how
Speaker 1: they do that, there's any different ways for them to
Speaker 1: do that. Part of its financially, but I feel like
Speaker 1: those groups, those new groups of like foodies and women
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, kayakers and mountain bikers that
Speaker 1: aren't just just just using the outdoors but actually are
Speaker 1: gonna give back. That gives me, uh, I think, um,
Speaker 1: it gives me hope for the future and hope for
Speaker 1: like my kids, right like, and that they're they're gonna
Speaker 1: have a place to defend, right and that I feel
Speaker 1: like you and I are here right now and we're
Speaker 1: you know, defending the legacy that was handed off to us.
Speaker 1: But it's for this short amount of time, and then
Speaker 1: our job is to pass it on to the next
Speaker 1: generation to help fight for that, right Like, Like, that's
Speaker 1: all we're doing, is we're passing that on so they
Speaker 1: have something to fight for, because they will have to
Speaker 1: fight for it, but we have to we have to
Speaker 1: make sure that one it's there for them and one
Speaker 1: that they have something inside of them that actually makes
Speaker 1: them want to do that. And you know, I know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that you're doing this with your
Speaker 1: kids and I'm doing it with behind. Is that they're
Speaker 1: getting engaged in the outdoors from the very beginning. It's
Speaker 1: just something that they're gonna be a part of. But
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully that they're the next leaders and that
Speaker 1: they're they're creating more opportunities for other people, and for me,
Speaker 1: I think that we're going there. Um. The threats are dire,
Speaker 1: but they've always been dire. It's just our time right
Speaker 1: now to do our part to make sure that we
Speaker 1: pass it along to the next generation. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: with things like new technology like this podcast, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're reaching more people that way, right, and you're reaching
Speaker 1: hopefully different audiences than just that old pipe man. And
Speaker 1: nothing against the old white man. I'm one of them now, uh,
Speaker 1: and they have a lot to contribute to conservation, into
Speaker 1: this kind of hunting and fishing legacy. Um. But if
Speaker 1: we are just so looking inward, we're not, that's not
Speaker 1: going to perpetuate into the future. And then you lose
Speaker 1: this thing that you just talked about that is uniquely American,
Speaker 1: which are these public lands that have these values that
Speaker 1: are hard to describe, but we all know it because
Speaker 1: it makes us, you know, it makes us feel proud
Speaker 1: of who we are. I'm not nervous about exposure, man,
Speaker 1: I know that like the way to get people to
Speaker 1: want to fight for what they have is showing what
Speaker 1: they have. You know, I've traveled a lot to you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of different countries, and you're getting a lot
Speaker 1: of areas where the disconnect between people and their landscape
Speaker 1: just becomes so severe because they're so shut out by
Speaker 1: you know, difficulty and travel economic considerations where when they're
Speaker 1: talking about that mountain range off of the distance or
Speaker 1: that marsh offer distance, it just has no they just
Speaker 1: never picture how it might possibly relate to their own
Speaker 1: well being. You know. I think that, Yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: to show people what they have. If we continue to
Speaker 1: do that, you know, then we got a bright future.
Speaker 1: If not, it's gonna look way different. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to think about that one. Yeah, any concluding thoughts, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm guilty of I'm gonna throw myself under the bus
Speaker 1: here because I'm one of those guys like just pays
Speaker 1: my for the thirty five bucks annually. I get my
Speaker 1: journal and get my sticker, put on my analogy and
Speaker 1: bottle put on my truck. But I need I feel
Speaker 1: like everybody should do a little bit more. I need
Speaker 1: to do a little bit more. I'm gonna talk to
Speaker 1: land when we're done here and see how I can
Speaker 1: actually put my boots on the ground. But it feel
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a call to action, like
Speaker 1: everybody should do just a little bit more than just
Speaker 1: paying a thirty five bucks. And maybe you could speak
Speaker 1: to that, just you know, in a couple of sentences
Speaker 1: of just like what's it show? But the chapter meeting
Speaker 1: is that we're just yeah, I mean, I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: we have chapters all over this country. There's seventeen chapters
Speaker 1: UM that are mostly based in the West, but I've
Speaker 1: talked about the ones in the East, and so it's
Speaker 1: getting engage with those chapters. And you know, I mean
Speaker 1: there's all ways to engage, you know, whether that's helping
Speaker 1: us with fundraising events and membership events all the way
Speaker 1: to showing up at your UH at the District Rangers
Speaker 1: office and talking to him about, you know, a TV
Speaker 1: abuse in a certain area and how can we help
Speaker 1: curtail that UM, And so there's different ways to get engaged.
Speaker 1: And I would say that the only reason I've already
Speaker 1: said that the only reason we have what we have
Speaker 1: today is because people have stepped up. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, paying the twenty five dollars um you know
Speaker 1: for a membership a year, that's a great way to
Speaker 1: step up. That's just the first piece. And that next
Speaker 1: piece is that you know the people. People that step up,
Speaker 1: UM make a difference, right, and you still get that
Speaker 1: Cambert A CP for joining Lifetime, you can you can
Speaker 1: get the A that's a sweet deal a CP if
Speaker 1: you become a life membership and you get that that CP,
Speaker 1: which is like gone, so it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: You guys are able to do that. Well, we have
Speaker 1: a good relationship with Kimber And then it's a it's
Speaker 1: also what you know that we create awareness for b
Speaker 1: h A and we gave away seventy six guns last year.
Speaker 1: Right from that between the micro carry that three A D,
Speaker 1: then the A C P and then the Mountain of
Speaker 1: Scent and that Mountain of Scent is just like unbelievable.
Speaker 1: If I had some money, I'd buy that right now.
Speaker 1: But no, no, I think it's it's stepping up, right.
Speaker 1: I mean you're asking about it, and I think that, Um,
Speaker 1: if you're complaining and you're not doing anything, and stop complaining,
Speaker 1: like you gotta do something, and and it's about that's
Speaker 1: that's the way America has been built. That's the way
Speaker 1: we're building an organization, and it's you know, those who
Speaker 1: step up actually get things done. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: would have matter. It's like, look at what is the thing, Like,
Speaker 1: what are the things you care about most of life?
Speaker 1: You know, I take all kinds of measures to make
Speaker 1: sure that that you know, family right is taken care
Speaker 1: of in a multi generational sense, Like I care about that, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to make sure the dike is taken care of.
Speaker 1: I care about my vegetable garden. I look to make
Speaker 1: sure my vegetable guards take care of. It's like I
Speaker 1: care about hunting fishing. You need to look and make
Speaker 1: sure you're hunting fishing is taken care of. It's just
Speaker 1: not gonna happen on its own, dude, it just don't.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna happen on its own. And also I
Speaker 1: think people think it's daunting, right, like oh I just
Speaker 1: my voice doesn't count, or like I just don't know
Speaker 1: how to do things. We can help you do that.
Speaker 1: And you know, again like showing up to that meeting, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and with your district ranger, like he's hearing
Speaker 1: from all sorts of different people, but that woman. We
Speaker 1: had some people working on the bitter Root travel plan, right,
Speaker 1: and like our local chapter was working on that their
Speaker 1: voice and talking about LX security versus a voice that's
Speaker 1: saying open up all roads and unfettered like a TV
Speaker 1: access everywhere. Those two voices then come together where they
Speaker 1: make a decision without that voice over here, we don't
Speaker 1: make it back in the middle, right, And so it's
Speaker 1: like your voice does count. And uh, and so I
Speaker 1: mean we'll talk more about how you can get engaged.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're we're young, and we're growing, and
Speaker 1: we've we've built this organization on word of mouth, and
Speaker 1: we're starting to get more opportunities like this to do
Speaker 1: bigger word of mouth, right, and uh, but we're resonating.
Speaker 1: We're resonating for a reason, and that's because people see
Speaker 1: us focusing on public land, which is this asset that
Speaker 1: we all have. It everybody has. Was that your compudent thought,
Speaker 1: you know, this is kind of like mine. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like computing thought. A lot of times I get like,
Speaker 1: we get a lot we feel a lot of emails
Speaker 1: of people who say, like, man, I you know, my
Speaker 1: dad didn't grow up hunting. You know, I was never
Speaker 1: brought up around it. I really want to start hunting,
Speaker 1: but it's like so daunting, Like I don't know anybody
Speaker 1: that hunts. I tell them often. I'd like, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: even be telling you this land. I'll say, you know
Speaker 1: what you ought to do, really joined a group, Like
Speaker 1: join a group like b h and start going there
Speaker 1: and pitch in because you're gonna wind it being hooked
Speaker 1: up with the most hunting and fishingist guys around, you know,
Speaker 1: because like I've met many b h A members and
Speaker 1: they are like guys that live the life. Go to
Speaker 1: those places and become like a teammate there and pitch
Speaker 1: in there and do it that way and just worm
Speaker 1: your way in to like a hunting and fishing culture
Speaker 1: in order to start like untapping the vast wealth of
Speaker 1: knowledge that your members have about accessible hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: that anyone with a with a pair of boots can
Speaker 1: get involved in. Hopefully you want that kind of member.
Speaker 1: We totally want that, and we do. We do. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I like, we do have a series called back
Speaker 1: Country College, and in that college, in that like online
Speaker 1: kind of video series, like we teach skills and I
Speaker 1: don't know how many comments come in there that I have.
Speaker 1: I've never been hunting, but this like actually making me
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, that I could have some skills.
Speaker 1: Now we're doing all the skills and does that take
Speaker 1: place of anything that happened on the ground now? But
Speaker 1: I think having people that come into hunting later sometimes
Speaker 1: or even more passionate about it and like appreciative of
Speaker 1: what it actually is because they didn't grow up like
Speaker 1: you and I did. Like we're just kind of a
Speaker 1: way of life, right, But when they come in, it's
Speaker 1: like new and a lot of times they're in their
Speaker 1: late twenties early thirties, they have a little bit of
Speaker 1: means and um and they can dive right into it
Speaker 1: and and to them they see the rewards that we
Speaker 1: do all the time, but it's so new to them,
Speaker 1: it's so exciting to them, and so they get you know,
Speaker 1: they're almost even more passionate. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: please continue to do that. I mean, anytime you're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, help us, like push membership, please do that.
Speaker 1: I used to shovel, manure and throw hay bales and
Speaker 1: exchange for hunting permission. Yeah, I didn't even know what
Speaker 1: else do with my My dad would farm me my
Speaker 1: brothers will have to shovel, manure and throw hay bales
Speaker 1: for hunt for his hunt permissions the reason to have kids. Right,
Speaker 1: So now I'm like, yeah, man, tie into like if
Speaker 1: you look at the what, look at the mission of
Speaker 1: the organization, tie into the organization, hang out and like
Speaker 1: it's just inevitable because like good people get involved in
Speaker 1: conversation or its conservation, good people get involved. People who
Speaker 1: care about the future, who care about other people, right,
Speaker 1: who want the world to be better than they left it.
Speaker 1: Those are the people who are involved in these organizations.
Speaker 1: That's also the kind of person that's gonna take you
Speaker 1: under their wing and show you some things when they
Speaker 1: realize that you're aligned in the same way. I don't
Speaker 1: think you need to become like an expert hunter and
Speaker 1: fisherman in order to be involved in conservation. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. We have this semantic thing in the
Speaker 1: u S where we got like environmentalism and conservation, and
Speaker 1: it's like, in some ways we view these two things
Speaker 1: as being different. I think that if we're gonna take
Speaker 1: like sort of the garden variety acceptance of of environmentalism
Speaker 1: being somehow like preservation and conservation being sort of like
Speaker 1: this idea of environmental protection open to the idea of
Speaker 1: us extracting we new doble resources of fishing game. The
Speaker 1: conservation movement in this country right now, this is a
Speaker 1: bowl statement, but the conservation movement this country right now
Speaker 1: is far more effective and far more powerful than the
Speaker 1: environmental movement because they reach across the aisles. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the conservation is doing more on the ground
Speaker 1: stuff than than the often that might build that that
Speaker 1: might use these like semantical terms. I think if you
Speaker 1: want to be a powerful player in supporting the kind
Speaker 1: of things you care about, I would look at the
Speaker 1: conservation movement, and you can start conservation without knowing shit
Speaker 1: about hunting, fishing, agreed. The one thing I would say
Speaker 1: there is one of the reasons why the conservation is
Speaker 1: being so successful as because as there's that like far
Speaker 1: right flank over here, and there's that far left flank
Speaker 1: with environmental over here, right, and so there's that opportunity
Speaker 1: to try to make that space in the middle, and
Speaker 1: which you know, I've had conversations with my mom, who
Speaker 1: has been involved in this kind of stuff for a
Speaker 1: long time about this exact thing, is that if that
Speaker 1: if that right flank of just unfettered extraction wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and that left lank of this kind of like leave
Speaker 1: it all alone, don't ever touch it again, don't fish it,
Speaker 1: don't where we don't even look at it? And where
Speaker 1: are we gonna be in the middle? Like what if
Speaker 1: you like, what if that middle was you know, farther
Speaker 1: over the right, what if that middle was farther over
Speaker 1: the left, right? Like it's there? Is that middle for
Speaker 1: a reason? And so do they play a role? I
Speaker 1: think so? But it's where stuff getting done. It's conservation,
Speaker 1: all right. That was my concluding thought. Thanks for listening in.
Speaker 1: Give a good look. Um, don't just take my word
Speaker 1: for it, man, it's a be it. You're a registered
Speaker 1: nonprofit by law of registered nonprofit needs to be transparent.
Speaker 1: Go look at what b a j Is doing and
Speaker 1: then come tell me if you got a problem with it,
Speaker 1: and I will explain how you're wrong. Um, thanks for
Speaker 1: tuning in. Lands great to be here. Alright, guys, think
Speaker 1: any