Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: I've been O'Brien and in this episode, I'm joined by
Speaker 1: a man that I've wanted to have on this podcast
Speaker 1: since I picked up a microphone to start the thing.
Speaker 1: And that made is Jim Posewitz and Jim pozzwits against
Speaker 1: to me and to many others, a conservation legend. If
Speaker 1: you don't know who he is, shame on you, your bastards.
Speaker 1: Listen up. He is a legend in Montana. He had
Speaker 1: a thirty two year career at the Montana Department of Fish,
Speaker 1: Wildlife and Parks and then doing so, helped create the
Speaker 1: Ecological Services Division and help protect his adopted home state
Speaker 1: of Montana at the Rocky Mountain Front, the Yellowstone River
Speaker 1: and some groundbreaking tactics to protect these places from development
Speaker 1: of all shapes and sizes. He has a lifelong passion
Speaker 1: for writing, and as you're hearing this podcast, pend a
Speaker 1: book called Beyond Fair Chase East that was a national
Speaker 1: bestseller sold over seven hundred thousand copies, and just wrote
Speaker 1: his autobiography called My Best Shop. And he's a man
Speaker 1: that his living the conservation ethic and some of the
Speaker 1: stories he tells in this podcast some of the ways
Speaker 1: he shapes the foundational elements of hunting in our pursuits
Speaker 1: are seminal to what we do. And it's very special
Speaker 1: to me to be able to sit in his home
Speaker 1: and listen to him speak about these issues. I loved it.
Speaker 1: And to help out with this conversation, I brought along
Speaker 1: Sam Longern. He's a mediator. He's part of the Mediator
Speaker 1: editorial crew here in Bozeman and is a devotee and
Speaker 1: follower of Mr pos Wits and has talked to him
Speaker 1: many times before and and I believe it would help
Speaker 1: out with the conversation. So without further ado, please enjoy
Speaker 1: Jim posits. Jim, how are you, sir? I have fine, Sam.
Speaker 1: How about yourself? I'm doing quite well. We're all doing well. Good,
Speaker 1: we're all doing well well. Thanks for having us in
Speaker 1: your home. That's good to good to be in Helena. UM,
Speaker 1: it's good to meet you. Well, my pleasure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would like to see the young guard coming to the front.
Speaker 1: We're trying to do what we're trying to do our
Speaker 1: best generationally. UM. I always like to to begin some
Speaker 1: of these things with a description of of where we
Speaker 1: are since people can't see where we are, okay, so
Speaker 1: I imagine from sitting in this room that there are
Speaker 1: and already from chatting prior to hitting record, that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of artifacts of your life in this room,
Speaker 1: many of them, um, including a giant mule deer in
Speaker 1: the corner. Um. So give us a quick description of
Speaker 1: the rumor sitting in and where we are. People. The
Speaker 1: room we're sitting in was built around UM nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: and I happened to come across it later in life
Speaker 1: meeting of a organization called the Forever Wild Endowment, and
Speaker 1: the Forever Wild Endowment was having meetings in this room
Speaker 1: and uh, this building the this is an add on
Speaker 1: to the building original building, but at the time it
Speaker 1: was owned by Donna Metcalfe Lee Metcalf's widow, and so
Speaker 1: I told her she ever wanted to sell it, I
Speaker 1: could use uh Downtown Helena office space. And so that's
Speaker 1: how I came to own the building. Was I bought
Speaker 1: it from the widow of Lee Metcalf and he is,
Speaker 1: of course one of the inaugural inductees into Montana Outdoor
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. As you are also a member, I'm
Speaker 1: also a member and and uh, that's a growing cadree
Speaker 1: of cool dudes. I got to write that down. Let
Speaker 1: go over to the podcast early on. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things in here. You were talking earlier, of
Speaker 1: course about your giant yel deer that you killed. So
Speaker 1: give us a quick rundown on this this giant I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take a picture of it. Everybody can see how
Speaker 1: big this thing is. But what year did you kill
Speaker 1: it and where did you stumble across it? Well, I
Speaker 1: meticulously hunted it in nifty five. I was twenty years
Speaker 1: old at the time. It was my third year in Montana,
Speaker 1: third hunting season in Montana, and may have been just
Speaker 1: after January in fifty six of an extended season at
Speaker 1: the extension of the fifty five hunting season. But it
Speaker 1: was on a tributary to the Madison River called Wolf
Speaker 1: Creek and what it was. In fact, in my book
Speaker 1: Beyond Fair Chase, I have a little section on the
Speaker 1: two bucks of Wolf Creek, pointing out that I was
Speaker 1: a novice hunter. I had excellent hunting conditions on this
Speaker 1: particular day. Uh, real cold, late season, lots of snow.
Speaker 1: We struggled just to get to the base of the hill,
Speaker 1: and of course up on the hillside at first light,
Speaker 1: we saw a number of deer that end. That deer
Speaker 1: was in the group, and I had to get above
Speaker 1: them to hunt them. And in the process of getting
Speaker 1: to the ridgeline above these deer so I could approach
Speaker 1: them from the top down and have better cover and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, I sorted my way through twenty
Speaker 1: some big horn sheep that were also up on that
Speaker 1: slope and trying to do it without alarming them, and uh,
Speaker 1: we're able to succeed successfully do that. I eventually get
Speaker 1: above these deer and uh begin to begin the star
Speaker 1: talk and shoot that buck. And he was about halfway
Speaker 1: up a wide open slope and uh there was quite
Speaker 1: a slide when he went down, and that slide was
Speaker 1: visible from the road between Ennis and West Yellowstone. I
Speaker 1: know that road. And uh, the game warden saw that slide,
Speaker 1: and he when his name was Todd. He was a
Speaker 1: very vigilant game warden, a good guy. So he goes
Speaker 1: and uh waits for us to come out. And it's cold, cold,
Speaker 1: and I dragged the deer down to the to the
Speaker 1: jeep and we take the jeep out and of course.
Speaker 1: En route, we almost ran into the game warden coming in,
Speaker 1: and he was convinced that I had poached a sheep,
Speaker 1: because that's he knew the sheep were there. He saw
Speaker 1: the slide coming off the hillside, and uh, I had
Speaker 1: everything tagged and punched correctly. And so, with some reluctancy,
Speaker 1: finally gave into the fact that, Okay, I guess these guys,
Speaker 1: these kids really Yeah, and uh, that's kind of the
Speaker 1: story and this footnote to the to that one. Uh,
Speaker 1: the next season, I shot one in the same drainage,
Speaker 1: almost as big. And those are the two biggest deer
Speaker 1: I've shot and sixty some years of hunting. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a giant buck. To look at it now, the
Speaker 1: mass it had holes on his main beans really all
Speaker 1: it's times. It's unbelievable. And I take great pride in
Speaker 1: the fact that I never measured it, because I do
Speaker 1: not want to reduce that value of that experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to a mathematical number. To me, it wouldn't didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. It's a tribute to the longevity that was
Speaker 1: available because of the wild country that was in what
Speaker 1: is now the Lead Metcalf Wilderness. And we're sitting in
Speaker 1: a building that was once the Metcalf guesthouse. Imagine your
Speaker 1: life has all kind of through lines like that with
Speaker 1: various amazing. It's amazing how how that happens. Uh, I
Speaker 1: can give you another satellite story, and I guess you can.
Speaker 1: We're here for him, keep it coming, okay. UM. When
Speaker 1: I was writing the book Uh right for ore on
Speaker 1: the twenty nine twelve election of Theodore Roosevelt, and I
Speaker 1: was working with an illustrator who were in ran the
Speaker 1: framing shop and the framing and there's quite a bit
Speaker 1: of Theodore Roosevelt, both in Rifle in Hand plus the
Speaker 1: Taking a Bullet. Uh. Both books focused on theater Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: and I write about Theodore Roosevelt shooting his first buffalo
Speaker 1: in eight three on Little cannon Ball Creek and far
Speaker 1: eastern Montana tributary to the Little Missouri. The guy at
Speaker 1: the framing shop says, Uh, you know, there's a guy
Speaker 1: who comes in here from time to time and he
Speaker 1: has me frame memorabilia from the original Bull Moose party
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve. And I said, oh, what's his name?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, it's uh Doug Ferris. Well, Theodore
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's hunting guide for the three hunt was Joe Ferris.
Speaker 1: And I come home and I tell my wife Gail,
Speaker 1: I've got to find Doug Ferris. And she said, well,
Speaker 1: let me make some calls. Not kind of surprised me,
Speaker 1: but I said, fine, you know, you have some help.
Speaker 1: We call around. We find Doug fair Us living in
Speaker 1: a rest home about two or three blocks from our
Speaker 1: state capital. I go and we go and have a
Speaker 1: meeting with him, and it turns out to be Joe
Speaker 1: Ferris's grandson. Gail wanted to make the phone call because
Speaker 1: he had been her next door neighbor for ten years
Speaker 1: and never made it. The story never, you know, was exchanged,
Speaker 1: and so she had lived next to the grand son
Speaker 1: and Theodore Roosevelt's original hunting guy, and there she was
Speaker 1: married to a man writing books on the right. And
Speaker 1: we find them three blocks from the state capital and
Speaker 1: the rest home. And uh. One of the other things
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt did locally was he threw the put the
Speaker 1: Elkhorn Mountains into the forest system. And when the nineteen
Speaker 1: o five it was the hundredth anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: who put the four service together. Basically in the nineteen
Speaker 1: o five and during his presidency there, and so we
Speaker 1: had a little celebration over here in the myrnal Looid
Speaker 1: which you can see out this window, and we brought
Speaker 1: uh the Forest Service and my organization at the time,
Speaker 1: which was Oryan, the Hunter's Institute. We put together an
Speaker 1: evening program on the accomplishments of Theodore Roosevelt creating the
Speaker 1: national forest system and how we're surrounded by national forests here.
Speaker 1: And we invited Doug Ferris to come. And so here's this.
Speaker 1: He's on a walker by this time and he's getting
Speaker 1: quite aged, but with Gayle's help, we get him into
Speaker 1: the meeting room, put him in the front row, stand
Speaker 1: him up with the help of his walker, and I
Speaker 1: tell the story of Theodore Roosevelt and his hunting guy, Joe,
Speaker 1: and then introduced the grandson of Joe Ferris, Doug Ferres,
Speaker 1: and he gets a standing ovation. That must have been
Speaker 1: a powerful moment. It was a moment, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a golden moment, Like I said, from in your life
Speaker 1: that you know, the great life that you've led. There's
Speaker 1: there's so many things that you've achieved and done, but
Speaker 1: some of these stories are just the connection that the
Speaker 1: community that we're in, you know, is the satellite story.
Speaker 1: And now the main event is pretty interesting too. But
Speaker 1: when you have these intersections and trail crossings and things
Speaker 1: like that, yeah, no one that shared these shared experiences,
Speaker 1: the shared passion. You have these people that you just
Speaker 1: and total strangers. Yeah. Absolutely, And and that's part of
Speaker 1: the the beauty of the North American model of wildlife
Speaker 1: relationship we call it, you know, the fact that in
Speaker 1: a democracy, any seeing, any person that wants to can
Speaker 1: participate in anything and including the hunt. And that wasn't assured.
Speaker 1: I mean, you look at our founding documents and fish
Speaker 1: and wildlife is not mentioned. It's all about human rights,
Speaker 1: human liberties and opportunity and all that. But none of
Speaker 1: the founding documents address who's going to own and be
Speaker 1: responsible for the fish and wildlife and who gets to
Speaker 1: be the hunter. That has to be decided by the courts.
Speaker 1: The court system starts arguing about that in eighteen forty
Speaker 1: two over New Jersey oyster fishing in the New Jersey Meadowlands,
Speaker 1: and they say because of the Declaration of Independence. The
Speaker 1: Court of Supreme co US Supreme Court says this because
Speaker 1: of the Declaration of Independence, the people are the sovereign,
Speaker 1: and those rights and privileges of sovereignty belonged to the people.
Speaker 1: And if the fish and wildlife resources to be managed
Speaker 1: as a public trust for their benefit, huge decision. That
Speaker 1: decision was made sixteen years before Theodore Roosevelt was born,
Speaker 1: sixteen years after Theodore Roosevelt dies I was born. That's
Speaker 1: the whole show. Here we are of people in a
Speaker 1: democracy finding a way to live with, appreciate, enjoy, and
Speaker 1: take care of these products of nature. Are you Are
Speaker 1: you proud of um hunters? Are you proud of you know,
Speaker 1: as you sit here today, are you proud of what
Speaker 1: hunters have done? Oh? Absolutely, If you look at the
Speaker 1: record of achievement. I mean we haven't always been you know,
Speaker 1: this dance was not done in ballerina slippers, was clogs
Speaker 1: and cloths and hobnails and other things. But you look
Speaker 1: at the end product, something you can actually go out
Speaker 1: and measure, something that is real, and you look at
Speaker 1: a wildlife resource that was marvelously restored. When Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: shoots this buffalo in three on Little Cannonball Creek, Montana,
Speaker 1: he was so excited to get one of the last.
Speaker 1: North Dakota had their last commercial slaughter in August of
Speaker 1: eighty three. T R showed up in September, huntred for
Speaker 1: nine days before he and Joe find this lone wandering bull.
Speaker 1: Never inside Jake my start in a journey of a
Speaker 1: thousand miles across Montana from the eastern border to within
Speaker 1: sight of the Rock Mountain front and back. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we're the bone yard of a continent. And does that
Speaker 1: define in that period of time? Because he's as you,
Speaker 1: you know, the definition of what a hunter is has
Speaker 1: changed many times. There were millions of years of course,
Speaker 1: as our human existence has changed and shifted. Do you
Speaker 1: feel like the modern hunter was defined in that perilous time?
Speaker 1: You know, through we always we have the people we
Speaker 1: know that defined it. But you do do you really
Speaker 1: feel like it was codified in that in those moments? Well,
Speaker 1: it was codified that it was up to the people.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was a public resource to be managed
Speaker 1: as a public trust. And then, like so many other
Speaker 1: things in a democracy, government often stumbles and fails and
Speaker 1: and doesn't persist or whatever reason, and then the people
Speaker 1: in a democracy filled the gaps. I mean, I've worked
Speaker 1: with spent twenty five years working with the Cinembar Foundation
Speaker 1: and that as an environmental granting group. In our first
Speaker 1: year we passed out three grants. This year. In modern times,
Speaker 1: there are over a hundred and forty or fifty applicants
Speaker 1: a year just in Montana looking for grants to advance
Speaker 1: a conservation or environmental restoration agenda. So that's the proliferation
Speaker 1: of the NGOs. And if you look back at the
Speaker 1: history of the idea of wildlife restoration, introduction of the
Speaker 1: Sporting Code and conservation, well you're back in seven. It's
Speaker 1: like four years after tr shoots that first Wandering Loan
Speaker 1: Last Bull, he forms the Boone and Crockett Club along
Speaker 1: with the Pin Show and George Bird Grennell and others
Speaker 1: for the restoration of big game and for the introduction
Speaker 1: of the Sporting Code. No, I mean, I think Roosevelt
Speaker 1: at that time was maybe in there's still late twenties.
Speaker 1: He lives to be sixty one, but he lives in
Speaker 1: a time when it was the dramatic destruction of the
Speaker 1: America's wildlife was most I guess most dramatic. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean never there's nothing but bones out there under press
Speaker 1: like that it seemed like in that time for this content,
Speaker 1: at least you have a a group of people come
Speaker 1: over to escape and aristocracy in the European aristocracy, hunting
Speaker 1: was very different, right, Um, I thought it was very different.
Speaker 1: It was the very elitist activity, and that you know,
Speaker 1: the hunting ethic, what you might call hunting ethic. In
Speaker 1: that scenario, as folks journey to the New World, we lost,
Speaker 1: I would I would say, and I hope you would
Speaker 1: agree that we've lost for a time what hunters really
Speaker 1: worked society as we landed here and manifest destiny took
Speaker 1: over and we started pushing west, and you know, the
Speaker 1: first step of survival you gotta eat. In that same
Speaker 1: time period, in England, poaching was the number one rural crime.
Speaker 1: Punishment was often death. One English code said it was
Speaker 1: ah if a person was convicted of taking so much
Speaker 1: as a hair, they shall have their eyes gouged out.
Speaker 1: In that same period, in Merry Old England, the rocks,
Speaker 1: the board, the beaver, the uh wolf, and the reign
Speaker 1: there when extinct. They were poached to extinction. At the
Speaker 1: same time period that the colonies were being formed, and
Speaker 1: of course when the king was granting colonial lands to
Speaker 1: his buddies. They often included the fishings, hawkings, huntings, and foulings,
Speaker 1: and so they were trying to take that European model
Speaker 1: and dump it. That gets changed by the oysterman. Sixteen
Speaker 1: years later, Theodore Roosevelt is born, and we are stripping
Speaker 1: the continent of all the game because of their commercial value.
Speaker 1: Market hunting and other uh theories about our relationship with
Speaker 1: the native people's here are probably likewise is valid, but
Speaker 1: there was no conservation ethic evident except in various individuals
Speaker 1: at the local level. I mean James and Granville Steward
Speaker 1: right in here. Eighteen sixty, eighteen fifty seven, that was
Speaker 1: one year before tr was born. They become territorial legislators
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four, and as territorial legislators in sixty
Speaker 1: four they put through a bill restricting fishing to a
Speaker 1: hook and line. And I thought, wow, that was good
Speaker 1: because Montana is being settled by miners, and all miners
Speaker 1: have dynamite. Thanks. The truth of the matter was that
Speaker 1: was before dynamite was invented. They were doing other means
Speaker 1: of getting the fish out with scenes and changing, just
Speaker 1: turning the stream course away and drying up the channel
Speaker 1: and picking up the fish. And so our territorial legislators
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four went in restricted angling to taking
Speaker 1: a fish to a hook and line. That was twelve
Speaker 1: years before Custer died at the at the Little Big Horn.
Speaker 1: In the seventy two they began trying to set close
Speaker 1: seasons to start protecting the vanishing remnants of wildlife here.
Speaker 1: So the conservation ethic is in the people and in
Speaker 1: the democracy. It's a form of government in which that
Speaker 1: expression can live and get nurtured, and uh gets spread
Speaker 1: and adopted. And well, where do you believe that? Looking
Speaker 1: back at Teddy Roosevelt, where you believe do you think
Speaker 1: there's a seminal moment or a point in his life
Speaker 1: where the seed was planted in him? Yeah? He has.
Speaker 1: There's two writings you need to look at. I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite can't quote him from memory here. But in eighty
Speaker 1: three he shoots that first buffalo and he does this
Speaker 1: war dance around the fallen bull. He gives his guy
Speaker 1: Joe Ferris, a hundred dollars in eighteen eighty three. That's
Speaker 1: a small fortune house. Oh, for sure. He shoots the
Speaker 1: second buffalo in eighteen eighty nine, somewhere on the southern
Speaker 1: border with Montana, Idaho, probably not too far from Yellowstone,
Speaker 1: and his observations then are totally different. He talks about
Speaker 1: this soon to be vanished, this remnant of a vanishing race,
Speaker 1: and and of course that, uh that was eighty nine.
Speaker 1: By seven he had formed the Boone and Crockett helped
Speaker 1: form Boone and Crockett Club for the introducing the Sporting
Speaker 1: code and the restoration a big game. Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: so his conservation epiphany occurred in Montana. I think because
Speaker 1: there was no fatalism in his writings then. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like we're doomed forever. No. No. And the fact that
Speaker 1: all these guys went back to New York State and
Speaker 1: he gathered for a Christmas dinner or something of that
Speaker 1: nature and decided to take action. And then in seven
Speaker 1: we dedicated to theater Roosevelt Memorial Ranch up us to
Speaker 1: Deployer as a hundred recognition of the hundredth anniversary of
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's conservation. Uh, you know, epiphany and all the marvelous
Speaker 1: things he did. You know, you set aside a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million acres for conservation purposes when he was
Speaker 1: in the White House. Do you believe do you believe
Speaker 1: you know obviously that that feeling is in the people, right,
Speaker 1: the value for the animals, It is instilled in us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's these are things that are instilled in us. They
Speaker 1: may have been a race for a time as we
Speaker 1: battled with natives and if as we you know, treated
Speaker 1: our manifest destiny as it as it was a value. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you know in those days, the fact that
Speaker 1: you have this conservation ethic sort of latent in the
Speaker 1: human culture and a lack of direct action or leadership
Speaker 1: from the top end, you almost see the repetition of
Speaker 1: that in current events. As you think about this, I
Speaker 1: don't want to get it. I don't want to fast
Speaker 1: forward in time too much as you as you're talking
Speaker 1: about this, I'm like that that's that's kind of still happening.
Speaker 1: I'll sure they're still trying to get rid of public lands,
Speaker 1: you know, or getting oil well drilled in him and
Speaker 1: coal mined under him. And and you know when Roosevelt
Speaker 1: was putting this public of state aside, he was adding uh,
Speaker 1: national forests and things in Congress past a the law
Speaker 1: they made it. It was an attachment to an agg
Speaker 1: appropriations bill. Again, that kind of shenani seems similar to
Speaker 1: today identical, but to prohibit him from setting aside any
Speaker 1: national force in Washington, Oregon, Montana, UH, Colorado, and Wyoming
Speaker 1: in one other states six or six states anyhow in
Speaker 1: this western bloc, and forbid him from setting aside any
Speaker 1: more national forests. Because it was a writer on agg
Speaker 1: appropriations bill, they had the votes to override a veto.
Speaker 1: He has seven days to sign or veto the legislation.
Speaker 1: In those seven days, he creates twenty two national forests
Speaker 1: at sixteen million acres to the forest the state signed
Speaker 1: for executive orders doing that and then signing the bill
Speaker 1: from forbidding him from ever doing it again. And then
Speaker 1: after that he started using national monuments to accomplish similar
Speaker 1: game refuges and bison refuge and things and so. And
Speaker 1: he wrote in his autobiography, my opponents hand springs, in
Speaker 1: their wrath and dire, were their threats, which only attest
Speaker 1: to the efficiency of our action. Still appropriate to the moment. Well,
Speaker 1: and you fast forward to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Uh
Speaker 1: the first ever national Uh was it North American Wildife?
Speaker 1: Come North American Wildlife Conference. I was one year old. Yes,
Speaker 1: I didn't go. I was saying I was there. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what happened. What happened. So that's another you know,
Speaker 1: because because it's enough to have the ethic right, it's
Speaker 1: enough to say that that we believe that these things
Speaker 1: should be taken care of, but it's it's nothing another
Speaker 1: thing to develop how we would pay for that, how
Speaker 1: we would care those things. So take folks through, um,
Speaker 1: what happens at that gathering and kind of what what
Speaker 1: it becomes. Well gathering produced the National Wildlife Federation a
Speaker 1: citizen and geo because they government needed help. And uh,
Speaker 1: one of the first things they did was to work
Speaker 1: on producing and introducing the Pittman Robertson Act, which would
Speaker 1: tax firearms and ammunition. And the beauty of that moment
Speaker 1: was the gun manufacturers were lined up with the sportsmen
Speaker 1: in pursuit of the conservation as ethic that would restore
Speaker 1: big game across the entire continent. That went from introduction
Speaker 1: to the President's signature in ninety days for lat and Uh,
Speaker 1: it was Yeah, that was it seems to me like
Speaker 1: a huge difference. Yeah, I mean, it seems if something
Speaker 1: like that were to happen today, if two thousand conservationists
Speaker 1: were to come together and decide on the future of
Speaker 1: of the model, well we tried that, you know. In
Speaker 1: a period there uh in the late eighties and early nineties,
Speaker 1: we had to think called the Governor's Symposium on the
Speaker 1: North American Hunting Heritage. There were seven of them held.
Speaker 1: First one was in Montana, called by Governor Stan Stevens,
Speaker 1: and the idea was to examine what was wrong with
Speaker 1: hunting because we were taking a horrible whipping the hunting
Speaker 1: community was because we were shooting every buffalo that set
Speaker 1: foot out of the Yellowstone National Park. And I had
Speaker 1: been a national conference in Washington, d c. Meeting of
Speaker 1: some kind, listened to public radio, and they were bashing
Speaker 1: hunting mercilessly because of that action. That action was required
Speaker 1: by the Montana state legislature at the time. And I
Speaker 1: came back, had a new dirt governor and a new
Speaker 1: director of the Fishing Game, and that one of his
Speaker 1: first staff meetings. I got up and I said, is
Speaker 1: there anybody in this room that things were doing the
Speaker 1: right thing? And not a soul stood up? And that
Speaker 1: was the entire you know, leadership of the Fishing Game Department,
Speaker 1: and the new director took note of that, and the
Speaker 1: new governor called the Governor Symposium series and then uh
Speaker 1: legislator from Zoula, Bob Reem, introduced a bill to get
Speaker 1: that off the books, and he was successful, and that
Speaker 1: was kind of a turning point for the Buffalo for sure. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean going back to because I want to take
Speaker 1: you know, your entrance into the in the fray here
Speaker 1: in the hunting space and the conservation space. But you
Speaker 1: move on from you know, I feel like the North
Speaker 1: American model not named that yet until until started to
Speaker 1: really you know, really being concreted in, you know, after
Speaker 1: that conference and after we knew how we were going
Speaker 1: to pay for the Pitman Robertson Act, and knew how
Speaker 1: we were going to pay for things, I think, things
Speaker 1: really you could say accelerated or normalized um and the
Speaker 1: modern hunter kind of sprung from there. What didn't happen
Speaker 1: was that we approached various components of the outdoor industry
Speaker 1: at as these conferences were rotating. Nobody was willing to
Speaker 1: step up like the firearms and ammunition guys did in
Speaker 1: thirty seven. And they still aren't and they still aren't
Speaker 1: very much. Still part of the conversation. People to act
Speaker 1: like the backpack taxes, this brand new idea. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just retreading a grid idea. Well that well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we went from the bone yard of a continent. Here.
Speaker 1: You can see deer tracks in our street outside downtown,
Speaker 1: uh held on the capital and you would you would
Speaker 1: agree that there are more people now than there were
Speaker 1: and yeah the turn of the century. But we have
Speaker 1: deer in our cities, bears in our orchards, and goose
Speaker 1: poop when every golf shoe in Montana goose poop. But
Speaker 1: I don't golf, but that's what they tell me, well exactly, um,
Speaker 1: And that you know that the tax that was imposed
Speaker 1: during that the passing of that that act was an
Speaker 1: existing exercise tax right of eleven that was applied and
Speaker 1: it's still eleven percent today, right, And the states have
Speaker 1: to match it. And if in the states cannot divert
Speaker 1: their hunting license dollar into other funding, other parts of
Speaker 1: state government. You know, they have two years to spend
Speaker 1: those dollars on what they're appropriated for. They lose them.
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's it's not many are lost, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, only to look and see how efficient
Speaker 1: this is and how useful it is for our society,
Speaker 1: for our wildlife. To see how long it's lasted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's how long it's lasted and well, and to go
Speaker 1: out on the landscape and like walk. The Southern River
Speaker 1: Game Range is a classic example of the Pittman Robertson
Speaker 1: act standing they're ready. And this was before the Landing
Speaker 1: Water Conservation Fund and an absolute critical moment in fact
Speaker 1: that that's a great story from a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: Because the as the elks started to recover in the
Speaker 1: wild lands to the west of the Rocky Mountain Front,
Speaker 1: they started getting out on private ground. There was a
Speaker 1: landowner named Rathbone who advertised in the New York paper
Speaker 1: for machine gunners to come out and shoot the elk.
Speaker 1: Wait this. Uh, this was probably in the forties, and
Speaker 1: the source of this is a little book written by
Speaker 1: a guy named Tom Selt, who was this Great Falls
Speaker 1: area sportsman and books shop owner. And uh, they formed
Speaker 1: the fishing game, formed a Sun River Conservation Council to
Speaker 1: address this conflict on the front. The landowner Rathbone, he
Speaker 1: shoots one cow elk. The game Warden's bust him, so
Speaker 1: the thing goes into the court. Montana Supreme Court says,
Speaker 1: when you buy land in Montana, now you buy it
Speaker 1: with full knowledge of the presence of wildlife for which
Speaker 1: there is no recourse. And that says, okay, boys, live
Speaker 1: with it. You don't own the critters on it. That's right.
Speaker 1: That was a critical stage. But then to get relief,
Speaker 1: the Sun River Conservation Council forms. Thomas Selt was its chair.
Speaker 1: Another rancher from Shotto was on it named Carl Malone.
Speaker 1: The decide they got to buy winter range outside the
Speaker 1: wilderness areas where the elk have to come and heavy
Speaker 1: snow and uh. This one landowner puts up his place
Speaker 1: for sale. H and his name slips my mind at
Speaker 1: the moment, but fishing fishing game proceeds to try and
Speaker 1: buy it, but to hit a deadline where they have
Speaker 1: to make a ten thousand dollar down payment by five
Speaker 1: o'clock on a particular day, and even then if nobody
Speaker 1: can move that fast in government, because there was a
Speaker 1: lot of money, had a competitive buyer there. Thomas Selt
Speaker 1: and Karl Malone, the book owner and the rancher put
Speaker 1: up five grand out of their own pockets to hold
Speaker 1: that little fishing game could go through and buy it.
Speaker 1: And that starts the progression of these jewels along the
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain Front, which now include Ear Mountain, Black Leaf,
Speaker 1: Pine Beot Theater, Roosevelt Memorial Ranch. And Uh, it's paradise.
Speaker 1: It is paradise, and it's windy. It's quite windy on
Speaker 1: the drop. Oh my god, on the drive up here
Speaker 1: to I was gonna get blown off the road. Well
Speaker 1: here you come now into the into the fray. Uh
Speaker 1: when do you first remember? Now we talked about you're
Speaker 1: shooting that big giant buck over there, and then then
Speaker 1: when you were twenty years old, But when do you professionally,
Speaker 1: when do you remember first having the urge to take
Speaker 1: take action and and you know, join a game agency
Speaker 1: or join a conservation agency and then and then how
Speaker 1: did it happen for you? I wouldn't go just a
Speaker 1: couple of years back before that. Having interviewed Jim before,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to hear how you came
Speaker 1: to Montana. Then get into this question because it's a
Speaker 1: god's good story. That's why I brought Sam for an
Speaker 1: other reason. He's handsome, man, but that doesn't help much
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Then you have to take my word
Speaker 1: for people. Yes, you're coming to Montana, but let's hear
Speaker 1: that one. Okay. Um first, a humorous anecdote. And when
Speaker 1: I was going to high school, they would use career
Speaker 1: testing kind of things, and your big counselors to tell you,
Speaker 1: you know what your aptitude tests, I think they called them.
Speaker 1: And I took my aptitude tests and one day the
Speaker 1: counselor called me in and she said, you know, I
Speaker 1: reviewed your aptitude here. But since there's no curriculum for hermits,
Speaker 1: why don't you go into fishing game that's made up?
Speaker 1: But it wasn't not in high school, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: I was actually even before that when mother would say
Speaker 1: outside and play. And I lived in a midsize community
Speaker 1: on the west shore of Lake Michigan, and we could
Speaker 1: walk beyond the city limits to little wood lots that
Speaker 1: we just called them the woods, and that's where we
Speaker 1: would go play when mother said go outside and play.
Speaker 1: And we had an interest in nature, you know, we'd
Speaker 1: collect little things we'd find in the woods and put
Speaker 1: them in our rooms and stuff of that of that kind.
Speaker 1: And uh, then I got into the Boy Scouts because
Speaker 1: they had a camp. And that was kind of a
Speaker 1: funny story there because my older brother he went and
Speaker 1: he got homesick the first week he was home. Gone
Speaker 1: campus only a week long. I went two years later,
Speaker 1: and I begged my parents to leave me there all
Speaker 1: summer's wanted to do. And then I in time became
Speaker 1: a counselor or junior counselor, and my dad run a
Speaker 1: gas station and sold Christmas trees and yeah, take a
Speaker 1: break here, the diuretics drying me out. So you were
Speaker 1: a counselor at the Boy Scout cancer decided that was
Speaker 1: that was the way. My my dad went to northern
Speaker 1: Wisconsin just to get trees to sell on this Christmas
Speaker 1: tree Christmas tree lot. And one of those trips, one
Speaker 1: of his buddies bought a deer from an Indian and
Speaker 1: I got a foot. It's about a deer to eat, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so at summer camp, I would take that deer
Speaker 1: foot and I would mark the woods because there were
Speaker 1: no deer living there, and then we'd have nature hikes
Speaker 1: and we'd show the Scouts the deer print and then
Speaker 1: night it looks fresh. Yeah, well, one night a week
Speaker 1: we'd have a night hike. One of the councilors would
Speaker 1: take the old mounted deer head out of the mess
Speaker 1: hall sitting in the swamp with it, we followed the
Speaker 1: tracks down through the trail to the swamp and then
Speaker 1: shine that deer and they all went home thinking they've
Speaker 1: seen their first deer. Took some imagination. Then, yeah, well
Speaker 1: that was early exposure, I guess, uh playfully. Um. Then
Speaker 1: there were a couple of famous grouse biologists working in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: the Fred and fran Hammerstrom, working on the prairie prairie chickens.
Speaker 1: One of the other councilors at the camp, who was
Speaker 1: several years senior to a few years senior to me,
Speaker 1: he became a conservation aid at their at their study area,
Speaker 1: and so I would go over and sit in the
Speaker 1: blinds watching the prairie chickens dance, and I could see
Speaker 1: no other profession for myself. And then was it just
Speaker 1: just the Can you describe what captivated you in that time?
Speaker 1: Like what you know what? Watching watching these grouse dance,
Speaker 1: you know, and looking at talking to the people who
Speaker 1: were doing They were both PhDs and beyond, but they
Speaker 1: were studying the American the prairie chickens, and uh, we
Speaker 1: got to participate. You know. We had the spotting scopes
Speaker 1: and buyn ox and we would try to read the
Speaker 1: band numbers that were visible and things of that nature
Speaker 1: to try to make a contribution and try to help. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't think probably at that time I had actually
Speaker 1: hunted and killed anything yet. Yeah, but that that certainly
Speaker 1: was an interest. And then when you live on the
Speaker 1: shore Lake Michigan, you get kind of an aquatic bend
Speaker 1: and you take an interest in maybe fishing wildlife. And
Speaker 1: one day after basketball practice, I was sitting in the
Speaker 1: bleachers watching some other level of our high school team
Speaker 1: play or practice, and the head basketball coach sat down
Speaker 1: next to me asked me what I wanted to do
Speaker 1: for a career, and I said conservation, you know, because
Speaker 1: at the time it was Wisconsin Conservation Department that was
Speaker 1: the fishing wildlife management agency. And he said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he said, maybe I have a contact for you. And
Speaker 1: of course, the guy who was the Bobcat coach in
Speaker 1: the early fifties had been a coach at one of
Speaker 1: the Wisconsin teachers college and so he knew the whole
Speaker 1: teacher network, you know, of of athletic coaches in the
Speaker 1: state of Wisconsin, and so my high school basketball coach
Speaker 1: put me in contact with uh Tony Storty, who was
Speaker 1: the head Bobcat coach, and they were trying to become
Speaker 1: competitive because they hadn't beat the Grizzlies in Missoula since
Speaker 1: nineteen o two. That was that was within Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: was president. So that led to recruitment to Montana, which
Speaker 1: has got a whole bunch of other stories that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with hunting and fishing. But you know,
Speaker 1: I imagine i'd like those two making the team and everything.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen fifty six, that's season, we beat
Speaker 1: the Grizzlies in Missoula for the first time since nineteen
Speaker 1: o two. So, uh, they got their money's worth. But
Speaker 1: they had gone, you know, through the recruiting net to
Speaker 1: the industrial heart land and so to speak, where all
Speaker 1: the thugs were hanging out playing, playing the game. But
Speaker 1: I grew up, you know, hour's drive from Packer Stadium.
Speaker 1: What else are you gonna do? Look at this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a photo right here of you doing your
Speaker 1: best like football stance. That's my freshman year at Bozeman's
Speaker 1: and what years that that was fifty three. You're looking
Speaker 1: pretty good there. He looked like you might have been like,
Speaker 1: what are you running back? No? I was a tight
Speaker 1: end and linebackers, and I got my recruitment reputation because
Speaker 1: I made All Conference middle line backer and the Fox
Speaker 1: River Valley Conference, which is Green Bay Manna to walk
Speaker 1: FONDI like, uh so it was kind of a competitive
Speaker 1: high school environment. That's corn fed football country right there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you those are sixty minute days you played
Speaker 1: both ways? Yeah, yeah, and now and then and then
Speaker 1: I imagine you were playing football in Montana and started
Speaker 1: looking around and he saw, well these mountains, this is
Speaker 1: well I had an imagination. I mean, when I met
Speaker 1: with the coach and then got to talking to Montana,
Speaker 1: I had to run to the encyclopedia to see where
Speaker 1: that it was. You know, but there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: stories buried there. We'll try to keep to the hunting
Speaker 1: ones if you can. Yeah, it's easy to go off
Speaker 1: on tangents. I like, ta um, So you're in Montana
Speaker 1: and can you you know, and you're still here right
Speaker 1: now any years later, can you tell us kind of
Speaker 1: what you know, what how it sank? In for you, like,
Speaker 1: this is the place for me, this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is the life I want to lead. Go outside
Speaker 1: and appreciate this. When you read about it before coming out,
Speaker 1: you know, you realize this is a mountain of rocky
Speaker 1: mountains and all that happy stuff, and you have something
Speaker 1: in your imagination that that's pretty vivid. And of course
Speaker 1: when you come to Montana riding on the train at
Speaker 1: that time, we woke up somewhere just west of Glen
Speaker 1: Dive and started looking for the mountains. You know. But
Speaker 1: eventually when you uh leave Billings, you can pick up
Speaker 1: the bare tooths and before you get to Livingston you
Speaker 1: can spot the crazy and then you go over Bozeman
Speaker 1: Pass and then you're right in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: And uh, I have no idea you know, where to
Speaker 1: get started, but that's how you get there. And you
Speaker 1: got there, did you feel um almost immediately drawn to
Speaker 1: those mountains? And you know, did that starts to define
Speaker 1: what you They were what I was looking for, And uh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a disappointment for certain and it was all
Speaker 1: imagine that the you know, in the imagination of seventeen
Speaker 1: eighteen year old kid, eighteen year old football player yeah,
Speaker 1: never been west of the Mississippi, never been east of
Speaker 1: the west shore of like Michigan. But I've been to
Speaker 1: Green Bay and and and my dad was athlete. In fact,
Speaker 1: he played in the first season there was an NBA.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, and what year was that? I have to
Speaker 1: keep as I'll have I'll look it up for you
Speaker 1: before you leave. You'll look it up. We will look
Speaker 1: it up. Is there? Um, we haven't. We haven't got
Speaker 1: to your first hunting experiences yet. Um, tell us about those,
Speaker 1: tell us about how it how it hooked you. Well,
Speaker 1: I had to wait six months. Well, I started trying
Speaker 1: to be an archery hunter in Wisconsin, but there were
Speaker 1: there no deer in the county where I was living.
Speaker 1: But north of us there was a place called Point
Speaker 1: Beach State Park that you could hunt in and and
Speaker 1: that's where I probably saw my first deer in the wild.
Speaker 1: And I'm up there with a bow and arrow, and
Speaker 1: I have, you know, not a prayer. You're thinking, I
Speaker 1: hope this isn't the Taxi Germany deer. Somebody's playing a
Speaker 1: truck on pretty close, I mean, And I saw one
Speaker 1: deer and I shot an arrow in its direction, and
Speaker 1: I knew it was out of range and beyond the
Speaker 1: range of the arrow, but I wanted to go home
Speaker 1: and tell my buddies I got a shot, and that yeah,
Speaker 1: that ends up. It all spins back into you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure in that area of the world, I'm not
Speaker 1: hunted it myself. But today and that are of the world,
Speaker 1: there are many many deer. Yeah. All my brothers, sons,
Speaker 1: uh shoot deer and they never leave the county. So
Speaker 1: I just shows you the restoration of Pittman Robertson there.
Speaker 1: You know that was passed when I was one year old,
Speaker 1: and now you know you shot at one deer. But
Speaker 1: now you go there and that's it's a tradition, that's
Speaker 1: part of that landscape, white tail deer hunting. And then
Speaker 1: when I got to Montana, why I had to wait
Speaker 1: six months, and so I got into that right now.
Speaker 1: I got through got there in August of UH fifty
Speaker 1: three for preseason camp, and then in January I hit
Speaker 1: the six months mark and they had an extended deer
Speaker 1: season in the Bridger Mountains. I borrowed a gun, drove
Speaker 1: out there and no hunter education or anything, and shot
Speaker 1: a doe deer. I'm gonna up in the in the
Speaker 1: men's dorm and left the windows open, and it was
Speaker 1: a vacant room, and all my buddies and I had
Speaker 1: a hot plate and we just cut off a chunk
Speaker 1: of bringing dead deer in the dorm room. Jim Well,
Speaker 1: it was a vacant dorm and in a dilapidated dormitory.
Speaker 1: It was called the Hudson House. It was a former
Speaker 1: military barracks converted to a college dorm and it was
Speaker 1: and the coach had promised us free rooms, so it
Speaker 1: puts ten of us in an recreation room in this old,
Speaker 1: dilapidated dorm, and of course ten jocks living in a
Speaker 1: room got kind of rowdy. Yeah, handful of them were
Speaker 1: g I Bill guys, so they've been around a little
Speaker 1: bit and they were that's where they were recruited from.
Speaker 1: And uh, one night we had the super Bash party
Speaker 1: made horrible, No, it's fine, you're fine, you're here now,
Speaker 1: horrible on a racket and things. And the very first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning, the Marines in our room, the
Speaker 1: ex Marines that were part of our group. They get
Speaker 1: us all up. We scrubbed that place down until it
Speaker 1: shone sparkled and then it had one table in the
Speaker 1: middle of the room, and we sat there with our
Speaker 1: books opened in front of us. When the DNA men
Speaker 1: must through, you're all looking like, did you guys tie
Speaker 1: sweaters around your shoulders. We'll never forget his expression, I
Speaker 1: mean his jaw flat hit the floor, Hello sir and
Speaker 1: describing me like, can you remember you know that first, dear,
Speaker 1: like you remember having some emotions around that or thinking
Speaker 1: that this is an important action or was it just
Speaker 1: in your youth? Well, I borrowed the gun. We had
Speaker 1: a peep site. I never even shot it, you know,
Speaker 1: went out on the hillside above ranchers building that the
Speaker 1: rancher was a butcher and a booster, and so, yuh,
Speaker 1: I see this deer, it's close. I put the sight
Speaker 1: on it. I pulled the trigger and the deer is gone.
Speaker 1: And I will walk up to where the deer was
Speaker 1: standing and she's down and I hit her right in
Speaker 1: the head. I didn't when my one of my Marine
Speaker 1: Corps buddies saw it, he said, well that was a
Speaker 1: good shot, right in the head. And I said, well
Speaker 1: that's all I could see at the time. When you
Speaker 1: bet John Wayne, yeah, part right exactly times you gotta
Speaker 1: shoot him. The head. Yeah, that was deer number one.
Speaker 1: And of course the landowner who gave us access there,
Speaker 1: it was actually the town butcher, and so he took
Speaker 1: care of cut it up for us and everything that
Speaker 1: was pretty fancy. And then you're eating the dorm room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that was a different dear. Okay, um moving forward,
Speaker 1: like you you get out of college, you survived. You
Speaker 1: didn't have any you know, any two crazy stories for
Speaker 1: he didn't get kicked out. Uh went into the third
Speaker 1: Infantry Division for a couple of years, which was customary
Speaker 1: at the time. I got to go to Bomberg, Germany,
Speaker 1: and uh so, in the fall of fifty eight, the
Speaker 1: Bumberg Riders won the U. S. Army europe Football Championship.
Speaker 1: So we had a tradition going there. And I was
Speaker 1: living off base because I was on temporary duty to
Speaker 1: the football team, and and uh so during the season
Speaker 1: you lived anyway he wanted to between practices, and it
Speaker 1: was called temporary duty. And I was freshly married and
Speaker 1: living in a little cold water apartment to block away
Speaker 1: from the military base, which was pretty cushy. And the
Speaker 1: punch line here is that's called temporary duty t d
Speaker 1: Y and the coaches pep talk before every game was
Speaker 1: do or die for t D Y Y. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: I also took time to join the local base rod
Speaker 1: and gun club and tried to get qualified to be
Speaker 1: a hunter in Germany and doing the studying and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and became quite familiar with the European methodology
Speaker 1: are a component of that, and it's a very respectful
Speaker 1: relationship between the hunter and the animal, but it's not
Speaker 1: for everybody. And had I been qualified, then I'd have
Speaker 1: to wait for an invitation to go hunt bay some
Speaker 1: with the hunter, the Jagermeister, the hunt master, and they
Speaker 1: had arrangements were that could be accomplished. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: there long enough to actually have a hunt in Germany.
Speaker 1: And you're to study the flora and the fauna. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, one of the part of their rituals
Speaker 1: was called the last bissing, and that is when you
Speaker 1: shoot an animal, you take whatever is uh I been
Speaker 1: feeding him and give it a branch and put it
Speaker 1: into his mouth as the last night. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of respect and it's it's a kind
Speaker 1: of an honorable thing to become the hunter. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we were sitting in a cafe one night, my wife
Speaker 1: and I and somebody comes into the door and busting
Speaker 1: into the door. There's been a crash on accident out
Speaker 1: on the roadway, and he said, is there are a
Speaker 1: hunter in the room because they learned first aid and
Speaker 1: patching stuff. And uh, I never quite forgot that because
Speaker 1: that's what the just citizen was looking for, somebody that
Speaker 1: had training. Yeah, I mean, I we've talked about it
Speaker 1: on this podcast before. The way the European tradition was
Speaker 1: held in the way, you know, the way it is
Speaker 1: the modern European tradition has kind of been twisted a bit,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure in those years, you know, the hunter
Speaker 1: was still the center point that sometimes of the community. UM.
Speaker 1: We had a fellow on that grew up in Czechoslovakia
Speaker 1: and it talked about the idea of a hunter. UM.
Speaker 1: The term that used for hunter also meant thinker, like
Speaker 1: one who thinks, someone who was able to look at
Speaker 1: a group of animals and pick out the one that
Speaker 1: is best taken in that scenario. And so the respect
Speaker 1: for the animal was was um was put at the
Speaker 1: feet of the hunter. It was included and in their
Speaker 1: trained and what they expected of the hunter and the hunter,
Speaker 1: you know, had to be exalted because they had to
Speaker 1: make these very serious decisions about which animals to take,
Speaker 1: which to which to leave, and how to manage, you know,
Speaker 1: the entire ecosystem really and what they were doing. True. True,
Speaker 1: So we're getting so he spent two years there, you
Speaker 1: told us, right, and then you come back to back
Speaker 1: to Montana, right, And coming back to Montana, Um, what's
Speaker 1: next for you? Well, graduate school and I did a
Speaker 1: fishery study out of out of Bozeman, uh got a
Speaker 1: master's degree in April of sixty one. Then I went
Speaker 1: up to Great Grade Falls as a phish biologist, and
Speaker 1: after a year and a half of that, they moved
Speaker 1: me to Glasgow as a fish manager. And after four
Speaker 1: or five years up there, they moved me into Helena
Speaker 1: is the head of the water resource development section. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen six nine, Anaconda wanted to open an
Speaker 1: open pit mine at the head of the Blackfoot River.
Speaker 1: So that became one of my projects to build a
Speaker 1: baseline study at the fishing wildlife up there. And the
Speaker 1: land board was confronted by a room full of Missoula
Speaker 1: College students the day they had to make the decision
Speaker 1: on whether or not to give the state lease to
Speaker 1: the Anaconda Company for a dam on Alice Creek to
Speaker 1: supply water for this mine, Hittleston Mine, And then the
Speaker 1: students packed the place totally out of the blue kind
Speaker 1: of although it couldn't have been, but where did they
Speaker 1: come from? And the landboard hung up to the two
Speaker 1: so they couldn't issue the easement, and the governor forced
Speaker 1: Anderson turned to the director of the fishing game and
Speaker 1: leave the profanity out. But he said, you caused this problem,
Speaker 1: now you solve it. The director came back, gave me
Speaker 1: the project and said, we're going to turn water resource
Speaker 1: development into ecological services division. And so that's where we started.
Speaker 1: And then we charged Anaconda company for half the baseline
Speaker 1: study that we told him, Look, we've got to have
Speaker 1: some help, some financial helped put some people in the
Speaker 1: field to get this data. And uh, that sort of
Speaker 1: started it where we started the pattern of making the
Speaker 1: applicant pay for whatever it was that we needed to
Speaker 1: do in the field. And while all this is going on,
Speaker 1: Alvador Aliendi seizes Anaconda's hold Eggs and Chile. The company collapsed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so my book I write, so when the salmon fly
Speaker 1: rises to when the trout takes your salmon fly off
Speaker 1: the surface of the big Blackfoot River. Thanks Salvador, we'd
Speaker 1: had a Berkeley pit, that they could have had a
Speaker 1: Berkeley pit at the head of the Blackfoot River. As
Speaker 1: you speak about these things, it just it's amazing to
Speaker 1: me how similar it is today, the debates that are
Speaker 1: happening today, the battles that are happening today, and how
Speaker 1: the two sides um are very similar to even today.
Speaker 1: I mean when even going back into the time of
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt and railroad ticoons and and and timber baron,
Speaker 1: timber barons fighting fighting against formation of the National forests. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the ultimate beauty of the dema oocracy of the wild,
Speaker 1: because anybody can step up and take a shot at it.
Speaker 1: And that's what's happened. You know, at one point they
Speaker 1: were New York City patricians that they had a philosophy
Speaker 1: that because they were rich, that those two who much
Speaker 1: has given much as expected, and they actually lived by
Speaker 1: that code of their own and that's why they these
Speaker 1: philanthropic actions of guys like Roosevelt. He didn't need to
Speaker 1: work you know different Pincho didn't need a job, but
Speaker 1: they took on the mantle of the leadership and reformation.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well to your point, I think if they hadn't,
Speaker 1: someone else would have hopefully, you know. But it seems
Speaker 1: like it's just innate in our in our in this continent,
Speaker 1: and in the people that landed here and formed this
Speaker 1: this country specifically, it was innate in them to value
Speaker 1: the resource. Um, that's why I believe in an englistening
Speaker 1: you talk, I believe that that I'm glad that those
Speaker 1: you know, the forefathers of conservation did what they did
Speaker 1: and had the balls of a moose. That's mostly Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yours. When I saw the hundredth anniversary of
Speaker 1: his presidency coming, I told my sons, I said anything
Speaker 1: by or about tr For Christmas. I had to go
Speaker 1: buy the bookcase. But well, that's one Christmas is supply.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing because you get into it and then
Speaker 1: you talk about the trail crossings and intersections and the
Speaker 1: fact that's amazing. Theodore Roosevelt and Grandville Stewart were both
Speaker 1: members of the Montana Stockgrowers and they met at the
Speaker 1: ock Roars meeting in Miles City, and at that meeting,
Speaker 1: one of the authors that wrote about it said that
Speaker 1: Roosevelt backed Stewart on every issue that was raised on
Speaker 1: the overstocking of the range, and then Stewart from that
Speaker 1: from that stock Roarers meeting was going north in pursuit
Speaker 1: of some horse thieves that were hiding out in the
Speaker 1: Missouri Breaks. Roosevelt tried to sign up himself and the
Speaker 1: Marquis de Morris to join the posse. Stewart said, no way,
Speaker 1: you guys are way too high profile. We're not right.
Speaker 1: You're not riding with us on this particular adventure. Man
Speaker 1: with balls, then there are going to go saddle up
Speaker 1: and go to hang some guy in the brakes. He
Speaker 1: went to DC and it's hanging. Well. Then I read
Speaker 1: another book about James Willard Schultz going down the Missouri
Speaker 1: River on the hundredth anniversary of Lewis and Clark, and
Speaker 1: Schultz describes his trip down to Missouri and there's no
Speaker 1: Damn or Fort Peck or anything, but he gets in
Speaker 1: one part of his book he tells the story about
Speaker 1: visiting with some branchers down in the breaks, and they
Speaker 1: tell the story about Stewart coming down and hanging the
Speaker 1: wrong guy. Have a research that connection yet, Well you
Speaker 1: spent he spent forty years at that Fish and Wildlife. Two.
Speaker 1: We'll round up, round it up for you. Um, before
Speaker 1: you retired, I flunked out of retirement. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: as we were talking about before, I think to fast
Speaker 1: forward to what what I think everyone really needs to
Speaker 1: hear from you and what I really want I think
Speaker 1: a lot of hunters want to explore his hunting ethics? Right?
Speaker 1: And after your tenure UM with Montana, you went to
Speaker 1: went about penning a book called Beyond fair Chase, right,
Speaker 1: and we said we we double checked before starting the podcast.
Speaker 1: It was published in nineteen correct, correct, Um, take us
Speaker 1: through why ethics for you? Why, after all this time
Speaker 1: spending the hunting community, consolation community, why ethics was important
Speaker 1: to you while why fair Chase was something that um
Speaker 1: was a pillar in your life and why you felt
Speaker 1: the need to address it at that point. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: leaving fishing game in the in the eighties, lady, eighties,
Speaker 1: I'm wrapping things up kind of. That's when I had
Speaker 1: gone back to Washington, d C. That's when we were
Speaker 1: killing every buffalo that set foot outside of Yellowstone National Park.
Speaker 1: And that's when hunting was being vilified, UH, coast to coast,
Speaker 1: And this is kind of like the pinnacle of the
Speaker 1: hunting participation at some level when it was really and
Speaker 1: I guess I was aware of the conservation side of
Speaker 1: what the hunters were sponsoring, and that story was not
Speaker 1: being told by anybody. And so I came back and
Speaker 1: we started the Governor's Symposium series on the North American
Speaker 1: hunting heritage under when Stan Stevens's first term as governor,
Speaker 1: and we started talking about, you know, what's wrong with
Speaker 1: us and what's right about us as hunters? And we
Speaker 1: held seven national conferences UH in the process. And of
Speaker 1: course that when you got a started inviting speakers and
Speaker 1: become a speaker and stuff, you have to start doing
Speaker 1: some study in remember, Like it strikes me, though, do
Speaker 1: you remember when you say that you want to what's
Speaker 1: right with us and what's wrong with us? Like that's
Speaker 1: that's a pretty heavy statement for me. Do you do
Speaker 1: you remember back in time to why that you you
Speaker 1: wanted to explore explore those things like particularly what's wrong
Speaker 1: with us? Well, what's wrong with us? Was? I guess
Speaker 1: the consummate thing was how we were treating the buffalo
Speaker 1: coming out of Yellowstone Park. Everyone setting foot into Montana
Speaker 1: was to be shot. And that was so alien to
Speaker 1: the conservation ethic that had restored while abundance of wildlife
Speaker 1: um clear across the state of Montana that I stumbled
Speaker 1: into the middle of a dear recovery boom of the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. I was know a great hunter. I mean
Speaker 1: that were deer were everywhere. To start adding, when you
Speaker 1: know things up and and just why a person is
Speaker 1: even inclined to go out in pursuit of whether it
Speaker 1: was a jack or a cotton tail rabbit, or a
Speaker 1: pheasant or a rough grouse. I mean, that was my
Speaker 1: total bag of as a hunter before coming to Montana.
Speaker 1: Was a couple of cotton tail rabbits in an apple
Speaker 1: orchard because the orchard guidn't like a nipping on the
Speaker 1: basis of his trees. They're probably pretty good things and
Speaker 1: rabbits exactly, although my mother was quite puzzled what to
Speaker 1: do with it. Did you did you ever? Did you
Speaker 1: find yourself to be unique in the in the thoughts
Speaker 1: that you were having around um, the examining the y
Speaker 1: or the ethics, No, and uh here I tend to
Speaker 1: maybe make some stuff up because the competition for the
Speaker 1: hunter's attention had turned to you know, did you get
Speaker 1: your limit? How big was your buck? And it still persists.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I never measured any of my I am
Speaker 1: just won't do it because it's just degrading. And then
Speaker 1: you realize, well, there's more here to that. And I
Speaker 1: had a consummate experience, you know, I mean, after all,
Speaker 1: the stuff is twenty five years with the Sinebar Foundation
Speaker 1: funding conservation, environmental protection, wildlife restoration, and then fifteen years
Speaker 1: with o'rien and what that adds to the personal to
Speaker 1: experience becomes over overwhelming. And a couple of seasons ago,
Speaker 1: I'm stumbling up into We used to live eight miles
Speaker 1: south of town and just out the back door, did
Speaker 1: lots and lots of hunting. But I go to an
Speaker 1: little familiar place in the dark and I sit there
Speaker 1: because gals coming up the other side. Your wife, yeah,
Speaker 1: and she's liable to, you know, start some elkout. So
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in one of the passes where they sometimes
Speaker 1: go as the hunter, as the hunter is known to do.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting there in a pre dawn and I'm
Speaker 1: looking down the trail. I came in what looks like
Speaker 1: a father and two sons come walking up the trail,
Speaker 1: and I'm just sitting there. Excuse me. The father sees
Speaker 1: me and he halts the boys. And they're like poster
Speaker 1: children out of Hunter Education magazine. I mean, they're control
Speaker 1: of their weapons, undivided attention, standing there quietly in the background.
Speaker 1: And the father tiptoes up to this old guy sitting
Speaker 1: in the woods, and the father says, we don't want
Speaker 1: to get ahead of you. He whispers it to me,
Speaker 1: and I look and I'm thinking, here, I'm sitting on
Speaker 1: the National Forest public lands in pursuit of a restored
Speaker 1: wildlife population that's available to anybody. And the first three
Speaker 1: guys I meet want to defer to me. And I
Speaker 1: said that, you know what I'm thinking of Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: talking about the generations within the womb of time is
Speaker 1: what he called us. Well, there were three generations right there,
Speaker 1: this old guy, me, the father, and two sons what
Speaker 1: I took to be two sons. And I look at
Speaker 1: the situation and I say back to the father, I
Speaker 1: think I know what I see here. And I want
Speaker 1: you ahead of me. And then he says, the youngest
Speaker 1: boy can shoot a cow if he sees one, and
Speaker 1: I give him a smile and the thumbs up, and
Speaker 1: the kid's face lights up in the dark with excitement
Speaker 1: of that moment. And in his anticipation is the excitement.
Speaker 1: And just again I lean on Roosevelt. We do these things, uh,
Speaker 1: for the economic well being of the people, But there
Speaker 1: is more. They also add to the beauty of living
Speaker 1: and therefore the joy of life. And there I was
Speaker 1: looking at the joy of life shining in the dark,
Speaker 1: and I thought, holy mackerel, well and all you've experienced
Speaker 1: in your life. Yeah, and then they walked up, and
Speaker 1: then you know, they walked ahead. I sat there and
Speaker 1: I baled. It was so emotionally moved by how this
Speaker 1: all fits. And when you see just these are people
Speaker 1: didn't know any of this stuff, I don't think, but
Speaker 1: maybe they did, but probably not. But the two boys,
Speaker 1: I know, we got my book. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: your emotion there is built in what you've seen and
Speaker 1: what in some ways you've shepherded in your life experienced,
Speaker 1: you know, And uh, to say that Bucker is a
Speaker 1: big accomplishment it's not true. Yeah, I mean you're you're
Speaker 1: talking about a big part of and I think one
Speaker 1: thing that you've done in your career and that I
Speaker 1: hope to do and I'm sure Sam hopes as well,
Speaker 1: is to is to carry that torch and is too
Speaker 1: understand the history of what came for us and how
Speaker 1: miraculous the time that we've described in this podcast was
Speaker 1: for America, and how miraculous that it has lasted for
Speaker 1: these decades and throughout your life is even more miraculous
Speaker 1: that it's a it's amazing to have thought about, you know,
Speaker 1: the the you were one year old, when when you know,
Speaker 1: the concerts, the early Conservations were coming together to decide
Speaker 1: the future. And here we are in the future. And
Speaker 1: there was two boys there that learned something that they
Speaker 1: that they to them was likely an aid to their
Speaker 1: family and to the way of life, which wasn't always
Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, it wasn't the Royal Hunting Party. It
Speaker 1: was not as the real Americans. And it's democratic in nature.
Speaker 1: And what I think this spends well into I think ethics.
Speaker 1: I forgot that question. We'll get there. They got plenty
Speaker 1: of time. Have a drink um. Well, I'll have a
Speaker 1: drink in in um, elevating the conversation of ethics as
Speaker 1: you did UM there was UH and in your book
Speaker 1: there's the level of caring about To me what struck me,
Speaker 1: it was the level of caring about the community of
Speaker 1: people that you were involved in, but the level of
Speaker 1: caring about right and wrong for them and and that discussion.
Speaker 1: You know, and as you wrote that book, you know,
Speaker 1: what's your ultimate goal, Like, would you remember what's in
Speaker 1: your head? Is I'm going to achieve something from this
Speaker 1: writing or is it just the conversation that you had
Speaker 1: within it? Well, there's you know, there's things going on
Speaker 1: in a person's life. And in the context of this subject,
Speaker 1: I had been going to the shot show. Uh, we're
Speaker 1: getting ready to go to the shots, right, and here's
Speaker 1: the commercial extreme and they're just peddling their stuff and
Speaker 1: nothing matters, ah, other than to sell the commodity. And
Speaker 1: the fact that there is an animal involved. We're going
Speaker 1: to get shot out here is not ever across that border.
Speaker 1: And and that's the tragedy of the industry not seeing
Speaker 1: a more you know, a more powerful uh reality and
Speaker 1: just the antler or the quantity or the locker full
Speaker 1: of dead fish or whatever it is. But all they're
Speaker 1: doing is promoting the commerce of it. And of course
Speaker 1: the commerce is what drove it to its knees to
Speaker 1: begin with the buffalo hight in other just the meat markets.
Speaker 1: And here we're going right back with its huge engine.
Speaker 1: Bloydn that a powerful notion, like, yeah, right, and so
Speaker 1: we're beyond fair chase to try to find another path
Speaker 1: came from the publisher of Falcon Press at the time.
Speaker 1: Tossed a little copy of a book called The Ethics
Speaker 1: Are the Style of Writing by Strunk and White Elements
Speaker 1: of Style or I forget exact title of it now,
Speaker 1: but it was a little tiny paperback book about writing.
Speaker 1: And he said, I want you to write a book
Speaker 1: just like this on the ethics of hunting. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I've never written anything articles, but never a book. So
Speaker 1: I sat down and I just wrote beyond fair Chase. Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the things I did right was it wasn't
Speaker 1: a list of thou shalts and thou shalt not, because
Speaker 1: they're everywhere and they're nowhere. Yeah, and so you I
Speaker 1: spun five stories into the book on relationships between the
Speaker 1: hunter and the hunted, including that buck there and another
Speaker 1: set in my downstairs from the next year in the
Speaker 1: same same hillside basically, but at any rate. Uh. I
Speaker 1: drafted it and uh there was very little editorial stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh and he wanted to call the Little Brown Book
Speaker 1: on Hunting because Chairman Mao had just come out with
Speaker 1: the Little Red Book. Little Brown Book on I would
Speaker 1: have lasted as long. But well I did. How what
Speaker 1: I did was I called offered to buy a beer
Speaker 1: for about four or five members of the Rod and
Speaker 1: Gun Club that I was a member of, told him
Speaker 1: the dilemma that I needed a better title. At the
Speaker 1: price of a couple of beers, I got one of
Speaker 1: the guys, Mike Trevor uh said how about Beyond Fair Chase?
Speaker 1: And that rang the bell and so that's where the
Speaker 1: title came from. And then I wrote the book. And
Speaker 1: it has five stories um um. One about the Wounded Bull,
Speaker 1: which is the one that comes back to me most often.
Speaker 1: Some one personal story about when my son passes up
Speaker 1: and elk because he wants his father to confirm that
Speaker 1: everything is good, as we all do. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: the next season he he gets an elk there and
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, it's all it's all fits. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, Uh, there's a ton of stories about stories
Speaker 1: coming back to me, but that we'll take a lot.
Speaker 1: But at any rate. That's where beyond fair Chase came from.
Speaker 1: And then the breakthrough there was I had been meeting
Speaker 1: with with the International Association of Hunter Education Educators. They
Speaker 1: were having an annual convention in Des Moines, Iowa. And
Speaker 1: so I wrote the guy and I said, look, I've
Speaker 1: got this book and I'd like to tell about it
Speaker 1: at your convention. I'll take any place on your program
Speaker 1: that you might be able to fit it in. Uh
Speaker 1: somebody cancels or whatever, and he agrees, he said, come on,
Speaker 1: and uh he gives me the award banquet speaking spot.
Speaker 1: And my wife Gail goes, she's on contract here with
Speaker 1: Falcon Press at the time to promote the book sell it,
Speaker 1: and one of the guys from his staff down down
Speaker 1: there at Falcon presses along. We go to Des Moines.
Speaker 1: I read a speech and we get into the banquet
Speaker 1: room and Gail and Chris, the other guy from Falcon,
Speaker 1: they set up a table to take orders on the
Speaker 1: outside of the banquet room. This is the Hotel Fort
Speaker 1: des Moines, and I get in here, and here's all
Speaker 1: these oak walls and beautifully kept historic place. And it
Speaker 1: occurs to me because I knew a little bit about
Speaker 1: conservation history that elder Leopold Iowa and Ding Darling I
Speaker 1: when Ding was the first president of the National Wildlife Federation,
Speaker 1: spoke in that same room. So I threw away my
Speaker 1: text and I talked about the echoes of their words
Speaker 1: that are held in these walls. And when that was over,
Speaker 1: they swamped our preorder table, and Gale and Chris so
Speaker 1: So pre sold a hundred thousand copies of Fair Chaise.
Speaker 1: And what'd you tell us before? Seven? About seven hundred?
Speaker 1: Now unbelievable seven? And Sam, what like when you first
Speaker 1: read it? Uh? What would you think? Like? What like?
Speaker 1: What was your reaction to what you've read? When what Mr?
Speaker 1: What Jim had put together? Well, I think I think
Speaker 1: it started getting distributed two hunter education courses probably right
Speaker 1: after I was I went through that, So I didn't
Speaker 1: read it until just a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 1: Lantani gave me a copy. But was that the one
Speaker 1: you started with the story of like killing a sparrow? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember that. I mean, I definitely resonated
Speaker 1: with it and immediately, having grown up, you know, with
Speaker 1: a BB gun in hand, killing all all manner forgotten
Speaker 1: mentioned yes, yeah, oh that was go ahead. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: oh please please go ahead. Bill Schneider wanted to call
Speaker 1: it the Little Brown Book on Hunting. I wanted to
Speaker 1: call it The Sparrow and the Mammoth Hunter. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty good title. That's that's pretty good. I feel like
Speaker 1: a T shirt turned out to be beyond fair chase.
Speaker 1: We like it. But yeah, this this book becomes a
Speaker 1: seminal project. And and I read it. I think about
Speaker 1: five years ago when I first I remember when I
Speaker 1: first started to I had been a professional in the
Speaker 1: industry for for years, and when I first started to
Speaker 1: examine my own actions, and I remember it was around
Speaker 1: a photo I took of elk, one of the first
Speaker 1: elk I ever killed, was in the Madison Valley. And
Speaker 1: we took this photo. We took, we stood, we The
Speaker 1: hunt lasted an hour and the photo shot photo shoot
Speaker 1: lasted three hours with the different positions of this elk,
Speaker 1: and and I remember no one taking a photo of
Speaker 1: us cutting it up, or no one taking a photo
Speaker 1: of of of me packing the antlers out, no one
Speaker 1: taking a photo of me doing anything other than standing
Speaker 1: around with this dead elks. First elk I've killed. And
Speaker 1: I just remember at some point in that and that hunt,
Speaker 1: just thinking I'm not sure what's going on here, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why I'm doing this, because at that
Speaker 1: point I was a was in an editor, an editor
Speaker 1: for a hunting magazine, and companies would invite me out.
Speaker 1: As you spoke about it hits home to me, and
Speaker 1: you spoke about like how we've turned hunting into a
Speaker 1: commodity when you use it to sell things, which which
Speaker 1: changes a lot of the motivation for some hunters in
Speaker 1: the industry. And I think that was part of what
Speaker 1: I was struggling with their It's like, why am I
Speaker 1: really doing this? Yeah, I'm eating it. Yeah, there's conservation,
Speaker 1: But what am I doing? Yeah? And that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I was struggling to get at been and
Speaker 1: and something. I think it really the you know, the
Speaker 1: ultimate revelation it provided me was it it's it's sometimes
Speaker 1: not enough just to follow the letter of the law,
Speaker 1: just what it doing, what is legal, does not completely
Speaker 1: satisfy our responsibility to this resource. And growing up I
Speaker 1: for the most part followed the law. There are definitely
Speaker 1: some um waverings there, but uh, you know, and and
Speaker 1: I and I feel like by the time I had
Speaker 1: read it, i'd I'd come to agree that game laws
Speaker 1: were there for a good reason and that I didn't
Speaker 1: like to give cops that reason to mess with me.
Speaker 1: But it really, it really um cemented I think ideas
Speaker 1: that I've already gathered from from other works and things
Speaker 1: that and I think that's the this is the great
Speaker 1: beauty of that title, as you need to go beyond
Speaker 1: what's required of you as a hunter and and and
Speaker 1: make sure that your actions are defensible and beneficial to
Speaker 1: the resource, and that you do you do as much
Speaker 1: for that animal and those populations and those resources as
Speaker 1: much or more than than they do for you, And
Speaker 1: that you you have that that responsibility, that it's a
Speaker 1: that's a given to take. Yeah, do you think about
Speaker 1: um your effort too. And then just your own personal
Speaker 1: feelings will define finding the relationship between the hunter and
Speaker 1: the hunted, like how we feel about animals. You know,
Speaker 1: how much how much time have you put into that
Speaker 1: and your own personal hunting, Well, it grows with time.
Speaker 1: I mean the first thing you wanted that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do with with that borrowed gun was to find
Speaker 1: a dead deer after I sent around that direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then of course it became take care of it.
Speaker 1: That was kind of an autopilot. That's why I was there. Ah.
Speaker 1: But the more experiences you have and and the more
Speaker 1: you learn about where you're hunting and the history of
Speaker 1: the place. You know, the Rocky Mountain Front, of course
Speaker 1: is a classic. But that first ranger up there, Eiler's Coke.
Speaker 1: He spent thirty days in five four services the first
Speaker 1: year in thirty days in nine oh six, and he
Speaker 1: described what's the Bob Marshall Great Bear Complex now, but
Speaker 1: it was described him by drainage. And in thirty days
Speaker 1: of hunting each year he saw he said, I never
Speaker 1: saw or got a shot at a single game animal
Speaker 1: except one mountain goat. I mean, you could trampled back
Speaker 1: there in sixty days. But that was the depth to
Speaker 1: which the slaughter had gone. And uh, he rides and
Speaker 1: he was a conservation oriented guy. And uh, the front
Speaker 1: has got a very rich history of people popping up
Speaker 1: along the way. Sometimes they're in the agency. They made
Speaker 1: it a wilderness before there was a wilder this act
Speaker 1: and UH Sun River Game Preserve was created, and I
Speaker 1: think it was only one dissenting vote in the Montana
Speaker 1: State Legislature when that was passed through start protecting this stuff.
Speaker 1: And that was from the grassroots, uh rancher from Shoto
Speaker 1: or maybe he was a businessman I think from Shotto,
Speaker 1: but that we had to do better. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to do better. And you feel like we've done better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly we've done better. And of course now the problem
Speaker 1: is again as well, life became more abundant, and are
Speaker 1: people are more interested in hunting and commerce returns. And
Speaker 1: then when you've got the critter living private and public
Speaker 1: both you have those conflicts and those of the issues
Speaker 1: that your generation is going to have to come to.
Speaker 1: UH management scheme that is good for the good for
Speaker 1: the critter. That was That was a question I've been
Speaker 1: I've had sitting on my my list for a while
Speaker 1: that I mean here moving us in that direction anyway
Speaker 1: that you know, the fair Chase ethic rose around Leopold
Speaker 1: and Roosevelt and and all of those, and by and
Speaker 1: large we have recovered a lot of our wildlife in
Speaker 1: this country. I was just curious to know, you know,
Speaker 1: from from me, from you? How do you approach some
Speaker 1: of these modern um issues of of fair chase and
Speaker 1: hunting ethics? Where where where do you start? When people
Speaker 1: are are talking about I don't know, Like I feel
Speaker 1: like bear baiting is very much in the modern debate.
Speaker 1: Some people would say that by putting out bait, you're
Speaker 1: creating an unnatural situation two to chase an animal that
Speaker 1: may not be fair. Other people would respond that by
Speaker 1: hunting bears over bait, you have the opportunity to properly
Speaker 1: sex the bear. Make sure you're taking a bore, preferably
Speaker 1: mature bore, and you'll have an opportunity to take a good, clean,
Speaker 1: standing shot. Um. And and this is something I struggle with,
Speaker 1: And I'm just curious, like you know, having being the
Speaker 1: guy who wrote the book on fair case what what's square?
Speaker 1: What square one? What? Where? Where do you start when
Speaker 1: trying to parse these difficult discussions. Well, you kind of
Speaker 1: start at midpoint on a spectrum, and that that midpoint
Speaker 1: is where you accept responsibility both for the taking of
Speaker 1: that animal that is equal to your responsibility to see
Speaker 1: to do that that animal was even there. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you've got to realize that you're just not a freeloader.
Speaker 1: And I think there's kind of a middle point in
Speaker 1: the hunter's career where when I borrowed that gun and
Speaker 1: shot that dough, I hadn't really I didn't even know
Speaker 1: why she was out there or why the plan was public.
Speaker 1: And as that awareness grows, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: have that all for your first start out of the shoot,
Speaker 1: but when you when you decide you're going to be
Speaker 1: a hunter, I think it would really be it's I know,
Speaker 1: it's to your advantage to start viewing it and it's
Speaker 1: the full context of why this is going to even happen,
Speaker 1: and uh, that enriches it. My best hunt was when
Speaker 1: I ran into those three guys south of town. I
Speaker 1: didn't even fire a shot or tag anything, or I
Speaker 1: didn't have to drag anything out, but I hadn't experienced
Speaker 1: that added to the beauty of living in the joy
Speaker 1: of life, as Roosevelt called it, I mean, what more
Speaker 1: could you get out of an activity? Yeah? Well, isn't that?
Speaker 1: I mean that that is ethics, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just like the the evolution of your experiences and to
Speaker 1: form the way you interact. I think if you have
Speaker 1: the commitment, you know, we're all going to stumble, you know,
Speaker 1: every now and then something, we'll go all right out there.
Speaker 1: And you don't have to beat yourself up on it.
Speaker 1: Just put it in balance of a journey that you're
Speaker 1: on and uh, when you get to be uh in
Speaker 1: my demographic, Uh, all I gotta do is look out
Speaker 1: the window and spot that deer truck and the alleyed
Speaker 1: out here. I mean there's a trophy, ye. And it's
Speaker 1: because our society is said, you know, we do not
Speaker 1: treat these things casually. They are fellow passenger on this planet,
Speaker 1: and they're telling us a lot about what we need
Speaker 1: to know if we're going to make this ah as
Speaker 1: rich for future generations as it was for hours. That
Speaker 1: there's still generations within the womb of time with an
Speaker 1: expati and expectation that we're going to leave them not
Speaker 1: only a livable planet, but a relationship with the other
Speaker 1: life on here that we haven't had traditionally. You know.
Speaker 1: And in some of these writings that I've been made
Speaker 1: available to me by my sons for various Christmas is
Speaker 1: there's one called a Forest Journey, and it points out
Speaker 1: that the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were
Speaker 1: Civilization's birthplace was once a forest so dense the sunlight
Speaker 1: could not shine through. And that's the sand piles were
Speaker 1: out there blowing each other up on right now. And uh,
Speaker 1: we had a second chance here, We had a new world,
Speaker 1: and we made it a bunch of mistakes. We didn't
Speaker 1: say please when we put put on the Eastern shore.
Speaker 1: We did not know. We didn't say thank you yet.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, I think there's way more to getting the
Speaker 1: full measure of the experience than just the day of
Speaker 1: field with the rifle in your hand. It's learning all
Speaker 1: you can learn about the places where you're going and
Speaker 1: their history, how they got to your custody. And there's
Speaker 1: beautiful stories lit heard through that. And and then when
Speaker 1: you have an appreciation, you know, the hand of Roosevelt
Speaker 1: is on you. He put these fourests around us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: against the odds, for sure, I know. And uh, all
Speaker 1: the other people that pop up at the various points
Speaker 1: and various levels in our society all had to make
Speaker 1: a contribution, you know, for that moment you get in
Speaker 1: the woods, and when you know as much of that
Speaker 1: as you can possibly stuff into your brain. Uh, then
Speaker 1: I think you're getting the full joy out of life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: would you hear you tell that? Do you think it
Speaker 1: would be necessary um or fruitful for you as you
Speaker 1: are now to travel back to that twenty year old
Speaker 1: young hunter who shot the dough in the head and
Speaker 1: explain these things to him or or do you feel
Speaker 1: as though the learning was necessary? I think the a
Speaker 1: that it came to you was necessary. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: think you can stuff that into somebody. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you yeah, show them pieces of the puzzle
Speaker 1: and tell them there is such a thing and motivating
Speaker 1: people anyway you can to pique their interest and have
Speaker 1: the materials available for him, you know, having the access.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have had to wait till I was turning
Speaker 1: seven five or whatever the heck it was, uh to
Speaker 1: start really really studying Theatore Roosevelt. I thought he took
Speaker 1: Sam one hill that was enough. Yeah, No, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all very interesting to me because add
Speaker 1: through this conversation and listen to you talk. There's so
Speaker 1: many threads, there's so many through lines to what I
Speaker 1: how I feel, you know, and I'm sure how Sam
Speaker 1: feels and how a lot of people that are coming
Speaker 1: of age and hunting right now feel, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the for lack of a better i't really like
Speaker 1: this term, and a lot of the adult onset hunters
Speaker 1: now feel because I think there's many many folks who
Speaker 1: are picking up hunting at this point in time when
Speaker 1: they're in their thirties or forties. They never had a
Speaker 1: father or mother to teach them that, and they're picking
Speaker 1: up hunting as an adult. In the reason I asked
Speaker 1: that last question because I often wonder if it's necessary
Speaker 1: to to to go hunting as a child or as
Speaker 1: a young as a young man or woman without all
Speaker 1: the burdensome knowledge of the past to be able to
Speaker 1: just enjoy and interact and simplify. And to to have
Speaker 1: done that is to have done it in a pure way,
Speaker 1: and then it and as as you grow your experiences,
Speaker 1: you'll grow your knowledge and grow that your intellect, and
Speaker 1: grow your your ethics and your fair chase ideals. And
Speaker 1: I always wonder, you know, as an adult onset hunter,
Speaker 1: somebody's thirty five right now listening to this that just
Speaker 1: picked up hunting, um, whether you feel they're at an
Speaker 1: advantage and intellectual advantage being able to assess the history
Speaker 1: and and the gravity of hunting, or at a disadvantage
Speaker 1: because they weren't able to come at it with a
Speaker 1: childlike enthusiasm that you know, we'd all like to have. Well,
Speaker 1: I think both avenues are four lanes, they're both highways. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think it's one thing to come on with. Well.
Speaker 1: You again, when you study the biography of some of
Speaker 1: the heroes, Uh, they came here because they were living
Speaker 1: in a concrete urban environment and reading about adventures of
Speaker 1: the frontier. They wanted to have one and and that
Speaker 1: cost a buffalo of a little cannon ball crickets. You know,
Speaker 1: it's life. But then the compensation that came as a result,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, we're back with wolves, were back with lions,
Speaker 1: were back with with with buffalo, were struggling with buffalo. Uh,
Speaker 1: but just think of the the reality of that struggle.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's a Native American taking a handful of
Speaker 1: calves off the Rocky mountain front and hiding them out
Speaker 1: at Pablo. That made a huge difference the species that
Speaker 1: might have gone. And it's in uh the book, the
Speaker 1: Buffalo book I'm reading now of Steve Steve yeah and
Speaker 1: beautifully documented. Yeah, that's one of Steve Rinella's best best works. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, the summer of nineteen or I call it
Speaker 1: the Summer of Our Dance. It's in our Christmas letter.
Speaker 1: And what had amounted to was we got acquainted with
Speaker 1: a little Native American girl named Millie, seven years old,
Speaker 1: adopted by friends of ours. And uh, we heard that
Speaker 1: Millie was going to well, I was right in this room.
Speaker 1: I was sitting here. I had Jesus Christ Superstar on
Speaker 1: my on my tape player. A little Millie came up
Speaker 1: and she was dancing to the music. And I got
Speaker 1: that little girl a note fit that she had something
Speaker 1: in her, uh, was a talent. And then then we
Speaker 1: learned that she was at the Pulse and Pow Wow
Speaker 1: this year. So Gaylee and I went up and Millie's
Speaker 1: mom and grandma had decked her out and finest dancing gear,
Speaker 1: and we joined in what they call the circle dance,
Speaker 1: were you get the part of the part of the
Speaker 1: outer ring. And inside the circle dance was a little
Speaker 1: Millie and four hundred Engian dancers. I think, Gail, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll get that. Yeah, you got it. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: and we were in this outer circle dancing around him,
Speaker 1: and in the background was the Mission Mountains, snow Captain gorgeous.
Speaker 1: Several weeks later, we're on the Rocky Mountain front on
Speaker 1: the other side the hockeys, and it was at a
Speaker 1: gal's birthday party, and the attendees were almost all ranch
Speaker 1: families and stuff and through old gals, most of them
Speaker 1: with more than a little gray hair, got into a
Speaker 1: line dance and they were stomping out this western tune
Speaker 1: on the Rocky Mountain front, and in the background was
Speaker 1: the saw Tooth Ridge and your Mountain and just glorious front.
Speaker 1: And so the Native Americans were on the west side,
Speaker 1: the ranches were on the east side. They're all dance
Speaker 1: and with the with the Rocky Mountains in the background,
Speaker 1: and two of the guitar playing singers in the western
Speaker 1: band on the front where members of the Blackfeet tribe.
Speaker 1: Things come full circle, without knowing it, without knowing it
Speaker 1: was under the same we're you know, participating in both.
Speaker 1: We were in the outer circle of thespabilities Mother's invitation,
Speaker 1: circling the four hundred interior dancers, including little Millie that
Speaker 1: I first spotted her talent sitting in that chair, Stars
Speaker 1: Christ Supers were just thinking of the wealth of experience
Speaker 1: in a lifetime that you can harvest here. And hunting
Speaker 1: is like that, you harvest an experience. You maybe hang
Speaker 1: stuff on the wall to remind you of the day,
Speaker 1: not whether your animal was bigger than somebody else's animal.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the glory of the day and the
Speaker 1: experience you had. And uh, is that the message you
Speaker 1: that you would I want to give desire to give
Speaker 1: to because I wouldn't say young hunters, but new hunters,
Speaker 1: people that are trying to examine their own pursuits and
Speaker 1: understand what their motivations really are. Sure, and I think
Speaker 1: the more you learn about the conservation ethic buried in
Speaker 1: this democracy of the wild, We've got this country most
Speaker 1: places on Earth, you know, the uh, Fertile Crescent didn't
Speaker 1: go from a forest so dense the sunlight could reach,
Speaker 1: couldn't shine through to a sandpile by accident, because here
Speaker 1: we had and subsequently that was you know, I think,
Speaker 1: seven thousand years ago. But nonetheless, that's what happened to
Speaker 1: the land because there was no relationship between the people
Speaker 1: and the things that were out there, and granted, you know,
Speaker 1: when the Marines landed there, Soddam had his private anelope
Speaker 1: hunting ground, and the Marines that were camped near Saddam
Speaker 1: Hussein's private fenced in hunting ground started supplementing their meals
Speaker 1: of with wild game and they imposed a bag limit
Speaker 1: on themselves. Wow, that's the strength and the depth of
Speaker 1: the conservation ethic in North America. Like I said, there's this.
Speaker 1: It seems it seems as though that's a great example
Speaker 1: of like this innate value system that we have and
Speaker 1: it's borne in us for some reason, and we and
Speaker 1: we purge it out with this commercial hype that we
Speaker 1: pour onto this first of all the tournament to something
Speaker 1: monetary and then go through this big restoration process and
Speaker 1: now the camp you know, the camp utalizers, I guess,
Speaker 1: or again stalking the commons very much. They are, very
Speaker 1: much they are. And again, as we go through this conversation,
Speaker 1: the history of what we do and what we love,
Speaker 1: the sides of the coins seem to be the same
Speaker 1: as you flip it, you know, it seems to be
Speaker 1: there's um takers and there's caretakers at some level. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and uh, that's probably not going to change. And as
Speaker 1: long as uh, we keep pushing our d NA forward. Well, Jim,
Speaker 1: I like what you're saying about fair chase as a
Speaker 1: almost a state of mind or a journey through life.
Speaker 1: But there's a difficulty in that if that's, you know,
Speaker 1: what we're trying to abide by, because there will always
Speaker 1: be be takers. And the way it seems that you're
Speaker 1: portraying this, it seems difficult to impose personal decisions onto others.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you navigate that? Ya? How
Speaker 1: do you tell someone don't do that? That that? How
Speaker 1: how can one say that's not fair chase to another
Speaker 1: to another hunter? Well? Right, And it's different at different
Speaker 1: stages in the in the individual's evolution as a hunter.
Speaker 1: You know, there's probably a time when a young hunter
Speaker 1: still thinks the only purpose in being out there is
Speaker 1: to take. And the sooner we move that threshold of
Speaker 1: understanding forward. And I think you know, today materials are
Speaker 1: available that you can sort of infect the young hunter
Speaker 1: with with an idea or a thought or a sense
Speaker 1: of value. And I think it helps people who are
Speaker 1: are sitting on the border saying I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: want to be a hunter. I mean, I sure like wildlife,
Speaker 1: is it okay? And uh, that's those are the kind
Speaker 1: of people we're looking for and to have material available
Speaker 1: for them. Uh, you know beyond fair chase was just
Speaker 1: step one. Okay, you want to you want to be
Speaker 1: a hunter? Think about it this way and and I
Speaker 1: think the net effect of that will will show up
Speaker 1: is in society as we as we progress here. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is to tell them, you know, appreciate
Speaker 1: the real beauty of of what you got out there.
Speaker 1: Not only don't you have to take anything, but you
Speaker 1: can have a great day and let one walk on
Speaker 1: by if you want, because you just, uh, I guess,
Speaker 1: make choices that try to enrich the your lifetime experience
Speaker 1: for yourself. Realizing that or accepting the fact that some
Speaker 1: of this may take time. You know, you may have
Speaker 1: to have a handful of experiences. You may have to
Speaker 1: find time to go to a book cabinet and read
Speaker 1: the autobiography of Theatre Roosevelt. It's a thick one, or
Speaker 1: I mean, so many people have written about him, but
Speaker 1: there's a marvelous consistency that comes out of the more
Speaker 1: of it you read, you find very few contradictions. And uh,
Speaker 1: in fact, after I read his autobiography, I read his
Speaker 1: wife either wrote as Abell's autobiography to see competing intermation. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: if you read my wife's autobiography to be like a
Speaker 1: lot of life, that jackass, that could be a private title. Um, now,
Speaker 1: it's it is interesting, you know when when to introduce
Speaker 1: those things and how? You know, I think we use
Speaker 1: modern hunters, you in your hunting life, Um, have not
Speaker 1: had to struggle with a thing called social media. You know,
Speaker 1: we're I feel like infantile in our communication on this platform.
Speaker 1: And hunters I think have been struck with the conundrum
Speaker 1: that is is unique to this time, in this generation.
Speaker 1: You know, we we now I believe I'm thirty three.
Speaker 1: I believe that my generation of folks, millennials, I'm in
Speaker 1: that generation. Sad to say that millennials can no longer
Speaker 1: walk into a room in most places. Maybe Montana is
Speaker 1: a little bit different, but in most places in the world,
Speaker 1: in the in this country, say I'm a hunter without
Speaker 1: have to having to then explain why, like what how
Speaker 1: it benefits? How can you You can't be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a hunter and the next someone will ask you why.
Speaker 1: And I think the y is just how does this
Speaker 1: benefit society? And so now we have a bunch of
Speaker 1: people struggling to communicate on its mass platform. With that
Speaker 1: everyone has access to what we're actually doing, and it
Speaker 1: gets sensationalized, it gets misrepresented, it gets boiled down to
Speaker 1: one little photo. There's so many point touch points for
Speaker 1: hunting that weren't there, you know, during your during your
Speaker 1: formative years. You know, there's people can reach into the
Speaker 1: honey community. Education then yeah, yeah, I mean the n
Speaker 1: r A had the hunter shooting safety programs, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they weren't required and I never took a hunter
Speaker 1: D course. Yeah, and so your communication around hunting was
Speaker 1: you know, even you were saying in some some of
Speaker 1: your later work is like we were trying to get
Speaker 1: the magazine out, you know, we're trying to get these
Speaker 1: printed materials out. And now the information at our fingertips,
Speaker 1: I think puts puts the modern hunter in this in
Speaker 1: this well, it certainly accesses a hunter to a body
Speaker 1: of knowledge that I never stumbled across until I mean,
Speaker 1: like my seventies, for god's sakes. Yeah, and uh, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like you sit on the point of a
Speaker 1: pyramid double sword. Well, I don't know my hands work here,
Speaker 1: but you know you're sitting there with a photo of
Speaker 1: a dead deer and you're kind of the top stone
Speaker 1: on the pyramid. And the more you know about the
Speaker 1: vase all went into that being possible, the more appreciative
Speaker 1: you will be. And uh, I think the probability when
Speaker 1: you appreciate all that it took to get that to
Speaker 1: your custody. The more you appreciate that, the more likely
Speaker 1: you are to contribute, look for a way to contribute,
Speaker 1: and to learn more and more higher have a higher
Speaker 1: degree of satisfaction. Yeah, do you feel like, just just
Speaker 1: almost by osmosis, that that that appreciation would transfer to
Speaker 1: somebody who's never done it before, Like would be so relevantly,
Speaker 1: you know, so readily seen, and the imagery of the communication,
Speaker 1: and like, well, I think they would cause them to
Speaker 1: hunger for the experience. You know, that's that laid out
Speaker 1: as an option in front of them and in their
Speaker 1: democracy where anybody who wants to can give it, can
Speaker 1: take a shot literally literally, that's well put hunger for
Speaker 1: the experience. I think I learned of all the things
Speaker 1: we've talked about, that's a learning that I'll take away
Speaker 1: because I really do feel I I just I probably
Speaker 1: make it more complicated for myself and I than I should.
Speaker 1: But I feel like, no, it'll just come like a flash.
Speaker 1: I mean, when those three guys stopped on the trail,
Speaker 1: that's to date, that's the best trophy I've ever egg.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. And I made a huge mistake of not
Speaker 1: finding out who they were. Well, if they're listening to this, yeah,
Speaker 1: the older man on the trail would like to say
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, that's right. I mean, how many activities
Speaker 1: do you engage in that you can get so emotionally
Speaker 1: moved that you sit and cry your eyes out because
Speaker 1: it's just so powerful and you think, Holy Macro, thank
Speaker 1: you Jesus for putting me here, you know, giving me
Speaker 1: this generation or whoever you know puts this all together
Speaker 1: for you. Well, well we thank you. I thank you,
Speaker 1: I'm sure Sam, thanks for taking the time to talk
Speaker 1: to us, for your works and hunting and you guys
Speaker 1: are tough. A lot of questions man, man, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I just yeah, I just feel thankful that we were
Speaker 1: able to spend this time and thanks for having us
Speaker 1: here and and any old time. Thanks for being a
Speaker 1: steward for for generations to come. For what else couldn't
Speaker 1: you do? Who got all that stuff in your head?
Speaker 1: Just a lot, a lot to get out? Well, thank
Speaker 1: you again, and and I can't wait to another conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always great talking with you. Well, thank you, Thanks
Speaker 1: Jan I'm looking forward to Alzheimer's running forget all this stuff,
Speaker 1: the world less complicated? Thank you. That's it. That is
Speaker 1: all another episode of the Hunty Collective. In the books
Speaker 1: So Privileged, you have a chance to sit down with
Speaker 1: Jim Pozzlewits to learn about his life, to let you
Speaker 1: all in on what he's done with his life, the
Speaker 1: story of his journey through the hunting world and the
Speaker 1: conservation world into developing the ethic he has around both
Speaker 1: of those things. I hope, very hopeful that this informs
Speaker 1: you and inspires you to do good work in our world.
Speaker 1: It certainly has for me and Sam as well. So
Speaker 1: onto the next thing. What are we doing right now
Speaker 1: in meat either and I always try to let you
Speaker 1: know what we're up to, where we're going, what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do, what we're trying to grow. And at
Speaker 1: this point in time, we really want you to go
Speaker 1: over to the meat Eater's store and check out what's
Speaker 1: there and see. If you can't find a T shirt
Speaker 1: or a hat or maybe a hoodie, you never know
Speaker 1: what you'll find there. There's all kinds of cool stuff
Speaker 1: with a hunting collective logo, with the meat Eata logo.
Speaker 1: There's an awesome shirt for my boy Ryan Callahan. Smells now, lady.
Speaker 1: You'll see that there, so get it done. Get over there. Also,
Speaker 1: I will be appearing at many of the live podcast
Speaker 1: events during the Meat Eat to Live podcast tour. That's
Speaker 1: gonna be fun. We're gonna be a lot of towns.
Speaker 1: We'll hope to see you there. There's vi i P
Speaker 1: tickets some available. Mos are sold out, but there are
Speaker 1: some v i P tickets available and we want you
Speaker 1: to show up and hang with us at these events.
Speaker 1: And if you've never been to one, it's basically a
Speaker 1: bunch of us sitting on a stage doing a podcast
Speaker 1: talking about what we love. So I'll be appearing. If
Speaker 1: you want the dates, you can go to the meat
Speaker 1: eator dot com slash Events, slash Live Podcasts and you'll
Speaker 1: find the dates there. But if you just want me
Speaker 1: to tell you right now, I will. It's Reno on
Speaker 1: February seven, Live at the Sheep Show. That's some tickets
Speaker 1: available for that and get over there sign those up.
Speaker 1: The doors open to one thirty pm. I'll be in
Speaker 1: Sacramento on February nine at eight pm at the Crest
Speaker 1: Theater with the crew, and I'll also be adding one
Speaker 1: more as I will be at the Boise show at
Speaker 1: the Live at the b h A Rendezvous and that's
Speaker 1: on May three. Tickets are not on set right now,
Speaker 1: but they are coming soon and there will be other
Speaker 1: shows added than I'm likely be attending those as well.
Speaker 1: Regardless of where I am, you should try to get
Speaker 1: to where the Mediator Podcast Live Tour is because we'd
Speaker 1: love to see you there man, and it is. It
Speaker 1: is uh a real tangible event where you can come
Speaker 1: and hang with us and hear from us, and we
Speaker 1: can hear from you. Um we really I think everybody
Speaker 1: on this team would say they really appreciate anyone who
Speaker 1: comes out to spend time, money and energy on what
Speaker 1: we believe is the right thing to talk about. So
Speaker 1: with that, we hope to see in those towns. I
Speaker 1: will be talking to you next week on the Hunting
Speaker 1: Collective podcast with another great guest. Hopefully you will enjoy
Speaker 1: see you