Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to episode number forty of The Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: I happen to be Ben O'Brien and also happened to
Speaker 1: be in Bozeman, Montana with my friends Joannest Patelis and
Speaker 1: uh first time guests on the show, Randy Newburgh. Randy
Speaker 1: Newburg of Fresh Tracks and many other awesome pieces of
Speaker 1: content on his platform. So we love Randy. Just to say,
Speaker 1: what a good dude. What a pleasure to sit in
Speaker 1: a room and talk with Randy and have Janni at
Speaker 1: our side. It was a great conversation around ethics, moral principles,
Speaker 1: as it were ethical questions that you all submitted and
Speaker 1: we tried our best to answer. But they're always interesting
Speaker 1: to to bat around, interesting to um I d eight
Speaker 1: on and and find ways to express some pretty complicated
Speaker 1: ideas and hopefully UM way that are clear and I
Speaker 1: can clarify some of your issues out there in the woods.
Speaker 1: So without further ado, please enjoy Randy Newburg and honest
Speaker 1: tell us, Mr Randy Newburgh, how are you, sir? I'm
Speaker 1: so close to perfect, Ben, you couldn't measure the difference,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't try. Thanks for having me, Thank you
Speaker 1: for being on nice. But tell us how are you.
Speaker 1: How are you doing? I'm doing well, thank you. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're randy. We're just coming off the meat Eater Christmas party,
Speaker 1: the first ever Bozeman Meat Eater Christmas party. Um, it
Speaker 1: was a good a good time, but I was most
Speaker 1: struck by the like the amount of actual good game
Speaker 1: and other seafood that we actually, hey, we should have
Speaker 1: invited you. Now I feel bad. I'm telling you how
Speaker 1: great it was. It's all right. I could have brought
Speaker 1: something over. You know, I had a bison tag this year,
Speaker 1: and I could have brought some bison. Yeah, you got
Speaker 1: a few steaks, and I do. But you know, I
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah, I'll get over it next year. Yanni,
Speaker 1: you injected a secret deer ham. Mm hmm, I never
Speaker 1: did get I wanted to before we start, get your
Speaker 1: method on that, because it was If anybody saw my instagram,
Speaker 1: it was one of the best wild game hams I've
Speaker 1: ever eat in my life. So please the secret deer
Speaker 1: definitely helps because it is one tender little animal. But
Speaker 1: my neighbor did the same exact process with a young
Speaker 1: mule deer's ham for Thanksgiving, and I had some of
Speaker 1: it a couple of days later leftovers and it was
Speaker 1: equally good, tender, juicy. But yeah, I didn't do anything special,
Speaker 1: just took Brian recipe out of the old Meat Eater
Speaker 1: cookbook that better go out and one. If you want
Speaker 1: one before the next hunting season, get ordered it now
Speaker 1: because they're back ordered. You'll get it about yeah June.
Speaker 1: Um no, I'm joking there. I won't take that long
Speaker 1: that there's more coming. I don't know exactly when. But anyways,
Speaker 1: I made a Brian and I did two hams, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think I just injected them twice. But I have
Speaker 1: one of those, um, I don't know what they call.
Speaker 1: It's just like a meat injector. It's like it's a
Speaker 1: it looks like a stainless steel giant needle. It's but
Speaker 1: it's not sharp like a needle. And the end of
Speaker 1: the what would be the needle has three or four
Speaker 1: little ports. You fill it up with Brian and you
Speaker 1: just jamming into that ham and push it in there.
Speaker 1: And I don't know I did that twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: times per ham until the Brian stort of starts squirting
Speaker 1: out of the holes you've been making. And uh, I
Speaker 1: might I think I only did that twice. I did
Speaker 1: when I first put it in the brine, and then
Speaker 1: maybe two days later, and I brined it for I
Speaker 1: put it on Saturday morning and we started cooking at
Speaker 1: Wednesday at about two or three in the afternoon, So
Speaker 1: five days and uh yeah. There might have been a
Speaker 1: couple of gray spots right around the bone where Brian
Speaker 1: didn't quite reach. Didn't matter to me. But it was good, fantastic, fantastic.
Speaker 1: We smoked it for I don't know, four to six
Speaker 1: hours around yeah, something something like that. It was. It
Speaker 1: was pretty unbelievable. You you ever seeking to your hunted, right,
Speaker 1: I have not, because listen to you guys talk about this.
Speaker 1: I have a full let's a blacktail ham in my
Speaker 1: freether right now, off fault hind quarter, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what to do with that. This may be the
Speaker 1: way to go. Yeah, what I like about it when
Speaker 1: you brian it and then smoke it, it seems like
Speaker 1: it gives you much better leftovers than with just a roast.
Speaker 1: Roasts are good. You can then slice them into a sandwich.
Speaker 1: But it's like that hamminess of it, you know what
Speaker 1: the Brian does. Um, the last one we did. We
Speaker 1: did it for a little cooking special we did, and
Speaker 1: my daughter and I the other daughter in my wife
Speaker 1: just weren't that into it. So she and I ate
Speaker 1: on it for a good week. Well and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like because you've brind it and smoked. It's just
Speaker 1: it's cured, right, not going bad. No, it's a sandwich
Speaker 1: for however long you wanted to be. Well, yeah, we'd
Speaker 1: have it in the morn with eggs. We make a sandwich,
Speaker 1: then we reheat it and have with some mustard in
Speaker 1: the evening. It's the way, it's the life. That's the life.
Speaker 1: Well normally, normally, well, we bullshit way more. We would
Speaker 1: probably bullshit for another hour. That's what I excel at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. That's why I'm sure. That's why I'm here
Speaker 1: is the Janice has been on my platforms before, so
Speaker 1: he knows that I'm below average at everything other than
Speaker 1: b Yeah, I try to be. I try to be
Speaker 1: just just under average at everything in life. So not
Speaker 1: to increase expectations, right, I'd like to keep them right
Speaker 1: there at average. But for some reason, we were talking
Speaker 1: about this before we hit record um. For some reason,
Speaker 1: ethics has been something that like people have been sending
Speaker 1: me and I'm sure sending for the media podcast, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're any like these ethical quandaries, these ponderings
Speaker 1: that people have that they can't answer. They you know,
Speaker 1: they trust the three of us somehow to answer them. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know, I don't get it. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me why. Speaking merely for myself, I could be
Speaker 1: misplaced trust, But yes, me too. But that's what makes
Speaker 1: the ethics thing interesting and a struggle. And that's something
Speaker 1: we'd like to talk about, right, because it is based
Speaker 1: off your like personal moral compass. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that everybody wrote in doesn't have a strong one, but
Speaker 1: just maybe on this one particular question or topic they have,
Speaker 1: it's just wavering a little bit and they're just looking
Speaker 1: for maybe a little bit of guidance or just some
Speaker 1: other people's opinions. Yeah, I mean, hunting is such a
Speaker 1: varied practice, right. You do things that you have different perspectives,
Speaker 1: different experiences, different traditions, and the way that things happen,
Speaker 1: and like when your traditions, um, the way you do
Speaker 1: things collide with someone else is sometimes it could seem
Speaker 1: like something on the ethical is happening, which is that's
Speaker 1: just the way we do it right. And I, I said,
Speaker 1: on a nonprofit board for thirteen years, and our goal
Speaker 1: was about hunting behavior and hunting ethics. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that was very common to the quandaries presented
Speaker 1: to us is how people can can conflated, conflicted, can confused,
Speaker 1: whatever term you want to say. Uh. They seem to
Speaker 1: use the term hunter ethics as a way to speak
Speaker 1: of their personal preferences. And there's a hunter who's serious
Speaker 1: indoe philosophy. He's a professor at Cornell University. His name
Speaker 1: is Jim Tantillo. And Jim was very good at talking
Speaker 1: about the true essence of what is an f what
Speaker 1: what is ethics, and what is personal preference. So I
Speaker 1: whenever someone uses the word ethics, I start having this
Speaker 1: real almost like then my intentas are vibrating. Is this
Speaker 1: a question about true ethics or is this just someone
Speaker 1: saying this is my personal way of doing things and
Speaker 1: someone else does it differently and I want confirmation that
Speaker 1: I'm doing it right and they're doing it wrong or
Speaker 1: and I I don't want to say I stray away
Speaker 1: from it, but a lot of times I will do
Speaker 1: it or my response will be kind of what you
Speaker 1: just said, Ben, is that this might be a cultural, geographic,
Speaker 1: whatever difference in how we do it, but is it
Speaker 1: truly an ethical issue? Yeah? And I think you know
Speaker 1: every conversation we have around ethics, when you hear the
Speaker 1: question or you hear the story, what you're thinking is
Speaker 1: it is this an ethics situation or are you just
Speaker 1: wondering why you're ways different than someone else? Right? Like
Speaker 1: it just it always ends up that way. Can you just,
Speaker 1: in Layman's terms, kind of explain a little bit about
Speaker 1: how how he differentiated the two, like what was the
Speaker 1: main difference between ethics and just like your personal way? Well,
Speaker 1: Jim is one of these people who have a brain
Speaker 1: bigger than my body. So I'm going to destroy it
Speaker 1: by trying to summarize the You take someone with a
Speaker 1: PhD and philosophy and ask an accountant to explain what
Speaker 1: they're talking about, you're heading down the wrong path to
Speaker 1: start with. Uh. But he, Jim does a very good
Speaker 1: job of, in a brief system or a brief term,
Speaker 1: explaining the kind of how we as us human culture
Speaker 1: arrived at this notion of ethics. There are certain accepted
Speaker 1: norms and certain unaccepted norms. Now, the norm is usually
Speaker 1: the motivation and the person feelings of why or or
Speaker 1: what you're doing in contrast to how you your motives
Speaker 1: versus others. Okay, a preference is, well, I shoot a
Speaker 1: traditional bow rather than a countpound bow. Some people will
Speaker 1: try to mix it up as an ethics argument. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. Some people will say, well, I hunt bears
Speaker 1: over bait, but or someone will say I spot in
Speaker 1: stock them, but those other guys out of the hun
Speaker 1: him over bait. That's not an ethics issue. That is
Speaker 1: really an issue related to preferences, right. Uh. Your motive
Speaker 1: for either of them is to go out and get
Speaker 1: some some food and fill a tack. How you do it,
Speaker 1: there's not usually an ethics issue. Yeah, And most of
Speaker 1: the things that we'll we'll tackle here this afternoon are
Speaker 1: your first reaction a lot of times as well. It depends,
Speaker 1: it depends on what your motivation is, on what your
Speaker 1: value system is, on the angle at which you come
Speaker 1: at this, you know, And I think that's like moral
Speaker 1: principles in general are just tough to define. You know.
Speaker 1: It's such a man, it's it's such a malleable idea
Speaker 1: that it's almost scary to like dive into and try
Speaker 1: to answer these things because there's there's no answer. There's
Speaker 1: sometimes where you d have to draw an ethical line,
Speaker 1: like that is an ethical one. You damn well know it, sir,
Speaker 1: I mean you know it. I think we often feel
Speaker 1: that we as hunters are different than the rest of society,
Speaker 1: when we're really nothing more than a cross section of
Speaker 1: the bigger society. And if you step out of the
Speaker 1: hunting world into any other part of our society, there
Speaker 1: are the same ethics questions. Obviously they have a different
Speaker 1: contact and a different discussion about them. But every activity
Speaker 1: in society has its ethics. Whether we're talking business, whether
Speaker 1: we're talking about volunteerism, whether we're talking about the elopment
Speaker 1: of landscapes, whatever it is, you end up in the
Speaker 1: same areas of discussion about what's ethical not ethical. Very
Speaker 1: often in those same discussions people use a sideboard of well,
Speaker 1: legal is my sideboard, and I'm willing to come inside
Speaker 1: that even further to define what my creed or my
Speaker 1: ethic is. Yeah, but we're no difference than the rest
Speaker 1: of the society. We think we are, but we're not yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it's good the hunting community in recent
Speaker 1: time that you can probably you know, having your experience
Speaker 1: UM much deeper than mine. But I think in recent
Speaker 1: years that there's been a more self awareness, like more like, hey,
Speaker 1: we this is complex, this is we are killing something here,
Speaker 1: rather than just we do it this way and don't
Speaker 1: question us. I think there's more given the fact that
Speaker 1: we had four hundred and seventy one people message Instagram
Speaker 1: with different things they were wondering about, Like people are
Speaker 1: willing to go there, They're willing to do it. It's
Speaker 1: definitely a modern human luxury to sit around and think
Speaker 1: about these things. That is truely honest, that that is
Speaker 1: very true. I think if there's a and you get
Speaker 1: into that modern luxury discussion in the hunting world, when
Speaker 1: you see cultural traditions that are not considered offensive, say
Speaker 1: in the out just outlying areas of Africa, compared to
Speaker 1: what it is in the United States or even where
Speaker 1: the person comes from. So h a U. S. Citizen
Speaker 1: who goes to Africa and does certain things is going
Speaker 1: to be judged way differently than someone who lives in
Speaker 1: Africa and does certain things. And we we just put
Speaker 1: really critical, uh, microscopes on people based on what their
Speaker 1: background is based done where they're from geographically, and back
Speaker 1: to your point of luxury. Since we in the United
Speaker 1: States have luxuries beyond most of the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: we're going to get judged differently than somebody from South
Speaker 1: America and the rainforest or someone from Sub Saharan Africa
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. I mean it's and it's much like,
Speaker 1: as you know, especially in hunting, the national world doesn't
Speaker 1: really have any ethical quand elk aren't like wondering should
Speaker 1: we mow down this pasture because we're hungry and wolves
Speaker 1: are like, I don't know if we should take that
Speaker 1: calf down. Yeah, you know what, we got them kind
Speaker 1: of pinned into this box canyon feeling a little on us.
Speaker 1: Not fair, it's not fair. Let's let him get back
Speaker 1: out in into the prairie where we can have a
Speaker 1: longer chase and then if we get one we'll feel
Speaker 1: good about now. They're just like A to B A
Speaker 1: to B. And when you get into ethics versus preferences,
Speaker 1: there are some that are just so if you step
Speaker 1: back and you weren't a hunter, the hypocrisy of it
Speaker 1: to someone who's not a hunter is glaring and I
Speaker 1: shoot grouse on the ground. I am unapologetic that I
Speaker 1: shoot grouse out of trees, Grouse on the ground, Grouse
Speaker 1: that fly, not just with your bulb while your old,
Speaker 1: but with a shotgun. If I come up to a
Speaker 1: tree and there are three grouse up in that tree,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be three grouse on the ground. You're coming
Speaker 1: home now. There there are people who would say in
Speaker 1: the same with peasants. So here here's my contradiction. I
Speaker 1: don't shoot pheasants on the ground, okay. But to a
Speaker 1: non hunter who's not familiar with our customs, they would say,
Speaker 1: why would you flush an animal where you have a
Speaker 1: greater likelihood of missing or you know, not a complete
Speaker 1: lethal kill. Why is that considered your norm? You don't
Speaker 1: flush an elk, You don't flush you dear are your weight?
Speaker 1: So to those not in the hunting world, they look
Speaker 1: at us like you people have some really crazy ideas
Speaker 1: about what's right and what's wrong. Yeah, we were talking
Speaker 1: about it yesterday around the European UM feeling on bow hunting.
Speaker 1: Most of Europe they're like, we're just done. That's it's
Speaker 1: either illegal in some places, or they just it's just
Speaker 1: frowned upon. Starting to change a little bit. Some places
Speaker 1: I know of, but traditionally you go over there, it's like,
Speaker 1: we shoot things with rifles because that's the most effective tool,
Speaker 1: right that there is. But at the same time, and
Speaker 1: I've only been Bulgarian, Germany and some other places, but
Speaker 1: at the same time they shoot running game, they do
Speaker 1: driven hunts. I'm like, wait a minute, I could maybe
Speaker 1: get with you on the first part, but the second,
Speaker 1: Like what that doesn't mean you could shoot shoot running
Speaker 1: things because you have rifles. You should still approach it
Speaker 1: as you should try to make make ethically it should
Speaker 1: probably be standing. I would say, I mean fishing with
Speaker 1: my wife as a contradiction, my wife has a statement
Speaker 1: that she says all the time, if you hook them,
Speaker 1: you cook them. So those who listen to my platforms
Speaker 1: know that my wife is a fanatic while angler, and
Speaker 1: while I are as good at table fires, you're going
Speaker 1: to find in the fresh waters in North America, the
Speaker 1: limit in Montana's five. When we go there, once she
Speaker 1: has her five fish were done. Then when I catch
Speaker 1: my five fish, she's on me. Let's go, honey, we're
Speaker 1: into him. Yeah, you know, we've been searching for three days.
Speaker 1: We found them. That's not going out And she just
Speaker 1: crosses her arms and give me this. No, this is
Speaker 1: about acquiring food, and don't be thumping and messing with
Speaker 1: these poor fish and taking them out of the water.
Speaker 1: And I know some people listening are gonna be like, man,
Speaker 1: your wife's got some issues. But it's just her value
Speaker 1: system of where she's at with that. And I would
Speaker 1: say that's the biggest reason. And even though we live
Speaker 1: in the fly fishing capital of the world, or some
Speaker 1: would say here in Bozeman, Montana, the sour looks she
Speaker 1: got when we first moved here, where I knock a
Speaker 1: trout on the head and throat and the cooler and
Speaker 1: we're gonna eat it. That almost the That's where she
Speaker 1: part of what drove her to become more of a
Speaker 1: walleye fisherman. While anglers don't have quite the what would
Speaker 1: I say, the the worry about having to release every
Speaker 1: fish as the trowal world does. So I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that's right or wrong. I'm just saying here's two people
Speaker 1: living in the same household who have completely different perspectives
Speaker 1: or somewhat different perspectives just on something. Fish and fish
Speaker 1: get treated in the eyes of our society differently than mammals,
Speaker 1: differently than bird, differently than I was just gonna say,
Speaker 1: I find that, like I always tell cash re LEAs
Speaker 1: fly fisherman, somebody's like, I'm gonna catching least fisherman. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting way to put it. But hunting has
Speaker 1: already had society is kind of already showing its light
Speaker 1: on hunting and said, what's going on over there? I
Speaker 1: don't really like that. I don't know if I don't
Speaker 1: like that, that doesn't seem ethical. Fishing, especially fly fishing,
Speaker 1: hasn't hasn't gotten that yet, like that it hasn't been
Speaker 1: where um, a guy with a fish, a giant fish
Speaker 1: that he caught that he knows he's gonna throw back
Speaker 1: is getting called out on social media and because it's
Speaker 1: just I would say, it's probably just the thing that
Speaker 1: they're catching, rather than if they were catching an elkins
Speaker 1: throw out it back be different. So I just throw
Speaker 1: those out there to give the audience some contact of
Speaker 1: how I look at this and answer these questions is
Speaker 1: I try to sort out what's a true ethic dilemma
Speaker 1: ethical dilemma versus what's just someone's preference or someone that's good.
Speaker 1: I like that we should start off each question. I
Speaker 1: think it's a real ethical questions. I think that is.
Speaker 1: And if if we get through these and we only
Speaker 1: find one ethical dilemma, I've got hundreds more. But I
Speaker 1: want to add to your thought Ranny about how you
Speaker 1: know people from the outside look at us, going, really,
Speaker 1: why do you guys think of it that way? Or
Speaker 1: do this or do that. One of my neighbors UM,
Speaker 1: as an archaeologist. She works here out of the university,
Speaker 1: and she listens to UM. I don't know if she's
Speaker 1: I should tell her to listen to the High Collective,
Speaker 1: but she listens to the Meteor podcast. She's not a hunter,
Speaker 1: but she listens to it from an archaeologists point of
Speaker 1: view of just like, how come this group of people
Speaker 1: thinks like this? And it's so interesting to her to
Speaker 1: like hear us like go back and forth and why
Speaker 1: you know we put limits and rules and the different things,
Speaker 1: and she just finds it fascinating, probably fascinating and positively
Speaker 1: humorous a time. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's only
Speaker 1: happening now because we're willing to have these conversations like
Speaker 1: in the past. I'm sure you can attest this, Randy,
Speaker 1: but it just wasn't. My dad would always say, just
Speaker 1: don't talk about it, you know, don't if you talk
Speaker 1: about it, the anti hunters might find out, you know,
Speaker 1: but not that it was what we were doing was
Speaker 1: wrong or illegal. It was just like, let's not worry
Speaker 1: about it, Like, let's do what we did we know
Speaker 1: to be right in ethical and if we posted out
Speaker 1: there to the world, we might have to change it.
Speaker 1: He must be just young enough. We're like posting out
Speaker 1: to the world was a thing when you were a kid.
Speaker 1: Because we never had that conversation and we hunted. We
Speaker 1: left Michigan and went to Wisconsin to deer hunt, and
Speaker 1: we had to drive through Chicago. So on the way back,
Speaker 1: I mean, my dad had every version of deer strap
Speaker 1: to We never actually did on the hood, but we
Speaker 1: certainly we definitely had deer on the top. We'd have
Speaker 1: him on those uh like the little care you can
Speaker 1: stick into your hitch just back there, and um, I
Speaker 1: definitely remember getting a few scals rolling through Chicago, But
Speaker 1: my dad wasn't speaking of my dad have so my head, hello,
Speaker 1: I will um. But he was not. He know, we
Speaker 1: never had that conversation. He wasn't worried about it. I
Speaker 1: think my you know, I don't know if we ever
Speaker 1: drive had it directly about social media or anything, but
Speaker 1: more just you know, this is our thing and this
Speaker 1: is what we do. And I think that was a
Speaker 1: prevailing thought of that of that generation, maybe thirty three
Speaker 1: years at the stage. I know you told me your
Speaker 1: song is I'm like, I don't know, I'm gonna I'm yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you feel like it? You know, you
Speaker 1: saw a change in that, in the way that it
Speaker 1: has been treated. I do. Uh. I saw a lot
Speaker 1: of discussion of it happening in the nineties, but we
Speaker 1: were still in the print world at that time, mostly
Speaker 1: a little bit of TV. I uh. I often say
Speaker 1: that most of society, not just hunting, was not ready
Speaker 1: for social media. Yeah. You look at how we interact
Speaker 1: with each other on platforms, and I going to read
Speaker 1: the comments on my YouTube channel or my my Facebook page,
Speaker 1: and not just the Hunting room, but across my personal
Speaker 1: page also. Well, we as a society still aren't prepared
Speaker 1: for interacting with the anonymity that comes with that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I think in the hunting world we weren't prepared
Speaker 1: for that. And we see it also just in the
Speaker 1: manner in which some of our messaging happens. We see
Speaker 1: messaging that just you shake your head and say, really,
Speaker 1: did you? Yeah? Do you thought that was appropriate? Okay?
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've seen a big change in that. I
Speaker 1: think social media or digital media maybe would be the
Speaker 1: better way to say it has brought hunting to a
Speaker 1: point where we have to have this discussion. If we
Speaker 1: aren't having these discussions daily, someone else other people are
Speaker 1: having these discussions about it, and uh, we probably don't.
Speaker 1: You want the conclude. Jan's a very discussion to drive
Speaker 1: where we're going with this. Yeah, yeah, it's I think
Speaker 1: it's very very healthy. Yeah. Well, let's let's get into
Speaker 1: some of these They are varied, and they are some
Speaker 1: of them are deep deep. Um. This is from Kevin Thompson.
Speaker 1: Kevin and a fellow Maryland or so shout out to that. Um.
Speaker 1: He said, I hunt mostly the Patuxent River State Park
Speaker 1: in Howard County and my friends family farm down in
Speaker 1: Calvert County. In short, my question around ethics is regarding
Speaker 1: crow hunting. My dad brought me up in the woods
Speaker 1: on crow hunting because it was a way to go
Speaker 1: introduce safe gun use and the idea of hunting. We
Speaker 1: never kept our kill. He still enjoys crow hunting, but
Speaker 1: I find it harder to rationalize as I've grown older
Speaker 1: and begun to hunt more and dive deeper into my
Speaker 1: own ethics of the sport. I love the time of in
Speaker 1: in the woods with him, but I find it hard
Speaker 1: to shoot a handful of crows and leave them for foxes.
Speaker 1: Might be over analyzing, but I want to see if you,
Speaker 1: Randy or the Eagle had thoughts on this. What do
Speaker 1: you think Randy Uh, As someone who's never crow hunted,
Speaker 1: I it's hard for me to put myself in those
Speaker 1: shoes because I I don't know what the cultural norms
Speaker 1: are in in Maryland about crow hunting. I don't know
Speaker 1: how it evolved or a lot of things have you
Speaker 1: have evolved from back in our our history where we
Speaker 1: viewed wildlife as a competitor for other resources, whether it's
Speaker 1: the game, dam manager and I believe crow that one time,
Speaker 1: we're deemed to be like like any predator. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And so they get viewed a little differently over time.
Speaker 1: Some of those views of that have changed. I think
Speaker 1: just the fact that this is a son talking about
Speaker 1: his his father. Generationally we have different views because of
Speaker 1: how we've evolved and how we engage and interact with
Speaker 1: other hunters. Uh, what I would get back to, what's
Speaker 1: his dad's motive for shooting crows? Is it? Is it
Speaker 1: back to the old Hey, you know the farmer is
Speaker 1: tired of the crow is great and problems or is
Speaker 1: he had the mindset that crows are what are ruining
Speaker 1: the nesting of woodcock and rough grouse and whatever else
Speaker 1: there might be His dad might have a completely different
Speaker 1: view of why he's doing this. And so yeah, he
Speaker 1: says here to introduce safegun use and like what hunting is,
Speaker 1: which might be an oxymoron's like, that's not really what
Speaker 1: hunting is, not walking around the shooting the thing and
Speaker 1: leaving it lay right. Um, so we have that to
Speaker 1: go on. But even still, I think, I think I
Speaker 1: when I think about this type of thing, I think,
Speaker 1: as hunters, and whether we would admit it or not,
Speaker 1: we like when the gloves come off right. We like
Speaker 1: when it's a wild hog and we can shoot it
Speaker 1: out of a helicopter. Like there's something attractive to that
Speaker 1: because the ethics are so that can be stressful, and
Speaker 1: it can be confusing and complex to like a dress.
Speaker 1: Even this, um So, crows being you know, being from Maryland,
Speaker 1: I never knew a whole bunch of people at hunting crows,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have a few, and it was always
Speaker 1: around this is a nuisance animal. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a nice way to spend your Saturday. It's
Speaker 1: leisurely because it's not wrapped in this ethical you know,
Speaker 1: quandary that we all have around what we kill. So
Speaker 1: I think for me, this is a good This is
Speaker 1: a pretty solid ethical question, especially around the relationship with
Speaker 1: the person who taught you how to hunt and going
Speaker 1: back to them and saying, hey, you remember the way
Speaker 1: you taught me. I now I am questioning the way
Speaker 1: that you taught me how to hunt or or the
Speaker 1: way that we did it. And I think this this
Speaker 1: is something that I've gone through with my dad. I'm like, hey, dad,
Speaker 1: remember the way that we did it when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. We don't. I'm not doing that anymore. Um So,
Speaker 1: I think even that it's probably a you know, generationally,
Speaker 1: you know, appropriate thing to to discuss and explorer. You know,
Speaker 1: if you ever hunt crows? Never have you know a
Speaker 1: few people that have? And do you have any feeling
Speaker 1: like you need to like you want to? No? No,
Speaker 1: definitely not. I mean again, for me personally, I think that,
Speaker 1: like all predators, they're part of the ecosystem. And I
Speaker 1: feel like, now sort of that's how science, game management
Speaker 1: and all that stuff looks at We're not just looking
Speaker 1: at it like oh, we need more else, so let's
Speaker 1: kill every wolf and every mountain lion and every grizzly bear.
Speaker 1: We've realized that that's not like the best way to
Speaker 1: have this like big happy hunting world, right, Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not for me, but again it's legal. Do
Speaker 1: I think it's ethnically wrong to go and kill some
Speaker 1: stuff and let it lie? I mean, we do it
Speaker 1: with all kinds of predators, And I think that if
Speaker 1: we just said, if it wasn't crows, but let's say
Speaker 1: if it was chipmunks, Right, they're not even a predator,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of like a past. You can consider
Speaker 1: a raven or a crow a past. I guess you
Speaker 1: can't shoot ravens, right, only crows, But you know, no
Speaker 1: one's gonna have any ethical problem about you shooting too
Speaker 1: many chipmunks. Okay, maybe some ardent you know, real animal
Speaker 1: over but most hunters aren't gonna have this conversation over
Speaker 1: a chipmunk, right. Yeah, that's like that hierarchy of what
Speaker 1: we care about, right, they're greater. This is a perfect
Speaker 1: illustration of how we place certain values on some species
Speaker 1: and no value or a little value on other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you you know, if you talk to an ecologist,
Speaker 1: they would say, like a healthy ecosystem very important, all
Speaker 1: things biodiversity, all things very important, you know. So let's
Speaker 1: not think of a predator or something we can kill
Speaker 1: a nauseum and you know, an unglit or a game
Speaker 1: animal something we should like really protect, like they all
Speaker 1: if we're doing it right, we're managing them all correctly,
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, if someone called me up and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to go on a crow shoot, because I've
Speaker 1: never done it, I'd say, well, what do we do
Speaker 1: with the crows? And if they said, wow, we just
Speaker 1: leave them lay out there? Thing? And this is just
Speaker 1: my own personal yeah value is I think No, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not interested. Yeah, No, I would say that too,
Speaker 1: But then someone might throw it back at me and say, well,
Speaker 1: you trapple out of nuisance beaver for people in Bozeman, Montana. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's the difference. Well, I have friends like Joannas who
Speaker 1: like to eat them. We're also talking about beaver gloves,
Speaker 1: which I'm very interested and I salvage the hides, I
Speaker 1: said allegedly castors, I said all edged details. Ah, but
Speaker 1: so I'd have to look in the mirror and say,
Speaker 1: am I judging that person differently than some of my
Speaker 1: own behaviors? And yeah, because sometimes, yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: gets tricky where we look at someone else doing it
Speaker 1: and you and doing in your head, you can go,
Speaker 1: you know what, the only reason you could be going
Speaker 1: out there to do that is for fun? Yeah, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, I don't like it because you're
Speaker 1: shooting stuff just for fun. But now back to this
Speaker 1: guy's story, I feel like his dad is just like
Speaker 1: it's another way to be out in the woods, right,
Speaker 1: And maybe I think what he needs to do and
Speaker 1: he needs to have a conversation with his dad about
Speaker 1: it and say, you know what, man, I want to
Speaker 1: still go out and shoot a bunch of stuff. Let's
Speaker 1: go and uh find some rabbits. Yeah, a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And now that I'm thinking about, I got a buddy
Speaker 1: that bates crows, like put the little decoys out. They
Speaker 1: put like a little poly of corn and sit there
Speaker 1: and just whack crows all day. And nobody's eating crows.
Speaker 1: Very few, very few. If someone is, please let us know.
Speaker 1: But I think that sound advice. I think I think
Speaker 1: it's it's say, hey, look, honey, is always fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's always some fun in it, um, But in this case,
Speaker 1: is there something else we can do to be having
Speaker 1: fun that doesn't involve, um, killing a bunch of crows?
Speaker 1: Or is like, hey, is this better for where we live,
Speaker 1: our you know, our place, our ecosystem. If it is,
Speaker 1: then let's keep doing it and let's have fun, and
Speaker 1: let's let's feel like we're ethically sound and we're doing
Speaker 1: all right in disregard um. Next one, and this is
Speaker 1: one I think that could go a while. But this
Speaker 1: comes from Scott Henry and he says, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about hunters using wild game to feed their dogs?
Speaker 1: This is a common practice among water fowler's and it's
Speaker 1: never sat right with me. I'm not talking scraps. Either
Speaker 1: they will go out shoot a limited birds with zero
Speaker 1: intention of eating said birds themselves. However, the birds aren't
Speaker 1: going to waste in quotation marks, they are being used
Speaker 1: as pet food. I'd love to hear your thoughts on
Speaker 1: this and in general, feeding wild games, feeding wild game
Speaker 1: to your dogs. Randy, WHOA that that one strikes me
Speaker 1: as worrisome from the standpoint of it's in most states,
Speaker 1: feeding ducks or geese to your dog would be considered illegal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be. That would be all right. So if
Speaker 1: we you can go under want and waste. Right, So
Speaker 1: if we say that the the absolute furthest side board
Speaker 1: in the discussion of ethics is legal, and we'll move
Speaker 1: in from there. This is even outside the sideboard of legal.
Speaker 1: I that one I have some ethical issues with if
Speaker 1: if you say I'm going to go out there for
Speaker 1: the sole purpose of shooting these and and you justify
Speaker 1: it by saying, well, I'm going to feed it to
Speaker 1: my dog. I've heard the same thing about spring bear
Speaker 1: in Montana. People say, oh, yeah, I shoot him my
Speaker 1: salvage to meat, but I feed it to my dog. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, Uh, technically that's you know, that's illegal. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think most people, when they analyze ethics, I would say,
Speaker 1: if it's outside the legal confines that our society has
Speaker 1: developed through our our process of governance and laws, if
Speaker 1: we really are a society of laws, it seems as
Speaker 1: though being outside the legal sideboards certainly puts it in
Speaker 1: the non ethical part. Yeah, yeah, that's a neat like,
Speaker 1: that's an easy one, and like and in this case,
Speaker 1: if yeah, if if you're going hunting to kill, you know,
Speaker 1: a game animal, and you intend to just feed it
Speaker 1: to your dogs, don't do that. We could probably say.
Speaker 1: Without none of us are wearing badges, we can all say,
Speaker 1: don't do that. And if someone in your group is
Speaker 1: doing it, tell him to stop doing it, because that
Speaker 1: is not the reason here. I think the next level
Speaker 1: would be in the case of hey, I'm just feeding
Speaker 1: them scraps, or I'm feeding them cut the meat that
Speaker 1: I don't like, or cut some meat that we don't
Speaker 1: have time to cook, or I'm just feeding them the shanks.
Speaker 1: Just just let ut you in the shanks. I think
Speaker 1: that probably happens a lot because it's attached to a
Speaker 1: bone and it would be easy to do. That's what
Speaker 1: are the thoughts around that, like how ethic you know,
Speaker 1: like this is something you could eat, but you're handing
Speaker 1: it over to Yeah, that's your dog. But I think
Speaker 1: that's where the discussion gets a little foggy here. Most
Speaker 1: states will say, let's use a big game animal. For instance,
Speaker 1: Most states in their regulations say what is the required
Speaker 1: salvage of meat or use of meat that you have
Speaker 1: to take from the field to not violate their rules
Speaker 1: they call want and waste. If you don't comply with that,
Speaker 1: you are subject to a citation for wasting in this
Speaker 1: game animal. So in most instances it's going to be
Speaker 1: front quarter, hind, quarterbackstraps, tenderloin. Some do or don't say
Speaker 1: the next meat. None of them say anything about the heart,
Speaker 1: the organs of living kidneys, and the ribs. Alaska is
Speaker 1: famous for strict one waste, but most states are famous
Speaker 1: for our pretty lax. So I'll use an example of
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who has probably raised my self
Speaker 1: introspection or whatever, if that's the term, the introspection of
Speaker 1: my own activities more than anybody. And and he's avidel hunter,
Speaker 1: only Hans Cawalc because he it's for him. It's strictly
Speaker 1: about food there. They're nothing about the aniler part of
Speaker 1: it that interests him in the least. He salvages as
Speaker 1: much of it as he can and down to every
Speaker 1: everything he can carry out of there. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the parts he boils or he processes or uses
Speaker 1: for dog and he takes it to the next level
Speaker 1: of He's not a big fan of how commercially processed
Speaker 1: dog food is made, what that does to the landscape,
Speaker 1: what that does to I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: how dog foods made, there's that's a that's a can
Speaker 1: of ethics, societal ethics that might really, yeah, what can
Speaker 1: hunters do to help that out? So his theory is,
Speaker 1: I'm one, I'm not going to participate in that system.
Speaker 1: My dog is my closest non human friend, and I
Speaker 1: want them to have the highest ality food, just like
Speaker 1: I'm getting nice quality food. So livers, tongues, pieces that
Speaker 1: maybe he's not using, he brings back and he he
Speaker 1: feeds to his dog. And so some would say, well,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between an edible part, like you said,
Speaker 1: the liver, Why is it okay to feed that to
Speaker 1: your dog but not the breast off of allard yeah,
Speaker 1: now I've heard I've heard some people say. In fact,
Speaker 1: the friend Andrew McKean, well, I'm sure we all know. Well, um,
Speaker 1: him and I had this conversation one time around one
Speaker 1: waste laws, because I'm like, is a universal one and
Speaker 1: waste law something we should pursue, and he just it's like, man,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's tough, and it's tough. And his point
Speaker 1: was like, I think it could make criminals out of
Speaker 1: the squeamish, Like it could make criminals out of folks
Speaker 1: who would prefer not to eat these things, Like I could,
Speaker 1: I could see that. But I also like, even in
Speaker 1: I was just reading them Montana, that's a little far fetched.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you all a sudden said sure you
Speaker 1: guys start eating hoofs and eyeballs. Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: if you what around internal Oregan though, if you said
Speaker 1: you must take the liver, you must take the heart,
Speaker 1: you must take the paunch, like you could go far
Speaker 1: that far. But in Montana they say for big game animals,
Speaker 1: all four quarters above the hawk, including loin and backstrap,
Speaker 1: fall into the category of of one waist. Hunters who
Speaker 1: can't use the wild game meat could donate it to
Speaker 1: a neighbor, friend or local food bank. And it's like,
Speaker 1: are you donating it to your dog like man's best friend? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: is it any different? Is it any different? Let's say
Speaker 1: you're not eating either anything you kill. Is it any
Speaker 1: different to feed it to your dog or to dropped
Speaker 1: off at the food bank. If we're talking about ethics
Speaker 1: of you going out there and killing and then either
Speaker 1: eating it yourself consuming it or not, does it matter
Speaker 1: if you if it goes to the dog or go
Speaker 1: to the food bank. Yeah, Because if it's a question
Speaker 1: of just replacement, like you're you know, like this wild
Speaker 1: game is replacing factory farms something or or store bought something.
Speaker 1: In that case, there is a direct line too. You
Speaker 1: know this this is still doing some good. Whether it
Speaker 1: just really depends like to the level of what you're
Speaker 1: doing it. You know, if you're flopping a backstrap down
Speaker 1: for your dog, I mean, I got I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: you'd have to really give me, you have to really
Speaker 1: give me a good reason, yeah, that that's not going
Speaker 1: into your belly or somebody one of your family members
Speaker 1: or your neighbor or something. We'd have to have a
Speaker 1: really deep conversation about that. Yeah, but see, I think
Speaker 1: this is beyond that. I think it's more about, like,
Speaker 1: is it ethically okay to shoot stuff and not eat it?
Speaker 1: That's I think that's the core of Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: core of this question, and that was the core of
Speaker 1: the first one too. I mean that, like, if they
Speaker 1: were eating the crows, that email would have never came in,
Speaker 1: that message would have never came in. And back to
Speaker 1: the point of where ethics becomes a discussion of motives
Speaker 1: and preferences. Is usually a discussion of how or mechanisms
Speaker 1: and tools used. I think if it if both these
Speaker 1: questions are a discussion of the ethics of shooting something
Speaker 1: with no intend of eating it, most of society, even
Speaker 1: most of the hunting community, is going to say that
Speaker 1: deserves some some scrutiny, Yeah, some ethical Look, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we could probably all just just not agree on that.
Speaker 1: It's not universe. None of these things are universal. But
Speaker 1: as if you're a non hunter or even an anti hunter,
Speaker 1: I it is hard to sit in a room with
Speaker 1: somebody who doesn't go hunting and say, I shot that
Speaker 1: and killed it, but I didn't need it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna be in a fight or an
Speaker 1: argument pretty quickly, and your rationalization is going to seem
Speaker 1: whether it's altruistic or whether you think it's right, it's
Speaker 1: going to seem selfish regardless of how you talk around it.
Speaker 1: Like there's just no way to get around that. Um coyote.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we had we had the question
Speaker 1: last time about shooting coyotes and what that means. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing because you don't nobody's eating him. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what my buddy Bendricks wrote in you know Bendricks,
Speaker 1: he's Kyle eating fool. I've got his recipe, and uh,
Speaker 1: next time I run across Kyle it shoot him a
Speaker 1: reply about crows and it's gonna die and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: eat it. He was saying that back in the day,
Speaker 1: he felt like some of our indigenous would that was
Speaker 1: like the meal you served when guests were over wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily kyo, but to be dog or a wolf. And
Speaker 1: some of the northern indigenous people of the North Marin continent, yeah,
Speaker 1: they eate wolf all the time. Our friend Ryan Callahan
Speaker 1: was very excited to try to cook and eat one
Speaker 1: of his friends over there in Idaho shot a wolf recently.
Speaker 1: It was very excited to get some of that meat
Speaker 1: and cooking and eat it. I don't think he was
Speaker 1: able to get it in time, but he was excited
Speaker 1: to do it and see I would eat it. I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't have any problem with it. What like, how
Speaker 1: do you how did we get to a point where society, like,
Speaker 1: culturally we just don't think of these things as edible creatures,
Speaker 1: like we just don't. Um, I speaking of the wolf issue. Um.
Speaker 1: When Montana opened their wolf season, Steve called me and said,
Speaker 1: because I told him I was going wolf onund and
Speaker 1: he said, well, if you guys get one, let's cook it.
Speaker 1: And this was way back before either of our platforms
Speaker 1: where the size they are today. And so we hunted
Speaker 1: for eleven days. We finally shot a wolf fair in
Speaker 1: Montana and skinned it. Got it already. I'm you know,
Speaker 1: put this thing in the freezer and Steph and I
Speaker 1: are going to look like it's very red, very red. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean not supid, better than a black bear? Yeah? Lightly? Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously not like like like you don't have
Speaker 1: any store. Um. So I take it to the fish
Speaker 1: wildlife and parks off us here in Montana. You gotta
Speaker 1: bring them in and and they way, They checked the teeth,
Speaker 1: everything else. And I'm talking to the biologist and the
Speaker 1: biologist says, what are you gonna do with it? Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna eat it. And instantly the biologist says, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa whoa. Wait a second. Here, this biologist had worked
Speaker 1: on the introduction team and had been monitoring the health
Speaker 1: of all these colored wolves. The disease what killed a
Speaker 1: lot of them, and this biologist said, I would strongly
Speaker 1: recommend against that. What And I said, We'll just cook
Speaker 1: it enough to get rid of whatever's there in. The
Speaker 1: biologist said I would suggest not eating that, which struck me.
Speaker 1: So about a month later, Steve reaches out to me
Speaker 1: and says, what did you do with the wolf? I
Speaker 1: told him what I just did do And I don't
Speaker 1: think Steve was convinced that we couldn't cook it out
Speaker 1: of that. So point is, how do we get to
Speaker 1: that stage? I think our concern for human health sometimes
Speaker 1: is so hyper sensitive that we'll take zero risk. And
Speaker 1: as a think about wolves have been on this landscape
Speaker 1: since forever, oh other people's prior cultures, prior societies didn't
Speaker 1: have back to your point on as a luxuries didn't
Speaker 1: have the luxury of Saint Juan. I'm I'm not going
Speaker 1: to take that risk. They looked at and said, I'm hungry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm hungry. Right. I took a lot of I took
Speaker 1: a lot of risk in trying to harvest whatever this animal.
Speaker 1: I'm going to eat this thing. I so ever, since that,
Speaker 1: I've struggled with the idea that we didn't eat that
Speaker 1: wolf at the recommendation of a biologist talk about and
Speaker 1: that's just a comes back to the modern luxury we
Speaker 1: we started around, you know were I I saw it
Speaker 1: around Havelina like always, oh, skunk pig. You know that
Speaker 1: the cowboys in Texas wouldn't even touch him, they kill
Speaker 1: him on site, wouldn't even touch him, you know. When
Speaker 1: I got down there, like, yeah, if you shoot a hobling,
Speaker 1: just leave it, like I just put in the bushes.
Speaker 1: And the first time I shot one, I like, why not,
Speaker 1: just let's try to eat it? Oh they stink? Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've shot a lot of stinky old Like
Speaker 1: the smell of an animal doesn't translate. Always taste the meat.
Speaker 1: And we cooked the first one shot we cooked up,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, this is delicious. What are we talking about?
Speaker 1: And every time that we would go back that same ranch,
Speaker 1: I'd be excited to shoot one and skin and eat it.
Speaker 1: And so I just perspective like cultural norms that' say
Speaker 1: this thing is this way, and and it likely was
Speaker 1: just the cowboys and the ranch hands there would shoot
Speaker 1: him and smell them and not want to touch him,
Speaker 1: and it and it grew from there. It's just like
Speaker 1: a cultural norm in Texas. Um. I'm you know, I
Speaker 1: hate that that, you know, with our transplanting of wolves
Speaker 1: and our fear of you know, disease, that we've probably
Speaker 1: implanted that in our culture now that it's you know,
Speaker 1: I know we have because nobody's sitting around going I'd
Speaker 1: love to eat. Though somebody says I just ate a coyo.
Speaker 1: You look at them like they're crazy. I'll take that
Speaker 1: to the next step. My son just shot a bowl
Speaker 1: out in Wyoming in the absolute core of their chronic
Speaker 1: wasting disease area. People have asked, that's so you're gonna
Speaker 1: eat it. Yeah, I'm gonna eat it. You can get
Speaker 1: it tested first. You're not gonna eat it, really there's
Speaker 1: been no proven Yeah, but like the like Brian Richards,
Speaker 1: the like own c w D in our country, might
Speaker 1: be the most knowledgeable person about it. He says, you
Speaker 1: hate to be the first one. I'm back to that
Speaker 1: point of risks. Your risks are sold. Yes, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: eating it. We've already started, so I'm far down that
Speaker 1: path already. Would you go like full bone in neck,
Speaker 1: groast like stuff like that? Obviously, when you're hunting in
Speaker 1: a c w D endemic area, you're not gonna you
Speaker 1: gotta leave the bones behind and yeah, yeah, and you're
Speaker 1: not gonna have a spinal tissue or any of that
Speaker 1: stuff that you bring with you. So I you know,
Speaker 1: in some listening are probably saying, well, Randy, why did
Speaker 1: you let a biology just talk to you out of
Speaker 1: eating a wolf? But yeah, everybody says you shouldn't eat
Speaker 1: You should get every animal tested in a c w
Speaker 1: D area, and if it's positive, you should junk it. Well,
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons why I won't junk it is
Speaker 1: where am I gonna junk it? In Montana? If it's infected?
Speaker 1: If I go dump it somewhere, am I going to
Speaker 1: spread a hotspot to c w D on the landscape.
Speaker 1: Someone to say no, because it's not brain tissue landfills
Speaker 1: where you're supposed to a lot of Yeah, there's get
Speaker 1: a lot of folks are in the hotspots are like
Speaker 1: dumpsters where you can write. Yeah, So I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: my risk. Yeah, what the hell I this elk is?
Speaker 1: It's if it's got c w D man c w
Speaker 1: D O tastes pretty damn good. They're gonna come out
Speaker 1: with the seasoning at CWD on it tastes delicious. All right,
Speaker 1: let's see what else we got. This one came this,
Speaker 1: This one came in a bunch of different forms, and
Speaker 1: I'll just read this one. Um, I must have got
Speaker 1: fifty of these. So you're out hunting and this came
Speaker 1: from Tommy Kato. You're so you're out hunting. The first
Speaker 1: critter that walks by is limping pretty badly. It's obvious
Speaker 1: that it was either on the losing end of a
Speaker 1: fight or had survived another hunter's porch shop placement, and
Speaker 1: the wound has healed. It's not the animal you're after.
Speaker 1: Whether that would be a big giant buck is Steve
Speaker 1: Ronella puts it or a dough but you have a
Speaker 1: tag and can legally hunt it. Should you take that
Speaker 1: animal understanding that there may be significant meat loss around
Speaker 1: the old wound, and in an efort to spirit from
Speaker 1: what would be a slow what could be a slow,
Speaker 1: painful death. I think the answer is pretty cut and dry.
Speaker 1: If a deer slash elk runs by in front of
Speaker 1: you and was just shot and still bleeding, you finished
Speaker 1: the job. But what about something that has healed but
Speaker 1: the animal is clearly struggling as a result of the injury.
Speaker 1: So there's lots to unpack there for sure. But Yanna,
Speaker 1: you want to tackle Listen first, I can try. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think we hunters and people just happened to
Speaker 1: be out in the field with a weapon need to
Speaker 1: be playing uh guide out there and interfering. Um, you
Speaker 1: can just la let nature be do its thing. And
Speaker 1: I don't think you need to feel bad that there's
Speaker 1: an animal out there suffering. We don't even know that
Speaker 1: they actually do suffer. He might just be doing his thing,
Speaker 1: And I think you can't in that moment probably make
Speaker 1: that decision, know for sure that if I shoot it now,
Speaker 1: it's gonna die now versus it dying in a week.
Speaker 1: You don't know that there's just especially with the wound
Speaker 1: that's healed over. Um, I did do it once I
Speaker 1: saw one had been hit on the mule deer dough
Speaker 1: had been hit on the highway ahead of me, and
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of the road just like
Speaker 1: barely could lift up its head, you know, And so
Speaker 1: we pulled off. And that was back when I thought
Speaker 1: it was a little bit more of a cowboy than
Speaker 1: I actually was. I used to always have a pistol
Speaker 1: kicking around pre kids, you know, just the pistols laying
Speaker 1: around in the car. And so yeah, we pulled her
Speaker 1: off into the ditch and uh, you know, shot her
Speaker 1: and just left her. Um for that kind of reason, right, Um,
Speaker 1: probably should have. I don't know. We've tried. I've tried
Speaker 1: to salvage road kill meat and it didn't work out good. Um,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if there would have been something
Speaker 1: salvage or not. But yeah, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: feel like it's really it's like not our ethical responsibility
Speaker 1: to be out there like be like, oh that animals
Speaker 1: suffering and now I'm gonna, you know, play god and
Speaker 1: take it out of its misery. You see that a
Speaker 1: lot though. You surely see that a lot. See that
Speaker 1: around animals calling defences, You see that a lot around
Speaker 1: road kill. Yeah, I feel like the hunter maybe feels
Speaker 1: responsible for for that animal's life, having been directly involved
Speaker 1: in the taking of some Yeah, I would agree with
Speaker 1: what Jana said, But then I have to look at
Speaker 1: when I was presented with that situation. Uh As in
Speaker 1: New Mexico, You're a prong horn archery prong horn tag
Speaker 1: in a unit that was considered by most to be
Speaker 1: a very sought after trophy prong horn unit, And I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in the blind and incomes this buck. That's it's
Speaker 1: an average buck. It's not the anywhere near the top
Speaker 1: end of what people think of when you say the
Speaker 1: planes of St. Augustine in New Mexico. But it is
Speaker 1: limping really, really bad. And at first, when I was
Speaker 1: watching it way out there, I'm thinking about, O coyot
Speaker 1: will take care of that problem. You know that that
Speaker 1: that antelope is not going to make it that long.
Speaker 1: And then the thing comes walking into the waterhole, and
Speaker 1: over the course of a half hour it takes for
Speaker 1: that prong horn to get to the water hole, I'm
Speaker 1: now faced. I'm face to face with this problem. I
Speaker 1: I can't deny it. It's on camera, it's a film.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to decide what I'm going to do
Speaker 1: when this prong horn comes into that water hole and
Speaker 1: he keeps coming, and it keeps coming, and it is
Speaker 1: laboring hard, and I'll admit to having this dilemma of
Speaker 1: do I shoot that prong horn or do I not?
Speaker 1: And for me with archery, now, did you let me
Speaker 1: ask you a question? Did you know? Did you Were
Speaker 1: you thinking that it was a hunter induced injury or
Speaker 1: I couldn't. It was limping severely. I had no idea
Speaker 1: why I was limping. But it gets to the water
Speaker 1: hole at twenty yards and you can see that this
Speaker 1: is this animal is having a tough go of it,
Speaker 1: and at that point in time, I said, you know
Speaker 1: what I would. I was just making this decision of
Speaker 1: do I want to keep hunting and try to shoot
Speaker 1: one of these huge prong horn this area is noted for,
Speaker 1: or do I want to shoot this animal? Just because
Speaker 1: in that close twenty yard face to face engagement, it's
Speaker 1: it's way less abstract than when you see it out
Speaker 1: there at five hundred yards and it comes in waters,
Speaker 1: and I said, you know what, and I shot it,
Speaker 1: And to this day, I i've personally I feel good
Speaker 1: about that. Now, what I've not felt good about it?
Speaker 1: If I let it go away, I suspect it would
Speaker 1: have went off and I would have not that much
Speaker 1: different for it. But at that point in time, in
Speaker 1: that situation, with that intersection of all these things going
Speaker 1: through my mind, I decided to shoot it and got
Speaker 1: over there and looked at had a deformed hoof, that's
Speaker 1: why it was limping. It had a hoof that looked
Speaker 1: like a big long elf slipper like Santa Elms, where
Speaker 1: I had never seen that in a problem right before.
Speaker 1: So he'd figured out how to make a living out there,
Speaker 1: even limping like that. So why was I so concerned?
Speaker 1: I guess it's just all of us who hunt. I
Speaker 1: hope we have some compassion for the animals that did us.
Speaker 1: And I would say that was one of those instances
Speaker 1: where my compassion or worry and maybe I'm putting some
Speaker 1: human traits or characteristics or emotions to what that animal
Speaker 1: was going through. Back to your point, you honest, maybe
Speaker 1: it had it had Maybe it had really no worried
Speaker 1: at all, just life as he yeah, and uh, but
Speaker 1: as a hunter, I said, well, I think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take care of this until I shot it and it
Speaker 1: went ten yards and into that story. Doesn't make me
Speaker 1: any you know, any better internally for doing it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Make sure it tastes good. I know that,
Speaker 1: but that really ends up being the motivation behind it, right,
Speaker 1: is like how it makes you feel? Right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: It's an interesting This is to me an interesting one
Speaker 1: because if I if you were just a straight predator,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, oh, easy, yeah, easy, I'll take it done.
Speaker 1: That's right. If you were hungry, right, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's the preferent one. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: perfect one. It can barely get away, So you'd be
Speaker 1: thinking about that. But at the same time, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: I don't even have to burn a bullet or walk
Speaker 1: over and inform tackle it, like like, so you have that.
Speaker 1: But they're the other part. I think why this and
Speaker 1: this always comes up. This came up a lot in
Speaker 1: my reading of all these readers. Listener and read your feedback,
Speaker 1: is like, this is a unique situation for a hunter,
Speaker 1: someone holding a hunting license, you know, possibly also a
Speaker 1: game manager or whatever. But as far as like just
Speaker 1: regular populace, this is a unique experience for a hunter.
Speaker 1: And and if someone else, if you're out hiking and
Speaker 1: you see a limping animal and you don't hold a
Speaker 1: hunting license, what are you going to do? Like there
Speaker 1: is no responsibility other than keep on hiking. I think
Speaker 1: it's unique to hunters to some degree. But as someone
Speaker 1: who's had to make the decision in the last however
Speaker 1: many years with two of my labs as they got older,
Speaker 1: I I took it to the vet, and the vet
Speaker 1: usually lets the pet owner make the decision, and I
Speaker 1: felt even a more powerful dilemma there. Why because this
Speaker 1: animal lived in my house, almost part of my family
Speaker 1: for for years. But I think the rest of society
Speaker 1: is faced with that decision with the other animals we love.
Speaker 1: It was very heart wrenching to decide that Merle and
Speaker 1: Copper had reached the point and now I'm I'm judge
Speaker 1: and jury. Is Meral really feeling that bad that he
Speaker 1: he should be put down? I had to make that
Speaker 1: decision and ask him. Yeah. I still to this day
Speaker 1: whenever I go out to his kennel and I see
Speaker 1: his doghouse, there the thought entered my mind, Why well,
Speaker 1: why was it? Why did I feel that I had
Speaker 1: to intervene there? Why didn't I just let the natural
Speaker 1: course of events take place. I think we as society,
Speaker 1: whether we're hunters or not hunters, we take our societal
Speaker 1: norms or our societal where he's and we place it
Speaker 1: into that situation. Yeah, I mean, and also as ya,
Speaker 1: he was kind of getting that, like, mercy is a
Speaker 1: virtue that we'd all you don't like to have, you know,
Speaker 1: And like, so I wish I could have asked merral
Speaker 1: his thoughts. Maybe he would have said, don't put me down, man,
Speaker 1: I'm still yeah here, or you're most late man sucks, Yeah,
Speaker 1: knocked me down. So I do think, uh, as we
Speaker 1: interact with all of the other living creatures of this society, Uh,
Speaker 1: we do put ourselves in those situations. Maybe we don't
Speaker 1: think of it in that context. I do think of
Speaker 1: it in that in text with my my two dogs
Speaker 1: that had to make that decision with and it sucks.
Speaker 1: I've got it. My wife's got a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: dog now and it's staff and it's part partly blind,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we're gonna be faced with another decision the
Speaker 1: same as I felt some of those same emotions when
Speaker 1: that prong horn was coming into my blink, other than
Speaker 1: I intended to eat. Yeah, the big difference is that
Speaker 1: you don't really know it and you didn't eat it.
Speaker 1: But still the same, Like, that's still the same general
Speaker 1: quandary you struggle with the same thing. Have you ever
Speaker 1: had to do that? Yeah, I put a dog and
Speaker 1: he pops down. Yes, six years ago, is my wife's dog.
Speaker 1: But yeah, because we had two folks in town, we
Speaker 1: had a big meeting here at the media to incorporated this.
Speaker 1: We had two folks in town who one April Fokey
Speaker 1: found out her dog had cancer and Brodie Henderson found
Speaker 1: out their dog was was going to be put down
Speaker 1: within days, just in and I've I've owned dogs, but
Speaker 1: not in my adult life. And so you see that
Speaker 1: hit people with you know, in Brodie's case and in
Speaker 1: April's case, they were both now having to make these
Speaker 1: decisions like when you know, when are we gonna do this,
Speaker 1: How are we gonna do it, How are we gonna
Speaker 1: tell the children, how we're gonna present this in some
Speaker 1: kind of positive way, because it has to happen. I
Speaker 1: mean that's your right. I mean, that's that's way heavier
Speaker 1: than should I shoot this limping antelope that's walking into
Speaker 1: the water. I've never I've never had I've never had
Speaker 1: the a wounded animal come across that I felt like
Speaker 1: I could have shot and didn't. I've never had I've
Speaker 1: never had that. But I feel I really do feel
Speaker 1: like I agree with Joanni. I feel like that's well
Speaker 1: put the way that you What I would tell this gentleman,
Speaker 1: is is it's not your responsibility. You you have the choice.
Speaker 1: You bought a hunting lecesnse. You can choose whichever animal
Speaker 1: you would like like as long as you can effectively
Speaker 1: take it. So if that's what you choose, there's some
Speaker 1: virtue in that. Great. But if you don't choose that,
Speaker 1: don't feel guilty that animals are of natural world is
Speaker 1: a harsh, damn place, and so you're not making it
Speaker 1: any easier on anybody by but inserting too much mercy
Speaker 1: into it. Can I flip that question? Sure? On my platforms,
Speaker 1: on my website, my podcast, I threw it out the
Speaker 1: other way. You hit an animal, do you keep hunting? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had this. I had this discussion with Mark kennying
Speaker 1: around white Tails yesterday and no is my answer. And
Speaker 1: there's been a if you throw that question out there,
Speaker 1: be prepared for about fo Uh. Yeah. I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: judge anyone by what they do or don't do in
Speaker 1: that situation, but I think it's a worthwhile discussion. It is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it very much is, because there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: situations that comment. We were talking yesterday about just the
Speaker 1: value of the knowledge you have to, like there was
Speaker 1: possibility of being a hunter. You have to have the
Speaker 1: knowledge to know did I kill this thing or not.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to track it and read
Speaker 1: its blood. You have to be able to understand how
Speaker 1: it would use the terrain and where it might go,
Speaker 1: and property boundaries and all. It's gonna run on the
Speaker 1: public land, well, it's rifle season. It's probably gonna get
Speaker 1: probably gonna get dumped pretty quickly. Um. But I think
Speaker 1: that just all that to me goes back to if
Speaker 1: you've done your part by being proficient with your weapon
Speaker 1: of choice, understanding how to track it and recover an
Speaker 1: animal properly. That's really probably the first step in making
Speaker 1: that and answering that question, have you done all those things? First,
Speaker 1: Alaska for black beards, they make that decision for you.
Speaker 1: If you hit an animal, you're done. Well most a
Speaker 1: lot of outfitters do, but a ton of outfitters, right,
Speaker 1: And so I threw the question out there, should that
Speaker 1: be a law for all species? Why? Why? Why did
Speaker 1: black bears? Wouldn't that make Alaska? Wouldn't that make us
Speaker 1: more ethical? Wouldn't that make like if you knew you
Speaker 1: had one arrow to shoot and that was it, and
Speaker 1: that was all you had, you shot it, it was over,
Speaker 1: and it hit the animal, it was over, wouldn't you
Speaker 1: be I would hope that, you know. I guess for me,
Speaker 1: do you do you feel like you should legislate something
Speaker 1: that you hope people would come to whatever? And it
Speaker 1: may not be this, but whatever the topic is, should
Speaker 1: you legislate that or should you let it get that
Speaker 1: that's the people of their own doing. That's a tough one.
Speaker 1: Waste is like it should just be a societal norm, right, Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I have my way of answering that people have
Speaker 1: seen how I answer that. I give myself one animal,
Speaker 1: but if I hit it, i'm whether it's a superficial wound.
Speaker 1: I hunt that animal until I have to leave. If
Speaker 1: I don't find it, I'm done, or if I when
Speaker 1: I have to leave, you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go look for another one. And some people have seen
Speaker 1: me do that and say, well, that's stupid, And I
Speaker 1: get that. You know, I'm afforded a luxury that a
Speaker 1: lot of people maybe aren't. I get the hunt a lot.
Speaker 1: My freezers seldom empty. Now if my freezer was empty
Speaker 1: and it's the last weekend of the rifle season and
Speaker 1: I'd hit one that I couldn't recover and here comes
Speaker 1: another one that that's a completely different contact of which
Speaker 1: that person has to analyze and make that decision than
Speaker 1: some guy like me who gets to hunt Tanna hunt's
Speaker 1: a year and I'm never going to be without wild
Speaker 1: game in my freezer. That's a big one. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, if for sure, if you're hungry, you're
Speaker 1: going to be making decisions like you're you were less
Speaker 1: concerned with the animal. Like if you're you're way less concerned,
Speaker 1: you're more concerned with your own personal need to get sustenance,
Speaker 1: then you are worried about is this right to do? Like?
Speaker 1: Then that that's the luxury we're talking about here, Like
Speaker 1: there's just if you can I think remove that would
Speaker 1: be like I have zero wild meat. I really don't
Speaker 1: want to go to the store. But then you can
Speaker 1: still say, hey, you can still go to the store.
Speaker 1: Don't remove your ethics because you don't have any while meat.
Speaker 1: You can still go and get it some chicken until
Speaker 1: you can figure it out. Um, And there's always other
Speaker 1: seasons of things to go and kill. So I mean
Speaker 1: you can still argue, hey, man, like that that's the
Speaker 1: game here. The fact is we don't have to hunt
Speaker 1: to eat. Yeah, that's the fact. Like we want to
Speaker 1: and we know it enriches us and does a lot
Speaker 1: of things for us, but we don't have to. And
Speaker 1: so I just feel like it like all these things
Speaker 1: come down to some of these things, not all of
Speaker 1: them come down to does it change our behavior in
Speaker 1: a positive way? Like if we want like one waste,
Speaker 1: is that way? You know? It's like that's a in
Speaker 1: some ways an ethical um construct we've build into a law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or like does this activity make us behave more in
Speaker 1: a more positive way with the intended purpose while we're after,
Speaker 1: which is to kill something effectively quickly and get it
Speaker 1: home and eat it. You know, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of our regulations evolved from things that don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: anything to do with ethics. Yeah, they have to do
Speaker 1: with societal norms. Yeah, I mean clearly you talked about
Speaker 1: it on your platform. This is something that came up many,
Speaker 1: many times on this discussion. So it's something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people are thinking about and experiencing shortly, because
Speaker 1: that's you know, and it goes back to hunting with
Speaker 1: i'll you know a lot of the trends of i'll
Speaker 1: hunt with the boat during rifle season because it's I
Speaker 1: like the experience better. We're like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: that the deer LEXI experience better. Like that's probably probably
Speaker 1: something to think about. We got a lot of people
Speaker 1: right in from Australia. I appreciate you guys down under.
Speaker 1: This was Alan Curtis. He says, why if hunters are
Speaker 1: after the quickest possible kill, does the head shots seem
Speaker 1: like an option that's not even on the table. Coming
Speaker 1: from Roux shooting in West Australia, I'm assuming kangaroo watching
Speaker 1: deer shot through the vitals has always been a curious point,
Speaker 1: with the head shot never never ever taken. What do
Speaker 1: you think head shots. I think the question starts is
Speaker 1: our head shots are they actually more ethical? Well, a
Speaker 1: true head shot is probably the most ethical thing there is,
Speaker 1: But a nose shot, or a jaw shot or an
Speaker 1: ear shot it probably if if you ask, the deer
Speaker 1: would be or the elk or whatever, would probably be
Speaker 1: the least ethical thing. Uh yeah, and I'm I'm assuming
Speaker 1: we're all talking firearms of course, but um yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's a room for air situation. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a much smaller target, is what it comes down to you. Um,
Speaker 1: our buddy Parker Hall who works for APHIST Wildlife Services, Um,
Speaker 1: those guys all shoot when they're out doing like big
Speaker 1: deer calls. It's always head shots. It's actually always the
Speaker 1: back of the head because you do have a bigger
Speaker 1: target there than if you take a profile shot on
Speaker 1: the head. Um. But again, I mean those guys are
Speaker 1: pretty much a trained sniper, right And uh, I think
Speaker 1: for most of us just out in the field, it's
Speaker 1: like an elk at two or fifty yards. Man, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm definitely gonna choose the big trash can lid
Speaker 1: vital zone, the big more stationary target that doesn't know yeah, exactly. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have ever hunt moves with any of the Athabaskans
Speaker 1: in Northern Alaska in Canada, m they had their head shooters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they hunt moves with two forty three's and stuff that
Speaker 1: we would uh, you know, most of us would be
Speaker 1: like what are you doing with two forty three or
Speaker 1: seven m M O eight or whatever? Pretty much all
Speaker 1: head shots. They got a lot of moose meat to
Speaker 1: show for it. Yeah, and well, and again with that
Speaker 1: animal doesn't have quite the flight instinct of deer and elk, right,
Speaker 1: you're probably getting a lot closer more often bigger head.
Speaker 1: Um doesn't. Moose doesn't move around too much a lot
Speaker 1: kind of stands there and can browse the same you know,
Speaker 1: patch of willows for hours sometimes. Yeah, well, it's just
Speaker 1: the end. It's the animal too. We shoot turkeys in
Speaker 1: the face all the time. That's kind of the that's
Speaker 1: kind of the point there. I've always and I argue
Speaker 1: I feel like when I'm turkey hunting this year, and
Speaker 1: that like a couple of years ago I experienced like,
Speaker 1: you know, I really wanted archery hunt for turkeys, and
Speaker 1: I was in at the camp of all archery hunters
Speaker 1: for birds, and the wound rate was like one to one.
Speaker 1: Would one kill one? And I'm thinking we could have
Speaker 1: had shotguns here and everyone we wounded would have been
Speaker 1: stone dead and there wouldn't be a giant rage size
Speaker 1: hole in its breast. Me. Yeah, I'm not archery hunted turkeys.
Speaker 1: If I had that result to be pretty quick for
Speaker 1: me to I'm done. I'm done as of now, like
Speaker 1: I'm just done, you know, I'm done. But and there's
Speaker 1: other things, like, you know, people think baiting bears is unethical,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to shooting them, it's a whole
Speaker 1: lot easier if they're sitting in front of a barrel
Speaker 1: and selecting for bores rather than Souther's. Yeah, that I'd
Speaker 1: say bear baiting is probably one where this preference versus
Speaker 1: ethics things is so easy to distill it as just
Speaker 1: about always that's a preference, not in ethics in the least. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I see how many people get themselves wrapped around
Speaker 1: the act on that issue. And so when you go
Speaker 1: there and then people say, well, what about baiting for deer? Yeah,
Speaker 1: quite to say, I don't care if people bait for deer,
Speaker 1: if that's how they do it, and what they want
Speaker 1: to do. It's not for me. Uh. I do worry about,
Speaker 1: you know, the disease bread things that relate to unnatural
Speaker 1: feeding of deer. But as far as a decision of
Speaker 1: how you're gonna take that deer, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: care if you bait him. My own care if you whatever. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's personal preference. And you said that like the bare
Speaker 1: baiting of the deer baiting is is the thing where
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, fair chase, that doesn't count. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: if it's if we're just erasing that for a minute
Speaker 1: and saying, what's what's fair to the death of the animal?
Speaker 1: It's coming in close, munching on some corn being stationary.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there stationary. It's I have a rifle. I'm
Speaker 1: now shooting it in a in a better scenario than
Speaker 1: if it was walking across the cornfield and I'm the
Speaker 1: other side of the cornfield. Like, that's a more ethical
Speaker 1: way to kill it. Maybe not a fair chase way
Speaker 1: to hunt it, right, So what are we out there
Speaker 1: really to do? Play at this? And there's another one
Speaker 1: I was just reading on here that I was like, man,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect one. And this came in a
Speaker 1: lot just around I think, knowing that you were coming
Speaker 1: on Randy Debt. Guys are like I, I, you know,
Speaker 1: I go on an outfitted hunt, and I do a
Speaker 1: lot of public land hunting, and I feel guilty about
Speaker 1: these outfitted hunts, Like I feel like it's not fair, Chase,
Speaker 1: I feel like I didn't do any of the work.
Speaker 1: I feel so guilty about letting an outfitter do a
Speaker 1: lot of the heavy lifting for me that I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna do it again. What's your thoughts around these ethics?
Speaker 1: And like that's a preference, that that's completely it's not
Speaker 1: even close, it's completely preference. And this came in a
Speaker 1: lot around like people, I think because we've been we've
Speaker 1: reinforced this public landowner, We've reinforced like this is the
Speaker 1: trend and this is the cool thing to do. People
Speaker 1: are feeling guilty about their way of doing it or
Speaker 1: specifically in this case, an outfited trip. I don't know
Speaker 1: who's saying what man to make that people start to
Speaker 1: feel like that because I feel like it's sorry it happens,
Speaker 1: but if it happens by us, mosis though man, Like
Speaker 1: I I am surprised how many because I started our
Speaker 1: platforms in two thousand and eight, and the y is
Speaker 1: the same today. It's to promote self guided public land
Speaker 1: hunting and create advocates for that cost. It's never changed.
Speaker 1: It had nothing to do with anti public or anti
Speaker 1: private land hunting or anti outfitting hunting. It's more it's
Speaker 1: more like, hey, by the way, you can also do
Speaker 1: this out here, and it's not that hard. There's great
Speaker 1: opportunities out here. You're paying into it anyway as well.
Speaker 1: So to that person's question, I struggle to even see
Speaker 1: that as a dilemma for somebody. I've been on three
Speaker 1: guided hunts. I had a blast. Were they anymore gratifying
Speaker 1: or less gratifying when it came to the end result? Well,
Speaker 1: on one of them, I didn't even fill a tag
Speaker 1: Arizona strip mealder back in two thousand seven, before I
Speaker 1: started our platforms. I got so much satisfaction out of
Speaker 1: that hunt that outfitter busted his ass, and so did I.
Speaker 1: And he told me, he said, I've never had a
Speaker 1: client that hunted all ten days of this season, but
Speaker 1: if you want to, that's what we're gonna do. And
Speaker 1: we did. Is one of the funnest hunts. Just he's
Speaker 1: a great guy. Yeah, we're out on public land, the
Speaker 1: Arizona Strip here, it's not an exclusive place where you
Speaker 1: include other people. If people are that worried about oh
Speaker 1: I didn't get out of it, you know someone else
Speaker 1: did all the work, Well, that's a different issue. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's an ethics issue. That's just what do
Speaker 1: I want out of my experience issue? And it's a
Speaker 1: preference thing. Like some people are very fine going to
Speaker 1: a trade show, meeting an outfitter, flying across the country
Speaker 1: hunting with them, getting an animal, bring them me back.
Speaker 1: That is a fantastic way to experience hunting. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's just different because the beauty of going on an
Speaker 1: outfitted hunt man is that you're probably gonna get to
Speaker 1: hunt with somebody that is a real expert in hunting
Speaker 1: that animal, and like the knowledge you're gonna gain there,
Speaker 1: you want have to go and hunt the same amount
Speaker 1: by yourself for five to ten years, or you could
Speaker 1: just be with that one person for a week and
Speaker 1: then gain all sorts of knowledge you know about that
Speaker 1: species and about that hunt and uh, yeah, come home
Speaker 1: with some stuff to eat. We've talked about that before
Speaker 1: on this podcast, and I put it that. I put
Speaker 1: it this way, like I want to hunt. I just
Speaker 1: want to hunt private land, public land, outfit, a non
Speaker 1: outfitted friends, family, Like I feel like it's all great.
Speaker 1: I will develop and have developed personal preferences around what
Speaker 1: I feel like it's the best version of it. But
Speaker 1: that should not change anybody else's version of it. No,
Speaker 1: And if someone wants to judge a person because of
Speaker 1: either there how they grew up hunting, the fact that
Speaker 1: just geographically maybe they're in a place where there's not
Speaker 1: lots of public land, or they enjoy hunting species, were
Speaker 1: they by law you have to use an outfit or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Get over that quick. Judging people based
Speaker 1: on the I I think that kind of stuff is
Speaker 1: really damaging for hunting. You know, when I started our platforms,
Speaker 1: I was caught really off guard when a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the outfitting industry thought I was going after him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was not that at all. I've never I refer
Speaker 1: so many people to outfitters who contact me and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I love that outcome, but I live in Maryland and
Speaker 1: I don't have the time or resources, and I send
Speaker 1: them to I have all kinds outfitters I send people to.
Speaker 1: So I found it curious that people thought that somehow
Speaker 1: by promoting one type of hunting to make the an
Speaker 1: awareness that you can go do that. And it was
Speaker 1: a response. It was my response to seeing people say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll never be able to do that. Oh I can't
Speaker 1: afford that. Are you just promoting an inclusive version of hunting?
Speaker 1: That's what you're doing. It's not That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: something that's exclusive is inherently bad, man. It's so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if a lot of people are thinking that or feeling that,
Speaker 1: I would encourage them to, uh, just go and hunt
Speaker 1: and don't don't worry about that. And it's certainly not
Speaker 1: an ethical question. But I would say I didn't get
Speaker 1: that quite a lot in these in these readings. Um,
Speaker 1: here's one that that's connected to that. Corey uh Skassic says,
Speaker 1: I went on my first elk in this past October.
Speaker 1: It was through an outfitter and a drop camp on
Speaker 1: public land. Is it unethical of me to hunt the
Speaker 1: same trailhead next year using the information I've gained. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be back. I wouldn't go back to exactly where
Speaker 1: we went, but I stick to the same area, wondering
Speaker 1: what your thoughts are. I'm gonna leave that one to
Speaker 1: be honest, because he's done a lot of helping people. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd have that happen often. Um oh yeah, where you
Speaker 1: A couple of years later you glass of somebody run
Speaker 1: into money trail and you're like, oh, when I showed
Speaker 1: you this, are we hunting together around here? Um? So
Speaker 1: is it ethically wrong to do that? I think this
Speaker 1: falls into the ethical I think this is an ethics question,
Speaker 1: like what it's it's a intellectual property ethics question, I think,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of these in hunting. So because
Speaker 1: it seems like you're cheating a little bit, I guess
Speaker 1: for for me, the answered no, I would never do that,
Speaker 1: But I get that some people. Hey, that's part of
Speaker 1: what I thought I was paying for when I came
Speaker 1: hunting with you. I wanted to learn a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to learn how to hunt elk or call elk,
Speaker 1: or how to what you need, what kind of camp
Speaker 1: you set up? And you know that if you don't
Speaker 1: like that, then you should have charged me more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean with this with this fella here, and I
Speaker 1: would say I would like, Corey, listen, if you got
Speaker 1: to ask the question, you're a you know the answer, broly.
Speaker 1: If you're like, should I do this, that's probably let's
Speaker 1: probably back it off a little back from where we're
Speaker 1: out because that means so he's and he's dancing around
Speaker 1: it here and somebody's like, I wouldn't be all the
Speaker 1: way back in where we were, Like yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: but you're still using what you learned from that that
Speaker 1: person to kind of compete with that person, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's really just like on a on an elk
Speaker 1: hunt out west these days, as good as the hunting
Speaker 1: is in so many of these states, you just don't
Speaker 1: need to do that and don't even have to cross.
Speaker 1: But yeah, use that to use what you learned for
Speaker 1: that outfit, or to go maybe in the same state,
Speaker 1: maybe the same unit, but just not the same trailhead man, Like,
Speaker 1: just there's other places to go. I would say I
Speaker 1: think that because I mean, sure, like you'll be out
Speaker 1: there and it'll be kind of non at you a
Speaker 1: little bit, but when you're walking down the trail and
Speaker 1: you run into that guy, to that aufhitic guy, you're
Speaker 1: gonna feel like a real dick, you know, like, sorry,
Speaker 1: so you had that happen a bunch of times? Yeah? Not.
Speaker 1: I mean it was always like something I gut it.
Speaker 1: But you know know the guy would come in and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I guess who I ran into, you know,
Speaker 1: over on the MASA. Wow for me. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's ethic hoole, but I agree if you've been
Speaker 1: if you got to ask yourself that question, you probably
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah. That's like as a father. Now I'm like, listen,
Speaker 1: if you gotta, can I have that? But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I don't even know this one.
Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear you guys thought on this.
Speaker 1: And I read this, I first thought at that it's
Speaker 1: not worth it, but then I read it again, I'm
Speaker 1: like that, Um, this guy's names Tyler Ham, he said.
Speaker 1: My buddy and I are Yukon resident hunters, and we
Speaker 1: hunt year round every weekend. We're pretty spoiled. We both
Speaker 1: agree hunting Grid, we both agreed we hunt grizzlies because
Speaker 1: we're scared of them. After being charged too many times
Speaker 1: and having camps be destroyed by them, we are just
Speaker 1: sick of them. What are your thoughts on that this
Speaker 1: is from a person that has tried to co exist
Speaker 1: with grizzlies on a weekly basis and had troubles. Mhm.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I think, yeah, I mean here here,
Speaker 1: I think this goes back to like the British Columbia
Speaker 1: grizzly situation and maybe even some of our gers, the
Speaker 1: situations in the Greater Yellowstone. This is somebody who's saying,
Speaker 1: I'm around these things every day and I'm killing them
Speaker 1: because I don't want him to eat me. M hm
Speaker 1: uh oh. In the Yukon, they you know, they have
Speaker 1: different opportunities slash situations than than what we have. I
Speaker 1: I've had my share Gridley bear encounters here in Montana.
Speaker 1: If we had no limits or seasons on them, would
Speaker 1: I feel comfortable going and shooting them because I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of them? No? Would I shoot at them because they're
Speaker 1: messing around in my camp? Maybe? I know it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to answer that one because of I'm not
Speaker 1: in that situation. But yeah, I read that too, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm not sure where this falls, but it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It certainly is interesting because I'm never, hopefully never gonna
Speaker 1: be in that situation. But um, I don't know if
Speaker 1: i'd blame him, I don't. I wouldn't call what you're
Speaker 1: doing hunting called self defense. But I think he's saying
Speaker 1: that he's haunting them. He's not saying he shoot them
Speaker 1: just when there's a charge or they're in their camp.
Speaker 1: He's developed this like rage where its getting rid of
Speaker 1: some bears, and maybe that's gonna make life easier on them.
Speaker 1: But you've always but you've I've I've met many hunters,
Speaker 1: I would say a lot of hunters that have this
Speaker 1: like personal disdain for a certain animal. Boy, do I
Speaker 1: hate X? If I see one trouble like, okay, well
Speaker 1: that seems odd. So for this person's question, I guess
Speaker 1: take it to its eventual conclusion. So you're gonna go
Speaker 1: remove all grizzly bears from the Yukon landscape just to
Speaker 1: make it safe for you and others. Yeah, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's where it eventually goes to. If if that is
Speaker 1: the the motive for yeah, I'd say at the turn
Speaker 1: of the century, we were killing animals that that in
Speaker 1: mass for for reasons similar to this, but also just
Speaker 1: for market reasons, and we we shut that off, like
Speaker 1: that's what our value system and our model conservation kind
Speaker 1: of like, okay, we got to do better than that.
Speaker 1: I mean, grizzly bears are serious interruption to places I
Speaker 1: hunt and what you have to do to keep a
Speaker 1: clean camp, what you have to do. I hunt differently
Speaker 1: when I'm in grizzly country. This year we filmed two
Speaker 1: hunts here in Montana that we were in grizzly bears
Speaker 1: like crazy. I didn't see them but their tracks, And
Speaker 1: people said, well, I thought you always get to your
Speaker 1: glassing spot before the sun comes up. Yeah. I do
Speaker 1: accept in these places of grizzly country because one time
Speaker 1: I walked right up on a grizzly bear in the dark.
Speaker 1: It was no one really hard looking down. What's that track?
Speaker 1: Well then when it got daylight, I realized what that
Speaker 1: track was because about three yards up the hill is
Speaker 1: the grizzly bear walking in front of me and whoa.
Speaker 1: So does it change how I haunt and how I
Speaker 1: have to run my camp and everything else? Yeah? It does.
Speaker 1: Does it create some risk? Yeah? And I always always
Speaker 1: preface this statement, but someday when I'm a grizzly bear turd,
Speaker 1: everyone's gonna say, see, that's as you get. My dad said,
Speaker 1: I never be ship well. But for me, I'm willing
Speaker 1: to accept those risks on the landscape to know that
Speaker 1: grizzly bears are there. Yeah, just my personal I could
Speaker 1: see being in the Yukon and having a little slightly skewed,
Speaker 1: but I still don't. It's not hunting with that. That's
Speaker 1: not hunting. It's not. It's a different when you have
Speaker 1: like a vendetta against animal, it's not. That's not it. Man.
Speaker 1: The motivation becomes skewed, then you're in trouble. Um. You
Speaker 1: got to address the the waterfowl one, because this is
Speaker 1: another one that came in a ton. This is just
Speaker 1: one from Josh Cook. He says, I was recently hunting
Speaker 1: geese with friends and ran into this ethics question. The
Speaker 1: limit here in Colorado was five geeks per day per hunter.
Speaker 1: We each had about three or four birds on the
Speaker 1: ground when a huge flock worked in our spread. After
Speaker 1: all the shooting excitement, we realized we had one. We
Speaker 1: had shot one bird over our limit. How do you
Speaker 1: handle this situation? This also came into the form like
Speaker 1: what how do I make that decision? I've got I
Speaker 1: can shoot two geese and there's seventeen of them, you know,
Speaker 1: in our feet up in our decoys, and there's four shooters.
Speaker 1: What do we do? I think came in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Um. I know we're not all seen as
Speaker 1: expert water fowlers, but you know this stuff you keep
Speaker 1: this to run into. Yeah, I think it's pretty simple.
Speaker 1: You just stick to the ball and if you want over,
Speaker 1: then you got to call a game warden and tell them. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think in that situation, if you did something that
Speaker 1: happens you admit to, most game boardings will go back
Speaker 1: further and say, all right, if if you know you're
Speaker 1: that close to your limit, all right, are you gonna
Speaker 1: have a discussion among your group that hey, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna mp our our shotguns into this flock and one
Speaker 1: guy yeah, and we'll worry about it later. Or are
Speaker 1: we going to make sure that we don't get in
Speaker 1: this situation and say, all right, we've got three left
Speaker 1: in our limit, only one or two guys are going
Speaker 1: to shoot when the flocks come in. And yeah, when
Speaker 1: you're and when you're shooting multi species, it gets even tougher, like,
Speaker 1: oh I can shoot one more of these one more
Speaker 1: of these three come in and you shoot with a shotgun,
Speaker 1: it's spray, it's some level. So this thing drops like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's not right. And I think the other thing you
Speaker 1: can do is is reported, self report, and always self report.
Speaker 1: And I'm with you, honest. Usually the most of the wardens,
Speaker 1: I know, if you explain the situation, they'll say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take your goose from you. But it's not
Speaker 1: going to be the end of the world. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: but if you're out there doing it and you get
Speaker 1: a reputation and somebody tells the game order, hey, I
Speaker 1: was hunting across the field from these guys and they
Speaker 1: are their party hunting and they're shooting too many and
Speaker 1: he comes over and catches you. Yeah, good luck with that.
Speaker 1: Speaking of party hunting, party hunting is legal where I
Speaker 1: grew up in Minnesota. Really yeah, yeah, Wisconsin to where
Speaker 1: we hunted. Yeah, I think of it would have been.
Speaker 1: I never thought of when I was coming up. I mean,
Speaker 1: this probably is not the right thing to say, but
Speaker 1: my dad, but that's growing up hunting. Like, there's six
Speaker 1: of us here. If six deer come out, I expect
Speaker 1: you're gonna dump every one of them. That was the expectation.
Speaker 1: And if you go to that part of the Midwest,
Speaker 1: there's not even a second thought given to party hunting.
Speaker 1: It's just the accepted norm. You say that out here
Speaker 1: in the West, where no state I know of allows
Speaker 1: party hunting, Oh my goodness, you better get ready to
Speaker 1: have yourself lit up. I've been in states where guys
Speaker 1: like archery hunters are damned because they're selective and the
Speaker 1: in the rifle season, they're doing deer drives and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they're just like these assholes over here with their
Speaker 1: properties where they only shoot a couple of deer a year.
Speaker 1: They're out there, they're creating sanctuaries where our deer. You know,
Speaker 1: this deer won't come over on us because we chase
Speaker 1: them around to shoot them. And that's that's a real like,
Speaker 1: that's a real pushing pool. And some of these, like
Speaker 1: rural communities, I've seen it a lot of places, a
Speaker 1: lot of places. I guess one thing that bothers me
Speaker 1: and I may be expressed it too much in the
Speaker 1: last two weeks is how judgmental we as a hunting
Speaker 1: community do you have become. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's just based on when you when you're the minority.
Speaker 1: You always feel you're under the microscope, you feel you're
Speaker 1: under pressure, and so maybe you have a tendency to
Speaker 1: lash out quicker or for reasons that maybe you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: But I'll use an example. My son drew a great
Speaker 1: late season out tag in Wyoming a week before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: We go down there. The first day, we see eighty
Speaker 1: four bulls out on the winter range and he gets
Speaker 1: to hunt one week a year because he lives in Oregon,
Speaker 1: and he's just really busy at that point in his life,
Speaker 1: building his career. And these are and there there are
Speaker 1: some really really nice bulls, and he passed on every
Speaker 1: one of them. He made a half hearted attempt to
Speaker 1: stock one of them and it was a four yard shot,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, it's not the shot I want.
Speaker 1: I think it was just wasn't He just wasn't ready.
Speaker 1: The amount of people who have called him on our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel a spoiled rotten Prima Donna bloss silvers boom.
Speaker 1: But you know, I would have shot the first. And
Speaker 1: so then the next day he ends up shooting a bowl,
Speaker 1: a really nice bowl, and at the time he shoots it,
Speaker 1: we're sitting there and I'm like the two year old
Speaker 1: black lab man. I'm in my tails wagon, I'm hooting
Speaker 1: and yelling. And he's a very deliberate person and he
Speaker 1: takes this very very seriously, and when he shoots the bowl, uh,
Speaker 1: he always has this feeling of, oh my goodness, I
Speaker 1: just killed an animal. He's that's just who and how
Speaker 1: he is where I'm over there hugging him, and I'm
Speaker 1: so excited because of the you know, this is the
Speaker 1: culmination and it's a great triple. The way people judge
Speaker 1: the fact that he wasn't doing cartwheels in the handstands
Speaker 1: was very interesting and peculiar to me. And then the
Speaker 1: way that people call him a trophy hunter. Hey, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's fine. I mean that's part of what we do,
Speaker 1: you know, you take it as part of the territory.
Speaker 1: But it gets me to the question of is it
Speaker 1: trophy hunting to say? And I hate the term meat
Speaker 1: hunter versus trophy To me, that's the dumbest thing we
Speaker 1: ever talked about. And when people, maybe I'm overly sensitive,
Speaker 1: when people try to split the hunting community based on
Speaker 1: some motive of trophy versus some motive of meat. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a distinction there in most instances. Um.
Speaker 1: But it gets me to the point of a lot
Speaker 1: of these things that people bring up as ethics or
Speaker 1: ethical dilemmas is part of it. Just we as a
Speaker 1: community are becoming very judgmental from the from the from
Speaker 1: a distance of what we see or what we hear,
Speaker 1: and that's just a natural response to how we feel
Speaker 1: our pastime is under scrutiny or is it just inherent
Speaker 1: in human nature that we judge people, And now we
Speaker 1: have platforms by which we can express those judgments without
Speaker 1: any context. And I think any behavior someone does, any
Speaker 1: activity and hunting be prepared for that scrutiny if you
Speaker 1: are inefficial. Yeah. And I think we put ourselves there,
Speaker 1: you know, the three of us in this room and
Speaker 1: a lot of folks that we hang out with put
Speaker 1: ourselves out there too, you know. And then generally you're
Speaker 1: doing it, you know, and you are doing it for
Speaker 1: good reasons, like you want to express ideas, you want
Speaker 1: to have an exchange, you want you want to put
Speaker 1: yourself out there too, to express what you feel is
Speaker 1: important in trying to positively impact folks. I think that's
Speaker 1: im you know, I know a lot of folks that
Speaker 1: would be deemed as influencers in our space, and I
Speaker 1: can think of very few of them that I don't
Speaker 1: like as people. I just and I get it all
Speaker 1: the time. The ex person does it this way, and
Speaker 1: what a you know, what a douche or what I
Speaker 1: can't believe this person would do this this way. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I've met that person, hunted with them, and what the
Speaker 1: funk are you talking about? Like it may come across
Speaker 1: this way, but you're looking You're coming not from a
Speaker 1: place of like lifting that hunter up before he does anything,
Speaker 1: or or he or she does anything. You're you're looking
Speaker 1: to judge. And that's where I I've done that in
Speaker 1: the past, and I'm trying to erase that from my
Speaker 1: vocabulary and my actions, like because I think it's just
Speaker 1: the problem I have is where we start. Like if
Speaker 1: you start from you click on a your Instagram account
Speaker 1: or you click on your social media and you start
Speaker 1: from like looking for for things to judge, You're always
Speaker 1: going to find something one and you're always going to
Speaker 1: be like either angry or upset and what the hell
Speaker 1: are you doing it for? You know? And it sounds
Speaker 1: like you need to work on being a better human something.
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's I don't know if it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: but I think it's in politics to people get so tribal.
Speaker 1: But but I guess the point is all of these
Speaker 1: questions you got, are someone overlaying their perspective with however
Speaker 1: much or however little context and information on the actions
Speaker 1: usually of somebody else. Yes, and that it were more
Speaker 1: comfortable with the kind of the safe defense or the
Speaker 1: safe rationalis Oh, that's un ethical, and so ethics ethos
Speaker 1: becomes the spear to point and poke the other person with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great I mean, that's the greatest point of
Speaker 1: all of this is that, like you're not sitting down
Speaker 1: with yourself and asking yourself, am I ethical? Because that's
Speaker 1: a pretty easy one. We already addressed it around Like
Speaker 1: if you're asking a question, probably already know the answer
Speaker 1: because that's a like that's an intrinsic like, that's the
Speaker 1: intrinsic way to handle these these questions. I'm asking myself,
Speaker 1: do I feel good about this? Is it legal? Okay?
Speaker 1: That's first, and then do I feel good about it?
Speaker 1: Do I feel right about it? And that's what you
Speaker 1: should do. Rather than is it legal, it was everybody
Speaker 1: else doing it? Is everybody else? Because that then it
Speaker 1: becomes extrinsic, and you're starting to do things for the
Speaker 1: pleasure of others rather than for the satisfaction of yourself.
Speaker 1: And that's what that's what worries me a little bit
Speaker 1: about not not these questions. These questions are fine. People
Speaker 1: wonder and they like to hear it discussed, but um,
Speaker 1: and it may later help them have that intrinsic dialogue.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of people that are acting on
Speaker 1: social media to to make others happy and to make
Speaker 1: it make what they do seem the right way. That's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to see once you look hard enough. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that some of the critics to them as
Speaker 1: you guys get on your platforms. Also, yeah, there's gotta
Speaker 1: be times where it's you know, is it ever tiresome
Speaker 1: to yawning like you're you're close to it? Like, is
Speaker 1: there ever a point where I feel like mine's pretty healthy?
Speaker 1: I think yours is probably pretty healthy too. I mean, guys,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say the criticisms are kind of far and
Speaker 1: few between. Really, Yeah, yeah, um, I mean they do
Speaker 1: come in if it's worthy. If it's a worthy criticism,
Speaker 1: we address it. But if it's someone that's just you know,
Speaker 1: blowing hot air man, then just like life's too short. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got somebody to comment on my stuff. Get out
Speaker 1: of Montana. That's a fair criticism. Yeah, your bastard, go
Speaker 1: back to California. Stuff like that. You're like, oh, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: well you know what, he's probably been here three years,
Speaker 1: so he's Yeah, it's clearly bought in. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, we're humans. We're we're gonna have emotions and
Speaker 1: feelings based on what our life experiences are, and everyone's
Speaker 1: going to have a different way of expressing those. Some
Speaker 1: won't or someone'll do it very articulately, and some are
Speaker 1: just assholes. And there there are some people a very
Speaker 1: small percentage, and like you, honest, I'm thankful that of
Speaker 1: my audience is just there for the positive experience. But
Speaker 1: there are some people who wake up with the motto
Speaker 1: of I'm not happy till you're not happy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and then social media just tends to amplify whatever you are. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you're a super positive person and like you wake
Speaker 1: up your life's great. I love my wife, I love
Speaker 1: my kids, I love my job. You're probably going on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Instagram going like great photo, dude. Like if
Speaker 1: you wake up you're like, oh my god, another day.
Speaker 1: Like I'd like to drag somebody down to my level
Speaker 1: so I feel a little bit better. Like that's true.
Speaker 1: But I think in the hunting industry, just because we
Speaker 1: all care about it so much, it's highly it is.
Speaker 1: It bothers him. Man when I see I haven't had it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I will some day sometime, but I see
Speaker 1: my friends in the industry getting it and I and
Speaker 1: it makes me cringe because I think it it starts
Speaker 1: from a place of judgment, and boy, that's like somebody
Speaker 1: who's a mass of following or a mass to influence.
Speaker 1: They've done it for, you know, some reason, and normally
Speaker 1: it's pretty good reason. Um. However, it twists and turns
Speaker 1: in its story about Yeah, but I think all hunters
Speaker 1: um should just be willing to have the conversation, which
Speaker 1: I think is great because in your platform, Randy, and
Speaker 1: then media, your podcast and on this one, like, those
Speaker 1: conversations are had all the time. And well, if we
Speaker 1: aren't having those conversations ourselves, ah, one day we're gonna
Speaker 1: wake up and the rest of society has had that
Speaker 1: conversation for us, and and we aren't gonna like the
Speaker 1: conclusion they arrive at it. That that's my feeling. It's well,
Speaker 1: you look at British Columbia, look at the grizzly bear situation, right,
Speaker 1: you know, like there's arguments on both sides, but somebody
Speaker 1: didn't get get to Vancouver and say like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: working on this. They're working on it. Even in my
Speaker 1: personal and professional life, I've had criticisms along the way
Speaker 1: that we're really helpful to me and I think maybe
Speaker 1: a better business person maybe made me a better husband,
Speaker 1: made me a better father. Hopefully they may not have
Speaker 1: been what I wanted to hear at the time, but uh,
Speaker 1: and then I've also we've all had our share of
Speaker 1: criticisms where it's like, you know what, thanks, but you're clueless.
Speaker 1: You know, appreciate, appreciate that, but that's not how Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've my My statement that I've learned from my grandma
Speaker 1: is you've made mistaken me for someone who gives a
Speaker 1: shit about your opinion. I like your grandma right now, Well,
Speaker 1: my grandma had more one liners. I most of them
Speaker 1: would not be fair for a podcast, but um, let's
Speaker 1: end on this. I think this was probably a little
Speaker 1: lighter hearted, probably not even ethics, but we'll go there anyway.
Speaker 1: This guy named Mark Coleman. He says, when your wife
Speaker 1: spots a new piece of gear that you didn't really
Speaker 1: need but you did really want, and you bought that
Speaker 1: piece of gear in stealth mode, is it unethical to
Speaker 1: nonchalantly say, oh, I've had that for a while. It
Speaker 1: was someone who gived lots of marital advice, like Randy.
Speaker 1: When I read that, I'm like, oh, yeah, you honestly
Speaker 1: sat in on a few of my podcasts where I've
Speaker 1: given marital advice. Actually, Steve and I got interviewed by
Speaker 1: Pat Durkin for the n R, a magazine about marital
Speaker 1: about marital advice because he'd heard so much of it
Speaker 1: on our podcast. That one's a pretty easy one. I
Speaker 1: had never lied to my wife, but I got a
Speaker 1: lot of good advice. If you guys want of another
Speaker 1: podcast about we probably should just how to make it
Speaker 1: so that you're you and your spouse can reach your
Speaker 1: thirtieth wedding anniversary like mine will be hearing about seven
Speaker 1: weeks and get to hunt and fish as much as
Speaker 1: I do. Stop at your limited wallye. There you go.
Speaker 1: That help. Don't lie my My first, always, my first
Speaker 1: point of of advice is be more concerned about peace
Speaker 1: than justice. That's like the default, and lying usually results
Speaker 1: in neither justice or peace. More lying usually Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you want to see the result of lying u
Speaker 1: and having to just cover another one, just watch the
Speaker 1: news every night. Yeah, he needs to be better at hiding.
Speaker 1: Does hiding new gear counts lying? No? No, if you
Speaker 1: don't ever just say you can't notnch long and be like,
Speaker 1: oh that I never I never got that. So I've
Speaker 1: always been the carrot the reward kind of person that.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So for my wife, she gets the calendar
Speaker 1: anytime I'm not hunting. So the other eight months out
Speaker 1: of the year, if my wife wants to go to
Speaker 1: the big city and do whatever, I'm gonna do it
Speaker 1: and smile like I'm having the time of my life.
Speaker 1: And when we built our new house, uh, she wanted
Speaker 1: new furnishings. And I looked at that and this is
Speaker 1: the typical hunter angler. I'm looking at that thing, you know,
Speaker 1: many rifles and optics and stuff. Yeah, and so we
Speaker 1: came to an agreement, and not everyone's probably gonna do this,
Speaker 1: is that we would take fifteen percent on the budget
Speaker 1: that the house cost and she'd get brand new furnishings
Speaker 1: and we just treated as part of the package. But
Speaker 1: I didn't wanna if there's a charge on the credit
Speaker 1: card for a new whatever, I don't you know, I
Speaker 1: I would expect the same accommodation. That's right, best deal
Speaker 1: I ever made. I just made a very similar It
Speaker 1: wasn't a deal in those numbers, but it was we're
Speaker 1: building a house, right, we had I had this dream.
Speaker 1: It's like, because my wife always says this ship like
Speaker 1: she'll say it's my dream table. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's that mean? A dream you've been dreaming of
Speaker 1: a table? Probably say like, oh, it's a dream curtain.
Speaker 1: It was like that's her way of saying, I really
Speaker 1: wanted this is what I want. And so I had
Speaker 1: this dream similar to have like a third car, like
Speaker 1: a third garage where I would that I would build
Speaker 1: into like a butcher shop, and and we had that
Speaker 1: added onto the build, like that would that would happen?
Speaker 1: And I started thinking, like I started getting to the
Speaker 1: point where you know, my wife's moving to a place
Speaker 1: where I'm I'm gonna be going a lot. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: run off to go hunting. She wanted some better cabinets,
Speaker 1: some better flooring, some better this better that I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just said, honey, I'm gonna be gone a lot.
Speaker 1: You know this. You've been married to me. You know
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that money from the from this third
Speaker 1: car garage, and I'm going to give it to you
Speaker 1: to use and whatever way that you want. So that way,
Speaker 1: when I'm gone during elk season, you can walk on
Speaker 1: those new floors, and when you're in the care nice
Speaker 1: kitchen with your half of elks brought out across the
Speaker 1: top butcher, and you'll be like, see told you. I
Speaker 1: was trying to establish this benevolence, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it will work or not. Well, we we have
Speaker 1: another deal at our house that my wife and our
Speaker 1: sister go on some vacations. Uh, and my wife and
Speaker 1: I go do our thing too. But the deal is
Speaker 1: when she comes back from a vacation, I never look
Speaker 1: at the bank statement or the credit card and say
Speaker 1: a word yeah. And when I come back from a
Speaker 1: hunting trip or I do something. The words never said
Speaker 1: about what it costs. Now, if I started getting outside
Speaker 1: the side the bounds of or she did, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'd have a discussion. But when you think about that,
Speaker 1: you know, when when this person talks about gear, you
Speaker 1: think about how many things in life really aren't that
Speaker 1: important over arguing. And maybe this just comes with age
Speaker 1: or or length of relationship. Uh, those kinds of things
Speaker 1: really aren't worth arguing over. They're they're often expressions of
Speaker 1: some other perceived unfairness, and it expresses itself. And you
Speaker 1: know that new piece of gear you got there, that's
Speaker 1: that's problematic and we need to talk about that. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a form of car they get, Yettie. A buddy
Speaker 1: of mine name is Andy Holland, who's one of the
Speaker 1: first employees ever Yettie. When he was there, c c
Speaker 1: O for a long time, UM or CFO, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: for a long time. He told me one time, he said, Well,
Speaker 1: we do. My wife and I we have an account
Speaker 1: that pays all the bills and takes care of all
Speaker 1: the living, and then each of us has our own account.
Speaker 1: Each month, we get a certain amount of money that's
Speaker 1: ours to spend on whatever we want, and neither of
Speaker 1: us can criticize or even even at some point see
Speaker 1: Randy's playing out a large some So that's we ready
Speaker 1: got to talk about business opportunities. But Randy has a
Speaker 1: large money clip of cash that he uses in the
Speaker 1: same way. I'm assuming because that's that's that's what Andy
Speaker 1: told me said. You know, she never touches my little kitty,
Speaker 1: and I don't touch hers, and it's perfect. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no way too. So this big wide und dollar bills.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I had it in my pocket
Speaker 1: today other than I I gotta be careful leaving it
Speaker 1: on the counter. My wife will grab something. But we
Speaker 1: each have our own allowance. The household budget gives us
Speaker 1: each and allowance each month, uh of dollars and anything
Speaker 1: that you can sell, sell, salvage, otherwise convert to money
Speaker 1: that's yours. And so I my one friend calls it
Speaker 1: his sock drawer money. Uh so this is my You've
Speaker 1: been saving yours for quite a while. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: So when I sell my muskrats or sell my beaver,
Speaker 1: when I do some trapping, that that out goes, that
Speaker 1: goes in there. When I recycle some old stuff, that man,
Speaker 1: I haven't used that for twelve years. Out to sell
Speaker 1: that when I sell some of my old decoys. I
Speaker 1: used to collect duct decoys. And every once in a
Speaker 1: while someone will say, I've heard you have this. Yeah
Speaker 1: I do. I'll pay you here you go green stuff.
Speaker 1: So that that's how it's solved. I don't know what
Speaker 1: my wife's equivalent of that is. It's something good. I
Speaker 1: don't rummage through her purse looking to see how much
Speaker 1: soccer o money she has. But so that's that's scow
Speaker 1: the waters at our house also, and that's also life
Speaker 1: living living life with an accountant. Yeah, for he knows
Speaker 1: that cash is the only way to really have money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for those who didn't know. In my other life, I
Speaker 1: am a c p A. So yeah, maybe I approach
Speaker 1: this differently than Yeah. I feel like three accounts a
Speaker 1: pocket full of cash is probably more. It's probably more
Speaker 1: beneficial for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is funny. I
Speaker 1: I used to use an outside production company instead of
Speaker 1: having all my own employees. And we're in Galina, Alaska.
Speaker 1: I tell the production company, do not let your employees
Speaker 1: show up with credit cards, send them with a Gobba cash. Well,
Speaker 1: I show up, I got four thousand dollars of cash
Speaker 1: in my pocket. And because I know what happened out there, well,
Speaker 1: whether aid lays us, we've got to go to some
Speaker 1: local person there. And hey, you know our flight now
Speaker 1: got too Fairbanks got canceled for three days because of
Speaker 1: the weather. We need a room. Yep, hundred dollars for you,
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for you, and you and you and you,
Speaker 1: so five hundred dollars a night to sleep in this
Speaker 1: really really rough place. And the production crew guys are
Speaker 1: pulling out their debit cards and credit cards, and this
Speaker 1: guy's rolling on the ground laughing. Sorry, boys, you can
Speaker 1: sleep out in the rain and the cold tonight. Uh.
Speaker 1: Fortunately I had my big water cash and bailed us
Speaker 1: out of that situation. But cash is a very handy
Speaker 1: thing to have. Now. It's a generational thing though too,
Speaker 1: like cash is such a such a foreign object of millennials.
Speaker 1: It is my camera guys. Everyone on my crew is
Speaker 1: thirty or younger. They never have more than two dollars
Speaker 1: with them and probably feel like cash is a weird
Speaker 1: thing to happen. Yeah, and they told me they're using
Speaker 1: debit cards. First of all, if you've ever done anything
Speaker 1: related well, and you wouldn't if you were in a
Speaker 1: c p A. But we have to go to these
Speaker 1: classes every year to maintain our certificate. One of them
Speaker 1: is fraud. Well, the number one compromised vehicle in the
Speaker 1: world is a debit card. If you're listening to this,
Speaker 1: do not use a debit card, not a credit card.
Speaker 1: A credit card is okay, a debit card, don't use it.
Speaker 1: And so my my guys are always using debit cards,
Speaker 1: and I almost threatened to fire them. I'm like, if
Speaker 1: you don't get rid of that debit card, I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to fire you because I've told you
Speaker 1: about ten times now. I'm gonna quietly slide mine into
Speaker 1: the trash camp. I would and ask any banker if
Speaker 1: they have a debit card. No, they all use credit cards.
Speaker 1: Why because they see the amount of fraud and compromise.
Speaker 1: It happens people that have been act And when you
Speaker 1: think about it, when someone steals gets your compromises your
Speaker 1: debit card, there's dealing right out of your bank account,
Speaker 1: whereas if they compromise your credit card, they're stealing from
Speaker 1: the credit card company. Those companies are they've got people
Speaker 1: on staff to go and recover that and prevent that.
Speaker 1: Good luck recovering your bank account. They just got cleaned out.
Speaker 1: It should be changing live. None of this other ethical
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about helped you at all. This is
Speaker 1: it to your point? It is a generational thing. It
Speaker 1: drives me nuts. We'll stop out of place and uh,
Speaker 1: I'll ask one of the guys, hey, can you run
Speaker 1: in and crab that? And they don't have me cash
Speaker 1: with him. Oh, I handed my credit card. Now, that's fine,
Speaker 1: and take care of it. But I would feel if
Speaker 1: I leave the house in the morning, there's three things
Speaker 1: I look for. I have my phone, do I have
Speaker 1: my keys? And do I have my cash? Yeah? I'm in,
Speaker 1: I'm in. I want to be paying something. Roll around.
Speaker 1: Someone's going to see me out in the dark street
Speaker 1: here and roll me. Well, Randy carry's guns as well.
Speaker 1: That's right. There's nothing on this body that's worth dying for. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't leave my house without my guns, my big
Speaker 1: wads of cash, my jewelry. I should have said the
Speaker 1: other part. Yeah, if you went out in my car
Speaker 1: right now, I am heavily. I'm very able to protect myself.
Speaker 1: Let's put that way, all right. I think we got
Speaker 1: it all figured out right, Yehnny, we know we've got
Speaker 1: to come back, look a lot more to do. But
Speaker 1: thanks for everybody who will endeavored to send us these
Speaker 1: ponderings and we uh, we appreciate it. Yeah, good questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some really good ones in there, and we'll
Speaker 1: we'll definitely do it again. So don't be shy send
Speaker 1: them along, even if we don't ask for him, because
Speaker 1: I know you're not. So thanks for Randy. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Guys really appreciate it. Welcome to month, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Bosman. How long you've been here about two coming
Speaker 1: up on two and a half weeks, But you're old time,
Speaker 1: you're almost homes Yeah, it's it's honest, your honest, you've
Speaker 1: been here what five years now? He's an all crushed
Speaker 1: you could run for political office there long enough. No,
Speaker 1: I have two weeks and I'm feeling I'm feeling settled.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling settled. As my wife said, when I look
Speaker 1: at the mountains, I feel good like I love you, honey. No.
Speaker 1: Thanks for what you guys produce. Thanks for the content
Speaker 1: you're doing, and I follow a lot of your stuff.
Speaker 1: You guys have really good discussions across all your platforms,
Speaker 1: and I think the value of having platforms in our
Speaker 1: world media platforms. Maybe I'm wrong in this, but I
Speaker 1: feel strongly that when you are blessed with the trust
Speaker 1: audience is placed in you, you need to use it
Speaker 1: to explore some of these issues, to have these discussions.
Speaker 1: And if you don't, if you're if you shy away
Speaker 1: from these discussions, and I don't care if it's politics, ethics,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, are you really giving back to your
Speaker 1: audience or are our pastime of hunting to the degree
Speaker 1: you could, yeah, we're Maybe that's judging too much, but
Speaker 1: I hope people feel encouraged to to have these discussions.
Speaker 1: They're never easy. You're gonna get some criticism no matter
Speaker 1: what you do, but it further stuff. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we're all happily centrist and we're happily pro nuance here.
Speaker 1: I like that it's uncomfortable, but usually if you go
Speaker 1: and take uncomfortable things all you come out the other end.
Speaker 1: Or I'm happy to have anybody that listens, that thinks
Speaker 1: the way I do about that you know, and the
Speaker 1: way that you do, and the way that Yanni doesn't.
Speaker 1: Steve Ornella and everybody else. I mean, I'm happy that
Speaker 1: there's people out there that share those values, take the
Speaker 1: time to listen to these types of things. Well, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. Guys really appreciate it. Thank you, Randy.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you. That's it. That's all episode number forty
Speaker 1: in the books. Thanks to Randy and honest but specifically Randy,
Speaker 1: because he doesn't work here, Jannest does. And but of
Speaker 1: those guys, it couldn't be more sound minds to to
Speaker 1: take on some of those questions. And I really admire
Speaker 1: and I am a fan of Randy Newberg and what
Speaker 1: he does for our community. Um, I can't say enough
Speaker 1: about him and his willingness to come and sit and
Speaker 1: spend two hours' acting around with us when he's a
Speaker 1: very busy, manful lot to do. So thanks to Randy
Speaker 1: for that. Thanks to all of you for submitting your questions.
Speaker 1: We got way more than I ever thought possible. So, UM,
Speaker 1: if we didn't get to yours and didn't get your
Speaker 1: response to on on Instagram, thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: sending these questions in and we'll probably do this again. UM,
Speaker 1: so tell your friends if you don't mind UM about
Speaker 1: this one. What else what else, what else? Well, you
Speaker 1: could also go to the Mediator dot com. You could
Speaker 1: definitely do that. You can read some stories that are
Speaker 1: there and things of that nature, and then you can
Speaker 1: subscribe to the newsletter that's there. You could visit the
Speaker 1: store and there's some Hunting Collective merge in the store,
Speaker 1: so then you could he's supporting a nice pro nuance
Speaker 1: anti bullshit t shirt. Definitely do that. Um Or you
Speaker 1: could just get a wonderful hoodie with the Hunting Collective
Speaker 1: podcast logo on the front. It's pretty cool, it's gray,
Speaker 1: it's nice. I like it. Um There's other things you
Speaker 1: can do. There's Mediator apparel, there's wine to Hunt apparel.
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of stuff in there that you can
Speaker 1: go and do at the Meteor dot com. If there's
Speaker 1: anything else, I'm forgetting. I'll probably get to it next
Speaker 1: time for episode forty one, but until then, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Bye.