Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you, shirtless,
Speaker 1: severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening. Don't make
Speaker 1: you eat your podcast. You can't predict anything there. He
Speaker 1: is already, did you just do it? He's done. I'll
Speaker 1: explain what he just did in a minute. But you
Speaker 1: know what happened to day that was kind of funny
Speaker 1: is I was flying with a a Muskox tongue, the
Speaker 1: tongue of a Muscox in a ziploc bag brind and
Speaker 1: I'm going through t s A in the airport in
Speaker 1: Seattle and uh, it flags right and they gotta check
Speaker 1: my bag and you're carrying it. Yeah, I haded my
Speaker 1: carry on a brind tongue. I mean when you look
Speaker 1: at you like, that's a tongue in a bag. And
Speaker 1: she said I need to inspect your bag, and we
Speaker 1: go over to inspect. Then she says, um, there's an
Speaker 1: organic mass in this bag. And I made a joke
Speaker 1: about organic masses. But then it was worried that you
Speaker 1: think I was hitting on her, and you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I'm like, oh, you know those organic man,
Speaker 1: but I left it with an organic mass. She pulled
Speaker 1: it out and said and it's just a tongue in
Speaker 1: a bag and she said everybody loves their fish. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 1: but um yeah, meat sets it off. It does, because yeah,
Speaker 1: that turkey set it off. Got me in trouble. That
Speaker 1: wasn't a checked bag, right, Is that what you want?
Speaker 1: Oh tell that? Because that's interesting about t s A.
Speaker 1: We a lot of people who write in and asked
Speaker 1: various questions about how you fly with meat. And I
Speaker 1: think I've told this story before. We're trying to make short.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I got called back to security after I'd
Speaker 1: already gone through and come all the way back through
Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, they need seeing the back room
Speaker 1: about your check baggage. And I go in there and
Speaker 1: on all the nice Stilens still tables, My big red
Speaker 1: Duffle is completely you know, taking apart all the pieces
Speaker 1: of laid out, and I happen to have a whole
Speaker 1: turkey chopped up in there cold. But there was like
Speaker 1: a tail fan. I was bringing the wings home for
Speaker 1: the kids, two breasts, the legs, it's all they're spurs,
Speaker 1: you know, because the kids want to see all that ship.
Speaker 1: So I'm like what They're like, well, this set it off,
Speaker 1: pointing at the turkey breast because again large organic mass.
Speaker 1: But the reason you get you're in here is because
Speaker 1: we were in there looking for that. We found a
Speaker 1: loose shotgun showy, Yeah, loose turkey bullets. And so that's
Speaker 1: what got me in trouble. But luckily in check backers
Speaker 1: they don't have to do the whole um check your
Speaker 1: background and and the and the cop report. But the
Speaker 1: funny part of it was that it was one of
Speaker 1: those heavy shot and you hunt turkeys and use heavy shot,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you touch the trigger, there goes
Speaker 1: four or five bucks. And I knew that. In my
Speaker 1: nice case, I had some like cheap Remingtons stuff. I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, if you don't mind, instead of taking
Speaker 1: that one can of swap out, you can take my
Speaker 1: cheap Remington one a heavy shot back. Yeah, he's like
Speaker 1: a problem. Banks. You packed it all up and left.
Speaker 1: Now you just got the problem where you try to
Speaker 1: go walk onto the plane with amo rounds and you
Speaker 1: have to talk to the policeman. You know, that's what
Speaker 1: I had to do before. But it was Embozeman. They
Speaker 1: were cool. Yeah, it had to be an anchorage and
Speaker 1: they knew that I wasn't trying to pull a fast one.
Speaker 1: I had just haunted arm again that day. You know,
Speaker 1: they're like, yea, yeah, I get a buddy. But here's
Speaker 1: the deal. Now, we got to act like you're trying
Speaker 1: to sneak onto the plane with ammunition and go through
Speaker 1: all the steps, though obviously you're just like you know,
Speaker 1: every other idiot who comes through here with like bullets
Speaker 1: in his pockets at the Anchorage airport, but I had
Speaker 1: to talk to policeman and take some information down. I
Speaker 1: had a morning at the Anchorage Airport where I was
Speaker 1: coming back to the States with a blacktail in my backpack,
Speaker 1: and I remember going through security and the deer's entire
Speaker 1: head was inside my backpack concealed, but when I went
Speaker 1: through the X ray machine, they could obviously see inside
Speaker 1: the backpack and the girl's face behind the machine, and
Speaker 1: she like looked at her supervisor, and she looked at
Speaker 1: her coworker, and then she looks at me, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, Hey, this Alaska and I'm taking a deer
Speaker 1: back to Montana. Cool about it, super cool about it.
Speaker 1: I had a friend that was carrying the antlers one time,
Speaker 1: and they had a big debate about the antlers, and
Speaker 1: in the end he was able to bring the antlers
Speaker 1: on cool. Another debate that they could be a weapon,
Speaker 1: whether yeah, whether it was weaponized or not. So we're
Speaker 1: just talking to had a bunch of weird stuff in
Speaker 1: its fishing vest. Who is that an old man was
Speaker 1: flying with the fishing vests. I missed that one and
Speaker 1: he had all kinds of like semi weapon like items
Speaker 1: and his vest. First he was really confused and they
Speaker 1: kind of said, like, um, they made him, let's just
Speaker 1: tell me this. They made him get on the plane
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, you put it in the overhead
Speaker 1: bin and don't mess with it until you get where
Speaker 1: you're going. But that's gonna stop the flame and get hijacks.
Speaker 1: But but that's on one day, and you think it's
Speaker 1: entirely rigid, right, Like there's a set of rules and
Speaker 1: there's no room for individual interpretation within that. But when
Speaker 1: Nick Brigden had a set of deer antlers, they debated it,
Speaker 1: and apparently with this old man, they debated what he
Speaker 1: had going on in his fishion vest, and there was
Speaker 1: a level of you know, weighing in on it. But
Speaker 1: you know, their mandate is looking for hazardous materials that
Speaker 1: would be hazard justus to the plane and air travel.
Speaker 1: Like I've heard day like if you you could have
Speaker 1: other illegal junk in there, and it's not their concern,
Speaker 1: Like it's not what they're looking for. I had a
Speaker 1: man I flew recently. I had I had a bag
Speaker 1: pulled out because I had a big hunkle iron ore
Speaker 1: in it, and the guys like, I need to look
Speaker 1: in your bag. I said, yeah, I got a piece
Speaker 1: of iron ore in are. He goes at getting raw.
Speaker 1: I'm like, in facts raw iron ore and he let
Speaker 1: me go. Then I had another time in the last
Speaker 1: few weeks where I had a mammoth tooth and pulled
Speaker 1: that out, never even asked what the hell it was.
Speaker 1: Daved a good looking over sent me on my way,
Speaker 1: like I feel like you could have like a dude's
Speaker 1: arm in there. Defeated They it's not their mandate to
Speaker 1: pull it out, I think, mabe. Depending on the state
Speaker 1: of decay, they might take you side. Or if you
Speaker 1: had a hundred dollar bill duct tape to the arm,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I'll look the other way here, Or
Speaker 1: if you laid a bag up they had one of
Speaker 1: those handcuffs. It was still handcuffed and you ran that
Speaker 1: through the thing. I need to check your bags, sir, um,
Speaker 1: joined by Chris gil Ridge Pounder. Um, Jeff Sposito, right,
Speaker 1: kind of Italian? Italian? I wonder if you're more Italian
Speaker 1: than I am? How many how many grandfi parents are?
Speaker 1: Do you have an Italian? Just my just my grandfather
Speaker 1: and my dad's side. But yeah, one grandparent. So I
Speaker 1: try to like relate to Italian culture. But um, but
Speaker 1: it's just really hard for me. Yeah, I'm American. Yeah
Speaker 1: was my last name. Yeah. My allD Man was brought
Speaker 1: up speaking and he was raised by his grandparents. So
Speaker 1: he was raised by full on balls out Italians immigrants,
Speaker 1: was raised to speak Italian in the home. Um. Later
Speaker 1: in life he moved out to Michigan. Was like it
Speaker 1: never happened. He wouldn't care about the language. South side
Speaker 1: of Chicago, right by what was Whiskey Park. So my
Speaker 1: grandfather lived and grew up in Pittsburgh, but came over
Speaker 1: same Italian speaking family. His parents never didn't speak in English.
Speaker 1: Similar similar story. Yeah, he was my dad's like I
Speaker 1: didn't eat the food, but now and then try to
Speaker 1: remember a word he was to one of his He
Speaker 1: had a handful of insults. One of them was that
Speaker 1: you were a minga la morta. Now, I've asked a
Speaker 1: lot of Italian speakers like what would that mean? Like,
Speaker 1: the best I can tell, it's like, uh, you're like
Speaker 1: a dead dick. He had another insult, which in my
Speaker 1: mind was was photonomy shako and I've that's many Italians
Speaker 1: and are like, yeah, I don't know that. That doesn't
Speaker 1: even sound like I don't know what that just made
Speaker 1: that up, but that was the Italian words he had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't have cared good to meet you. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, just tying off the Italian thing, I just
Speaker 1: learned my cousin, apparently we have enough Italian in there
Speaker 1: that you can apply for dual Italian citizenship. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the laws are really, but yeah, And then
Speaker 1: I started to ponder what would be the advantages of
Speaker 1: having this sort of disadvantages. But she, but my cousin,
Speaker 1: was able to get an Italian dual Italian citizenhip an
Speaker 1: Italian passport. I don't know what the advantage. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure either, but it sounds cool, so maybe something to
Speaker 1: look well, if you wound up in some you know,
Speaker 1: Mexican jail. You have two embassies that call. You could
Speaker 1: have like two embassies simon simultaneously working on your behalf.
Speaker 1: I guess that's an advantage. Yeah, I'm not sure there's
Speaker 1: an advantage, but there you go. And then Peter Pete, Pete, Pete,
Speaker 1: who's holding a dog? Shocker? Oh yeah, you got a
Speaker 1: dog out somewhere right now. Oh yeah, he's tied up outside.
Speaker 1: Oh he's tied up. He's in the truck. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: can actually see him from right here. So you're keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on him. And he would rather be killing
Speaker 1: house cats cats. I don't mean to say killing house
Speaker 1: cats cases family friendly. Let's just leave it to the
Speaker 1: wild ones. Yeah, tell him your last name again. I
Speaker 1: forgot your lastname. That's not occurring to me right now. Munich,
Speaker 1: Pete Munich yep. Um, So we got dual things going
Speaker 1: on here because Chris, you got nothing. Chris is just
Speaker 1: in town, and I felt and he just rather than
Speaker 1: being alone in his hotel trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get cable to work or something. Um, Chris is
Speaker 1: a cameraman that works with us, and you just put
Speaker 1: in a long hard day. Yeah, I wouldn't say a
Speaker 1: hard day. It was a fun day. It was a
Speaker 1: day we weren't climbing ridges or anything. Um, Pete Munich,
Speaker 1: you do many things, but Rocky Mountain go Tollions explain
Speaker 1: that real quick. So the rock came out and go
Speaker 1: to lines is as your child, I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it my brain child. Yeah. With the help of
Speaker 1: many talented people along the way, has become the leading
Speaker 1: conservation organization for rocky mountain goats across North America. Alright,
Speaker 1: do you have members? We do? Oh? Yeah, Um, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an animal that doesn't draw. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have its focus group. Correct? It does now? It
Speaker 1: does now? It never did have its focus group. Correct.
Speaker 1: You've read all the books by Duncan Gil Chris, quite
Speaker 1: a few of them, and his videos. Not many mountain
Speaker 1: goat writers, but he is, if there are two, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing he's probably the best. Oh he's he's a pretty
Speaker 1: he's a legend right there. But the guy that wrote
Speaker 1: The Beast The Color of Winner, Chadwick not real hunting friendly. No,
Speaker 1: but nor are his colleagues. But um, but uh an
Speaker 1: informative book anyway. Yeah, The Beast of Color Winner is
Speaker 1: an incredible book. Um certainly doesn't highlight hunting in the
Speaker 1: way that we try to. He's still alive, lives in Montana. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's a good guy. He's you know, he Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's weird because like when you get
Speaker 1: a researcher, you know, but but they spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time in proximity the animal. You can kind of
Speaker 1: go with two directions and you kind of almost felt
Speaker 1: like this like anthropomorphic kind of relationship, you know. But
Speaker 1: it's an informative as hell. Yeah, it's incredible. You know,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of literature on mountain goats, and
Speaker 1: certainly not a lot of literature for the general public.
Speaker 1: So The Basic Color of Winter is a very valuable
Speaker 1: book to the mountain goat. Yeah. Um. Gilchrist has so
Speaker 1: many awesome observations. I love that. You know, he's like
Speaker 1: an astute observer. Accidentally he's an accidental very good writer.
Speaker 1: When I said that, I mean I think that. I
Speaker 1: don't think he he set out to try to emulate styles,
Speaker 1: but he accidentally writes like Hemingway interest in these very
Speaker 1: like clear declarative sentences. He like says a very true thing,
Speaker 1: then says a very true thing, then says a very
Speaker 1: true thing on down the line and winds up having
Speaker 1: He's like kind of like accidentally beautiful passage. It's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to argue with a guy like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like an authoritative sense. And then Jeff Sposito, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from Italy, from from dual citizen. Possibly soon Oh you
Speaker 1: even have a hat. The reason Jeff, he's I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about um. So we got
Speaker 1: to kind of like two organizations to two goody two
Speaker 1: shoe do good or organizations represented here. I've never been
Speaker 1: called that before that. You actually couldn't get that name.
Speaker 1: You tried to be the two shoot the Goody two
Speaker 1: Shoe Alliance, but had to go with the Rocky Mountain.
Speaker 1: Wasn't able to wasn't able to get it on paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so right down when you got going on the
Speaker 1: two percent so so similar to Pete. Thanks to a
Speaker 1: lot of help. But but we started an organization called
Speaker 1: two percent for Conservation and UH and really the primary
Speaker 1: objective is to to help conservation groups UH get help
Speaker 1: them fund their mission work by bringing industry companies and
Speaker 1: giving away to get industry companies more involved and at
Speaker 1: the same time, how how this really came to fruition
Speaker 1: was understanding that that companies that do get back to
Speaker 1: conservation deserve recognition for for what they do, uh and
Speaker 1: and what they contribute, and trying to find a medium
Speaker 1: or a platform to help them get recognition from consumers
Speaker 1: for for what they do. For conservation groups. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you go on there and you see that that that's there,
Speaker 1: and you know what you're doing. Now, I look, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can even talk about this. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about like because I see that name and
Speaker 1: something pops into my mind, can you talk about that?
Speaker 1: You're not a lot of talk about that. I think
Speaker 1: we can talk about whatever, whatever everything. It's kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's what is it one percent for its
Speaker 1: one percent for the planet. Yeah, and that's uh so
Speaker 1: one Percent of the Planet is an organization that that
Speaker 1: was started by of Entinard, who is the founder of Patagonia,
Speaker 1: and and a fellow named Craig Matthews who wants a
Speaker 1: fly shop here in West Yellowstone just south of us
Speaker 1: and uh uh don't quote me on this, but twelve
Speaker 1: or fifteen years ago they started One Percent for the
Speaker 1: planet based off the principles of of businesses that make
Speaker 1: a living on on the planet. Outdoor industry should be
Speaker 1: given back to UH to environmental causes and protecting the
Speaker 1: planet and UM and their models. It's been very successful.
Speaker 1: They have I think over two thousand member businesses now, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's all in the in the software outdoor in
Speaker 1: well it's it's uh, it's very broad. I mean they
Speaker 1: have food, you know, food organic companies. Cliff Bars is
Speaker 1: a pretty popular brand name. That's one percent planet number.
Speaker 1: Remember if you look on the back of every cliff Bar,
Speaker 1: you there's a little logo. UM. So it's pretty broad.
Speaker 1: But but a lot of over two thousand I believe,
Speaker 1: yeah so so yeah, so they we I can't take
Speaker 1: credit for for inventing that model, but but really looking
Speaker 1: at what that model has done for environmental UH sustainability
Speaker 1: type nonprofits and what it's done for businesses like Patagonia
Speaker 1: who really have a strong reputation with corporate responsibility. We
Speaker 1: how many businesses, I mean, how many organizations do they backed?
Speaker 1: You know, they have UH I want to say thirty
Speaker 1: five hundred different nonprofit environmental they say, or within their network.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's broad, it's it's super broad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, so that's kind of what our model
Speaker 1: is built off of. We looked at the opportunity to
Speaker 1: kind of leverage that and hunting and fishing conservation, and
Speaker 1: it made a lot of sense the more we learned
Speaker 1: about how one percent of the planet structured and what
Speaker 1: they do. Um and that's kind of what started us
Speaker 1: down the path with two percent of conservation. So what
Speaker 1: do you got to do now? Like it's pretty brand
Speaker 1: spigty new. Yeah, we gotta we got everything to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we uh to this point. So we've been working on
Speaker 1: on getting this going for about the last two years,
Speaker 1: really doing all the back and stuff, getting the r
Speaker 1: S determination for five of m C three status, getting
Speaker 1: some startup funding money, working with some uh some conservation
Speaker 1: groups and some businesses to really get feedback and involve
Speaker 1: the model, make sure we're going on the right path.
Speaker 1: And when you say startup money, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: like you needed money just to get like the legal
Speaker 1: stuff taking care of. Gotta get the legal stuff taken
Speaker 1: care of, got to build a website, got to create
Speaker 1: a brand. Who got to go out and market the
Speaker 1: brand and build value so, so who pays for that?
Speaker 1: Do do the did did the groups that you're gonna
Speaker 1: eventually support pay for it as an investment for the
Speaker 1: backing they might get down the road or did you
Speaker 1: have people who are participating the program help so so
Speaker 1: so a little bit of both. But yeah, my our
Speaker 1: first approach was to go to some conservation groups that
Speaker 1: I'm fortunate to have a relationship with the first one
Speaker 1: I went to was a Wild che Foundation, And yeah,
Speaker 1: it was exactly that conversation and hey, what do you
Speaker 1: think of this model? Is pretty open, casual conversation. This
Speaker 1: is an idea we have when we think that if
Speaker 1: it's successful, it could it could help raise more money
Speaker 1: for groups like yourself. Uh, and I need some money.
Speaker 1: But to get it going, we need we need some money.
Speaker 1: So they had they took a leap of faith. They
Speaker 1: believe in the model, and they said, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that this just can impact us long term, can impact
Speaker 1: conservation as a whole long term, which is which is
Speaker 1: it just as important. So they were willing to invest
Speaker 1: some money to in in the form of a grant
Speaker 1: to get it off the ground. Did that come with
Speaker 1: stipulation that you're gonna have to pay them back. No, no,
Speaker 1: no strings they took faith. Yeah, no strings attached. How
Speaker 1: many uh are you guys? Is it launched? Like? Could
Speaker 1: I expect to go somewhere and go and be like,
Speaker 1: oh two percent for conservation? So we yeah you can.
Speaker 1: So we turned the website on for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, about ten days ago. Yeah, okay, so the
Speaker 1: website's live. It's it's fishing wildlife dot org or two
Speaker 1: percent conservation dot org. Get you there too, So we
Speaker 1: have a website. I gotta put in a little percentage.
Speaker 1: You can't buy domain names and simuls two all written out,
Speaker 1: but yeah t w oh yeah, but fishing wildlife dot org.
Speaker 1: The problem with hunter eat No, we're into the problem.
Speaker 1: Someone else had already taken the numeral. Who is that?
Speaker 1: Just some jackass? Same way some jackass owns meat eater
Speaker 1: dot com. Did you try to buy it? The guys
Speaker 1: owns meteor dot com now and then puts up a
Speaker 1: picture of some dinner he ate in the restaurant. You
Speaker 1: reach out to him. We drive. We haven't tried yet.
Speaker 1: We don't have those kind of pockets yet. Have you
Speaker 1: even approached the game? Oh yeah we did, No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just sent just an email to saying, hey, we'd
Speaker 1: love to have that name. I don't think you ever
Speaker 1: got back to you any It's funny, not a hunting thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's the same thing. He's like, oh yeah, looking
Speaker 1: for a restaurant. He's hunting for a restaurant. Yeah. Be
Speaker 1: like he's going to be like, I'll go by going
Speaker 1: out to eat or I'll buy trying to find a
Speaker 1: good restaurant dot com. And then you give me the
Speaker 1: one you have because you obviously have the wrong one
Speaker 1: because that's going out to dinner. That's funny, Yeah, out
Speaker 1: to dinner. It would be a better at one for him.
Speaker 1: There's so many stories, and this is the right group
Speaker 1: of guys to know them all. But there's so many
Speaker 1: stories about like people right when domain names, you know,
Speaker 1: the domain name buying games, like people who like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he might want to be in the big
Speaker 1: name in politics. Someday I'm gonna go buy his name.
Speaker 1: You almost like, go get my kids names now in
Speaker 1: case everyone have like a you know, if he comes
Speaker 1: like a tree trimmer and wants to have like his name.
Speaker 1: Uh So, speaking of that, but we were pretty fortunate
Speaker 1: to uh I play the domain game. No, we got
Speaker 1: fish and Wildlife dot org, which is nobody had that,
Speaker 1: and I think somebody lapsed on it. And I was
Speaker 1: on Go Daddy late at night one time when trying
Speaker 1: to find fish and wildlife dot org no, and I
Speaker 1: was putting in a whole bunch of random domain names
Speaker 1: and Go Daddy and it's like, I don't even know
Speaker 1: how I came to fish and wild life dot org
Speaker 1: but put it in. It was like available hunter Bucks
Speaker 1: and I was like, ham, that's kind of expensive, and
Speaker 1: moved on to like search of other domains. And the
Speaker 1: next morning I woke up and like texting one of
Speaker 1: my buddies that's helped me with this, and I was like,
Speaker 1: fishing wildife dot organs availables, Like you bought it, right,
Speaker 1: And I was like no, he's like, dude, you're a moron. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: So so we bought that domain name and that's what
Speaker 1: we're using to promote the platform A two percent for conservation.
Speaker 1: I figured if it doesn't work out, maybe we could
Speaker 1: sell it domain name and somebody needs it. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: the people know al right, so you launched ten days ago, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who are your benefactors? So to mean who would you okay,
Speaker 1: you aggregate the two percents? No? No? So yeah, So
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I don't I wouldn't say benefactors
Speaker 1: the word I would use, but I think that's appropriate.
Speaker 1: So we aren't taking the money from companies that they're
Speaker 1: giving back to conservation. Essentially, what our organization does a
Speaker 1: certify that a company does meet certain criteria. Oh, I
Speaker 1: got you. So so that is a common misconception I've
Speaker 1: had with businesses. And but this is really what the
Speaker 1: sending one percent of sales? Uh? But but to your point,
Speaker 1: So this was an interesting learning that I had from
Speaker 1: one percent for the planet, right, That's what I thought
Speaker 1: when I started studying the model too. I was like,
Speaker 1: huh so, how the hell are you going to distribute
Speaker 1: those funds? How are you getting these companies to write
Speaker 1: your check for one percent of sales? And and uh
Speaker 1: and and I learned that No, that's not how it works.
Speaker 1: I mean the companies, and this is a huge benefit
Speaker 1: of the model, are empowered to work with the conservation groups.
Speaker 1: They want to what what are you passionate about as
Speaker 1: a company, who do you want to support or you
Speaker 1: want to support the Rocky Mountain? Go to alliance back
Speaker 1: country owners and anglers. We don't we don't care as
Speaker 1: long as they are pro hunting and fishing conservation groups.
Speaker 1: We just certify. Okay, did you contribute one percent of
Speaker 1: sales to that and then one percent in your time?
Speaker 1: So so I guess we should clarify that first it's
Speaker 1: two percent for conservation. Is one percent of sales plus
Speaker 1: one percent of time equals two percent for conservation. But
Speaker 1: let's say they turned around, they're like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: gave it all the Humane Society r H s U S. Right.
Speaker 1: Would you then say, well, that don't county of course.
Speaker 1: So that's so that's part of what we do from
Speaker 1: the certification is just we look at the criteria of Okay,
Speaker 1: who would you who would you contribute funds to? Who
Speaker 1: are those organizations? Make sure we have we have four
Speaker 1: kind of bullet points for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: that kind of define conservation groups in our mind. Those
Speaker 1: are the obvious and wildlife and habitat improvement, right, that's
Speaker 1: kind of the most common one. Access and Opportunities one
Speaker 1: of them which is hugely important wildlife and have to
Speaker 1: be research and everything. That's research everything. Ye, um, what
Speaker 1: are there are to education and outreach. So this is
Speaker 1: teaching kids about conservation, about hunting and fishing, about how
Speaker 1: it works. And then uh, hell's the fourth one? I say,
Speaker 1: access an opportunity. Have to pull up the website to
Speaker 1: figure out the fourth one wildlife habitat, access, opportunity, education, outreach.
Speaker 1: Come on, man, good thing the website which which thinks
Speaker 1: about all that? Chris, I'm into it, man, Like in
Speaker 1: what way? Well, I'd like the like for the one
Speaker 1: percent for the planet model that you're talking about, right,
Speaker 1: Like I will as a consumer, and like a lot
Speaker 1: of people I know will consciously go out and buy
Speaker 1: products from brands that followed that model. Makes it feel
Speaker 1: a little bit better, Yeah, it makes you feel good
Speaker 1: about it. So like, if you're into hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: and you don't really have like an outlet to donate
Speaker 1: your money, like you're not gonna you know, or if
Speaker 1: you're just some dude that works at a ski shop
Speaker 1: or something or a fly shop, you're not gonna like
Speaker 1: write a check to ex conservation group for whatever. But
Speaker 1: if you go and buy a new jacket from whatever
Speaker 1: company and you're like, oh, part of that went to
Speaker 1: you know, funding conservation programs. You feel good about it. Chris,
Speaker 1: is just safe say like you weren't like a big,
Speaker 1: full balls hunting guy. No, man, no, it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that I didn't. I never was. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: he liked the angle. Yeah, I was an angler still
Speaker 1: am what's your what was your angling back? I'm going
Speaker 1: towards a question I have for you, But what's your
Speaker 1: angland background? Well, same as mine, grew up in Michigan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of like, you know, whatever's hitting a lot
Speaker 1: of pipe whatever is you know, you guys go chase
Speaker 1: the wild steelhead. We chase the steelhead. Oh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sans fire rod though. Yeah, it was always drifting spawn
Speaker 1: or waxworms. But do we fly fish for steel? But
Speaker 1: we didn't really see that fly gear? Yeah, just fly
Speaker 1: gear or just run running line and we with it's
Speaker 1: a brand like Amnesia and run split shot in the
Speaker 1: eighteen yars Leader and yes we'll fly on it. But
Speaker 1: a lot of the spinning techle guys are running the
Speaker 1: yarnball same thing. Yeah, you know you're hooking fish off
Speaker 1: from under your boots all the time because you're just
Speaker 1: staying on the edge of those deep assholes and runs
Speaker 1: and just running it through there and act like your
Speaker 1: fly fish, and it's like you could have put a
Speaker 1: spinning reel on. And some guys get like high mighty
Speaker 1: about it and they're like, oh no, I'm a fly guy.
Speaker 1: I'm like, dude, we're essentially fishing the same gear and
Speaker 1: a shamano reel. You have a sims like to today.
Speaker 1: I saw sticking out of here in Bosman. I saw
Speaker 1: sticking out of the back of a truck a rod
Speaker 1: tipping a bober. Yeah. I'm like, what's funny, guys, what
Speaker 1: the hell's the bobber fishing for? Right now? Bluegills? It's like,
Speaker 1: just no bluegills on the beds around here. Anything There
Speaker 1: is a fly rod with the strike in yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: strike in bober. They've been selling those for a long time.
Speaker 1: We had this conversation before. It was like it's a
Speaker 1: strike indicator, you know. And I said before, like, yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so my kid uses one of those to indicate strikes.
Speaker 1: What we call it is a bomber. That's what I
Speaker 1: call it. Man. You know what used to really mess
Speaker 1: up my client's heads when those when those what they
Speaker 1: called uh thing about bobber's rights fisherman. The guy came out.
Speaker 1: There's a guy that makes a product called a thing
Speaker 1: bob which is a bomber. Yeah, it's a strike indicator
Speaker 1: that looks like a bobber. It doesn't. It's like a
Speaker 1: plastic It doesn't look like I have that. Is it
Speaker 1: a plastic sphere? No, it's not plastic. It's like a
Speaker 1: soft umlass. Its soft plastic has air and it but
Speaker 1: it's completely sealed and it doesn't have a little uh
Speaker 1: what do you call spring spring in the spring home?
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta basically double up your leader, stick
Speaker 1: it through the whole flip flip the leader over bull
Speaker 1: tight you know that sounds like a breaking point to me. No,
Speaker 1: because you're doing it way at the leader. You know
Speaker 1: you're test. But people got used and they come in
Speaker 1: all kinds of colors, but they're all like one solid
Speaker 1: color and you can slide it up and down. Yeah
Speaker 1: at yeah, you just move that loop out, move out
Speaker 1: wherever you want, put the loop back over. People got
Speaker 1: used to fishing those and because they were just one
Speaker 1: solid color, they kind of look different. You know, They're like,
Speaker 1: it's my strike indicator. So they came out with white
Speaker 1: ones I took the white ones and some red marker
Speaker 1: freaking it would mess with those fly fish in mind
Speaker 1: and be like, really, you don't have like a pink
Speaker 1: one or a green one? Like yeah, they didn't want
Speaker 1: to admit that's exactly what it is. And by the way,
Speaker 1: we had a San Juan worm hanging underneath it, you know,
Speaker 1: calling you were you were matching, you were matching something
Speaker 1: those fish have never laid eyes on, which is a
Speaker 1: red worm. It just gave me a smile every time
Speaker 1: I look over off the oars and be like, I
Speaker 1: I've done it. I've spent many hours fishing that way,
Speaker 1: and I, yeah, you don't like you know what we
Speaker 1: would call it? I struck a happy me. A lot
Speaker 1: of guys call it. I was like, I can't call
Speaker 1: it a strike indicator because that's just you know, that's
Speaker 1: like mental masturbation. But someone isn't like a bob or either.
Speaker 1: We would call the float, yeah, because we use them
Speaker 1: for steal a lot. A float with a stick, which
Speaker 1: is just like ice fishing. You'd call that a bomber.
Speaker 1: Same rig up. What do they call the bomber that
Speaker 1: you put that uh water into to fish off spinning
Speaker 1: reel so you can actually throw a weight. Let's fly
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Yeah, but I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: know him and I've owned them, but I don't know
Speaker 1: what they called. Have no idea. I've never used us.
Speaker 1: And you know what I was driving at. You first
Speaker 1: came out and worked with this win September September last year. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you've gotten like a kind of
Speaker 1: a crash course and a bunch of hunting related business? Oh? Yeah, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I learned a lot. Yeah. What's the
Speaker 1: business thing about all that? She's into it, man, she's
Speaker 1: supportive of it. She like kind of hates my job
Speaker 1: because of the travel. I can imagine, but she's in.
Speaker 1: You don't say, you'll say being going all the time
Speaker 1: costs little stress? Who heard of such a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she likes she likes it. She likes it because I
Speaker 1: don't have to like go to super dangerous places. Now
Speaker 1: you know she just got back from the Congo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's not like that. That is like like that
Speaker 1: is like if you worked in Afghanistan, Yeah, you work
Speaker 1: in the Congo. Yeah, you work in Iraq? Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: a dangerous place? I would say more I would say Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: well Detroit, Yeah, but Detroit, yeah, definitely. So she likes
Speaker 1: this better than Afghanistan. Yeah, grizzly bears to her safer
Speaker 1: than yeah, we bears. Right, that's good because most people don't.
Speaker 1: Most people think that bears. Most people think bears are dangerous,
Speaker 1: which they are, but it's still Ye, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: there's so much. This is the thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: Let's come back to the barrier things I want to
Speaker 1: thing alright, So, um, two per separate conservation. They picked
Speaker 1: the group, you certify the group. Now what's the thing
Speaker 1: you need most right now? Do you need businesses to
Speaker 1: go to percent? So you need customers to prioritize buying
Speaker 1: a two percent? So we need both. I think that
Speaker 1: are our strategies we need. We need customers to value
Speaker 1: what we're doing, because that's gonna make it. That's gonna
Speaker 1: make businesses understand and realize the importance of becoming a member.
Speaker 1: But um, but there are a lot of businesses that
Speaker 1: already meet the criteria, that are already volunteering time, that
Speaker 1: are already given back one percent of sales. So so
Speaker 1: our strategies to go find those businesses, uh and talk
Speaker 1: to them about what we're trying to do, uh and
Speaker 1: see if they believe in the models. Hey, hey, if
Speaker 1: you had this converse station internally about marketing what we
Speaker 1: do for conservation, right, and what would be their argument
Speaker 1: against it? Well, there's no argument necessarily against it. But
Speaker 1: your your business trying to sell products. That's your first
Speaker 1: that's where you're focusing. But know, in your case, you're
Speaker 1: saying there already because there's a lot of companies, particularly
Speaker 1: smaller companies I know about, they are already doing that.
Speaker 1: That's right. So so what would be there? What would
Speaker 1: be a reason they would have to not be like
Speaker 1: yes unless they just want they didn't want to be
Speaker 1: part of something that could hopefully They don't have very
Speaker 1: many reasons not to say yes, unless it was paranoid.
Speaker 1: Our model is unproven, so there's some risk and like
Speaker 1: tying your brand with with our brand, that's not you mean,
Speaker 1: you don't know what I'm gonna go do something stupid
Speaker 1: on with how we market our brand or something. But
Speaker 1: you don't have any chance to really do anything bad
Speaker 1: because they're not sending you like like I thought earlier,
Speaker 1: they're not sending you the money that it turns out
Speaker 1: you embezzled it. Yeah, so it's low risk to answer
Speaker 1: your question. For companies are already doing it, this is
Speaker 1: just another way for them. It's a it's a multiplier
Speaker 1: effect on their investment. Right So, you're working with b
Speaker 1: h A or so company working with b J they're
Speaker 1: not only are they given you exposure for your sponsorship
Speaker 1: and your dollars, right, this is another way for those
Speaker 1: same dollars don't have to invest any more to get
Speaker 1: more more recognition for it. Right so, so hopefully so
Speaker 1: that's kind of our goal the gates to start talking
Speaker 1: to these conservation minded companies out of the gate. But
Speaker 1: the real goal and the real long term win is
Speaker 1: if we could prove that value, right as I want
Speaker 1: companies who aren't currently working with conservation groups, who aren't
Speaker 1: investing one percent to see that value and then and
Speaker 1: come asking like, shoot, man, I want to do that too,
Speaker 1: How do I get involved? And we can say, well,
Speaker 1: what do you care about? Go in public land access? Yeah,
Speaker 1: go talk to the guys at b h A and
Speaker 1: see what we can do. And that's when incremental dollars
Speaker 1: will come to conservation. And that's really when the model
Speaker 1: is is effective at doing what it what we hope
Speaker 1: that it can do. So when you go on pitches
Speaker 1: to a company, you go and talk to the marketing
Speaker 1: guy at the company, talk to whoever I can talk
Speaker 1: to first. But but yeah, the marketing guys usually the
Speaker 1: guy the guy out of it because it's like a
Speaker 1: marketing thing. It's something in it for you. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a marketing investment the way most companies look. Yeah, Yanni's
Speaker 1: t shirt company recently sold a bunch of T shirts
Speaker 1: and gave the money all the way there you go,
Speaker 1: which someone might look and be like, dude, that's stupid
Speaker 1: way to run a t shirt business. Probably not, so
Speaker 1: you might think, like, man, you got it all wrong
Speaker 1: what they really do in business because they keep all
Speaker 1: that money. But you were thinking marketing sure, as much
Speaker 1: as you were thinking trying to do like you know
Speaker 1: when Yeah, so I think I think this model hopefully
Speaker 1: for something like that. Right, Like, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: marketing investment for what? How how conservation groups have evolved
Speaker 1: right as they offer sponsorships to companies as a fundraising
Speaker 1: mechanism for them, and that that really is a marketing
Speaker 1: investment for business. I don't understand what that means. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. You can go become the corporate sponsor
Speaker 1: of vh A or army, or you can work or whatever.
Speaker 1: You can buy advertising their magazine. You can as a business.
Speaker 1: You're not just writing a check to these conservation groups
Speaker 1: without expecting anything in return. Right. How how that models
Speaker 1: evolve of how they raise money is as they offer
Speaker 1: you something in return for your contribution. Right. So so
Speaker 1: it's a marketing investment, right, and this is just another
Speaker 1: way to leverage that investment. So that that was an
Speaker 1: interesting point where you saying, let's let's say you have
Speaker 1: a conservation organization that does the publication well, keeps that
Speaker 1: publication alive and drives membership for that conservation organization and
Speaker 1: allows them to advertise. Yeah, it's like the people advertise
Speaker 1: in that magazine. So a company that is buying ads
Speaker 1: in a place in support of a conservation organization, that's
Speaker 1: a conservation spend on their part. Hell yeah, it is
Speaker 1: that that that conservation group depends on those funds to
Speaker 1: execute their mission work fundraising, and that's a recruitment tool,
Speaker 1: way to seminate information totally. Yeah, I mean going to uh,
Speaker 1: the wild Chief Foundation is a good example, right, buying
Speaker 1: a booth at their show and exhibiting at their Showy,
Speaker 1: they'd have that show to raise money and awareness for
Speaker 1: their brand. That's important for them executing their mission work
Speaker 1: raising funds. So so going to work with them, miss,
Speaker 1: that's a contribution to conservation. That's important. So would you
Speaker 1: pick your uh, would you picture that a fella is
Speaker 1: gonna go like, a fella is going to go make
Speaker 1: a purchase. They would go check on your They would
Speaker 1: go check on on Fish and Wildlife dot org and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you know, if I'm gonna do this,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll do it at a at a group that's pledged. Sure,
Speaker 1: I hope that that they can do that. Check the website.
Speaker 1: But you know the way that the model gives companies
Speaker 1: flexibility to leverage it how they want, Right, So I
Speaker 1: would hope that a guy's going to buy Ammo right
Speaker 1: at Sports and Warehouse and he's going looking at the
Speaker 1: giant wall of freaking boxes Ammo, and he's sitting there
Speaker 1: looking at the two seventy and there's a box of
Speaker 1: Federal with a little two percent for Conservation logo on it,
Speaker 1: and there's a box of whatever Rimington that doesn't have
Speaker 1: a logo on it. Hopefully, if we're doing our job
Speaker 1: right getting our brand out there and recognition or right
Speaker 1: with the consumer, he'll see that and know that, you know,
Speaker 1: a percentage of that purchase is gonna go back to conservation.
Speaker 1: He'll buy that federal AMMO rather than whatever else. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the the end goal and that consumers
Speaker 1: with you. Uh two more questions, maybe more what um,
Speaker 1: what's in it for you? Like? Why are you doing this? Nothing?
Speaker 1: I kind of thought that you weren't getting the checks.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, uh, you know. So, So my background,
Speaker 1: I work in the hunting industry for for for sika
Speaker 1: Um who sells clothing, hunting clothing, and I just sales
Speaker 1: and market. I've I've been with them for a long
Speaker 1: time and and we've always internally talked about this, this
Speaker 1: opportunity to talk about what we do for conservation and
Speaker 1: struggle with how we do it. And then so part
Speaker 1: of my job at sick As I work with all
Speaker 1: the conservation groups that that we have partnerships with, and
Speaker 1: I've gotten to develop lots of relationships there and learn
Speaker 1: about how they function and the challenges they have and
Speaker 1: the challenges they have from fundraising and and kind of
Speaker 1: those two perspectives. This just kind of hit me one
Speaker 1: time and it's like ship man, that we could do
Speaker 1: something here to make this easier for both parties, right,
Speaker 1: And so I just started working on nights and weekends
Speaker 1: and it's kind of it's kind of come to this.
Speaker 1: So so really, I'm married, I got two kids, kids
Speaker 1: six and three, well three and two weeks um. And
Speaker 1: then two percent. It's not two percent of profits, don't
Speaker 1: it's it's actually it's one percent of sales, one percent
Speaker 1: of sales, and it's one percent of time, which is
Speaker 1: uh which we've based off of roughly two thousand and
Speaker 1: eighty work hours in the year, right, so twenty one hours,
Speaker 1: and that's not per individual at the company, that's just
Speaker 1: company wide. We want you to commit to, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty one hours going back to volunteer work and that
Speaker 1: could be sell raffle tickets at a banquet, sitting on
Speaker 1: a board, doing a river cleanup project. We just want
Speaker 1: you to do more than write a check. Right. That's
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say it's easy to write checks, right, because
Speaker 1: that's not easy. But anybody company can essentially write a check,
Speaker 1: but can you can you show commitment beyond right and
Speaker 1: check and go out and foster that that volunteerism with times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, And and that was a learning that I
Speaker 1: had when when pitching this model, getting feedback to conservation
Speaker 1: groups are like, yeah, money is really important, but to
Speaker 1: a lot of them, arguably time is more important than
Speaker 1: the money. Like we need voluntelunteer time. Yeah, we need
Speaker 1: volunteers to help us execute that the actual conservation work
Speaker 1: that we're trying to do. So so yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: how you get to it's one percent of sales plus
Speaker 1: one percent of time. And that's that's where our naming
Speaker 1: convention comes to two percent for a conservation. So like
Speaker 1: if if if a listener like, what's your call to action? Man,
Speaker 1: if you have to give a call act, like, what
Speaker 1: do you need most right now to happen? We need
Speaker 1: we need people to uh to communicate to the businesses
Speaker 1: of the brands that they love the products they want
Speaker 1: to buy, that this is valuable to them. So I
Speaker 1: want a guy that that loves that's a die hard
Speaker 1: Matthews guy, loves to shoot Matthews pose, that's all he
Speaker 1: wants to say, Hey, man, why aren't you guys give
Speaker 1: the back one percent to conservation? Why aren't you volunteering time?
Speaker 1: You should be a member of the YEP. And if
Speaker 1: some dude is out there, you know, stitching up uh
Speaker 1: backpacks out of his of his garage and selling them
Speaker 1: like he could heck yeah man. Yeah. So so there's
Speaker 1: a cool thing too where I think there's lots of
Speaker 1: opportunity for for non dimmit companies. Like it's not just
Speaker 1: hunting fishing companies, right, that's obviously where there's the most
Speaker 1: direct correlation. But but a guy that owns a construction
Speaker 1: company that's just a passionate hunter, right, ship that construction
Speaker 1: company could be a member too. He should They should
Speaker 1: be contributing a conservation or or whatever it is. So
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunity when you start looking at the world of
Speaker 1: businesses outside of just hunting fishing companies too, which is exciting.
Speaker 1: There you have it fishing wildlift out org or if
Speaker 1: you know how to spell that, good to for conservation,
Speaker 1: but yeah, fishing wildlife out orgus. That's your favor that
Speaker 1: that's easier to remember. That's that's my domain name. Win
Speaker 1: for the year. Beat was it you? Yeah, your hand? Okay,
Speaker 1: well let's do this though, let's do this two percent
Speaker 1: for conservation. Do you have concluding thoughts about two percent
Speaker 1: for conservation? We do have something I can say about it.
Speaker 1: I don't. It's like, don't, don't waste our time. I'm
Speaker 1: just glad to hear that. Yeah, you guys are like
Speaker 1: really trying to get out, you know, get out of
Speaker 1: just the hunting and fishing industry, cause I think that
Speaker 1: will help raise awareness of what the hunting fishing industry
Speaker 1: does already and just get more people in on the
Speaker 1: conservation boat. You know, you could make it. You could
Speaker 1: already be because you could take and look at all
Speaker 1: the money you gave away off the T shirts you
Speaker 1: gave away, Like he's like, yeah, the volunteer time. No,
Speaker 1: you know what you've done. The money was well, you
Speaker 1: got the volunteer time, man, you know the volunteer time.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be interesting when we go talk to businesses
Speaker 1: that you know, that might be hard, That might be
Speaker 1: the hardest thing. Sure that we find out that that
Speaker 1: we do, which which is good. I think it. We
Speaker 1: don't want it to be easy to be a member
Speaker 1: of this right people you don't want people makes it
Speaker 1: more valuable firm businesses right, because it's a commitment. It's
Speaker 1: hard to do. You'd be like, well, if I drank
Speaker 1: all night at a Duck's unlimited thing, does that count
Speaker 1: of volunteer time? You got any concluding thoughts about that? Chris,
Speaker 1: you already kind of told us about what you thought
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, help me do it. Um. Chris's real
Speaker 1: name is Ridge Pounder. It's not my birth certificate because
Speaker 1: this man um is. You know, I talked about Duncan
Speaker 1: Gil Chris being an accidental uh good writer. Chris is
Speaker 1: an accidental good higbelievable lucky dude. Attitude and stamina. I
Speaker 1: think it's just attitude, man. I think it's not even
Speaker 1: that you're hurting deep down, like not in pain, but
Speaker 1: like I get winded, you know, I'm not like just
Speaker 1: you're always just right there. He's always just right there.
Speaker 1: About that? So much is that that attitude can almost
Speaker 1: in the end trump the stamina because you can take
Speaker 1: two guys and look at him and look at their
Speaker 1: stats in the gym and be like that dude's gonna
Speaker 1: crush that dude. But the guy that's like looks like
Speaker 1: he's the gym rat. Might not have the good attitude
Speaker 1: and those long days on ridges and on trails, attitude
Speaker 1: really just takes you home. Long smiles, makes a short
Speaker 1: mile and yeah, big smile on Rich Pounder's face all
Speaker 1: the time, like you're having fun, Dude, I am having
Speaker 1: fun even when I'm like, dude, did you run ahead lately?
Speaker 1: And get that coming on? Shot? I haven't seen you
Speaker 1: up ahead of us lately. And then I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: the Um, but he's ready, you mean, he's ready to
Speaker 1: run up and do it. Yeah, so what I've been
Speaker 1: telling him, and that this is the second time I
Speaker 1: brought this up today, becauase worked today? Um, you're not
Speaker 1: that old. Yeah, you Here's what I'm afraid that you're doing.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid that you just think that you're just gonna
Speaker 1: go on him through life, slicking up and down hills
Speaker 1: like a grease hog without putting any investment in. And
Speaker 1: I think you might be at the apex of when
Speaker 1: I can do if you go on just thinking that
Speaker 1: that's how you are. Dude. You know, I've been having
Speaker 1: that attitude I think for most of my life of like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's fine, but I think you're right. I
Speaker 1: just gotta hit it. But what do I do? I live,
Speaker 1: I live in flatland. Man. I think he's got ten
Speaker 1: more good years. I don't know, but that's not that
Speaker 1: long once you're there, when you listen, when you've been
Speaker 1: alive ten more years, Yeah, when you've been alive ten
Speaker 1: more years, you'll still be younger in me, which is insane.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell point I was trying
Speaker 1: to make. I was trying to make the opposite point.
Speaker 1: He'll be my age. That's what I'm saying, because I
Speaker 1: really everybody keeps telling you know, it's been telling me
Speaker 1: for ten years. My tablan's gonna slow down, You're gonna
Speaker 1: get beer gut yettata YadA. Well, now, just in the
Speaker 1: last year, I really am like, man, watch what you're
Speaker 1: not getting a beer gut no, but drinking beer. You
Speaker 1: haven't drinking beer like five months. Yes, he's on a
Speaker 1: Lavan cleanse, but I still think that, Like I just
Speaker 1: know my body feels different finally, like I'm kind of
Speaker 1: accepting this. Yeah, I feel it, dude. I live in
Speaker 1: absolute fear because because I know now. The other day,
Speaker 1: for instance, I woke up in my neck hurt from sleeping. Funny, Okay,
Speaker 1: normally by eight in the morning, it would not be
Speaker 1: that way. My neck hurt for five days. That's a
Speaker 1: bad Well, that's that's it's just happening. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: live in fear. I need a new pillow. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I was at my brother's house. He's got he's got
Speaker 1: a foot and food. Well, you know, because we got
Speaker 1: the house and so my wife and I had were
Speaker 1: like a bed, but you know, the kids. We brought
Speaker 1: all the kids in my brother's place to fish, and
Speaker 1: they were confused about what the hell is going on.
Speaker 1: Like We're like, okay, you guys all go in that
Speaker 1: room and sleep, and we're in this little not a
Speaker 1: little bit, but like a bed, you know, and pretty
Speaker 1: soon they're in ours. And I was just like, came
Speaker 1: there in mind, I'll go back and find another place
Speaker 1: to sleep. And that's where I hurt my neck. But
Speaker 1: it took forever to get better. And it's just because
Speaker 1: I'm getting old. My wife keeps telling me I'm getting old.
Speaker 1: She's like, you've really aged a lot lately. It's well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not, because it's like I like to know what's
Speaker 1: going on I don't want people tell me a bunch
Speaker 1: of lies. Yes, you know, speaking of that, we should
Speaker 1: bring up our friend who we hung out with last week.
Speaker 1: Did we mention that podcast we did in Wyomen about
Speaker 1: his bluntness and about how people about that. It was
Speaker 1: like we it was a little uncomfortable at first, but
Speaker 1: when she got used to the way that this dude operated,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. You appreciate it because you're like, there's no
Speaker 1: gray area. Everybody knows exactly what's going on, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of how you like it. So he's yeah, he's
Speaker 1: very very successful businessman. Um accomplished in that field and
Speaker 1: has been in management roles for a long time. And
Speaker 1: we uh at one point found a couple of move sheds.
Speaker 1: Rather than have any awkwardness about who owns these move sheds,
Speaker 1: those will be staying on the property, and at first
Speaker 1: like whoa there? Like, hey, you know what better that? Right?
Speaker 1: Then him being like, man, those guys found him and
Speaker 1: they took him home, and now I'm mad and wish
Speaker 1: I had him. Just keeping it real, we got don't
Speaker 1: eating dinner. He's like, let's clean up, right, It's like, please,
Speaker 1: everyone should just be like that. Just tell me what
Speaker 1: it is you want. My wife would be like that
Speaker 1: more often. Yeah, well, you know I say that, but
Speaker 1: I say that, but she obviously is just lately. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: So Rocky Mountain go to Lions or mountain? How's it going?
Speaker 1: It's the Rocky Mountain, go to Lions. Rocky Mountain go
Speaker 1: to Lions. Now, like, what was the genesis? It was
Speaker 1: early two thousand and thirteen. I went to my first
Speaker 1: Wild Sheep Foundation convention and what reason. I was working
Speaker 1: at SNAIS at the time and we had a booth,
Speaker 1: so I went. I was on my first trade show circuit.
Speaker 1: I was like twenty two years old or something, even
Speaker 1: younger than Ridge Pounder. I'm twenty six now, Yeah, still
Speaker 1: younger than Ridge Pounding. Are you younger? Are you younger
Speaker 1: than rich Pounder? Getting old too? I saw the Montana
Speaker 1: Governor's tag sell for two the big Horn sheep permit
Speaker 1: self for two hundred, four hundred and eight quarter. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm really butchering this. Half a million dollar sheep was
Speaker 1: sold that year. Those funds went to Montana Big Horn
Speaker 1: Sheep Conservation and Management, and I have a relationship with
Speaker 1: a regional biologist here Julie Cunningham, a very good friend
Speaker 1: of mine, and I came home from that convention and
Speaker 1: literally Monday morning, I was knocking on her door and
Speaker 1: I had killed a mountain goat in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: and I'm obsessed with mountain goats and asked her how
Speaker 1: I could help out with mountain goat projects, if there
Speaker 1: was any volunteer opportunities or if anybody had orchestrated a
Speaker 1: conservation group specifically for this animal. And the answer was no.
Speaker 1: But her quick follow up was, I've been waiting my
Speaker 1: entire career for somebody to walk in here and say that.
Speaker 1: So she and I sat down and over a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee, um, they go to Liliance was kind of
Speaker 1: born that morning. So we came up with the idea,
Speaker 1: We're going to start a grassroots conservation group to assist
Speaker 1: with mountain goat conservation and mountain goat management, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's all fine and dandy, but then the biggest question
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, what are we gonna what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? Yeah, what are the mount Like what problems
Speaker 1: does the mountain go have? So because they're like they're
Speaker 1: generally above development, sure they're higher than development, but they
Speaker 1: would have very low fecundity. They don't have like a
Speaker 1: high reproductive rate, so what's their problem? Nanny harvest is
Speaker 1: probably the most detrimental thing to a mountain goat population.
Speaker 1: And what's unfortunate is across North America, the average mountain
Speaker 1: goat tag is in either sex permit and that's that.
Speaker 1: Can I break in from it? Just clarify cult points here?
Speaker 1: So what are you talking about there? Is is you know,
Speaker 1: when you get a permit and either sex permit um,
Speaker 1: you'll find the animals that are very hard to sex
Speaker 1: or they're hard to sex, they don't. They generally do
Speaker 1: either sex permits. So for instance, bears, it takes a
Speaker 1: trained eye two sex a bear. You I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've ever seen in my life a bear tag
Speaker 1: good for a gender specific bear. It's asking a lot
Speaker 1: wild picks. A trained I you never see like it's
Speaker 1: good for a male or female. Um. Things that are
Speaker 1: easy to distinguish. She got a big damn set of
Speaker 1: antlers on its head or not, stuff like that. You
Speaker 1: see it. Mountain goats, it takes a trained eye, an
Speaker 1: educated eye. So rather than putting that on people where
Speaker 1: you're basically sending fifty of your people out to probably
Speaker 1: end up breaking a law. They do it just because
Speaker 1: it's so hard to enforce, I'm guessing, and it's puts
Speaker 1: a certain level of um responsibility on their shoulders, I'll
Speaker 1: point out, and I'm sure you're aware of this. I
Speaker 1: drew a goat tag and the ken eye. But it's law,
Speaker 1: and they say it's either sex. If you kill a nanny,
Speaker 1: you can't even apply for this tag for seven years
Speaker 1: or something like that. So they penalize you that way,
Speaker 1: and that's not even the end of the repercussions of
Speaker 1: that harvest. The Alaska model, if you harvest a nanny,
Speaker 1: the quota for the following year is directly resulted. They
Speaker 1: lower their tags. If you go in there and kill
Speaker 1: a nanny, you're taking a tag out of someone else's
Speaker 1: the next year. Alright, So so go on about that
Speaker 1: nanny harvest being a big issue. Yep, we could have
Speaker 1: a hell of all out more goats. Sure if people
Speaker 1: would draw a tag, and then you get when you
Speaker 1: draw a tag, you got months before you're gonna hunt. Sure,
Speaker 1: So mountain goats are extremely robust. You know, they don't
Speaker 1: they don't deal luckily with the extremely detrimental issues that
Speaker 1: big horn sheep deal with as far as pneumonia outbreaks
Speaker 1: or anything of that. Like, they're they're a lot more
Speaker 1: durable of a mammal than a wild sheep my opinion. Um,
Speaker 1: so they're they're survivors. They do very very well when
Speaker 1: introduced to areas, and there's not a lot of literature
Speaker 1: explaining that. But mountain goat introductions um, if done with
Speaker 1: the large amount of mountain goats are extremely successful. Other
Speaker 1: animals introduced are a lot more finicky. So mountain goats
Speaker 1: are total survivors. Um. They flourish in a handful of
Speaker 1: different environments. And what's an old mountain goat like a sheep?
Speaker 1: Like a fourteen year old ram would be a dead
Speaker 1: sheep walking right. He didn't have any teeth left, just
Speaker 1: like a billy. Um. But the nanny harvest is extremely
Speaker 1: dangerous because they do reproduce so slow. The average mountain
Speaker 1: goat doesn't reproduce until it's three maybe four years old.
Speaker 1: Kid recruitment rate in the first year is sub uh
Speaker 1: and most of the populations in the lower forty eight
Speaker 1: are pretty small, So if you have a couple of
Speaker 1: years of heavy female harvest. There are significant repercussions from
Speaker 1: those harvests, and you can't incriminate these people. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't blame the fourteen year old kid that draws
Speaker 1: a mountain goat tag and it's an either sex tag
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know anything about mountain goats and he
Speaker 1: goes out goat hunting and he sees one and he
Speaker 1: shoots one and it happens to be a six year
Speaker 1: old female. Well, that's a really valuable animal to that population.
Speaker 1: She's important they give off one ofspring. Correct, they have one? Yeah, twins,
Speaker 1: Twins do occur. Uh, it's pretty rare. It's very rare
Speaker 1: for the twins to both survive, but nothing near what
Speaker 1: we think of like a white tail pumping out twins
Speaker 1: every year. Pretty much what white tail will have faunds
Speaker 1: its second year, right, So it's very different. And you
Speaker 1: can't expect the average sportsman to understand that when you
Speaker 1: hand him a mountain goat tag. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're focusing on moving forward is public
Speaker 1: education and raising the public awareness and raising the responsibility
Speaker 1: of the mountain goat hunter. And uh, do you talk
Speaker 1: about are you talking about raising it in a legal
Speaker 1: sense or raising it in like, hey, buddy, you should
Speaker 1: know this, or do you guys think it would be
Speaker 1: a good idea to maybe mandate a little more education,
Speaker 1: a little more responsibility, Like what what's your take on it?
Speaker 1: Because I can see that you get sideways with some
Speaker 1: people who want to just be like that. They're going
Speaker 1: and they're going and they don't want to have to
Speaker 1: do anything. Sure, it's a little bit of all of that. Um,
Speaker 1: I think the more you raise the public education, the
Speaker 1: more you raise the you know, it's embarrassing for a
Speaker 1: guy if he goes out, you know, and I'm I
Speaker 1: got this once in a lifetime mountain goat tag. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. I don't want to accidentally shoot
Speaker 1: a nanny for a bunch of different reasons. So it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of that, and it's a it's definitely
Speaker 1: part of I think that the judging the gender of
Speaker 1: them and being educated on it is up to the
Speaker 1: guy with the tag in his pocket, and the educational
Speaker 1: materials available to that guy at this time are poor.
Speaker 1: Duncan Gilcrest produced some phenomenal Mountain Goat educational materials that
Speaker 1: happened in the nineties. Nobody's done it since then. So
Speaker 1: we orchestrate on the ground boots on the ground volunteer
Speaker 1: projects throughout North America to assist regionally with mountain goat
Speaker 1: surveys and population analysis on a larger scale. You guys
Speaker 1: are out poling the mountains checking stuff out. Do you
Speaker 1: ever find all stuff that no one knew? I found
Speaker 1: a mountain goat. I found a nanny in South Dakota
Speaker 1: last year and she looked like she had this horrible
Speaker 1: infection on her face and she just had scabs all
Speaker 1: over her face and it was gross. I mean, as
Speaker 1: gross as you think it is, that's what she looked like.
Speaker 1: And uh turned out it was this contagious exhuma of
Speaker 1: Capri species that South Dakota didn't know they were dealing with.
Speaker 1: So that's probably the closest thing we've ever found come
Speaker 1: to finding out that nobody knew about before. But so
Speaker 1: you never found one that jumped mountain ranges in a
Speaker 1: weird way, and oh no, that happens quite a bit. Um.
Speaker 1: Just we're sitting in Bozeman right now. Just north of
Speaker 1: town is the Bridge or Mountain Range, very well known
Speaker 1: mountain goat population those goats came from the Tobacco Root
Speaker 1: mountains just west of here in the ninety nineties. Did
Speaker 1: they really on their own? No, they were interesting. So
Speaker 1: they brought a trailer full of goats up to Ferry Lake.
Speaker 1: It's the trailhead for the Sack of Jewaya Hike, the
Speaker 1: highest peak in the Bridge Range. They turned loose. I
Speaker 1: don't know, fifteen mountain goods. One of them was like
Speaker 1: an eleven year old billy. He hiked up to the
Speaker 1: saddle down the west faced and forty miles across the
Speaker 1: Gallatin Valley walked back to the tobacco. Yeah, there's pictures
Speaker 1: of that goat jumping fence in Belgrade, Montana. His buddies like, man,
Speaker 1: where you been. He's like, don't even get me started.
Speaker 1: You don't even know about the walk. I just said,
Speaker 1: there's a goat right now. There's a there's a billy
Speaker 1: right now that just showed up in a Dinosaur National
Speaker 1: Monument on the west side of Colorado. And this goat
Speaker 1: came out of Utah from Washsatch population and he walked east.
Speaker 1: It's got to be thirty forty miles and all on
Speaker 1: his own. He's you know, some five year old Billy
Speaker 1: showed up in Dinosaur National Monument, which is controlled by
Speaker 1: the FEDS, and according to the National Park Service and
Speaker 1: the FEDS, that's an exotic animal. Yeah, so they are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to deal with him right now,
Speaker 1: and the proposed solution is to kill him, which breaks
Speaker 1: my heart. It sounds like a pretty badass, badass billy
Speaker 1: that went for a walk and went went. But he
Speaker 1: came from an introduced population though in Utah he did.
Speaker 1: I can see how that would put him in a
Speaker 1: sticky situation. I was gonna say, because like in Colorado,
Speaker 1: all the goats, they're considered and that must be just
Speaker 1: in general, like a sticky subject for you guys. Right,
Speaker 1: But Montana has Montana has native populations, but the northwest
Speaker 1: we do Bob marshall the bitter root stuff, everything west,
Speaker 1: everything west of the Bob. There's an argument that some
Speaker 1: of the mountain goats in northern Utah are in fact
Speaker 1: native or not, that the current mountain goats are native,
Speaker 1: but their ancestors did in fact live there, That mountain
Speaker 1: goats did inhabit into the northern Utah. The Willard Peak
Speaker 1: population matters. He asked, so and they were potentially like
Speaker 1: wiped off from human causes. Yeah, hard to kind of
Speaker 1: put your finger on what you know, there wasn't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of testing of animals until the last couple
Speaker 1: of decades. But what's an argument in favor of um,
Speaker 1: what's an argument favorite putting mountain goats in places where
Speaker 1: they haven't been before. It's a it's a natural resource.
Speaker 1: You're you're increasing your natural resources. And if you're supporting
Speaker 1: sportsmen who fork over their dollars, if you're the if
Speaker 1: you're the state manager of mountain goats, I believe it's
Speaker 1: your responsibility to have a lot of mountain goats and
Speaker 1: to provide this opportunity to the citizens of your state.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a renewable natural resource. I asked this
Speaker 1: question about turkeys one time, because you know, well, because
Speaker 1: I mean forty in states of turkey seasons. They said,
Speaker 1: it's been yet to be demonstrated that there's a deleterious effect.
Speaker 1: No one's pointed to. Uh, No one's pointed to a
Speaker 1: good negative. It's a lot like the pheasant pheasants everyhere.
Speaker 1: People love peasants from Asia, straight out of China. It's
Speaker 1: like no one has yet said, man if it weren't
Speaker 1: for these pheasants, so they just winds up being like
Speaker 1: it just winds up being in many cases like a
Speaker 1: win win, Like you're not you know, put them there.
Speaker 1: It's not that you can point to um endemic species
Speaker 1: that have gone extinct because of mountain goat grazing or
Speaker 1: the other species have been in displaced because of mountain
Speaker 1: goat activities. There's two main arguments against mountain goat introductions.
Speaker 1: The one is the destruction of alpine plant life. Take
Speaker 1: that for what it's worth. The other is conflict of
Speaker 1: sheep habitat and people that like sheep don't like seeing
Speaker 1: goats near them. Oh so, use there's a conflict. They
Speaker 1: find a conflict between goats and sheep. Certainly what they
Speaker 1: co exist the over place, um they do well. Are
Speaker 1: they worried about disease transmission? Correct? Yeah, so there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of fear. There's a population of goats and
Speaker 1: Nevada and the Ruby Mountains, pneumonia has run rampant through them.
Speaker 1: It's the only population of mountain goats in North America
Speaker 1: that is very clearly suffering from a pneumonia outbreak. Obviously, navonia.
Speaker 1: Pneumonia has rereaked havoc on wild sheep across North America,
Speaker 1: not so much in the wild goats. Nevada has this problem.
Speaker 1: It's kind of ground zero for this, for this disease outbreak. Uh,
Speaker 1: certainly they can transmit it to a wild sheep very easily.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people are living in fear of
Speaker 1: pneumonia transmission. It's called m o V and it's the
Speaker 1: infection that can cause in the mania and living in
Speaker 1: fear that goats could potentially in fact our Wild Cheap
Speaker 1: so a goat tested positive in Washington last year, it
Speaker 1: could be a false positive. They don't know. A goat
Speaker 1: tested positive in Jackson Whole a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: again very realistically is likely a false positive in the testing.
Speaker 1: But those are huge red flags to Wild Cheap enthusiasts.
Speaker 1: And uh, let me let me back up and say,
Speaker 1: one of our most cherished relationships is in fact with
Speaker 1: the Wild Cheap Foundation. We work really closely with them
Speaker 1: and a lot of stuff. But um, disease outbreaking wild
Speaker 1: animals are certainly something to be cautious though, Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: hugely are there any areas there are? There? Is there
Speaker 1: any native mountain goat range that where mountain goolts were
Speaker 1: extirpated from the range, they've never made it back. Like
Speaker 1: if you looked at it a map at the time
Speaker 1: of European con the showed where goats are are they
Speaker 1: still everywhere they were there was and you know, before
Speaker 1: the Europeans, mountain goats were as far as Mexico, and
Speaker 1: it was a an ancestral goat. Um. It's not an
Speaker 1: actual mountain goat as we know it today, but there
Speaker 1: was a subspecies of mountain goats that lived as far
Speaker 1: as Mexico when the ice fields were that far south,
Speaker 1: and then they started receding to the north and the
Speaker 1: goats kind of that particularly think it's called the Harrison.
Speaker 1: Harrison mountain goat is the subspecies of goat that existed
Speaker 1: all the way into Mexico. They are completely extinct now.
Speaker 1: The mountain goat that we know today um inhabited everything
Speaker 1: from Alaska into parts of Idaho and arguably Utah. You've
Speaker 1: ever read the book The Big s Guy, I have
Speaker 1: not a mountain goat saves his life, say what, He
Speaker 1: shoots the mountain goat and eats it, but it stays
Speaker 1: his life perfect in the end of the Big Sky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh we always though about that. It's such a
Speaker 1: good book. Man who wrote it? Huh Uh? That's why
Speaker 1: people call Montana Big Sky Country because that book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you coin thing the Big Guy? Why not? I've never heard.
Speaker 1: I can't read, so what it like? Uh? Where are
Speaker 1: you guys at with things? How long has you been around?
Speaker 1: So the idea came about an early two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: I believe about a year later, we were granted five
Speaker 1: oh one C three status from the I r S.
Speaker 1: So we became a nonprofit UM and things have kind
Speaker 1: of exponentially escalated every year. So we started off just
Speaker 1: doing super grassroots projects here in Montana, assisting with regional biologists.
Speaker 1: Mountain gets are very hard animal to keep tabs on UM,
Speaker 1: and they are nowhere near the top of the list
Speaker 1: of priorities of the average state biologists. Public you know,
Speaker 1: public interest certainly hasn't been focused on mountain goats, and
Speaker 1: it has been on several other species. Were because it
Speaker 1: must of them live on public land, right, probably more
Speaker 1: high high country all the there on, all the unwanted lane. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they say that the the goat hunt starts
Speaker 1: where the sheep hunt ends. But in Montana, the average
Speaker 1: mountain goat hunting district is surveyed every four years. The
Speaker 1: average sheep district or elk district is surveyed once or
Speaker 1: maybe twice a year. So very low on the totem
Speaker 1: pole of priorities comes the mountain goats. So when why
Speaker 1: do you think that is? I love those things. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they it's just kind of out of sight, out of mind.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's no public effort behind him until now.
Speaker 1: You know, if you got the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
Speaker 1: and all the weight and money they pull, of course
Speaker 1: elk is going to be a big priority in your state.
Speaker 1: And uh, do you think part of it has to
Speaker 1: do with how durable they are, that they're we just
Speaker 1: have confidence that they're just kind of let them do
Speaker 1: their thing. Yeah, I mean I don't know. Yeah, but man,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of attitude that's dangerous. But yeah, because
Speaker 1: you get a few bad years and and lord, you know,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're like, hey, we have
Speaker 1: all those things. I feel like we're just general wildlife.
Speaker 1: You you just you know, plucked a random citizen out
Speaker 1: from somewhere that you know, eastern Mississippi, like they want
Speaker 1: to see a mountain, go like them. When I lived here,
Speaker 1: we would take people up and with a spot scope
Speaker 1: and just part of the whole tours, you take them
Speaker 1: up and in glass up. Some of the ones in
Speaker 1: the bridge arranged will be like, oh, you know, very cool.
Speaker 1: You got what's going on? You gotta be somewhere just
Speaker 1: making sure the babysitters, uh doing all right, You're doing good.
Speaker 1: She's doing good and drinking too much hopefully not. You
Speaker 1: know what I got interested in them is uh after
Speaker 1: moving to Montana, I had a girlfriend in and I
Speaker 1: was always putting in my applications and I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: you should put into you know, she never hunted. One
Speaker 1: year she drew a big horn you tag a goat tag,
Speaker 1: and we got her a black bear. On one year
Speaker 1: she had a big year, big game hunt. Cool the
Speaker 1: goat tag. We drew it in an area called Blogic Canyon,
Speaker 1: which may be familiar with not so on the west side,
Speaker 1: but we didn't know. That's how I discovered Duncan Gil.
Speaker 1: Chris was just trying to bone up. I had no idea.
Speaker 1: You know, I've never been in a mountain go hunt.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anybody that been on a mountain go hunt.
Speaker 1: So we went up and it was I was inexperienced
Speaker 1: that mountain hunting and just generally experienced that big like
Speaker 1: definitely inexperience of mountain go hunting and inexperienced that big
Speaker 1: game hunting outside of a handful of animals that had
Speaker 1: just moved from the Midwest to the West. And uh,
Speaker 1: we're shocked to find one and killed the first one
Speaker 1: we saw, young Nanny. Next I went on a go hunt.
Speaker 1: It was a couple of years later, and by that
Speaker 1: point we'd logged just some massive amount of time in
Speaker 1: the mountains, and we went up and our method then,
Speaker 1: our sexing method then was to sit in this pass
Speaker 1: and look at a ton of goats and we're like
Speaker 1: that one out of the eleven that we're looking at
Speaker 1: is far in a way the biggest one we're looking at,
Speaker 1: and started at that point great way buffalo, just being like,
Speaker 1: it's way bigger than everybody else. Let's go investigate its
Speaker 1: male nous. You's learned from this guy. So what do
Speaker 1: you like? What are the what do you tell people
Speaker 1: when you get into the male female thing? It's like, like,
Speaker 1: I've been a lot of time looking at animals. I've
Speaker 1: been on go hunts, I've skinned several of them. I
Speaker 1: can't if I look at one from three yards way,
Speaker 1: I don't immediately be like, oh, yeah, it's tough. I
Speaker 1: meant you're lying to yourself. You say it's easy. Um,
Speaker 1: So what are the like, what are the things that
Speaker 1: in your conversations and your experience, What is like the
Speaker 1: thing you're looking for? You gotta watch him p r Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the nail in the coffin. The boys stretch out
Speaker 1: like a big Clydesdale and pe like a horse. And
Speaker 1: the girls squad do they pe every hour the p
Speaker 1: every time they get out of a bed, they do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would bet bet. I don't have the
Speaker 1: data to back this up, but probably the time a
Speaker 1: mountain good gets out of its bed, it takes a pass.
Speaker 1: So that's like the thing you're looking for. That's the
Speaker 1: that's the dead giveaway. You can determine the gender of
Speaker 1: a mountain goat without watching it. You're in by the
Speaker 1: by the glands on its horns. Yep, you gotta kind
Speaker 1: of kind of take a look at the big picture.
Speaker 1: There are several key identify irs that will indicate the
Speaker 1: gender of a mountain goat, and it's important to look
Speaker 1: at all of them and not just one of them,
Speaker 1: because if you make your mind up on just one
Speaker 1: attribute that you see in this goat, you could be wrong. So, uh, nanny,
Speaker 1: A girl typically will have a skinny, tall horn with
Speaker 1: a kink in the top quarter, a sharp kink, like
Speaker 1: almost a point where it looks like it was bent
Speaker 1: something bent it. Yeah, a boy is gonna have a
Speaker 1: heavy horn and a gradual sweep, a big, gradual curvature,
Speaker 1: no kink, just a clean swoop. But dude, dead alone
Speaker 1: is confusing because I've looked at the pictures. You better
Speaker 1: not just you better not make your decision on just
Speaker 1: that that now. And then you see one a picture
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, yeah, dead on. Sometimes you look at
Speaker 1: it and you're like, oh, that's like, no, that's not
Speaker 1: So we host these billy verse nanny quizzes on our
Speaker 1: social media platforms and they're pretty popular and people eat
Speaker 1: it up. So we'll put up a picture of a
Speaker 1: mountain goat, so what do you think is billy or nanny?
Speaker 1: And there increasingly popular and uh, it's a good educational
Speaker 1: tool throughout the throughout the work week. But we definitely
Speaker 1: there's some very very experienced, legitimate people that participate in
Speaker 1: these quizzes that get stumped. I mean I get stumped. It.
Speaker 1: It's tough because some of those old nannies have some big,
Speaker 1: old long horns too, right, So it's not like you
Speaker 1: can judge them on just pure size. Look, you gotta
Speaker 1: look at the whole picture. So the gland. So a
Speaker 1: common misconception is only the billy has a gland. That's
Speaker 1: not true. Girls got glands too, They're just way smaller.
Speaker 1: So both the boys and the girls have glands behind
Speaker 1: the horn. The billies have significantly larger glands that look
Speaker 1: like hockey pucks late in the season behind their horns.
Speaker 1: And he's all run it out and he run late, right, yeah, November,
Speaker 1: and um, the billies are obviously going to be significantly larger.
Speaker 1: A ten year old billy looks like an albino silverback
Speaker 1: gorilla walking around the mountain side. They're big, they're big,
Speaker 1: and I see that like when you see like the man.
Speaker 1: Oh you kind of know he's the man, but we're
Speaker 1: looking at a band of him. It's tough I tell
Speaker 1: people that the mountain goat you want to shoot is
Speaker 1: the one that you look at and immediately make your
Speaker 1: mind up. There's no question about it. He's just a
Speaker 1: tank and there's no there's no two ways about it.
Speaker 1: He's definitely a billy and he's definitely big. That's what
Speaker 1: they tell you about about grizzlies. Yeah, right, you can
Speaker 1: look at you know, you look at adults all day long.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I think it's this. I think
Speaker 1: it's that, but it goes. But you know what, as
Speaker 1: soon as when he when he steps out, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: big boar, that's him, you know, and all that sussing
Speaker 1: out those minor little things. How long we've been talking for?
Speaker 1: Al right? So what do you need from people? You
Speaker 1: know what? I think there should be a rule if
Speaker 1: you draw a goat take, you have to join our organization. Yes,
Speaker 1: I like that. How many states have goat seasons? Okay,
Speaker 1: not kind of Alaska, because Alaska you can buy the registration,
Speaker 1: hunts and all kinds of well it's count Alaska. You
Speaker 1: gotta don't draw that. You can just get them states
Speaker 1: that you can hunt mountain goats in. Though I think
Speaker 1: it's I can count them off here. It's Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Utah,
Speaker 1: South Dakota. South Dakota has a tag. They're They're crawling
Speaker 1: all over to Crazy Horse Memorial. I'm headed to South
Speaker 1: Dakota in the morning for a mountain goat project. But
Speaker 1: they give a tag out. They gave two tags out
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fifteen. It was the first permits
Speaker 1: they've issued in over a decade. And did did you
Speaker 1: guys get billies or female? They've got two billies. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: they're in the Black Hills there in the Black Hills.
Speaker 1: It's a really incredible story. The back in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: half a dozen goats broke out of a petting zoo
Speaker 1: and Custer State Park. I heard this before, no joke.
Speaker 1: Flash forward fifty years later. They had like a hundred
Speaker 1: of them and they hunted him. And they were there
Speaker 1: and obviously an exotic animal to the Black Hills of Dakota,
Speaker 1: and they hunted them and then their numbers started to dwindle.
Speaker 1: Uh for a handful of reasons. They augmented the population
Speaker 1: with an introduction from Colorado. At that point, they wanted them,
Speaker 1: they want them. They owned up to them. They were like,
Speaker 1: we like them, they're they're doing well. Let's make it happen.
Speaker 1: Hunting had been closed for ten years. This is our
Speaker 1: Tomorrow morning starts our third annual volunteer project and the
Speaker 1: Black Hills of South Dakota, and two thousand and fifteen
Speaker 1: was the first time in a decade that they decided
Speaker 1: to give permits out. So I like to give the
Speaker 1: God Alliance a little bit of credit there that we
Speaker 1: got boots on the ground and eyes on the hills
Speaker 1: and helped out a regional biologist doing some counting, doing
Speaker 1: some counting and doing some gender analysis. Yeah, tell us
Speaker 1: about that, you guys organized. I think last year. I
Speaker 1: try to make it, but my wife actually shared it
Speaker 1: with me. She found it on like the Bowsman the
Speaker 1: Bowsman list Serve or something like that, like the I
Speaker 1: don't know if that working internet thing that goes out
Speaker 1: to everybody. You know, it's like the Twitter, like boson
Speaker 1: or something on those lines. Anyways, I want my wife.
Speaker 1: My wife gets emails from it. It's usually good, a
Speaker 1: lot of good, interesting stuff going on around town. And
Speaker 1: I want to say, you guys were organizing like a
Speaker 1: big two day go count in the Craziest, big camping trip. Yes,
Speaker 1: we orchestrate backcountry volunteer projects and several different states. The
Speaker 1: one that you're referring to was in the Crazy Mountains
Speaker 1: last summer and the Craziest. I could talk to you
Speaker 1: for an hour for about the story of the Goats
Speaker 1: and the Craziest, but essentially that is what we do.
Speaker 1: We UH started a nonprofit with no money, and as
Speaker 1: Jeff with two percent can relate, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: headaches and a lot of late nights. But the thing
Speaker 1: that we did have was enthusiasm and momentum and passion
Speaker 1: and time, and we turned that into volunteer work. So
Speaker 1: this summer alone, we're working in several different mountain ranges
Speaker 1: in Montana, the Black Hills in South Dakota, the Frank
Speaker 1: Church Wilderness of Idaho, the Goat Rocks Wilderness of Washington,
Speaker 1: the Ruby Mountains of Nevada, the Willard Peak population of Utah.
Speaker 1: So it's bloomed into a lot of different UH real,
Speaker 1: real interactive volunte I was going to show up at
Speaker 1: that one that was up here in the Crazies, what
Speaker 1: would have that been? Like you would have put a
Speaker 1: backpack on. I would have gave you a folder and
Speaker 1: told you good luck, and I would have found you
Speaker 1: at the end of the weekend and asked what you found.
Speaker 1: So we divide and conquer. We we separate our volunteers
Speaker 1: out across the mountain range and we document every mountain
Speaker 1: goat side in and we tried to document the gender
Speaker 1: of the animal, AH, general observation, social interactions. Guess photograph
Speaker 1: we do. Yeah, we film them in, photograph them seat.
Speaker 1: It's we also have the responsibility of kind of is
Speaker 1: the goat healthy even if you're not a hud be
Speaker 1: like a fun little thing. You know people do that
Speaker 1: like geo cashing stuff and must go out look for
Speaker 1: damn go What do you think about all that pounder?
Speaker 1: I think it's cool, man. I got one question. Um,
Speaker 1: if somebody does want to do that, say they live
Speaker 1: in like Miami, and they're like, I really love mountain
Speaker 1: goats and they want to go like on one of
Speaker 1: these things Miami, Florida. Yeah, you're saying somewhere, Really, are
Speaker 1: you worried about them being a detriment? No, But like,
Speaker 1: say they want to go on one of these volunteer
Speaker 1: things right where they go and identify do you guys?
Speaker 1: I guess it's hard, But do you ever do like
Speaker 1: travel stipends for anybody? Like if you come and volunteer time,
Speaker 1: will help you out with a ticket or put you
Speaker 1: up or something like that. We're too poor for that.
Speaker 1: But uh no, to answer your question, No, we guys
Speaker 1: provide mountain house. We do not provide mountain house. I
Speaker 1: will provide you with a folder and you're like, I
Speaker 1: need that pan back, give you a hug, and I'll
Speaker 1: ask you for the pen bag one day though, offer that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. For our Idaho project this summer, we're
Speaker 1: working out of Yellow Pine, Idaho with the regional biologists
Speaker 1: out of McCall, Idaho. We have two pilots volunteering their time, airplane, fuel,
Speaker 1: and aircraft to the project. Serious counting. This is the
Speaker 1: first time in the Go to Lines history that we
Speaker 1: will have two fully donated airplanes surveying from above with
Speaker 1: boots on the ground volunteers on the mountain below. So
Speaker 1: how do you guys get money? Do you have like state?
Speaker 1: Do you get government Granswers just come from donors. So
Speaker 1: we have a membership base annual annual dues. UH take
Speaker 1: care of a lot of our operation aational expenses. What's
Speaker 1: it cost to join for your thirty five bucks? We
Speaker 1: got a three year membership for a hundred, We got
Speaker 1: a lifetime membership for five. We have an annual business
Speaker 1: sponsorship available for two hundred and fifty dollars. So companies
Speaker 1: like Sitka gear behind us UM and are also going
Speaker 1: above and beyond sponsoring our educational projects and donating to
Speaker 1: our conservation fund UM. Besides that, we do a trade
Speaker 1: show circuit every Winner, and that's kind of our bread
Speaker 1: and butter. We got a pretty pretty badass logo, and
Speaker 1: so people like our shirts and hoodies and T shirts,
Speaker 1: and to be honest with you, that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of our revenue comes from selling shirts. What's your guys website?
Speaker 1: We have a handful of domains and it's a backwards
Speaker 1: question mark and then no, it's go tolions dot org,
Speaker 1: r m g A dot org. Did you have any
Speaker 1: problem finding that dot org? Go to Alliance dot org.
Speaker 1: What's really funny, though, is we were talking about someone
Speaker 1: else has Mediator dot com or something. There's like a
Speaker 1: junior high school girls cheerleader squad that uses the same
Speaker 1: acronym rm g A. So if you look at Instagram
Speaker 1: hashtag rm g A, it's tons of mountain goats and
Speaker 1: then like twelve year old girls doing backflips. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty weird. But they didn't lock up your website though. No,
Speaker 1: tell me a get what it is Goat Alliance dot org.
Speaker 1: All right, So if you've drawn a goat tag and
Speaker 1: see this, I had to stick by this because I
Speaker 1: did draw a limited draw goatag in Alaska one. If
Speaker 1: you draw a goat tag, you have to go down
Speaker 1: there and kick in man, come volunteer with us, lace
Speaker 1: your boots up. Yeah, go look at some mountain goats.
Speaker 1: I love looking at mountain goat me too. I like
Speaker 1: how you sometimes stumble into them in weird places to
Speaker 1: like when snow gets deeply come down the timber a
Speaker 1: little bit more so. Just last week, north of Bozeman,
Speaker 1: a giant billy showed up just off a county road
Speaker 1: in the Bridger Mountains, and a buddy of mine was
Speaker 1: out looking for bears, and he said, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: believe what I'm looking at right now. It's like I
Speaker 1: gotta go two hundred yards off the county road. Start
Speaker 1: sending me pictures of it. What was he doing looking
Speaker 1: for bears? No? No, no, what was the goat doing eating? Yeah?
Speaker 1: He was just eating down in a super green gut
Speaker 1: right off a county road, just fed all the way
Speaker 1: down to the flat. Yep. So I got it. I was.
Speaker 1: I was at work, and I got on the horn
Speaker 1: and called a handful of photographers I know in town
Speaker 1: and one of them was free, and he bombed up
Speaker 1: there and photographed this thing. And it's like easily a
Speaker 1: twelve year old billy by himself, two yards off the
Speaker 1: county road and like borderline Antelope country, pretty wild. Hey
Speaker 1: was it you? Was it you that this guy that
Speaker 1: got our friend Randa will Lams into a bear? I
Speaker 1: did go hunting with Randall Williams this past weekend. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you got a bear? We got a bear. He
Speaker 1: was pretty excited. Oh yeah, Randall is a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine. Randall and I went to high school together.
Speaker 1: And uh, I've taken Randall bear hunt. Randall's a very
Speaker 1: accomplished hunter, but I have, So I shouldn't have said
Speaker 1: you got him into a bear? Well, I heard a
Speaker 1: rumor that you had found the bear. Yeah, I go
Speaker 1: watching the bear for about two weeks. Yeah, I'd go
Speaker 1: see him every night. Is that right? He's holding tight? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Randall Randall's very good friend of mine, and I
Speaker 1: had taken Randall hunting here for bears in southwest Montana.
Speaker 1: This is our third year doing it. In two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen and two thousand fifteen, it got real western it.
Speaker 1: We just had these really god awful backpacking trips where
Speaker 1: we got way in over our head. Uh a combination
Speaker 1: of weather and trying to figure out new hunting spots
Speaker 1: and it was just a total goat rope and never
Speaker 1: got Randall of bear. And it was kind of on
Speaker 1: me because I was showing him around my hunting spots,
Speaker 1: you know, and we got ourselves into some pretty god
Speaker 1: awful situations on a handful of different occasions this year.
Speaker 1: I was like, I knew when he was coming. I
Speaker 1: was gonna drop everything to make it happen, and so
Speaker 1: we did. We invested a lot of time scouting before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we found a bunch of them, but this one was
Speaker 1: extremely consistent. It took us five and a half hours
Speaker 1: to get to him. Randall shot him at four hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty one yards five and a half hours to
Speaker 1: get over to him, or to get to hike up
Speaker 1: into where he was. Took us five and a half
Speaker 1: hours when I left the truck to when we put
Speaker 1: a rifle on the ground to shoot. It was far.
Speaker 1: It's easy to put a spot in scope on something.
Speaker 1: It's a little tougher to walk over to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we used to wind up, like when I used to
Speaker 1: do a lot of spring bear hunting here, we'd wind up.
Speaker 1: Just got some miserable situation his band because the weather
Speaker 1: was very erratic. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we were hiking
Speaker 1: and anywhere from two inches to two ft of snow.
Speaker 1: We got some snow late last week and it's stuck.
Speaker 1: So our whole hike was in the snow and it
Speaker 1: was pretty shallow. But then you get on the north
Speaker 1: face and you'd be up to your hip until this stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's just miserable. Remember that, just on a getting
Speaker 1: off again with snow shoes. I'm not smart enough to
Speaker 1: carry those. I just post hole my Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it's nice that spring snow. You can just grease across
Speaker 1: all right, Sonny, Chris, Uh, Chris, Gil Yet you got
Speaker 1: concluding thoughts? Uh, you're thinking about dinner. Yeah, I kind
Speaker 1: of think about dinner, enjoy the conversation, learned a whole bunch.
Speaker 1: I like learning. I want to hear more about Uh
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I do. You don't have that point, No, no,
Speaker 1: I do. It's kind of off topic, but it kind
Speaker 1: of goes back to the suffering. Um on that first
Speaker 1: shoot that I was on a b C. We're talking
Speaker 1: about like observing, observing animals, and I'd like never seen
Speaker 1: why I'd seem like a black bear on a ski
Speaker 1: lift in the summertime. He was riding the ski lift. No, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was sitting um, but I had not ever seen
Speaker 1: like a wild grizzly bear, and like we saw one
Speaker 1: one of those early days. But then it was like,
Speaker 1: uh we saw that pack that dude came in on top. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that one was really that was cool, man. And
Speaker 1: then it was just like after that week of fog
Speaker 1: and rain and snow and hail and like the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and then we're just seeing those ones like feeding and
Speaker 1: flipping boulders over and just moving. It was like so
Speaker 1: worth all that gnarly suffering just like watching it, you know,
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's just because I don't
Speaker 1: get to do that often. But no, dude, it's magical
Speaker 1: to watch. Yeah. Magic was a good word. It's it's
Speaker 1: magical to watch them. One of the things I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about, We're gonna have to save it as
Speaker 1: I was gonna talk about some current political issues surrounding
Speaker 1: that animal. But um, yeah, man, it's cool. It's it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's you feel privileged. Yeah, that's the word. Especially outside
Speaker 1: of the park. Oh yeah, you know. We used to
Speaker 1: always have a thing like when people be like, oh
Speaker 1: I saw a blank, we didn't count it if you
Speaker 1: saw in the park. So you'd be like, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen a wolf and be like, oh yeah, in
Speaker 1: the park, Like that's not I'm talking about the real ones. Man. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's all I got. You don't want to
Speaker 1: plug your new Fish to Eat T shirts ever? Sale?
Speaker 1: It is, I like it. It's not selling. People don't
Speaker 1: want to fish to Eat shirt. Yeah, And we forgot
Speaker 1: to get that picture today. I clad to Whitey today
Speaker 1: on the head man, I had my T shirt on it,
Speaker 1: and we totally forgot he's something on a mountain. Whitefish
Speaker 1: not whitefish. Yeah, people don't like a fish to eat shirt. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what it is, We're probably just not marketing
Speaker 1: it properly. They might like it better if you gave
Speaker 1: all the proceeds back. That's right, they start giving them away. Um,
Speaker 1: I got yeah, that would be my concluding thought. Is
Speaker 1: today fishing as much as I'm always talking about, how like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that five fishing, I'm not gonna I'm not that into
Speaker 1: five fishing anymore. I was enjoying. I was telling Chris.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I'm not really into like,
Speaker 1: I don't need to catch a bunch of fish right now.
Speaker 1: But standing here waters washing, rushing around, they got a
Speaker 1: nice view. There's something nice about this. I'm having fun.
Speaker 1: And then I caught a fish and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, man, I was just like change, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: my focus got into like like all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: really pick apart this riffle now, and just started like
Speaker 1: you know, getting all technical, and I could feel this
Speaker 1: like energy, and I was like, man, I really didn't
Speaker 1: like what you caught the fish though, Yeah, because I've
Speaker 1: noticed that fishing with people, how when someone catches the fish,
Speaker 1: all the lazy asses all of a sudden start fishing
Speaker 1: hard for twenty minutes. You'd all interested all such you
Speaker 1: watch the kind of fade away, you know. Yeah, concluding though, Pete, Well,
Speaker 1: it John Muir's birthday, so he uh, he was born
Speaker 1: on the day Prince died. It's a weird way to
Speaker 1: look at it, but it's extremely factor. That would mean
Speaker 1: nothing to him. No, he wouldn't be too concerned about that.
Speaker 1: I'd say, what prints, So tell me about that. What's
Speaker 1: that mean to you? Well? John Muir's extremely uh inspirational
Speaker 1: conservationists that I look up to, and you know, founder
Speaker 1: of the Sierra Club and everything that he's done. And yeah,
Speaker 1: just my social media got blowing up with John Mire
Speaker 1: quotes today. It was awesome. Sorry is he has some
Speaker 1: good ones? Oh? I got like six in my head
Speaker 1: right now. Can you give me one or two? I
Speaker 1: think my favorite one I read today, I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: it yet. Everybody knows the mountains are calling and I
Speaker 1: gotta go and whatever. And the one I heard today
Speaker 1: I've never heard before. It was between every two pines
Speaker 1: is a doorway to a new world. And that kind
Speaker 1: of struck home for me. I like, I like walking
Speaker 1: through the woods. You get anymore? I said, I had six, right,
Speaker 1: So I no, I think that's it. I guess my
Speaker 1: only ending note would be, uh, you know, I like
Speaker 1: there was a miracle. I like when he was going
Speaker 1: up I can't remember it, but he was went up nearer.
Speaker 1: I have a cabin in Alaska, and he had talked
Speaker 1: about I'm gonna mutilate it. But he had talked about,
Speaker 1: um that the islands. You know, there's so many of them.
Speaker 1: They look scattered like someone who had been sowing seed.
Speaker 1: Oh but I remember the quote. It was a doozy
Speaker 1: though talk about a visual Wow, good stuff. Do you
Speaker 1: have any concluding thoughts? Yeah, you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: offer some postive nights super still thinking about getting my
Speaker 1: dual citizenship over here. I'm figuring out what the value
Speaker 1: is going to be. Uh you know, my mind is
Speaker 1: just running and thinking about how the heck we can
Speaker 1: well I think too too concluding thoughts. I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in how we can educate people to not jo Nanny's Like,
Speaker 1: that's a tough one, Like what do you what do
Speaker 1: you do to people? Here's all it takes in my mind.
Speaker 1: Like I generally feel that people with notable exceptions, I
Speaker 1: generally feel that people want to do the right thing. Okay.
Speaker 1: People are generally very receptive to information that will help
Speaker 1: them do a better job in life in the out
Speaker 1: of doors, especially if you can say and here's why
Speaker 1: that matters. Yeah, I don't disagree. I think yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it has to take it. I think that's what
Speaker 1: you've you've discuss is how do we deliver what is
Speaker 1: that better information? How do you deliver it to people?
Speaker 1: Get them to actually read it? People don't read stuff
Speaker 1: that type of stuff. Remember like with the with the
Speaker 1: with the grizzly brown bear thing. I remember watching the
Speaker 1: thing put out by UM the Wildlife Management Agency and
Speaker 1: Yukon saying that if UM we restricted the harvest to
Speaker 1: mails only, we'd have three times as made bear text.
Speaker 1: I think, I think Alaska. I think, I know I
Speaker 1: could be wrong, could this up? But they have Alaska
Speaker 1: Parting Fish Game put out this. It's like an hour
Speaker 1: long video all about identifying bore for brown bear hunts.
Speaker 1: But I think right, maybe it was. And I believe
Speaker 1: they require you to have it to watch it, don't
Speaker 1: I mean loosely require you. But I say you watch
Speaker 1: some bitch of thousand times and still look at a
Speaker 1: bear and like, man, I cannot tell every bear looks
Speaker 1: big when it's alive. But the p thing it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've heard a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of people say about observing bears, like do you really
Speaker 1: want to know? Wait for pete. But the problem on
Speaker 1: bears like a goat, you might have a long time
Speaker 1: to watch the goat and you might be able to
Speaker 1: find him again tomorrow. Bears Man a lot of times
Speaker 1: and I disappeared. Maybe it's just like there he is.
Speaker 1: Then it's like then you look for him for a
Speaker 1: week and you never find him again. What was your
Speaker 1: You got a second concluding thought? Yeah, so my my
Speaker 1: last thought for the concluding concluding including thought for this
Speaker 1: shameless plug is this to your your question, Chris, about
Speaker 1: that guy in Florida that wants to volunteer, got it?
Speaker 1: That guy more than wants to volunteer, And here you
Speaker 1: are struggling to get volunteers and and part of the
Speaker 1: organization two percent that we're trying to do, it's it's
Speaker 1: foster all this this volunteerism is that I'm just excited
Speaker 1: to hear about those questions and and hopefully what we
Speaker 1: can accomplish is is can acting that guy up with
Speaker 1: this organization and getting people out there to to get involved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could get some contractor that gives a ship to
Speaker 1: fly Chris out from Chicago out here to help. Did
Speaker 1: you have someone in mind in Miami? No, I just
Speaker 1: it's far away. Just feel like feel like a far
Speaker 1: away place. I mean, I'll sweet to be that guy
Speaker 1: that he works for a business in Miami and that
Speaker 1: that business is telling all the employees like, go along too,
Speaker 1: We're gonna pay you today. Go put the Montan account goats.
Speaker 1: I like it. It's yeah, doing stuff. I uh, let
Speaker 1: me start that thought over. I reaped the benefits quite literally,
Speaker 1: reaped the benefits of the out of doors for decades
Speaker 1: before I ever thought about settling up the debt that
Speaker 1: I had a crude during a life time of amazing
Speaker 1: adventures and seeing things that no one's ever seen and
Speaker 1: doing stuff that I will think about it for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. It's just like I think that
Speaker 1: people get to a point when they go like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: have I had it good? You know, maybe it's about
Speaker 1: time I don't just think about everything that that the
Speaker 1: outdoors is going to give to me, pay it forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it hits people. I mean some people. It doesn't some
Speaker 1: people that hit the young. But uh, I think that
Speaker 1: in some way, you know, organizations like like what you
Speaker 1: guys are trying to do it just to sort of
Speaker 1: say to people, listen, man, and I say this all
Speaker 1: the time. We live in the good old days, by
Speaker 1: many standards, by many measurements. Right now it's the good
Speaker 1: old days. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity out there.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of elk in North America right now.
Speaker 1: It's just but it's not by accident. It was by
Speaker 1: accident a d fifty years not by accident. It was
Speaker 1: there a hundred fifty years ago. We messed it up.
Speaker 1: It was built back. I'm speaking very specifically to the US.
Speaker 1: It was built back from the ground up. The resources,
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing resources we have in large measure by
Speaker 1: hunters and fishermen. That needs to be continued because it
Speaker 1: can very easily go in the other direction. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: you got it. And so I remember my fourth bullet
Speaker 1: point right which ding ties right in, because I was
Speaker 1: thinking a lot I was taking a lot less of
Speaker 1: you through. Don't even know what's on the website that
Speaker 1: I wrote, but but it's recruitment and retention. It's about
Speaker 1: you know, getting youth, minorities, middle aged people who have
Speaker 1: never hunted or add the opportunity hunting fish. You know,
Speaker 1: how do we how do we get people involved and
Speaker 1: educate them on what controvation is and the way our
Speaker 1: our model of conservation funny of our state and wild
Speaker 1: life agenctates works. We need people to buy it, fishing licenses,
Speaker 1: hunting tags. Right, So so what are we doing? Very
Speaker 1: little hard funding from the states. Right If people are
Speaker 1: people aren't fishing, hunting, then then they're struggling and funding.
Speaker 1: So so recruitment and and getting new people involved in
Speaker 1: hunting and taking somebody out to fish for their first
Speaker 1: time so important. So organizations that that are have programs
Speaker 1: that that focus on that type of activity are are crucial.
Speaker 1: All right, Get any last because there's a lot built
Speaker 1: up after your concluding thought. I don't have a concluding thought,
Speaker 1: and I kind of gave my concluding thought, oh thought,
Speaker 1: yours is great about you know what to get back
Speaker 1: those get concluding thought though. All right, thank you guys
Speaker 1: for coming down, Thank you for having Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for having us