Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You Can't
Speaker 1: predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the
Speaker 1: most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt
Speaker 1: app from the iTunes or Google play Store. Now where
Speaker 1: you stand with on X All right here we are
Speaker 1: half half remote, like half COVID remote and more than
Speaker 1: half COVID remote two thirds COVID remote. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I mean by that. In that um, Joannice and
Speaker 1: Brody Henderson are in um Our studio. How's it feel
Speaker 1: over there? Guys? Back to you great, wish you were here?
Speaker 1: Ah am on Maybe I'm on my third I might
Speaker 1: be on my third or fourth quarantine. I'm not totally sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm waiting on Seth to get his latest result. Who
Speaker 1: like he already had COVID now he's maybe got it again. Um,
Speaker 1: all of his buddies got it, so there's a good
Speaker 1: chance he does. Yeah. His theory, Seth feels like when
Speaker 1: he had it, he didn't have it, but now he
Speaker 1: has it. But I got twenty bucks riding on the
Speaker 1: fact that he doesn't have it. But like he already
Speaker 1: had it. You're bet in history hasn't gone so well lately?
Speaker 1: Were you talking about? Man? I just one a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks on pebble mind probably I lost two hundred on
Speaker 1: the election, made a hundred on a different election related bet,
Speaker 1: and then picked up with the thousand. I need to
Speaker 1: forgive the thousand because it's with a family member and
Speaker 1: that's that's the kind of money that like causes tensions.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna find a way to let her off.
Speaker 1: But also joined by Clay Nucomb. Thanks Clay, who's who's remote,
Speaker 1: not quarantined, but remote? And uh with Fosberg from tr
Speaker 1: CP from the very functional, the very functional city of Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Where no one does anything weird. Oh no,
Speaker 1: normalist can be What what's the general climate like in
Speaker 1: d C? And not not? I don't mean like the weather,
Speaker 1: but is you know, is it just like business as
Speaker 1: usual or people scratching their heads or what? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: more or less business as usual. I mean we got
Speaker 1: used to the unusual now, so you know, there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff going on, and you know, people are
Speaker 1: just sort of waiting for the latest mails from the past. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you. Um, well, we'll talk a lot more
Speaker 1: about dings and d C dings in a minute. But Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised you don't know. Clay recently did for us
Speaker 1: a video, a wonderful video, um about how to make
Speaker 1: Christmas ornaments with squirrel tails. Yeah, yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: know where you're going with this. Well, first, I'm going
Speaker 1: with the fact that you're a video making machine. Man.
Speaker 1: It was you know, I'm pretty crafty too, so kind
Speaker 1: of home mecky crafty claiming a video. It's out right,
Speaker 1: like I saw that that's on It's on Meteor, Instagram, mete,
Speaker 1: your website, Facebook, It's out there, man. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: viral man went viral plays. Play's got virality And by
Speaker 1: that I don't mean covid. But um, I'm surprised you
Speaker 1: don't know about tail slitters and tail strippers. I you
Speaker 1: you will soon because that has bought you one of
Speaker 1: each man. But well, hey, you know what, So Steve
Speaker 1: texted me the other day and I knew he was
Speaker 1: watching my video, and he said you not have a
Speaker 1: tail stripper and almost texted you back that you were
Speaker 1: like one of the Internet trolls, Like you know how
Speaker 1: many people have asked me that troll on text? I'm
Speaker 1: a text troll. Hey, you know what man, I grew
Speaker 1: up using Listen, man, yes, I mean that's my tail strippers,
Speaker 1: green sticks, two of them, to green sticks, but with
Speaker 1: a squirrel tail. It was just easy enough to do
Speaker 1: it with hand, you know, by hand. Well, I got
Speaker 1: it what I thought for sure you would say when
Speaker 1: I asked you if you had a tail slitter and
Speaker 1: a tail stripper, I thought you would say, I do.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to discourage people from doing this
Speaker 1: by making them think you needed fancy equipment. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And listen, don't say that it was that. I'm that
Speaker 1: it's trolling. It's a text trolling is when you do
Speaker 1: it in a public format as a way to like
Speaker 1: put people in their plates. I sent you a private
Speaker 1: text okay, complete, you in your place, and then and
Speaker 1: then turned around and ordered one for you as a gift.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty high level, high level thoughtful. He's saving
Speaker 1: you from future trolling. Yeah, yeah, well it was it
Speaker 1: was what you thought. The foresight that you thought that
Speaker 1: I had to like make this do it yourself video.
Speaker 1: It would have been cool if I would have thought that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't think that. I just didn't have I
Speaker 1: just didn't have the gear. Can you guys explain the
Speaker 1: whole point of Yeah, okay, to understand a tail stripper,
Speaker 1: take your middle finger and index finger and put them together, Okay,
Speaker 1: like you're making the peace sign, but then sandwich your
Speaker 1: fingers together. Now, imagine that right at your middle knuckle,
Speaker 1: you were to drill a hole right where your fingers touch,
Speaker 1: and then you were to take your fingers and clamp
Speaker 1: them around the tailbone so that that little hole you
Speaker 1: drilled was accommodating the tailbone. Then you grab that device
Speaker 1: and pull and it strips the bone right out of
Speaker 1: the tail. The tail slitting guide is like a long
Speaker 1: sliver of metal with a with a groove in it,
Speaker 1: and you insert that into the tail fox, coons, squirrel, whatever,
Speaker 1: and then just run your knife down that groove and
Speaker 1: it slits the tail open so you can dry it
Speaker 1: out without having a bony spine inside. I didn't know
Speaker 1: the tail slitter existed. I didn't know about the tail strippers,
Speaker 1: but the tail slitter that is totally new to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or do you want to aluminum? Right? Uh? Quick note
Speaker 1: on a Yanni, you'll like this. Um, Seth and I
Speaker 1: were before he got uh got to thinking he had
Speaker 1: COVID all over again. Um, we were squirrel hunting and
Speaker 1: we've been we've embarked on a project that you'll probably
Speaker 1: want to get involved in. Where we were, we had
Speaker 1: some fox squirrels the side of the the house cats and
Speaker 1: where you guys got a black face fox squirrel, which
Speaker 1: is way cool. No, that was a great That was
Speaker 1: a gray. That's a black face gray, even though it's huge.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a black face gray. I mean it
Speaker 1: was equal to those fox squirrel. I think it's a
Speaker 1: black face gray either way. Me, Seth, Matt, we're getting
Speaker 1: um and we started our collection. We're all getting a
Speaker 1: complete set of tanned squirrel hides, Eastern gray, black face
Speaker 1: gray fox, and then on and on and on until
Speaker 1: I have the full So we're gonna start flashing and
Speaker 1: stretching those and we're each gonna have a collection. I
Speaker 1: just got a couple of Montana fox squirrels last week.
Speaker 1: That's one other. What's your plan for displaying those? Steve
Speaker 1: hang him on a string, like, just let him drape.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna put him on a wall? Hang on
Speaker 1: a wall. I look, I look classy. Look great. Um.
Speaker 1: One other quick thing we did Clay that I thought
Speaker 1: you might find interesting. The day after Thanksgiving, we made
Speaker 1: a bunch of raccoon barbecue sandwiches. Mm hmm, very good.
Speaker 1: I put my oven on four and browned all the
Speaker 1: legs and whatnot in the back pieces in my oven
Speaker 1: for a long time. Then I pressure cooked him for
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. Then we picked it, put barbecue sauce in it,
Speaker 1: got cole slaw, pickles, and brioche buns. Yeah sounds good.
Speaker 1: Um uh. My brother's buddy had him, so he brought
Speaker 1: it all over. While we're on cooking, Can I uh
Speaker 1: share a little something I learned. I think you guys
Speaker 1: would all like to hear about because you can go
Speaker 1: home and try it if you don't haven't tried it yet.
Speaker 1: And for the for the life of me, I cannot remember,
Speaker 1: I've texted three separate people saying, Hey, were you the
Speaker 1: one that told me that you're family and your wife
Speaker 1: really like smash burgers like Venison Burger has done smashed
Speaker 1: burger style? Like, don't know what you're talking about, so
Speaker 1: obviously wasn't you either? Very simple all you do is
Speaker 1: you just get a instead of making patties, you make balls,
Speaker 1: just venison balls, season them if you want or whatever.
Speaker 1: I did, just playing, you know, with whatever my temper
Speaker 1: sent fat in there big as well. Yeah, but not
Speaker 1: not like it's probably just a little bit bigger than
Speaker 1: a golf ball. Not quite the size of a um
Speaker 1: you know, tennis ball. Not the same amount of meat
Speaker 1: you would use for a regular quarter pound patty that
Speaker 1: you like, like you normally cook your burgers at home,
Speaker 1: right it. And if you're saying there's a big difference
Speaker 1: between a golf ball and a tennis ball, yeah, I
Speaker 1: said somewhere in between. Okay, I can't think of a
Speaker 1: ball that lands right in between those two handball racketball, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go, that would work. Okay, So I make
Speaker 1: a piece of meat like a super hot skill it
Speaker 1: or flat top grill. Okay, it's gotta be flat No, can't,
Speaker 1: can't be a grill, get it smoking hot? You put
Speaker 1: I was doing three at a time. You put those
Speaker 1: balls and spread them out evenly onto that skillet you
Speaker 1: know I had. I must have been just like a
Speaker 1: ten inch skillet. I guess that I have at home
Speaker 1: that I was using. And then at first I started
Speaker 1: with a slotted spatula, but I realized I wasn't gonna
Speaker 1: be able to move fast enough. So I had another,
Speaker 1: uh skill it where I could just put it on
Speaker 1: top of these balls and just squish them until until
Speaker 1: they were you know, figuratively paper thin hot spish balls
Speaker 1: you're looking for, Yeah, paper thin patties, And so you
Speaker 1: literally squish them down. They cook like that for less
Speaker 1: than a minute. You flip them, throw some salt on there,
Speaker 1: put a piece of cheese on there, let them cook
Speaker 1: for another thirty seconds and they're done, which is another
Speaker 1: cool thing about them. As they cook super super fast. Um,
Speaker 1: you kind of get like weird edges, and you get
Speaker 1: a little bit more just browned kind of bits and
Speaker 1: pieces on your burger than you would I think doing
Speaker 1: the normal patty. Um, so it gives you a little
Speaker 1: more more carmelization in the mouth, a little bit more
Speaker 1: crispy edges. But yeah, the kids each just had one,
Speaker 1: and uh, I did a triple on mine, and I
Speaker 1: had cheese in between each layer and meat and uh,
Speaker 1: much much different eating experience than your standard make patty
Speaker 1: and throw it on your grill. Cheese burger. How does
Speaker 1: the burger know that it was squi on the grill
Speaker 1: as opposed to on a cutting boarder on a plate.
Speaker 1: I didn't try to do it ahead of time. So
Speaker 1: maybe you could do it ahead of time and just
Speaker 1: put him skinny like, but you're working with something hopefully
Speaker 1: it's gonna be so thin that I imagine that it'd
Speaker 1: be fragile if you try to make them that thin
Speaker 1: ahead of time. That makes sense. Yeah, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to move it around. And the internet is full
Speaker 1: of If you just type in smashburger recipe, there's there's,
Speaker 1: you know, tons of recipes out there to read. I
Speaker 1: think that's the way a lot of these uh Burger
Speaker 1: franchise restaurants to it. Like the cool it's like in
Speaker 1: and out burger. I think does that some of the
Speaker 1: burger I'm not familiar with that one. Yeah, you guys
Speaker 1: know how we were talking recently about those those crazy
Speaker 1: footprints that came out of New Mexico, where it was
Speaker 1: the an individual walked along a path and then walked
Speaker 1: back along that same path some thousands of years ago,
Speaker 1: and in the time between when he or she passed
Speaker 1: through the second time a mammoth and a giant ground
Speaker 1: sloth had crossed her trail in White Sands National Park
Speaker 1: or National Monument, whatever the hell it is. A guy
Speaker 1: from Australia wrote in about these crazy fossilized footprints from Australia.
Speaker 1: It was from these hunters of about twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: And there's like a few sets of hunters in a family.
Speaker 1: There's a kid that kind of wanders off and comes
Speaker 1: back into the group, but there's also the footprints of
Speaker 1: a one legged person. They don't see where the individual
Speaker 1: was using a walking stick, like it either wasn't um
Speaker 1: it either wasn't captured and the like fossilized prints. But
Speaker 1: it seems as though this person with one leg was
Speaker 1: able to like cruise along hopping on one leg. Wow.
Speaker 1: We also recently reported on this big flock shooting, this
Speaker 1: big elk hunting flock shooting occurrence in Montana. So there's
Speaker 1: this there's a ranch and the ranches enrolled in a
Speaker 1: in something called black management area. And the way black
Speaker 1: management areas work as you take revenue from non resident
Speaker 1: hunting licenses and use it to fund this program where
Speaker 1: ranchers and landowners farmers get paid to allow get paid
Speaker 1: a very modest fee. No one gets rich off this stuff.
Speaker 1: They get paid a modest fee. I think the cap
Speaker 1: is fifteen thousand a year. Yeah, it's like they're basically
Speaker 1: doing a favor to hunters. They're like, it's a gesture.
Speaker 1: It is a it is a gesture to the public
Speaker 1: and part of the annoyance. This is one way you
Speaker 1: can think about it. Part of the annoyance of this
Speaker 1: is offset with a small amount of money. It's not
Speaker 1: life changing money to enroll in Black Management UM, but
Speaker 1: it's a black Manager place and an open day of
Speaker 1: general firearm season, a bunch of guys get onto herd
Speaker 1: of LP can start flock shooting. I think they kill
Speaker 1: like fifty These elk citations were written. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what the citations are for. But on there we mused
Speaker 1: about what does the landowner think about all this? Well,
Speaker 1: a guide that that that does some work for this landowner,
Speaker 1: not on this place, but he guides a different property
Speaker 1: wrote in and said he watched this spectacle from seven
Speaker 1: miles away. It was too far to see any individual
Speaker 1: elk fall, but he said it sounded like the beaches
Speaker 1: of Normandy When these guys surrounded this herd out and
Speaker 1: he said, if you're asking what the landowner thought of
Speaker 1: the whole thing, the landowner is quote not happy with
Speaker 1: this event, and he is considering dropping out of the
Speaker 1: black management program, which is a real disappointment. Uh. Another
Speaker 1: thing I read about recently, Uh, a hunter in Minnesota
Speaker 1: just fatally shot. I mean, this happens every year. Fatally
Speaker 1: shot another hunter mistook him for a deer. Apparently the
Speaker 1: guy that got shot, uh, wasn't wearing his hunter's orange.
Speaker 1: This is up by the midge. Apparently the guy that
Speaker 1: got shot wasn't wearing any hunter's orange. But you know,
Speaker 1: and you might look at that and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the problem. I mean when someone when you hear
Speaker 1: of someone mistaking someone for a deer, it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: not only did you think you were looking at a deer,
Speaker 1: you thought you were aiming at its rib cage. It's
Speaker 1: just so hard to understand why this has to be
Speaker 1: a story that you read every year multiple times, Like,
Speaker 1: are are people so greedy and lusty that they want
Speaker 1: a deer that bad? Yes, firing a movement like mistakey.
Speaker 1: I don't buy the mistaking it for a deer they're
Speaker 1: just seeing movement. It's got to be you know, I've
Speaker 1: been I've been surprised at sometimes people. I mean as
Speaker 1: a growing up a bow hunter, like we were taught
Speaker 1: not to shoot at walking deer. We were taught to
Speaker 1: really calculate the shot. I mean, you had to be
Speaker 1: a successful bow hunter, and then transitioning later in life
Speaker 1: to rifle hunting and different things, especially in the big
Speaker 1: woods when deer moving through big woods. I'm surprised at
Speaker 1: the shots that I see and hear about people taking,
Speaker 1: which they've most got to be just you know, like
Speaker 1: shooting at something that's moving. And I'm not saying they're
Speaker 1: not identifying what they're seeing as a deer, but as
Speaker 1: far as like are they aiming at the rib cage?
Speaker 1: I don't know how they could be. You know, A
Speaker 1: much more common hunting injury, I think it's the most
Speaker 1: common hunting injury from firearms is when someone's swinging on
Speaker 1: a bird with a shotgun and you know you're shooting
Speaker 1: at a bird, but what you don't see in the
Speaker 1: foreground or in the distance is your hunting partner or
Speaker 1: another individual. And when I hear those stories, I'm often
Speaker 1: like man like I could. I hesitate to say this.
Speaker 1: You're like, I can just picture how that happens, Like
Speaker 1: I could picture how it happens, but something like this,
Speaker 1: I just can't. It's upsetting because it's so it's so
Speaker 1: preventable and so much more dangerous then, you know, like
Speaker 1: what happened to Dick Cheney years ago. UM, kind of
Speaker 1: interesting story come out of Wisconsin. There's like a article
Speaker 1: that comes out by a local priest who's suffering hunter harassment.
Speaker 1: So this he's called He's a norber teen priests, which
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell that means. He's forced
Speaker 1: to file a police report because he keeps getting continued
Speaker 1: public harassment for bow hunting on the St. Norbert Abbey
Speaker 1: grounds and appear. So this dude joins this like order
Speaker 1: in two thousand thirteen, and he lives on a hundred
Speaker 1: sixty acre abbey property, so like where he's sort of stationed.
Speaker 1: Is a hunter do they use that term? I don't
Speaker 1: think priests use that term. But he's stationed in this
Speaker 1: place hundred sixty acres, and he realizes that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of deer there, so he starts investigating and
Speaker 1: checks into his uh city ordinances and regulations and checks
Speaker 1: with the d NR. Uh, checks village stuff. Everybody says
Speaker 1: there's no reason you cannot be bow hunting on abbey grounds.
Speaker 1: So he starts a bow hunt and he quickly his
Speaker 1: dude gets He stacks up four deer, but people in
Speaker 1: the town are so pissed. He had to go and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pursue his hunter harassment law protections to keep
Speaker 1: hunting on his abbey. I was feeling going down there
Speaker 1: and doing communion and whatnot and hanging out with the
Speaker 1: guy just to get I can see there's a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners whose wheels are turning right now thinking about
Speaker 1: ways they can get into some good hunting properties. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to become a priest. Yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: line of work. I'm sorry pursuing man. Um Brody talked
Speaker 1: about this, uh talk about this dude that got in
Speaker 1: trouble for this twoth that got in trouble for setting
Speaker 1: a mountain bike trap. Oh yeah, this happened in Montana. Um,
Speaker 1: he's in big trouble. Yeah, like like like there's no
Speaker 1: way he's going to be in that much trouble. I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, dude, Okay, tell everybody about it. But
Speaker 1: I bet you he'll wind up getting like a nothing,
Speaker 1: a slap on the slap on the list. I don't know,
Speaker 1: we'll see. Um certainly could have hurt some people. This
Speaker 1: guy is not a fan of mountain bikers, which you know,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I I can understand. Like, I gotta tell
Speaker 1: the story. First, he put a board that he had hammered,
Speaker 1: maybe a dozen nails through, quite a few nails, to
Speaker 1: lay across the trail so that when mountain bikers ran
Speaker 1: over that board they popped their tires. This was in
Speaker 1: an area where mountain biking is completely legal. I'm not
Speaker 1: even sure how they tracked the guy down and confirmed
Speaker 1: that that it was him, but he confessed to it.
Speaker 1: Dude out walk and his kids stepped on the board, right,
Speaker 1: But I'm saying, how did they get from point A
Speaker 1: to point people? Like? How did they ever figure out
Speaker 1: who the hell is doing it? Who it was? But
Speaker 1: he once they they caught up to him, he confessed
Speaker 1: to it, said he wasn't trying to hurt anyone, He
Speaker 1: just didn't like all those mountain bikers out there. When
Speaker 1: I was reading about one of the the things that struck
Speaker 1: me was one of the investigators winds up interviewing a
Speaker 1: guy who had allowed this individual access to the national
Speaker 1: forest through his private property, and when the investigator prevents,
Speaker 1: presents this guy with a board with all the nails
Speaker 1: through it. He tells the investigator, Yes, I saw the
Speaker 1: suspect with such a board who laid out for me
Speaker 1: his plan to use it to to reduce mountain bike traffic.
Speaker 1: They describe this guy as a witness, But how is
Speaker 1: he not sort of complicit? Right, Like if he could
Speaker 1: have at least said that's not not a good idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if I went to your house, Brody, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: see this machete, I'm gonna take this machete and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go or hit claw on the head with it, right,
Speaker 1: and then I do that and then later you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, he did have a machete and he told
Speaker 1: me he was gonna hit Clay on the head with it. Like,
Speaker 1: is that is that being a witness or is that
Speaker 1: being like something different accomplice? Yeah. The reason the reason
Speaker 1: I hesitated earlier is because there's a spot that I
Speaker 1: hunt back in Colorado where, um, you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: some illegal mountain bike use, some illegal motorcycle use, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it bugs me, but that's you know, in
Speaker 1: a spot they're not supposed to be. So do you
Speaker 1: normally just like string piano wire across those No. No,
Speaker 1: But um, I'm not gonna lie if I hadn't said I.
Speaker 1: I fantasized about the idea of doing the same exact
Speaker 1: thing this guy did. But of course I never falled
Speaker 1: through with it, because you can hurt someone, you know
Speaker 1: you can. But I'll tell you on those trails, illegal
Speaker 1: trails like that, because I know, I mean, we might
Speaker 1: be talking about the same spot, but I would sort
Speaker 1: of advertently maybe kick up big rock onto that trail,
Speaker 1: roll a log onto that trail. I mean, no one's
Speaker 1: supposed to be mountain bike in it, so like you know,
Speaker 1: they come across a log, they should be prepared for that.
Speaker 1: I got. I got a cousin he caught a thirty
Speaker 1: I remember, he caught a sixty three pound beaver one time.
Speaker 1: But the same cousin he tells me this, told me this,
Speaker 1: This is a long time ago. According to this cousin
Speaker 1: of mine, he one time was in an emergency room
Speaker 1: like where the um ambulances pull up and you got
Speaker 1: like the sliding doors. I don't know what the hell
Speaker 1: he's doing there, but he's there. He says that out
Speaker 1: of this ambulance comes a gurney and on the gurney
Speaker 1: is a headless corpse. Under its arm is a helmet
Speaker 1: with the head still in it. This struck his curiosity,
Speaker 1: and he says that what happened was a guy was
Speaker 1: so pissed about snow machiners snowmobilers that he did, like
Speaker 1: Yanni said, and strung a wire. I love that. True
Speaker 1: or not, we still we floated it. We used to
Speaker 1: flow the river where the landowner, one of the landowners,
Speaker 1: you got to float through his property. He strung some
Speaker 1: wires keep kayakers and rafters from rolling through. So we
Speaker 1: just carried wire cutters with us. Okay, Clay, tell us
Speaker 1: about the um tell us about what's going on with
Speaker 1: this Washington bear hunting deal. Now, yeah, so there's uh.
Speaker 1: I talked to a lady today that's what the Inland
Speaker 1: Northwest Wildlife Council named Marie new Miller. Really nice lady,
Speaker 1: and she talked about how she was at a a
Speaker 1: spring the commission meeting and because the spring seasons were
Speaker 1: the first seasons of one that they came up and
Speaker 1: were talked about, and basically she was the only hunter
Speaker 1: there that gave any positive input about the spring seasons
Speaker 1: in Washington, and she said that there were basically there
Speaker 1: was a room full of people that were upset about
Speaker 1: the that had negative things to say about a spring season.
Speaker 1: They had all these different reasons, but there was a
Speaker 1: couple of interesting things that she spoke about. So this
Speaker 1: was a zoom meeting, and she said that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of out of state special interest groups that are
Speaker 1: influencing wildlife law in the state of Washington and in
Speaker 1: other places, which was kind of a new, a new
Speaker 1: idea that it's kind of an influence of COVID because
Speaker 1: there's a Mountain lion group in California, an anti predator
Speaker 1: hunting group in California that was present in this meeting.
Speaker 1: Um there, I made a list here of five takeaways
Speaker 1: from what she said, Steve, But basically, COVID nineteen and
Speaker 1: these some of these ZOOM meetings are given access to
Speaker 1: to these groups to regulation meetings from AFAR that they
Speaker 1: never had. The second thing that would never have showed up,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't have been like to show up for local meeting.
Speaker 1: That's right, they would have never showed up. The second
Speaker 1: of all is that in the state of Washington, and
Speaker 1: I would assume this is the same in other states.
Speaker 1: They that any email that comes into the commission is
Speaker 1: presented and somehow acknowledged by the commission. And so these
Speaker 1: anti hunting groups are pretty well raped, well put together,
Speaker 1: and they're sending these form emails. So basically, one of
Speaker 1: the people got up and said, hey, we had five
Speaker 1: hundred and forty emails come in against the spring hunt
Speaker 1: and it was a form email chain sent out by
Speaker 1: one of these anti hunting groups. But you know what
Speaker 1: that does inside of a crowd, when you begin to
Speaker 1: hear something negative, it's it's like empowered some of the
Speaker 1: people that were actually in the zoom meeting to begin
Speaker 1: to speak out against it. And um, basically she was like,
Speaker 1: where are the hunters at? Where where the where's the
Speaker 1: voice of the hunters? Yeah, and her her point to
Speaker 1: me was that the commissions here the squeaky wheel, but
Speaker 1: not the positive stories of hunters and hunting and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we have I think the solution to
Speaker 1: the problem, and there's nothing specific that's happening in Washington,
Speaker 1: Like there's not a regulation that's being proposed that takes
Speaker 1: away their spring hunt, but it just came up and
Speaker 1: she sent an email to meat Eater and Uh, basically,
Speaker 1: as hunters, we need to build a culture that's more
Speaker 1: proactive talking with our game commissions, talking about the positive
Speaker 1: things that that we see inside of our hunting seasons.
Speaker 1: Because there's definitely squeaky squeaky wheels. Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: there's a the cultural shifts that we're experiencing today inside
Speaker 1: of his era of technology. Basically, rapid culture shifts can
Speaker 1: have significant consequences and hunting regulations and are moving much
Speaker 1: faster than they have in past decades because of technology,
Speaker 1: if I can say it that way, Like so, like
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of some murmur about a spring
Speaker 1: bear hunt not being a good thing, Like maybe in
Speaker 1: past times that would have taken twenty five years to
Speaker 1: infiltrate a deep part of the culture to change regulation.
Speaker 1: Well anymore, it's that is moving much faster, and so
Speaker 1: you know, I just think we just have to be
Speaker 1: more proactive with the tech communication game as hunters and
Speaker 1: and and speak up for stuff. But this points to
Speaker 1: a thing that I argue about frequently with my very
Speaker 1: dear friend Carl Malcolm, and Carl's of the opinion that
Speaker 1: you know, um, we need more voices, right, more voices
Speaker 1: in the room, more seats at the table, and that
Speaker 1: game management in this country has so long been uh
Speaker 1: so heavily influenced by hunters and anglers, and he's points
Speaker 1: to the fact that we need to be realistic about
Speaker 1: the fact that more people have input and that we're
Speaker 1: not always going to enjoy having oversized input on like
Speaker 1: game commission rules and things. Uh. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he's being pragmatic or if he's being hopeful when he
Speaker 1: talks about the fact that more people are going to
Speaker 1: be coming into the conversation, but I don't necessarily look
Speaker 1: at that as an entirely good thing. UM. And as
Speaker 1: we deal with like management and funding structures, where right
Speaker 1: now fishing game agencies are funded largely by hunters and
Speaker 1: anglers and shooters meaning people to buy hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: licenses and all kinds of other things that are have
Speaker 1: excise taxes on them for that purpose, like marine gas
Speaker 1: and sporting goods and all kinds of things. UM. Funding
Speaker 1: from that and funny like funny from buying licenses and
Speaker 1: buying sporting goods. Right, So the users are paying. As
Speaker 1: we look at these other funding structures and we talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, having a backpack tax or a trail tax
Speaker 1: or some way for other outdoor users to kick in money.
Speaker 1: Then when they kick in money, they're gonna probably want
Speaker 1: to have their opinions be heard. And I don't think
Speaker 1: their opinions their eyes gonna go along with ours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the truck to you can do that is just
Speaker 1: target those dollars to what they're used for. So there's
Speaker 1: an exercise tax on mountain bikes that's for fixing up
Speaker 1: mountain bike trails someplace. That's great. That shouldn't be something
Speaker 1: that the hunters dollars should be paying for, which has
Speaker 1: been partly done in the past. You just segregate the accounts.
Speaker 1: You know, in terms of fish and wildlife management, hunters
Speaker 1: ought to have a learn to say we do. I
Speaker 1: think it goes back to and you guys help me
Speaker 1: understand this better. Even it goes back to how these
Speaker 1: state ame agencies are run. Like her, one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about today. She told me that four
Speaker 1: percent of people in Washington State or hunters, So they're
Speaker 1: starting out as a minority. So the anti hunting argument
Speaker 1: is that, hey, most of the people in the state
Speaker 1: aren't for this, specifically talking about the spring bear hunt.
Speaker 1: So this is a democratic society, so why don't we
Speaker 1: stop the spring bear hunt? And the game agency in
Speaker 1: Washington came back with a great response as I understood it,
Speaker 1: which was, we don't manage our game based upon democratic
Speaker 1: feel I mean, and I know here in Arkansas our
Speaker 1: commission is totally run by these commissioners. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's not a referendum state, meaning you can't just get
Speaker 1: a bunch of people together sign a petition to get
Speaker 1: something made into law. Um, So that brings up the question,
Speaker 1: I mean, is our our game management practice is up
Speaker 1: for the democratic process. Yeah, but I mean, like so
Speaker 1: much stuff in society is not or so much stuff.
Speaker 1: We have a representative democracy, right, like you have an
Speaker 1: opportunity now and then for your congressmanutes every two years,
Speaker 1: your senators every six years, your presidents every four years, whatever,
Speaker 1: you have an opportunity now and then the way in
Speaker 1: and generally how things are going. But when people point
Speaker 1: out like it's a democratic society. It's like, Okay, if
Speaker 1: we're gonna go invade Iraq, right, do we then have
Speaker 1: a quick vote to see if we're gonna do it
Speaker 1: or not? If we're gonna have a new tax buill,
Speaker 1: do we have a quick vote to see if we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it or not? Or like we're gonna lower, um,
Speaker 1: the maximum fine for marijuana possession, do we put that?
Speaker 1: Of course not like we'd like get people to do
Speaker 1: things for us, and we don't subject everything to a
Speaker 1: temperature check, a public temperature check every time we turn around. Um.
Speaker 1: And so when people like, when people point out that argument,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I see what you're saying, But we
Speaker 1: don't do anything like that. Yeah. One of the things
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk to One of the things I want
Speaker 1: to talk to with about is, uh, what are do
Speaker 1: you have opinions about what happened with Colorado? The um
Speaker 1: where in this case where we did go to a
Speaker 1: public opinion and have like a public opinion a poll
Speaker 1: on a path toward a wolf. Yeah, No, I don't
Speaker 1: you know. Listen, I think that you know the worst
Speaker 1: thing you can do is to sort of have you
Speaker 1: well life management by ballot box I mean, this is
Speaker 1: professionals how to be dealing with this stuff. And you
Speaker 1: that's why you have professionally run you know, game fishing,
Speaker 1: game agencies. And no, I think if we've failed, if
Speaker 1: we go to this you know model of you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get the citizens way in on it was
Speaker 1: just like that. Colorado has a history of that too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that involves the spring bear hunt, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think in the mid nineties the spring bear hunt in
Speaker 1: Colorado was outlawed by ballot box initiative. You can even
Speaker 1: argue that, you know, Congress is not the right place
Speaker 1: to be dealing with things like a wolf de listing,
Speaker 1: which we ended up having to do around you know,
Speaker 1: the gradielist an ecosystems, certainly because you know, the courts
Speaker 1: kept blocking it even though biologically it was justified to
Speaker 1: delist wolves. So Congress had to weigh in and you know,
Speaker 1: deal with it there. But again that's not the best
Speaker 1: place either. Are you guys familiar with the predator hunting
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that the anti hunting community wants to shut
Speaker 1: down predator hunting so that predators would overtake the landscape
Speaker 1: and take down ungulate numbers to such a level that
Speaker 1: hunting would no longer be necessary because have you heard that? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I hear that. Do you know the do you There's
Speaker 1: one we'd like to talk about a lot which is
Speaker 1: even more insidious. It was that the Clintons. I know
Speaker 1: you're gonna say that they liked what they wanted wolves
Speaker 1: to come. They wanted the wolves reintroduction because the wolves
Speaker 1: would kill all the game. No one would hunt anymore,
Speaker 1: and if they couldn't hunt, they wouldn't have any reason
Speaker 1: to buy a gun. And that's how you disarm America.
Speaker 1: It's a long it's a long play. So I feel
Speaker 1: like I I don't know that that I know that theory.
Speaker 1: And there's a guy, there's a guy that's a very
Speaker 1: big proponent of he's right here in our town. He's
Speaker 1: done a lot around wolf reintroductions, and he gives a
Speaker 1: lot of talks about UH wolf reintroductions. Really likes him
Speaker 1: a lot, and he's very antagonistic toward hunters. And I've
Speaker 1: mentioned this a couple of times where he referred to
Speaker 1: hunters as the recreational big game killing industry UH and
Speaker 1: views them as being like an adversary for it. But
Speaker 1: I don't think that he views wolf reintroduction as a
Speaker 1: way to ticket to hunters. M I think it's more
Speaker 1: like he veals that we have an obligation to like
Speaker 1: restore in a completely intact ecosystem. Be my guess. Maybe
Speaker 1: at night he's like, you know, like this insidious plot.
Speaker 1: But I I don't know. I mean, I couldnot like
Speaker 1: if anybody could put it together and be the Clinton's though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, hey, did you know my dad
Speaker 1: went to high school with Bill Clinton? Because you're from Arkansas?
Speaker 1: Did they party a lot? No? He was a few
Speaker 1: years older than my dad, but well I'm sure Clinton did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're old man partied with him?
Speaker 1: Not not Gary Newcomb, No, sir, so you're your old man.
Speaker 1: Can't put your Gary Newcomb? Can't put the rest this
Speaker 1: inhale or not inhale thing? Well he probably could, but
Speaker 1: not because he was there, got it. We we're a
Speaker 1: little bit now, we're not too terribly early. Every year
Speaker 1: most every year for the last few years, we've done
Speaker 1: with wit from Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership where a full disclosure,
Speaker 1: I am a proud board member. Uh. When Fosburgh comes
Speaker 1: in and does a recap. So the year is not
Speaker 1: quite done. I mean, you know, it's it's it's winding down.
Speaker 1: We're getting there. It's winding down. Last year when we
Speaker 1: did this, you had, uh you had about nineteen a
Speaker 1: general thumbs up. We went through the details, but you
Speaker 1: had a thumbs up from conservation perspective. Where where does
Speaker 1: the thumb sit. Now, let's say it's a middle of
Speaker 1: the road kind of sideways right now. There are some
Speaker 1: huge accomplishments. They're also doing some real disappointments. Really uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think it's you know Nick bag as he
Speaker 1: usually is, listen, and I think that overall, I think
Speaker 1: we're happy with where we got this year. We have
Speaker 1: some challenging circumstances, but once again, in least in Congress,
Speaker 1: conservation proved one of those things that you could actually
Speaker 1: get done in a very hyperpartisan year presidential election, you know,
Speaker 1: hot congressional elections, everything else. That's one of the you
Speaker 1: talking about that and explaining how that happens, that conservation
Speaker 1: is a thing that can move forward when when nothing
Speaker 1: else can move forward. I was kind of thinking about
Speaker 1: that a little bit recently and looking at um that
Speaker 1: we'd have uh, you know, Republican led Senate, the Democrat
Speaker 1: the White House. They're not gonna get anything done. Maybe
Speaker 1: they'll decide to focus on some some conservation work to
Speaker 1: get those easy wins that you were talking about that
Speaker 1: they often get thirsty for. Yeah, I think so. I
Speaker 1: mean they have to everyone has to show they can
Speaker 1: legislate and get stuff done. And if you look back
Speaker 1: at this year, I mean things like the Great American
Speaker 1: Outdoor Act, which was permanent and full funding for the
Speaker 1: Land Water Conservation Fund. It was a ten billion dollar
Speaker 1: almost trust fund to deal with maintenance backlog in public lands.
Speaker 1: That came together because you know, a lot of different interests.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought it was a good idea at
Speaker 1: the time. Some of those were conservationist just interests, some
Speaker 1: more political. There was an idea that you know, they
Speaker 1: wanted to help, you know, Corey Gardner in Colorado and
Speaker 1: Steve Danes, you re election efforts. So you know Trump
Speaker 1: proposed doing this. This is when the Democrats have been
Speaker 1: pushing for years, and they weren't dumb enough to say, oh,
Speaker 1: because you're proposing, I'm gonna vote against it. It's like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: bring it on, and so that allowed us to get
Speaker 1: it done. Can you can you explain why, like the
Speaker 1: Elder talk people through the l w CF, and why
Speaker 1: we had to have a new thing called the Great
Speaker 1: American Outdoors Act to sort of like provide backing for
Speaker 1: a thing we already had, which is the LWCF. Like,
Speaker 1: why does it require a new It wasn't. It's just basically,
Speaker 1: you know, Congress passes things in bulk these days. It
Speaker 1: doesn't do individual bills very often. So the Great American
Speaker 1: Outdoors Act had two independent bills underneath it. One was
Speaker 1: Land and Water Conservation Fund. The other was a maintenance backlog.
Speaker 1: Just a little background on Land of Work Conservation Fund.
Speaker 1: It was created in nineteen by Congress when they opened
Speaker 1: up the Outer Continental Shelf that oil and gas development.
Speaker 1: The idea was that oil and gas industry pay into
Speaker 1: a fund UH to do national resource conservation in perpetuity
Speaker 1: million dollars a year. The problem was that in the
Speaker 1: fifty five years that has been around, only once did
Speaker 1: Congress actually fully funded. So you know, two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: and a big ominibus bill that we passed, we permanently
Speaker 1: reauthorized this. You don't have to go back to Congress
Speaker 1: every year every five years to get it reauthorized. In
Speaker 1: the Great American Outdoors Act, we took that funding and
Speaker 1: moved it off budget because what did Congress has been
Speaker 1: doing is saw this juicy pot of funding sitting out
Speaker 1: there that had not been protected in nine from being rated.
Speaker 1: So Congress rated it for all sorts of purposes unrelated
Speaker 1: to conservation. What were they rating it for deficit reduction schools?
Speaker 1: You know? Who knows? I mean, it just it was
Speaker 1: used for other purposes. So they still collected the money
Speaker 1: from the oil, yes company, oil and gas industry paid
Speaker 1: into it every year nine million dollars, and in their
Speaker 1: mind they're paying into it because of this thing, this fund.
Speaker 1: But then the money goes and sits in another pile
Speaker 1: and someone grabs the money off that pile. Oh yeah no.
Speaker 1: So Congress looks at and says, what we can give
Speaker 1: it the nine hundred million dollars we're supposed to, or
Speaker 1: we could give it half of that and use the
Speaker 1: other half for these pet projects we might have. So finally,
Speaker 1: what we've been trying to do is get that off
Speaker 1: budget so it automatically goes out things like Pittman Robertson
Speaker 1: Dingle Johnson. You know those funds. Congress is not allowed
Speaker 1: to tamper with the sportsman's exercise taxes. Let's go to
Speaker 1: the federal government and then go back out to the states.
Speaker 1: This would be similar in that the nine million dollars
Speaker 1: in full guess for goes to projects like it was intended,
Speaker 1: land acquisition, permanent Easeman's city parks, trails, those types of activities.
Speaker 1: You know, that was a huge win. You know, I
Speaker 1: think people might be interested in about when we're talking
Speaker 1: about money going into piles and someone robbing that money
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, when you buy like earlier, I
Speaker 1: mean we talked about this, when you buy your fishing license. Okay,
Speaker 1: the money from your fishing license goes to support your
Speaker 1: state game agency, which does everything from like regulation, you know,
Speaker 1: enforcement of hunting and fishing laws, disease research, access enhancement,
Speaker 1: boat launches, like on down the line. It goes to
Speaker 1: all this stuff. If a state, states are blocked. You
Speaker 1: can tell me if this is a universal or not.
Speaker 1: States are blocked from raiding that money because if they
Speaker 1: raid that money and don't put it for what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to go to, they're not eligible for the federal
Speaker 1: funds that come from the excise taxes. Correct. Ye, so
Speaker 1: you get like you get like slapped on the hand.
Speaker 1: Um if you try to steal the hunting and fishing money. Correct.
Speaker 1: And now that it was genius when they set that
Speaker 1: up because people would have taken that money. Oh sure.
Speaker 1: And so now you know you have a Congress can't
Speaker 1: rate it and the states can't rate it. You know
Speaker 1: the matching funds the states use basically which is their
Speaker 1: state license fees. So no, it's a it's a perfect situation.
Speaker 1: It's worked and that's why it's funded conservation for since
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. Is there like when all this LWCF
Speaker 1: money comes in, um, who who is the who is
Speaker 1: the who's the collection of people that decides where it goes?
Speaker 1: So half of it goes basically half of it goes
Speaker 1: back after the states, and the states can use it
Speaker 1: for anything from real conservation, migration corrid or is that
Speaker 1: type of activity, or they can use it for a
Speaker 1: city baseball diamond, basketball courts, you know, urban recreation. They
Speaker 1: have flexibility and how that gets used. The other half
Speaker 1: is basically goes to the agency's Department of the Interior
Speaker 1: Department of Agriculture that then goes out for very specific projects.
Speaker 1: And what we're trying to do is, you know, make
Speaker 1: sure that they really think about projects a little bit differently.
Speaker 1: They have in the past. LWCF has been used to
Speaker 1: fund like the big Plum Creek acquisitions on the Blackfoot
Speaker 1: and you know, things like that, which are multimillion dollar,
Speaker 1: really complex deals. But it could also be used for
Speaker 1: things like, you know, funding you buy one section someplace
Speaker 1: in Montana to open up a landlocked parcel. You know,
Speaker 1: as you guys know, we've been working with ONYX on
Speaker 1: those reports on landlocked and you've got sixteen and a
Speaker 1: half million acres around the country that are owned by
Speaker 1: the public but the public can't access. So you start
Speaker 1: thinking about a little bit differently because three of the
Speaker 1: nine million, seven million dollars annually is your remarked for
Speaker 1: access projects. So start thinking about that little section or
Speaker 1: half sections someplace that opens up a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different land and the on X project it really helps
Speaker 1: identify where those areas are. Yeah, because that's like a
Speaker 1: that's like a force multiplier on your money when you
Speaker 1: buy like a small chunk and open up a huge chunk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned even like you know, the you know,
Speaker 1: block management in Montana, if you buy a section that
Speaker 1: opens up more block management potentially, or target some of
Speaker 1: the block management, which is also funded by the farm bill,
Speaker 1: you know, to you know again access that national forest
Speaker 1: behind you what you said that some of this money
Speaker 1: could be used, And it surprised me when you said
Speaker 1: like urban projects like baseball diamonds and such. I knew
Speaker 1: that a lot some of that money I had seen
Speaker 1: wording inside of that where it said it could go
Speaker 1: for rifle ranges and firearms related stuff. I mean, how
Speaker 1: how can how are we not are we guarding against
Speaker 1: like all of that money going to by small diamonds. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, you're it's largely a state
Speaker 1: decision where they want to spend it. So engage in
Speaker 1: the process. You work with your game and fish agency,
Speaker 1: you know, your record aptor parks or agency, whatever is
Speaker 1: in the state, and help influence that decision. The idea
Speaker 1: was that it makes sense to send some of this
Speaker 1: money local and locals decide how they want to spend it,
Speaker 1: and we want to make sure that they can think
Speaker 1: about you know, yeah, that different ideas like migration quarridors.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of those estates in the West
Speaker 1: are now developing formal migration policies try to identify and
Speaker 1: protect big game migration corridors use some of the state
Speaker 1: side money to help, you know, further that cause, as
Speaker 1: well as doing things like baseball diamonds or if you
Speaker 1: do a shooting range or you know, whatever it might be. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: let's go on to you got I got a quick
Speaker 1: follow up if it's all right with I want to know. Thanks, Steve,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Um when when you're like, what does it
Speaker 1: look like? If you can give me like an abbreviated
Speaker 1: version of when like you're in there in the trenches
Speaker 1: in d C trying to help push something like the
Speaker 1: Great American Outdoors Act through what does that look like
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis? And then too like
Speaker 1: did you are there allies that like right alongside t
Speaker 1: RCP that are maybe not in our you know, the
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing bubble that are also in there? And
Speaker 1: also a great question answer to the second part first,
Speaker 1: so yeah, we had great allies in the outdoor recreation community,
Speaker 1: in the historic preservation community. Yeah, it's a big you know,
Speaker 1: there were literally hundreds and hundreds of different groups that
Speaker 1: were engaged in this. We're all fighting side by side
Speaker 1: for it in terms of what it looks like in
Speaker 1: the trenches. I mean, what we do is really two things. One,
Speaker 1: we provide good information. You know, we let a member
Speaker 1: of Congress know, here are the projects that have benefited
Speaker 1: and hunters and anglers in your state through all the BCF.
Speaker 1: Here are the other types of projects that are sitting
Speaker 1: out there that could get funded if we had full funding.
Speaker 1: And then what we also do is apply some pressure.
Speaker 1: And you know, honestly, they don't want to see me
Speaker 1: walking in the door. They want to hear from their
Speaker 1: local rod and Gun club in that state, you know,
Speaker 1: the local chapter of Pheasants Forever Turkey Federation engage. I mean,
Speaker 1: local voices matter a lot more than you know, guys
Speaker 1: like me that live in here in d C. And
Speaker 1: they're paid to do this stuff. So what we try
Speaker 1: to do is, you know, and that's why we have
Speaker 1: guys and you know a lot of the western states
Speaker 1: around the country as organizers mobilizing local businesses, local citizens,
Speaker 1: local rod and gun clubs to engage on these issues
Speaker 1: to make their voices heard. So it's one part good information,
Speaker 1: another part yeah, just you know, shoe leather and getting
Speaker 1: the people out there that can help influences. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Uh you put down Pebble Mine in the wind category
Speaker 1: and yeah, and I recognize that. And to bring people
Speaker 1: that have been following this show. Um, we had a
Speaker 1: big pebble episode recently. I should say recently, but I
Speaker 1: guess this fall we had a big Pebble Mind episode.
Speaker 1: And it was funny because while we were recording that,
Speaker 1: we had a gentleman on Tim Bristol Um who just coincidentally,
Speaker 1: his last name is Bristol and Pebble Mind is you know,
Speaker 1: in the headwaters of Bristol Bay. And he came on
Speaker 1: and sort of laid out the whole history of where
Speaker 1: this idea came from, why it's a bad idea, why
Speaker 1: it won't go away, and and literally while we were
Speaker 1: speaking with him, he was very eager to get home
Speaker 1: after the interview. While we were speaking with him, a
Speaker 1: story was breaking about some some activists who had masqueraded
Speaker 1: as foreign investors in Pebble Mind, and the CEO of
Speaker 1: Pebble Mind, what what was his name? With Tom Collier,
Speaker 1: Tom Collier. These people masquerade as investors, and they do
Speaker 1: in a call with Tom Collier from Pebble Line, and
Speaker 1: Tom Collier um really opens up to them in a
Speaker 1: way that wound up being deeply humiliating to him, where
Speaker 1: he contradicted a lot of Pebble Mind's own messaging. Um
Speaker 1: they had all along in the permitting process been looking for,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, like a ten or twenty
Speaker 1: year roadmap. He shares with these these supposed investors that
Speaker 1: this is like a twenty year play that he's got
Speaker 1: plans where the state is going to pay for a
Speaker 1: lot more things in the state had any intention of
Speaker 1: paying paying for. And then he really liked drives a
Speaker 1: nail on his own coffin by speaking rather disparagingly of
Speaker 1: a number of politicians that he needs to have a
Speaker 1: lot of cooperation with, to the point where, uh, some
Speaker 1: politicians who haven't been entirely supportive or to entirely dismissive,
Speaker 1: but it wanted the process to run, and they've been
Speaker 1: pretty careful to say that, like, this is a process
Speaker 1: we're gonna allow to play out, and they don't want
Speaker 1: to weigh into heavily. But anyways, he goes and shares it. Basically,
Speaker 1: these people are in his back pocket, and when the
Speaker 1: rubber meets the world, they'll do what he says. And
Speaker 1: there's nothing that's going to be quicker at getting those
Speaker 1: politicians to not do what you say than to say that,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, listen, that was you know, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that you know, the interview, the tapes, you know, had
Speaker 1: that big bearing on the corps final decision to deny
Speaker 1: the permit for the Mind. But it's sure as hell
Speaker 1: have for persuade Leasa Murkowsky and Dan Sullivan to come
Speaker 1: out very vocally against that mine, oh just as it
Speaker 1: was so insulting to them, and uh, you know it was.
Speaker 1: And we've been trying to get them both to come
Speaker 1: out hard against the Mind, and again, like you say,
Speaker 1: they've just sort of taking a very neutral stance of
Speaker 1: let's wait and see, let's see what they say, not
Speaker 1: wanting to you know, take anybody off. But started saying
Speaker 1: that stuff, holy map, they went off like Roman candidles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, it was just one of those uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were gonna and I'm sure someone
Speaker 1: will someday make a documentary about this entire process that
Speaker 1: would be sort of like, you know, a huge moment
Speaker 1: in the film is this call. But but that set
Speaker 1: off I don't know if it's set off or not.
Speaker 1: It sure seemed to set off a um cascade of events,
Speaker 1: like all of a sudden, there's people wanting to do investigations.
Speaker 1: Tom Collier is dismissed from his position. Uh, the Army
Speaker 1: Corps of Engineers comes in and and rejects the proposal.
Speaker 1: But this the fighting about this mine is that just
Speaker 1: it never goes away. Like when we had this this episode,
Speaker 1: I was pointing out to someone that I went to
Speaker 1: my first pebble mind event, I thought it was the
Speaker 1: year before my kid was born. He's ten years old.
Speaker 1: And um Bristol had pointed out that to really close
Speaker 1: this thing up, there needs to be some land designations
Speaker 1: in that area that would make it that we don't
Speaker 1: just need to constantly revisit this horrible idea. I don't
Speaker 1: want to spend too much time, so we've covered so
Speaker 1: heavy a basis like this, like when you draw a
Speaker 1: gold bearing or out of the ground, you use an acid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you use cyanide to dissolve the gold out right. This
Speaker 1: isn't like digging up for gold nuggets. This is like
Speaker 1: or that contains gold. You crush that stuff up, put
Speaker 1: cyanide on it, and that dissolves the gold. Then you're
Speaker 1: able to collect the dissolved gold. The problem is you
Speaker 1: have all this you have all this waste from the cyanide,
Speaker 1: and you have like a bunch of heavy metals that
Speaker 1: are in water, and that stuff don't go away. So
Speaker 1: you gotta make a big lake and you fill this
Speaker 1: lake up with all this ship right, um, And they
Speaker 1: just in their plan they're like, oh, yeah, and the
Speaker 1: lake will always be there, but we'll build a sweet
Speaker 1: dam to hold it in. And people like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean always? I mean like twenty years, fifty years. No,
Speaker 1: it's like for an eternity, forever, forever. The lake of
Speaker 1: toxic sludge sits there behind the earth and dam, and
Speaker 1: people point out, well, how can the dam be forever?
Speaker 1: And they're like, to be a sweet damn, real nice damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sismically seismically active area. Yeah. And so it just is
Speaker 1: very unsettling to people who have to trust that this
Speaker 1: earth and dam will hold for the rest of human history. Right.
Speaker 1: It's just hard to buy. It's hard the toxic sludge
Speaker 1: does last for eternity as far as you know, it's
Speaker 1: got a it's got a greater life expectancy than the
Speaker 1: damn that's for sure. So that's where in this mind,
Speaker 1: like in a nutshell, that's where this mind becomes really problematic. Uh,
Speaker 1: there is that. But your original point is exactly right,
Speaker 1: and that's what you know, Tim, and you know Tim
Speaker 1: and I used to work together and try to limit it,
Speaker 1: and he you know. So the trick now is how
Speaker 1: do you permanently protect that area? Do you do land
Speaker 1: swap with the state and give them some federal lands
Speaker 1: where they actually me make some money, you know? Do
Speaker 1: you get the state legislature to designate all those state
Speaker 1: lands as you know, some sort of you know, salmon reserve,
Speaker 1: you know, something like that. But you know, there's nothing
Speaker 1: to stop the next fly by Night and jackass company
Speaker 1: coming in there five years from now and they think
Speaker 1: they have favorable politicians and do the exact same thing again.
Speaker 1: M do you think that will kind of put a
Speaker 1: wrap on this? Now? Do you think that's just the
Speaker 1: the appetite, the political appetite too, Like, just squash this
Speaker 1: once and for all, you think it will be left
Speaker 1: to linger. No, I think there's an appetite, you know,
Speaker 1: thank you Tom Collier to kill this once and for
Speaker 1: all now. And so I think that you know, Lisa
Speaker 1: mccowski is already on record and you know, variety of
Speaker 1: publications saying that she wants to find a permanent protection
Speaker 1: mechanism for Bristol days. Yeah. Now, one of the things
Speaker 1: that I was wondering about when you know, I was
Speaker 1: pretty happy when um, Donald Trump Jr. Uh, Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 1: a number of right wing figures came out and you know,
Speaker 1: varying degrees of intensity, but came out like in opposition
Speaker 1: to pebble mind. And I went, remember, I remember wondering
Speaker 1: if this would somehow be like cover or could be
Speaker 1: justified as cover for something else. Uh, which I think
Speaker 1: And now that's like a conspiracy theory that exists in
Speaker 1: my own head or not. But layout where we're at,
Speaker 1: you know, in the year and review around the Arctic
Speaker 1: National Wildlife Refuge. So another premier, um, another massive, premier
Speaker 1: pristine ecosystem in Alaska that for my entire life we've
Speaker 1: been arguing about do we leave it be or do
Speaker 1: we tap its resources? Yeah, so a little bit of
Speaker 1: background on this one. And again you know, we don't
Speaker 1: do a whole lot with an wharf which is arcade
Speaker 1: National Wilife Refuge. But but you know, there's history here.
Speaker 1: So when the Alaska Native Lands, I guess it was
Speaker 1: Alaska National Interest Lands Act passed in the nineties seventies,
Speaker 1: which created most of the national parks, refuges, forests we
Speaker 1: have in Alaska, it was silent on what to do
Speaker 1: with the coastal plane of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Speaker 1: It basically the four miles of coastal plane and by
Speaker 1: that north slope twelve hundreds of miles of which were
Speaker 1: open for oil and gas development, two hundred miles being
Speaker 1: that and more coastal plane. We're basically to be determined
Speaker 1: what we do with it later. So when that law
Speaker 1: passed in the seventies into the Carter administration, you know
Speaker 1: it basically you know, it didn't have to be Nostradama's
Speaker 1: to know you're gonna have fights over that area for
Speaker 1: a very long time. And that's just what's played out.
Speaker 1: And you know, so now here we are, you know,
Speaker 1: a long time later, and we're still dealing with it.
Speaker 1: So it's always been the goal of politicians in Alaska
Speaker 1: to open it up because they were convinced that there's
Speaker 1: the next Prude Obey is sitting under there. I think
Speaker 1: it's very questionable or that's true or not. But what
Speaker 1: happened now is you finally had you know, during the
Speaker 1: beginning of this administration, you had a Republican House, Republican
Speaker 1: Senate Trump, and they jammed through opening up an war
Speaker 1: to development. And now the part of the interior is
Speaker 1: moving as fast as humanly possible to you know, get
Speaker 1: the first lease out of there, and knowing that the
Speaker 1: Biden administration when they come in, is going to shut
Speaker 1: that thing down. It's much harder to shut it down
Speaker 1: if there's already a sole lease someplace. So that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's why they're trying to get at least right now
Speaker 1: and have somebody buy some thing out there so that
Speaker 1: it's much harder undo in the future. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: people that are posed to drilling in in where what
Speaker 1: are the reasons they're opposed to it? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: the main thing is I think actually, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a variety of different reasons, but this the porcupine caribou
Speaker 1: herd is the main one that's their main calving grounds.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's a big polar bear area too, and polar
Speaker 1: bearers aren't doing great right now. But it is, you know,
Speaker 1: because it was the biological heart of the refuge, which
Speaker 1: is why it wasn't set. It opened up for a
Speaker 1: well and gas development in the nineteen seventies and you know,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve, you've been up there, you know, so
Speaker 1: you've seen it. And when those cariboos come in, as
Speaker 1: you know, pretty freaking amazing and huge numbers, and in
Speaker 1: the spring in early summer. So I think that's the
Speaker 1: main reason. And it's just that, you know, if you
Speaker 1: go over to prude obay Or it is a major
Speaker 1: industrial city, and you know, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of folks that want to leave that coastal plain over
Speaker 1: an Animore the way it is not looking like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to Uh, when you deal with something where
Speaker 1: you have this like this pebble mind issue in the
Speaker 1: ani issue, um, you do get a little self conscious.
Speaker 1: I get a little self conscious about um. The tendency,
Speaker 1: my tendency to look at every development project and be like,
Speaker 1: oh no, not there, this is a line in the sand,
Speaker 1: and then the next one not there. This is a
Speaker 1: line in the sand, you know. But I do feel
Speaker 1: like that, man, Um, Like I can't I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's even maybe it's just perceived. It's in my
Speaker 1: head that there's supposed to be this idea that we're
Speaker 1: you trade one for the other, Like Okay, you can't
Speaker 1: do the big gold mine, but um, we'll make it
Speaker 1: up to you with some oil leases. But man, I
Speaker 1: mean we're talking about places that are again like like
Speaker 1: the most productive in the case of Bristol Bay, like
Speaker 1: most productive salmon fishery in the world, um with anwar
Speaker 1: one of the most pristine Arctic ecosystems on the planet.
Speaker 1: So like, I want to being a little bit unapologetic,
Speaker 1: even though it's in my head that that you're being
Speaker 1: like a real obstructionists by just feel in my mind like, yeah,
Speaker 1: those those things, it's like if we can't have the
Speaker 1: sort of audacity and vision to protect that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: like nothing is sacred. Man. Yeah, I'm totally with you,
Speaker 1: and I think they're just special places out there, and
Speaker 1: there are fewer and fewer of them as more and
Speaker 1: more of our globe gets developed. I think ann war
Speaker 1: Bristol Bay Boundary Orders is one of those kind of places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a big campaign the Ruby Mountains, you know,
Speaker 1: the Invada and that's you know, a pretty special place
Speaker 1: as well. They're now proposing a big titanium. Mind it
Speaker 1: was a titanium I think, so on you by the
Speaker 1: Okay Finoki Swamp and Origina, which is another pretty amazing place. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there are no place that's not
Speaker 1: you know, sort of under assault in some fashion. You know,
Speaker 1: talk about you know, mining near the Grand Canyon. You
Speaker 1: know that's been talked about for a long time. But
Speaker 1: you can imagine extraction people, you can imagine at some
Speaker 1: point think I'll be like okay, well then where like
Speaker 1: I just took possession of in the mail a new
Speaker 1: titanium stove pipe for my seek outside stove that goes
Speaker 1: into my teepee tent um. I like that I was
Speaker 1: able to order that thing. So when people say like okay,
Speaker 1: so what okay mr, Mr, don't touch this and don't
Speaker 1: touch that? Uh, where should we be doing this? Like
Speaker 1: how do you how do you answer it? I mean, look,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of places that appropriate to mine.
Speaker 1: You know, go to Nevada, and look at a bunch
Speaker 1: of the big Barrick or Newmont or some of those
Speaker 1: you know mining developments out there. It's incredibly arid country.
Speaker 1: I mean, the basic water is the main thing that
Speaker 1: you know, gets you in the way of a good mind.
Speaker 1: And that's where dealing with in Bristol Bay, that's where
Speaker 1: you're dealing with the Ooki Finoki the boundary waters Nevada
Speaker 1: place like that, that's not an issue. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess six inches of rainfall a year or whatever. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I just think, are there are places in
Speaker 1: Nevada that are that are not being mind that could be?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I have no idea. I'm not
Speaker 1: you know, mineral I'm not geologists, so but I'm just
Speaker 1: saying there are appropriate places for a mine. And even
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of minds being developed in Alaska.
Speaker 1: They're fine. It's just they're not in you know, sort
Speaker 1: of these amazing areas. And these presumably these amazing areas
Speaker 1: too would be super cash cows for these huge energy groups.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it's not like this is the only
Speaker 1: place left. But they just by their projections, by their
Speaker 1: understanding of you know, the resource, they're like this would
Speaker 1: be major place. It's it's it's it's accepted as an
Speaker 1: objective reality that pebble is the would be the largest
Speaker 1: gold mine in human history, so they would fight for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, part of the problem is it's not
Speaker 1: a you know, like a solid gold seem like you'd
Speaker 1: find some places in other places. It's so spread out
Speaker 1: over such a large area. You have to churn up
Speaker 1: so much habitat to produce that gold and copper that
Speaker 1: it's you know, that's where you get into the problem.
Speaker 1: So it's the you know the nature of the development
Speaker 1: as well. All right, well, let's keep I want to
Speaker 1: keep bumping along on our list wolves getting federally delisted.
Speaker 1: You have that you view this as a win with
Speaker 1: some caveats. But first, is this like is this real
Speaker 1: or like like no, as Biden gonna come in like
Speaker 1: just undo this. No, the obadministration proposed it too, blocked
Speaker 1: by the courts. So you don't think you don't think
Speaker 1: that you don't think that Biden will be like reflexively
Speaker 1: hostile to this idea, Well, I mean I would, I haven't.
Speaker 1: I have not spoken anybody about it over there, but
Speaker 1: I doubt it because they did it in the Obama
Speaker 1: Biden administration before. Yeah, they proposed this and he got
Speaker 1: blocked by the courts. And you know, what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do is, you know, take this out of the
Speaker 1: political sphere and make it much more of the wildlife
Speaker 1: biologists controlling the decision, not the courts, not Congress, not
Speaker 1: ballot mission with someplace. And the only thing I don't
Speaker 1: like about, you know, the most recent delisting, it's done
Speaker 1: the day before the election in Minnesota, a swing state,
Speaker 1: and you how do you look at that and not
Speaker 1: think it's political? And that just galvanized the opposition to it,
Speaker 1: and almost it works against our interests those of us
Speaker 1: like to see the wolf, do you listed? Yeah? You know,
Speaker 1: I actually, um well sometimes some other time I'll tell
Speaker 1: you a story about that timing, but um not not
Speaker 1: that's not for now. But okay, give me the caveats.
Speaker 1: So it's a win like so, so if you want
Speaker 1: to understand, it's gonna go, it's gonna go to the courts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: US Fish and Wildlife Service, we have uh trying to
Speaker 1: think it to what level of detail we want to
Speaker 1: get in here, CASSU where I mess up on this
Speaker 1: with but wolves were listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Speaker 1: They were listed like sort of across the Lower forty eight.
Speaker 1: One fell swoop, right. We we just listened like so
Speaker 1: we didn't want to hit a lot. Didn't get we're
Speaker 1: not getting Alaska implicated in this because Alaska has wolves
Speaker 1: across historic range or something like that. Um, very you know,
Speaker 1: thriving wolf populations. But they were listening to Lower forty eight. Later,
Speaker 1: when we kind of got a more detailed look at
Speaker 1: the problem, we realized that thinking about the Lower forty
Speaker 1: eight as a whole isn't a great way to try
Speaker 1: to manage wolves, um because we know that they're not
Speaker 1: going to be recovered in you know, downtown Denver, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna happen. So we should look at like
Speaker 1: where could they be and where are they and kind
Speaker 1: of break up the map a little bit and talk
Speaker 1: about these different population groups. And so one of these
Speaker 1: population groups is the Northern Great Lakes, and so that's
Speaker 1: wolf populations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Uh, you wind
Speaker 1: up there's all kinds of complexities in the law when
Speaker 1: you try to go after the fact and impose this
Speaker 1: logic of these distinct population segments like it creates a
Speaker 1: lot of ways for people to file lawsuits. That the
Speaker 1: fact that we didn't have that system in place when
Speaker 1: they were listed, and we tried to later come in
Speaker 1: and overlay this logic, um has created a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: So the Northern Great Lakes wolves have been you know,
Speaker 1: the US fish And while their service went and said
Speaker 1: it's time to delist them, that gets blocked in courts.
Speaker 1: That bounces back and forth. They have hunting and trapping seasons,
Speaker 1: Hunting and trapping seasons go away, then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they were locked back up put on the endangered
Speaker 1: species list. And now they're saying, um that you know,
Speaker 1: the outgoing I shouldn't time it with the outgoing administration.
Speaker 1: But they're now saying, all right, enough enough, we're does
Speaker 1: delistened the whole damn deal again, and it'll almost certainly
Speaker 1: get all wrapped up in a bunch of lawsuits, almost certainly.
Speaker 1: But it's important to note that the like the the
Speaker 1: Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains, you know there, they've exceeded
Speaker 1: recovery goals for a long time. Like there's a reason
Speaker 1: why they're wanting to delist them. Yeah, but it's just
Speaker 1: so political and you you may well see, you know,
Speaker 1: similar to what we've had to do in the Greater
Speaker 1: Yeloste ecosystem with Congress passing specific delisting legislation for the
Speaker 1: gray wolf there. My guests is you're probably have to
Speaker 1: see that again in the Great Lakes. And these are
Speaker 1: these are well funded anti hunting groups that are have
Speaker 1: a long term strategy to keep this inside the courts.
Speaker 1: Is that is that true? Yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: fair description. Yeah, and they do it like they kind
Speaker 1: of if you look at the details of these lawsuits,
Speaker 1: they sort of skirt the issue. Um, They'll often they
Speaker 1: don't argue, uh, how many wolves there are, they don't
Speaker 1: argue that. It's like you need to when you're doing
Speaker 1: these lawsuits, you're sort of going after these, um you're
Speaker 1: pursuing technicalities. You'd be like, okay, so you have a
Speaker 1: listing plan, Well, we can prove that you didn't consider
Speaker 1: something of relevance. And you know, like it's motive, it's
Speaker 1: motivated by a very it's motivated by a desire. But
Speaker 1: you take whatever little things you can get to try
Speaker 1: to like hold it up within the court during procedural
Speaker 1: administrative issues. Those are the main ones that stick. Now.
Speaker 1: The irony is, of course, if you know wolves had
Speaker 1: been delisted, you wouldn't have to do a ballot initiative
Speaker 1: in Colorado. They could just go ahead and reintroduce them.
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Oh yeah, huh. I really should
Speaker 1: know this. As a predator hunter, if wolves have been
Speaker 1: on the endangered species lists, why can we hunt them
Speaker 1: in Idaho and in other places? Because you know there
Speaker 1: was the courts did not sing allowed those states to
Speaker 1: move forward, and you know that was all the Great States.
Speaker 1: You know, I think Wyoming may still be in litigation
Speaker 1: about his plan, but you know that's been on and
Speaker 1: off because Wyoming didn't have a robust a plan as
Speaker 1: the other states didn't. Oh no, they had, they had.
Speaker 1: I thought they were insane, but they're kind of in
Speaker 1: the end one like Wyoming wanted to come in, Like
Speaker 1: all the states in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem came up
Speaker 1: with these management plans, right, and Wyoming came up with
Speaker 1: this management plan or they're basically saying, Okay, the area
Speaker 1: around the in the g y area, the area on Yellowstone,
Speaker 1: they'll be managed like as a big game animal. But
Speaker 1: then they took a huge chunk of the state and said,
Speaker 1: and here they'll be managed like coyotes. No bag limits,
Speaker 1: no reporting structure, no closed season. And I thought that
Speaker 1: they were insane to try that approach and that they
Speaker 1: would never get there. And I was like, man, you're
Speaker 1: shooting yourself in the foot with that. But they stuck
Speaker 1: it out, stuck to their guns, pun intended, and God,
Speaker 1: despite what the Clintons wanted, God, despite the Clintons, they
Speaker 1: got what they were after. Um and and so I
Speaker 1: was I thought that was a pretty bold play on
Speaker 1: their part. But when when when in our list here
Speaker 1: delisting what you have some caveats, explain the caveats. Oh,
Speaker 1: I was just what I was saying is that you
Speaker 1: know this is not yes as good as it scenes,
Speaker 1: because I think it's going to go straight back into
Speaker 1: the courts. So yeah, well hit hit again. I think
Speaker 1: that that that's the main caveat is that you don't
Speaker 1: go out and buy a license tomorrow. Yeah, okay, but
Speaker 1: what about Mexican gray wolf protections? Yeah, I'm again, I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert down there. I'm not even gonna venture
Speaker 1: into it. Is there any solution to keep it out
Speaker 1: of the courts. I mean, it just seems like like
Speaker 1: the best arguments that we can come up with. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there going to have to be wolves running through
Speaker 1: the streets of Chicago before the lawsuits? Just what I
Speaker 1: think that you're gonna see, you know, probably congressional legislation
Speaker 1: on something like the Great Lakes population. That exactly when
Speaker 1: when you talk to when you talk to people who
Speaker 1: are opposed to delisting wolves like wolf, like you know, Diard,
Speaker 1: wolf advocates that aren't aren't interested in a compromised solution.
Speaker 1: They love to point out that we've only recovered wolves
Speaker 1: across the fraction of their range. Um they seldom considered, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're they're right, And I like to point out
Speaker 1: to them that we've only recovered elk across ten percent
Speaker 1: of their range. But we manage elk hunting and elk
Speaker 1: populations in a lot of places very effectively. But we
Speaker 1: still don't have uh elk across the entire state of Nebraska,
Speaker 1: which historically we did. So it is possible to manage
Speaker 1: a species as a renewable resource, as a game species,
Speaker 1: while you're still pushing ahead with a broader recovery plan.
Speaker 1: Because we do it all the damn time. Okay, gutting
Speaker 1: the farm bill. Yeah, this is the farm bill is
Speaker 1: a loss. Explain to people what the hell that what?
Speaker 1: What what the farm bill is? Yeah? So the farm Bill,
Speaker 1: he know, is the single largest conservation program in this country,
Speaker 1: six billion dollars annually to incentivize conservation on private lands,
Speaker 1: the conservation reserve program, you know, wetland areas, grassland areas,
Speaker 1: you know, just restoring various types of habitats. But it
Speaker 1: unlike a lot of the environmental stuff we've talked about,
Speaker 1: like the Endangered Species Act, the the Farm Bill is
Speaker 1: all voluntary. It's all incentive based. So the ideas you
Speaker 1: give a farmer an incentive to enroll the land in
Speaker 1: a good conservation practice, and it's been incredibly successful. And
Speaker 1: just one of the areas, the one we focus on
Speaker 1: a lot is the Conservation Reserve program, which was really
Speaker 1: created back in the nineteen eighties as essentially a supply
Speaker 1: management tool when during the farm crisis to get people
Speaker 1: give money to farmers and have them set aside land
Speaker 1: so that they have money to in spite of really
Speaker 1: terrible markets. So in its height, you know, the farm
Speaker 1: Bill Conservations Deserve program about thirty seven million acres enrolled
Speaker 1: in it. And you know that's good for you know,
Speaker 1: upland Burghs is good for deer, it's good for water quality,
Speaker 1: it benefits pretty much everything. Today, you know, that program
Speaker 1: is down to twenty point seven million acres. Give me
Speaker 1: the number again, at its height twenty about thirty seven
Speaker 1: million acres down to down to the lowest level today
Speaker 1: is today is the lowest level we've seen really since
Speaker 1: the creation of the program, and that is twenty point
Speaker 1: seven million acres and we're expecting another probably three million
Speaker 1: acres to expire in twenty one. So and at the
Speaker 1: same time, we're giving I think you know, the last
Speaker 1: two years, we gave thirty billion dollars to farmers because
Speaker 1: the trade wars are going on with China and depressed markets.
Speaker 1: Is essentially a bailout, not asking to do anything. At
Speaker 1: the same time, we're just starving the Conservation Reserve program
Speaker 1: and we're not offering enough in terms of rental rates,
Speaker 1: we're not offering enough the sentives for folks to get
Speaker 1: into the program. A. So you're seeing it basically, you know,
Speaker 1: dying on the vine. Our farmers are farmers wanting to
Speaker 1: get involved, but they're just not sure. They just can't
Speaker 1: make the numbers work with the way they're trying to
Speaker 1: fund it. Yeah, and they've you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of interest to sign up for it, but when you're
Speaker 1: offering low Brunwald rights and minimal incentives to get in,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna have a whole lot of interests for
Speaker 1: folks to lock up their land for ten or twenty
Speaker 1: or whatever many years. So what are they doing? I mean,
Speaker 1: they're they're growing crops on that land and yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: so they're tilling it and growing something and getting a
Speaker 1: bail up from Congress. So what we want to try
Speaker 1: to do is really try to reincentivize that, you know,
Speaker 1: the Farm Bill program, and have a much more honest
Speaker 1: effort to get it implemented. And I think the Trump
Speaker 1: administration has been a mixed bag. A lot of conservation
Speaker 1: areas good on things like Great American Outdoors Act, good
Speaker 1: on migration corvers, but they have been really bad in
Speaker 1: terms of conservation on private lands through the Farm Bill.
Speaker 1: What is it? What give me an argument against the
Speaker 1: Farm Bill? Like, well, what do they not like about
Speaker 1: the Farm Bill? It costs a lot of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we have subsidies that cost a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, No, I know. It ties the farmer's hands.
Speaker 1: It requires more effort to implement. It's it's easier to
Speaker 1: write somebody a check and send it out there. And
Speaker 1: if you have a Department of Agriculture or Office of
Speaker 1: Management or budget that doesn't really care about conservation, it's
Speaker 1: not going to prioritize this. And you know, plus you
Speaker 1: look at a program like the you know, conservation Reserve program.
Speaker 1: It's in the Farm Service Agency and not in the
Speaker 1: National Resource Conservation Service, and our c S wakes up
Speaker 1: every day thinking about conservation Farm Services f S A
Speaker 1: does not. So again, it's not a high priority for
Speaker 1: the agency that administers it. Not a high priority for
Speaker 1: Sunny Purdue, not a high priority for you know, Nick
Speaker 1: mulvanny and omb. So you know, it's a perfect storm
Speaker 1: of you know, just it's just not getting implemented. How
Speaker 1: has it? This is like a horrible generalization, But let's
Speaker 1: say I went out and found a random sampling. I
Speaker 1: somehow pulled a random sampling of a hundred farmers, uh,
Speaker 1: and I put to them, hey, what do you all
Speaker 1: think of the farm bill, And what do y'all think
Speaker 1: of the CRP program? What am I going to hear back? Uh,
Speaker 1: you're probably the next bag. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: them really like it because it provides seuple been an
Speaker 1: income for areas that they may not want a farm,
Speaker 1: or made me recognize that it's great to have pheasants
Speaker 1: on there too, And then they could do a you know,
Speaker 1: walk in program and have extra money from hunting on
Speaker 1: their property also. So I think the ones that have
Speaker 1: done it, I mean again, I think that if they
Speaker 1: were to do another enrollment and offer better incentives, you
Speaker 1: see widespread interests for you know, big sign ups. If
Speaker 1: you know it you started, Yeah, broody? How how do
Speaker 1: you think how farming has changed plays a role here?
Speaker 1: Like you have a lot more gigantic commercial fence defense
Speaker 1: farms that like there's not a tree anywhere, there's not
Speaker 1: a fallow field anywhere, and you've got a lot less
Speaker 1: small farms that traditionally had brush or fallow fields or
Speaker 1: shelter belts or whatever. Like. Are those big giant commercial
Speaker 1: farms just less interested in being involved with this? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And I think that when you had the you know,
Speaker 1: the old time you know, small farmer or even you know,
Speaker 1: the low person who lived on the land and cared
Speaker 1: about it and took real pride in it. You know,
Speaker 1: that's very different than you know, when you basically contracted
Speaker 1: out for somebody just to maximize profit of it. And
Speaker 1: I think that's part of what we're seeing. Um So, no,
Speaker 1: I think that's part of it. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, technology is you know, with precision agriculture things
Speaker 1: like that, you can be a lot smarter about how
Speaker 1: you farm. You can target areas that you may be
Speaker 1: more productive for you to grow soybeans or corn, and
Speaker 1: you know, protect other areas that are much better use
Speaker 1: being in a CRP land. So to simplify the issue,
Speaker 1: it's an issue of funding because the funding is there,
Speaker 1: funding just is not being used. Okay, so, but why
Speaker 1: wouldn't they offer more incentive through making the price super high,
Speaker 1: like making it so they should advantageous were we were
Speaker 1: landing that that's what we want to have happened, and
Speaker 1: that's what's happened in the past. But if the farmer
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, is not not being offered very much money,
Speaker 1: not being offered the incentive to get into it, and
Speaker 1: again Congress has made this money help let's sitting out there,
Speaker 1: it's just not being offered by the Department of Agriculture
Speaker 1: to the farmers. So that's about question where's the where's
Speaker 1: the stop point for that price tag? Like who decides
Speaker 1: how much money is going per acre to those farmers
Speaker 1: because if if it was financially advantagious, they would do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously that various depending on where you are, because you know,
Speaker 1: one price doesn't fit all because different for you. So
Speaker 1: there there are very local mechanisms to set those prices.
Speaker 1: But basically, you know, we want to have a program
Speaker 1: that is robust enough that folks want to get into
Speaker 1: it and they're willing to put decent land into it,
Speaker 1: not a bunch of just marginal habitat that can't grow anything. So,
Speaker 1: you know, that's been one of my real frustrations is
Speaker 1: you know, just that the implementation of the farm bill,
Speaker 1: because the last farm Bill was really good. I mean,
Speaker 1: it dedicated a lot of money six billion dollars annually
Speaker 1: to conservation. You know, it dedicated more money to conservation
Speaker 1: than it did to basically traditional farm programs. And so
Speaker 1: we we love that, and there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: really good programs in the Farm bill, but it just
Speaker 1: needs to have, you know, a much stronger orientation towards
Speaker 1: the implementation and making it work. Okay, what's the what's
Speaker 1: the ACE Act? So that's the Yeah, this is an
Speaker 1: act that was passed, you know, this past year, the
Speaker 1: American Conservation Enhancement Act, huge win. It had I think
Speaker 1: six or seven different individual bills underneath it. Again the
Speaker 1: idea that Congress passes big bills to have a lot
Speaker 1: of little components in it. It reauthorized in North American
Speaker 1: Wetland Conservation Act, reauthorized, National Fisher Wildlife Foundation authorized for
Speaker 1: the first time, National Fish Habitat Partnership Act, which has
Speaker 1: been around administratively for a while but had never been
Speaker 1: codified by Congress. Great Lakes program, Chest Peak Bay program,
Speaker 1: all really good you know, on the ground conservation programs.
Speaker 1: Who do we have to thank for? That was that bipartisan? Yep,
Speaker 1: very by partisan. It passed. I can't remember the exact
Speaker 1: vote counts, but overwhelmingly, you know, not close. Martin Heinrich,
Speaker 1: who you know, you know, worked really hard on that
Speaker 1: variety of others, but no, it was you It was
Speaker 1: very bipartisan. Very few people opposed it. It was again
Speaker 1: a place where they could come together. When when when
Speaker 1: you're doing something like that and it is a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff rolled together, is there a lot of in
Speaker 1: fighting about trying to keep crazy stuff out that's just
Speaker 1: gonna want to that's going to turn people off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's one of the strategies of the folks that
Speaker 1: are anti conservation. They'll try to get poison pills added
Speaker 1: just to things too. It kills the whole bill. So
Speaker 1: that is part of you know, the the art and
Speaker 1: science managing these bills when they're on the you know,
Speaker 1: the floor or you know, in committee and the Congress,
Speaker 1: they're in Senator of the House, is you know, just
Speaker 1: keeping that silly stuff out of there and keeping the
Speaker 1: poison pills away. I mean, you know right, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of folks who wanted to see
Speaker 1: great lakes, you know, wolf delisting on that bill. It
Speaker 1: was just but it was you know, and we we
Speaker 1: were one of them, but it was one of those
Speaker 1: things that could potentially derail that bill because of the
Speaker 1: vehemence of the opposition from some folks. So you're put
Speaker 1: in a position where you gotta keep it clean in
Speaker 1: order just to get the win. Yeah, listen, we would
Speaker 1: love to see a bunch of other stuff in there,
Speaker 1: but we'll take the good instead of the perfect. Yeah
Speaker 1: you said, you said anti conservationists or anti conservation with
Speaker 1: it being so bipartisan, who is this? I mean there
Speaker 1: are fringe elements. Uh you know that. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't like public lands. I mean we've talked about them.
Speaker 1: They rail against them all the time. Who think that
Speaker 1: any money that's going to you know, conservation, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: is a waste of money. Yeah. So it's a different
Speaker 1: orientation and they've sort of you know, you can do
Speaker 1: a little you know, Google research and figre out who
Speaker 1: we're talking about. But yeah, there's a handful of members
Speaker 1: who just don't like this stuff and always fight against it.
Speaker 1: But they wouldn't describe themselves. Oh no, of course not.
Speaker 1: How do they describe themselves that just like just unfettered, frugal,
Speaker 1: you know, get the government out of this stuff. Government
Speaker 1: shouldn't be involved with this. Yeah. Yeah, So they either
Speaker 1: use the libertarian coach or the you know, the definite
Speaker 1: hawk approach when it suits their purposes. But they don't
Speaker 1: say I hate animals. No, No, Uh, they may say
Speaker 1: I hate public lands. Oh no, I don't know that,
Speaker 1: but that that's getting like less and less tenable all
Speaker 1: the time. Though, man, you gotta yes, yes, it is
Speaker 1: thankfully so hippy with uh we have, as in the
Speaker 1: lost column environmental rollbacks. Walk that through a little bit
Speaker 1: like like well, I mean, let's talk about the Clean
Speaker 1: Water Act. So, you know, clean Water Act obviously, it
Speaker 1: was a product of the early nineteen seventies after we
Speaker 1: saw the Cuyahoga River cash on fire, and it is,
Speaker 1: you know, fundamentally changed water quality in this country to
Speaker 1: the point where the majority of our waters are now fishable, swimmable,
Speaker 1: maybe not drinkable, but you know, still it's you know,
Speaker 1: done an amazing job of cleaning your stuff up. Now,
Speaker 1: the controversy has been to a large aread, not what
Speaker 1: comes out of a tail pipe someplace or a sewer
Speaker 1: hype from a factory into a river. The issue is
Speaker 1: much more evolved into you know, say, open space and
Speaker 1: what is covered and what is not covered by the
Speaker 1: Clean Water Act. And there were two rulings by the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court back in the two thousand's, two thousand and
Speaker 1: four and two thousand seven. I believe that basically you know,
Speaker 1: said Congress, you have needs to define what is and
Speaker 1: what is not included in the Clean Water Act. Is
Speaker 1: a farm pond included? Is the irrigation ditch included? Is
Speaker 1: an ephemeral stream or you know, isolated wetland included? And
Speaker 1: so it basically told Congress to do that. Congress never
Speaker 1: took it up, is you know, it's too controversial. So
Speaker 1: you've had ministrations ever since defining it themselves. The Obama administration,
Speaker 1: we thought, did a very good job with the Waters
Speaker 1: of the United States, which defined what was included in
Speaker 1: that in the overall navigable rivers standards. So you know,
Speaker 1: a heart strict reading of the Clean Water Acts as
Speaker 1: a navigate river is something you can actually you know,
Speaker 1: flow the boat down. A much more scientific based reading
Speaker 1: the statute is there are a lot of little streams
Speaker 1: that impact or wetlands impact that navigable water directly that
Speaker 1: need to be included, because you know, that's not the
Speaker 1: way river's work is just protecting it and not any
Speaker 1: of the tributaries. So the administration set out a complex
Speaker 1: rulemaking process that basically laid out what was and what
Speaker 1: is not included. It eliminated you know, any sort of
Speaker 1: coverage for things like farm ponds, irrigation ditches, conventional agricultural practices,
Speaker 1: things like that. But it did protect headwater streams, wetlands,
Speaker 1: and even some isolated wetlands when there was a scientific justification.
Speaker 1: So incomes the Trump administration and proceeds to basically undo that,
Speaker 1: eliminates all the protections for headwater streams and isolated wetlands.
Speaker 1: So essentially decreased by fift The wetlands that are covered
Speaker 1: are protected by the Clean Water Act and probably decreased
Speaker 1: by maybe a quarter. You know, the stream miles are protected.
Speaker 1: And the rationale there is that. I mean, it basically
Speaker 1: come down to job creation and industry right like making sure.
Speaker 1: I mean that's not what that was some of the
Speaker 1: arguments they use and the heavy hand of government, and
Speaker 1: they always trot out a few horror stories where there
Speaker 1: was indeed, you know, federal overreach and some port you know,
Speaker 1: dude that's just trying to build a farm shed or something,
Speaker 1: you know, gets blocked by some evil person of the
Speaker 1: e p A. So you know, I mean there's you know,
Speaker 1: there have been abuses, no question, but it also argues
Speaker 1: for let's better define what is what is not included
Speaker 1: and our ideas, let's not define it so that you know,
Speaker 1: half the wetlands in this country are no longer protected.
Speaker 1: And it's really you know, they trot the farmers out
Speaker 1: as the main you know, sort of victims and an
Speaker 1: overly robust Clean Water Act. Honestly, the way that the
Speaker 1: vulnerable is written, it was eliminated, you know, basically, it's
Speaker 1: not you know, if you have normal farm practices, farm ponds,
Speaker 1: irrigation ditches, those are not included in Clean Water Act.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows that. But it's a lot easier trott a
Speaker 1: farmer out there and say, you know, you're trying to
Speaker 1: story my livelihood than a real estate developer out there
Speaker 1: who says you're going to block him, I being a
Speaker 1: mini mall that I want to put in. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: do you feel that they could have had a better
Speaker 1: way of fixing the problems. Congress needs to deal with us.
Speaker 1: So we have a situation now because Congress won't deal
Speaker 1: with this. You know, you have different administrations are to
Speaker 1: keep your genuflecting back and forth and pendulum is gonna
Speaker 1: back and forth. And if you're a developer, if you're
Speaker 1: a landowner, if you're a farmer. You're never gonna have
Speaker 1: any source of certainty about what is and what is
Speaker 1: not covered. And listen, I have I completely agree with
Speaker 1: that uncertainty is a terrible thing. And we've been arguing
Speaker 1: that Congress, you know, Republicans, Democrats get together and decide
Speaker 1: what is covered and do it, you know, statutorially, so
Speaker 1: that we don't have an administration just swinging back and
Speaker 1: forth that we attacked by the of course all the time. Uh.
Speaker 1: The lost column c w D as well, uh continues
Speaker 1: to spread no real consensus from the sportsman community. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think y'all listen, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: some people that you pretend it's not out there. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be you know, the science deniers, but the majority
Speaker 1: of folks recognize it as a threat. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone pretends it's not out there, all right. Maybe they
Speaker 1: just they just say it doesn't matter, It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It's never going to jump to humans, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna see population impacts unless you replace like Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: we're seeing population impacts. So you know, I think that
Speaker 1: you know, prudence would dictate that we get on top
Speaker 1: of this, and uh, you know, we got five million
Speaker 1: dollars appropriate to last year to go out to the
Speaker 1: States to kick up surveillance and tests. Just peanuts, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just peanuts. So we had fifteen million in the
Speaker 1: House bill that you know, the Senate cut down to
Speaker 1: five and you know, I was piste, but five is
Speaker 1: better than zero, which just was before that. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a joke. Yeah, it's a joke. But you know,
Speaker 1: a Department Agriculture, you know, drags his feet and getting
Speaker 1: the money out the door and then only gets to
Speaker 1: you about two and a half million out to the States,
Speaker 1: and the other is used for indemnity payments for captive farms,
Speaker 1: is used for genetic research and how he might be
Speaker 1: able to modify white tail deer and make him live
Speaker 1: longer it will c w D, and is for administrative
Speaker 1: services you know, which nobody knows what that is. But
Speaker 1: basically just they paid for themselves. So you know, even
Speaker 1: of that piddling amount we got through Congress, only half
Speaker 1: of that actually made it out to the States, you know,
Speaker 1: to expand surveillance and testing. So it's just you know,
Speaker 1: there is you know, the you know that basically Department
Speaker 1: Agriculture has done a terrible job in terms of getting
Speaker 1: on top of this. Now I give Interior some credit
Speaker 1: because they've been pretty vocal about this, and we managed
Speaker 1: to get in the ACE Act that I talked about,
Speaker 1: establishment by law of an inter agency Chronic Wasting Disease
Speaker 1: Task Force, So Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior,
Speaker 1: you know, probably some other agencies to all get together
Speaker 1: and figure out how we're going to stop the spread
Speaker 1: of this thing. Is it ation was gonna be? What
Speaker 1: needs to happen with in your opinion, I mean, do
Speaker 1: we need Like if we had all the money in
Speaker 1: the world, what would we do. First of all, you
Speaker 1: you have to get control of the captive deer industry,
Speaker 1: which continues to be the biggest spread of this, even
Speaker 1: though they want to admit that. But any time you
Speaker 1: put you know, live deer in the back of a
Speaker 1: truck and you drive them around the country swapping genetics,
Speaker 1: you're moving disease, and so I would are. And also
Speaker 1: we have to understand that the aphists the Department of Agriculture,
Speaker 1: you know, their herd Certification program, which is supposed to
Speaker 1: sort of give you a stamp good housekeeping seal of approval.
Speaker 1: If you have a you're applying by a certain standards,
Speaker 1: you're CWD free and you're a good operator. It's been
Speaker 1: a joke. I mean, you know, the keeps popping up
Speaker 1: in the certified low risk herds and it gives I
Speaker 1: think producers, you know, a false sense of security. It
Speaker 1: gives regulators false sense of security. So what I would
Speaker 1: recommend is that there'd be a moratorium and any sort
Speaker 1: of interstate movement alive dear period until we can get
Speaker 1: a decent heard certification program out there that we know
Speaker 1: actually works. I don't trust the Department Agriculture to do that.
Speaker 1: You need some sort of third party national Academy and
Speaker 1: Science is something like that to look at it and
Speaker 1: make some recommendations as to how that can be reformed
Speaker 1: so that this industry is part of solution, not part
Speaker 1: of the problem. Now, what's this already in a wild
Speaker 1: herd like like it is widespread across North America? Does
Speaker 1: that not even though we know it came from this
Speaker 1: captive wildlife? Does that not? Listen, hunters have an issue
Speaker 1: problem here too. I mean, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: you're bood of seeing a lot of the states have
Speaker 1: put in you know, these prohibitions and moving carcasses across
Speaker 1: state lines, and that's a good step. Yeah, Yanni, you
Speaker 1: did that video for us last year and show people
Speaker 1: how they can bone out a deer. It's still on
Speaker 1: our website. Yeah, so that you have the tools, you
Speaker 1: know too, if you're a hunter to not be part
Speaker 1: of that problem. You can have your deer tested. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. But you know, especially during the pandemic and
Speaker 1: the government you know sort of you know fund in
Speaker 1: crisis that state and local garments had been under, you've
Speaker 1: seen a real decrease in testing and surveillance at the
Speaker 1: state level, and you know, every single state agency has
Speaker 1: got a hiring freeze on. You know, they had to
Speaker 1: redeploy resources to other areas. You know, things like surveillance
Speaker 1: and testing, you know, have become a lower priority. So
Speaker 1: you're not hearing about as much right now because there's
Speaker 1: less testing going on than there has been in the past.
Speaker 1: So you know, yeah, we need to do more surveillance
Speaker 1: and testing. We hunters have responsibility to be and if
Speaker 1: state agency says, hey, go out and shoot a bunch
Speaker 1: of animals in this area and knocked the population down,
Speaker 1: do it I mean they're trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: you have your good hunting for years to come. Stay
Speaker 1: like Illinois, which took it seriously and hunters were part
Speaker 1: of solution and went out and they whacked a lot
Speaker 1: of deer in areas where it came in. They kept
Speaker 1: at background levels, whereas Wisconsin didn't take that approach, and
Speaker 1: it's fift prevalence in a bunch of the state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that now. Man like uh Doug Dern,
Speaker 1: he talks about areas on there were guys on certain
Speaker 1: farms that he knows about where they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: getting their dear tests that there that their families are
Speaker 1: hunting on their farms and they're running some of these
Speaker 1: guys seventy of the deer their families are getting our
Speaker 1: CW depositive. Yeah, I mean, it's Wisconsin's ground. It's ground zero, man,
Speaker 1: ground zero. Absolutely, It's like the few, the future is.
Speaker 1: The future is now in that place, man, yep. And
Speaker 1: no no other state out there wants to be like Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: So give them the resources. You know they can't that
Speaker 1: they need to not be that state. All right, Let's
Speaker 1: let's let's end on a win. Um with. Tell people
Speaker 1: to Manhattan men Haydan Manhattan man Hayden. It's also called
Speaker 1: bunker or pogy depending on where you are, especially the
Speaker 1: bottom of the food chain. Uh. In the Atlantic and
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico, everything eats you know, striped bass,
Speaker 1: you know, red fish, eagles, whales, I mean, you name it.
Speaker 1: They eat it because it's a nasty, little oily ish Uh,
Speaker 1: it looks like it. Maybe a shad is probably the
Speaker 1: closest thing I think about. Oh, you know they the
Speaker 1: big one will be like fourteen inches long, some fifteen yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And they're filter feeders, so they have an environmental function too.
Speaker 1: So in a place like the chest Week Bay which
Speaker 1: has chronic water quality problems and as a breeding ground
Speaker 1: for man haitan, I mean more manhitan, you having there,
Speaker 1: the better water quality you're gonna have. Yeah, same thing
Speaker 1: with oysters. But anyway, we have, you know, never done
Speaker 1: a good job managing forage fish, the base of the
Speaker 1: food chain. We manage them like we've done everything else,
Speaker 1: which is, you know how many fish can you kill
Speaker 1: before you crash the species? Instead of what does the
Speaker 1: ecosystem need? And based on that, you know, how many
Speaker 1: fish should can you kill them? And when I say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like everybody get out there killing them.
Speaker 1: There is one industry on the East Coast, and that's
Speaker 1: place called Omega Protein that catches these things and giant
Speaker 1: purse sayings, grinds them up, turns them into basically fish
Speaker 1: food for aquaculture salmon, you know in Canada. Huh so yeah,
Speaker 1: so anyway they're using those fish to feed farm fish.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so I thought there was I thought
Speaker 1: there was a pet food component to this. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: might be. Yeah, but that's the reason that Cook You
Speaker 1: Cook Industries bought Omega Protein. Cook is the big aquaculture
Speaker 1: operation up there, and obviously it's part of vertical integration.
Speaker 1: So if you buy, you know, the company that makes
Speaker 1: your food, you're gonna be more profitable. So so what
Speaker 1: we finally got to do is, you know, the Atlanta
Speaker 1: States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates basically the non federal
Speaker 1: waters in anything three miles and in up and down
Speaker 1: the East Coast for migratory fish including men haden, striped bass,
Speaker 1: blue fish, weak fish. You know, they finally changed the
Speaker 1: way you know, they manage it to move from single
Speaker 1: species management ecosystem management, and they adopted that unanimously this summer,
Speaker 1: and then in the fall they came together and you know,
Speaker 1: basically did the first catch Lin's based on the new
Speaker 1: model and reduced the man haden harvest by ten Now,
Speaker 1: their science show that should have been reduced by eighteen,
Speaker 1: but at least ten percent to step in the right direction.
Speaker 1: So I say that's a win because you've had a
Speaker 1: basically a fundamental sea change of how we managed the
Speaker 1: bottom of the food chain, which helps every predator out there.
Speaker 1: Uh well, that ten percent allow the fish to start
Speaker 1: to recover your thing. Oh yeah, and we're already seeing
Speaker 1: they had a reduction a few years ago. We're already
Speaker 1: seeing more menhdan out there we have before me. I've
Speaker 1: got a guy who works for us, you know, in
Speaker 1: Long Island, and he was saying there, at some points
Speaker 1: this summer there were schools that ran basically from Montalk
Speaker 1: all the way down to Fire Island, And for those
Speaker 1: of these who are familiar Long Island geography, that's a
Speaker 1: long way. And you had everything in their feeding on
Speaker 1: the whales, blue fin, tuna, you know, stripe, bask galore.
Speaker 1: And so we're already see starting to see him come back.
Speaker 1: And but they're saying right now that the current Manhaden
Speaker 1: harvest reduced the stripe bass populations by about that's right.
Speaker 1: Bass is the number one recreational you know fish in
Speaker 1: the country salt water. And there's gonna be some science
Speaker 1: coming out of the Gulf of Mexico where we have
Speaker 1: even a bigger industry. Menhadan industry and two players, you know,
Speaker 1: Daybrook is the South African company, and Cook which is
Speaker 1: the Canadian company. And the resource is going to come
Speaker 1: out of the University of Florida. It's already out there
Speaker 1: in draft is showing that there's about a fifty percent
Speaker 1: production in you know, redfish and sea trout due to
Speaker 1: the current Manhaden harvest down there. There's also some meaning
Speaker 1: meaning that there's these researchers are saying that the due
Speaker 1: to this Manhaydan harvest. Yeah, they're seeing a like in
Speaker 1: our own lifetimes. Oh yeah, no there, if you didn't
Speaker 1: have that harvest, you'd have more redfish and sea trout
Speaker 1: than you do now. And this industry is growing substantially.
Speaker 1: They're planning on growing another fift pent and there's anecdote
Speaker 1: of information out there too. That tarpen or directly impacted
Speaker 1: by this harvest too, because tarpin will follow them at
Speaker 1: hayding around. That's a that's a tasty meal for a tarpan. Huh.
Speaker 1: So these guys, these these commercial harvesters, like these industrial harvesters,
Speaker 1: they might be um seeing some reductions in their harvest
Speaker 1: quotas coming up in the Gulf too, maybe, But the
Speaker 1: Gulf is a while west out there. You know, it
Speaker 1: is a bigger industry. You've got two players. There are
Speaker 1: no catch limits in place. There's a voluntary agreement. There
Speaker 1: are no hard catch limits in place. Unlike in the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: where the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission actually has legislative
Speaker 1: authority to manage it, Golf States Marine Fisheries Commission doesn't.
Speaker 1: So there's not even a mechanism right now for them
Speaker 1: to reduce harvests and mandate mandated. Another issue is the
Speaker 1: pogey boats in the Gulf. Yeah, there are more and
Speaker 1: more conflicts with recreational anglers because they will come right
Speaker 1: in on the you know, the beaches and catching them.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you're in there, catch you fishing
Speaker 1: for them. They will come in there and push you
Speaker 1: off and you know, hit that school, and they're also
Speaker 1: tearing up a lot of the barrier islands we've been
Speaker 1: working on restoring down there after Katrina, So they're causing
Speaker 1: environmental damage there. You know, direct conflicts, recreational anglers, and
Speaker 1: there's the direct conflict, the direct impacts on sport fish
Speaker 1: throughout the Gulf. This was in the wind column. Well,
Speaker 1: the Atlantic is in the Gulf. Were haven't even gotten
Speaker 1: started there. I mean, that's gonna be the next frontier.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get engaged. We're gonna go down there. We're
Speaker 1: gonna try to get common sense regulations and listen, you
Speaker 1: can still have a big reduction industry down there. It
Speaker 1: is a really fertile you know, Gulf of Mexico and
Speaker 1: you can eat, but you ought to stop the industry
Speaker 1: where it is now at a minimum. Don't let it
Speaker 1: grow another fift you know, push him off the beaches
Speaker 1: where we have all the conflicts and recreational anglers. So
Speaker 1: there are things you can do that, honestly, I think
Speaker 1: in the end would work for everybody. But you know,
Speaker 1: the status quo is not sustainable long term. So it's
Speaker 1: like when part one. Yeah, so like at the end,
Speaker 1: of the first Star Wars. They blow up the thing,
Speaker 1: but then all of a sudden, you got the Empire
Speaker 1: strikes back. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Coincidentally, I just
Speaker 1: got an email with like a half dozen beautiful pictures
Speaker 1: of a humpback feeding on men Hayden off a cape
Speaker 1: lookout in North Carolina. This is a I'm no fish bologist,
Speaker 1: but I was gonna say it sounds to me like
Speaker 1: the whales are part of the problem here. Oh honestly,
Speaker 1: people care, I mean, the general public and large care
Speaker 1: is a lot more about the whales. They do about right,
Speaker 1: So there there there are of It sounds to me
Speaker 1: like we need less whales. We want more man Hayden,
Speaker 1: we want more whales. Okay, I got it backwards, I
Speaker 1: got I understand that. All right, Well, what one last thing?
Speaker 1: We got time for one last thing? Yeah? Can you
Speaker 1: can you? Uh all right? Are you ready to I
Speaker 1: thought you forgot all about my book report? No, man,
Speaker 1: what we gotta here? Yeah? His book report? Man, he
Speaker 1: threw mine into the first and I was just like, jump, well,
Speaker 1: because we're trying to um it's hard to explain. I
Speaker 1: didn't know how long we need for wit we got
Speaker 1: Joanni's gonna Johnny's gonna redeem this sec Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing is, I didn't know how long I
Speaker 1: was gonna take for wit we got through the list.
Speaker 1: I had wrote a scathing email to Yanni about his
Speaker 1: not telling me whether or not he was prepared to deliver,
Speaker 1: and so then for me to not get to it
Speaker 1: would lead him to think that he could do a
Speaker 1: bad job and not even get caught. You know, I've
Speaker 1: actually got two of them stacked up that we've talked
Speaker 1: about doing prior and haven't gotten to him. So we
Speaker 1: we have some already ready for the next time. It's
Speaker 1: chef's choice. So you can do whatever a little, you
Speaker 1: can do whatever book report you want. Well, now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do the one that I worked on today because
Speaker 1: it's fresh in my head for sure. Report all right,
Speaker 1: this story. Interestingly, I think to me, when I pulled
Speaker 1: up the map that was associated with this story, I
Speaker 1: immediately saw I'm like, yeah, that's why that's why I
Speaker 1: thought you'd be good at this, because it's like a
Speaker 1: little bit close to home. Yeah, totally, no little if
Speaker 1: if If regal Avia, so you know where because everybody
Speaker 1: knows where regal Avia is. If that was the center
Speaker 1: of the clock, this story takes place about um, five
Speaker 1: miles northwest, no, sorry, seven miles northwest ten o'clock from
Speaker 1: the Senate from the center of the clock. Um. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, it's a high likelihood that I probably share
Speaker 1: blood with some of the same hunters that left these
Speaker 1: artifacts I'm gonna talk about in this story. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I might as well be doing a biography of my
Speaker 1: family here. I wrote that today. Um yeah. It's like
Speaker 1: I'm your new Eastern Northern European correspondent here for Meat Eater,
Speaker 1: So you have to keep coming up with stories that
Speaker 1: I can do reports on from the zone of the world.
Speaker 1: All right. The it's a net Geo article titled six
Speaker 1: thousand years of arrows emerge from melting Norwegian ice patch.
Speaker 1: Love it? Yeah, interesting enough. Um. The first artifact that
Speaker 1: was found here was a three thousand, three hundred year
Speaker 1: old shoe that was found in two thousand six. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what tipped everybody off to like ice patch archaeology, right, Like,
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing I guess up until then, Right, and
Speaker 1: somebody finds a shoe sticking out of this ice patch
Speaker 1: and they start paying attention, and they also start paying
Speaker 1: attention to ice patches all across the world because stuff
Speaker 1: that's been buried under this ice is now like because
Speaker 1: it's all melting at a pretty alarming rate. Everybody always
Speaker 1: says alarming rate. Yeah, I don't know if it's alarming
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, if you look back at history,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of melts and freeze and thoughts.
Speaker 1: What is alarming, I'll point out, is that it might
Speaker 1: not be good for us to live on this planet
Speaker 1: if it containues down this path. Right. People always say, oh,
Speaker 1: poor mother Earth. I don't, I don't. I don't pity
Speaker 1: her at all. I think she can shrug her shoulders
Speaker 1: get rid of us, and she'll keep on spinning around
Speaker 1: the sun for quite some time. Um, it just might
Speaker 1: not work out so good for us. Hey, can you
Speaker 1: clarify that these aren't glaciers. I was just gonna point
Speaker 1: out that an ice patch is different from a glacier,
Speaker 1: which is basically a slow moving river of frozen ice.
Speaker 1: That's a glacier and ice ice patch is just a
Speaker 1: deposit of water which then freezes and forms, and it
Speaker 1: can grow bigger and smaller you know, depending on what
Speaker 1: average temperatures are doing. I didn't know that, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't move. Yeah, it sounds like normal ice to me.
Speaker 1: What was the shoe that came out of it? What
Speaker 1: was the man? There? Weren't any details about that shoe, um,
Speaker 1: but a couple of interesting things that they I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we're interested in it more because of like these
Speaker 1: I think there was a total sixties some arrows that
Speaker 1: popped out of here, right, And they figured that at
Speaker 1: time they could look kind of because from radio carbon dating,
Speaker 1: so they could like date each arrow and they can say, oh, this,
Speaker 1: these ten arrows were here from two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and then these fifteen were from six thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: and they can radio carbon date the antlers and bones
Speaker 1: and other things that they found at this ice patch
Speaker 1: and sort of figure out how, you know, when the
Speaker 1: hunters were there, you know, how much they were dealing
Speaker 1: with or what were they doing with the animals, because
Speaker 1: they found times where there was a whole bunch of bones,
Speaker 1: uh and arrows, right, indicating that sort of like they're
Speaker 1: they're hunting, and they're there and they're killing stuff, right.
Speaker 1: But there's other times there's a whole bunch of bones
Speaker 1: but no arrows. And I don't know, this seems kind
Speaker 1: of a stretch and I don't know if it's the
Speaker 1: researchers is doing this assuming, but they're saying that, well,
Speaker 1: just at that time, it was just wolverines killing all
Speaker 1: these rain beer and stashing them, huh, which they do.
Speaker 1: It seems like there had to be a lot of
Speaker 1: wolverines right around there doing this in the same spot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same spot, which I want to get to about the
Speaker 1: spot and ask you guys a question here in a second.
Speaker 1: But there's other times where the inverse was there, right,
Speaker 1: like a lot of arrows but no bones. And they
Speaker 1: just figured that at that time the humans were taking
Speaker 1: like literally using more of the animal or using all
Speaker 1: of it and taking it off the mountain where this
Speaker 1: because this ice patches at high elevation, right, so instead
Speaker 1: of maybe just taking some meat, that actually making bones antlers,
Speaker 1: and for for whatever reason, they were going to use
Speaker 1: it for you know, making things, trading, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: But he also makes the assumption that because they found
Speaker 1: like a point that was made out of iron, there
Speaker 1: was a point that was made out of a sharpened
Speaker 1: muscle shell from a river like fifty miles away and
Speaker 1: then there was a stone point there. So the guy says, well,
Speaker 1: even though there uh technology changed, they still kept their
Speaker 1: same hunting techniques. And I'm like, yeah, and he's just
Speaker 1: saying technique as in because it's all in the same spot, right,
Speaker 1: And I don't think that that's necessarily like a technique.
Speaker 1: They were like hunting a zone that had animals, right,
Speaker 1: but like they're just returning to the same spot. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't look at that as the same technique you're
Speaker 1: talking about that they were using archery equipment though, I mean,
Speaker 1: was that what he was referring to. They could have
Speaker 1: used something different maybe. Yeah, he said that honing techniques
Speaker 1: stayed the same even as the weapons that used evolved
Speaker 1: from stone and rivershell arrowheads to iron points. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's him saying they just showed back up in
Speaker 1: the same spot year after over hundreds of year. Well,
Speaker 1: here's my question to you guys, the whole old site
Speaker 1: of it. If you were shooting old delta points, you
Speaker 1: go upen on a spot and you're shooting old delta points,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, like razorbacks come out and
Speaker 1: you start shooting razorbacks up in that same spot. Then
Speaker 1: a while later, mechanicals come out and you start shooting
Speaker 1: mechanicals up in that spot. And then like single bevels
Speaker 1: come out and you start shooting those up in that spot. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that you could safely say that this dude's
Speaker 1: technique stayed the same, but his his ship kept changing around,
Speaker 1: his tools just changed. Okay, I don't know, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll take now why uh? Why do you think it's
Speaker 1: an ice patch on top of a mountain right in Norway?
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to cut you off of the gap.
Speaker 1: He had a food plot there? Well? What But that
Speaker 1: is the question why there? Why they're what drew the
Speaker 1: animals there? Do you know the answer? Yes? The saddle saddle? No? No,
Speaker 1: if there's ice there, there was water. There's a water
Speaker 1: hole when the climate was much dryer. Maybe any other
Speaker 1: gases us pass. I'll give you. I'll give you a tip.
Speaker 1: They were always hunting there in the summer calving area. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but that's not what this article said. Not at the
Speaker 1: research said oh they're avoiding bugs, yes, get away from there,
Speaker 1: and that we don't really get to apply that ambush
Speaker 1: speculative man oh, come on, they do. Now we know
Speaker 1: that you can in the summertime, you can go anywhere,
Speaker 1: and you know the high Arctic, and that's where you
Speaker 1: find them. We talk about that's what the dudes were
Speaker 1: I thought you meant that's what the dudes were doing. No,
Speaker 1: I totally agree, because when you go out in the
Speaker 1: in the mountains, the caribou in August are always laying
Speaker 1: up in a snow pile on top of a mountain.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, okay, I mean they literally are laying in
Speaker 1: snow patches on the north side of peaks. I totally
Speaker 1: buy that this is a good book report. I was
Speaker 1: gonna give a bad grade when he kind of messed
Speaker 1: up that technique's part, But I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: you should read the story and decide for yourself, because
Speaker 1: I think he was kind of leading me to the
Speaker 1: wrong way. Um. So that's kind of the interesting stuff
Speaker 1: about the hunting. What the researchers sort of like their
Speaker 1: big takeaway, and that the takeaway from this article is
Speaker 1: that they're hoping that the ice patch would be like
Speaker 1: this perfect time machine, right where if something was like
Speaker 1: the last the thing that was the oldest, everybody thought
Speaker 1: would be buried the deepest or be at the center
Speaker 1: and most part of this ice patch, right, and then
Speaker 1: things that later in time would come in there would
Speaker 1: be sort of sort of the outer ends. But after
Speaker 1: this discovering them being a radio carbon date sixty plus arrows,
Speaker 1: they're finding out that's completely not not the case. And
Speaker 1: they're just guessing that underneath the surface because of melting
Speaker 1: and movement, that uh, it could be like like that
Speaker 1: the water melted a little bit and then and then
Speaker 1: a you know, little river, a little stream carried an
Speaker 1: arrow to yeah, and it's also getting torn up and mangled.
Speaker 1: And then if it's let's say, something like a light
Speaker 1: arrow shaft all of a sudden appeared on the surface,
Speaker 1: the wind could very easily blow it to the edge,
Speaker 1: right or blow it right off of it. Full jackets,
Speaker 1: full metal jackets are on the bottom. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: expecting like a layer cake of arrow technology exactly what
Speaker 1: Just like alogists digging in the dirt, right, you're gonna
Speaker 1: expect the oldest stuff to be towards the bottom. How big?
Speaker 1: How big is this uh ice patch? Uh? Sixty acres?
Speaker 1: I believe I have a great way to visualize that
Speaker 1: because I grew up on a sixty acre lake, so
Speaker 1: it's just about the size. Just for you people at
Speaker 1: home listening, it's about the size of the lake where
Speaker 1: I grew up. I bet they'll find a bunch of
Speaker 1: your stuff there one day. You ought to drop a
Speaker 1: signed copy of the Wilderness Skills and Survival Book down
Speaker 1: there and like a ziplock bag. I'll tell you what, Man,
Speaker 1: there's a lot they will there's a lot of my stuff,
Speaker 1: like the bottle at Lake man Um. I'll close with
Speaker 1: this to them. It is melting at an alarming rate.
Speaker 1: Not so much because I don't think they're worried about
Speaker 1: the uh, you know, the planet melting and blowing up
Speaker 1: or whatever, but because they know that they only have
Speaker 1: today's technology and today's techniques to figure out what they're
Speaker 1: seeing and what to do with it, and it's all
Speaker 1: coming at them very rapidly, and they're just hoping that
Speaker 1: they can do the best they can, you know, in
Speaker 1: the moment. Yeah, I want to I want to throw
Speaker 1: a little archaeological archaeology anthropology tidbitten here. Um our, Our
Speaker 1: understandings and technologies change all the time, and there's this
Speaker 1: thing in modern day archaeology where they'll find some big camp. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's say this camp is, you know, an acre in size.
Speaker 1: They would be like, you know, you're tempted to go
Speaker 1: and dig the whole thing up right, see what it
Speaker 1: all is in there. But they're like, they know that
Speaker 1: just in ten years time, twenty years time, our questions
Speaker 1: are going to be different, our methods are going to
Speaker 1: be different. So they'll take a little chunk and do
Speaker 1: a little chunk now, knowing that they're leaving tons for
Speaker 1: future generations to go in and do what they need
Speaker 1: to do with it. The Folsom site which I talked
Speaker 1: about all the time, when they first dug the Folsom site,
Speaker 1: which is the ice Age kill site where some hunters
Speaker 1: killed some ice h bison. When they went in there first,
Speaker 1: they just wanted to find big bones and big projectile points,
Speaker 1: and they dug the whole damn thing. Later, when people
Speaker 1: started realizing that you could look at pollen counts to
Speaker 1: figure out what the climate was like, and that there
Speaker 1: was all these other food items to search for, and
Speaker 1: that you could you know, pursue all these different avenues
Speaker 1: of discovery, they had to go to those people's debris pile,
Speaker 1: so they had to go dig through all the garbage
Speaker 1: at the first are geologists left behind to try to
Speaker 1: see what they could discover. And it was like, imagine
Speaker 1: if those guys had just taken a little chunk and
Speaker 1: took a look, and then a hundred years later, other
Speaker 1: dudes they had a way different idea about how to
Speaker 1: go about it, had their little chunk to share. Um.
Speaker 1: So what these boys are saying is that, uh, that's
Speaker 1: not gonna work. It's all it's all happening right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: coming coming right to the surface. Thank you Nie, you're olcome.
Speaker 1: That's a great little report. Uh and thank you with
Speaker 1: for coming on. Tell people how to find tr CP
Speaker 1: tr CP dot org, come on, love to have you involved. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: you can go in if you want to help tr CP.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, TRCP dot org. Find them, see what they're
Speaker 1: all about. You can find policy papers, um and kind
Speaker 1: of figure out where they stand on everything. Nothing happens
Speaker 1: in secret? Oh no, no, very transparent. Um, you can
Speaker 1: find it all out. You don't need to wonder what
Speaker 1: they really think about things, because it's just laid out
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Speaker 1: Thanks Brodi, jannest Clay take care of guys. Thanks guys,
Speaker 1: Thanks w