Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater podcast. We're recording in in
Speaker 1: uh Seattle, Washington, not far from my house, in a
Speaker 1: in a in a rental house that the T shirt magnate, uh,
Speaker 1: Janice Telis rented for a shoot. Um you got do
Speaker 1: you guys? Have? Have you ever bought one of the
Speaker 1: Honest's T shirts? I have not. That's Randall our guests,
Speaker 1: Randall Williams Williams Williams admitting to having not bought one
Speaker 1: of Janice's Hunt Eat shirts. Andy, I'm interested in the
Speaker 1: T shirts for sale. I just made a sale for you, honest.
Speaker 1: That's that's my very old Andy. How long we've been friends? Uh,
Speaker 1: probably goes back to mid nineties. Maybe we've been friends
Speaker 1: almost half the time that I've been alive. Just about
Speaker 1: dead nuts half the time I've been alive. Um, Andy,
Speaker 1: was like you were because you were still becoming one,
Speaker 1: but you were the first chef I ever actually met
Speaker 1: besides like a dude who cooks fried food in the bar. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually when we when training to be a chef. When
Speaker 1: our path across, Yeah, I was just starting culinary school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably nineties six right there? Where was that faris
Speaker 1: day in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So just down the road
Speaker 1: from Ferres. Yeah, I was at g V. I moved,
Speaker 1: I went to like I graduated from the third college
Speaker 1: that I enrolled in. But you were at the culinary
Speaker 1: arts program. Yeah. I was at Grand Valley for a
Speaker 1: little bit and then switched gears and ended up at
Speaker 1: the culinary program right there in downtown Grand Rapids. And
Speaker 1: that was a fun time. We did the first meal
Speaker 1: thing we ever did, besides cooking steel head or something,
Speaker 1: was when we cooked we had a pig with a
Speaker 1: road killed deer. We did, and we sold the I
Speaker 1: believe we sold the road killed deer inside of a
Speaker 1: pig and had a party, big old party, wild, big pig,
Speaker 1: small deer. What. No. We were coming back Me and
Speaker 1: my brother Matt were coming back from fishing into PM,
Speaker 1: remember the PM from Michigan. We're coming back from fishing salmon.
Speaker 1: Must have been late summer, coming back from fishing salm
Speaker 1: On the PM. Guy in front of us hit a
Speaker 1: deer with his car. He didn't want it. We called
Speaker 1: the cops. Cops gave us no. We never even got
Speaker 1: I could. I'm sure the statute limitations is worn out
Speaker 1: by now. Did not get a permit for the deer,
Speaker 1: drove the deer from Baldwin down to your Grand Rapids
Speaker 1: and hung it in a garage at a house we
Speaker 1: were renting. And this was a full on flophouse. I mean,
Speaker 1: none of the dudes that lived in that house were
Speaker 1: on that lease. Probably. Well. A funny side note about
Speaker 1: that is being Mark Schmidt. We're up in that same
Speaker 1: neck of the woods the same time you guys were,
Speaker 1: and we were coming home the day the morning after
Speaker 1: that and saw that gut pile on the side of
Speaker 1: the road and made mention of it, and then got
Speaker 1: all the way back to our house, opened the garage
Speaker 1: door and there was that darranging. We pieced it together. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a great recipe to put a deer cut up
Speaker 1: in a pig. And I think we sold it with
Speaker 1: bangling wire. It was twenty years ago though. Anyhow, that's
Speaker 1: not where you're top about. So Joannice, who tells uh
Speaker 1: of of of plug your T shirts? Yanny Janna is
Speaker 1: on the conversation, Yanayana, get so little, so little out
Speaker 1: of this. Let it let's talk. He's dumb bunch t shirts. No,
Speaker 1: this has really helped our T shirt business. And by
Speaker 1: the time you guys listen to this, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: of Texas T shirts and Montana T shirts. So Yanni
Speaker 1: makes the shirts hunt to Eat and um, he had
Speaker 1: an original one that wasn't state specific, then in Colorado
Speaker 1: because that's his roots are in Colorado. Then now you're
Speaker 1: doing Texas. It's got a big fence on it. It's
Speaker 1: got an a fence in a corn feeder. No, I'm joking,
Speaker 1: it's made to look like the Texas flag, Texas license plate.
Speaker 1: He's coming out with Montana doing Alaska. We've been trying
Speaker 1: talking into do in Jersey. She hasn't gotten around to yet.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Hunty dot com go by one of Yanni's teachers.
Speaker 1: The reason we're here to talk though, Randall Williams. Now,
Speaker 1: when I was in I went after regular college, I
Speaker 1: went to graduate school. When I was in graduate school,
Speaker 1: I took a class with a with an environmental historian
Speaker 1: by the name of Dan Flores. And um, if everyone
Speaker 1: read great history stuff, go check out Dan's books. But
Speaker 1: Dan writes a lot of I mean some of his
Speaker 1: most influence correct me if I'm wrong, but thinks one
Speaker 1: of the most cited, like when an academic does a paper.
Speaker 1: One way to gauge like writes an article, they'll call
Speaker 1: it the paper right now'll publish it. A way to
Speaker 1: gauge a paper success is how many times it's cited, right, right,
Speaker 1: And his thing Bison ecology, Bison diplomacy. Yeah, this cited
Speaker 1: and anthologized, and it's just like that has been like
Speaker 1: a hugely successful paper, right Yeah. Now that's from the
Speaker 1: Journal of American History, which is a really prestigious journal,
Speaker 1: and I think that was from maybe and it's been
Speaker 1: reproduced in countless anthologies. Yeah, And in it, Dan Floores
Speaker 1: argues quite beautifully that the planes Indians never had never
Speaker 1: reached equilibrium with the bison herds, and that had correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, I'm sure you know it, say
Speaker 1: better Id Randall, And and he argues, had you just
Speaker 1: introduced the firearm and the horse, you'd have had eventually
Speaker 1: had the same outcome. Yeah. I mean, the larger argument
Speaker 1: is um essentially that there are so many variables that
Speaker 1: go into determining what the what the bison population of
Speaker 1: the planes would be that you can't simply blame this
Speaker 1: mass extinction on market hunters. At the end of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, because that's always been what most historians have
Speaker 1: have done, is to blame white market hunters, the industrial
Speaker 1: hide hunt for the extinction of or the near extinction
Speaker 1: of the bison. And so Dan is arguing that they're
Speaker 1: larger um climactic patterns, periods of drought on the planes
Speaker 1: that uh, you know affect with bison populations. Native hunters
Speaker 1: they had, you know, they're their long standing traditions and
Speaker 1: practices changed wholesale with the introduction of the horse and
Speaker 1: the firearm and so probably yeah, the opening of markets, um.
Speaker 1: And Indians participated in in the market hunting as well. Um.
Speaker 1: And So essentially what his article does is it takes
Speaker 1: this story that had really been rendered into something of
Speaker 1: morality play, um and and makes it much more complex
Speaker 1: and I think ultimately much more interesting. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's sort of the gist of the bison piece. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't want to dwell on that. I'm just getting
Speaker 1: to dance. But the reason, like I wrote about that
Speaker 1: animal from not from an academic standpoint, but more from
Speaker 1: a popular standpoint. Um. But I became very like I
Speaker 1: tried to become versed in these various arguments. I think
Speaker 1: that a thing about like why the hide hunter thing
Speaker 1: was so dramatic as it was so complete and final
Speaker 1: that even though those guys were coming in and whittling
Speaker 1: away at was just a fraction of the animals. The
Speaker 1: fashionable number for for bison in the US, the fashionable
Speaker 1: number buffalo bison. It's the same damn thing. The fashionable
Speaker 1: number used to be like sixty million. And that came
Speaker 1: from some really strange calculations by a guy named earned A. Seaton. Right,
Speaker 1: he like, read about a big herd that Colonel Dodge
Speaker 1: who's who Dodges gave the name dot to Dodge City.
Speaker 1: Colonel Dodgers, like, I saw a big gass, heard of buffalo.
Speaker 1: It took this may day in the past. It was
Speaker 1: this many miles wide. So Seaton went and said, Wow,
Speaker 1: there must have been x number and that herd. He's like,
Speaker 1: there must have been I don't know what whatever million
Speaker 1: animals and that heard and they lived here, and so
Speaker 1: there's probably like six or seven or eight other areas
Speaker 1: that are that big, and so each of those areas
Speaker 1: has that many, and that became how you always heard
Speaker 1: that there was sixty million these animals at the time
Speaker 1: of European colonization. Now the fashionable figure is you see
Speaker 1: often maybe it's changed because it's been a few years
Speaker 1: since I've been in the game, the fashionable figure million,
Speaker 1: you know. But the thing that's weird about it as
Speaker 1: you get where by the time the hide hunters, like
Speaker 1: by the time euro American hide hunters came on the
Speaker 1: scene and we're shooting them to put on rail cars,
Speaker 1: to send the hides on rail cars to the East
Speaker 1: to have them tanned, there were way fewer. You know,
Speaker 1: it was already a vulnerable population because by the end
Speaker 1: of the Civil War that number again this is debatable,
Speaker 1: but but a reasonable gas or a reasonable theory would
Speaker 1: be by the end of the Civil War you had
Speaker 1: maybe fifteen million, maybe ten millions. So they've already been
Speaker 1: whacked down by a half two thirds, and you wind
Speaker 1: up having these pretty big, substantial herds left a couple
Speaker 1: you know, you have these eight herds of like a
Speaker 1: couple million, a million, and so to our eyes today,
Speaker 1: it would seem like unfathomable amounts of animals in the
Speaker 1: herd and the high owners of rolling and they would
Speaker 1: kill thousands, you know. So it would be like right now,
Speaker 1: we don't have nearly as many. Uh, take your pick,
Speaker 1: I don't name something naming equivalent. We don't have nearly
Speaker 1: as many what as we did at the time of
Speaker 1: European contact. Big horn sheet? Okay, you so if a
Speaker 1: bunch of guys went out right now and made did
Speaker 1: their best to shoot every big horn sheet and they
Speaker 1: shot them pretty much all, would you later say, you
Speaker 1: know what happened to the big horn sheep? These one
Speaker 1: assholes in two thousand fifteen shot them all, and then
Speaker 1: someone else would be like, oh no, because they were
Speaker 1: way down from all these other factors have been planning
Speaker 1: out for the last two hundred years, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: really that much of a sin because there they were
Speaker 1: already missing from nine of their range from the from
Speaker 1: nd when these dudes in two thousand fifteen went and
Speaker 1: shot the rest, does that make sin less or more so?
Speaker 1: The Highlanders shot a lot of ship. Maybe they didn't
Speaker 1: shoot thirty two million, but they mopped up what was
Speaker 1: left of like some big herds at shirt were a
Speaker 1: fraction of the original, but it's still kind of like catastrophic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Dan's article basically um highlights a whole host
Speaker 1: of factors that sort of set the stage for hide
Speaker 1: hunters to come in and just deliver the death blow. Right,
Speaker 1: And so that's I think it was a pretty pretty
Speaker 1: significant intervention, and um sort of a controversial one too,
Speaker 1: because it it disrupts um. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people like to make the past into simple morality place.
Speaker 1: And the bison was always this example of uh, just
Speaker 1: expl naked exploitation, breed Native Americans used every part of
Speaker 1: the animal right, never wasted anything, right, complete sanctimonious, you know.
Speaker 1: And then evil guys came into Star of the Indians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and to and ands just it's just I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's just not true, right, And but and to acknowledge
Speaker 1: all these other factors that led to this catastrophe isn't
Speaker 1: to absolve hide hunters of any blame, right, it's not
Speaker 1: uneducated guys were uneducated, guys were years old. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: even though I would have been a hide hunter, like,
Speaker 1: there's no way the same way Like when I was
Speaker 1: in my early twenties, I moved out to Mountainics, I
Speaker 1: wanted to hunting fish, remove any aspect of of any
Speaker 1: any idea about history and the idea about education, and
Speaker 1: always grew up on a farm in Michigan with no phone,
Speaker 1: no internet, no nothing. Turned twenty years old. You can
Speaker 1: make money hunting buffalo. You go out on buffalo. You
Speaker 1: have no idea what you're engaged in, right, you might
Speaker 1: get it on some like. It wasn't like an evil thing.
Speaker 1: This is the last thing I say about it. But
Speaker 1: later Horn today, who collected specimens for the Smithsonian. Later
Speaker 1: he went to Miles City trying to find he wanted
Speaker 1: to shoot a cup buffalo for the Smiths, and they
Speaker 1: knew they were going to be gone the Museum Natural History,
Speaker 1: Sorry was I can remember which one was? Anyways, someone
Speaker 1: they wanted some collections, They wanted some pristine mounts before
Speaker 1: the animals were completely gone. He went out to Miles City.
Speaker 1: It was in the e in late eight eighties, I think,
Speaker 1: And he commented that in Miles City, the ranchers around
Speaker 1: there mostly came to that area because they were high
Speaker 1: and hunters, and they stuck around because they were convinced,
Speaker 1: after they had shot them all that there must be
Speaker 1: more somewhere, and they're just gonna hang tight until they
Speaker 1: show up. And then a few years went by and
Speaker 1: they all got into cattle ranching. They didn't even know
Speaker 1: what they had done. There was rumors about a bunch
Speaker 1: of Canada millions would come from Canada. They weren't like,
Speaker 1: we got them all, good job boys. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just the scale of that, that destruction is sort of
Speaker 1: unimaginable to us today. But and so how could we
Speaker 1: even expect any of these guys running around UH to
Speaker 1: have any idea what they're going? I bet you. Illiteracy?
Speaker 1: Ill literacy and then another thing like it's a slam.
Speaker 1: Illiteracy was probably rampant among the high honors, and there
Speaker 1: was probably very little education among the high honors. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm sure yeah they were. If you factory and where
Speaker 1: those guys are mostly from and where they wound up,
Speaker 1: and you do some kind of calculation you had about
Speaker 1: communication and stuff, it would be like if you sent
Speaker 1: kids from here from current day rural America to Kazakhstan
Speaker 1: and told him that shoot that thing and we will
Speaker 1: pay you to shoot it, yeah, I mean, and then
Speaker 1: to them be like, dude, you didn't realize that the
Speaker 1: populations in Kazakhstan. It's like it would mean nothing to him. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the h and so it was a lucrative business.
Speaker 1: You know, you could make a lot of money just
Speaker 1: running around rolling over bison, skinning them out higher skinners
Speaker 1: three or four five bucks apiece, throw them, throw them
Speaker 1: on a train. And that's and then and then even still,
Speaker 1: it's not as if they're just doing this um in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. Right. The leather from these hides are going
Speaker 1: onto factory belts in Chicago and New York. It's fueling
Speaker 1: the industrial revolution um to some degree. So uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's they're they're part of their their cogs
Speaker 1: in a much larger process. And and to place you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of burden of guilt on them is uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's not a very intellectually serious exercise.
Speaker 1: So they were filthy. They were filthy. They were filthy. No,
Speaker 1: but I only bring up Dan the historian Dan Flores,
Speaker 1: because Dan Floors uh contacted me and said that I
Speaker 1: should speak to you about your dissertation, which I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have you explained. But first, what is explain for the listeners?
Speaker 1: Like what is the dissertation? Do you just finished your PhD?
Speaker 1: I did, Yeah, it just has one of those he says.
Speaker 1: He says he says he has two and one of
Speaker 1: them stands for pretty huge. Uh huh um. Filling the blank,
Speaker 1: but okay, explain what the dissertation is, like, how how
Speaker 1: that how that whole thing plays out. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: dissertation is the final step on the road two a
Speaker 1: doctoral degree. Um. And so you did your you did
Speaker 1: your doctoral work under Dan Flores. Yeah, so Dan was
Speaker 1: my Dan was my doctoral advisor, UM. And I studied
Speaker 1: history at the University of Montana environmental history. Um. And
Speaker 1: explain that real quick. Environmental history. Yeah, it's like in
Speaker 1: a nutshell. Yeah. Environmental historians are interested in questions, uh,
Speaker 1: pertaining to how humans in the past have interacted with
Speaker 1: the environment and how human behavior has shaped the environment
Speaker 1: and also in turn, how the environment has shaped human
Speaker 1: behave of heer. Um. And so it's a pretty it's
Speaker 1: a relatively recent, uh sub field, and it really came
Speaker 1: about in the seventies. Dan was one of the I mean,
Speaker 1: there have always been intellectuals concerned with these questions, but
Speaker 1: in terms of sort of a professional sub field within history, UM,
Speaker 1: environmental history came about, uh really in the seventies, as
Speaker 1: environmental concern became a large part of American Life. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Cronan is a he's got a couple of classic works. Um,
Speaker 1: who's the guy that did the thing about the death
Speaker 1: of the frontier? Um? Like, who wrote the thing declaring
Speaker 1: the frontier was dead? In whatever your turn turn Yeah.
Speaker 1: But Turner wasn't an environmental historian. No, No, Turner. Turner
Speaker 1: is a Western historian. Frederick Jackson Turnderi Jackson Turner. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Turner had this idea that he would look at the
Speaker 1: census data, right, right, and one day found out that
Speaker 1: on the census report things were in the US were
Speaker 1: so lowly or so unpopulated that they would be called
Speaker 1: the frontier. And then one day a census came in
Speaker 1: and they realized there is no frontier anymore, right, And
Speaker 1: he had this and then was it Cronin that then
Speaker 1: kind of interpreted that later? Well, yeah, I mean almost
Speaker 1: all of Western history that said is is sort of
Speaker 1: produced in conversation with Turner. Um. And yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the history of the American West. And and there's this
Speaker 1: long standing debate about whether the West is a process
Speaker 1: or a place, um. And so Turner is really arguing
Speaker 1: that the Western, the West is a process, right, It's
Speaker 1: a process of frontier settlement. It's a process of sort
Speaker 1: of rendering wilderness into civilization. And that's that's sort of
Speaker 1: Turner's thesis. And he's he's writing at the turn of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, UM, and he's he's looking at this
Speaker 1: census date and saying, well, once we as Americans run
Speaker 1: out of uh trees to cut down or or sort
Speaker 1: of bison to shoot, right, um, native people's to fight, Um,
Speaker 1: what's what effect is that going to have on uh,
Speaker 1: the American people? Because he is really attributing a lot
Speaker 1: of the distinctive characteristics of American civilization to this process
Speaker 1: of of western or of of sort of frontier settlement. Um.
Speaker 1: And so he's tracing um, you know, the the democrat
Speaker 1: the origins of America and of America's democratic political culture
Speaker 1: to all of this availa quote unquote available land right um.
Speaker 1: And so Western historians of the American West, or Western
Speaker 1: historians sort of interchangeable there um throughout the twentieth century
Speaker 1: have been trying to write because Turner was so influential, UM,
Speaker 1: Western historians have been wrestling with this question of um,
Speaker 1: is the West a process? Is it a place? I
Speaker 1: think environmental historians would argue that the West is a
Speaker 1: place and that it's defined by um aridity. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are certain you know, certain key characteristics, environmental characteristics, and
Speaker 1: also characteristics related to its political organization of the federal
Speaker 1: government is really uh inescapable in the West, whereas in
Speaker 1: the East, a lot of issues of governance are resolved
Speaker 1: at the municipal or a state level. Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: you look at uh landownership rates and you can live
Speaker 1: in a federally owned land. Yeah. So so this is
Speaker 1: you know, not to get into the the minutia of
Speaker 1: the historiography in Western history, but basically there's this long
Speaker 1: standing debate place process. How do we define the West?
Speaker 1: If you say that you're interested in the American West
Speaker 1: and that's what you study, how do you define that, um,
Speaker 1: is Alaska part of the West? Is Hawaii part of
Speaker 1: the West? Yes? No, m all right, Well it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, this is this is what academics do. Is
Speaker 1: you just come up with inventive questions to all these yes. No,
Speaker 1: well yeah, um, I just got back from Hawaii. I
Speaker 1: don't want to get into that, but I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear someone tell me what would tell me you like
Speaker 1: the pros and cons of calling at the West. So
Speaker 1: now you did your dissertation, which is like your final,
Speaker 1: the final, Like it's it's the final I want to take.
Speaker 1: I want to go way back for people who have
Speaker 1: who haven't dabbled around in college that much like when
Speaker 1: you go to college, you go to regular college four
Speaker 1: years that you probably had some kind of graduate degree
Speaker 1: which took you two or three years. Well, I went
Speaker 1: straight from so I did my undergraduate degree, uh in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and then I came out to the University of Montana.
Speaker 1: I was I was admitted directly into the doctoral program.
Speaker 1: And now the years that take five years, And how
Speaker 1: many years have you just been working on what would
Speaker 1: become your dissertation the whole time, the whole time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I sort of began. I mean it's evolved over time,
Speaker 1: but it began in that first semester of graduate school.
Speaker 1: So like it turned into a five year project. Yeah, essentially,
Speaker 1: So I did two years of course work, UM seminars,
Speaker 1: this and that, and then UM the next step is
Speaker 1: your comprehensive exam. So you come up with a list
Speaker 1: of the essential books and in a number of fields.
Speaker 1: So I did four fields Um, and you each of
Speaker 1: those lists about a hundred books, so you you read,
Speaker 1: you know, I read about four hundred books and sit
Speaker 1: down and have a conversation with your advisors and they
Speaker 1: you know, or you'll hear the more or less. Yeah,
Speaker 1: skim to quite a few of them. But read strategically.
Speaker 1: So kids, I don't, man, that ship goes down the kids, man,
Speaker 1: but I have to read, Like I don't want to
Speaker 1: start talking about that. I love them, I love them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the first thing that goal is the ability to
Speaker 1: read books. Yeah, I mean, that's that's. Uh. There's not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of glamour to graduate school or you know,
Speaker 1: graduate studies and the humanities. But the the the undeniable
Speaker 1: luxury of it all is that, you know, people expect
Speaker 1: you to read a lot, and uh if that's something
Speaker 1: that that you like doing, which is what drawing, what
Speaker 1: drew me to it. Um, you're expected to read a
Speaker 1: lot and you have that time available. So when I
Speaker 1: went to grad, all we did was read many Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the amount of work you had to do
Speaker 1: for that, especially I was in fine arts like writing.
Speaker 1: It's like basically basically like you could have summed up
Speaker 1: by saying discore, read for two years and and then
Speaker 1: if you can, if you got time, write something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's what yeah, I mean, we I did reading.
Speaker 1: You know, the first two years are reading seminars and
Speaker 1: writing seminars. So in reading seminar you might read ten
Speaker 1: books a term, and then in writing seminar you're expected
Speaker 1: to produce an article length paper um. And then after
Speaker 1: two years of that you sort of sent off to
Speaker 1: prepare for your exams and essentially master these fields um.
Speaker 1: And then once you pass your exams, then you move
Speaker 1: on to the dissertation phase where you're actually um right.
Speaker 1: And what a dissertation is is it's a book length
Speaker 1: piece of writing that is expected or or must make
Speaker 1: an original contribution to uh, the literature. So you have
Speaker 1: to either engage with a new body of sources, or
Speaker 1: engage with new questions or or um applied you know,
Speaker 1: a new line of thinking to an old question, something
Speaker 1: along those lines. So you have to do something original, um.
Speaker 1: And basically it's sort of can you can you do
Speaker 1: you have the talent? Do you have the requisite knowledge
Speaker 1: to be a practicing historian? And so it's a it's
Speaker 1: a process of professionalization essentially, now, because there's probably some
Speaker 1: dude sitting out there feeling like they tuned into the
Speaker 1: wrong thing because they're trying to UNI podcast reveal for me.
Speaker 1: What's the name of your dissertation. So the name of
Speaker 1: my dissertation is green Voters, gun voters, Hunting in politics
Speaker 1: in Modern America. Oh man, that's rich. Um, that's why
Speaker 1: I want to talk about before you get into that. Uh,
Speaker 1: give me a quick if you had to do. What's
Speaker 1: your hunting in fishing background? My hunting and fishing background.
Speaker 1: I grew up in outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, grew up fishing,
Speaker 1: and group of friends and I in high school decided
Speaker 1: we want to get into hunting. And uh, none of ours,
Speaker 1: none of our dads hunted, well, one of one of
Speaker 1: our friends. They just didn't grow up in a hunting family.
Speaker 1: So we sort of were like a self talk guy essentially.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we read a lot of magazines, we
Speaker 1: watched a lot of shows. One of my buddies, my
Speaker 1: best friend, his dad did hunt, but he, you know,
Speaker 1: his dad didn't take us all out hunting, right, So
Speaker 1: we sort of figured it out on our own. And
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a different ballgame in outside of
Speaker 1: Cincinnati because you're sort of setting up a tree. We
Speaker 1: we got into white tail hunting, so it's find a game, trail,
Speaker 1: set up a tree. Stand sit wait, sit wait. He
Speaker 1: hasn't throw it on a sack carrots or anything. No
Speaker 1: we do. We couldn't in Ohio, but yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: So so we got into it in high school and
Speaker 1: we you know, growing up, we we lived by the
Speaker 1: Little Miami River and would run around set and try
Speaker 1: lines and fishing all summer and that was our I mean,
Speaker 1: that was our big thing. And so we're thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we should become hunters, and so we uh
Speaker 1: so that's I mean, that sort of led me to
Speaker 1: the project in some respects. Is these what my source
Speaker 1: space for this project is pretty much just field and stream,
Speaker 1: outdoor life, local hunting, of fishing columns, um and and
Speaker 1: so that's that's sort of how I was introduced to
Speaker 1: the sport primarily, UM and we did a lot of
Speaker 1: figuring out on our own, but um, these magazines have
Speaker 1: always been sort of a source of fascination for me,
Speaker 1: and also coming from a non hunting family. UM, you know,
Speaker 1: in some respects, you feel like an observer, right um
Speaker 1: And so so anyway, that's that's sort of my background.
Speaker 1: And now I'm out in Montana and uh, i've the past.
Speaker 1: I just finished the doctorate, but uh past six years.
Speaker 1: You know, I was out. I was in Alaska prior
Speaker 1: to going to Montana, and so I was split my
Speaker 1: time between guiding fishing in Alaska in the summer and
Speaker 1: then run back to Montana for the academic calendar. So
Speaker 1: it's been it's been a pretty good uh, pretty good
Speaker 1: life so far. Yeah. Uh, south central Alaska about ninety
Speaker 1: hundred miles northwest of Anchorage, Mary called Lake Creek for
Speaker 1: what uh salmon and trout u And it's just people
Speaker 1: come out to fly out trips for the week or
Speaker 1: for the out of lodge. So we're just running jet
Speaker 1: sleds around and good times. Yeah. Alright, so break break down,
Speaker 1: break down your research, Like how would you look at
Speaker 1: So I look primarily at um like I said, field
Speaker 1: and stream, outdoor life, nationally circulated hunting magazines, fishing game
Speaker 1: I didn't do. Yeah, I know, I first be for
Speaker 1: a fishing game. At some point you have to put
Speaker 1: the blinders on and just say I think I've got
Speaker 1: what I need here, and you can always bring in
Speaker 1: the big venerables like field stream out or sports, ports
Speaker 1: the field, the big three, and I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: do so much for sports the field. UM. But I
Speaker 1: also I what I'm what I'm looking at in the
Speaker 1: dissertation is huntings changing, huntings transforming or evolving or changing
Speaker 1: public culture from the end of World War Two up
Speaker 1: until about the nineteen nineties. And so I looked for
Speaker 1: any place where hunters are sort of publicly celebrating or articulating, rationalizing, uh,
Speaker 1: explaining what they do, what it means to them, how
Speaker 1: they see themselves as hunters, how they identify and understand
Speaker 1: themselves and what they're doing. Um. And also where they
Speaker 1: sort of butt up against the non hunting public and
Speaker 1: how they define themselves in relation to uh, non hunters,
Speaker 1: anti hunters, etcetera. UM, and so so so focusing on
Speaker 1: the friction, not internal friction, but the friction between the
Speaker 1: friction or lubrication or whatever between people who are hunting
Speaker 1: people who don't like the broader culture. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: like conflict within the hunting world about where do we
Speaker 1: feel what how do we feel about? No? And I
Speaker 1: do look at I do look at that as well. Um,
Speaker 1: I look at you know how you know you see it.
Speaker 1: You know you see it in today's you know, letters
Speaker 1: to the editor, this and that. You know, somebody says
Speaker 1: we as sportsmen should do this, we as sportsman should
Speaker 1: be on this page. Um and and there is conflict
Speaker 1: within these ranks. So what I'm looking at is how
Speaker 1: hunters have um identified over the course about fifty years,
Speaker 1: how they've identified in relation to one another and in
Speaker 1: relation to the non hunting public um and And it's
Speaker 1: sort of a mutually constitutive process. And that you know,
Speaker 1: they're not they're not in a vacuum. Uh. They're they're
Speaker 1: defining themselves in relation to a changing world around them.
Speaker 1: Um and they're but but they're not just sort of
Speaker 1: um blank slates either, right, if that makes sense. So
Speaker 1: some of the some of the changing public culture comes
Speaker 1: from within, and some of it is in um in
Speaker 1: response to outside forces as well. So tell me, like
Speaker 1: you guys hate generalizations and stuff like that, I know,
Speaker 1: tell me something like tell me something that was tell
Speaker 1: me something that would surprise me. You found out, like
Speaker 1: what what in the end one of being like what's
Speaker 1: the what? Right? Well, so they're there there are five
Speaker 1: chapters to the thing. There's five chapters in an epilogue,
Speaker 1: and they're all, um, they all sort of track a
Speaker 1: different story throughout about a fifty year span, so it's
Speaker 1: not written chronologically. Um. And what might interest you the
Speaker 1: most one of the chapters is right now, will interests
Speaker 1: me the most is one of the five chapters, So
Speaker 1: the first one. So the first chapter looks at um
Speaker 1: hunters and environmental politics from about nineteen to the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. And what I do in that is there's
Speaker 1: there's sort of this old paradigm of you know, we
Speaker 1: have conservationists from turn of the century, and we have
Speaker 1: and this is what a sort of an academic historian
Speaker 1: would tell you. There are conservationists and they're properly modern environmentalists,
Speaker 1: and there's this moment of rupture whereas you know, at
Speaker 1: the turn of the century of guys like Difford pin Show,
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt, um, all these, you know, just the horrid
Speaker 1: heroes of conservation um. And and they are really dominating
Speaker 1: environmental policy making of this period. And then in the
Speaker 1: post war period, a new set of actors steps in
Speaker 1: with a new set of values and they are the
Speaker 1: driving force behind some of the landmark legislation in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. Yeah. Yeah, And so what I try
Speaker 1: to do in that first chapter is basically say that
Speaker 1: there's much more continuity than that, and that it it
Speaker 1: makes for an easy story to tell if you say,
Speaker 1: you know, hunters did had did this at the turn
Speaker 1: of the century, and then non hunters had their their
Speaker 1: moment in the sixties and seventies, and I'm saying, no, Look,
Speaker 1: if you look through the nineties, forties, fifties, sixties and
Speaker 1: seve of these uh hunters remain a powerful, engaged, UH
Speaker 1: political block that are really driving policy making at a
Speaker 1: local and UH federal level throughout this period. So I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the ways in which these magazines are So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like the counterculture spawned this sudden group of environmentalists.
Speaker 1: You went out and like rewrote the books. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think I mean, if I were to sort of
Speaker 1: oversimplify what most is no, no, but but but I
Speaker 1: think that's a that's a good way of sort of
Speaker 1: summing up or simplifying what a lot of historians who
Speaker 1: haven't looked at this stuff would tell you is that
Speaker 1: there's sort of a counterculture, a new set of values
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies that's really responsible for the
Speaker 1: environmental legislation and policies that have given us the world
Speaker 1: that we live in today, essentially UM and that their
Speaker 1: values and their issues and UM issues of concern supplanted
Speaker 1: these older uh issues of concern that guys like Roosevelt
Speaker 1: are concerned that viewpoint in the among historians. Why do
Speaker 1: people think that that happened? Well, I think that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that in part it it comes from you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of environment a lot of historians, a lot
Speaker 1: of academics in general, UM study things that they're interested in,
Speaker 1: concerned concerned with, are concerned about UM, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of the initial scholarship on this subject was written
Speaker 1: by people who came of age in the sixties and seventies. Yeah. Um, so,
Speaker 1: I mean that's sort of how Dan got into environmental
Speaker 1: The criticism of that generation is how ego centric that
Speaker 1: generation was. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's so so this
Speaker 1: but this is how history has written, is that you know, uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's sort of a thesis. One group puts
Speaker 1: out a thesis, they put out an argument, and then
Speaker 1: other people come revisit that and say, you know, things
Speaker 1: might have been oversimplified here, they might have been overlooked
Speaker 1: and sort of the initial group that makes sense of
Speaker 1: things and periodizes things and say is this is you know,
Speaker 1: environment modern quote unquote modern environmentalists are this their X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z. They believe A, B and c um.
Speaker 1: That's how they make sense of the past and of
Speaker 1: of a really messy reality. And and so they come
Speaker 1: in and do that initial work. And then what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do in my project to say, you've you've
Speaker 1: overlooked UM a much more uh, you know, complex reality.
Speaker 1: If you've overlooked UM stories that might make it a
Speaker 1: little more difficult to to uh makes sense of what
Speaker 1: happened in the sixth season seven where where we get
Speaker 1: you know, the Clean Water Act, of Clean Air Act,
Speaker 1: things like that, UM, the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act, UM. So, so that's sort of what my
Speaker 1: projects is. So that's the that's the first chapter is
Speaker 1: is trying to write sort of a counter narrative of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century environmental movement through the eyes of field
Speaker 1: and stream readers outsoor life readers UM. Was Chapter two.
Speaker 1: Chapter two, Chapter two looks at the emergence of anti
Speaker 1: hunting sentiment UH in the nineteen seventies and the ways
Speaker 1: in which anti hunting advocates try to harness their own
Speaker 1: agenda to some of these powerful new environmental laws, and
Speaker 1: how this dynamic reshapes the way that a lot of
Speaker 1: hunters perceived these laws. But let me let me back
Speaker 1: up from it. What what what when did the word
Speaker 1: well their anti owners? I mean, of course they were,
Speaker 1: but what were they Bambi's in ninety two, right, So, um,
Speaker 1: but Bambi isn't Yeah, I mean Bambi's nineteen forty two.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I that I do with
Speaker 1: this is and and opposition to hunting goes back further
Speaker 1: than that. Um yeah, I mean you ever read the
Speaker 1: Old Testament? Yeah? Jacobs? Right? Yeah? And and so this
Speaker 1: is I mean there there's a huge literature out here.
Speaker 1: But one of the there's an interesting book, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've read it, Daniel Justin Herman's Hunting in
Speaker 1: the American Imagination. And one of his arguments is that, um,
Speaker 1: sort of the early Puritans actually, if they knew that,
Speaker 1: you know, what would become who would become Americans were
Speaker 1: people that prided themselves on their hunting culture. Um, the
Speaker 1: Puritans would have been really dismayed by that, because they
Speaker 1: hunting is something that you do when you're not working,
Speaker 1: and you should always be working, and it's something and
Speaker 1: so yeah, and so one of his arguments is that
Speaker 1: sort of early that hunting occupied a different place in
Speaker 1: the American imagination in colonial times, and what his book
Speaker 1: does is sort of traced that through. Uh, once once
Speaker 1: the United States is created, then you need some American
Speaker 1: heroes and heroes that differentiate your culture from that of Europe.
Speaker 1: And so Americans embraced sort of the Daniel Boone types, right,
Speaker 1: And so that's a really interesting book. I'm you'd really
Speaker 1: enjoy that one. But but anyway, Um, there's always been
Speaker 1: sort of you know, hunting has has occupied different places
Speaker 1: in the American imagination over time, and what my project
Speaker 1: does sort of track that through the twentieth century. So
Speaker 1: to get back to the question of anti hunting sentiment, Um,
Speaker 1: there's opposition to hunting that arises in the nineteenth century. Um,
Speaker 1: the s p c A and some of these anti
Speaker 1: animal cruelty groups. Yeah, but and they're they're primary, their
Speaker 1: primary consideration in the nineteenth century was really sort of
Speaker 1: cruelty to horses because they're they're urban based reformers who
Speaker 1: are looking at these horses out in New York City,
Speaker 1: getting in London, getting whipped, getting knocked around in the street,
Speaker 1: underfed horses just being put to work. Right. And so
Speaker 1: that's really where this idea of animal cruelty um comes
Speaker 1: comes into uh more widespread, I guess uh, um it
Speaker 1: carries it carries more cloud among the wider public. Um.
Speaker 1: And so really in the in the late sixties and
Speaker 1: early seventies is when this stuff comes to a head.
Speaker 1: When you when you when there became like an anti
Speaker 1: hunting movement seventies, Yeah, a movement, yeah, Um. There there
Speaker 1: are a number of groups founded in the mid sixties, um.
Speaker 1: And and one of the reasons for this, and this
Speaker 1: is what I look at in in this chapter is that, um,
Speaker 1: some of these laws that are created in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies to uh for purposes unrelated to the anti
Speaker 1: hunting agenda are very quickly uh embraced by anting anti
Speaker 1: hunting advocates in order to uh secure their own uh
Speaker 1: desired outcomes. Right. And so give me an example, um, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: a protection. Yeah, that's that's a good one. I mean,
Speaker 1: the one that I really focus on in this uh,
Speaker 1: in this chapter is the National Environmental Protection Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine UM, which is signed into law in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy And people know ANIPA as it's known because
Speaker 1: it requires environmental impact statements, right, and so if if
Speaker 1: the federal government is going to do some thing or
Speaker 1: funds something, it requires that that experts come in and
Speaker 1: assess what impact this action is going to have on
Speaker 1: the environment, right. And this is something that if you
Speaker 1: look back at the pages of Field and Stream and
Speaker 1: out their Life, one of the more interesting things that
Speaker 1: I found was that in nineteen forty four or forty five,
Speaker 1: the editor of I believe it was Arthur Graham, who
Speaker 1: is the editor of Outdoor Life at the time, is
Speaker 1: calling for this almost this exact law because but he's
Speaker 1: worried about um channelization and the construction of huge dams
Speaker 1: in the post war era, and so he's writing in
Speaker 1: and this is like in nineteen forty four. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so the I mean, this is this is what really
Speaker 1: fascinates me is you can go back into these magazines
Speaker 1: and this is an issue that's still selling war bonds, right,
Speaker 1: and he's he's calling for a law and he I mean,
Speaker 1: he uses the words, you know, we need a coordinating
Speaker 1: law with sharp teeth that will hold government officials accountable
Speaker 1: for what they do to the natural a world. Did
Speaker 1: he lose his job? It was like people were on
Speaker 1: board with this stuff. And what I think is and
Speaker 1: you know, what I think is interesting is if you
Speaker 1: look at these magazines through the through the forties, fifties,
Speaker 1: sixties into the seventies, a lot of the a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that they're calling for you would associate
Speaker 1: with sort of cutting edge, avant garde environmentalism, you know,
Speaker 1: if you consider them in context. Sure, man, the fact
Speaker 1: that someone we've been talking about that then yeah, and
Speaker 1: and he's he's writing in forty forty five, this law
Speaker 1: isn't isn't signed. It's signed by President Nixon in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and and it's still you know, at the
Speaker 1: time of it's of its uh signing, it's it's still
Speaker 1: held as you know, the largest achievement of the crowning
Speaker 1: achievement of the environmental movement. Right, if you think about
Speaker 1: what what environmental impact statements require, it's sort of incorporating
Speaker 1: a new system, a new set of values into the
Speaker 1: policy making process. It's a big deal. And he's calling
Speaker 1: fort and forty four forty five. And when it came
Speaker 1: around the anti hunters and the hunters, yeah, so gain
Speaker 1: or had the hunters lost interest in about the seven No,
Speaker 1: they were. They were still using it um and and
Speaker 1: using targeted litigation to pursue their own ends right to
Speaker 1: to pursue UM. They used it a lot. UH. Different
Speaker 1: sportsman's groups used environment Olympac statements to challenge UM resource extraction, UH,
Speaker 1: channelization of waterways, things like that, um and and it's
Speaker 1: it's very much celebrated in the page of these magazines
Speaker 1: when this law is is enacted. UM. But very quickly,
Speaker 1: what you see that anti hunting groups are using lawsuits
Speaker 1: and making claims under underneath they're saying the environment Olympac
Speaker 1: statement for this hunting season didn't consider this alternative. And
Speaker 1: essentially what environmental impact statement does is it asked that
Speaker 1: somebody sit down and say, if we do a you know,
Speaker 1: one to three will happen if we do be four, five,
Speaker 1: six were happening. So it's sort of the systematic accounting
Speaker 1: of what might happen through these various policies, an environmental
Speaker 1: impact statement on a proposed hunting season. That's well, that's
Speaker 1: what they that's what the anti hunting activists demanded that
Speaker 1: they do in the nineteen sixties or in the nineteen seventies. Um,
Speaker 1: and they start challenging just try to make it owners,
Speaker 1: Try to make difficult, right, you slow things down and
Speaker 1: and sort of the the real fear. And you see
Speaker 1: this in the magazine some of these some of these
Speaker 1: writers are saying, well, if they challenge Pittman Robertson with
Speaker 1: the Pittman Robertson Act of seven, which is the act
Speaker 1: that places an exercise tax on firearms and sporting equipment, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: that funds much of the wildlife management in this country. Um,
Speaker 1: the fear of research, habitat and all that stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's responsible for the sort of miraculous
Speaker 1: recovery of all the wild game species in this country
Speaker 1: between nineteen thirty and nine seventy. When we're talking about
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, in nineteen thirty, there's like half a
Speaker 1: million deer in nineteen seventies, of fourteen million in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty there's uh, just a handful of and turkey and
Speaker 1: turkeys are a great example. Antelope populations increased like something
Speaker 1: like fourteen times in in this period of forty years. So, UM,
Speaker 1: it's really a Pittman Robertson and and these funding structors
Speaker 1: that are built around this model of consumptive use in hunting. UM.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the backbone of of wildlife management in
Speaker 1: this country. UM. And hunters, you know, hunters today, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll tell you that with great pride right now. You
Speaker 1: see that all the time. UM. And and actually the
Speaker 1: fear among a lot of these writers in the seventies
Speaker 1: is that Pittman Robertson will be challenged under uh NIPA.
Speaker 1: And and it actually is. Their lawsuits filed and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of behind the scenes wrangling, UM.
Speaker 1: But but their wildlife wildlife officials, um, you know, government
Speaker 1: administrators that they're saying, you should do an environmental impact
Speaker 1: statement on Pittman Robertson. And what they're asking for, um
Speaker 1: is that there have to be an accounting for every
Speaker 1: single thing that Pittman Robertson dollars do, which is just uh,
Speaker 1: totally unmanageable. So you want to put in like a
Speaker 1: water tank somewhere and right exactly, you have to r exactly.
Speaker 1: And so this is the this is really a moment
Speaker 1: of crisis. Um. And you'll see, you know, if you
Speaker 1: go back and read through these magazines, you can see
Speaker 1: this all unfolding. Um. And so so in this chapter,
Speaker 1: I look at the way you know, when anti hunters
Speaker 1: harness environmental laws to their own agenda, it changes the
Speaker 1: ways in which hunters perceive environmental loss. And so this
Speaker 1: is one of you know, one of the questions that
Speaker 1: why so many hunters now seem like burdened or annoyed
Speaker 1: by the Endangered Species Act. Yeah, and and they're I mean,
Speaker 1: they're all. Endangered Species Act is used um a lot
Speaker 1: by anti hunters as sort of a marketing tool essentially,
Speaker 1: I mean has great cultural cache in the nineteen seventies. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, people have lunch boxes and stuff with charismatic megafauna,
Speaker 1: and politicians are going out waving you know, when the
Speaker 1: environmental when the Endangered Species Act has passed, it's wildly popular.
Speaker 1: It's a wildly popular piece of legislation at a moment which, uh,
Speaker 1: faith in government is declining. Precipitously right in the in
Speaker 1: the early mid nineteen seventies. And so this is one
Speaker 1: that lawmakers really hang their ad on. We're doing what
Speaker 1: the people want, um, but very quickly endanger very quickly,
Speaker 1: anti hunting advocates use claims revolving you know, using this language.
Speaker 1: They're deploying this language of endangered species to target hunters
Speaker 1: and blame hunters for environmental degradation. And so again in
Speaker 1: the concept of endangered species is sort of weaponized. Um
Speaker 1: and and and in a large part where this chapter
Speaker 1: does is explores the polarization that we see between people
Speaker 1: who identify as environmentalists and people who identifies as hunters.
Speaker 1: And I know this is a gross, you know, oversimplification
Speaker 1: of of who hunters are today, right, but I think
Speaker 1: if you, if you talk to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: the words environmentalists and hunters, they're not often used. That's
Speaker 1: That's why that's why I say I'm a conservation exactly
Speaker 1: term it too obvious, say conservations. But now and then
Speaker 1: I just also say yeah, I'll just say like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm an environmentalist, you know. Yeah, up until some point
Speaker 1: the seventies, Horner's said I'm an environmentalist. But they were
Speaker 1: using one of the people say, m we're using a
Speaker 1: lot of them were using, um, the terms interchangeably, right.
Speaker 1: Cons It's not as if concert the term conservationists all
Speaker 1: of a sudden supplanted the term environmentalists these magazines in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. But um, one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: that you'll see is in the sixties and seventies, you know,
Speaker 1: as the article is saying, you know, covering, uh, the
Speaker 1: the development of outdoor education programs at colleges and taking
Speaker 1: sort of these long haired hippie types into the woods
Speaker 1: and teaching them about you know, camping and hiking and
Speaker 1: this and that, and the readers of these magazines are saying,
Speaker 1: this is great, we need these people on our side.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that rings a bell. Just republished all those
Speaker 1: articles now yeah. No, And so this is I mean
Speaker 1: it's sort of echoes to you know, contemporary development, sort
Speaker 1: of echo what I see in these sources from from
Speaker 1: forty years ago. That's amazing. Three chapter three chapters. Cool,
Speaker 1: leave chapter two for a minute. Yeah, absolutely, unless you're
Speaker 1: least you feel like we missed the point. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's sort of what I'm doing. That's
Speaker 1: sort of what I what I look at is is um,
Speaker 1: this this polarization and the changing politics of the word
Speaker 1: sort of environmentalism in the hunting community. Um. Now, if
Speaker 1: you really want to act like you're piste off at someone,
Speaker 1: like you'd be like a tree hugger, right, you know,
Speaker 1: But dude, I'm prone to hugger tree. No, no, man um,
Speaker 1: especially when I'm trying to climb it. But you know,
Speaker 1: I wanna tell you something real quick. The the one
Speaker 1: note I had ahead of talking used to tell you
Speaker 1: the story when I was in high school. I Gradurom
Speaker 1: High schoo Okay, I grew up in western Michigan. In
Speaker 1: one or two I can't remember. Me and the guys
Speaker 1: I hung out with, largely as a joke but kind
Speaker 1: of not. We started a group called hate Hunters against
Speaker 1: teenage Environmentalists, and we had T shirts and wild game
Speaker 1: dinners and we did like a fundraise, a can goods
Speaker 1: drive as a fundraiser. Because we had never even heard
Speaker 1: the word environment mentalists. Then all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: was there, and we thought that like we were on
Speaker 1: the impression that an environmentalist that that meant anti hunter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And because there was a school group. These kids in
Speaker 1: school who were into charismatic megaphon and dolphins and stuff,
Speaker 1: but a very strong anti hunting bent. Started like an
Speaker 1: environmental group, but all they talked about was anti hunting
Speaker 1: because in their mind that's what the debate was, right.
Speaker 1: Their mind was like pitted a bit like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're an environmentalist. Oh I hate hunting to write was
Speaker 1: their tone many years ago. So we started hate. We
Speaker 1: had T shirts and said, hey and off it was
Speaker 1: hunters against teenage environmentalists. I said a joke, we'd have
Speaker 1: Wildgate dinners and like. It was only years later that
Speaker 1: I realized that that's not what that meant. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this is. I think this is. That's a pretty
Speaker 1: common misconception. I think a lot of people associate the
Speaker 1: term environmentalists with the politics of anti hunting. One of
Speaker 1: my buddies from Hate just got hold of me and
Speaker 1: sent me I'd lost my T shirt. He sent me
Speaker 1: his old T shirt nice, which I hung in my
Speaker 1: close in a safe place. My wife's like, best not
Speaker 1: to share that one on social media. Yeah, but explain
Speaker 1: you had for three to me? Chapter three looks don't
Speaker 1: get less interesting, do they? Um, No, it's a writer's mistake,
Speaker 1: man to put all the good stuff in the front,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, No, it's uh, I sort of I
Speaker 1: wrote it backwards, so I wrote the first chapter last,
Speaker 1: and uh it was a sprint to the finish, so
Speaker 1: I was just kind of hammering it out. But um, yeah.
Speaker 1: Chapter three looks at uh gun control and the politics
Speaker 1: of gun control on the pages of these magazines, and
Speaker 1: how that conversation changes over time. When did the conversations start,
Speaker 1: um in a way that we'd recognize it today. The Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the origins of the modern second Amendment debate
Speaker 1: are in the nineties sixties. Um and And is the
Speaker 1: Gun Control Act of ninety is sort of the the
Speaker 1: foundational piece of the modern regulatory uh framework, right and
Speaker 1: um and that's when the debate that we would recognize now, Well,
Speaker 1: the debate changes in the seventies. Um and And this
Speaker 1: is what that chapter looks at and it it really
Speaker 1: looks at it. Um. I don't do it a really
Speaker 1: detailed analysis of you know, this proposed bill, did this,
Speaker 1: this proposed bill did that? I look at more popular
Speaker 1: perception of this debate and and and the pages of
Speaker 1: these magazines. When hunters say we as hunters have a
Speaker 1: stake in this question where do we fall? UM on
Speaker 1: what side are we? Um that the answer to that
Speaker 1: is is in this sort of constant uh negotiation through
Speaker 1: the seventies and um, you know the and and and
Speaker 1: this conversation is also unfolding in relation to questions about
Speaker 1: environmental protection. UM. Yeah, and well, I mean by the eighties,
Speaker 1: you see guys writing into these magazines saying and and
Speaker 1: this is this will sound familiar to a lot of
Speaker 1: your listeners today. You know, we we vote Democratic and
Speaker 1: we lose our guns to hunt with, or we vote
Speaker 1: Republican and we lose our lands to hunt on. Dude,
Speaker 1: I always say the same. This is something, this is
Speaker 1: something that that you you know, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a letter to the editor, um that that says
Speaker 1: that exact uh that has that exact phrase in it
Speaker 1: from UH. I think it's nineteen eight or nine four.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably the the in in in the
Speaker 1: lead up to the eight four election. U. After the
Speaker 1: initial stage brush rebellion has fizzled out. Um. But but
Speaker 1: this is one of sort of my my The central
Speaker 1: assumptions of this project is that it's very hard for
Speaker 1: people to to think about one question at a time,
Speaker 1: right as we as as sort of political animals. You know,
Speaker 1: all of these things are constantly uh influx in relation
Speaker 1: to one another, and so political behavior isn't just you're
Speaker 1: not presented with sort of an ideal ticket, um. And
Speaker 1: these tickets change over time, and as a result, you know,
Speaker 1: people have to ask themselves questions, what do I believe
Speaker 1: in at this moment, where do my loyalties lie, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so that chapter three looks at the emergence of
Speaker 1: the modern Second Amendment debate, how it changes in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and and ultimately how sportsmen react to this um new
Speaker 1: point of fracture in American political life, and how did
Speaker 1: they react, um, I think, without with without getting to
Speaker 1: uh detailed here, in the late nineteen sixties and early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, it was far more common to see sportsmen say, uh,
Speaker 1: we occupy sort of a position of influence in this
Speaker 1: debate because we have a legitimate purpose um. And these
Speaker 1: are the words that they're using. They're not mine, but
Speaker 1: we have a legitimate purpose for these firearms, and so
Speaker 1: we should use our position of influence um, in order
Speaker 1: to come up with reasonable solutions UM and it's in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies you see
Speaker 1: sort of the larger UH and and there's obviously exceptions
Speaker 1: to this. It's it's very much in debate, but there's
Speaker 1: there's a large element calling for a position of moderation
Speaker 1: on these issues. The debate becomes much more polarized in
Speaker 1: the mid seventies UM nineteen seventy, nineteen seventy five in particular,
Speaker 1: UM and there are some all you know, there are
Speaker 1: there are a number of other developments, but increasingly the
Speaker 1: position of sort of UM uncompromising hardline opposition to new
Speaker 1: firearm regulation becomes a more popular opinion, as expressed in
Speaker 1: these magazines, Well there had to be new firearms, Like
Speaker 1: when I look at fire are issues now, it's so
Speaker 1: much has to do with you don't hear the word
Speaker 1: very often, but a lot of it has to do
Speaker 1: with technology. Roy's grappling with when I say, oh, the
Speaker 1: American public, whatever side of this issue around or always
Speaker 1: grappling with, well, what are we gonna do about what
Speaker 1: you might consider to be emerging technologies? Right? You know? Right? UM?
Speaker 1: Availability on the marketplace of things that weren't available on
Speaker 1: the marketplace before. So is what you're talking about? Was
Speaker 1: that driven by availability of new weapons classes or was
Speaker 1: it just like well, the in the in the mid
Speaker 1: nineties seventies, the concern, uh is pistols that are called
Speaker 1: quote unquote Saturday Night specials. Right, and it's in the
Speaker 1: debates and stuff you don't even think about now. The
Speaker 1: debate sort of echoes what you hear about quote unquote
Speaker 1: assault rifles today. Right. People are arguing this as an
Speaker 1: arbitrary categorization that you know, one a gun of another
Speaker 1: type could do, could be equally as harmful or injurious
Speaker 1: whatever like just like but it's but it's a big
Speaker 1: I mean, and and you know what you think about it, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's actually a pretty um, it's a pretty mainstream debate.
Speaker 1: I Mean, there's a there's a cover of Field and
Speaker 1: stream h called Saturday Night that the title of the
Speaker 1: feature pieces Saturday Night Special the real issue. And it's
Speaker 1: got this big smoking handgun on the cover. It's this
Speaker 1: illustration and and the the author of the peace Bob
Speaker 1: Bob Brister I believe is the author of the piece.
Speaker 1: He essentially writes, Um, we have no use for these
Speaker 1: and as gun owners, we shouldn't be lumped in with um,
Speaker 1: you know, street thugs and this and that and these
Speaker 1: criminals and what that was. That was the editorial stance.
Speaker 1: There was a big blowback to that. And and and
Speaker 1: this is part of what I look at is the
Speaker 1: politics of you know, there's this larger suspicion at the
Speaker 1: time to um CBS owns Field and Stream, and CBS
Speaker 1: puts out at the time at the time, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they put out um some really sort of nasty anti
Speaker 1: hunting hit pieces as documentaries on TV. The Guns of
Speaker 1: Autumn is one UM and and so readers there there
Speaker 1: are a lot of letters to the editor. And I
Speaker 1: also looked at the personal papers of writers and editors
Speaker 1: for these magazines, and you'll see that they're getting mail saying,
Speaker 1: are you guys in control of your magazine or is
Speaker 1: it the the guys up at CBS. UM and so
Speaker 1: there's the and so so Field and Stream has to
Speaker 1: sort of, uh steal its resolve essentially and really come
Speaker 1: out as you know, we are on the sportsman side
Speaker 1: in this one. And they adopt a more hardline position editorially.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And and I mean there's this is this
Speaker 1: is at the time when suspicion of the media um
Speaker 1: becomes more popular. Uh in American life. The story of
Speaker 1: Jim Zumbo. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah no, And it's very very,
Speaker 1: very exactly, it's very similar to that. It's very similar
Speaker 1: to that. And so this is well, I'm not familiar,
Speaker 1: you're not so Oh my god. I mean it's such
Speaker 1: a you know the name of Jim Zumble, venerable, long
Speaker 1: time hunt done a lot for hunting, a long time
Speaker 1: gone right, a long time hunting writer. He right when
Speaker 1: blogging kind of started. He had done a blog entry
Speaker 1: where he had come from. He was blogging, I believe
Speaker 1: from Wyoming. I've been on hunting Kyles and mentions in
Speaker 1: his blog. Let me back up and say, this guy
Speaker 1: had been I think he'd been a staffer at out
Speaker 1: their Life for twenty five years. Was sponsored by all
Speaker 1: the big players. Okay, had his own like Jerkys, his
Speaker 1: own everything, right, I mean, he was like the name
Speaker 1: he's like the Bill Dance of hunting and shared with
Speaker 1: his blog readers his opinion that or he relates the
Speaker 1: story how he was hunting Kyle to some guys who
Speaker 1: were telling him how guys have started hunting coyotes with
Speaker 1: a RS and he says, hunters have no business using
Speaker 1: these terrorist guns. I say, Bannon from the woods right now,
Speaker 1: now immediately, I mean his show, all his sponsorships, his
Speaker 1: position at the man like everything was immediately stripped through
Speaker 1: public outrage. And he later attempted or redact, like how
Speaker 1: do he say that word? Redact? He would later try
Speaker 1: to redact and he said that he had been out
Speaker 1: in the wind all day and had it has been
Speaker 1: a long day. It was very tired man when he said,
Speaker 1: and that didn't work. Um. And later he went through
Speaker 1: a he went through a very public sort of he
Speaker 1: like enlisted himself sort of in a re education camp,
Speaker 1: you know, um, in a very public way, and went
Speaker 1: hunting with the guns that he had said he was
Speaker 1: opposed to, and did a did a lot of steps
Speaker 1: to try to you know, recuperate. And it was like
Speaker 1: everything about it was sad. I don't know about what's sad, um, clearly,
Speaker 1: you know it was kind of in one way, it
Speaker 1: was kind of the beginning of uh of just like that,
Speaker 1: like here's a guy who's always gone through like an
Speaker 1: editorial process, right, and it always you know, you write
Speaker 1: something you write another draft, right, and that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff like gives you time to sort of like filter
Speaker 1: out like what you're thinking and what you're sing, you know,
Speaker 1: like what do you really believe? Like I'll get like
Speaker 1: everyone has written a really nasty email at eleven at night,
Speaker 1: right two, and then if you have the wherewithal to
Speaker 1: not hit sand at eight in the morning, you'd be like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna quite put it that way.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a different way. But he didn't. He did.
Speaker 1: He just put this out there like bann them, you know,
Speaker 1: and people took him very literally, like so it's never
Speaker 1: really clear like what he and it was clear like
Speaker 1: he said what he said, right, but you don't know
Speaker 1: like had he gone through his normal thinking on it,
Speaker 1: you know, and talked to his buddies, right, and the
Speaker 1: buds he said, well, you don't think about this way, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: not look at this way or whatever, and you think
Speaker 1: about the ramifications what you're saying. And but it was
Speaker 1: just like it was it was it was just painful.
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy had really in many ways devoted
Speaker 1: his life to um the promotion of hunting, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was just I mean, just eviscerated and just
Speaker 1: like people who never heard of Jim Zumble on whatever
Speaker 1: morning that was on Tuesday, we're feigning just the biggest disappointment,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It was like it was
Speaker 1: quick he became famous in a crowd that he who
Speaker 1: had never been famous with you know. Um, it was
Speaker 1: just it was that was sad. It was sad watching
Speaker 1: him have to sort of like do I always thought
Speaker 1: of when the communists like rolled into Saigon and put
Speaker 1: millions of people in re education camps. It was like
Speaker 1: it was like him having to go to re education
Speaker 1: camp because he's just like a like an old guy.
Speaker 1: And then out of that came the term like a fud, right,
Speaker 1: a fud and you're a fund as a dude again,
Speaker 1: I've been accused of being a fund. A fund is
Speaker 1: a guy who looks at firearm issues through the lens
Speaker 1: of a hunter, because like Elmer Fund, I guess he's
Speaker 1: got a shitty gun. I don't know, so I'll be like,
Speaker 1: you're like a fud if you view because in all honesty,
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment has no mention hunting. Like I'll always
Speaker 1: have people say like, oh yeah, well you should be
Speaker 1: able to have guns because you hunt. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, in some respect, maybe I'm glad
Speaker 1: you feel that way because at least you allowed that
Speaker 1: there is a reason to have guns, like in your mind,
Speaker 1: like it's not like a dead end deal. But the
Speaker 1: frameworers of the Constitution, the Second Amendment, we're not thinking
Speaker 1: about the guys right to go out and shoot squirrels
Speaker 1: right there, Like it wasn't what they were trying to protect.
Speaker 1: If it was, they would have said something like that
Speaker 1: it was not on their mind. So that's not like
Speaker 1: a plausible argument. But the whole thing was sad. The
Speaker 1: whole thing was sad. Read up on. I wrote a
Speaker 1: thing in Salon about Jim zombo Um when it was
Speaker 1: just like I just wish he had sad on what
Speaker 1: he said and thought about it for a couple of
Speaker 1: days because I feel, having never met the guy, um,
Speaker 1: I feel that he would have like whatever, a couple
Speaker 1: of days later he'd be like, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't like it, Like there's what, like, let's think about
Speaker 1: the message we're sending. He would have like he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have went out and said like let's ban him. Now.
Speaker 1: I think it was just I don't think it's what
Speaker 1: he would have I don't think it's what he meant. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't do it's what he would have said had
Speaker 1: he thought about it longer. And I think that he
Speaker 1: got so just like it was just watching like a
Speaker 1: nice old man just get beat to death on the curb.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people look at like a great victory,
Speaker 1: great victory, and it kind of sent a message like
Speaker 1: don't method us, you know, And I think that that,
Speaker 1: you know, the message resonated. But anyhow, it's just funny,
Speaker 1: like when you talk about that story, it's like you
Speaker 1: that story plays out now and then Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of what I see in these magazines thirty
Speaker 1: forty fifty years ago, um, they they echo events and
Speaker 1: developments that I remember from my own time in my
Speaker 1: lifetime reading these mag as a reader, right and as
Speaker 1: a researcher. So that was really interesting to see. I mean,
Speaker 1: the blowback from that wasn't you know, it wasn't this swift,
Speaker 1: And I think technology tightens that. People just falling in love.
Speaker 1: People were falling in love with the web man. But
Speaker 1: you absolutely get uh, you know, you absolutely would see
Speaker 1: letters to the editor from from the mid nineties seventies,
Speaker 1: saying who's in control of of the editorial position of
Speaker 1: this magazine? Is it you, guys um or can we
Speaker 1: trust you? Or as CBS dictating the content here? Did
Speaker 1: another editor recently publish a anti gun letter to the
Speaker 1: editor and lost his job? I'm not sure. I can't
Speaker 1: remember where I think he published. Just telling you listeners,
Speaker 1: I could be messing this up. I don't think I am.
Speaker 1: If i'm if I'm messing it up, I'm not messing
Speaker 1: up the main just I'm messing up a detail. A
Speaker 1: an editor I believe published a anti gun like a
Speaker 1: gun editor at a gun magazine published an anti gun
Speaker 1: letter to the editor was in losses lost the position,
Speaker 1: which is like which which is weirder than the zumble
Speaker 1: thing weirder because it's sort of like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it was almost like he was sort of using the
Speaker 1: magazine as sort of like a place for debate in
Speaker 1: a place that where debate wasn't welcome in it is
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, that's a tricky thing I would
Speaker 1: never do. Like an episode on my show, well, I remember,
Speaker 1: like this week a meat eater, We're not going hunting,
Speaker 1: We're going to an anti hunting convention, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it would be like, uh, it'd be weird.
Speaker 1: Well that's I mean, what's funny though, And this is
Speaker 1: one of the larger takeaways from the project that I
Speaker 1: see over in terms of measuring sort of the larger
Speaker 1: change over time is that hunting's public culture. I feel
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties before you have
Speaker 1: these these uh, larger public challenges to hunting, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a public culture that's much more open
Speaker 1: to debate. I mean in in Outdoor Life publishes and
Speaker 1: and uh, oh fifty four maybe um or maybe this
Speaker 1: is forty eight, they published an article called why I
Speaker 1: gave Up Hunting and they say, this guy makes it.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not we're not saying we're on board
Speaker 1: with this, but he he makes a compelling case, and
Speaker 1: we thought that this voice should be heard. Have you
Speaker 1: seen something he didn't want to see? Um? I mean
Speaker 1: he he basically just described this as a he he
Speaker 1: sort of woke up one day that the author of
Speaker 1: the piece. I'm not sure i'ming to remember is the
Speaker 1: author's name, but basically says I woke up one day
Speaker 1: and sort of realized that um, what I was doing,
Speaker 1: uh was sort of indulging a more primitive uh side
Speaker 1: of me that that right, yeah, yeah, And and they
Speaker 1: publish it, right, and you can't imagine that story. You
Speaker 1: could get it published, but it wouldn't be published in
Speaker 1: field stream outdoor life, right, right exactly. And so the
Speaker 1: question I mean, and and you can sort of be,
Speaker 1: uh be skeptical and say they're just you know, publishing
Speaker 1: that piece, They're fanning the flames and sort of you know,
Speaker 1: drawing lines and sam, but I really do you know,
Speaker 1: you look at there there's debate about the morality of
Speaker 1: hunting in the forties and fifties and early sixties before
Speaker 1: the anti hunting movement really gains attraction, But the debate
Speaker 1: is much more um Ah, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: right word to use. I mean there there's a spirit
Speaker 1: of sort of honest consideration of other viewpoints that that
Speaker 1: you don't see as much in contemporary culture. Well, I
Speaker 1: would argue that honestly, we know what I mean, like
Speaker 1: the hunting like the hunting community. Who who feels the
Speaker 1: compulsion to engage in the debate about hunting? Right? Lovely?
Speaker 1: This hunt right right, Like my brothers when you talk
Speaker 1: about they don't like they don't you know, it's just
Speaker 1: not what they're doing, right, They're not like sitting talking
Speaker 1: to someone about it right now all day in time,
Speaker 1: but they're talking about something else, right. So Anyways, those
Speaker 1: of us who you're right grapple with this stuff verbally
Speaker 1: with other people. Um, we're not like talking right now.
Speaker 1: The broader hunting community isn't talking right now about like
Speaker 1: so much like to hunt or not to hunt. But
Speaker 1: we are having a very spirited, very divisive debates about
Speaker 1: high fence, right, yeah, about long range shooting, long range technologies. Um,
Speaker 1: the drone thing. I thought it was gonna become big,
Speaker 1: but so many states are getting out ahead of it
Speaker 1: so quickly that it might not become an issue. Laser
Speaker 1: range finders right, souped up compound bows. It's like we're
Speaker 1: always sort of Um, there is still that debate because
Speaker 1: I can't think of a hunting writer or or a
Speaker 1: shooting magazine editor who has a weighed in on what's
Speaker 1: too far a shot. But I think too that there's
Speaker 1: another side to these conversations. There's there's a very vocal
Speaker 1: element of the hunting public today that says hunters shouldn't
Speaker 1: be criticized and other hunters right, and that I think
Speaker 1: that's a product of this, this this cultural shift that
Speaker 1: that I tracked in the in the in the dissertation
Speaker 1: of the seven sixties, seventies, primarily the seventies is sort
Speaker 1: of my big pivotal decade. But I think this, you know,
Speaker 1: us hunters have our backs to the wall. We don't
Speaker 1: need to be debating the ethics of what the guy
Speaker 1: next to you is doing. And and I think that
Speaker 1: is an unhealthy I think that's that's that guy's pulling
Speaker 1: that guy's pulling the plug on the boat. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: when we're on this boat together. But just cut ahold
Speaker 1: at the bottom up and there's there's all chapter four.
Speaker 1: But if you got any concluding thoughts about three later,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure to cover your whole deal
Speaker 1: for chapter four. Chapter four was the one I was
Speaker 1: going to begin with because chapter four tracks the changing
Speaker 1: culture of wild game consumption from to and that's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting in the way in which the changing and sort
Speaker 1: of sort of how the changing ways in which hunters
Speaker 1: used to meet that they that they kill, that they harvest, whatever, um.
Speaker 1: That how that changes how they imagine what they're doing.
Speaker 1: So if you can't fill the freezer for the winner
Speaker 1: to feed your family all year because you don't own
Speaker 1: a freezer, because it's what are you doing? Right? And yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I mean refrigerators. Refrigerators are far more widespread
Speaker 1: in the immediate post war period, but freezer ownership is
Speaker 1: it doesn't really take off until the mid sixties. I've
Speaker 1: never thought about that. I mean, that's similar to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone, Okay, on up, Jim Bridger, jet Smith. They
Speaker 1: did all that ship without flashlights. Man, when it got
Speaker 1: dark it was dark. Yeah. Yeah, you can do some
Speaker 1: shop with a candle or a fire, but they did
Speaker 1: without flashlights. You go out and spend a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks in the was of no flashlight. And I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about Alaska in July, but like I spent a
Speaker 1: couple weeks and realize how much stuff you get done
Speaker 1: under artificial illumination and how much like really important stuff
Speaker 1: happens on artificial illumination. Imagine, like it's like one day
Speaker 1: I was a currenty Like wow, man, when it got
Speaker 1: dark it was dark. Yeah, but no refridge, Like what
Speaker 1: were they? What did they what did they say when
Speaker 1: they had no fridge? Well, it's hard to I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to generalize, right, But one of the
Speaker 1: things that you so, so what what struck? And this
Speaker 1: wasn't initially a chapter in the project, but as I'm
Speaker 1: reading through these magazines I and and especially local newspaper columns,
Speaker 1: you kept I kept running into these anecdotes about, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people only eat things they shoot because they
Speaker 1: want an excuse to shoot another something like that. Whereas
Speaker 1: I think that the people still say that, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that and obviously they're options, but I
Speaker 1: think that for the most part, Um, what what I
Speaker 1: saw over this several decade long period is a changing, uh,
Speaker 1: a much more widespread adoption of the ethics of consuming
Speaker 1: what you kill. Right. Um. And obviously people have consumed
Speaker 1: what they killed since the dawn of time, right, but
Speaker 1: there's certain it's why people into hunting. Yeah, it is right.
Speaker 1: But but if you look at like the late nineteen
Speaker 1: forties and early nineteen fifties, Um, I mean one of
Speaker 1: the things that I one of the things that I
Speaker 1: never really thought about before I got into the project
Speaker 1: is um hunting became much more popular in the immediate
Speaker 1: post war decade. We we often think about hunting is
Speaker 1: sort of this declension. You know, at one point in
Speaker 1: history all people hunted to to live, and that number
Speaker 1: has just been steadily declining. But hunting um sort of
Speaker 1: like religiosity. There are moments of revival, right yeah, huge,
Speaker 1: Basically this whole generation like that my dad started. My
Speaker 1: dad started getting serious about big game hunting immediately after
Speaker 1: World War Two. I mean, like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: guys round who used to traveling around, used to hang.
Speaker 1: All those guys having a good time. They were stir crazy, right,
Speaker 1: like they didn't want to get into the thing. The
Speaker 1: Hell's Angels came out at the same time, my dad
Speaker 1: like cruised around with buddies of his and they hunted
Speaker 1: because they were out of their mind. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a phenomenon, yeah, I mean it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a post war phenomenon. So in nineteen forty there's
Speaker 1: like seven millions something hunting license is sold, and by
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty it's like fourteen million. It's it nearly doubles.
Speaker 1: And think how ald those guys were too. It's like
Speaker 1: now the average hunter is what like in his late
Speaker 1: forties or fifties or something like that. I mean, this
Speaker 1: guys years old and so and and it's funny, I
Speaker 1: mean the way that you phrase that there's an editorial
Speaker 1: and outdoor life before the end of the war, and
Speaker 1: and the I'm the author's escaping me at the moment,
Speaker 1: But he writes, you can't introduce millions of young men
Speaker 1: to the joys of firearms and living in the woods
Speaker 1: and not expect and expect them to just give it up,
Speaker 1: you know, at the drop of that hat. Right. Remember
Speaker 1: a neighbor down the road of ours who was a pilot,
Speaker 1: like flew a plane in World War Two, And he
Speaker 1: later talked about getting home from World War two and
Speaker 1: and asked some kind of like the things he did
Speaker 1: for a while, and he said, I enrolled like he
Speaker 1: had the g I bill enrolled in school, sat there
Speaker 1: for a couple of days and just realized, after what
Speaker 1: I just did for two years, you've got to be
Speaker 1: kidding me. Sitting chair, you know, Yeah, there's just no way.
Speaker 1: And and so this is I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 1: new passion for a lot of a lot of young
Speaker 1: men in this period. And if you think about the
Speaker 1: numbers of wildlife that existed in the nineteen thirties or
Speaker 1: you know, prior to Pittman Robertson, prior to this through
Speaker 1: rebounding of all these wild game populations. You think about
Speaker 1: how that changed, um, sort of the culture of hunting, right,
Speaker 1: if there's if there aren't any deer in your backyard
Speaker 1: to shoot, sort of what it means to to drive
Speaker 1: to the north Woods, get your deer and come back home.
Speaker 1: You're not taking you know, your little kid out on
Speaker 1: the weekend and going hunting with them, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: your your war buddies. You're taking your red and black
Speaker 1: checkered outright. But but what you know, with the novelty
Speaker 1: of this behavior for a lot of these guys, Um,
Speaker 1: there are some complications. Rates of accidental shooting skyrocket in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties and early nineteen shot Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is a huge sports illustrated
Speaker 1: I think in like the nineteen fifty two predicted that
Speaker 1: more hunters would get shot that year than like moose,
Speaker 1: big horn, wild goat, and they list you know, basically
Speaker 1: everything other than deer. They said more, you know, more
Speaker 1: American men are going to get shot in this hunting
Speaker 1: season and all of these species of big game combined.
Speaker 1: My old man loved the irony of the fact that
Speaker 1: he had was on the Anzio Beach, had invasion. Okay,
Speaker 1: fought all through the Italian Peninsula, marks all way to France,
Speaker 1: and was injured, but never by a bullet, never scratched
Speaker 1: to buy a bullet, and came home and they were
Speaker 1: hunting rabbits and the guy shot him in the foot
Speaker 1: of the twelve gate shotgun point blank range. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like he's like, how could that be? I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a common experience, relatively speaking, but get but
Speaker 1: get me into the like, okay, how would they deal
Speaker 1: what what? Before? When these guys all start hunting deer,
Speaker 1: they don't have freezers. They're not like seasoned woodsman who
Speaker 1: know how to smoke hands and know how to do
Speaker 1: like primitive old school meat preservation techniques. Would you just
Speaker 1: good deering, party with it and eat it in a week?
Speaker 1: Well that's that's why I mean, I found a lot
Speaker 1: of references to guys running around town trying to hand
Speaker 1: meat off to neighbors and and this and that, right,
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of the thing. Before it's spoiled. Um.
Speaker 1: And there you know, you could rent freezer space. Um.
Speaker 1: And sportsmen were earlier adopters of this technology, freezers and
Speaker 1: and other Americans and and freezer companies. Actually you'll see
Speaker 1: these advertisements in in the late early nineteen fifties when
Speaker 1: these freezer manufacturers starting to really push this technology. They're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: imagine eating year round what you killed this fall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And they're actually laws on the books in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen forties. Um. You know. One of the ways in
Speaker 1: which some of the early wildlife regulations prohibitor intended to
Speaker 1: curtail poaching was by um criminalizing possession of wild game
Speaker 1: within X number of days after the end of the season.
Speaker 1: And in some states, I think it was like five
Speaker 1: or six states when the season ended, you can't have
Speaker 1: any any wild game in your house, yeah, and so
Speaker 1: and so there, because social was if you have it,
Speaker 1: you probably shot it last Yeah. Um, you know, why
Speaker 1: would you why would you have a tenderloin from Why
Speaker 1: tell you shot you know, six months ago? Something like that,
Speaker 1: as so many people do today. But so so in
Speaker 1: these magazines. If you look at these magazines in in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties, some of these editors are saying,
Speaker 1: we need to we need to reinvent these laws because
Speaker 1: there's more and more sportsmen by freezers and have the
Speaker 1: means to preserve while gaming around. These laws are actually
Speaker 1: going to penalize law abiding sportsmen, or they're gonna penalize
Speaker 1: sportsman who want to conserve this this meat music to
Speaker 1: feed their family. Um. And so I mean another side
Speaker 1: story or another sort of thing that you'll see in
Speaker 1: these magazines again again and also in in newspapers. Um,
Speaker 1: these accounts people sort of openly acknowledging that most and
Speaker 1: you'll you'll see these words. And so it's not my
Speaker 1: sort of me poking at people in the past, but
Speaker 1: you'll see these words again again. Most of the wild
Speaker 1: game in this country is wasted. You'll see that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you'll see it in anywhere from Ladies home journal to
Speaker 1: UH to field and streamed outdoor life. It's sort of
Speaker 1: this open, ugly secret. Well it's not, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: And but I think back then the difference is back
Speaker 1: then the there wasn't a sort of the the ethical
Speaker 1: consideration of wasting what you kill wasn't nearly as prominent
Speaker 1: on the page of these magazines UM and that really
Speaker 1: is it because they didn't have an awareness of finiteness
Speaker 1: or or or is it something different. It's a point
Speaker 1: of concern I think for a lot of wildlife officials
Speaker 1: and administrators who are tasked with conserving this resource, and
Speaker 1: those are sort of the terms that they view it in.
Speaker 1: And so in the nineteen sixties you see state fish
Speaker 1: and Game UH departments putting out cookbooks and putting out
Speaker 1: guides on how to prey and and this is something
Speaker 1: that agricultural extension services throughout the country had been doing,
Speaker 1: you know, piecemeal, but it really takes off in the sixties,
Speaker 1: especially as freezer has become more available. And then especially
Speaker 1: once hunting comes under um pressure from anti hunting activists
Speaker 1: who are saying, you're doing this, you know, just to
Speaker 1: serve some kind of blood lust or this or that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a wasteful, destructive practice. Increasingly UM hunters
Speaker 1: are defending their pastime by um highlighting that they're using
Speaker 1: this as a means to feed their family. UM. And
Speaker 1: and there's a huge social scientific literature from the nineties
Speaker 1: seventies where there are public opinion polls of of the
Speaker 1: general public, not just hunters and anti hunters, but of
Speaker 1: the non hunting sort of disinterested public right, and the
Speaker 1: approval figures of hunting are much much higher as they
Speaker 1: are today when you emphasize, uh, the the eating, the
Speaker 1: consumptive aspect of it, right, eating what you kill, UM,
Speaker 1: And so that in the seventies this really takes off
Speaker 1: in it also, I also tie it in or dovetail
Speaker 1: it with um the economic misfortune of a lot of
Speaker 1: uh the country during this period, Like if you think
Speaker 1: about again d industrialization, economic stagnation. UH. You see in
Speaker 1: the sources, you'll see in magazine articles that you know, verbatim,
Speaker 1: Deer hunting in the North Woods this year took on
Speaker 1: a new uh, a new level of significance as out
Speaker 1: of work, Yeah, as as laid off auto workers are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out a way to provide for their families.
Speaker 1: You know, we had that a few years ago. It
Speaker 1: was announced too much fanfare that there had been a
Speaker 1: slight uptick in license sales. You know, people were very
Speaker 1: excited about it, and UM, many people interpreted those numbers,
Speaker 1: and one interpretation you kept seeing again and again was
Speaker 1: it was contemporaneous with economic crash. And then you had
Speaker 1: a lot of dudes who had a lot of time
Speaker 1: on their hands and did a lot of hunt in
Speaker 1: those couple of years. Yeah, I mean, and the people
Speaker 1: that are that really uh, some of some of the
Speaker 1: people that were hit the hardest by the the economics
Speaker 1: stagnation in the nineties seventies. Um, we're blue collar, middle
Speaker 1: class breadwinners in you know, the upper rust belt Michigan.
Speaker 1: You think about strong deer hunting culture, right, and so
Speaker 1: in that context, this behavior, this practice takes on a
Speaker 1: new significance. This is how and this is you'll see
Speaker 1: this again and again if you look at local newspapers
Speaker 1: and like Youngstown, Ohio, places like that, there's a story,
Speaker 1: you know, a local interest story come Christmas time about
Speaker 1: an out of work, uh, out of work guy who
Speaker 1: went out and fed his family for the winner, you know,
Speaker 1: with a deer too. And it becomes yeah, and it
Speaker 1: becomes sort of this trope um that you just don't
Speaker 1: really see. And and it's not to say that people
Speaker 1: didn't consume what they killed in the forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: but it just takes it resonates in new ways in
Speaker 1: the imagination in these other contexts. Chatter five, Chapter five
Speaker 1: after five time. Yeah, how long we've been talking? Probably overboard.
Speaker 1: We're getting there, but no, I think we can. We
Speaker 1: can finish up Chapter five. Chapter five some final thoughts
Speaker 1: or yeah. Chapter five. Chapter five looks at UM, the
Speaker 1: ways in which the hunting in American life is increasingly
Speaker 1: debated with rights based claims UM in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: and nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. You know, people claiming
Speaker 1: I have a right to hunt and and and conversely,
Speaker 1: I also look at the politics of of tribal hunting
Speaker 1: and fishing rights because the two unfold simultaneously. UM and
Speaker 1: and I really sort of tell the story of UM. Obviously,
Speaker 1: people have claimed that their rights to hunt, dating back
Speaker 1: UM much longer, right, further back than than this period
Speaker 1: that I'm considering. But Daniel Boone had no right to
Speaker 1: be doing what he was doing. Much one he was
Speaker 1: doing was land claimed by the British clown crown, and
Speaker 1: he was like trespassing not only on a Native American land,
Speaker 1: he was trespassing on the land claimed by another country. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so one of the interesting things that I discovered in
Speaker 1: my research was this article from like a law review
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. And this guy's making mention of
Speaker 1: the fact that Pennsylvania at the time of the Constitutional
Speaker 1: Convention had a pretty radical democratic, small d democratic political culture.
Speaker 1: Um and in Pennsylvania, I'm I'm certain that it's Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: I'm also certain that nobody else is gonna call me
Speaker 1: out on this one, but I think Pennsylvania suggested incorporating
Speaker 1: into the Bill of Rights a right to hunt on
Speaker 1: all unoccupied lands within the new nation. Man. And it
Speaker 1: was Jettison, really yeah, yeah, yeah, so that was that
Speaker 1: was But yeah, so this this guy like in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, apparently a dug up some transcript of of
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia delegation or something like that when they're meeting
Speaker 1: to debate the ratification of the Constitution. Anyway, Um so
Speaker 1: I look at I look at the ways in which
Speaker 1: and and part of it stems from the rise of
Speaker 1: new anti hunting strategies like um, um, you know, folks
Speaker 1: showing up in the woods trying to disrupt hunts and
Speaker 1: hunters making claims I have a right to be here.
Speaker 1: This is a little it's like a lot of states
Speaker 1: ratified rassment. Yeah, this is the sort of the origins
Speaker 1: of the modern debate over hunter harassment loss which is
Speaker 1: what I look at, I have a right to hunt.
Speaker 1: I'm doing something lawful, authorized by the state, um and
Speaker 1: and my rights are being infringed upon. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of you probably know better, but it's like an
Speaker 1: implied right. Be like like because you know, people are
Speaker 1: talk about the right deprivacy the constitution, right, there is
Speaker 1: no it's an interpretation, right, there's no one because there's
Speaker 1: a you know, the right privacy, which is like a
Speaker 1: thing where like we accept that that's an that that's implied.
Speaker 1: That's what idea, that right privacy. So people talk about
Speaker 1: you have a right to hunt, it kind of winds up.
Speaker 1: It's like, um, you have like an implied right. There's
Speaker 1: like a cult. There's like an hereditary cultural thing enabling
Speaker 1: you to hunt. And then it's interesting to see like
Speaker 1: the hunter harassment stuff was almost kind of a step
Speaker 1: in the direction of saying like, well, at least have
Speaker 1: the right to hunt without you messing with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and the debate over these hunter harassment laws centers
Speaker 1: around competing rights claims because the anti hunting activists advocates
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, um argue that these
Speaker 1: laws are infringing my right to test or to free
Speaker 1: speech or whatever you want to call it right and
Speaker 1: so so ultimately, um, sort of the the stakes of
Speaker 1: this hunting and anti hunting debate are amplified by the
Speaker 1: arena in which it's taking place, or the the language
Speaker 1: in which it's taking place of rights claims, right space claims,
Speaker 1: which are pretty powerful claims in American political culture, especially
Speaker 1: in the second half of the twentieth century, following all
Speaker 1: of the big so you know, social movements, the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement of the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties whatever. So. Um, So,
Speaker 1: the fact that this is a language that's being adopted
Speaker 1: and appropriated in order to you know, engage in this
Speaker 1: contest over the the the ethics of hunting, the morality
Speaker 1: of hunting, heightens heightens the sort of emotional stakes that
Speaker 1: people have in it. Um. And so that's that's that chapter, UM.
Speaker 1: And then that blog. That blog looks at and it's
Speaker 1: just really briefly, UM, looks at this debate over public
Speaker 1: lands that you know, it's around the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, rears its head again in the eighties
Speaker 1: and seems to be rearing its head again. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like and so yeah, so that's that chapter sort of
Speaker 1: sketches out the role that the hunting public has played
Speaker 1: in this eight and uh it's a pretty powerful role, dude. Man,
Speaker 1: I hope that in twenty years you can write another
Speaker 1: dissertation about how this whole anti public land thing got
Speaker 1: just squashed by hunters in the two thousand and sixteen
Speaker 1: two era. Well, if I'm writing another dissertation in twenty years,
Speaker 1: I have made a series of terrible mistakes. Oh, which
Speaker 1: leaves me the last thing I want to ask you.
Speaker 1: This is my concluding thought. What do you gotta do now?
Speaker 1: Get the thing published in like a major Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean you gotta do. I'm sort of catching
Speaker 1: my breath and uh, it was, like I said, it
Speaker 1: was kind of a sprint to the finish there, to
Speaker 1: get to get wrapped up, and uh, I'm sort of
Speaker 1: thinking about publication options and and thinking about publishers and
Speaker 1: and uh like academic type publishers. Well, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's an I think there's a popular audience for it.
Speaker 1: So at the moment I submitted, but I know I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that needs to be academic. I mean to
Speaker 1: make it be a dissertation. Once let's say Scruber publishes it,
Speaker 1: does that still count? Okay? I don't know if he
Speaker 1: had to be like it had to go through the
Speaker 1: academics publishes it. Yeah, but it doesn't have to go
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have to go through like the peer
Speaker 1: review process. No that So, so what happens is after
Speaker 1: you write the dissertation, you submit it to a committee
Speaker 1: of examiners and they read it, and they're ultimately the
Speaker 1: arbiters of whether or not this constitute say an original,
Speaker 1: valuable uh contribution to the literature. And so Dan it
Speaker 1: was as my advisor was the head of that committee.
Speaker 1: And then I had five other professors of history and
Speaker 1: a professor of environmental studies who read the thing, and
Speaker 1: we sat down and you defend. It's a defense. So
Speaker 1: they sit down and ask you, why did you do
Speaker 1: it this way? You know, what are you missing here?
Speaker 1: It's as I readgious, I would have done this this way.
Speaker 1: And you you answer and address their concerns as best
Speaker 1: you can, and then you're asked to leave the room,
Speaker 1: and they ultimately come back and say he either passed
Speaker 1: it or you didn't, so well, I passed. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here. So now now that you've done that,
Speaker 1: can take any publication venue you want. Yeah, it's mine.
Speaker 1: Um it. You submit it to an online database, but
Speaker 1: you can put a hold on it for several years
Speaker 1: as you're working out how exactly you want to publish it.
Speaker 1: Um and and ideally you publish it with the oppress
Speaker 1: that will give you the widest audience possible. So you
Speaker 1: don't want to send it to something I don't even
Speaker 1: want you to kind of think I was suggesting that
Speaker 1: it wasn't Yeah for that. I just thought that because
Speaker 1: you're involved in this process, that you have to stay
Speaker 1: within that world. No, no, once you once people will
Speaker 1: publish a dissertation as a popular book. Typically typically not
Speaker 1: because most dissertations are written in a like heavily footnote
Speaker 1: of they're not written in a in a literary style
Speaker 1: that people are gonna they're not accessible because they're written
Speaker 1: for an academic audience to sort of show your chops,
Speaker 1: test your you know, show show your metal to an
Speaker 1: academic audience. But you have to go in and douce
Speaker 1: it up right and take out all like de footnote
Speaker 1: it and and um citations and present all that in
Speaker 1: a different way. Yeah. I mean it's it's up to
Speaker 1: the publisher. It's up to the press how they how
Speaker 1: they want to do it. I mean I I wrote
Speaker 1: it in such a way that I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of people they write thousand page dissertations and they have
Speaker 1: to chop it down to like a twoe book. And
Speaker 1: so I approached it. I tried to save myself some
Speaker 1: work on the back end by by keeping it as
Speaker 1: tight as I could as I wrote it. So so
Speaker 1: my concluding thought is, yeah, I don't want to ask
Speaker 1: you like there's a lot there's a lot of unknowns.
Speaker 1: My conclude thought is I I hope that this that
Speaker 1: this work sees the that this work becomes available for
Speaker 1: you to look at. Yeah. And then don't mean like
Speaker 1: them going in you know, like I hope it's like published. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: that's that's what they're not going on to j store
Speaker 1: or trying to buy, like trying to buy your disstation
Speaker 1: for twenty bucks. Yeah. No, that's that's the that's the hope,
Speaker 1: that's the goal. Um. And yeah, I finished. I just
Speaker 1: finished about a month or so ago, and I got
Speaker 1: a lot of balls in the air right now? And
Speaker 1: are you gonna go work at a university? UM. At
Speaker 1: the moment, I'm teaching online and and UH for university
Speaker 1: and UM sort of figure out the next step. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in teaching. I love teaching. UM, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if I want to necessarily go through the academic
Speaker 1: ten your track job market. UM, I'm interested in also
Speaker 1: finding employment and conservation and sort of working towards bringing
Speaker 1: groups together resolving some of the issues that I've tracked
Speaker 1: as they emerged in the nineteen seventy nine, nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So literally, this man up and give him a job.
Speaker 1: How much? How much money do you make? No joke? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just came off a salary is a teaching assistant.
Speaker 1: So anything anything, Listen, you're gonna get this guy cheap.
Speaker 1: Anything sounds good to this guy. Yeah. Any concluding thoughts
Speaker 1: too many really for the time I have. UM, congratulations
Speaker 1: first off for getting that done. Thank you. It's quite
Speaker 1: the project. That's gonna feel good. Yeah, it's quite the
Speaker 1: dragon to sligh as you like to say. Um. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I hope that your work opens opens up some discussion.
Speaker 1: It's important to know for everybody, it's important to know
Speaker 1: your history and where you come from, and not only
Speaker 1: your family history, but now us as hunters. And it's
Speaker 1: some interesting stuff that you've you know, looked at and shared.
Speaker 1: So yeah, open. Hopefully it opened the discussion everybody out there.
Speaker 1: You can label me as a tree hugger, environmentalist that
Speaker 1: likes to shoot stuff. That's my concluding thought, like shoot trees.
Speaker 1: And you didn't say, well a lot. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: your first This is the first time you ever said
Speaker 1: I I wanted this conversation. Yeah, yeah, and I thanks
Speaker 1: thanks for the opportunity to let me sit in. It's
Speaker 1: interesting stuff. I learned quite a bit. Do you any
Speaker 1: concluding thoughts? Well, you're probably thinking about that big link
Speaker 1: had you gotta flay and he's got a cooler too,
Speaker 1: Lane cot on ice that won't fit in the fridge.
Speaker 1: Well like like like Randall, I came from a non
Speaker 1: hunting family, So this is all good dodged, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's stuff that I didn't thinking about. So it's
Speaker 1: this is this is good to hear. Yeah, congratulations on
Speaker 1: getting through it. And thinks it sounds like a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty interesting piece. I can't tell if you're allowed to
Speaker 1: have concluding thoughts or not. What do you think thoughts? Yea,
Speaker 1: what you hear me? Don't know what thought. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just a little tradition of having concluding thoughts. I'm
Speaker 1: just just happy and honored to be here. Good time, dude,
Speaker 1: don't start, don't give me the old and then uh
Speaker 1: then you know, visit your local bookseller in about two years.
Speaker 1: Once we get this thing on the on the shelf
Speaker 1: and pick it up, and you know, we'll get put
Speaker 1: up on We'll get it put up. When your book
Speaker 1: comes out, we'll get up put up on our our
Speaker 1: website and you're honest, maybe we'll get a deal where
Speaker 1: you buy a hundred T shirts to get a copy
Speaker 1: for free, about a hundred bucks and get a T
Speaker 1: shirt for free package. All right, um man, I'm just
Speaker 1: you know, now I feel guilty to the view to
Speaker 1: the listeners that we've been discussing and like, because usually
Speaker 1: you know, a book will get published, then you go
Speaker 1: and do you talk about it. You know, yeah, because
Speaker 1: now I'm like, stay tuned because something to read this
Speaker 1: book available. It's hard way, yeah, it's hard to say.
Speaker 1: Once you start setting out queer, he's depresses, it's you
Speaker 1: never know when what the timeline is, so we'll see,
Speaker 1: but well, we got the basic idea. It was fascinating. Man,
Speaker 1: thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad you're I'm glad you're
Speaker 1: able to come and talk with us. I mean, definitely
Speaker 1: stuff I never thought about, and some stuff I had
Speaker 1: thought about, but I thought about it wrong. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was a different Uh. You know, when I
Speaker 1: set out to write the thing, I thought I was
Speaker 1: gonna tell once story, and I realized that there so
Speaker 1: many more stories out there. And I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in this, if the listeners are interested
Speaker 1: in this stuff. Outdoor Life just recently digitized their whole
Speaker 1: uh back catalog to like eighteen eighty seven eight something
Speaker 1: like that. You can buy a monthly. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: this saved me because prior to that, I was carrying
Speaker 1: home these huge bound volumes that weighed like twenty pounds apiece,
Speaker 1: and it was like ten issues of of Outdoor Life,
Speaker 1: and I was just hauling them back from the library
Speaker 1: in my backpack. And then you know, in January, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm cranking through this thing. And you can go online
Speaker 1: now and get a subscription. It's like it's like five
Speaker 1: bucks a month or something, and they have full page
Speaker 1: scan so you can go you can look at the
Speaker 1: advertisements all that stuff, and then field and stream too
Speaker 1: is available on Google Books digitally from like nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: to the early two thousands. So if you know, if
Speaker 1: if you want to go, and I'd be curious to
Speaker 1: have someone go do a dissertation on the changing nag
Speaker 1: you of chewing tobacco ads in field streamed outdoor lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a rich history there. All right, thanks for listening. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll keep making them keep listening. Take care,