Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case underwear. Listening to Hunt podcast,
Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators
Speaker 1: are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download
Speaker 1: the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store.
Speaker 1: Nor where you stand with on X. All right, everybody,
Speaker 1: joannest there's a note from your honest in the notes
Speaker 1: says a note, can we please introduce all guests at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the podcast? This is Ben Janni's for years,
Speaker 1: for years. All that man wants Yanni. I like to
Speaker 1: have the suspense. I don't introduce him because I like
Speaker 1: to create a suspense because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people just listen because they're like one of Brody's there, right, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I just want you to know that, uh, there's another
Speaker 1: man sort of sitting on my shoulders that's talking to
Speaker 1: my ear all the time as you're not introducing the guests,
Speaker 1: and you can probably guess who that is. It's the
Speaker 1: same man that thinks you should not heat birthing tubs
Speaker 1: with su vied devices. Correct your father? Correct? Do you
Speaker 1: like in movies? Do you like if if you're watching
Speaker 1: the movie, do you want to know right when the
Speaker 1: movie starts, what's gonna happen? No, yeah, I can tell
Speaker 1: you who would though. It would be my kids. We've
Speaker 1: recently started to introduce them to uh The Star Wars,
Speaker 1: and so we watched four or five six over the
Speaker 1: last two weeks. And they cannot take it if they
Speaker 1: get that feeling of anticipation, just a little teeny teeny bit.
Speaker 1: They cannot stand it that they know something is about
Speaker 1: to happen and they don't know what it is. When
Speaker 1: you know, after we met, you know, the after we met.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he talks about this though. Anyways.
Speaker 1: I was watching the Where the Red Fern Grows and
Speaker 1: then uh Old Yeller with my kids, and before we
Speaker 1: got into it, I told him, listen, these dogs. You know,
Speaker 1: the dog dies in the end, right. I just want
Speaker 1: you to know this up top, so because I knew
Speaker 1: that'd be upsetting to him. So watching the movie, they're
Speaker 1: just enthralled. They love those movies. They get to the
Speaker 1: end and I'm thinking, well, now that they're sucked into
Speaker 1: the plot, they will, you know, stick it out now
Speaker 1: that they know because they're sold you know, engrossed in
Speaker 1: the story, but it gets up where you kind of
Speaker 1: smell what's gonna happen, that the dog is gonna die,
Speaker 1: and they just they want to turn it off and
Speaker 1: walk out of the room. That I thought for sure
Speaker 1: they would be like, wow, what the hell, it's tough
Speaker 1: it out, But now they're like, oh, really he's gonna
Speaker 1: die now, Okay, click done. I don't think they want
Speaker 1: to deal with the emotional trauma. I'll tell you right now,
Speaker 1: I'm right there with him. Now. When when when my
Speaker 1: kid senses something coming up on a movie he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to watch, He plugs his ears and runs out
Speaker 1: of the room. No, he doesn't want you to want
Speaker 1: to hear it, see it nothing. He's like, my god,
Speaker 1: Luke Skywalker is gonna keep his arm in my mind.
Speaker 1: And the old yellow dog. Uh okay, Yanni introduced everybody.
Speaker 1: Then since since you know the give us this one
Speaker 1: goes out with Yanni's dad. Oh jeez, all right, who
Speaker 1: all do we have here? Brody Anderson? Years ago in
Speaker 1: old Colorado, it's maybe twenty years ago, dude, it's twenty
Speaker 1: I got news for you, Halen from the Great State
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania, Brodie. Understand, all right, you know I'm dealing cards.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna pretend like John is uh right here
Speaker 1: on my right hand side, so I'm gonna continue to
Speaker 1: deal cards. They're Stephen Ronnella at the head of the table,
Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan's yellow, Karin Snyder Schneider, Schneider, I am a Schneider,
Speaker 1: you like the al right, uh Phil or lovely podcast engineer.
Speaker 1: And then the esteemed author John MoU Allen, who we
Speaker 1: had on I guess three years ago or so to
Speaker 1: discuss his book The Wild Ones. Yes, nailed it was Bay.
Speaker 1: We're gonna discuss Oh no, let's not tell him what
Speaker 1: which book we're gonna discuss. Do like a little suspense
Speaker 1: a little bit. It just Yanni's dad wants to know
Speaker 1: who's there, but he doesn't want to know. Why are
Speaker 1: we leaving out the mystery guests for now? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: just to keep yann his dad at the edge and see,
Speaker 1: just just keep him irritated so there is a little
Speaker 1: surprise for people coming later on. I just got home
Speaker 1: last night from Mexico. We went down for spring break.
Speaker 1: We go every year we go to Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I could say every year now because for a lot
Speaker 1: of years we've done this. We go down to East Cape,
Speaker 1: so southern Baja Peninsula and fish and just sit on
Speaker 1: the beach and stuff. It was fun. But I almost
Speaker 1: got I'm almost not here. The reason I bring this
Speaker 1: up because you now, right, you have to show that
Speaker 1: you haven't had COVID to get on a plane. And
Speaker 1: they got this big testing facility set up at the
Speaker 1: airport Baha. It's like a big tent. You get results
Speaker 1: in thirty minutes. Uh. The tricky part is, you know
Speaker 1: there's false positives and stuff from the thing. So it's
Speaker 1: little unnerving. If you have a family of five, like you're,
Speaker 1: you feel like you're rolling the damn dice. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you and you've had it, Well, that's the trouble. So
Speaker 1: I had my my paperwork from the health department, the
Speaker 1: county Health department, and I had my paper all I
Speaker 1: had a official stamp on it, official signature on it,
Speaker 1: and it said like what day you know, whatever, what
Speaker 1: day you had it, and this and that, and it
Speaker 1: says you can resume normal activities. In my case, you
Speaker 1: can resume more normal activities January. Um. But Delta, who
Speaker 1: I'm normally a fan of uh won't accept it, And
Speaker 1: they said, or you need a letter saying that you're
Speaker 1: cleared for travel, And I'm like, but it says right here,
Speaker 1: I can resume normal activities in January. Nowhere can you
Speaker 1: find point to me a website that says that spells
Speaker 1: out that requirement that leveling isn't normal activity. I'm not
Speaker 1: putting this on you, Brody. I just mean, like, no
Speaker 1: one could point. So it's Sunday, I can't get hold
Speaker 1: of me. You call, you call your doctor's office, and
Speaker 1: it'll be like, you know, if it's an emergency, call whatever,
Speaker 1: and in the fight's gonna leave. My whole family now
Speaker 1: has their tests. So I go down, I go to
Speaker 1: the tent and and you know, it's my faults. I
Speaker 1: don't speak Spanish, so I'm not I'm not blaming anybody.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm not blaming anyone but myself. But it's
Speaker 1: very hard to convey my concerns. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: do the rapid test. And the thing is once you've
Speaker 1: had it, like you can get these residual positives. So
Speaker 1: I take the test and be like, I'm either going
Speaker 1: to be in Mexico for a couple of weeks fishing, yeah,
Speaker 1: minus my family or and thankfully it came back negative
Speaker 1: and I was able to get on the damn plane.
Speaker 1: So you were trying to say, like, listen, I need
Speaker 1: a test, but here's my unique situation, and they're like,
Speaker 1: you need a test or you don't need I was like,
Speaker 1: what do you think? What like, what's your take on
Speaker 1: this situation? You know, can you like barely swab my nose?
Speaker 1: You know? And they man, they were just it was
Speaker 1: very binary, oh for sure, but just gets hilarious because
Speaker 1: you could suck out the language part. Put you on
Speaker 1: any place in the planet in that situation, and I
Speaker 1: guarantee that person is gonna be like, bro, I'm not
Speaker 1: here to think about your situation. I'm here to swab
Speaker 1: you or not. I want to know if it was
Speaker 1: the family upset or were they just ready to leave
Speaker 1: you there? Uh yeah, I don't know. It wasn't like that.
Speaker 1: What the kids were that they get they get a
Speaker 1: little uh, they get a little anxious about stuff like that.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll be like whenever see each other again.
Speaker 1: They they were getting anxious, especially the oldest one. He
Speaker 1: kind of he was tracking what was he was tracking
Speaker 1: what was going on and was not liking what he's hearing.
Speaker 1: He's not quite old enough to be like, listen, I
Speaker 1: have a boarding routine, and I just need to get
Speaker 1: into my routine. You deal with you, Yanni. Remember how
Speaker 1: I was telling you about all about um this thing
Speaker 1: in Germany that that I I was that I didn't
Speaker 1: really know what I was talking about, but I had heard.
Speaker 1: I had heard that in Germany you put your dog
Speaker 1: in a barrel with a raccoon and they du get out.
Speaker 1: Are you remembering this? That's right? Okay, well the guy
Speaker 1: and I said, and I got around equating this to NAVDA,
Speaker 1: which is the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association of
Speaker 1: which my friend Ronnie is you know, he's always been
Speaker 1: very involved there. Um and and the president. I remember,
Speaker 1: I just want to sing clear my name. I remembering.
Speaker 1: I remember being a little incredulous, little skeptical of your statement. Well, oh,
Speaker 1: i'd heard this German thing a bunch for me. No,
Speaker 1: not from you. I don't want to get into how
Speaker 1: I know about it, but I know about it, and
Speaker 1: I know what's here's listen, typically associated with drop stars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I don't know what that is. It's
Speaker 1: one of those dogs. It's like a shade of a
Speaker 1: hair of a difference between a German short haired pointer Navidad.
Speaker 1: This is Ryan Callahan. You can come on after me
Speaker 1: for this statement, my apology, and then you come with him.
Speaker 1: You guys got to back up about why you put
Speaker 1: your dog in a barrel with it, Pam. It's called
Speaker 1: the sharpness like a barrel better a sharpness test here.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into it like I didn't
Speaker 1: make this up. I don't wake up one day and
Speaker 1: make up there's such a thing to fight. I believe
Speaker 1: it's something people would do to Why would they do
Speaker 1: it though? That's why I'm saying. They call it like that.
Speaker 1: He's got them these that he's blood. He got sharpness,
Speaker 1: sharpness which is like a which is a which is
Speaker 1: a soft term for having a lot of gird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want spirit, you want your coon dog running
Speaker 1: away from a raccoon. It's just a way to test
Speaker 1: like that. That dog is the high test fighter. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I did not Ronnie. Ronnie had explained to us that
Speaker 1: historically when they hunted farms game farms in Europe, they
Speaker 1: wanted their upland bird dogs if they came upon a
Speaker 1: vermin to kill it. Well, he's coming on the show
Speaker 1: pretty soon. Can you remember that Ranny could talk about
Speaker 1: this whole thing, because he's got me all in trump, possums, raccoons, skunks,
Speaker 1: egg eaten things, feral cats, anyhow, he were it in.
Speaker 1: He's fired up, very friendly. David Trehan Tryan Treyhan, President, President,
Speaker 1: North American Versaal Hunting Dog Association, wants us to know
Speaker 1: that this sort of thing, he said, I made what
Speaker 1: sounded like a vague, factually incorrect reference to the sharpness
Speaker 1: test used in some German testing systems that are unrelated
Speaker 1: in NAVDA, And he doesn't know where I'm getting this
Speaker 1: whole barrels with the raccoon thing anyway. So he's like,
Speaker 1: you got that wrong, and then you got the fact
Speaker 1: that this has something to do with NAVEDA wrong. Says
Speaker 1: it's neither condoned by NAVDA, nor, to the best of
Speaker 1: my knowledge, practiced by any of our members. We're concerned
Speaker 1: that listeners who are unfamiliar with NAVDA, our goals and
Speaker 1: our mission might come away from that discussion thinking that
Speaker 1: has done at all, or worse, thinking that it's common
Speaker 1: practice and that would be truly unfortunate. And he goes
Speaker 1: on to say they have eighty five chapters, ten thousand men, birds,
Speaker 1: US and Canada. And although some aspects of our testing
Speaker 1: system are based loosely on those used in Germany, NAVI
Speaker 1: does not evaluate dogs performance related the hunting mammals of
Speaker 1: any species. Rather, we focus exclusively on upland and waterfowl hunting.
Speaker 1: And they are dedicated to treating all animals, including dogs
Speaker 1: and game, with respect and dignity. So remember and remember
Speaker 1: that show Happy Days. Fonzie was he was he wasn't
Speaker 1: able to say wrong. He'd be like, I was ru Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was wrong, Like I was wrong. Hey,
Speaker 1: you corrected it, but you know that was wrong. I
Speaker 1: should still a little bit. It's not fair. I was wrong. Okayky,
Speaker 1: I'll tell them about the moss balls. Oh boy, m okay.
Speaker 1: So apparently if you're an aquarium enthusiast, you buy these
Speaker 1: moss balls to drop in your aquarium tank. Um. And
Speaker 1: this is something that's distributed through like all these national
Speaker 1: pet store chains. And it was found that there are
Speaker 1: some zebra muscles inside moss balls. Zebra muscles proliferate at
Speaker 1: a high higher rate. They are are bad for native ecosystems.
Speaker 1: Is a non native species like like transforming, like what
Speaker 1: zebra muscles in the Great Lakes. If if, if you're
Speaker 1: worried about wolves in Colorado, you should be worried about
Speaker 1: zebra muscles in your neck of the woods. But there
Speaker 1: are Great Lates zebra muscles sympathizers. Yeah, Okay, here's one scenario.
Speaker 1: With all to respect, there are, yeah, but the Great Lakes.
Speaker 1: So they're like an experimental aquarium anyway, It's like it's
Speaker 1: already all made. Never mind, go ahead, I'm staying out.
Speaker 1: I'm done. I'm done. I'm gonna talk about this rabbit fever.
Speaker 1: Deal with this little girl. That's it. Um muscles, Right,
Speaker 1: they filter feed. They eat zo plankton and phytoplankton. So
Speaker 1: in systems where we see maybe just dirty water, that
Speaker 1: can oftentimes be a shipload of food that all of
Speaker 1: our fish, including game fish, when they're at a very
Speaker 1: young age, they depend on that zo plankton phytoplankton to
Speaker 1: get large enough to where they can then start being
Speaker 1: more fun fish to catch. If you're just worried about
Speaker 1: game species, right, um what zebra muscles can do is
Speaker 1: they proliferate so heavily. They can clean a system so
Speaker 1: much to where that water is crystal clear and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, how pretty the lake is. Must be
Speaker 1: must be good, must be good talking, but it can
Speaker 1: be very very scarce on life. And um, then you
Speaker 1: can get in all this other stuff that like the sun,
Speaker 1: sun's rays are penetrating way deeper in the water calling
Speaker 1: than they used to be, and then other things that
Speaker 1: can proliferate and the oxygen can go way down in
Speaker 1: the lake and then everything dies. Okay, vegetation, You get
Speaker 1: aquatic vegetation in places you never had it before. Yes,
Speaker 1: and then it's only suitable for what always lives, which
Speaker 1: is carp um. Anyway, your aquarium moth balls, moss balls, okay,
Speaker 1: old moss balls. Don't I would think, don't just pitch
Speaker 1: them out in the yard. I was calling them zebra
Speaker 1: balls on the podcast. I thought that was cute. Um,
Speaker 1: don't pitch them out in the yard or just throw
Speaker 1: them away. If you have purchased some of these things,
Speaker 1: I'm sure is there a brand name? Like, what is there?
Speaker 1: I didn't see a brand name, but these are apparently
Speaker 1: like ubiquitous amongst uh you know, national pet store chains
Speaker 1: and things like that. So uh, take them, throw them
Speaker 1: all in the freezer for a good twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: or like most people do, we'll just forget about them
Speaker 1: for several months, and then then by the next time
Speaker 1: you come across him, then you're cool to throw them away. Um.
Speaker 1: Or you know, you can like soak them in bleach
Speaker 1: um and then throw them away. But the the worst
Speaker 1: thing you can do is like don't flush them down
Speaker 1: the drain or throw them out in the storm drain
Speaker 1: or something like that. One of the broody was talking
Speaker 1: about zebra muscle sympathizers. I'll tell you who's not is
Speaker 1: industry in general, because like filtration systems and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Uh uh yeah, they clog them up. You're water power plants,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I don't know what the actual number is,
Speaker 1: but it's like a billion dollars a year just managing
Speaker 1: of the things, yeah, cleaning cleaning them off. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: like Montana, you know there's water, there's watercraft check stations
Speaker 1: all over the place, uh in the summer months, and
Speaker 1: one of the things they're looking for are zebra mussels inside. Um.
Speaker 1: The the building area of your watercraft. And then if
Speaker 1: you look at this stuff online, you'll always see like these,
Speaker 1: um kind of stereotypical pictures of zebra muscles being stuck
Speaker 1: all over old boat props and the bottoms of boats
Speaker 1: and and uh and then like in the Great Lakes especially,
Speaker 1: you get like on the lock systems. Uh. Just yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody's making good money cleaning off zebra muscles. So if
Speaker 1: you got moss balls, bleach them, bleach, bleach your balls. Uh. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is for Easter. Tu Larima story for Easter. A
Speaker 1: guy a listener wrote in Um, he says he's got
Speaker 1: a public service announcement, so he's apparently a Tonka truck enthusiast.
Speaker 1: That's how this starts. Correct, He's a Tika truck enthusiast
Speaker 1: and wakes up and checks on Craigslist and sees that
Speaker 1: there's a kid selling a bunch of Tonka trucks. Sow
Speaker 1: him being a Tonka enthusiast. Um, it's funny. I we
Speaker 1: have a lot of Tika trucks, and I as a kid,
Speaker 1: and I imagined my mother's attic being sort of this
Speaker 1: repository of amazing vintage perfect Tonka trucks. It must just
Speaker 1: be up there, and I got my kids pretty excited
Speaker 1: for a trip to Grandma's. Went up There's just not
Speaker 1: what I remember. Did you get rid of them? Are?
Speaker 1: They just was like by a bunch of tiker trucks.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's one that's not a tiger truck. It's
Speaker 1: got three tires. I'm not sure what happened over the
Speaker 1: last thirty years. It's not the attic I imagined it being. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's a time enthusiasts. So he goes to the guy.
Speaker 1: He goes by. He goes to this kid's house by
Speaker 1: the time of trucks, makes his purchase, and the kids
Speaker 1: mentions like, hey, I also raise rabbits, So meat rabbits.
Speaker 1: The guy raises the meat rabbits. So he buys a
Speaker 1: meat rabbit and the trucks and brings the rabbit and
Speaker 1: the trucks home. But the meat rabbit he gets to
Speaker 1: a seven year old and the meat rabbit scratches. The
Speaker 1: seven year old barely drew blood. Everyone goes about their business.
Speaker 1: Now imagine this now so we know where this is going.
Speaker 1: But but picture that he gets a rabbit rabbit scratch
Speaker 1: as a kid twenty days goes by. Her lift notes
Speaker 1: swell up. She gets a high fee. Her go to
Speaker 1: the hospital in Oregon. They keep focusing on has she
Speaker 1: been scratched by a cat? Cat scratched? Fever? Damn furs?
Speaker 1: Time man, I got it, so keep asking about cats. Um.
Speaker 1: They give her some antibiotics, do nothing. Lymph nodes grow
Speaker 1: to the size of an egg. They do a surgery
Speaker 1: on the poor girl. They remove her tonsils, They remove
Speaker 1: her lymph nodes. They leave a three inch scar on
Speaker 1: her neck. A month goes by, the fever returns, the
Speaker 1: lymph nodes swell again. They go to you see Davis again,
Speaker 1: you've been scratched by a cat again? They say, No,
Speaker 1: I forgot to mention this in Oregon where you scratched
Speaker 1: by a cat? No, but she was scratched by a rabbit.
Speaker 1: You see Davis where you scratched by a cat? No,
Speaker 1: but she was scratched by a rabbit. All of a
Speaker 1: sudden to realize that this poor girl has had to
Speaker 1: lurma and it was not diagnosed. So they do more surgery. Relieved,
Speaker 1: removed two more lymph nodes. A cluster of necrotic dead
Speaker 1: lymph nodes deep inside her neck, some dead tissue and
Speaker 1: skin around the area put around the right by right
Speaker 1: antibiotic savor life. They nick a nerve that controls or smiles,
Speaker 1: and now her smiles off. It's crooked. She's got a
Speaker 1: six inch scar below the three inch scar. The guy's
Speaker 1: father in law goes and kills the rabbit. Later, someone
Speaker 1: from the Center for Disease Control and Sacramento calls to
Speaker 1: interview the family. They thought she maybe had plague, doesn't
Speaker 1: and then expresses disappointment in the family for having killed
Speaker 1: the rabbit, and they hung up on the person. Yeah, horrible,
Speaker 1: guy says. With Easter coming up soon, I know people
Speaker 1: be buying rabbits for their kids, and they should be
Speaker 1: informed of this disease. Now, we talked about to Lorimi
Speaker 1: extensively in the Wilderness Skills book, all the different ways
Speaker 1: you can get it. You know, there was a guy,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we mentioned this. Have you mentioned
Speaker 1: this in the book? A guy that hit a desiccated rabbit,
Speaker 1: a dead desiccated rabbit with a lawnmower and contracted a
Speaker 1: airborne to lorimi and his lungs. Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: may have. And there's actually I think we mentioned that
Speaker 1: there there has been talk of weaponizing because you can
Speaker 1: arisolize it scary. This guy says, um, this will give you.
Speaker 1: He says, this will give you something besides c w
Speaker 1: D to talk about. Then he goes on to say,
Speaker 1: if you have any health issues, he says, you know,
Speaker 1: call your local trapper before seeking medical. I wonder if
Speaker 1: they wipe out the uh the other if they went
Speaker 1: to the kid's Yeah, I would think so. He probably
Speaker 1: went back and he was probably selling Tonka trucks with
Speaker 1: a rabbit the bag. Oh man, that's all that story is. Man,
Speaker 1: watch out for tik trucks. But in your long and
Speaker 1: illustrious cotton tail hunting career, how many have you come
Speaker 1: across that you suspected of having to know? I don't
Speaker 1: check them, but you know what, I used to hunt
Speaker 1: cotton tails with a guy. They had gotten to Loremia
Speaker 1: from cleaning cotton tails. I make a point of looking
Speaker 1: at the liver. I've never seen what I haven't checked.
Speaker 1: It was a bad one. This guy's name was Ken.
Speaker 1: He was a hay farmer and he had gotten to
Speaker 1: Loremi and his old man got to Loremia. And he's
Speaker 1: still hunted rabbits. What's the lever supposed to look like?
Speaker 1: Like yellow or white spots? I believe. I used to
Speaker 1: make rabbit tempera with for ken, make rice, cook a
Speaker 1: bunch of vegetables, make a sweet and sour sauce. Cut
Speaker 1: the rabbit little strips. Make a little temper rabbit strips.
Speaker 1: Put it on there. Don't sweet and sour sauce all
Speaker 1: over it sounds good. He liked it. Yeah, something fried
Speaker 1: with a bunch of sugar on it. Yeah, most people
Speaker 1: are gonna dig that one. There's also that rabbit hammorrhagic disease.
Speaker 1: It's still going around right now, which which is nasty.
Speaker 1: But um, that's just another observation thing. You know, call
Speaker 1: your local department and Natural Resources or fishing game and
Speaker 1: let them. Yeah, there's a lot of good county by
Speaker 1: county maps where you can see, like if all of
Speaker 1: you've seen all kinds of dead rabbits, it will show
Speaker 1: this new hammorrhagic thing cruising around. Yeah, we should talk
Speaker 1: about that more extensively sometimes. All right, John Wellmi ready, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: last time, tell about briefly recap the book we had
Speaker 1: you on about last time. Last time I was here
Speaker 1: talking about a book called Old Ones, which was about
Speaker 1: endangered species conservation. That's the most boring way to put it, um,
Speaker 1: and the more interesting way to put it is, it's
Speaker 1: sort of about how America has treated and thought about
Speaker 1: its wildlife throughout its history. So, you know, why, why
Speaker 1: are we a country that at the beginning of one
Speaker 1: century we want to kill all the bears and at
Speaker 1: the end of another century when we want to make
Speaker 1: sure that the bears don't go extinct? Um. So there
Speaker 1: was a lot of on the ground reporting about the
Speaker 1: kind of byzantine efforts to save the last you know,
Speaker 1: Lang's metal mark butterfly at an industrial site in California
Speaker 1: and things like that, and then a lot of history
Speaker 1: about uh sort of you know, different eccentric characters throughout
Speaker 1: American history have had, you know, very unique ideas and
Speaker 1: and sometimes progressive ideas about are sort of obligations to
Speaker 1: UH to wildlife. And in that conversation you hinted at
Speaker 1: because I think you were working on this back then,
Speaker 1: you were in this book. You're working on your book
Speaker 1: that became This Is Chance. Yeah, I've been working on that.
Speaker 1: That book, This Has Chance took me about six years
Speaker 1: of work Um. So I've been just amassing, you know,
Speaker 1: historical research for years and years, so it was very
Speaker 1: much always on my mind, and I probably you know,
Speaker 1: took any opportunity I could just start downloading the things
Speaker 1: I was I was finding out at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you started working on tell people what this is.
Speaker 1: This is Chances. And then when you tell, like, explain
Speaker 1: what you were, what you were getting at when you
Speaker 1: started working on it, and and and how it kind
Speaker 1: of became different than what you thought. Yeah, well this
Speaker 1: is Chances, a book about the Great Alaska earthquake in
Speaker 1: nine four sometimes it was the Good Friday earthquake. Um.
Speaker 1: It happened on Good Friday evening, right as the sun
Speaker 1: was going down. Um. And the book basically tells the
Speaker 1: story in in pretty intimate detail. Um, just the narrative
Speaker 1: of these first three days in the city of Anchorage.
Speaker 1: So this was a time, this is just a few
Speaker 1: years after Alaska statehood, when Anchorage was uh kind of
Speaker 1: you know, beginning to feel like a real metropolis in Alaska.
Speaker 1: I sort of saw itself as as fulfilling the promise
Speaker 1: of of what Alaska was gonna be. And suddenly you
Speaker 1: have this nine point two magnitude earthquake that shook the
Speaker 1: city for four and a half minutes and you know,
Speaker 1: just causing all kinds of destruction, but also really upending
Speaker 1: people's you know, sense of of their of their community.
Speaker 1: That that's the part that that's one of these that
Speaker 1: blows my mind about the the earthquake, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest earthquake in US history, right, Yeah, that's correct, the
Speaker 1: second most powerful one ever measured, and the and the
Speaker 1: most powerful one in the US. But the fact that
Speaker 1: I felt one once, that was like it was over
Speaker 1: before you could tell what you were feeling. But the
Speaker 1: fact that that lasted longer than a rock song, you'd
Speaker 1: almost like settle into it. It is kind of it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine. Makes four and a half minutes seemed
Speaker 1: very long, very long. Yeah, that was definitely the first
Speaker 1: thing that grabbed me about it, one of the first,
Speaker 1: maybe the first thing I found about the earthquake, which
Speaker 1: I had never heard of. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: on the East Coast. It's you know, happened fifteen years
Speaker 1: before I was born, or fourteen years before I was born.
Speaker 1: It just it just kind of went over my head
Speaker 1: that there had been this this disaster. So one of
Speaker 1: the first things I found was just this big report,
Speaker 1: you know, four hundred page report um of individual people's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, recollections of this is what was happening to
Speaker 1: me during those four and a half minutes. And you
Speaker 1: see a lot of like mental gymnastics of you know,
Speaker 1: first not like you're saying, not knowing what the hell
Speaker 1: is happening, And that can go on for a minute.
Speaker 1: You know, thirty people think it's it's the Cold War,
Speaker 1: people think it's a nuclear attack or whatever it is
Speaker 1: Judgment day, and then there's a kind of bargaining phase.
Speaker 1: You know, they're coming up with different different explanations, and
Speaker 1: some people, you know, just it seemed like they just
Speaker 1: kind of gave up hope that that they were ever
Speaker 1: gonna kind of make sense of this thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there was enough time that you could kind of go
Speaker 1: through you know, certainty and fatalism and all these kinds
Speaker 1: of emotions and and just lock onto these these different
Speaker 1: bizarre images, uh that as your mind's trying to to
Speaker 1: make sense of them, trying to make some kind of
Speaker 1: story about what's happening to you. John, I have a question, Yeah,
Speaker 1: did anybody anyone of those reports ever say that, oh,
Speaker 1: at minute three, I just settled in. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're definitely I don't think anyone put it so explicitly,
Speaker 1: but you definitely you could. There were There were definitely
Speaker 1: accounts where it was like, you know, I tried to
Speaker 1: hold on to this and that didn't work. So and
Speaker 1: they would go through four or five different things, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh or you know, at first I was trying
Speaker 1: to keep my car from jerking into the opposite lane,
Speaker 1: but then the steering wheel was wrenching my wrists and
Speaker 1: that seemed dangerous. So then I decided to you know,
Speaker 1: hunker down here. So yeah, there was It's it's amazing,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean if I recommend you actually just
Speaker 1: sit with a stop watch for four and a half
Speaker 1: minutes and see what that feels like, because you can
Speaker 1: go crazy when the earth's not shaking, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's the that psychological part of it, the
Speaker 1: surreality of it and the disorientation. Um. I still can't
Speaker 1: really get my head around, you know. When you you
Speaker 1: mentioned growing up not knowing about that earthquake. Um, it's
Speaker 1: still lived. You know, my brother lives an anchorage has
Speaker 1: been there for a very long time. Now, Um, it's
Speaker 1: still almost like, I don't want to say it's a
Speaker 1: daily part of life, but it's it's just like it's
Speaker 1: the earthquake. And you know, we used to go hunt
Speaker 1: ducks in a place that used to be agricultural fields
Speaker 1: but it fell whatever eight ft and became a marsh.
Speaker 1: And there's still pieces of equipment and stuff sticking out
Speaker 1: of the water. You know. It's like people just like
Speaker 1: talk about it as as this thing, and there's still
Speaker 1: all the trees from the areas that slumped into the ocean,
Speaker 1: trees sticking up. Yeah. Yeah, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: you're probably talking about Portage. There was this whole, yeah,
Speaker 1: a whole a whole little community that just exactly just
Speaker 1: sunk and got inundated by by the salt water. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's what struck me to when I
Speaker 1: went to Anchorage. There's there's places that you know, they
Speaker 1: just couldn't really rebuild in the way they wanted to,
Speaker 1: you know. So the there's an earthquake park Um, which
Speaker 1: was basically the luxury neighborhood of Anchorage at the time,
Speaker 1: that just sloughed off this ridge onto the shore line
Speaker 1: and now now it's a park you can hike through.
Speaker 1: They've got little interpretive signs and things. Um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very much a part of the identity of the city.
Speaker 1: I think. Um, it's a city that is really proud
Speaker 1: of its history, and it doesn't have you know, as
Speaker 1: long or you know, as crowded of a history as
Speaker 1: some other uh you know, cities on the in America.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a real touchstone for people. One of
Speaker 1: the things I liked about the book is explains a
Speaker 1: little bit about I know, it's like it's hard, we'll
Speaker 1: get to what the book narrows in on, but uh, Richter,
Speaker 1: like you you always here. You know the Richter scale.
Speaker 1: And I remember in early college I had to take
Speaker 1: geology one O, one or something and they explain how
Speaker 1: that scale is exponential. So a nine is ten times
Speaker 1: worse than a than an eight. Um. But I guess
Speaker 1: you thought you thought I was worth putting in your
Speaker 1: book talk about what Richter, like, the guy Richter, what
Speaker 1: he was doing, and how this earthquake kind of played
Speaker 1: into his work and life. Yeah, I love that you
Speaker 1: asked about that. I mean, I know that as a writer,
Speaker 1: you know, you probably read that. I knew exactly what
Speaker 1: what was going on, which was, you know, there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of science in the book. But I started
Speaker 1: reading about Richter and I was like, I gotta get
Speaker 1: this guy in here somehow. I was like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: like doing a book. You sometimes you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: care how I'm jamming this in. Yeah, I don't care
Speaker 1: where I put it. That was definitely it. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's okay, I'll give him two pages. Okay,
Speaker 1: oh you don't like that, editor, have at one page?
Speaker 1: Al right, how about half a page? But yeah, but
Speaker 1: I got him in there, and then you of course
Speaker 1: zeroed right in on it. And that's the first first
Speaker 1: thing we're gonna talk about. But yeah, Charles Richter. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about the guy. But he wasn't
Speaker 1: He was an odd duck. Um he was he he um.
Speaker 1: You know, I sort of uh, I sort of had
Speaker 1: this image of him as this kind of like, uh,
Speaker 1: someone who's exceptionally good at the science he's doing and
Speaker 1: kind of exceptionally bad at every other facet of of
Speaker 1: social existence, you know. And uh he he was in
Speaker 1: a kind of polyamorous relationship for a while and wrote
Speaker 1: a lot. You know, was seemed not so sensitive about
Speaker 1: it and have the great greatest sensitivities about he was
Speaker 1: dappled in nudism, I believe. Um. In any case, he
Speaker 1: wasn't we all yeah, well when you know every time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he wrote some really really bad poetry which I
Speaker 1: had the pleasure of of reading. Um explained the polyamorous relationship. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't actually know that I can go
Speaker 1: too too much into death and that at the moment
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. No, I just don't remember all the details,
Speaker 1: remember that there there was a lot of there was
Speaker 1: a lot of consternation from his wife that he lived with.
Speaker 1: In my memory that you know, he he wasn't really
Speaker 1: good at at juggling everything as far as I remember. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but the thing that I the thing that
Speaker 1: I loved was that he enters the story. This is
Speaker 1: why I could justify putting him in the book there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you're that he enters the story in this very
Speaker 1: kind of representative moment where he's you know, he works
Speaker 1: down in southern California running his lab, and he's sitting
Speaker 1: at home about he and his wife have cocktails poured
Speaker 1: and they're turning on the radio to listen to a
Speaker 1: broadcast of a concert, and he's got this giant dude
Speaker 1: that I'm sorry, but that just doesn't happen anymore. No, No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. I mean it kind of I feel like
Speaker 1: it's kind of happened this last this last year a
Speaker 1: little bit. We're kind of all our grandparents sitting in
Speaker 1: our chairs side by side. You know what's on the
Speaker 1: list tonight? Hunt um. But yeah, that's that's the kind
Speaker 1: of the kind of a mood that they were setting that.
Speaker 1: It was a really mid century, you know, elegant living room.
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of it and kind of this uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a gorgeous southern California home. And he has
Speaker 1: um been pissing off his wife by um installing a
Speaker 1: bunch of scientific instruments in his living room, um, right
Speaker 1: in the middle of the living room so that he can,
Speaker 1: you know, measure earthquakes and stuff. And she does not
Speaker 1: like this, although he in his telling she's she's grown
Speaker 1: accustomed to it and is fine with it now, but
Speaker 1: you kind of have to question that. And they're setting
Speaker 1: them down with their their concert, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the needle starts starts jumping, measuring the great Alaska earthquake,
Speaker 1: you know, without out a couple thousand miles away, and
Speaker 1: uh he uh. He turns to his his his wife,
Speaker 1: and he says, oh, that's a that's a great earthquake,
Speaker 1: you know, and and she and she doesn't really she
Speaker 1: doesn't respond, you know, so because because he's talking over
Speaker 1: the concert. Um so, but I like that moment, I guess.
Speaker 1: And the reason why I felt justified to cram it
Speaker 1: into the book is because I tell that that little
Speaker 1: anecdote just as a kind of end note to a
Speaker 1: kind of panorama of all of the destruction and chaos
Speaker 1: that's happening in Alaska, and then reverberating out, you know,
Speaker 1: until it's getting smaller, you know, these actual the shaking
Speaker 1: is getting smaller and smaller, and people registering is getting
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller, until finally you come all the way
Speaker 1: down the coast, uh, and you've kind of just got
Speaker 1: this dweeb in his living room just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: pausing between SIPs of his cocktail, saying, oh, look at that.
Speaker 1: You know, something's a shaking, you know, So that's somewhere exactly.
Speaker 1: It seemed to me to reveal something, um, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of profound about suffering. I guess something that happened
Speaker 1: during the concert, right, remember that concert? Because why did
Speaker 1: so few people die? Yeah? That's a really good because
Speaker 1: it seemed like you know, and reading i'm it plays
Speaker 1: out when you're reading it, it plays out. Yanni wouldn't
Speaker 1: like it because you don't really know what's gonna you know,
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen. The daughters will be irritated, but you're
Speaker 1: thinking that, uh, that out like thousands of dead people. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the whole luxury neighborhood ends up on the beach.
Speaker 1: That is like like literally like someone cleared a table
Speaker 1: and said, all the houses down off the edge of
Speaker 1: the table. Yeah, yeah, it's um. I mean that's the
Speaker 1: key point for me was that it took days to
Speaker 1: realize that fewer people had died than anyone imagined. That
Speaker 1: to me was the real drama of this. This story
Speaker 1: was like calling their way back from this complete disorientation
Speaker 1: to just figure out the most basic information about what
Speaker 1: just had happened. Right, you know, how many of us
Speaker 1: are dead? That seems like a pretty fundamental thing to
Speaker 1: get your head around after something like this. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of different reasons. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: the there there were you know, there was just just
Speaker 1: over hundred deaths of numbers kind of up in the
Speaker 1: air still, but UM, and a lot of these deaths
Speaker 1: were the majority of them were actually in um Native
Speaker 1: Alaskan villages that just had a tsunami from tsunamis resulting
Speaker 1: tsunamis UM. You know, the entire villages were just kind
Speaker 1: of a race by those waves. UM. And so you
Speaker 1: had UM you know, sadly that was where a lion's
Speaker 1: share of of the deaths were in Anchorage itself. The
Speaker 1: story is a lot more complicated because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it was Alaska's you know, greatest metropolis.
Speaker 1: It was also not a very densely populated place, right
Speaker 1: and there weren't a lot of tall buildings at all.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of you know, small, single family wooden structures,
Speaker 1: which which fared you know, not exactly well, but you
Speaker 1: didn't have complete you know, pancaking all over the place. UM.
Speaker 1: And then the other the other reason, which I found
Speaker 1: most fascinating was a lot of people survived because there
Speaker 1: was this great burst of energy um, all around the
Speaker 1: city right after the shaking stopped to go find people
Speaker 1: in the package. So, um, you know this search and rescue,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean to even call it, that makes
Speaker 1: it sound way more organized and methodical than it was.
Speaker 1: At first. It was just this scramble to peel people out.
Speaker 1: You know, you had people just passer by outside the J. C.
Speaker 1: Penny Building working in teams bringing in tow trucks and
Speaker 1: other equipment, cutting torches to get people out of cars
Speaker 1: that had been buried in the rubble of the collapsing facade.
Speaker 1: So whereas in a lot you know, a lot of disasters,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the debts are people that
Speaker 1: you know, they're not killed immediately by the disaster itself,
Speaker 1: but you know they're they're killed by some you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're trapped or something like that. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people are being peeled out right away and taking
Speaker 1: to get medical care. Um. So it's it's a much
Speaker 1: more complicated story than that. But those are some of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I that I really latched onto as
Speaker 1: being kind of illustrated with what was happening in the city.
Speaker 1: You know, John, I don't know, it kind of surprised
Speaker 1: me too. I'm trying to think of out why I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say it surprised me. It surprised me a
Speaker 1: little bit because in a lot of ways the books
Speaker 1: seem to have this It had almost the um libertarian ethos,
Speaker 1: where it would be that all these um like structures
Speaker 1: we put together, you know, like like organizational things and
Speaker 1: official dumb and bureaucracy, right, so that we're all set
Speaker 1: when ship hits the fan. But in this case, you're
Speaker 1: going you almost make this kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: it almost seems like you're enthusiastic about the fact that
Speaker 1: that stuff doesn't work, and what does work is just
Speaker 1: people like doing what needs to be done. And it
Speaker 1: kind of seems strange to see you. You know, this
Speaker 1: is like prepay when you wrote it was pre pandemic.
Speaker 1: You know, I wonder if you'd look at it differently
Speaker 1: now when you see that that you know, like how
Speaker 1: we've responded to the last year in terms of our
Speaker 1: reliance on bureaucracy and government and following the guidelines in
Speaker 1: this book being like, dude, guidelines don't work, man, at
Speaker 1: least here, And then you know, I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: something that I've been I've been thinking about a lot, obviously,
Speaker 1: and and to be honest, it's not it's not as
Speaker 1: easy to resolve for me as it as it might seem.
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of So there's a there's
Speaker 1: a big portion of the book that's about sort of sociology,
Speaker 1: sociologist who studied disasters, and and there's a great book
Speaker 1: by Rebecca soln It called The Paradise Built in Hill.
Speaker 1: I don't know if any of you guys have read that,
Speaker 1: but it's it's explicitly about that. It's just about this
Speaker 1: field of sociology. That's that's showing what you're talking about
Speaker 1: that you know, it's people banded together and do right.
Speaker 1: And I remember I know Rebecca and she she had
Speaker 1: started working on that book. She published a piece, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of about that premise in Harper's I think, and
Speaker 1: it came out the week of Hurricane Katrina. And I
Speaker 1: remember talking with her then and and she's she's putting
Speaker 1: forward the thesis, you know, people are are good, they
Speaker 1: band together, and on the TV, you know you're seeing
Speaker 1: just you know, kind of chaos and full and I
Speaker 1: think she had the presence of mind to know that um,
Speaker 1: you know, she's looking at it in a on a
Speaker 1: different time scale, and that also a lot of that
Speaker 1: media stuff is uh is incorrect when it first comes out,
Speaker 1: and it took her years to piece together the story
Speaker 1: the kind of true reporting the show that that her
Speaker 1: initial insect is true. I don't know why I'm I'm
Speaker 1: going on about her, except for just I think she's
Speaker 1: an amazing writer. Uh. You know, my book owes a
Speaker 1: debt to her, to her book, But in any case, UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right absolutely that what's happening in the
Speaker 1: book is you have a lot of Cold war bureaucratic
Speaker 1: structures in Anchorage and elsewhere that are set up to
Speaker 1: handle disasters, but what they're really set up to handle
Speaker 1: is like nuclear war, and no one set up to
Speaker 1: handle nuclear war, you know. So, so you have UM
Speaker 1: in the place of these um kind of official agencies
Speaker 1: kind of unraveling or being slow to adapt to the situation,
Speaker 1: you have endo visual people UM, including Genie Chance, who's
Speaker 1: sort of the main character of the book, who are
Speaker 1: who are kind of rising up and meeting the problem
Speaker 1: in front of them. And then not only are they
Speaker 1: meeting the problem in front of them, but then they're
Speaker 1: banding together in forming kind of ad hoc organizations to
Speaker 1: solve even bigger problems. And it just keeps going like
Speaker 1: that all weekend. And I think that is absolutely true,
Speaker 1: and that's absolutely characteristic of what tends to happen in disasters. Um.
Speaker 1: You see that when people have studied the responses you know,
Speaker 1: in all kinds of different kinds of natural disasters all
Speaker 1: around the world. Um, what we saw this year, I
Speaker 1: think is, um, you know a lot of that, you know,
Speaker 1: and we can we can talk about that too, because um,
Speaker 1: I've actually been involved with a group like that, um
Speaker 1: where I live. But UM, but I think what you're
Speaker 1: referring to is we've we've also seen, uh, you know this,
Speaker 1: there's some elements of a disaster that only government can address.
Speaker 1: Right those people are gonna kick in. The ordinary people
Speaker 1: are gonna kick in right away and start digging someone
Speaker 1: out of rubble, or organizing search and rescue or getting
Speaker 1: food to people, things like that. But there's also things
Speaker 1: happening on a grand scale that only government is going
Speaker 1: to be able to solve. And because my books only
Speaker 1: dealing with those first three days, I'm not talking necessarily
Speaker 1: about a lot of those things. I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: rebuilding a city, making sure the water system is safe, um,
Speaker 1: things like that. And so I think the thing about
Speaker 1: I mean, we we kind of got to see it
Speaker 1: in real time at the beginning of the pandemic or
Speaker 1: even through the middle of the pandemic, where you had
Speaker 1: people doing as much as they could, you know, staying
Speaker 1: staying home, sewing masks, doing three D printing face shields,
Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of things. But when you have
Speaker 1: a government response that's just not kicking in on a
Speaker 1: problem of this scale. If those people are only going
Speaker 1: to get you so far. UM. So I could have
Speaker 1: told a lot more of the story of how the government,
Speaker 1: especially the military, being that there was, you know, this
Speaker 1: huge military presence in Alaska. Um, they had a lot
Speaker 1: to do with making things run smoothly after the quake. Uh.
Speaker 1: But to me, for those three days, the most interesting
Speaker 1: story to me, and and the most surprising story, was
Speaker 1: the story of these people who were in many cases
Speaker 1: surprising themselves and really managing to get ship done in
Speaker 1: ways that they wouldn't have been able to predict beforehand.
Speaker 1: Explain how did I slap that one way? Did I
Speaker 1: defend my thesis successfully. Yeah, I think I think that
Speaker 1: you you tackled it well. I do not view this
Speaker 1: as an anti government manifesto. It was good though, to
Speaker 1: see because you know, at the beginning of you can
Speaker 1: only you can only equate a pandemic and an earthquake,
Speaker 1: like the comparisons. You kind of run out of comparisons
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. But right early in the pandemic, I did
Speaker 1: see a lot of folks, including some people who I like, Uh,
Speaker 1: their initial thing was I'm gonna get ready to start
Speaker 1: killing my neighbors when they come for my food. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's there's some folks that that's where they're That's just
Speaker 1: where they go. It's it's sad that that's where they go,
Speaker 1: but that's where they go. And other people are like,
Speaker 1: I wonder how I could help my neighbors, you know? Um,
Speaker 1: And you really see in the three Days that that
Speaker 1: you describe, you see overwhelmingly is what can I do
Speaker 1: to help my neighbors? Not um, how can I get
Speaker 1: ready to kill them all when they run out of water? Uh?
Speaker 1: But talk about how how how Genie Chance enters the thing?
Speaker 1: And like you know the books called This is Chance,
Speaker 1: which is named after which you wouldn't guess from looking
Speaker 1: at the cover necessarily, but named after a particular person
Speaker 1: who really emerges as this star player in this in
Speaker 1: this drama. Why did you choose not to introduce Genie
Speaker 1: Chance on the cover when when her name is so
Speaker 1: clearly on the cover? Children I like to I like
Speaker 1: to torment children who can't stand suspend and uh, I
Speaker 1: need to plug their ears when scary things happened in movies. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Genie Chance. For me, discovering Genie Chance and
Speaker 1: discovering the earthquake happened simultaneously. That report that I mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, just collecting individual people's accounts of those four
Speaker 1: and a half minutes, that was something Genie did. Um. So.
Speaker 1: Genie was a part time radio reporter, working mother and
Speaker 1: anchorage at the time, which was a pretty rare thing
Speaker 1: on on its own. Um And she was just, you know,
Speaker 1: completely tenacious person. And she ended up by sort of
Speaker 1: a quirk of luck, but also like her own persistence,
Speaker 1: winding up in the heart of everything, you know, immediately
Speaker 1: after the quake, right at the police station where information
Speaker 1: was starting to come in, the the official city response
Speaker 1: was starting starting to take shape, and she had this
Speaker 1: mobile radio unit in her car that she used to
Speaker 1: report UM as a kind of roving reporter around Anchorage normally,
Speaker 1: and so she was able to get on the radio
Speaker 1: in once the station was up and running and relay
Speaker 1: a lot of that information. And at first that was
Speaker 1: a very simple job, and over the course of these
Speaker 1: three days it becomes um a much more important job
Speaker 1: and a much more elaborate job where she just kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, stumbled into being a really integral part of
Speaker 1: of the whole community response and also like a voice
Speaker 1: that was guiding a lot of people in town through it.
Speaker 1: So even you know, saying like we need a diesel
Speaker 1: fuel over here, or we need a doctor and here,
Speaker 1: you know, that was her giving that information. And then
Speaker 1: also people who couldn't were separated from their family members,
Speaker 1: just you know, hours of just reciting people's names and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, your mother is looking for you. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: give us, we'll come here, we'll get a message back,
Speaker 1: and relaying those those back and forth over the air. UM.
Speaker 1: But that report that I mentioned, uh, that was that
Speaker 1: was all her doing. That was after the quake, she
Speaker 1: went back and interviewed all these people to just kind
Speaker 1: of collect in oral history like that. And I found
Speaker 1: that report and in the very beginning, there's a little
Speaker 1: author's note that says, you know, the author is a
Speaker 1: our time radio reporter who was on the air for
Speaker 1: fifty nine hours after the quake, and her family recorded
Speaker 1: a lot of those broadcasts, and uh, you know I
Speaker 1: saw that and and my my, you know, journalists spiky
Speaker 1: scent started tingling, and I just thought, I got to
Speaker 1: find these these tapes, um, which which I did. Ultimately
Speaker 1: I found found a lot of hours of broadcasts from
Speaker 1: the radio station Katie and I and that that was
Speaker 1: kind of the backbone of this book. It allowed me
Speaker 1: to to really tell it in a minute by minute
Speaker 1: kind of way. Uh. You could times have mentioned how
Speaker 1: the book focuses in a few days, but when towards
Speaker 1: the end it doesn't, because I mean it's very much
Speaker 1: about like the day of the quake and the immediate aftermath.
Speaker 1: But it we don't need to go into this and
Speaker 1: to go high level of detail because people need to
Speaker 1: go read it and find out. But for her, um,
Speaker 1: it never ends, you know. I mean it's like there's
Speaker 1: these handful of people that that this becomes sort of
Speaker 1: the defining thing in their life and then and then
Speaker 1: shapes and and kind of in unhappy ways. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: that being like this pinnacle moment you never eventually I
Speaker 1: guess you kind of stranded on the the pinnacle, you know.
Speaker 1: For her, Yeah, I don't know that I put it
Speaker 1: exactly that way. I mean I think that she, you know,
Speaker 1: when you think about what it would have been like
Speaker 1: to be like a working mother in nine four, I mean,
Speaker 1: she was dealing with a kind of um sexism that
Speaker 1: it's it's just almost funny to see it now, like
Speaker 1: you you feel like it's a satire, you know, the
Speaker 1: way people would talk to her. And so during the
Speaker 1: quake for her to just ascend to this position of
Speaker 1: of you know where she's just so obviously competent and
Speaker 1: getting stuff done and being so valuable to the community
Speaker 1: without question, I think that really, um it kind of
Speaker 1: freed her to to just accept her own you know, awesomeness.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, like it was just sort of
Speaker 1: like the last the last thing she needed to feel
Speaker 1: like why am I wasting my time? You know with
Speaker 1: other people's expectations. So in that way, it was a
Speaker 1: kind of door that that opened for her, and she
Speaker 1: went on to have this career in the legislature and
Speaker 1: and did a lot of really um, you know, important
Speaker 1: work there. But yeah, there is there is a moment
Speaker 1: in the book where when you kind of just fast
Speaker 1: forward through the rest of her life and you do
Speaker 1: realize that that it, you know, it was a very sad,
Speaker 1: you know, last phase of her life for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons. And that was something that I just really
Speaker 1: tried to keep and keep my eye on as I
Speaker 1: was going through the whole process of researching this book.
Speaker 1: Was it's a very weird thing to write about three
Speaker 1: days that happened fifty plus years ago, because you're your
Speaker 1: head so in the minute by minute drama of that time,
Speaker 1: and then you look up from that and you say,
Speaker 1: I wonder what happened to this guy? And nine times
Speaker 1: out of tend you hit an obituary, you know, and
Speaker 1: you realize that these three days were just a sliver
Speaker 1: of time in these people's lives, and uh, And that
Speaker 1: really shaped the whole feeling of the book for me,
Speaker 1: was to to think that there's this kind of intensity
Speaker 1: that kicks in in these moments, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the feelings that that come up in those times, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the possibilities that come up in those
Speaker 1: times are things that kind of haunt you or or
Speaker 1: carry you carry on for the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: so that you could have someone at the you know,
Speaker 1: top of their game, you know, like Genie, you know,
Speaker 1: in this moment, and then you you sort of you
Speaker 1: wanted to last. You want it to stay as of
Speaker 1: her life, and and it, you know, it keeps going
Speaker 1: higher for a while. But you know, eventually kind of
Speaker 1: all our stories and in the same way, um and
Speaker 1: somehow that just made the whole story of the quake
Speaker 1: more poignant to me. This this idea that your life
Speaker 1: can be disrupted, you know that violently at at any minute. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, in the end, it's kind of what we
Speaker 1: all kind of get get the earth, you know, stripped
Speaker 1: out from under us. I guess okay, tell folks, you
Speaker 1: know the title subtitles, Okay, can I get? Can I get? In?
Speaker 1: A one more questions? Didn't go? Man? John? What did
Speaker 1: it put you in any sort of like a like
Speaker 1: a different space to spend six years in three days? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it really did. I don't even really know how to
Speaker 1: how to talk about that. I mean, it was it
Speaker 1: was insane, Like it's just an insane thing to do
Speaker 1: in retrospect, you know, like like I remember one night
Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle of like we were having you know,
Speaker 1: having dinner with the family, and we're doing that. You know,
Speaker 1: who would you living or dead? Who would you like
Speaker 1: to have to dinner? You know, as Gennie Chance, you know,
Speaker 1: like question, you know, and you know it's like it's
Speaker 1: not only it's not only Genie Chance. It's like it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the uh, the second in command at the
Speaker 1: National Guard. Because I really wanted to know, like where
Speaker 1: where were you standing when you said this? You know,
Speaker 1: like it's not they were not normal concerns, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think that it's Uh, it definitely made
Speaker 1: me think about my own life differently in the sense
Speaker 1: that I think anytime you have the luxury of really
Speaker 1: trying to to zoom out and realized that you know, this,
Speaker 1: this moment that we're in is is just going to
Speaker 1: be this little narrow, um, you know, speck of a
Speaker 1: much longer line, Um, it really starts to mess with
Speaker 1: your head because I just don't think we normally have
Speaker 1: the tools to like integrate all that information. But definitely
Speaker 1: I feel like I mean, even the other day I
Speaker 1: was I was just like standing on my on my
Speaker 1: front lawn looking at this this maple tree, and I
Speaker 1: was thinking like, oh, yeah, it's starting to look a
Speaker 1: little unhealthy, like yeah, maybe maybe twenty years from now
Speaker 1: it'll it'll keel over. And and also this used to
Speaker 1: be a tree farm, so I wonder if this was
Speaker 1: you know, this came up after they cleared all the
Speaker 1: furs or what, you know. Just suddenly seeing these moments
Speaker 1: on a much huger time scale, Um, I think is
Speaker 1: something that I may never stop doing, just kind of instinctually, um,
Speaker 1: because I spent so much time kind of stuck in
Speaker 1: you know, stuck in the past. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that makes any sense. It's it's something I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to unpack for myself. Honestly, are you doing a new
Speaker 1: book now? I wish? Um. No. I mean, this year
Speaker 1: has been just completely strange professionally, so I've been kind
Speaker 1: of dabbling on a couple of things. But um, I'm
Speaker 1: one of those people that kind of just had to
Speaker 1: pump the brakes a little bit and deal with you know,
Speaker 1: kids and and keeping my my family life working. So
Speaker 1: um So, No, just in the since the new year,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been really starting to look for what
Speaker 1: my next project is going to be. But there were
Speaker 1: a few months there where I was like just a
Speaker 1: whole part of myself was was deactivated. You know, do
Speaker 1: you have to restrain yourself from turning to the kids
Speaker 1: on like all their events, right and being like, well,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it's not that big of
Speaker 1: a deal. Yeah, yeah, I think I think I do.
Speaker 1: I mean I have to do that to myself too.
Speaker 1: But yeah, around the time, right right after I finished
Speaker 1: this book, I did um before it had come out,
Speaker 1: but after I was done with it, I did a
Speaker 1: story about the um the campfire in northern California in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. Um So, I did a big magazine
Speaker 1: story about that. And that was another similar situation where
Speaker 1: I basically just told the story of like six hours
Speaker 1: and was you know, had videos of multiple angles of
Speaker 1: different things and was just you know, just like even
Speaker 1: more compressed than three days of an earthquake, was the
Speaker 1: six hour you know, evacuation of this one this one car.
Speaker 1: And I definitely started like looking around at you know,
Speaker 1: the trees on my property and noticing which ones are
Speaker 1: gonna fall in the driveway and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: I made the mistake of kind of like talking about
Speaker 1: that a little too much with my daughters. And I
Speaker 1: think it's you know, I really it was not good parenting,
Speaker 1: you know. I sort of loaded them up with a
Speaker 1: kind of awareness of peril that I don't think was
Speaker 1: was recommended. Um, But yeah, you gotta you gotta put
Speaker 1: up some walls sometimes, and I'm not necessarily very good
Speaker 1: at it. I made the mistake one time, um of
Speaker 1: explaining to my kids how the sun will burn out,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was telling them that the Earth
Speaker 1: kind of in a midlife crisis, like you know, for
Speaker 1: a billion year old planet, and the sun is gonna
Speaker 1: peter her out and maybe about that long. And they
Speaker 1: just can't comprehend the time. So in their mind is
Speaker 1: still like any moment are they look at? I told, well,
Speaker 1: you won't know until eight minutes after it happened, So
Speaker 1: but no, they feel like at any moment is just
Speaker 1: gonna go blue. Yah. Well, I remember, I'm gonna blame
Speaker 1: you a little bit, Steve, because I remember I think
Speaker 1: maybe I heard you on a interviewed. I think it
Speaker 1: was an I don't think it was a conversation we
Speaker 1: were having where you were talking about your son and
Speaker 1: just loving your truck and knowing that everything that you
Speaker 1: need to survive is in your truck and uh and
Speaker 1: uh and I feel like that's what That's what I
Speaker 1: was aiming for, you know, I was aiming for that
Speaker 1: kind of like we got this kind of vibe that
Speaker 1: I don't think I carry it off, and I didn't
Speaker 1: carry it off the same way. I gotta work on
Speaker 1: my tone or something. You know. What's messing with me
Speaker 1: on this is I A huge part of me is like,
Speaker 1: don't be in a city center, don't be in a
Speaker 1: in a place where the infrastructure is so built up
Speaker 1: when these disasters occur. And it's it's really boning me
Speaker 1: out that the uh, you know, the superstructure less native
Speaker 1: villages on the coastline were the ones that had the
Speaker 1: highest mortality rates. That's it was just like not it
Speaker 1: was lack of not the narrative you want to hear,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not yeah, well there, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there is a school of thought that the you know,
Speaker 1: if you stop thinking of people as problems during disasters
Speaker 1: right as as chaos that needs to be controlled or avoided,
Speaker 1: and you start seeing them as parts of the solution,
Speaker 1: then that suggests you want to be around as many
Speaker 1: people as possible, right because mutual aid and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: it's just you've got more to work with and uh
Speaker 1: and then again, you know, so this is I live
Speaker 1: on Bambridge Island, which is next to Seattle, so it's
Speaker 1: a I think it's twenty seven thousand people community, you know,
Speaker 1: and I've been, um, I've been really blown away by
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that volunteers in this community
Speaker 1: have been able to do during the pandemics. I've been
Speaker 1: working volunteering at the vaccination clinic they're running. They just
Speaker 1: did their ten thousand DOCE yesterday, which is insane for
Speaker 1: a community this size, and they're doing, you know, people
Speaker 1: from all over this part of the state. And I
Speaker 1: think that maybe there's also a sweet spot where you
Speaker 1: have a community where you know, it's small enough that
Speaker 1: people feel a part of it and feel like the
Speaker 1: problems are manageable and that they can step up and
Speaker 1: actually make a difference with that, but it's not quite
Speaker 1: too small where you know, you don't have that kind
Speaker 1: of critical mass of of human energy to get things done.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I agree, I mean, it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that people in those villages weren't weren't taking care of
Speaker 1: each other. They were. I mean, they were really heroic
Speaker 1: in terms of, you know, trying to get everyone, you know,
Speaker 1: clambering up these hill sides, keeping kids warm overnight, things
Speaker 1: like that. But they were just up against that was
Speaker 1: more geography, I think than sociology. They were just up
Speaker 1: against a giant wave that was that was coming on
Speaker 1: their on their coastline. So you can I'm I'm trying
Speaker 1: trying to reassure you. Go, you're doing a good job.
Speaker 1: You're doing a good job. Okay, I'm practicing for my kids,
Speaker 1: all right, John hit us with all the all the
Speaker 1: detailed information, all right. The book is called This Is Chance,
Speaker 1: The Shaking of an All American City and a voice
Speaker 1: that held it together. And it just came out in
Speaker 1: paperback from find people at Random House Books and you
Speaker 1: can buy it with your money. Um was a good pitch.
Speaker 1: Tell everybody where. I mean, you can find it anywhere
Speaker 1: you can find I want to I want to see
Speaker 1: if I want to see how you walk this delicate line.
Speaker 1: Where should people find the book, John You can buy
Speaker 1: it from from Eagle Harvard Book Company on Bambridge Island, Washington.
Speaker 1: Go on there, go on their website and tell Johnson
Speaker 1: that was very that was that was very diplomatic, and
Speaker 1: anywhere else books are sold. Yeah, all right, man, Uh,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you in six years when you got
Speaker 1: another one. Thank you. Appreciate that. You gotta find something
Speaker 1: that happened in one day, because then maybe he'll take
Speaker 1: you just two years to do it. Yeah, or like
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes. Maybe I'll just I'll do a
Speaker 1: book about this podcast. I'll just retrace, I'll interview, I'll
Speaker 1: find out what was your interior monologue is going on
Speaker 1: as we as we supposed all look forward to reading.
Speaker 1: Thanks man, Uh, come back anytime you got something you
Speaker 1: gotta plug you. If it's just a magazine article, cool,
Speaker 1: I'll do that. Thank you very much to talk to y'all.
Speaker 1: Cal Are you hip to the whole deal about how
Speaker 1: you look like the guy from ram Jam? Nope, you're
Speaker 1: not hip to that. No, no one showed you this.
Speaker 1: I mean, who's looked into ram Jam deeper than the
Speaker 1: song Black? Betty right. Well, that's that's how we know
Speaker 1: about it. You haven't seen this, cran, do you mind?
Speaker 1: You don't know about this? Holy shit, that guy looks
Speaker 1: like you, but you don't look this like poo. This
Speaker 1: is no that brought up. We actually found Callahan. Callahan
Speaker 1: is a collaborator in lyricist for The Grateful Dead named
Speaker 1: Robert Hunter, who weirdly died at seventy eight. Even though
Speaker 1: you're sitting here right now, if you show that is cal,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable, dude, can you can you cal? Can you
Speaker 1: fold your hands and rest your head? I have advice
Speaker 1: for men. This is my advice for men in photographs.
Speaker 1: Keep your hands away from your face. But for me,
Speaker 1: if you don't mind, can you rest your chin on
Speaker 1: your hands? Okay? Right here, right here? Were we need
Speaker 1: to play? Like? Yeah? Where can we putting on the
Speaker 1: other direction? Can get other direction for me real quick?
Speaker 1: And then look at me, look at me? No, no,
Speaker 1: you gotta have your yeah hold here for the for
Speaker 1: the audience out there. We are looking at a front
Speaker 1: from if you go to Rolling Stones magazine, I think
Speaker 1: it's Rolling Stone, Rolling Stones, sorry, Rolling Stones, Rolling Stones magazine.
Speaker 1: And I turned up the picture. It's a Robert Hunter,
Speaker 1: grateful dead collaborator and lyricist. A at we ain't getting
Speaker 1: richer because we can't get a picture that it's unbelievable anyhow,
Speaker 1: what gets me to thinking about wolves? Yanni? Janni's got
Speaker 1: Does this qualify as a book? Can we do this
Speaker 1: qualify as a book report? We play a book report? Jingle? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What the hell? Yeah? But first before my book report,
Speaker 1: you got to introduce our guests. That's joined us. Now,
Speaker 1: that's real port and Joann, you do it that all
Speaker 1: the time. Go ahead, Johnny, No, I asked you to
Speaker 1: do it. Oh, bro do you do it? Wow? That
Speaker 1: just went to hell real quick because because because Brody,
Speaker 1: you're mainly you're mainly friends with our guests. Yeah, Kell
Speaker 1: knows him to. Our mystery guest is gas Bar Para
Speaker 1: Cone joining us in Colorado, gas Bar, introduce yourself. Thanks, guys, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess our paracone. Uh appreciate the opportunity to join
Speaker 1: you guys. Have been in the hunting team and angling
Speaker 1: space for most of my professional career and UH happy
Speaker 1: to join the conversation today and your your neck deep
Speaker 1: and wildlife politics for reasons passing all understanding. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: worked for a group called Freestone Strategies, and we're a
Speaker 1: full spectrum public affairs firm and a large portion of
Speaker 1: my portfolio is involving, uh, you know, the greater realm
Speaker 1: of wildlife politics. Yeah, alright. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: note also that you you formerly served on Colorado's Wildlife Commission. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was. Actually I started my tenure when it was
Speaker 1: the former Division of Wildlife. Obviously, Parks and Wildlife merged
Speaker 1: under the Hick and Loop administration, and I continued to
Speaker 1: serve under the newly formed Colorado Parks and Wildlife for
Speaker 1: four years after that. So, um my, my work continued
Speaker 1: kind of in that space when I became the legislative
Speaker 1: director for the Department of Natural Resources under Governor Hick
Speaker 1: and Loopers. So uh like, like you indicated, I've been
Speaker 1: necked deep in this stuff for the better part of
Speaker 1: a decade here in Colorado. Good you like that? That
Speaker 1: was one of Okay, now ya, he's gonna do his
Speaker 1: Yanni's book report book report. Who um, who's verbiage? Who's verbiage?
Speaker 1: Crin is is Escaped about a wolf that escaped the island.
Speaker 1: The articles huh, go ahead, Yanni real curious about that
Speaker 1: that word. Yeah, this is Canadian broadcasting. They use the
Speaker 1: word escape. It's interesting. Well anyways, Yeah, there was a
Speaker 1: radio colored female wolf on i'le Royale that she was
Speaker 1: brought there from Minnesota. And uh, if everybody remembers, I
Speaker 1: can't go into too much details. I'm not gonna remember properly,
Speaker 1: but I believe there was like too many moves on
Speaker 1: i'le Royale and they brought in some wolves to take
Speaker 1: care of the wolf problem or the moose problem and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. I'm guessing this is probably
Speaker 1: part of that. Yeah, hey, do you when you because
Speaker 1: you grew up in Michigan Unity, did you grow up
Speaker 1: saying Isle Royale or we do? We would always call
Speaker 1: it Isle Royal, Isle Royal, probably Royale, I guess after
Speaker 1: maybe I maybe never said it until I was thirty
Speaker 1: years old and had long been gone from Michigan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that that you don't want to get too
Speaker 1: much detail. But like a long time ago, that island
Speaker 1: which is out Lake Superior but sits between Michigan Peninsula Canada.
Speaker 1: It was like a Lynx Caribou eco system. And then
Speaker 1: because it freezes now and then new stuff shows up
Speaker 1: and leaves, and moose got out there. There's like some
Speaker 1: speculation that I don't think people who know there's some
Speaker 1: some people think he says it freezes. He means the
Speaker 1: lake freezes, sorry, which is how a wildlife got out
Speaker 1: to the island and occasionally leaves the island. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I had which kind of hard to believe that there's
Speaker 1: like a boo out there at one point in time,
Speaker 1: like not like a long I mean, in modern times,
Speaker 1: there was caribou um and then everybody, you know, everybody's
Speaker 1: always dying off, and someone new walks out there, and
Speaker 1: then most recently became like tons of moose um. They
Speaker 1: don't want anybody to hunt out there, which and so
Speaker 1: they're trying to control That's actually a whole other story
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into at some point here. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we've talked about a little bit trying to like open
Speaker 1: up the pressure of the park Service to allow hunting
Speaker 1: to bring the moose numbers back down to a more
Speaker 1: manageable thing. But right now, what they're trying to do
Speaker 1: is truck wolves out there. And you think that the
Speaker 1: wolf would be the happiest wolf on the planet. Going
Speaker 1: back to your escape thing, I think it's it's the
Speaker 1: notion that it was collared, captured, brought there. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that like, that's where it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: because it was biologists intentions to remain and then it escaped.
Speaker 1: Different sort of feeling of escape because it was put
Speaker 1: on an island surrounded by, you know, hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: of water, and you would think that there'd be no
Speaker 1: way that this wolf would ever leave that island. But
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen came the Polar Vortex, which when I
Speaker 1: read this, it got me thinking, how come the crazy
Speaker 1: storm that we had like a month ago that killed
Speaker 1: probably thousands of birds in Arkansas and south and all
Speaker 1: kinds of crazy animals in Texas, it never got a
Speaker 1: big crazy name like the Polar Vortex. M Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good point. Yeah, you guys that didn't that didn't crossed.
Speaker 1: I think they should have dubbed the Great chill Off.
Speaker 1: You have something or another. So she leaves uh Ile
Speaker 1: Royale or Royal, depending on what part of Michigan you're from,
Speaker 1: and travels all around, crosses the U. S. Canada border
Speaker 1: a few times. All in all, travels thousands of kilometers
Speaker 1: until at some point her radio collar dies and from
Speaker 1: what the people that were watching her can tell you
Speaker 1: that she kept on cruising around and uh, last time
Speaker 1: they had her was near Thunder Bay, which is like
Speaker 1: north west part of Lake superior Um. So yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot lots of traveling. Pretty kind because she went back
Speaker 1: home more or less. But then it was like something
Speaker 1: got the wires got crossed. Man, it just became a wanderer, right,
Speaker 1: but as this next story will show you, they like
Speaker 1: to wander this. Uh, next stories about two year old
Speaker 1: wolf that was collared in bamf and uh he traveled
Speaker 1: all the way from uh Alberta to Montana in five days,
Speaker 1: three hundred miles. Yeah, pretty amazing. It's like you're not
Speaker 1: even stopping to eat, man, or like if you're eating,
Speaker 1: you're eating on the oh yes, scavenging. I'd imagine. I
Speaker 1: don't imagine he like followed it, heard it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you run into a pack of deer and get
Speaker 1: lucky and be cool to see his line of travel,
Speaker 1: Like was he just straight line in it for Montana
Speaker 1: or you know, yeah, because I mean that whole like
Speaker 1: Cootney Country is not flat right country. It's mountainous, heavily timbered.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh some big water in there too, three miles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hunt, the wolf was killed by a hunter legally
Speaker 1: here in Montana, and uh, that got a lot of
Speaker 1: people's attention. But what a chief scientists for a nonprofit
Speaker 1: called Yellowstone to Yukon says, what you should focus on
Speaker 1: is how cool it is that that wolf was able
Speaker 1: to do that. And then it shows this amazing like
Speaker 1: corridor and connectivity for wildlife that it can still happen.
Speaker 1: And if a wolf can do that, then ley bears
Speaker 1: can connect between uh, you know, the wilderness of Canada
Speaker 1: and the Yellowstone ecosystem as well, which is really neat
Speaker 1: and it's a hard thing to figure out unless you
Speaker 1: have a dead wolf in this circumstances. That's the thing
Speaker 1: I always think about this is how many animals are
Speaker 1: actually running around with the collar. Like when we were
Speaker 1: caribou hunting this year and I took my boy cariboo hunt,
Speaker 1: we saw hundreds of caribou go by. Okay, I saw
Speaker 1: one with a collar. And that's an intensely studied herd
Speaker 1: where they it's that they have a ton of collars
Speaker 1: and now have people that in the winter full time
Speaker 1: track them. So you watch hundreds of things and one
Speaker 1: goes by the collar in an area where it's like
Speaker 1: they're doing a collaring study. Um, how many things go
Speaker 1: unnoticed because no one has a collar on. But then
Speaker 1: every week there's some crazy story about something wearing a
Speaker 1: collar doing well, you know, like the same journey. So
Speaker 1: all the all the unsung. There's a lot of unsung
Speaker 1: heroes out there. Man, what's going on we don't know about.
Speaker 1: But there's that aree tutors that theory that the collar
Speaker 1: scrambles their brain exactly. There's this lady in Wyoming, her
Speaker 1: dog brought outside of Wyoming, her her dog brought her
Speaker 1: a recently deceased blackfooted ferret. Right, this is like the
Speaker 1: rediscovery of the of living black footed fair That's that's that,
Speaker 1: I mean a while ago. Oh yeah, this this was
Speaker 1: a while ago. But it's like that discovery served a
Speaker 1: huge purpose that just kind of came back to light recently. Um,
Speaker 1: and it it was because of a dead faret that
Speaker 1: a dog picked up problem. It's like, it's just funny
Speaker 1: how things work. You gotta start with something dad Sometimes Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they cannot and that's like the problem. That's like
Speaker 1: the real Bigfoot problem, right, no dead ones. We got
Speaker 1: a collar one, then we'll know. You put a collar
Speaker 1: on one of those suns of bitches, all of sudd
Speaker 1: he's gonna wind up. You know, You're gonna call him
Speaker 1: up wherever, like in Washington where they all live, and
Speaker 1: he's gonna wind up dead on a road in Connecticut
Speaker 1: with that breaking collar around his neck the back of
Speaker 1: a van. He'll just be like, I don't know, dude,
Speaker 1: they put that collar around me. That has went for it.
Speaker 1: They started walking. But wolves moving and us moving wolves
Speaker 1: around is why we've got gas bar on. Jeez, that's good, Brodie,
Speaker 1: see that? Yannie, Oh, Yanni. Um, here's a question for
Speaker 1: you about your book report. I've always been familiar with
Speaker 1: the group the Yellowstone to Yukon or is it Yukon
Speaker 1: to Yellowstone Yellowstone Yukon, Which is this, you know, maintaining
Speaker 1: this travel trying to imagine that you're maintaining a wildlife
Speaker 1: travel corridor. They would connect the greater Yellowstone ecosystem with
Speaker 1: the you know, the Canadian wilderness and then the vast
Speaker 1: boreal forest. Uh. But the wolf didn't make it to Yellowstone,
Speaker 1: And isn't a big problem with the Yellowstone to Yukon
Speaker 1: core or how do you connect sort of the glacier ecosystem,
Speaker 1: like the connectivity between the Glacier Flathead ecosystem, Northern Continental
Speaker 1: Divide ecosystem and Yellowstone. Like, now, if some guy had
Speaker 1: shot him down by Yellowstone, then I think he'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: the corridor works. But he had it was hundreds of miles.
Speaker 1: He didn't make it to Yellowstone. He made it like halfway.
Speaker 1: It's probably at least three dred miles to go, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he still had to cross I ninety, which is proving
Speaker 1: not as a difficult right, Like, yeah, it's a barrier. Um,
Speaker 1: A couple of wildlife overpasses on would would do some
Speaker 1: serious wonders. But you know that wolf sniffing distance from
Speaker 1: running all the way down the bitarets um, and you know,
Speaker 1: not having too much of a gap between a cross
Speaker 1: and I fifteen into the y E can see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then the wolves made across Interstate eighty from Wyoming into Colorado. Yeh,
Speaker 1: they did the impossible already. Yeah, alright, Brody Jimny bears
Speaker 1: have done that too, right, let's not go there yet.
Speaker 1: You have run run the bitter yeah down, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I have gone from southern Wyoming into Colorado. Oh by
Speaker 1: government helicopter. Well and catapult, Oh yeah, government catapult that
Speaker 1: we don't know making fun, but we do know about
Speaker 1: the wolf. Okay, Brody and Yanni run this whole program here.
Speaker 1: Um so last year, gas Bar, when did that go through?
Speaker 1: This year? November? So there there is a ballot initiative
Speaker 1: that passed in Colorado to reintroduce wolves. Not not really
Speaker 1: though you already messed up. I don't think that that's true.
Speaker 1: What's not true about it? I thought it was like,
Speaker 1: it's not that level of specificity. Well I can let
Speaker 1: gas Bar, you know, talk about it. But anyway, we'll
Speaker 1: clear that out. But at the same time, there is
Speaker 1: a pat now a breeding pack of wolves established in Colorado,
Speaker 1: which is caught. You know, it was too late for
Speaker 1: that to have any impact on the measure that passed.
Speaker 1: But we've got these two things happening concurrently, and we're
Speaker 1: past the point of like the reintroduction is happening. But
Speaker 1: gas Bar, do you want to explain to Steve what
Speaker 1: what happened? Look? Yeah, like, uh, Okay, the initiation, what
Speaker 1: was the damn initiative proposition? There you go, look at this.
Speaker 1: Now he's got the number. Yeah, so you know you're
Speaker 1: you're both right here. Um. Following this continuous trend of
Speaker 1: ballot box biology that we've seen throughout the West, Uh,
Speaker 1: Colorado voters narrowly past Proposition one fourteen that requires the
Speaker 1: state to reintroduce the northern gray wolf into Colorado. Uh.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, there's some caveats to this though, of course. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, it isn't as simple as to say, you know,
Speaker 1: we we passed the proposition, Now we go buy a
Speaker 1: bunch of wolves and drop them off in the state. Um.
Speaker 1: This gets a little bit complicated on it on account
Speaker 1: of a couple of different timing things that happened. Uh,
Speaker 1: most predominantly the ruling that came out of Secretary Bernhardt
Speaker 1: last year delisting the wolf in the lower forty eight.
Speaker 1: That happened also concurrently, of course, while the ballot major
Speaker 1: was in place. So there's a really unique convergence of
Speaker 1: events that um is unfolding for the first time, and
Speaker 1: not a lot of precedents on on how to navigate this.
Speaker 1: And we can get into that in detail if you
Speaker 1: guys would like, But effectively, what Proposition one fourteen acquired
Speaker 1: UM was for the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to
Speaker 1: create a plan to reintroduce the wolves, and what they
Speaker 1: need to consider is, uh, the details for restoration, including
Speaker 1: specific selection of donor population, the place, manner and schedule
Speaker 1: of reintroduction, actions necessary or beneficial from maintaining a self
Speaker 1: sustaining population, and details for management, including distribution of state
Speaker 1: funds to compensate for livestock losses. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the Commission has some lateral and how they go about
Speaker 1: developing this management plan. They recently just approved about a
Speaker 1: month ago a broad scope outline that puts some booke
Speaker 1: ins on the process, and that requires the formation of
Speaker 1: three things, the first of which is the hiring of
Speaker 1: a third party facilitator, the second of which is the
Speaker 1: creation of a working group, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: social amen of all of this, and then a scientific
Speaker 1: technical group, all of which will advise the Commission and
Speaker 1: the development of that final plan. Hey, gas bar can
Speaker 1: before we get too deep into the that policy stuff,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about kind of the the
Speaker 1: wrenches that we're getting thrown into the process. Like just
Speaker 1: recently in regards to what Polus government Polis said as
Speaker 1: well as how it was going to be, there was
Speaker 1: some speculation that hunters and anglers were going to fund
Speaker 1: this thing and like that. These are the reasons why
Speaker 1: a lot of people were upset. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: exactly right, Um, and I share that sense of frustration. Um.
Speaker 1: The language in the ballot was relatively arbitrary, associated with
Speaker 1: who was responsible from a fiduciary and financial perspective, UH,
Speaker 1: to pay for the implementation of prop One fourteen and
Speaker 1: why it does allow for um donations and contributions from
Speaker 1: third parties as well as the opportunity for an appropriation
Speaker 1: for from the General Assembly to the Division to pay
Speaker 1: for all of this. Absent any of that action, the
Speaker 1: plan has to be implemented on the backs of dollars
Speaker 1: generated through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses. And
Speaker 1: you know that's a frustration dust, not only because I
Speaker 1: think it flies in the face of this general underlying
Speaker 1: sentiment of Pittman, Robertson and Dingle Johnson. Um. You know
Speaker 1: it's worth noting, of course, the sportsmen of a long
Speaker 1: history of being willing to underwrite wildlife and conservation programs,
Speaker 1: so long as as those revenues go back to the
Speaker 1: perpetuation of the sport. That doesn't seem to be the
Speaker 1: case in this instance. And so um. Last year, during
Speaker 1: the legislative session, shortly after the passage of Prop One fourteen,
Speaker 1: we went to a couple of members um in the
Speaker 1: Colorado General Assembly and had asked them to draft and
Speaker 1: pass legislation that would have required the General Assembly, via
Speaker 1: taxpayer dollars, to come up with the revenue sources for
Speaker 1: the implementation of Proper one fourteen. Unfortunately, COVID does what
Speaker 1: COVID does and gotten the way of it and destroyed
Speaker 1: the whole process. Um. So here we are again this year,
Speaker 1: back at the legislature with a similar bill requesting that
Speaker 1: no general or I'm sorry, that no sportsman dollars be
Speaker 1: made available for the implementation or the restoration of wolves.
Speaker 1: Want to be clear, though, you know, this is not
Speaker 1: an effort to effectively relitigate or overturn Proposition one fourteen.
Speaker 1: It is is merely a way to identify an alternative
Speaker 1: revenue source. Let me let me hear with a couple
Speaker 1: of questions here, just so I can understand this better.
Speaker 1: Why did the arrival of wolves walking in on their
Speaker 1: own four ft into the state, Why did that not
Speaker 1: sort of gait and undo this whole conversation, Like, if
Speaker 1: the goal was to reintroduce wolves, why would you not
Speaker 1: be just ecstatic that it happened? You know, I'll say naturally.
Speaker 1: I mean it happened on the back of the Yellowstone reintroduction,
Speaker 1: but that was a long time ago. It's accepted now
Speaker 1: you had a natural reintroduction. Why why why is that
Speaker 1: not just viewed as a victory and that it puts
Speaker 1: to end the conversation. I think from our perspective, it
Speaker 1: is kind of viewed as a victory. Um. You know
Speaker 1: that discovery occurred after Proposition one fourteen was on the ballot.
Speaker 1: What simultaneously happened, as I mentioned, was Secretary Bernhardt issued
Speaker 1: a rule delisting the wolves in the lower forty. And
Speaker 1: so where we stand now is the Commission has got
Speaker 1: this obligation by the people of Colorado to move forward
Speaker 1: with a plan. Um, because we are in a scenario
Speaker 1: where the wolf is not listed. Uh. And back to
Speaker 1: the point that you had raised, Brody, the Governor had
Speaker 1: made a request of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission
Speaker 1: to expedite the timeline for the reintroduction effort of Prop.
Speaker 1: One fourteen. The reason in the thinking behind that, I
Speaker 1: can assume is that I don't think there's anybody who
Speaker 1: is of the opinion that the wolf is not likely
Speaker 1: to find itself back on the list in the near future.
Speaker 1: And so there's this narrow window of opportunity where you
Speaker 1: aren't subject to the endangered species laws and rules that
Speaker 1: governed reintroduction like took place in in Idaho and Wyoming, UM,
Speaker 1: And so you know, hypothetically there's nothing legally that would
Speaker 1: preclude them from just going and purchasing wolves and dropping
Speaker 1: them on the landscape. UM. Fortunately, the Commission, I think
Speaker 1: so good wisdom and pursuing what they're calling it a
Speaker 1: preliminary tin J, which is a section of the the
Speaker 1: s A. But it effectively, UM would establish a plan
Speaker 1: that in the occasion the wolves were to get relisted again,
Speaker 1: it would give some give the state some flexibility on
Speaker 1: the management prescriptions, particularly with respect to lethal take. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a question as to you know, what
Speaker 1: a determination from US Fish and Wildlife Service UM would mean,
Speaker 1: because these reintroduced populations traditionally have been UM non essential
Speaker 1: separate populations. But now that we have an established population
Speaker 1: in the state, there's a question as to what does
Speaker 1: that mean UM for a reintroduction effort, and we're an
Speaker 1: uncharted territory here, it's relatively unclear what US Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service might say about that. Is So you guys
Speaker 1: think that the Biden administration is going to turn around
Speaker 1: and UH is going to turn around and and re
Speaker 1: like relist wolves. They did include it on their Rural
Speaker 1: review UM coming out of this every year and incoming
Speaker 1: administration has the opportunity to take a look at the
Speaker 1: rules that were issued under a previous administration, and they
Speaker 1: do have the authority to overturn those. I think what's
Speaker 1: more likely to happen is that a judicial determination will
Speaker 1: result in them going back on the list. Man. As
Speaker 1: far as the it's not just as far as like
Speaker 1: the FEDS to use the broad term, but like the
Speaker 1: s A in regards to reintroduction, right, it's not just
Speaker 1: the presence of wolves in the state, but it's the
Speaker 1: health of that population. Right. So isn't there a lingering
Speaker 1: question of like we're gonna do some uh uh some
Speaker 1: some damn studies this spring and and see if we
Speaker 1: can't howl up a bunch of wolf puppies in the
Speaker 1: Stata why or in the state of Colorado. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think those are still slightly separate discussions though, right, because
Speaker 1: the statutory mandate that came from the voters, uh is
Speaker 1: a question that's disconnected from the evaluation of es A. Right,
Speaker 1: there's not necessarily a scenario where a Fish and Wildlife
Speaker 1: or a FED decision in this case, would have the
Speaker 1: effect of circumventing the responsibility that the Parks and Wildlife
Speaker 1: Commission is tasked with right now, So I think they,
Speaker 1: you know, exist independently, and how they come together and
Speaker 1: ultimately approving a reintroduction effort is the question. And it's
Speaker 1: anyone's guess how those two will be evaluated, uh, concurrently
Speaker 1: by the FEDS. Gasbar just recently correct me if I'm wrong. Um,
Speaker 1: we found out that it's not going to be a
Speaker 1: situation where they just start cutting wolves loose this year,
Speaker 1: that they that, like Governor polls suggested, like, they have
Speaker 1: to follow the planning and procedure process that was outlined
Speaker 1: in the initiative. Yeah. The thinking is that this will
Speaker 1: occur over a three year timeline, and there's a there's
Speaker 1: a huge social element to this, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: just given the politics that surround reintroduction efforts, particularly with
Speaker 1: respect to wolves, of course. But um, yeah, so the
Speaker 1: Science and Technical Committee presumably will dedicate a lot of
Speaker 1: time to identifying what is suitable habitat how the interplay
Speaker 1: between the existing wolf population in the state and this
Speaker 1: wholly separate introduced population might exist. Um. And you know
Speaker 1: collectively that that social element and the science and technical
Speaker 1: element um will help script the ultimate management plan. And
Speaker 1: the thinking is that that will be that will take
Speaker 1: place over roughly a three year timeline. UM. The statue,
Speaker 1: the language, and the proposition says that they need to
Speaker 1: take the steps necessary to introduce wolves by the end
Speaker 1: of That doesn't necessarily imply that wolves need to be
Speaker 1: on the ground at that date, but that the process
Speaker 1: for the reintroduction needs to be concluded and the effort
Speaker 1: needs to commence quickly thereafter. You know, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: to a rumor I heard as beyond rumor, but um
Speaker 1: an idea about different strains. Um, well, some people call
Speaker 1: subspecies of wolves. But before I said that, I'll point
Speaker 1: out the historically wolves existed in a continuous band. Um.
Speaker 1: You know there there there weren't gaps and populations, right,
Speaker 1: So you had these large, you know, these large gray
Speaker 1: wolves in the north, and then you had what we've
Speaker 1: come to call the you know, much smaller Mexican gray
Speaker 1: wolf from the south, and and you had these variations,
Speaker 1: but there weren't hard edges between the populations. Isn't there
Speaker 1: some issue in Colorado where it seems that the people
Speaker 1: that are really driving for the reintroduction would have been
Speaker 1: angling towards having it be Mexican gray wolves in the south,
Speaker 1: but the ones that showed up on their own, are
Speaker 1: you know, a larger, different northern animal. Is there is
Speaker 1: there some friction there on that because I know the
Speaker 1: proposition doesn't get into that. But wasn't that the intention
Speaker 1: would be there would be Mexican gray wolves. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion around that. Um. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: the all of Colorado is in the historic range of
Speaker 1: the northern gray wolf. That is not true for for
Speaker 1: the Mexican wolf. And so I think from a um
Speaker 1: you know, e s a standard perspective, the recovery of
Speaker 1: the northern gray wolves is a is a more likely
Speaker 1: scenario in Colorado. But you know, there has there has
Speaker 1: been a lot of conversation and about you know, what
Speaker 1: it might mean in the occasion that they were to
Speaker 1: cross pollenate. Um. You know, if if northern gray wolves
Speaker 1: were to migrate to the southern part of the state,
Speaker 1: would there be conflict between the Mexican wolf population, and
Speaker 1: so you know, there have been even comments from some
Speaker 1: of the members of the Commission seeking to shift this
Speaker 1: thinking from the Northern gray wolf to to the Mexican wolf.
Speaker 1: As it stands currently, I think it's more likely that
Speaker 1: the pursuit for reintroduction will likely fall with the Northern
Speaker 1: gray And there there's another level of conflict, right because
Speaker 1: the Mexican wolf is listed and the recovery efforts are
Speaker 1: like there there's a legal conundrum there, right, It's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: you're legally bound by the s A to recover this
Speaker 1: wolf in these areas. And like how it's written and
Speaker 1: what happens when gene pools start getting mad, Well, that's
Speaker 1: what I understanding, Like all the all the hassle they
Speaker 1: put in over the years, um, And you know, I
Speaker 1: don't it doesn't bother me all all the work we
Speaker 1: put in over the years to identify range, get source
Speaker 1: population animals, and re established the Mexican wolf two, then
Speaker 1: it ain't It's not far from the San Juan Mountains
Speaker 1: to you know, so it seems like it's it seems
Speaker 1: like you'd probably you know, I guess some people might
Speaker 1: point out and be like, they don't really care about
Speaker 1: those level of details. If it's wolves as wolves, and
Speaker 1: then you gotta stop calling them Mexican wolves, right. You
Speaker 1: need the old high school dance biological chaperones out there?
Speaker 1: Whoa you too? If you if you had uh here,
Speaker 1: I'll save my crystal. I'd like to say my crystal
Speaker 1: ball question for later. Go ahead, Brodie. Oh, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think we've we've hit it pretty good as far
Speaker 1: as what's going on. I mean, why did you Colorado
Speaker 1: people decided to put this up to I'm a registered
Speaker 1: Montana voter jack um, But yeah, I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time there, and I was happy to live in
Speaker 1: a state where I didn't have to compete with wolves
Speaker 1: to kill an elk, you know, But then up here
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, there's plenty of elk getting killed.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I'm gonna get crucified for saying
Speaker 1: that that. Here. Here, here, Here's how I always explain
Speaker 1: to people. Um Alaska has wolves across nineties some of
Speaker 1: their historic range. They have grizzlies across the entirety of
Speaker 1: the historic range. Why does everybody want to go honey
Speaker 1: in Alaska? I don't know. I always tell people you
Speaker 1: wouldn't like and you would like this. Wolves a load
Speaker 1: of plays things with teeth everything. There's wolves everywhere, so
Speaker 1: there must not be any animals there. But I do
Speaker 1: have the wolf. But everybody wants to go there and hunt.
Speaker 1: So it's like it is a hard thing for people
Speaker 1: to explain it. You'd be like, wolves will be the
Speaker 1: end of hunting in Colorado and and for a while,
Speaker 1: it'll see if they come on hard because because it
Speaker 1: there's a learning curve. There's a learning curve on the elk,
Speaker 1: like when when they brought him into the when they
Speaker 1: brought him into the Greater Yellowstone area, I mean you
Speaker 1: saw two thirds drop offs and elk populations. I mean,
Speaker 1: they they do not understand, like hey look at that
Speaker 1: dog and and all of a sudden, Yeah, So my
Speaker 1: my concerns in Colorado are they have. There are these
Speaker 1: large elk herds that right now they can't figure out
Speaker 1: what the hell is going on, Like the kaff recruitment
Speaker 1: is very poor, and these elk herds are their numbers
Speaker 1: are going down, and those elk herds are in areas
Speaker 1: where wolves are gonna end up. For sure it is
Speaker 1: gonna Yeah, it will. It's like, no more things piss
Speaker 1: out of them. But I don't. I think it's it'll
Speaker 1: knock the piss out of them, but it won't be
Speaker 1: the end. No, no, Yanni, you moved. Yeah, I we've
Speaker 1: got top are we are furnace is getting fixed. Finally
Speaker 1: we've been out of Hea for like two weeks and
Speaker 1: the dudes coming over. So he's gonna be in the
Speaker 1: basement where I was at. Congratulations. And what else do
Speaker 1: we need to point out? Though? About your Yellowstone? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know Northern heard of Yellowstone that dropped by two thirds. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was other factors, they think now there was like
Speaker 1: a perfect storm of habitat a super high, unhealthy population
Speaker 1: and then the wolves coming in that produced that precipitous drop.
Speaker 1: And then it's you can't just say because the wolves
Speaker 1: showed up that that's what did it. It was there
Speaker 1: was some coincidence there. Well, there's it's never one thing.
Speaker 1: But when you throw one more thing on top of
Speaker 1: those herds that are hurting in Colorado, I mean, the
Speaker 1: end results not gonna be good. I wouldn't imagine. Well,
Speaker 1: and you honestly touched on an interesting point there, right.
Speaker 1: A lot of the proponents of this have been using
Speaker 1: this trophic cascade as the baseline for why this makes sense.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think by all accounts, some of
Speaker 1: the trophic cascade argument has been overblown. Um. You know
Speaker 1: we've learned since the introductions. Can you explain trophic cascade? Please? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the trophis cascade is effectively this idea, and as far
Speaker 1: as I understand it, um, it originated out of this
Speaker 1: this concept that predators and the relationship that they have
Speaker 1: with prey can improve the ecological conditions of a select environment. Um.
Speaker 1: It was reading the other day a study about some
Speaker 1: of the early thinking about this, and they were talking
Speaker 1: about the relationship between spiders who scared grasshoppers improving grass
Speaker 1: conditions in a unique area. And of course, you know
Speaker 1: when wolves were introduced into Yellowstone that that scientific theory
Speaker 1: was quickly overlaid and a lot of the ecological improvement
Speaker 1: in the Yellowstone area has been attributable alone to the
Speaker 1: reintroduction of wolves. There's been a subsequent series of these
Speaker 1: that have indicated that well, yeah, they certainly have contributed
Speaker 1: to a degree of the improvement. Um, it seems a
Speaker 1: bit overstated to claim that a soul species is accountable
Speaker 1: for all of the improvement that we have seen. Um
Speaker 1: at our Net, who's the chief scientist for t RCP,
Speaker 1: was explaining to me that, you know, wolves very seldomly
Speaker 1: changed their eating behabits, habits or their their food preference um,
Speaker 1: specifically with relation to aspen and willows, which a lot
Speaker 1: of the trophic cascade argument has been based on on
Speaker 1: account of wolves being present. And so you know, undeniably
Speaker 1: there there could be circumstances where wolves dispersing um wildlife
Speaker 1: populations to other areas and disrupting the concentration that we
Speaker 1: see in winter grounds might be beneficial to the health.
Speaker 1: The other piece too, that the proponents have been talking
Speaker 1: about is the potential benefit of the introduction of wolves
Speaker 1: to the c w D problem that we have in Colorado.
Speaker 1: And again, um, you know, very likely maybe the case
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's relatively fair to say that
Speaker 1: the wolves have this innate sense of ability to to
Speaker 1: peel off the weaker prey in a population. Um, as
Speaker 1: far as I'm aware, and I need to state that
Speaker 1: I'm not a biologist, but it seems a little bit
Speaker 1: far fetched to me as well to think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the introduction of wolves in Colorado would result in in
Speaker 1: the stop of the spread or wholesale turnaround in the
Speaker 1: c w D conditions that we have. So yeah, could
Speaker 1: could there be some benefits? Sure, Um, I just don't
Speaker 1: find those to be the baseline, uh scientific explanation for
Speaker 1: the reintroduction that others have claimed. Oh that the scene
Speaker 1: that d thing is a joke, man, We've talked about
Speaker 1: that before too. Is like the animals are the animals
Speaker 1: are infected for sometimes years before their symptomatic It's such
Speaker 1: a joke. And then the thing that they you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm about an have wolf person, but let's let's
Speaker 1: let's at least talk with a little bit of like,
Speaker 1: you know, have it be slightly reality tinged when we
Speaker 1: talk about it. This idea that they you know, this
Speaker 1: this Farley Moat oversimplification that came from the movie Um,
Speaker 1: you know the never cry wolf thing that they like
Speaker 1: trimm disease from the herd. They prey on calves and
Speaker 1: pregnant females of pregnant females, your most valuable animal. It's like,
Speaker 1: I understand, like it's fine to like wolves, but why
Speaker 1: can't we just can't just like them as what they
Speaker 1: are and not act like there's like these magical creatures. Well,
Speaker 1: the trophic cascade argument is does have a very strong
Speaker 1: correlation to systems in which people have been removed. So
Speaker 1: this that's not a joke, right. It's like, if you
Speaker 1: can the trophic cascade argument in in a vacuum in
Speaker 1: which human beings don't exist, works great. You apply that
Speaker 1: onto a system that's highly highly managed for wildlife over
Speaker 1: human use interaction, like a national park. Um, you can
Speaker 1: see it like applied there and see how yep, these
Speaker 1: dots can connect. But it doesn't do us all that
Speaker 1: much good in working situations where you know, human beings
Speaker 1: are active on the landscape. Yeah, it's like that that
Speaker 1: quote we talked about before describing Yellowstone is blank um
Speaker 1: square miles of paradise surrounded by reality. Brody kind of
Speaker 1: hit on an interesting point. Where Brody talked about not
Speaker 1: wanting to compete with wolves, and I think it's funny
Speaker 1: that how it's funny how much people tiptoe around that. Sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, but I don't think there's anything wrong with
Speaker 1: saying that, UM. I don't think there's anything wrong was
Speaker 1: saying that that I value um having a resource to
Speaker 1: be available to people, at least the knowledge I'm saying, like, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that I like having elk, and like I'm
Speaker 1: fine having elk and deer on the landscape because people
Speaker 1: want them and we have like regulated legal hunting for them,
Speaker 1: and so I'm fine having to be that we acknowledge that.
Speaker 1: But people act like it's like it's it's a taboo perspective.
Speaker 1: I like eating milk, And I think that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the wolf reintroduction world that don't
Speaker 1: mind that are in the back of their head. They'll
Speaker 1: never admit it. In the back of the head. They
Speaker 1: do kind of like to stick it to hunters a
Speaker 1: little bit like this is one guy like that one
Speaker 1: of the chief marketing officers, like the CMO of the
Speaker 1: wolf world, even what he called he talks about the
Speaker 1: recreational big game killing industry. Like that's his viewpoint on hunting.
Speaker 1: And I think he's like he used to hunt, but
Speaker 1: then he quit. Um, and that's like how he typifies
Speaker 1: the hunting world to say, like, oh, the only people
Speaker 1: that that don't want a bunch of wolves is the
Speaker 1: recreational big game killing industry. Um, as though it's like
Speaker 1: naughty to go hunting. But I can say this because
Speaker 1: at one point I did hunt so peasant or something.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't know, man, tell me why, Like, give
Speaker 1: me your perspective on it, Like can you talk like
Speaker 1: as a person or you gotta stay all official gas bar?
Speaker 1: Oh no, hit me, what's your question? Sell me? I'm
Speaker 1: not liking wolves in Colorado unless you don't even care
Speaker 1: to sell me on that. Yeah. I think the discussion
Speaker 1: we're having here really is whether or not a reintroduction
Speaker 1: is appropriate. Right. Look, I mean wolves are coming down, Um,
Speaker 1: they've migrated in. It's not going to be long before
Speaker 1: we have an established pack in Colorado and they're going
Speaker 1: to coexist. I think that question is a foregone conclusion
Speaker 1: at this point. Um. You know I'm sympathetic to what
Speaker 1: you said. Look, you know I'm a big game hunter.
Speaker 1: I spend a month in the field during archery season,
Speaker 1: chasing elk every year, and it's my passion and it's
Speaker 1: what I like to do. And I would be lying
Speaker 1: if I said anything other than I'm worried about the
Speaker 1: impact it will have on the big game populations. But
Speaker 1: I don't think you can evaluate all of this in
Speaker 1: a vacuum either, right, Brody touched on it. We've got
Speaker 1: I live in northwest Colorado and we've got tremendous problems
Speaker 1: with both our deer and our elk herd up there.
Speaker 1: At the moment um, you know, it's accountable to changes
Speaker 1: in habitat loss um. Drought conditions were incredibly severe last year,
Speaker 1: our caffe recruitments somewhere in like the low thirty percent
Speaker 1: at the moment the expanding outdoor recreation is having devastating
Speaker 1: impacts on that piece as well, And so to layer
Speaker 1: one additional UM component that will add strain to the
Speaker 1: herd seems to me like we're getting pretty close to
Speaker 1: the to the tipping point. And UM, I I come
Speaker 1: from the vantage point that we need to take a
Speaker 1: holistic perspective of all of this. UM. Wildlife management doesn't
Speaker 1: exist in a vacuum, and Uh, you know, my experience
Speaker 1: has been that the proponents of the wolf reintroduction are
Speaker 1: interested in exclusively that peace. Um, I don't think they
Speaker 1: have given honest assessment to the impacts across the board.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm relatively agnostic as to whether or
Speaker 1: not there's a population of wolves in the state. I
Speaker 1: would prefer that they come in naturally and that the
Speaker 1: state maintains management authority. Um. You know, call me a skeptic,
Speaker 1: but I am skeptical of of the reintroduction process. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you look through the timeline of the listing and
Speaker 1: d listing decisions that occurred with the introduced populations in
Speaker 1: Idaho and Wyoming, in some cases they were taken off
Speaker 1: and put back on the list, um, you know, upwards
Speaker 1: of six different times. And we have far far exceeded
Speaker 1: the recovery objectives in all of those cases. So it's
Speaker 1: you know, to think that the plan that we come
Speaker 1: up with as a state is going to have some
Speaker 1: long lasting effect and won't be uh, you know, affected
Speaker 1: by the long history of litigation efforts that we've seen.
Speaker 1: I think is is a foolish perspective and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical of the reintroduction effort on that account. You know.
Speaker 1: By way of example, um, I think there was like
Speaker 1: thirty one wolves that were introduced in total um in Idaho.
Speaker 1: That was like the state didn't get uh the ability
Speaker 1: to hunt them until two thousand and nine. Their their
Speaker 1: recovery objective, if I remember correctly, was tin wolves or
Speaker 1: tin populate or tin packs are tin packs or a
Speaker 1: hundred plus wolves, And by two thousand and nine, when
Speaker 1: the state finally got the management prescription and the ability
Speaker 1: to harvest them via hunter, there was something like eight
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty wolves and so um. Yeah, to think
Speaker 1: that once our recovery objective in the state is achieved
Speaker 1: in the state, at that point will is assume full
Speaker 1: management authority and we will be able to keep the
Speaker 1: population in check. From an eco ecosystem perspective, I just
Speaker 1: I don't have much faith in that outcome. No, dude,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll dick you. They'll they'll dick you around so
Speaker 1: bad you'll never see the end of it. It's like
Speaker 1: they it's kind of the playbook. And you know, I
Speaker 1: would play dirty too if I was trying to get
Speaker 1: what I wanted around wildlife. But they'll it's a playbook
Speaker 1: that they're like, oh no, no no, no, no, it's just
Speaker 1: gonna go like this. Then we'll hand it over to
Speaker 1: the state and it'll be like this number and there
Speaker 1: won't be these kind of restrictions, and then you get it,
Speaker 1: it goes way longer, and then they will legally block
Speaker 1: you in the courts from ever getting what the concessions
Speaker 1: that were supposed to be made in terms of the reintroduction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're talking about an initiative that what was it,
Speaker 1: gas bar, Like fifty four out of sixty four counties
Speaker 1: voted against. Uh, yeah, so it passed in only twelve
Speaker 1: of the sixty four counties statewide. And you know, remember
Speaker 1: that the the initiatives said that introduction could only occur
Speaker 1: west of the Continental Divide, so you know, effectively the
Speaker 1: western half of the state and only four of the
Speaker 1: counties west of the Continental Divide supported it. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, look, Boulder County supported it with a margin
Speaker 1: of sixty to thirty two, and Boulder Counties kind of
Speaker 1: our our our liberal hot spot in the state, whereas
Speaker 1: Rio Blanco County, UM, a location that's very likely to
Speaker 1: be picked as a reintroduction location, denied it. To twelve,
Speaker 1: the average no voting counties in the area that would
Speaker 1: be affected was sixty. This is a trend that we've
Speaker 1: seen in all of the ballot majors, you know, dating
Speaker 1: back to to the the constitutional ban on trapping as
Speaker 1: well as the uh, the bear hunting restrictions that we
Speaker 1: saw in the state. And so yeah, yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: much an urban rural divide. Huh. All right, So that
Speaker 1: that was time for the crystal ball question. Do you
Speaker 1: think that, I don't know why you wouldn't think this,
Speaker 1: but do you think that whatever, three years whatever, they
Speaker 1: will be opening up crates and cutting loose new wolves
Speaker 1: or do you think that somehow the existing population that's
Speaker 1: got there on its own, would you know, it would
Speaker 1: develop expand become healthy and self sustaining and they would
Speaker 1: somehow magically be like, oh, never mind, We're just gonna
Speaker 1: stick with what we got. Or do you think that
Speaker 1: this is like happening, man, this is going to go down.
Speaker 1: I think the latter part of what you said is
Speaker 1: going to be true. Under either circumstance. The population that's
Speaker 1: here is going to continue to breed. I do think
Speaker 1: that the Parks and Wildlife Commission will develop a plan
Speaker 1: for reintroduction of wolves. They are pursuing what's called this
Speaker 1: preliminary ten j uh. It's never been done. Colorado will
Speaker 1: be the first state that has actively, from a state
Speaker 1: initiated perspective pursuit of reintroduction of of a wolf population
Speaker 1: um on the assumption that the wolf goes back on
Speaker 1: the list in the next three years. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a high likelihood. I think there are serious questions
Speaker 1: that remain as to whether or not US Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service will ultimately approve a reintroduction plan in light
Speaker 1: of the existing wolf population in the state. Man, the
Speaker 1: wolves are almost screwing themselves. The wolves that we're going
Speaker 1: to get dropped off probably the wolves that we're going
Speaker 1: to get dropped off into the happy hunting grounds. They're like, man,
Speaker 1: we're probably piste about the wolves that walked down there.
Speaker 1: But the wolves walked down they're gonna be tough. They're
Speaker 1: forged by fire man m hm. Disney. But you know,
Speaker 1: the gas bar brought up a good point to me,
Speaker 1: which is like it's all over, but the crime right
Speaker 1: there commings. So hunters should they just need to accept it, right,
Speaker 1: Like you've got to like accept it and kind of
Speaker 1: be part of the process. At this man, the worst
Speaker 1: thing you can do is the smoke pack of day philosophy.
Speaker 1: You know, tell you what, be a part of the
Speaker 1: conversation in a meaningful way. Yeah, there will be a
Speaker 1: lot of people that will get like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: some people that that it's to say, it's the crowd
Speaker 1: that quit waterfowl hunting when they had to stop using lead.
Speaker 1: There will be people. There will be people that that, uh,
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of gur and we'll like up
Speaker 1: it over. I'll be like I quit hunting by God
Speaker 1: when the wolves. And then there'll be people who are
Speaker 1: just who get after it and figure stuff out and
Speaker 1: they'll keep doing well. But I'm telling you, man, it'll
Speaker 1: be yeah, a shock to the system. Right. They eat
Speaker 1: seven pounds of meat a day, so just get a
Speaker 1: calculator out right, it's just a reality what hey, what
Speaker 1: is the uh? Is there an initial number that they've
Speaker 1: got a goal for? Well? No, and you know this
Speaker 1: is really where the meat and the potatoes if this
Speaker 1: plan comes together, and why sportsmen need to continuously engage
Speaker 1: themselves in this process, right, because there are questions about
Speaker 1: how many wolves will constitute a recovery objective where they
Speaker 1: will be reintroduced um. You know, all of these questions
Speaker 1: are going to be crafted um by the Commission over
Speaker 1: the course of the next three years. And my hope
Speaker 1: is that we as a sportsman community can engage in
Speaker 1: this rather than just throwing our suckers in the dirt
Speaker 1: and being upset about the fact that we lost at
Speaker 1: the ballot, and engage in the process to develop what
Speaker 1: could be the most thoughtful and well thought out planned.
Speaker 1: But we broke this discussion last year and the legislation
Speaker 1: we were trying to craft, and I've heard numbers as
Speaker 1: high as two hundred and fifty UM. I think from
Speaker 1: our perspective, we're looking at a closer a number closer
Speaker 1: to around fifty UM. The precedents in other states, of course,
Speaker 1: was ten packs or a hundred wolves. UM. Now when
Speaker 1: you over the lay the landscapes of Idaho in Montana
Speaker 1: versus you know, the western half of Colorado, I think
Speaker 1: it lends itself to a lower number. Something I got
Speaker 1: way more habitat here man, Yeah, exactly. And so but
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter because they'll say, here's the thing. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because they'll you'll agree on let's say you
Speaker 1: agree on a hundred hunter hunters, good number, everybody can
Speaker 1: live with a hundred. And then you'll get to hundred
Speaker 1: fifty two and someone will be like, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: deal list and go to state management. And then you'll
Speaker 1: fight lawsuits for twenty years and then it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: That's the word. Yeah, it does not matter. It will
Speaker 1: never You'll never get it undone. It'll just be. It'll
Speaker 1: become like a thing that gets litigated to the point
Speaker 1: where it'll just it'll find its number. I mean, it
Speaker 1: took forever here, and it's so tenuous here. The history
Speaker 1: has indicated that. And unfortunately, whatever plan we come up
Speaker 1: with won't supersede. Uh. You know, federal statutes under es
Speaker 1: a right and so our our plan will continuously play
Speaker 1: second fiddle to the ongoing national es a discussion around
Speaker 1: listing and delisting. And it's an unfortunate reality because, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, Steve, they're on their way here. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have a population of wolves in Colorado in the next
Speaker 1: couple of years before any of this is implemented. You
Speaker 1: know what cracks me about the like the winey ass,
Speaker 1: the wolf protection crowd is that you know, like you
Speaker 1: look at Wisconsin right where they hit recovery objective, you
Speaker 1: know eons ago they get way over recovery objective. But
Speaker 1: then they have a hunt and they set a quota
Speaker 1: and they go over to quota and everybody's all up
Speaker 1: stem like home, when did you people start caring about quotas?
Speaker 1: You never cared about the recovery objective number? That like
Speaker 1: became like a completely like you never cared about surpassing that.
Speaker 1: But all of a sudden they go over a hunt
Speaker 1: quote and everybody acts like they're married to these numbers.
Speaker 1: So you don't care about the numbers? Yeah, like what
Speaker 1: just unfolded? It was it Wisconsin where they but I'm like,
Speaker 1: they went way over. But you guys have we've been
Speaker 1: over the quota that you liked for twenty years, right,
Speaker 1: and like, so don't act like all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: like you really care about all the numbers being right
Speaker 1: becase you don't give a about they only care about
Speaker 1: certain numbers. It's it's indefensible too, because you also have
Speaker 1: to be like, you know, you guys really screwed up
Speaker 1: because all the other times wildlife science, wildlife management, Uh,
Speaker 1: deals in perfect scenarios, there are normal mistakes when it's
Speaker 1: done right, you know, when you're dealing with wild animals
Speaker 1: and social science at the same time. Kills me. Which
Speaker 1: is why all these discussions need to take place within
Speaker 1: the state game and phish agencies. Right, We've seen an
Speaker 1: onslaught of legislation all throughout the Rocky Mountain West this
Speaker 1: year trying to address specific pieces not just you know,
Speaker 1: well outside of the scope of wolf free introduction, but
Speaker 1: trying to to manage hunting and angling as a sport
Speaker 1: wildlife populations in general through through legislation. And I just
Speaker 1: do not find it to be a proper venue for
Speaker 1: wildlife management discussions that you know, those discussions need to
Speaker 1: be led by wildlife professionals, founded on the best available
Speaker 1: science at the time. Sure, a social element needs to
Speaker 1: be incorporated in it. And I don't mean to undermine
Speaker 1: or or discredit the importance of that, but uh, it's
Speaker 1: been my experience that the legislature has not always yielded
Speaker 1: the the best wildlife management strategies or policies. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. The State of Montana is just like
Speaker 1: makes you want to throw up right now. It's like
Speaker 1: very clear that wildlife is a vehicle for vendetta, Like
Speaker 1: you're telling me you can look me in the eye
Speaker 1: and say that this legislation is for animals somehow or
Speaker 1: is this for who you're talking to, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: a people thing, not an animal thing. And you know, look,
Speaker 1: there there are some scenarios where it's been beneficial to write,
Speaker 1: particularly on funding. We've seen it be advantageous in Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: and some of the Eastern states on Sunday hunting and
Speaker 1: blue laws. And so I don't mean to demonize it
Speaker 1: across the board, um, because there have been occasions where
Speaker 1: it's been beneficially, but those are like those are those
Speaker 1: are social that's like social legislation, it's not like wildlife management.
Speaker 1: That's good point. Uh, this is a tangent to this.
Speaker 1: But I was looking at, you know, lawsuits to undo
Speaker 1: the Bernhardt's deal liisting. I'm gonna wind up missing that
Speaker 1: guy enough and and and more than a handful of ways,
Speaker 1: but lawsuits looking to undo the the delisting. Now that
Speaker 1: we've hit recovery objectives and how you always see humane
Speaker 1: society pop up. It's funny that because they do the
Speaker 1: nice stuff for dogs. People never realize that it's one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful anti hunting, anti anti trapping groups
Speaker 1: out there, like far and away there. Day I was
Speaker 1: at Murdocks, like Murdock's Ranch supply, you know what, you're
Speaker 1: like doing the thing and they ask you if you
Speaker 1: want to donate something. At Murdocks, they ask if you
Speaker 1: want to donate the Humane Society. Man we're driving, which
Speaker 1: is like a weird like you're talking to like a
Speaker 1: ranch community, whether they want to donate to the leading
Speaker 1: animal rights like the leading animal rights organization of the country.
Speaker 1: I thought, like, I think, like someone that kind of
Speaker 1: slipped by someone, we're not about bringing it up with
Speaker 1: the cashier. We're driving south to town and there's of
Speaker 1: those anti trapping billboards out that way, and my kids
Speaker 1: are like, what what is that. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: some people don't like it. Yeah, they masquerade as dog helpers. Hey, Steve,
Speaker 1: I did bring it up at Murdochs. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because she said, yeah, it's like a very
Speaker 1: hot topic because everybody in there is like, what this
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense, and um, it's like the local
Speaker 1: Humane Society, which is like a different thing than the
Speaker 1: H S U S. Is that right? Yeah, like they're
Speaker 1: not connected. I think I think that there is a connection. Man.
Speaker 1: Well no, because I don't think that the owners of
Speaker 1: Murdocks and all the employees there would allow that. You
Speaker 1: need to get your little producer cap on it, colonel
Speaker 1: sniff it out. Alright, gas Bar, Um, you were born
Speaker 1: in the US? I was Yeah, were you? I'm asking?
Speaker 1: Were you? Yeah? Yeah, gas Bar, Para Cone. I just
Speaker 1: feel like, uh, you know, I don't know Silian namesake?
Speaker 1: Is it Sicilian? Yeah? That's my people. I know, I
Speaker 1: know we're good people. Um, we're your are you were
Speaker 1: your were your folks from Sicily? Are you guys been
Speaker 1: in the US for a long time? Yeah, third generation
Speaker 1: American and it's a little throwback name. Man, gas Bar,
Speaker 1: you're the only gas Bar I know. Well, easy to remember,
Speaker 1: I said of my grandfather. I am as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming out and explain this wolf deal man.
Speaker 1: You'll have to come back a whole bunch and keep
Speaker 1: us up to speed on it. Be happy to thanks
Speaker 1: for the time, guys. I'm not totally happy. I mean,
Speaker 1: you did a great job. I just like, I just man,
Speaker 1: stuff kind of you got some lingering questions. No, no questions,
Speaker 1: I just just something about it. I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like I wish they would have done it.
Speaker 1: I wish they would have done it like this around
Speaker 1: as everybody what their opinion about it is. You know
Speaker 1: what's interesting that, uh, you guys can pull off culling
Speaker 1: all those geese out of the parks in Denver and
Speaker 1: feeding them to the food shelters. Uh huh without putting
Speaker 1: that up for a public vote. Yeah, there's a bit
Speaker 1: of duplicity in some of the rags on the books.
Speaker 1: I would be denying if I said otherwise. Yeah, the voting,
Speaker 1: the voting on this stuff. I know this will never happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, just to be ridiculous, to demonstrate ridiculousness. Will
Speaker 1: it be like some day they'll be like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a vote, and we're gonna ask you everyone in
Speaker 1: the state. Should the pheasant limit be two or three?
Speaker 1: That's the way it's going. I mean, well, and you know,
Speaker 1: we have allocation questions before the legislature here. Now there's
Speaker 1: a bill out there trying to limit the nonresident tags available.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, again, we periodically as a wildlife
Speaker 1: Commission have gone back and taken a look at season
Speaker 1: structures and and license allocation distribution between residents and nonresidents,
Speaker 1: and you know, those take a couple of years there
Speaker 1: among the more contentious conversations that occur in the state.
Speaker 1: And you know, here we have kind of just a blanket,
Speaker 1: one size fits all approach um that would uh set
Speaker 1: in statute, uh that distribution requirement, and it's drawn uh
Speaker 1: confrontation on on every side of the discussion, right, which
Speaker 1: I think just underscores that the venue is not suitable
Speaker 1: for those type of conversations. That we got one for
Speaker 1: extending wolf season here in Montana, right, And it's like
Speaker 1: you talked to a public a vote. Well, no, this
Speaker 1: was some legislation, and it's just just funny, right because
Speaker 1: they're like, uh, these folks who introduced this legislation, they
Speaker 1: don't understand how bad hunters are at killing wolves, and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, we can, we can make wolf hunting
Speaker 1: season year round. The people who kill wolves are trappers,
Speaker 1: but they only want to do it when furs good.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, the the biological basis is not there,
Speaker 1: it's the social basis that is the point. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: and like when they opened up Idaho's wolf harvest for
Speaker 1: the first time. You know, I think they gave out
Speaker 1: something like your listeners may tell me I'm way off
Speaker 1: on this number, but you know it was several thousand tags, right,
Speaker 1: and they ended up killing like a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: or a hundred and forty of them, which was like
Speaker 1: the best hunting season I think Idaho had right right,
Speaker 1: Like when she dropped off the table after that once
Speaker 1: the wolves were like, oh, getting shot at now, trying
Speaker 1: to move off the road. But with just under a
Speaker 1: thousand wolves on the landscape, you would expect that hunter
Speaker 1: harvest uh percentage to be a bit higher than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a testament to the difficulty of the hunter harvest
Speaker 1: approach and management. All right, man, thanks a lot, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm back looking at this picture of Cal. Now, my god,
Speaker 1: take it easy, buddy, I appreciate it. To wrap up, Cal,
Speaker 1: plug your deal. Oh so, I guess the day after
Speaker 1: this podcast will be the Louisiana episode of Cal in
Speaker 1: the Field. Cal's we can reviewed my my podcast, but
Speaker 1: something you can see visually on our meat eat or
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. So the first episode was Trapping Live Trapping
Speaker 1: grizzly bears with Idaho Fishing game. If you want to
Speaker 1: see some if you want to see some amazing grizzly
Speaker 1: bear footage that it's good. It is good, big grizzly
Speaker 1: in a trap and they work it up and process
Speaker 1: it and and eventually let it go. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like that. It's incredible good example, like the internal frustrations
Speaker 1: of being out on something like that. There's just like
Speaker 1: an overwhelming amount of cool stuff happening and an endless
Speaker 1: amount of things we could talk about, and it's like,
Speaker 1: but here's like the most concise version that we could
Speaker 1: get out to you. That was episode number one, which
Speaker 1: is tearing it up on YouTube. Are been sitting there?
Speaker 1: And episode two is Idaho Fisheries. We're talking about getting
Speaker 1: rewarded for catching rainbow trout, which is is a goofy
Speaker 1: deal but like bonny hunting rainbows. Hunting rainbows yea yeah,
Speaker 1: on the South Fork of the Snakes. Another fun one.
Speaker 1: And then Louisiana, Uh, we do all or we fish
Speaker 1: for this really cool species called Atlantic triple tale, which
Speaker 1: is a giant perch and super tasty fish, and you
Speaker 1: learn about the citizens science going on with a fish
Speaker 1: that people have been catching in the Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 1: forever but only got on regulations on gold fisheries regulations
Speaker 1: within like the last five years. That really surprised me
Speaker 1: because it's such a highly esteemed eating fish, yes, and
Speaker 1: such a prized sport fish, but people who like to
Speaker 1: catch it. It surprised me there's just one of those
Speaker 1: fish like oh yeah, they're always there, yeah, never never
Speaker 1: mind those things. I think it's because there's no like
Speaker 1: specific commercial task, like they only show up as bycatch
Speaker 1: right bycatch, some folks target them, but you really got
Speaker 1: to target them with with hooking line, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's like is it worth people's time to go after
Speaker 1: him in a in a market sense. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just kind of an interesting thing that even now,
Speaker 1: it's like there's so much life in the ocean that
Speaker 1: we're still getting around to like properly identifying, doing some
Speaker 1: real I mean, I talked to the one person who's
Speaker 1: really researched Triple Tale. It's got Jim Frank's He's awesome. Um,
Speaker 1: there's two fish in this world that I want to
Speaker 1: catch that I've never caught in Triple Tales. One of
Speaker 1: them the other one I came. I never it's like
Speaker 1: a weird mental problem. I can't remember, but I always
Speaker 1: have to ask Ghanni, Ny, what was the other fish?
Speaker 1: I want to catch real bad? Oh, there's three fish
Speaker 1: I want to catch real bad. You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: give me just a little bit of a hint. It
Speaker 1: looks like a little shark, but it's not kobia. Yeah
Speaker 1: they're good man, a triple tail and a kobia and
Speaker 1: then a she fish. Oh yeah, I'm must fish want
Speaker 1: to be too? Yeah yeah, and then we yeah, go
Speaker 1: all over Louisiana, hunt hogs, hunt gallon yule, which is
Speaker 1: uh a marsh hand and just look at the effects
Speaker 1: of salt water intrusion and and erosion in Louisiana. And yeah,
Speaker 1: super wild, fun trip to Louisiana. So when you're shooting
Speaker 1: at the pig, it looks sounds like you're raiding a
Speaker 1: m you're raiding a target, Like you're raiding a target
Speaker 1: out of them, like pretty tight work with a shotgun
Speaker 1: and thick brush. Oh yeah, you know. The idea is
Speaker 1: to go in without any judgment and experience things the
Speaker 1: way people experience them in their places. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: felt a little down. It's a little odd being like
Speaker 1: so loaded shotgun bow, the boat boats under underpower, which
Speaker 1: is storm in there and you're just gonna plow me
Speaker 1: into a bunch of bushes. And that's how we're hunting hogs.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it looks like it's like that. It's like
Speaker 1: apocalypse now when the tiger comes. Yeah, just like firing
Speaker 1: into some grass. I mean you can see what you
Speaker 1: were doing. I'm not trying to make it like it
Speaker 1: was unsafe, but it's just it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good clip. Uh but yeah, you know, trying to take
Speaker 1: a look at some different conservation issues. See how folks
Speaker 1: you know, are exploring their spaces as they change over
Speaker 1: time and different parts of the world. And it's been
Speaker 1: super fun and and always very interesting. So good work
Speaker 1: everybody check it out now. How I feel like if
Speaker 1: you wanted to find it, like how people actually find stuff,
Speaker 1: you'd go cal in the field into your YouTube search engine.
Speaker 1: Would be real easy, call in the field, yep. Start with.
Speaker 1: A smart thing to do would be go to YouTube
Speaker 1: search meat meat eater and hit that subscribe button. Who
Speaker 1: fill out Phil, Thanks, thank you all right, buddy. Thanks
Speaker 1: tuning in. We got man, do you a lot of
Speaker 1: tid landing things we didn't talk about but we'll talk
Speaker 1: about him later, including yeah, I'm gonna do it like
Speaker 1: how they do it in real shows man, like when
Speaker 1: you do a teaser next week on I don't know
Speaker 1: about it'll be next week, but including um, same sex
Speaker 1: relationships and critters. I was waiting for Korean's like musical outra.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody,