Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: I've been O'Brien and today I am standing in the
Speaker 1: middle of an icy lake at Fort Peck in Montana.
Speaker 1: A good friend Andrew McKeen, who's most recently the editor
Speaker 1: in chief Outdoor Life, one of the better writers thinkers
Speaker 1: that I know in our industry, and a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine. We've traveled the world together and we're here
Speaker 1: in his hometown of Glasgow to do a little ice fishing.
Speaker 1: So this whole podcast we were sitting kneeling around an
Speaker 1: ice hole. In fact, his legs fell asleep during the podcast,
Speaker 1: kneeling around an ice hole trying to catch a big
Speaker 1: lake trout. So that was a huge part of it.
Speaker 1: But the other part we wanted to talk about was recruiting, retention,
Speaker 1: and reactivation, our three model of getting hunters in our
Speaker 1: bucket keeping them there. So it was a great conversation,
Speaker 1: a lot of fun here on the lake. We haven't
Speaker 1: caught any fish, but I've been happy to just be
Speaker 1: in this beautiful country and talk about hunting. So the
Speaker 1: first ever ice fishing podcast with Hunting Collective an unsuccessful one,
Speaker 1: but fun nonetheless, enjoy it. Oh here we're going. Hey,
Speaker 1: Andrew McKeene, I've been on bran. What's going? That's good?
Speaker 1: Oh man, my hands are warmed up. Let me take
Speaker 1: a quick swig of this old Milwaukee light as we
Speaker 1: get going here. I don't warm you right up. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit frozen. You's got a little slush in it,
Speaker 1: which it's not a big deal at all for me
Speaker 1: at this point. We are did you know it's a
Speaker 1: good way to always started these podcasts? What you describe
Speaker 1: where we are? We are sitting on our knees in
Speaker 1: a desolate expanse of frozen lake. We very much are
Speaker 1: joining that. We're we're off a shaft house point on
Speaker 1: Fort Peck Reservoir. I got a fishing rod here that's
Speaker 1: about eighteen inches long in five ft of water. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it's only a hundred ft of water, but it
Speaker 1: might as well be five. Same amount of fish come
Speaker 1: out of either one. It's a it's a it's amazing country.
Speaker 1: I here, man, this is the homeland. You live here.
Speaker 1: I am so excited that you're here. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: to be here. I am so excited to be here.
Speaker 1: It like I said, you just moving to Montana and
Speaker 1: and you know you're always worthy, intrepid outdoor editor who
Speaker 1: found the found the perfect spot to live. So the
Speaker 1: rest of us are jealous. Well, now you've been so
Speaker 1: you haven't been here through all of winter or mosquito season,
Speaker 1: and there's only about a week and a half in
Speaker 1: between the two. It's i can be a challenge of
Speaker 1: place to live. But yeah, So my hometown is Glasgow,
Speaker 1: mont Hannah. This is Fort Peck Reservoir, which is the
Speaker 1: largest body of water in the state of Montana. It's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you say? It has as much
Speaker 1: shoreline as the state of California. That's right, Uh, and
Speaker 1: far fewer rockfish and far more ice fish and rednecks.
Speaker 1: There's we're sitting in the middle of kind of a
Speaker 1: shanty town of sorts. Not the kind of shanty town
Speaker 1: that you don't really think of, but this is an
Speaker 1: ice shanty town. It's not Leech Lake level, but it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Like there's a little community here. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a little community people most most, I believe in my
Speaker 1: briefing ice fishing experience, it feels as if ice fishing
Speaker 1: and mostly just standing around drinking. You look at a rod,
Speaker 1: like nothing's happening over there, and then the guys will
Speaker 1: be like, no, they're not biting. Were like, well, how
Speaker 1: much work have you done? And it seems like right
Speaker 1: now we're just sitting around. There's a bunch of dudes
Speaker 1: just talking and fishing. Maybe is set and dry. Although
Speaker 1: you notice, I am I'm continuing to jig. You are
Speaker 1: jigging as we're talking. You are jigging. And uh, if
Speaker 1: we catch a fish that might be live, I'll give
Speaker 1: the live commentary on your on your ability to pull
Speaker 1: this these giant things, and what what kind of fish
Speaker 1: are in here? Some people know what we might be
Speaker 1: pulling in. Well. Fort Peck is known for walleye. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty good walleye fishery. Maybe the second most famous
Speaker 1: or known fish is northern pike. There's a good small
Speaker 1: mouth bass fishery here. But today we are heard in
Speaker 1: deep water fishing for lake trout. Yeah, they've caught a
Speaker 1: couple of big old lake trout here. Huh before we
Speaker 1: got here, as the guys that were already set up
Speaker 1: a couple of big lakes on the ice. And they're
Speaker 1: good looking fish deep there. How they eat they well,
Speaker 1: they're a little bit fishy, a little bit, a little
Speaker 1: bit oily, but smoke them or yeah, I mean they're good.
Speaker 1: Put them in the oil, fryme up up, always fram up.
Speaker 1: The thing I like about this so far is we
Speaker 1: haven't gone to that the third level of ice fishing,
Speaker 1: which is you doubt everything your lure, you're constantly changing up. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: Steven Ronnella has this ice this camera. They dropped down
Speaker 1: and then you can see the fish we were in.
Speaker 1: He was describing watching the perch just like swim up
Speaker 1: to the bay, just gently put their mouth on it
Speaker 1: and then decided, no, I'm back off. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that makes you even more paranoid. Let you know
Speaker 1: that the fish are noncommittal in the way that they are.
Speaker 1: So if I just just this this different jig, different
Speaker 1: weren't different weight, different leader, I wouldn't want that much information.
Speaker 1: The thing of the beauty of ice fishing is you
Speaker 1: have no idea what's going on out there, so you
Speaker 1: could just make it up. Oh, I know, you're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think this is where I think
Speaker 1: we just it's just about persistence at this juncture, which
Speaker 1: it often is. It's often is, but it's the feeling
Speaker 1: that you get, you know, when you're sitting out on
Speaker 1: the ice. We don't have any fancy stuff here, but
Speaker 1: you're just we're drinking. I'm drinking and you're drinking Old
Speaker 1: mill walky light. This is the American pinup series. Can
Speaker 1: you know? Not sponsored? Not sponsored? But if hey listen,
Speaker 1: Old Milwaukee, if you're listening to this, any of your
Speaker 1: marketing executives, are you in your agency? People hit us
Speaker 1: up here the Hunting Collective. We'd love to be sponsored
Speaker 1: by Old Milwaukee. Like this ship is delicious and I
Speaker 1: kind of feel like we would bring our own new
Speaker 1: pin up series to it. Yes, yeah, but up ice
Speaker 1: Fisherman here suit. This is the other just dudes in
Speaker 1: fur Well, I mean your hat. So Ben O'Brien today
Speaker 1: at the gas station in Glasgow, he comes out with
Speaker 1: this Dakota Dan hats and it's like a it's a
Speaker 1: rabbit mad rabbit bomber hat. I thought he'd had it
Speaker 1: like it was a family heirloom, and he wore it
Speaker 1: like in that kind of subtle way like yeah, my
Speaker 1: great granddad broke this in. Yeah. No, I didn't announce
Speaker 1: that I was putting it on or anything. I just
Speaker 1: slipped it on and during conversation you must have said them,
Speaker 1: you certainly got fuzzier in the last twenty minutes. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: part of it was just your Johnny attitude. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but my attitude change immediately. You wanted me to look
Speaker 1: at it and notice it. But I didn't put it
Speaker 1: together that it was a brand new purchase. It was
Speaker 1: only shout outs to the Glasgow Jiffy Lub where we were.
Speaker 1: That was it was a good good purchase. It's it's
Speaker 1: proven to be um, it's made in China course and
Speaker 1: it but it's proven to be synthetic for I imagine,
Speaker 1: but proven to be a good good purchase. The thing
Speaker 1: I like about the setup and you can kind of
Speaker 1: hear it maybe in the background the soundtrack to this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we don't need no stinking ice shanty. We
Speaker 1: don't need We're out in the elements here. We're literally
Speaker 1: on our knees. I can't feel my feet of the
Speaker 1: saddest podcast ever. Our backs are to the wind, which
Speaker 1: isn't helping. And I'm so distracted by my dog, who
Speaker 1: is just she's we call her the resident dumbass. She
Speaker 1: just chased Uh. The loneliest snow goose in America into
Speaker 1: the only open water on the lake. And she went in.
Speaker 1: She went in, and that water is cold. We thought
Speaker 1: we were gonna have to go over there and rescue her.
Speaker 1: But Nellie be and Nellie she found her way out
Speaker 1: of there. Man. She she is standing beside us now,
Speaker 1: probably waiting to crop to us. This wind. You never
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean this country, you know, talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about your home country here, because it is
Speaker 1: you know, the Missouri Breaks, it is Fort Pack. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty popular names. Like I was saying before
Speaker 1: we're driving over here, I do feel like Fort Pack
Speaker 1: is something, at least Montane's talking about it. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the Missouri Breaks are something that all hunters understand,
Speaker 1: you know, as as a destination. I think this is
Speaker 1: you know, I moved here twenty years ago, worked for
Speaker 1: fish Wilife from Parks, and I kind of thought this
Speaker 1: is gonna be kind of a fun little hiatus on
Speaker 1: the way to somewhere else. And there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things I know it is. One is you nailed you
Speaker 1: nailed it. I mean, these sort of legendary locations. The
Speaker 1: Missouri River Breaks is you know, kind of synonymous with
Speaker 1: big mule deer and all com big horn sheep, and
Speaker 1: it's all real. That is in my backyard. The Milk
Speaker 1: River is just over our shoulder, which was kind of
Speaker 1: lost a little bit of its luster, but synonymous with
Speaker 1: big white tails. Oh yeah, pheasant hunting. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're a sportsman, this is a pretty nice place.
Speaker 1: Back in the day when I was coming up, the
Speaker 1: real Tree monster bucks man Bill Jordan was out there
Speaker 1: just bringing like Mike, Mike Waddell's coming out here every
Speaker 1: year and killing bucks. And that's what I knew of it.
Speaker 1: So when I thought of the river, I thought of this,
Speaker 1: you know, hollow ground, this destination that that is, you know,
Speaker 1: a kin to Pike County, Illinois for white It was
Speaker 1: popularizing that way, and I mean it's still is. So
Speaker 1: the thing that has kept me here is, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: to me. It's as I said to have been on
Speaker 1: the way out here. We really don't have an access problem.
Speaker 1: There's abundant public land, there's block management everywhere. In some ways,
Speaker 1: it's going back in time to nineteen fifties America, where
Speaker 1: if you know somebody is certainly if you live here,
Speaker 1: you get asked if you want to hunt their place,
Speaker 1: you don't have to ask the locals. They ask, Um,
Speaker 1: that's pretty nice. Yeah, it's it's rolling country, it's black hills,
Speaker 1: it's you know, river bottoms. Is I mean, you know
Speaker 1: the view out your back porch, I said, made me
Speaker 1: feel like when Captain Woodrow f Call was in drove
Speaker 1: all his cattle from He's not a real person, his
Speaker 1: fictional character, but he drove all those cattle from Texas spontanity.
Speaker 1: He came up when this region he goes, boys, we're here,
Speaker 1: this is the place it in your place feels much
Speaker 1: like that, and uh you know that. No, No, people
Speaker 1: that listen to this podcast. No, I've wax and waxed
Speaker 1: about Montana. Well enough book this this area. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's such a diverse state. This area just feels a
Speaker 1: lot different then than many that I've spent time. Well,
Speaker 1: now I gotta bring in the other part of it.
Speaker 1: There's a reason there aren't very, very very many people here.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a hard place to live. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've had a tough, long winter. We have h long,
Speaker 1: hot summers with the biggest mosquitoes you've ever seen. The
Speaker 1: Washington Post just did a analysis of every ZIP code
Speaker 1: in in the country last year looking at infrastructure in
Speaker 1: the distance between towns and services, and they named Glasgow
Speaker 1: the loneliest town in America when it comes to accessibility
Speaker 1: to to public services. So it's the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and I can really feel like it's sometimes it's it's
Speaker 1: two eight five miles to the airport, so you know
Speaker 1: you can do it. You can get to know yourself
Speaker 1: pretty well and really to the airport. So anytime any
Speaker 1: listening complains about the airport run minds like five minutes,
Speaker 1: um more like five miles. But I think it's it's
Speaker 1: safe to say that this is tough country. Man. It
Speaker 1: makes for tough people, but hardy in good people too.
Speaker 1: I find just from my brief time out here. The
Speaker 1: thing I like about it, and also it greaves me
Speaker 1: a little bit, is it is like the best in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties America, where everybody's watching out for you. It's
Speaker 1: been a great place to raise kids, but it's also
Speaker 1: the worst of nineteen fifties America where and people are
Speaker 1: kind of trapped in time in terms of like there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of ethnic diversity or culinary diversity and
Speaker 1: everybody knows your business. Everybody knows your business. I like it, um,
Speaker 1: but it makes going to the grocery store kind of
Speaker 1: a long You got to prepare for it because they're
Speaker 1: gonna make small talk. Yeah, I think I think both.
Speaker 1: I think I think I yearned for both things, right.
Speaker 1: I think I yearned for like that small town fiel
Speaker 1: where you know everybody, but also like so yearned to
Speaker 1: be connected and be you know, in a place where
Speaker 1: lots going on. Like I yearned for that bee hive
Speaker 1: of activity. But I also at the same time, I
Speaker 1: don't want to you know, pass by a bunch of
Speaker 1: strangers on the street, go to the grocer shore and
Speaker 1: not know a soul. So there's there's you know, there's
Speaker 1: gifts and takes, but you try to find a place
Speaker 1: where you can get both of those things. I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like Bozeman though, is we were talking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's like Paris in the twenties. It's like the epicenter
Speaker 1: right now, a lot of cool stuff. So I think
Speaker 1: I've actually got that. Yeah, I think it's close, but
Speaker 1: so nobody else moved there. Full I'm already like that
Speaker 1: old one say here's this is my favorite. Like, if
Speaker 1: anybody wants to go and read the reviews of my podcast,
Speaker 1: there's like, there's someone stars in there's there's a couple
Speaker 1: of dozen of those in there. And one guy just
Speaker 1: wrote this is after I had already moved to Montana.
Speaker 1: Stay in Montana. It's full one star. It's like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: sound review of this media product. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to denigrate my hometown too much, but I'll
Speaker 1: tell you this. So we've lived here, We've lived your
Speaker 1: nineteen years, we've raised. My daughter was born here, we raised.
Speaker 1: It will take another eighties seven years before we're like
Speaker 1: residents generations, at least three or four generations. People always say, oh,
Speaker 1: aren't were you actually from Yeah, you don't have you
Speaker 1: don't sound like you're from here. I feel like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got a lot long ways to go. But you know,
Speaker 1: and in the effort of transition, and speaking of raising kids,
Speaker 1: your kids are you know, high school age, right, and
Speaker 1: your two twin sons are ready to go off to college,
Speaker 1: and and I think all three of your kids are
Speaker 1: you know, hunters at some level, right. I Mean you
Speaker 1: don't call them all avid hunters, but they certainly live
Speaker 1: in in the mecca um to take up out there
Speaker 1: pursuits you you know, you were for folks that don't
Speaker 1: know Andrew's background, you know, you were editor in chief
Speaker 1: and Outdoor Life for how many years prior to seven years?
Speaker 1: Seven years um? And I have been in the outdoor
Speaker 1: industry and in wildlife management and such for many years
Speaker 1: prior to that. And so I mean you've involved yourself
Speaker 1: in a lot of you know, hunter recruitment and hunter
Speaker 1: retention types of activities and and written about it for
Speaker 1: Outdoor Life and been a part of a lot of
Speaker 1: editorial products that that spoke about it in a broad
Speaker 1: and microsense. You know, what what do you feel like
Speaker 1: for your kids their generation? Like, what's the you know,
Speaker 1: I want to call it their plight, but what's their
Speaker 1: biggest challenge to you know, maintain what they've got here
Speaker 1: in Glasgow? That's a good question. I mean one of
Speaker 1: the I guess motivators for me being involved in you
Speaker 1: know kind of would say kind of the greater pass
Speaker 1: it on movement is So my daughter is a freshman
Speaker 1: in high school in Glasgow, Montana. She's fifteen. She took
Speaker 1: hunter education when she was eleven year old, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of Montana kids. It's not these are not big classes.
Speaker 1: I think she's got fifty kids kids in her grade.
Speaker 1: There's only two girls who hunt and maybe three or
Speaker 1: four boys who hunt. This is possibly the hunting out
Speaker 1: in America. This is what I said. This is the mecca.
Speaker 1: If anybody thinks of like a place where you have
Speaker 1: access to a plethora of game, you know, and just
Speaker 1: a culture that supports it, this is it. Man. So
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's not a given that just because
Speaker 1: you are raised here and maybe your folks have always
Speaker 1: done this, that you're going to So that was kind
Speaker 1: of the first thing. It's like, we got to really
Speaker 1: work on that the funnel, you know, the throat of
Speaker 1: the funnel, and getting more kids involved it. But then
Speaker 1: I started looking at my buddies in the generation above me. Hell,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of out here on the ice. We
Speaker 1: just saw they don't do it much anymore. They're aging out.
Speaker 1: And so the big kind of the national perspective is
Speaker 1: tying those two things together. We're an aging population. All
Speaker 1: the statistics say at about age sixty six, you just
Speaker 1: don't do this much anymore, even though you may have
Speaker 1: the interest and and you know maybe now the financial
Speaker 1: ability and the time to do it, you just don't
Speaker 1: have the physical desire to do it. And so the
Speaker 1: big problem is we're not replacing ourselves as we age
Speaker 1: out with a new generation coming in issue. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: it's the you know that that will post World War
Speaker 1: two boom and hunters and we're in the decline. And
Speaker 1: I think I think it's this's is no news to anybody.
Speaker 1: There's been a concern about it for a long time,
Speaker 1: which is why there have been all the kids programs
Speaker 1: that state agencies and the NGOs think about the Turkey Federations,
Speaker 1: Jake's program, like all we gotta work on really making
Speaker 1: it attractive to kids. The fallacy with that whole thing
Speaker 1: has been and I've participated in this fallacy myself, is
Speaker 1: typically you think about kids who go to like a
Speaker 1: field day for a Turkey Federation, they're the kids of
Speaker 1: the parents who are already involved in that. Those are
Speaker 1: the most likely kids to be involved just as a
Speaker 1: family tradition. And so it's I don't think it's follows
Speaker 1: that kids just because they're exposed to it are gonna
Speaker 1: do it. There's just a lot of distractions, A lot
Speaker 1: of other choices that they have. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: it comes to like there's another part of it. Another
Speaker 1: part of the dichotomy is very much that uh, and
Speaker 1: I was this way to some extent. I don't know
Speaker 1: if your kids will be this way. We'll see. But
Speaker 1: you know, you your your parents teach you hunting. Your
Speaker 1: dad is normally the the way that that goes. But
Speaker 1: you know, somebody in your family or some close friend
Speaker 1: becomes your mentor teaches you hunting. And then you turn eighteen,
Speaker 1: you go to high school. Um, you discover the opposite sex,
Speaker 1: you discover um parties, you discover other things. Sports Milwaukee
Speaker 1: Light shout out to Old Milwaukee Light hashtag pin up
Speaker 1: can American series not hashtag not sponsored. The ship is good, um,
Speaker 1: but I think it it. I dropped off during college
Speaker 1: a good bit because I had a job, I had
Speaker 1: an internship. I was taking full of course twelve course
Speaker 1: or twelve credit three courses, and I dropped off of
Speaker 1: honey at least as you know, when when I wasn't
Speaker 1: with my dad. So the danger is that that's what
Speaker 1: we focus on the youth, right, we gotta get him in,
Speaker 1: we gotta get him in well we gotta retain them
Speaker 1: to right, got to keep them in UM. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's something that is starting to be recognized
Speaker 1: as well because there's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: drop off. Well you think about kids too, I mean,
Speaker 1: there may be that avidity, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: other things in their lives, but you start to think
Speaker 1: about what how to build a self perpetuating machine. Kids
Speaker 1: don't have disposable income, they don't have disposable time, they
Speaker 1: don't have disposable transportation, so they're totally dependent. And so
Speaker 1: you're exactly right, what we're what we're looking at. Do
Speaker 1: you explain let's let's look explain our three and kind
Speaker 1: of involvement in and give people an idea what's going on.
Speaker 1: This isn't an isolated, you know, thought that we've got
Speaker 1: to do something to really perpetuate these traditions, and we
Speaker 1: kind of talk about what's dependent on that perpetuation ship.
Speaker 1: It's shoot, it's the entire funding structure for wildlife management
Speaker 1: in America is participants fund wildlife management, game wardens, the
Speaker 1: whole system. And so once we start to see big
Speaker 1: drop off, there's meaningful impacts in terms of there's not
Speaker 1: enough funding to get this stuff. They'll say most I
Speaker 1: think the average is and this changes. So this is
Speaker 1: not a direct uh stat that I'm quoting, but it's
Speaker 1: it's around six of most state agencies funding comes from
Speaker 1: tags and Pittman robbers and type funds, you know, excise
Speaker 1: tax type revenues. And so that's a huge number. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's, like I said, that's all dependent on these
Speaker 1: user groups going on and buying licenses and spending the
Speaker 1: money and doing the things that's required to go hunting.
Speaker 1: So we we've created this in this system that's beautiful
Speaker 1: and is beautifully intertwined, but it also hinges on participation.
Speaker 1: So the there there have been a lot of demographic
Speaker 1: studies and just looking at kind of cultural changes over
Speaker 1: time that have have taken the national look at this
Speaker 1: and said, okay, so there's the throw to the funnel
Speaker 1: we talked about. That's the recruitment side. There's the um
Speaker 1: retention side, which is, if you've started hunting like you
Speaker 1: in college, like an awful lot of people, how do
Speaker 1: we bring these people back and kind of keep them
Speaker 1: in the fold? Yeah, I mean, and in the term
Speaker 1: you know where did the term like our three is
Speaker 1: the term that we that it was coined. Um, you
Speaker 1: know something I think people need to know, and it's
Speaker 1: it's more of an industry term. But take people through
Speaker 1: where where that first started and kind where you first
Speaker 1: heard it, and what you think of that model or
Speaker 1: at least that articulation of the needs for that funnel.
Speaker 1: So the just to be um clear, are three is
Speaker 1: So it's recruiting, retention, and then reactivation. And that's that
Speaker 1: idea that you may have had some exposure to this
Speaker 1: at some point in your life, you fell out of it.
Speaker 1: How do you we bring those people back in? So
Speaker 1: we're not starting from scratch with a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: new people who have to understand, you know, the value
Speaker 1: of wildlife and the tradition of in America. So those
Speaker 1: are the three rs. I actually I didn't really hear
Speaker 1: about it in terms of like almost kind of branding
Speaker 1: campaign and so just a couple of years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very recent. Um. And like a lot of these things,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm an agency alum and veteran, but agencies drive
Speaker 1: me crazy for a couple of reasons. One, they coined
Speaker 1: things like this are three movement. Well, it's not a movement.
Speaker 1: Until people make a difference with that. You can't just
Speaker 1: say it's going to happen and then it's just words,
Speaker 1: just a bunch of words. It didn't make like a
Speaker 1: nice logo. I believe it's just words. But I guess
Speaker 1: the words that like a concept that we can agree with.
Speaker 1: But it's the concept in action, right you say? And honestly,
Speaker 1: reactivation is kind of clunky. So if I had to say,
Speaker 1: maybe it's two hours and then maybe we find another
Speaker 1: work for you or something, why or why? Um? The
Speaker 1: other thing that drives it crazy about state agencies is
Speaker 1: they want to just study everything to death and then
Speaker 1: prove the concept, which is the scientific method. I get
Speaker 1: it is how we manage lots of our wild life,
Speaker 1: but the human dimension of what we do kind of
Speaker 1: resist that sometimes. And so one of my um foundational
Speaker 1: principles about this is our ability to recruit, retain and
Speaker 1: reactive people. May not work the same in Illinois or
Speaker 1: New York or Montana. It's going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit different. But we can sit here as people who
Speaker 1: care about it and study it for fifteen or twenty years.
Speaker 1: In that time, the world isn't standing still waiting for
Speaker 1: our conclusions. Let's just do some stuff. Let's just kind
Speaker 1: of do it. But state agencies are kind of resistant
Speaker 1: to that idea. Yeah, that they have to stay have
Speaker 1: to act on. I mean this it's governmental action campige book.
Speaker 1: Let's just see this works. We have to have a
Speaker 1: study in a basis on which to act. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I think we need to act is because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, demographics. Wait for no man, our baby boomers
Speaker 1: are leaving the fold. We're not replacing ourselves very well.
Speaker 1: But here's the interesting, I think exciting thing is think
Speaker 1: about that continuum of kids who didn't have the disposal
Speaker 1: time income. People who do, I think are the most
Speaker 1: energetic and and source of greatest potential. And that's the
Speaker 1: you know, the twenty five year old college graduates who's
Speaker 1: really looking for something in their life to give a
Speaker 1: meaning and something to do, something to join, um, like
Speaker 1: the local food movement has probably been the best thing
Speaker 1: that's happened to this. And really the whole idea of
Speaker 1: the outdoors is being an authentic experience. Nobody is gonna
Speaker 1: sugarcoat it for you. If you can have a mentor
Speaker 1: somebody to guide you, but ultimately you're kind of on
Speaker 1: your own. You're gonna find out a lot about yourself
Speaker 1: out in the elements. I think that's actually the most
Speaker 1: exciting thing. I look at it almost like a new
Speaker 1: homestead movement. Yeah, that's that's a great way to put
Speaker 1: it too, because you know, it's it's cultivating this willingness
Speaker 1: to you know, charge ahead and fail and start again.
Speaker 1: And it's not you know, I think some of the
Speaker 1: fallacies in our current media space is that there's there's
Speaker 1: this like focus on the success, right. You gotta like,
Speaker 1: you can't have a TV show without a dead animal.
Speaker 1: You can't have um. The more the more dead creators
Speaker 1: you get on your your social media, the more likes
Speaker 1: you're gonna get just by nature of the way that
Speaker 1: it orders. But and that those things are all great,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a depiction of what we do. You're
Speaker 1: not gonna erace you know, those things. But at some
Speaker 1: level of Nelly back old Nelly the dumbass, she's kind
Speaker 1: of a coyote. She's a forager. She's a forager. She's
Speaker 1: looking for the ice hole to ice hall, looking for Bayer, yeah,
Speaker 1: looking for bay, looking for the occasional fish tail. Our
Speaker 1: neighbors are backing up getting out of town. Why do
Speaker 1: I suddenly feel so alone here? But like everybody left us.
Speaker 1: It was a great podcast. Way to walk home? Now?
Speaker 1: I no, no, well now go here? Now there you go?
Speaker 1: Kind of she's she's skulking. Yeah, whatever, I'll come back. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like these these ice fishing interludes. Hopefully we get
Speaker 1: an interlude where there's a fish on looking over back
Speaker 1: at my hole. My hole looks like it's it's doing good. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I think we talked. We like,
Speaker 1: we talked about this, and I've talked about this a lot.
Speaker 1: But it's important to note that we talked about this.
Speaker 1: We you know, we we would be proactive on it
Speaker 1: even if we weren't in the situation we're in. Um no,
Speaker 1: now at least get back now, kid, go over here,
Speaker 1: there you go. Um, we would be talking about it
Speaker 1: even if we were in a healthy situation, I think,
Speaker 1: but we wouldn't be. I don't think we would be
Speaker 1: as active in this. You know, we should be desperate
Speaker 1: in a lot, in a lot of ways to to
Speaker 1: stem the tides. It's interesting though, you kind of hit
Speaker 1: on this. I think we all who are define real
Speaker 1: lives about what we do, understand it through and through
Speaker 1: we don't. There's no shortcuts. You earn what you put
Speaker 1: into it. It's kind of a feedback loop that way.
Speaker 1: I think there's been a tendency we've talked about kind
Speaker 1: of giving kids all these opportunities. You see it in
Speaker 1: youth seasons all these other things too. There's a real
Speaker 1: tendency to say, Okay, we want to open the gate
Speaker 1: for a bunch of new participants, we have to make
Speaker 1: it as easy and as accessible as possible. I actually
Speaker 1: think that's the wrong approach because I think the value
Speaker 1: of this is it is hard. It can't be so
Speaker 1: hard it's intimidating. There has there has to be success,
Speaker 1: but there also has to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: the challenge that boost the reward as the outcome when
Speaker 1: it finally happens. That's why I think introducing things like
Speaker 1: small games the equation right. If you're there's you know
Speaker 1: a lot of folks that listen to this that are
Speaker 1: new hunters and have written in or chatting with me
Speaker 1: about the challenges of being a new hunter, and um,
Speaker 1: there aren't many challenges, but there also are many doors
Speaker 1: that are hanging wide open for you to walk through.
Speaker 1: You just have to You just have to do it,
Speaker 1: and you don't don't, you know, don't get caught up
Speaker 1: in the dogs of hunting that you gotta go out
Speaker 1: killing the gold elk or to um. So that's why
Speaker 1: I think the kind of the revitalization of small game hunting.
Speaker 1: I had more fun as much fun hunting cotton tails
Speaker 1: or squirrels or running around just run around the woods
Speaker 1: with my friends as I do anything else. So I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certainly is so much value in that that I
Speaker 1: think it's coming back. I mean, we might have lost
Speaker 1: it as a culture a little bit for a while,
Speaker 1: but I think it's coming back. Oh, I think it is.
Speaker 1: I am so optimistic about it. But I think there's
Speaker 1: some structural things too. So if you accept that the
Speaker 1: activity itself can be a challenge, getting into it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I really work on. It's
Speaker 1: like trying to simplify state regulations, and that's the gateway
Speaker 1: to participation doesn't have to be as hard as it
Speaker 1: is because the activity itself, you're gonna find your own way,
Speaker 1: and it can it can be a struggle, but at least,
Speaker 1: let's get people to the table, into the game. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of work that we can
Speaker 1: do there, um really as a community of citizens, to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we want to perpetuate this. This is I want my
Speaker 1: kids to come back home or to make this a
Speaker 1: part of their lives that perpetuates my tradition to their
Speaker 1: great grandkids and great great grandkids. That's an important thing
Speaker 1: to me. There's there are ways to make it easier.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing too is I look at
Speaker 1: our community of people who love this to find their
Speaker 1: lives by it. There are things that we can do.
Speaker 1: We we we need to be passing it on to just
Speaker 1: people who don't look like us, people in our neighborhoods
Speaker 1: who may express an interest. Share our gear, share time,
Speaker 1: share knowledge. We as a community of people are kind
Speaker 1: of hoarders. We hoard our secret spots, we hold our gear,
Speaker 1: We hoard a lot of stuff. I think over time
Speaker 1: we need to start to break that open. We need
Speaker 1: to share a lot more. That's a hard that's so
Speaker 1: that's a big push for a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it seems like as you talk, you speak about
Speaker 1: it and these like broad generalities. It seems you know,
Speaker 1: it may seem a little bit shallow, but a little
Speaker 1: bit b dantic or whatever, but to me, it's it's
Speaker 1: an important conversation is to have and you, like you
Speaker 1: and I were talking not long ago about do it
Speaker 1: on a small level. Right. So two examples that i've
Speaker 1: you know, kind of watched over as long as we've
Speaker 1: known each other, and then something to talk about the
Speaker 1: other day. One would be how you brought your kids up, right,
Speaker 1: and you've written about that in Outdoor Life and covered
Speaker 1: it there. One of the favorite things you ever did
Speaker 1: was Iris hunts, which was your daughter. Um, well that's
Speaker 1: not her first hunting adventures. And so it's that like
Speaker 1: it's talking about that experience in a human way, right,
Speaker 1: It's like human interests, like how does this, how does this?
Speaker 1: How is this delivered from this little girl? Um? And
Speaker 1: how does she go through it? And the other one
Speaker 1: is like to return to the low movement for local stewardship, right,
Speaker 1: like we're talking about the local rod and gun club,
Speaker 1: yeah the other day. So these are these are very
Speaker 1: different things. Uh, Nelly's that's the new pin up girl
Speaker 1: right there? Get him Nelly, hey girl? Um, so those
Speaker 1: are the two things from you that I really wanted
Speaker 1: to know about because you know, one is that just
Speaker 1: the narrative of you and Iris and UH, your two
Speaker 1: twin sons, how that worked for you in your personal experience.
Speaker 1: But then greater, how do you feel like, uh, on
Speaker 1: a local level, we can get back to just caring
Speaker 1: about our community and using and using that as a
Speaker 1: way to express hunting and fishing. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's that's a more personal thing for people to talk
Speaker 1: about rather than just talk about these at these broad
Speaker 1: eleven million miss and twelve million. Now absolutely, I think
Speaker 1: I think that just puts people to sleep. Nobody gets
Speaker 1: people listen to this like a couple of dudes on
Speaker 1: their knees on the ice wind housing just talking about
Speaker 1: some bullshit. But there is there's personal things that happened
Speaker 1: that you know, shape your shape the way you think
Speaker 1: about hunting. That it's funny, like I'm a dad of
Speaker 1: three kids. My boys are twins. It was an easy
Speaker 1: thing to kind of take them and introduce them to things.
Speaker 1: But my daughter has had an aptitude for this for
Speaker 1: a long long time. But I mentioned, you know, there's
Speaker 1: not a big tradition of her peer group it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny. She's she's a she's a kid who's looking
Speaker 1: for Well, that's a good look right there. It looks
Speaker 1: like a bunch of he headed to California ship. Now
Speaker 1: what we just what just we have to describe what
Speaker 1: just drove by? Three dudes on a four wheeler sitting
Speaker 1: on top of cooler. Each one has a beer in
Speaker 1: their hand. They got an auger strap to the front,
Speaker 1: they got they got an ice sled on the back
Speaker 1: full of buckets of ice fishing gear, and they're just
Speaker 1: try it's like a parade float. It kind of looks
Speaker 1: to me like a mobile garage sale. Yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: like maybe it looks like, you know how the wagon
Speaker 1: train in the West. Two of those dudes will die
Speaker 1: before they reach their destination. One will be that's a
Speaker 1: Milwaukee Light commercial that just drove by us. Boys. I'm
Speaker 1: so surprised Nelly didn't join that, just because it looked
Speaker 1: I kind of want to join it. It looks like
Speaker 1: it was not room for us, though not many In
Speaker 1: many many ways, there's not room for us there. But anyhow,
Speaker 1: you're raising your kids, so yeah, so to me, I
Speaker 1: knew this was something we were going to do anyway.
Speaker 1: So that was that was easy, but it's it was
Speaker 1: easy in the sense of I we have the place
Speaker 1: to do it, and it was to me a little
Speaker 1: bit of a laboratory. The harder thing to me was,
Speaker 1: this is a hard thing to say. Is it's gonna
Speaker 1: sound as you said? And I think it was about me.
Speaker 1: There was a there was a there was you know,
Speaker 1: there's a shadow and put it that came from a comedy. Um.
Speaker 1: I actually think it's easy as hell to teach your
Speaker 1: own kids these things. What's hard is somebody else's kids
Speaker 1: or somebody who is doesn't have the same origin point
Speaker 1: as you do. As we through the Outdoor Life piece,
Speaker 1: started thinking about how do we talk about making a
Speaker 1: difference and making this scale Because it was one thing
Speaker 1: to one to one is how most of us learned
Speaker 1: how to hunts with her parent or an uncle, family friend.
Speaker 1: It doesn't scale very well if you think about we're
Speaker 1: trying to make a big global difference, at least national difference.
Speaker 1: You've got to figure out a way to replicate yourself
Speaker 1: more than just once. And so what Outdoor Life. One
Speaker 1: of our projects was to figure out ways that we
Speaker 1: could expand the footprint of just one person. You know,
Speaker 1: the NGOs have done it with pretty well, with field
Speaker 1: days and all that stuff. We just talked about how
Speaker 1: kind of shallow that is. So we actually talked about
Speaker 1: what if each of us take three people out. The
Speaker 1: kind of the foundational principle for this is if somebody
Speaker 1: expresses an interest in hunting and ask you to take
Speaker 1: them hunting and you don't do it, you're an asshole. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't be an asso. The problem with that is if
Speaker 1: fifteen people all express that and you're committed not to
Speaker 1: be an asshole, you don't have time for yourself anymore.
Speaker 1: So what's like the asshole thresholds? To me, it's three
Speaker 1: people a year. That's pretty good hunting a year. But
Speaker 1: you gotta think about it now. If that's your filter too,
Speaker 1: you can actually be a little selective because if you're
Speaker 1: dependent depending to scale this up now you can start
Speaker 1: to pick and choose people who are gonna replicate your
Speaker 1: experience to another generation of people. This is kind of
Speaker 1: the classic pyramids influence the influence. To me, that's the
Speaker 1: secret for this whole thing. I think there's enough people
Speaker 1: who have an interest. This is the recruitment part. Of
Speaker 1: the r y like find people who are gonna follow
Speaker 1: on with this and follow through with this. What are
Speaker 1: you wait a minute, we just had a little visitation here.
Speaker 1: They're pulling out fish galore Chester from r R Bouse's coming.
Speaker 1: Are we going? What is that for? Is that for us? Fuck? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Man flopping fish we're gonna eat, will eat them, Come
Speaker 1: over the office, We'll cook them up for you. No,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect part of the podcast you made
Speaker 1: it on you made it on the podcasts as the
Speaker 1: deliver of fish. Well done, man. So a snowmobile just
Speaker 1: rolled as it rolled, sluiced up to slide, propelled, was propelled,
Speaker 1: uh and and out flopped a couple of big lakers. Nelly,
Speaker 1: those are not for you. They're not for you. She's
Speaker 1: convinced there has been a faction on the ice. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's every serious conversation about hunter recruitments should
Speaker 1: be interspersed with like random visits from somebody. That's the
Speaker 1: way it h back. So pick your pick your people
Speaker 1: who are gonna pass it on. The thing I did
Speaker 1: this past year and the going kind of the community
Speaker 1: thing is we have a local sporting group called the
Speaker 1: Highline Sportsman it's not associated with any credit group or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just a bunch of us the middle of nowhere
Speaker 1: or who really like to work together, and we really
Speaker 1: liked to fish and hunt, and we realized that the
Speaker 1: big scirt groups were leaving out a lot of little
Speaker 1: small conservation missions like right was, they're saving habitat for
Speaker 1: turkeys and pheasants and stuff, but what about like the
Speaker 1: habitat for humans, for people. So one of the things
Speaker 1: we took on, I was kind of an evangelist about
Speaker 1: this whole mentor thing, and so we all as a
Speaker 1: group said, we're each going to take out one person.
Speaker 1: That's the way to scale it right there too. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people in this town, even though
Speaker 1: it's we don't have an access, probably got game all
Speaker 1: around us who know have an experience on hunting our fishing.
Speaker 1: So each of us who were able to took out one, two,
Speaker 1: and even three people. And that's what I was saying,
Speaker 1: that's the hard thing because these people they don't have
Speaker 1: their own gears. You're sharing their gear. They don't have
Speaker 1: a place. You're sharing your place, and they don't have
Speaker 1: they're sharing your time too. To me, that was the
Speaker 1: heaviest lift of all but holy Cologne. It was also
Speaker 1: the most rewarding of all to see these people who
Speaker 1: have never hunder your fish before holding up a gigantic
Speaker 1: that quarter of a mule they just killed. I mean
Speaker 1: it's going to take home and feed their families. It's just, uh,
Speaker 1: where's what's this person going? Right here? This lonely walker
Speaker 1: across I see Nelly taking them down. The funny thing is,
Speaker 1: like you would say, this is is this great, you know,
Speaker 1: philanthropic thing you're doing there, But it really is a
Speaker 1: rewarding for the mentor as it is for the mentee
Speaker 1: like it is, and it's like personally, I love it
Speaker 1: and I love doing it. I've done uh several times,
Speaker 1: not through a year, which I need to start, but
Speaker 1: that you know, there's something in it for the mentor.
Speaker 1: I mean there really is. And it makes you a
Speaker 1: better hunter because you see it through the eyes of
Speaker 1: someone that's never like seen it. It opens it up
Speaker 1: to you. I think that's actually that's a huge part
Speaker 1: of it. I hadn't thought about two right now. It
Speaker 1: it made me a much more aware hunter because you're
Speaker 1: trying to maximize the success of the or whatever mint
Speaker 1: we've had a hard time figuring out what it's not
Speaker 1: really an apprentice mintee sounds around of Florida or maybe
Speaker 1: like a mint um. So whatever that apprentice is um,
Speaker 1: you know, you want them to have a good time.
Speaker 1: I think this is the other thing they have to
Speaker 1: have success. Going out and just seeing game is not enough.
Speaker 1: Going out and just smelling the her than being part
Speaker 1: of nature, that ain't enough. They've got to have the
Speaker 1: at least the chance to pull the trigger. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you take away that like the constructs for those
Speaker 1: of us have hunted a long time and feel like
Speaker 1: we're pursuing like the bigger the animal, the better. You know,
Speaker 1: if you could strip that away a little bit, that
Speaker 1: that helped. That's helped me in the past. See that
Speaker 1: like a man, I had the greatest time. All we
Speaker 1: did was shoot a hablina and all we did was
Speaker 1: cook up a havelina. But it was one of the
Speaker 1: greatest days I've had running around outside, Like all we
Speaker 1: did was shoot a mess of squirrels, But it's the
Speaker 1: greatest day I've had a long damn time. And then
Speaker 1: you start to learn that like if I would just
Speaker 1: get out of my own way and a lot of
Speaker 1: these In a lot of these cases, i'd be fine,
Speaker 1: you know, I just exactly right, exactly right and that.
Speaker 1: But those people don't know how to get in their way.
Speaker 1: All they're trying to do is go right foot, left foot,
Speaker 1: right foot, left foot. But the cool thing is so that.
Speaker 1: So I took these three people out last year, and
Speaker 1: my kids participated, to which I'll get it was really
Speaker 1: neat for my kids to be part of that whole thing.
Speaker 1: They took them out occasionally too, and and it doesn't
Speaker 1: stop there. So this spring in Montana there's a window
Speaker 1: opportunity to put in for special permits. So these people
Speaker 1: I introduced to hunting last year, like, okay, I'm na
Speaker 1: take the next step. Where do I put in for elk?
Speaker 1: Like hell, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to work. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not giving away my spot two times work for you?
Speaker 1: Get out there and you tell me where to go
Speaker 1: next year. Yeah, it's it's man, It's there's something about
Speaker 1: it too. So like if if if you're able to man,
Speaker 1: it'll change not only change the person that you're with,
Speaker 1: but it'll change you. I teach hunter education here and
Speaker 1: you know, for all of the listeners. If you don't
Speaker 1: teach hunter ed, I encourage you to because it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an easy lift, it's easy to do every staate age.
Speaker 1: She's looking for volunteers to help teach this. This is
Speaker 1: really just an extension of that. But um, one of
Speaker 1: the things I noticed in hunter education, we talked about
Speaker 1: the stages of a hunter. Right. You know, there's the
Speaker 1: beginner who just wants to shoot. There's the the limit
Speaker 1: filler who just wants to fill whatever limit is available.
Speaker 1: Then there's the method. There's a trophy hunter. There's also
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of the road, there's the
Speaker 1: philosopher hunter or whatever. I think this is the perfect
Speaker 1: manifestation of that philosopher hunter. What I noticed is I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a lot of people in our world
Speaker 1: who get exposed to this our three discussion who are like,
Speaker 1: I know I should do it. I feel bad that
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think you should. It's a It's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing at some point in your trajectory
Speaker 1: as a hunter or a sportsman, this is gonna come
Speaker 1: to you and you're gonna do it. If you're not
Speaker 1: doing it now, don't worry about it, but just be
Speaker 1: aware that your work is needed when it when you're ready,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be Yeah, there's gonna be demand. We were
Speaker 1: we were talking about talking the other day about Um,
Speaker 1: you know podcasting right, Um, you're involved in it a
Speaker 1: lot of like pretty much everybody that has the capability
Speaker 1: nowadays is involved in it. And um, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that you can do it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you have something to say. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you would have talked to me six or seven years
Speaker 1: ago when I first heard about podcasting, had I started one,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have a whole lot to say. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know that that grows, right, So it's the same
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's like when you're ready and you
Speaker 1: feel confident, you condified your ideas and the way that
Speaker 1: you hunt, and you've you know, done all the work
Speaker 1: that you had to do, then you can open yourself
Speaker 1: up to given to other people in different ways. But
Speaker 1: you don't have to force force stuff into it. Man,
Speaker 1: I would love you for me moving into Montana to
Speaker 1: teach hunter safety. You know, have my wife and son, come,
Speaker 1: have my wife cook, you know, big castrole for everybody,
Speaker 1: and we'll teach unter safety and hang out like that.
Speaker 1: That would be a great way to spend my life,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I would enjoy the hell out of that.
Speaker 1: When I don't have little kids, I'd probably be better.
Speaker 1: I'll probably be better suited, you know. So like a
Speaker 1: time of life. Yeah, it's a time of life for sure.
Speaker 1: One of the things people ask about all the time,
Speaker 1: it's like, what's the playbook for this? Like how do
Speaker 1: I actually do it? How do I break it down?
Speaker 1: How do I? And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that is magical about hunting and fishing and being an
Speaker 1: outdoors person is there ain't no playbook. You make it
Speaker 1: up as you go along. But I also think that's
Speaker 1: the great beauty of it. It makes it hard to replicate, though,
Speaker 1: because it's it's a handmade thing. Your ability to teach
Speaker 1: somebody is it's not a mass production. You you've given,
Speaker 1: you taken pretty small increments, all right. That frustrates the
Speaker 1: ability to scale this for sure. But I think also
Speaker 1: those the intimate relationships when you're with one other person
Speaker 1: in the field, there's no looking away, there's no like
Speaker 1: escape ground, and so you're kind of forced to face
Speaker 1: a lot of things, you know, whether it's your own
Speaker 1: lack of knowledge about things, your own lack of experience.
Speaker 1: That's a huge point. You just space, like when you're
Speaker 1: walking around and this has happened to me several times.
Speaker 1: You're walking around in the woods with someone who's never
Speaker 1: been in the woods, and they're asking questions, the simplest questions,
Speaker 1: and you've never thought of these simple questions, like you
Speaker 1: could say, you could say exactly how and why an
Speaker 1: elk might be standing in that spot that he's in.
Speaker 1: Can't tell him. You can't say the tree that he's
Speaker 1: under or the type of grass that he's punching, you know,
Speaker 1: or like or understand what the ripe Parian corridor is
Speaker 1: or uh, you know, explain the taxonomy. There's just there's
Speaker 1: things that they'll ask that you realize only ship I
Speaker 1: skipped over that and went right to like the mechanics
Speaker 1: of my compound bow, and so those things are you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a problem, Like you know, everybody has those
Speaker 1: knowledge holes, all of us do. Nobody's perfect, but it's
Speaker 1: nice to have somebody to like open that up to
Speaker 1: you and realize that, Man, I need to you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna teach my son, I need to be
Speaker 1: able to tell him what that helks eating, why they're eating,
Speaker 1: and why it's growing there, why it was growing over
Speaker 1: there where they bed where you know, and those things
Speaker 1: are important and enriching for the you know, the veteran
Speaker 1: hunter who just doesn't hasn't seen it in that way,
Speaker 1: because I know, I don't know if you do, but
Speaker 1: I know a lot of hunters that can get you
Speaker 1: to that elk and call that elk and make sure
Speaker 1: you kill it better than anybody, but couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: any of the things I just described, absolutely, So I
Speaker 1: think it like it widens the aperture anyways in many
Speaker 1: good ways. No fish, Oh no, I'm jigging like a
Speaker 1: mouf over. I mean, you know, we we get ice
Speaker 1: in the line. I mean I keep feeling like I
Speaker 1: have fish because my line waste so much now with
Speaker 1: accumulated ice. But we're not gonna We're not gonna get there.
Speaker 1: But tell people describe a little bit about your hunt
Speaker 1: with Iris and like you know, from her eyes, like
Speaker 1: you said, she she doesn't have or didn't and doesn't
Speaker 1: have a peer group of you know, young lady hunters
Speaker 1: running around with her, so uh, you know, you're kind
Speaker 1: of through her doing a little trojan horse activity into
Speaker 1: the local the local population. So I think everybody who
Speaker 1: has a kid, or even somebody that they take hunting
Speaker 1: for the first time, was gonna be familiar with this.
Speaker 1: But like as the teacher, you want success so bad
Speaker 1: you want it to happen. One of the interesting things
Speaker 1: with my daughter is so she's a good shot, she's
Speaker 1: super safe with guns, she's pretty knowledgeable about wildlife, and
Speaker 1: we're to find him. What I didn't recognize is she's
Speaker 1: also a total schoolmarm when it comes to ethics and
Speaker 1: waiting for the perfect shot. The biggest problem for me
Speaker 1: and I still actually see it with him. And now
Speaker 1: she's fifteen, we've got four seasons under her belt, and
Speaker 1: now of course she's become this trophy hunter, not just
Speaker 1: any fear will do. It's like, what have I done here?
Speaker 1: What have I done with Nelly? She's heading over to
Speaker 1: an entire different camp. I'm sure we'll see her again.
Speaker 1: She'll make it back. She made it out of the
Speaker 1: ice earlier, She's made it from harder. So you know,
Speaker 1: as a mentor somebody who's teaching, you kind of get
Speaker 1: these small victories. Okay, we've we've this case, we were
Speaker 1: hunting deer, we found the deer, we've executed great stock.
Speaker 1: Here's this shot we've set up, we've kind of What
Speaker 1: we as experience hunters recognized is when the stars aligned
Speaker 1: and everything is right, we act on it. What we
Speaker 1: forget is we can kind of see when that shot
Speaker 1: is perfect. What a young hunter, at the beginning hunter
Speaker 1: doesn't see is there expectation of perfection is different than ours.
Speaker 1: They think perfection is gonna last forever, and they have
Speaker 1: all kinds of time to kind of get settled and
Speaker 1: get the breathing right. I bet with Iris his first hunt,
Speaker 1: we had five or six excellent shot opportunities, but and
Speaker 1: it was perfect. It was the most perfect for an
Speaker 1: uncountable fraction of a second when we as experience sports.
Speaker 1: But no, that's when you take it. And she would
Speaker 1: just she would wait too long and then it would
Speaker 1: become imperfect and she couldn't take the shot. So that
Speaker 1: was actually a source of great frustration. I had no
Speaker 1: ability to articulate that to her. I'm like, why didn't
Speaker 1: you shoot? And I would just you know, I kind
Speaker 1: of lose my shot a little bit. What I recognize
Speaker 1: now is that's actually part of the learning curve too,
Speaker 1: is to say, hey, when things are right there, right,
Speaker 1: and you have to have the confidence of perception to
Speaker 1: act when things are right. Yeah, and that's I mean
Speaker 1: that that takes a long time and the evolution of
Speaker 1: a sportsman. Oh yeah, well we're talking about that. Let
Speaker 1: the drive up here with a couple of gas from mediator.
Speaker 1: About the intersection of like, your ability to make the
Speaker 1: shot and the opportunity, Like, that's the sweet spot. It's
Speaker 1: not that you're just looking like the first opportunity to
Speaker 1: get you just pull the trigger or the first time
Speaker 1: or you like or you're gonna wait till your ten
Speaker 1: yards away from an animal is shoot it every time?
Speaker 1: It's the it's the cross section between you know, the
Speaker 1: intersection that sweet spot up. I have the right opportunity
Speaker 1: and I have the ability to make that opportunity to
Speaker 1: turn that opportunity to success. And that's I think what
Speaker 1: people struggle with throughout their hunting careers. So what you know,
Speaker 1: why wouldn't it be be that way in the first shot. Well,
Speaker 1: we have the accumulated knowledge to know that those fleeting
Speaker 1: moments may not happen again. Yeah, So it really kind
Speaker 1: of puts that emphasis on it. We better take it
Speaker 1: when it happens. If you're a beginning hunter, you think
Speaker 1: this happens every day all day. So why being in
Speaker 1: a hurry, why why you know why really emphasized that intersection.
Speaker 1: And that's right, I mean I think it to me
Speaker 1: it Um, it's you know, you watch kids, You watch
Speaker 1: their eyes, man, you just watch their facial expressions. And
Speaker 1: you know, when I was a kid, I had I
Speaker 1: missed three deer, wounded a deer, and then had a
Speaker 1: rifle cartridge not go off on another deer, which I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever had had since then. And so
Speaker 1: it was like my six try I got to hear
Speaker 1: and this is rifle hunting. You know, none of this
Speaker 1: deer more than sev yards away. But I was twelve
Speaker 1: years old, and so I think I was in that
Speaker 1: situation too. I thought, well, every time this is over,
Speaker 1: like a two or three day period, I'm like, every
Speaker 1: time you go out, you get two or three chances
Speaker 1: out of the deer. So the net, well, the next
Speaker 1: one will come by, the next one will come by. Um,
Speaker 1: and you just you with perspective, with with learning, you
Speaker 1: learn that perspective that's not always the case. He's man,
Speaker 1: but I just got a deer. Eventually Iris got a deer.
Speaker 1: She had said, well, this is the other thing, like
Speaker 1: she borrows this from my dad, who actually he came
Speaker 1: out here at eastern Montanai at a cow elk tag.
Speaker 1: We got permission to hunt this ranch where it was
Speaker 1: full of cow elk, and I said, hey, Dad, what's
Speaker 1: your effective range? She's like three hundred yards? Like all right,
Speaker 1: that's great, no, no problem. We got twelve cows at
Speaker 1: three hundred and eight yards and I'm waiting for my
Speaker 1: dad to shoot. He wouldn't wouldn't shoot, wouldn't shoot. The
Speaker 1: cow start drifting away, Like Dad, why didn't you shoot?
Speaker 1: He's like, well, they weren't a three hundred yards. So
Speaker 1: Iris inherited this thing from my dad and it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: two hundred yards is her effective ranch she was shooting with.
Speaker 1: She was on with the two forty three. Uh. We
Speaker 1: had blown opportunities inside a twound yards. Finally we had
Speaker 1: one at two forty and she was not going to
Speaker 1: take the shot, which I had greatly admired her for. Finally,
Speaker 1: when things were lined up, she took the shot at
Speaker 1: like two seventy yards with forty three and dropped a
Speaker 1: young mule in your buck with one shot. So our
Speaker 1: first season was a great success. You can actually check
Speaker 1: it out look at Iris Hunts and there's a whole
Speaker 1: video series on this whole. It's great. Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of some of the best writing I've ever read the
Speaker 1: anthor space. I mean, it's fantastic. Um, you know, it'll
Speaker 1: bring a tear to your eye. But you know, you
Speaker 1: asked her last night what she was thinking about doing,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of like a career. She's a
Speaker 1: freshman high school. What does she bad? Question? I got,
Speaker 1: I got a challenge for you asking you. But but
Speaker 1: I think this tells you a little bit about the
Speaker 1: potential effectiveness of this. Are three stuff to bring it
Speaker 1: back to. That is, she defined herself right then, and
Speaker 1: she wants to be a wildlife biologist or a vetinarian,
Speaker 1: something to do with both the outdoors and wildlife. And
Speaker 1: don't discount that. It was actually a pretty good question.
Speaker 1: Um it'll change, Yeah, I'm sure it will. But that's
Speaker 1: something that is like has helped define who she is
Speaker 1: from those early experiences. Yeah, and that's and that's you know,
Speaker 1: you want to help like give your kids the room
Speaker 1: to have those experiences. And I think hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: do that. And it just does. And it's it's if
Speaker 1: done correctly, of course, or if you know, if done
Speaker 1: within the responsibility of you know, a good family and
Speaker 1: you know, just just good ethics and good moralities like
Speaker 1: those things. It doesn't give kids perspective. And we've said
Speaker 1: I've said in this podcast before, it's like a three
Speaker 1: dimensional perspective, right because if you take it, if you
Speaker 1: just take him to the damn if you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take you to uh the amusement park and
Speaker 1: you'll get to ride all the rights, that's just you
Speaker 1: go up, you wa, you come you get an experience,
Speaker 1: you come down, and there's nothing that came from it
Speaker 1: other than the experience. This is different. You have an experience.
Speaker 1: It's fun. It's kind of like the roller coaster ride.
Speaker 1: There's ups and downs, and there's emotions and such. But
Speaker 1: then those emotions turn into reality when you pull the
Speaker 1: trick and you kill something, and the benefits you get
Speaker 1: is the meat and take part in conservation. Those types
Speaker 1: of things, those the byproducts of of what's there. So
Speaker 1: it's him and it's the ultimate you know, I hate
Speaker 1: to say gift, but it is. I mean it is someone. Well,
Speaker 1: you have been a big part of, I think, kind
Speaker 1: of changing the conversation around what a trophy is your originally,
Speaker 1: you know, trophy is all about me and this ego
Speaker 1: standing behind big antlers. You know, I think you've done
Speaker 1: a masterful job of changing the conversation. It's actually, here's
Speaker 1: a trophy picture. It's me with a backstrap or a haunch,
Speaker 1: and this is the trophy parts of an animal. To me,
Speaker 1: that next step is when I see a trophy picture,
Speaker 1: it's you with somebody else. Yes, you've given You've passed
Speaker 1: it on. That's the trophy. Is this experience that you've
Speaker 1: given somebody else. Yeah, And I it's funny, I I
Speaker 1: I've started to like that's a filter that I've started
Speaker 1: to look at at those field pictures as like two
Speaker 1: people sharing the experience is a trophy moment. It is.
Speaker 1: And you know what we started doing. I've had lots
Speaker 1: of pushback, like you hate fun, you hate smiles, you
Speaker 1: hate America, And I just say, look highlighting you know,
Speaker 1: one expression of the like what you the byproct of
Speaker 1: hunting is fine. We should continue to highlight all the
Speaker 1: expressions of hunting that are good, whether it's like time
Speaker 1: you spent with your family or you know, your relation
Speaker 1: with your dog that that is running across the ice
Speaker 1: now looking looks so guilty. Clearly got into somebody's space.
Speaker 1: We got oh Nelly? Now? Um yeah, if we stop,
Speaker 1: if this podcast stops right now, you'll know that Nelly
Speaker 1: knocked the recorder into the ice hole. What do you
Speaker 1: call my dog? What do you call my dog? And
Speaker 1: I damn icehole? Jeez? I thought maybe I was calling
Speaker 1: her the wrong name. You looked at me with the saucers.
Speaker 1: What have I done? What's her name? Or name is
Speaker 1: not Nellie? Where I work with this uh young lady
Speaker 1: at Yeddie and call it the wrong name for about
Speaker 1: three years. So that's what I get. By the way,
Speaker 1: I can no longer feel my feet below my Yeah
Speaker 1: we should we can stand up? Oh see you want
Speaker 1: to be a mentor out and I'm the younger. The
Speaker 1: two of us can't stand. I literally can't stand. My
Speaker 1: legs went to sleep. Now we go, yeah, generational right now? Well,
Speaker 1: you're truly you're soon you'll only be able to be
Speaker 1: a mentor you can't stand up. This has been very
Speaker 1: unsuccessful and um fishing trimp man ill freaking I love
Speaker 1: this lake, look at this believable place. But there's no
Speaker 1: way I can use my phone to take a picture
Speaker 1: of this that would do it any justice at all, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but it is be it's beautiful. Uh well, if there's
Speaker 1: one thing you had to tell people about how to
Speaker 1: how to manage new hunters or how to bring people along,
Speaker 1: what would you say? Is there any boiler plate, like
Speaker 1: one line that helps people understand how this is gonna
Speaker 1: sound just so underwhelming? Just do it? Just do it?
Speaker 1: I mean it can it can be intimidating. The idea
Speaker 1: isn't more way more intimidating, I'll guarantee it than the action.
Speaker 1: Just do it. It's it's an extension of what you
Speaker 1: do already and who you are already. I'm convinced of it. Um,
Speaker 1: let's just leave it right there. No, just do it,
Speaker 1: just do it. We came up with that, but no
Speaker 1: one else has ever said that. No companies have ever
Speaker 1: said that we might make a hashtag. All right, So
Speaker 1: there's this thing I'm doing where I'm trying to test
Speaker 1: out segments right, because that's what a lot of people
Speaker 1: have segments. I've never had them, but I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: test some out. So I got a couple of segments
Speaker 1: I gonna throw right, no preparation at all. Um. The
Speaker 1: first one is called hot spot. Cool Dude, That's what
Speaker 1: I call it, and it's about where I try to
Speaker 1: convince you to give up one of your hot spots
Speaker 1: because I'm a cool dude, because you're well you would
Speaker 1: be if you give it up. I see you see
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And so you know you live in
Speaker 1: this country with all kind of access. Would you be
Speaker 1: willing to get the listeners of the hunting collective? You're
Speaker 1: bet one of your best hunting your fishing spots. Just
Speaker 1: tell them exactly where it is and how they get
Speaker 1: to it. Are you willing to Well, you're okay, I thought,
Speaker 1: I don't have to convince you know you're willing to
Speaker 1: do it, all right? Give it to us, Give it
Speaker 1: to us, all right. So one of the really cool
Speaker 1: dynamics over the last ten years has been dove season
Speaker 1: in Montana. So I think what's happened on a continental
Speaker 1: basis is there's grain is being planted way farther north
Speaker 1: in Canada than it ever has been. So it used
Speaker 1: to be September one, we'd have a big cold front,
Speaker 1: we'd lose all the doves that we had. September one
Speaker 1: douve open. What's happened now? September one happens. We lose
Speaker 1: our local doves, but we get all the Canada's doves
Speaker 1: here argis Montana, so the dove hunting here can be
Speaker 1: like Alabama good I'm not sure. For at about two weeks,
Speaker 1: come to Glasgow, get a block management MAC for reaching
Speaker 1: six and there's a block management area called the Herd
Speaker 1: h u r D. It's just out of Glasgow about
Speaker 1: a mile and a half. It's on a county road.
Speaker 1: There's the best it's gonna be the best of hunt
Speaker 1: you've ever had. You just gave him exactly where they're
Speaker 1: gonna go. And if you and if the herd is
Speaker 1: full of people who are listening to this podcast, right
Speaker 1: across the gravel road is called the Spaniard b m A.
Speaker 1: Go there, Go there and hopefully if it is full
Speaker 1: that means people actually listen to this, which is good,
Speaker 1: uh or bad depending if that's your spot. If you
Speaker 1: I've been exiled from the Highline Sportsman. Listen the Highlight
Speaker 1: sports Listen up here. Now he's given away a dove spot.
Speaker 1: That is like, that's you know, the appropriate entry level
Speaker 1: hotspot giveaway right there. I was hoping you did like
Speaker 1: that tactical advantage that I mean, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: great spot, but it's also good for about two weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the larger the animal, the more of the hot spot
Speaker 1: is protected. I feel, is that right because it's the
Speaker 1: more meat year. But hey, you asked, I gave cool dude, man,
Speaker 1: cool dude. That's good. I like that segment. I thought
Speaker 1: maybe i'd have to like really are off some kind
Speaker 1: of reward or something, but that I'm glad that you
Speaker 1: gave that to go dove hunting block Management. Come to
Speaker 1: Glasgow if you ever happen to be coming to Glasgow,
Speaker 1: maybe see a Glasgow Scottie's Game or something like that.
Speaker 1: The other one because I know have you've been in
Speaker 1: this situation the other segments tell me that's not a
Speaker 1: dog training question. The other one is called damn Near Died.
Speaker 1: This the other segment I came up with and I
Speaker 1: made these names up myself so people you could write
Speaker 1: in and tell me how stupid they are or if
Speaker 1: they're if they're funny and smart. Um. This one is
Speaker 1: like where you might have almost died somewhere outside, and
Speaker 1: I know you have a specific thing. We're probably where
Speaker 1: you're gonna be thinking, a specific story of where you're
Speaker 1: in this tribal situation. I want to hear about it. Oh,
Speaker 1: this one, it's gonna be disappointing, but it was pretty
Speaker 1: damn scary. In Montana antelope season, there's a block nothing
Speaker 1: hunt some black man north. It is called Frozen to
Speaker 1: Death Crick, and the next range over it's called Starve
Speaker 1: to Death Crick, which should tell you something about the
Speaker 1: desolation of the country. Was how with my buddy Steve,
Speaker 1: he shot an antelope and the pickup is about eight
Speaker 1: miles away on this ridge. As we're taking care of
Speaker 1: the anild Field restaurant, I realized there was a road
Speaker 1: way closer to us on the other side. All I
Speaker 1: did do is go and buy and pick up eight
Speaker 1: miles away, drive all the way around and get on
Speaker 1: this other road and cheese. We could just drag the
Speaker 1: antelope right to it, so I did. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: the antelope once I went all the way around on
Speaker 1: this other road. Finally I Steve stayed with it. I
Speaker 1: found him. Uh, Steve, you said as we got done
Speaker 1: field dressing the antelope that his back was really bad
Speaker 1: and I would have to carry the antelope on my
Speaker 1: back to the truck. So I put it. I put
Speaker 1: the entire antelope on a frame pack. And one thing.
Speaker 1: I'm a little guy, but I'm wiry, and I just said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not stopping. So I didn't. And
Speaker 1: the last time I looked behind me, Steve was way
Speaker 1: behind And the next time I looked, he was not there.
Speaker 1: I never saw him again. Yeah, we're recording recording a podcast.
Speaker 1: Steve Schindler just showed up. Welcome. We're telling a story
Speaker 1: about We're telling a story about Steve Dalby, whom you know,
Speaker 1: shoot an antelope frozen to death, crick and I carried
Speaker 1: out for him, and he just disappears. So I finally
Speaker 1: realized I'd have no idea where my pickup is. It's
Speaker 1: dark at this point, and I got an antelope on
Speaker 1: my back. The first thing I did, obviously, was got
Speaker 1: rid of the antelope. Uh, I had no idea where
Speaker 1: I was. In the middle of this frozen death country.
Speaker 1: Only I could see was the cooling tower for the
Speaker 1: cold Strip power plant in the distance, so I knew
Speaker 1: that way was southeast. But I spent the entire night
Speaker 1: out there with a wet T shirt from sweating up
Speaker 1: carrying an antelope. In October, Damn near died, freezing to death. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's be called mckenn damn near die and you made
Speaker 1: it out. I made it out fine. Do you have
Speaker 1: any effects of your experience? Actually he lost lost a
Speaker 1: lot of weight. There were two remarkable things. One as
Speaker 1: just as the sun was setting, a bunch of geese
Speaker 1: came over, and this is big Alkali flat. I think
Speaker 1: the geese set their wings and started feathering down. I'm like,
Speaker 1: are they going to land on one? There's no water
Speaker 1: around here. One by one the geese bounced across this
Speaker 1: hard pan Alkali flat. They thought it was water. So
Speaker 1: I got to see geese totally fooled out, and they
Speaker 1: were I've never seen an embarrassed goose, but they acted like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't see nobody saw that, nothing to see fly away.
Speaker 1: The second thing is in the morning, when I came
Speaker 1: back to find the antelope that I had jettison. I
Speaker 1: found a big old arrowhead right next to the anod
Speaker 1: was there like what was the most desperate moment? Most desperment.
Speaker 1: I was cold that night, I mean I was sweaty.
Speaker 1: I had zero gear, and I realized the wind was
Speaker 1: kind of coming up, not quite like this, but it
Speaker 1: was cold. I realized I needed to protect myself thermally.
Speaker 1: So I got in this cut bank. It kind of
Speaker 1: tucked my arms in and it must have fallen asleep
Speaker 1: a little bit because my grandmother, who had had been
Speaker 1: dead for several years at the time, kind of came
Speaker 1: to me in this little little dream state and said,
Speaker 1: my grandma was not an outdoors woman. She said, just
Speaker 1: go uphill and you're gonna run into your pickup. So
Speaker 1: when I when I kind of parsed that out, she
Speaker 1: was right. As long as I just followed every little
Speaker 1: rivulet uphill, I was gonna come to a ridge. All
Speaker 1: the roads are on the ridge. And I did that
Speaker 1: and I got thanks Grammy. Then he lived today. But
Speaker 1: floor pack, oh so stee. The reason I was carrying
Speaker 1: the antelopes, it's like us, I'm gonna mount it. I
Speaker 1: don't want to, you know, drag the skin off of
Speaker 1: this potential mount, so we got back to the pickup.
Speaker 1: He also spent the night on the prairie. We got
Speaker 1: Rhea reacquainted with each other and he said, no way
Speaker 1: am I going to mount that antelope. That's a good
Speaker 1: way to end. And thanks Mr ke We didn't catch
Speaker 1: any damn fishing. We did drink some beer. My beer
Speaker 1: is totally frozen, is it? Mine? Probably is too. We
Speaker 1: were crags to see you. That's it. That's all another
Speaker 1: episode in the books. Thanks to Andrew McKeen and the
Speaker 1: grand folks of Glasgow, Montana. Fright when I was up
Speaker 1: here in this beautiful lake here in four pack. If
Speaker 1: you ever to make it up in this country, please do.
Speaker 1: It's a great place to be in a beautiful, beautiful
Speaker 1: part of our world. And hopefully you can all go
Speaker 1: out there. And as Andrew, Andrew told you, just take
Speaker 1: three people hunting every year. If you're a veteran hunter,
Speaker 1: and if you're a new hunter, look for a mentor
Speaker 1: and find someone that you trust it can show you
Speaker 1: what they know and then take it from there. It's
Speaker 1: there's no easy solutions that that's for sure. What else,
Speaker 1: what else? What else? Well, Uh, we're standing out here
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere. But we we still have
Speaker 1: some stops left in the Meat Eater Live Tour. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be Austin, Texas on April two. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: at the b h A Rendezvous in early May Boise, Idaho.
Speaker 1: Those are two stops that I'll be at and I'll
Speaker 1: be on stage there with Steve Yanni Cal and others
Speaker 1: uh and and fun And speaking of that, you know
Speaker 1: b h A Rendevus coming up. Hopefully you get out
Speaker 1: there and see us. It's gonna be a fun weekend
Speaker 1: for conservation, for hunting, for fishing, and all the things
Speaker 1: we love to do. And we're also thinking of coming
Speaker 1: out with some brand new hunting cleftic merch. So if
Speaker 1: you go to the Meat Eater store and click around,
Speaker 1: you'll find that Honty Collective merch. But there's some new
Speaker 1: stuff coming then. I think you all will enjoy. And
Speaker 1: I think this is a good time to let you
Speaker 1: guys all know that we are planning a big relaunch
Speaker 1: for the Honey Collective. A new style, a new format,
Speaker 1: a bunch of new stuff coming up. Um, we want
Speaker 1: to relaunch because we want to get better. I've listened
Speaker 1: to all the feedback. I've heard a lot of things
Speaker 1: from a lot of people. Um, I've been happy with
Speaker 1: success of the podcast. When we're not gonna rest on it,
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep on going and we're gonna do it
Speaker 1: with you along with us. So without with all that said,
Speaker 1: see it later, man, We're gonna go try to catch
Speaker 1: a fish, maybe bring some stuff back home. Maybe a
Speaker 1: nice lake trout for the friar. We'll see you next time,
Speaker 1: next Tuesday with the Honey Collective. See you, fe