Speaker 1: Welcome to the Hunting Collected podcast Numero Uno number one,
Speaker 1: coming to you alive from Mexico. I'm sitting on a ridge,
Speaker 1: a nice glass and tit as some would call it,
Speaker 1: in the middle of Sonora, the middle of Cartel Country.
Speaker 1: I got a little recorder, some binos and pretty cool guests.
Speaker 1: First guest is Steve Rinella. We've been here hunting for
Speaker 1: the last six days. Jason Ko's deer or cow's deer
Speaker 1: some call them, in the middle of arid desert mountainey
Speaker 1: landscape that can only be described as as beautiful, challenging.
Speaker 1: Steve and I have been hiking around for for six
Speaker 1: days and talking about life, talking about hunting, talking about politics,
Speaker 1: just getting to know each other better as we've been
Speaker 1: known each other for years and I've been friend and
Speaker 1: then that way. That makes him the perfect first guest
Speaker 1: for a Hunty collective. Steve is of course an author,
Speaker 1: a writer, a great example of a modern hunt and
Speaker 1: because he is that, because he's a great example of
Speaker 1: an a bastion for hope for the future of hunting,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to him about how he feels
Speaker 1: right now, how he felt in the past about hunting.
Speaker 1: It may be ways to fix some of the problems
Speaker 1: that we've have. We feel hopeful about some of the positives.
Speaker 1: They're happening right now and I think we were able
Speaker 1: to do that and about an hour and a half,
Speaker 1: So give us a break. This is the first try
Speaker 1: to podcast, but hopefully the Honey Collective will continue to
Speaker 1: have interesting guests that can help us examine our own
Speaker 1: ideas about hunting, our own philosophies why we go outside. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, Mr Steven Ronella Steve describe You're one
Speaker 1: of the best ortors I know. So I like how
Speaker 1: this is going. Yeah, I like to start off with
Speaker 1: a little I can start off with a little compliment
Speaker 1: to the gas, you know, really smoothing old that's the
Speaker 1: old trick man. Describe where we're at. We are in Sonora, Mexico,
Speaker 1: close enough to the US border that if we look
Speaker 1: to the north, we can see a very ominous looking
Speaker 1: surveillance blimp um that seems like that hovers over the
Speaker 1: landscape like the spaceship in the movie District nine. You've
Speaker 1: seen that, So who's that there's like? Looking at that
Speaker 1: which one would imagine has the most sophisticated equipment in
Speaker 1: the world yet I am sitting literally in rabbit droppings
Speaker 1: and comedy where um on a hillside cover it in
Speaker 1: a lot of juniper and ocatillo and oak and mesquite
Speaker 1: and very dry yellow grass. Good, Yeah, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I like it. A lot of exposed rock, yeah, it
Speaker 1: is expelled. A lot of stuff that looks like it
Speaker 1: does not get a lot of rainfall, that's true. A
Speaker 1: lot of dry river beds, dry creek beds, a lot
Speaker 1: of places for cus here to be hide now today,
Speaker 1: But I don't believe we've seen anything we wanted to chase.
Speaker 1: But just for those listening, we're both bindos in hands.
Speaker 1: So if we have to break a bit from the podcast,
Speaker 1: you'll know why. Because forever we found in our chasing
Speaker 1: a big but we found in our chasing a big bucket.
Speaker 1: We can start this over whenever that ends, hopefully pretty soon,
Speaker 1: because this is the last day of a six day hunt.
Speaker 1: He in Sonora country, Cartel country. We haven't seen any cartail,
Speaker 1: but we have seen and killed some cous Dear Steve,
Speaker 1: you kinda pretty damn good one. Five days good, didn't you?
Speaker 1: The first full day of the hunt, I um, which
Speaker 1: never happened. Well, Okay, I've hunted cus dear five times,
Speaker 1: you know, each time for a week or so, and
Speaker 1: I've killed cus deer two times, so you know, and
Speaker 1: those in those times I've put in a lot of hours.
Speaker 1: It also looked at a lot of deer. But hunting
Speaker 1: cuz deer you tend to like it was a couple
Speaker 1: of things about it. You hunt. I've always hand a
Speaker 1: cuz deer late in the year, always, but mostly in January, UM.
Speaker 1: And so at that point I usually have like a
Speaker 1: pretty full freezer, all right, except be hunting off fall,
Speaker 1: so I'm not feeling like in a real meat crisis.
Speaker 1: And it's a place that really just like to hang
Speaker 1: around and observe and you just spend like today we
Speaker 1: will spend from dawn till dark. We will spend the
Speaker 1: entire day on one knob, on one like Punta Alto
Speaker 1: as they say in Spanish. Um. And so it's just
Speaker 1: like really just kind of an intense focus on this observation,
Speaker 1: watching the landscape, observing deer, and you'd like to kind
Speaker 1: of drag it out. And so I think that because
Speaker 1: of how enjoyable it is and the weather, like you
Speaker 1: couldn't imagine better weather than Senora in January. And so
Speaker 1: you know, you don't go running off after the first buck,
Speaker 1: you see. So you kind of like like, in my
Speaker 1: mind like hunting couse deer is almost like a it's
Speaker 1: like a vacation, you kind of thing in some way,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, you like to wait and try to
Speaker 1: find a big one's having to be a couple of
Speaker 1: times in the past though, is I'd let some bucks
Speaker 1: slide and then on the last day or two be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna change my attention now to get a meat
Speaker 1: buck and then not be able to find one because
Speaker 1: there's a big difference out here between finding one and
Speaker 1: getting it. Yeah, oh of course we found plenty that
Speaker 1: we haven't. You see him. They step behind the bush
Speaker 1: and that's it just vanished, man. And the landscape is
Speaker 1: so it's so corrugated and just full of hell holes.
Speaker 1: Increases that. Yeah, things just pop up and then you
Speaker 1: never say again. And it's often to be looking at
Speaker 1: It's often that they're popping up thousand yards away, you know,
Speaker 1: and then it was gone. Sometimes before you can even
Speaker 1: tell what they had going on. You just get this
Speaker 1: like basic idea that you're looking at a buck and
Speaker 1: then it vanishes and you spend a day trying to
Speaker 1: find it again and never find it again. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the literal version of a topographic map when you're looking
Speaker 1: at this place and it's cuts and divide and dry
Speaker 1: creek beds and brush a hillsides and clear grassy hillsides
Speaker 1: and yeah, and it's like the kind of place where
Speaker 1: it's not like readily obviously even what way the rivers
Speaker 1: are flowing like you feel like you get into a
Speaker 1: river channel and somehow walk a circle. Yes, absolutely, And
Speaker 1: and for me, you're right, I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: end of the year. This is we we left the
Speaker 1: day after New Year's Day, and you know it's quiet here.
Speaker 1: It's eerily quiet. Hopefully the sound on this first podcast
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of wind, and you can just
Speaker 1: hear how quiet it is here. And even though we're
Speaker 1: sitting together, a lot of times we split up and
Speaker 1: you sit by yourself and you're just focused on nothing
Speaker 1: but what's in the field of view you're buying. And
Speaker 1: that's a pretty healthy reset for the whole next year
Speaker 1: to come. What I've thought of like hunting down here
Speaker 1: before I've kind of thought is that that the the
Speaker 1: astancias of the ranches down here really the only place
Speaker 1: in the West that you would that you can kind
Speaker 1: of get a sense for it would be some of
Speaker 1: the wilderness areas or some of the more remote corners
Speaker 1: of Nevada. You know, it's hard to explain. Um, just
Speaker 1: like how still I mean these guys still you know people,
Speaker 1: you see razors. It seems like you see you know,
Speaker 1: UTVs more and more, but still work cattle on horseback.
Speaker 1: It's just quiet out here, man, big huge, huge properties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we can see how many miles can we
Speaker 1: see right now in this vista to this next mountain bip.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I don't see I'm not actually looking
Speaker 1: at the blimp right now. But it's it's been it's
Speaker 1: been a constant landscape this entire time. Now, it's it's
Speaker 1: that's what strikes me about about this type of honey.
Speaker 1: And and we're here on a ranch that is a
Speaker 1: private ranch, but we kind of made the decision just
Speaker 1: to do it on our own. I mean, we don't
Speaker 1: have any guys, don't have anybody telling score the deer
Speaker 1: are where they aren't where the big deer live where
Speaker 1: they might be, so we're just finding the highest class
Speaker 1: and tip this glasses and uh, there's some purity in that.
Speaker 1: I know. I've heard, I don't know if I was
Speaker 1: you or your brother at some level talk about the
Speaker 1: purity meter. Matt, my brother Matt has a purity score
Speaker 1: talk about which has weighted very heavily to to um,
Speaker 1: which is this demonstrates a lot of bias. What's your
Speaker 1: purity score? Is this pretty high on the on the list? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's high, man, I mean, like, you know, to steal
Speaker 1: his idea, which I guess is hardly unique of a
Speaker 1: start of purity scoring a hunt. I do rate public
Speaker 1: land higher only because just speaking very generally, like in
Speaker 1: a very general sense, is much harder to be consistently
Speaker 1: successful on public land then it is private land. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a gross generalization, but um, public land has,
Speaker 1: you know, Jenny has open access, you know, and if
Speaker 1: you're talking about hunts that are kind of like over
Speaker 1: the counter taking place on public land, there's open access,
Speaker 1: and there's no coordination or little to no coordination between
Speaker 1: people using the landscape, so you're often instead of working
Speaker 1: in coordination with whoever else might be out there, you're working.
Speaker 1: You know, you're kind of plotting against each other and
Speaker 1: like a very like if you're like I got a
Speaker 1: feeling those guys will go there. I'm gonna get up
Speaker 1: an extra hour early and get there. You know. There's
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff hunting on private land. Yeah, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: less people out and sort of coordinating their activities and
Speaker 1: and it's just different. So if parity winds up being
Speaker 1: like some kind and a difficulty, then yeah, I rate
Speaker 1: that pretty high. Um, I rate Like, here's the way
Speaker 1: of putting it, how excited and surprised it's a hunt
Speaker 1: has high purity. I guess if you're if you're shocked
Speaker 1: that you were successful, it tends to have a higher purity.
Speaker 1: And you say that right, because it's like those hunts
Speaker 1: for you're like shocked to be successful are great. But
Speaker 1: then why is it also great to go out and
Speaker 1: realize that you're in the middle of a huge duck
Speaker 1: migration and then all you talk about is how great
Speaker 1: it was because ducks were just piling in no matter
Speaker 1: what you did. You can be shooting off flares and
Speaker 1: they're still laying the depots, and that somehow great too.
Speaker 1: But the so it's you know, it's it's so it's
Speaker 1: so full like personal biases. It's hard to really talk
Speaker 1: about in any kind of real way. But I do
Speaker 1: like the ones where you're nervous amount whether you'll be
Speaker 1: able to work it out, and then success comes down
Speaker 1: to you really working hard and putting in your best
Speaker 1: effort and having a payoff and being kind of like
Speaker 1: surprised and pleased that worked out. Is there is there
Speaker 1: a level of predictability there if it's an unpredictable landscape
Speaker 1: like in this In this case, it's it's fairly predictable
Speaker 1: where we can it can't go I mean we can
Speaker 1: we can go the borders of this ranch, and we
Speaker 1: kind of can talk to locals and get a bit
Speaker 1: of a prediction on what's good and what's bad. But
Speaker 1: we don't have we can't predict a migration, we can't
Speaker 1: predict the rut we're here just trying to catch. It.
Speaker 1: Is predictability like a little bit far out. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you're gonna like map out like let's say we're
Speaker 1: map out the purity score, let's do it. Well. The
Speaker 1: thing that I would bring into is that so our
Speaker 1: body like we we have a friend, Jay Scott, who
Speaker 1: facilitates both guided and non guided hunts for Cou's deer
Speaker 1: in Sonora. Um, so this is a rancher. He's worked,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't like he hasn't hunted it. So that
Speaker 1: in my mind, as I'm like doing this very biased,
Speaker 1: very personal purity score thing, like in my mind, the
Speaker 1: fact that we're sort of on the van guard of
Speaker 1: hunting this place, that adds a little purity to me.
Speaker 1: That we've never hunted it before adds a little purity
Speaker 1: to me because discovery is important something. So if we
Speaker 1: can't if we learned, because now we know this summitch
Speaker 1: pretty well. Yeah, not all the way, but we've learned
Speaker 1: a lot. Like we've hunted duntled Dusk, a lot of guys,
Speaker 1: swapping a lot of notes, so we know a lot
Speaker 1: about it. Coming back next year, yes, absolutely, there will
Speaker 1: be a teensy bit less purity in my mind because
Speaker 1: we already knew it, right. So this the fact that
Speaker 1: we're just kind of like figuring it out and don't
Speaker 1: even have like super strong guidance, um makes it kind
Speaker 1: of fun. But then I've done this sort of thing
Speaker 1: a lot of times, so I kind of like understand
Speaker 1: how to put it together. There's a lot of hunting
Speaker 1: rodby clueless, but this, even though we're south of the border,
Speaker 1: this is a type like arid open country spot and
Speaker 1: stock hunting is something that I've devoted a great deal of,
Speaker 1: you know, time to figuring out and I kind of
Speaker 1: like understand it now you know, and I'm able to
Speaker 1: apply it to a handful of different kinds of animals wells.
Speaker 1: As you get going in your life, and I've found this,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're the same. Your purity score, it's harder
Speaker 1: and harder to score high. The more you hunt, the
Speaker 1: more places you go, the more things you see, the
Speaker 1: more experiences you have, it's harder to score high im purity.
Speaker 1: Give yourself a bigger um, you know, bigger room for error.
Speaker 1: Early on, you're like, man, it's cool just to see Mexico.
Speaker 1: Once you see in Mexico, once you see in this
Speaker 1: country and you understand what it is and hunting kus
Speaker 1: do you And maybe you're not so next time. The
Speaker 1: pretty score is just just a little bit further. So
Speaker 1: maybe next time, if you're looking to introduce a difficulty
Speaker 1: you didn't have on this trip, you bring your bow
Speaker 1: if you'd put me out here twenty years ago, No,
Speaker 1: I know exactly how I would have hunted it, and
Speaker 1: I think that I would have been shocked and surprised
Speaker 1: where I had to get any buck, Yeah, because we
Speaker 1: would have come out and we'd just walked up and down,
Speaker 1: up and down, up and down, thinking you're gonna like
Speaker 1: jump one up or that's just how we would have
Speaker 1: hunted it back then, and so back then it had
Speaker 1: I gotten one, I would have been like stunned, right,
Speaker 1: and we'd be like if like me and my brothers
Speaker 1: had come down, we all want up getting the buck,
Speaker 1: even just spikes and for keys, right, we'd be all
Speaker 1: worked up. But yeah, just through kind of like learning
Speaker 1: how to do this um over, you know, a long
Speaker 1: period of time, you do kind of come into situations.
Speaker 1: You come into a lot of hunting situations feel a
Speaker 1: little bit more cocky. Like I did a hunt this
Speaker 1: year with our mutual friend Remy and I. I had
Speaker 1: been applying for years for an elk tag on the
Speaker 1: fog Nack Island. Um finally drew one, and just so
Speaker 1: happens that a body of mine had drawn it and
Speaker 1: been on the hun a couple of times before, so
Speaker 1: he came with now because he went before, he just
Speaker 1: knew like how it goes right, and he just knew
Speaker 1: how to work it, and so going with him it
Speaker 1: was an completely different experience what I expected because he knew.
Speaker 1: He kind of told me like, here's where I think
Speaker 1: will happen when we go, and that woind up happening.
Speaker 1: And he was very much in the driver's seat on
Speaker 1: that hunt because he was coming in with with with
Speaker 1: the knowledge. Um, and that's the kind of stuff you
Speaker 1: seek out, right, So you seek out people who know
Speaker 1: what's going on, and that's like an important part of learning.
Speaker 1: But it just winds up being a different experience. Not
Speaker 1: that I didn't have a great time on that hunt,
Speaker 1: but it was very different than if I just went
Speaker 1: in cold rolled into it. I think one of the highest,
Speaker 1: like one of the highest purity score hunts I ever
Speaker 1: did was I was probably and I was like my
Speaker 1: I think it was in my first year graduate school
Speaker 1: and my brother had gone down he was going to
Speaker 1: graduate school in Auburn, Alabama, and he started messing around
Speaker 1: out onto Skegee National Forest. So he had just moved
Speaker 1: there and me, both my brothers and a buddy bars
Speaker 1: all decided to go do a hunt in Tuskegee National Forest.
Speaker 1: And we don't know anyone. I didn't have any kind
Speaker 1: of network. This is like before stuff was widely available
Speaker 1: on the web, Like you didn't go find information like
Speaker 1: this on the web. And we just went down and
Speaker 1: started hunting to Skegee. And we had, you know, a
Speaker 1: week or so, and everybody got a buck. And I
Speaker 1: got a buck on the last day that was so
Speaker 1: small that when I school captin, I could put it
Speaker 1: in my shirt pocket. That buck rack, that little spike
Speaker 1: rack rode home with me in the shirt pocket of
Speaker 1: my shirt front, the front shirt pocket. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's how our school captain. I just left a little
Speaker 1: narrow sliver of bone and had two like inch and
Speaker 1: a half spikes. Not a button buck, but a small spike.
Speaker 1: But dude, we'd like done it right. Everyone in the
Speaker 1: world that goes I went. Everyone in the world, like
Speaker 1: in the east, everyone once the dreams going the West.
Speaker 1: We went from Montana to go hunt Alabama in the
Speaker 1: National Forest. What Alabama? Because my brother gone down for
Speaker 1: graduate school. I'd go in to Montana for graduate school.
Speaker 1: He went to Alabama for graduate school, And so we
Speaker 1: just went hunted Alabama and like figured it out on
Speaker 1: a national forest. And I still count that as being
Speaker 1: like one of the coolest sons ever went on. I
Speaker 1: think that's true. I mean, the coolest sons ever went
Speaker 1: on when I was growing up where those songs where
Speaker 1: we just we had Green Ridge State Forest in Maryland,
Speaker 1: grew up and you just get a couple of buddies
Speaker 1: to get your dad and your neighbor. You go up
Speaker 1: there and you walk around. You shot a spike. That
Speaker 1: was the best if you made it to a spot
Speaker 1: where you could camp and camped out by the creek.
Speaker 1: And when I was old enough, had a few beers.
Speaker 1: That was just as well. But we had no that
Speaker 1: we didn't wrap any kind of trophy measurements other than
Speaker 1: the fact that we were together with people that we
Speaker 1: cared about. That's all we ever did. And um, I
Speaker 1: found that hunting became more complicated once I kind of
Speaker 1: developed my own sensibilities and um and heard about everyone
Speaker 1: else's sensibilities and what they wanted to do, and and
Speaker 1: got into this business and and learned that I had
Speaker 1: to figure out, you know, what my ideologies were and
Speaker 1: what my ideas were about hunting because I can't just
Speaker 1: walk around the woods of my dad and my neighbor anymore.
Speaker 1: At first, the different perspectives on the outdoor world natural
Speaker 1: world hunting, they come as this like day lose, right,
Speaker 1: and it's disorienting, and you might look at it and think,
Speaker 1: like you just see all kinds of things that seems
Speaker 1: sort of ugly. But then when you realize that all
Speaker 1: of those practices are coming from something that probably developed
Speaker 1: very naturally, it was passed on patrilineally, and then lady,
Speaker 1: you try to dig through it and find out what
Speaker 1: parts of the world at large are worth keeping and
Speaker 1: what parts of the world at large you'd like to
Speaker 1: see vanish, and uh, you know, it's it's like fun
Speaker 1: to be able to it's fun to be able to
Speaker 1: toy with all these ideas. Yeah. Well, with a much
Speaker 1: more narrow um, a much more narrow understanding of the world. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: that that's what I think about when you take new
Speaker 1: new hunters that are, you know, twenty years and older
Speaker 1: in their adult stages of their life, I get a
Speaker 1: lot of that. I'm sure you get the same a
Speaker 1: lot of people. No, I think that new hunters you
Speaker 1: struggle when you're you know, say you're twenty five or
Speaker 1: thirty or thirty five or even older, and you seeing
Speaker 1: hunting and social media or you experienced someplace in your
Speaker 1: life and you want to pick it up. I think
Speaker 1: it's tough. Social media makes it tougher because you see,
Speaker 1: you know, people that you either respect or admire doing
Speaker 1: you know, the ultimate maybe it's a private ranch, L
Speaker 1: Cohn or something like that. And you see those things,
Speaker 1: the films that we make in that hunting industry, in
Speaker 1: the ways that we portray it, and you see those things,
Speaker 1: you see the pinnacle of hunting represented in our media.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that you get a sense that
Speaker 1: you can just be like you were in Dusky, You're
Speaker 1: like I might have been in Maryland. You can just
Speaker 1: be someone who is exploring the natural world, learned about animals,
Speaker 1: and you just haven't to have a bow or a
Speaker 1: rifle in your hand. I mean, I think that's something
Speaker 1: you lose if you don't. If you don't pick up
Speaker 1: hunting early on, and you're you you're introduced to it
Speaker 1: through the modern media cycle. I think that's a struggle
Speaker 1: something that we should think about. Means that it creates unrealistic, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but it and it creates this ideologue that that you
Speaker 1: have to do with a certain way. You have to
Speaker 1: look a certain way and act a certain way, and
Speaker 1: you have to the bigger the animal, the more successful
Speaker 1: you might be. But when you were in Tuskegee and
Speaker 1: when I was in green Rid State Forest, we never
Speaker 1: thought twice. We never had the ability to think twice
Speaker 1: or the perspective of the sensibility to think twice about
Speaker 1: whether that four point or six point or ten point
Speaker 1: was was success? It was? There was the other thing.
Speaker 1: I'm allays interested in your relationship with your dad wanted
Speaker 1: then your relationship with your brother as well. But brothers
Speaker 1: dating Matt, I think that lays a strong base about
Speaker 1: who you are as a hunter and what you're what
Speaker 1: the rules are and and what your expectations are. Um,
Speaker 1: talk about that. Talk about your dad, your first experience
Speaker 1: hunting and just what it what it shaped in you.
Speaker 1: Now that that's important. We uh, I was raising Western Michigan. Um,
Speaker 1: my dad had been you know, my dad was born
Speaker 1: in South side of Chicago. He's raised by his grandparents
Speaker 1: who spoke Italian in the home. Um, he brought that radio,
Speaker 1: so let this go on the podcast. This is I
Speaker 1: believe Yanni be honest to tell us the lobby an eagle. Go, Yanni,
Speaker 1: you're on the podcast. Wow, Um, these boys got the rangers.
Speaker 1: We're sitting here thinking about coming up towards you guys.
Speaker 1: You guys still down with the plan of out in
Speaker 1: the north end. Yeah, we're down with that plan. If
Speaker 1: you just follow that road up to the around the
Speaker 1: tip where where we are, you should be able to
Speaker 1: spread out and see into Black territory when you guys
Speaker 1: were walking that road this morning, when you guys go
Speaker 1: to might be a good Yeah, there's plenty of good
Speaker 1: stuff in there to hang the meat. Excellent. We'll ring.
Speaker 1: They're gonna tell them you have to packet for a
Speaker 1: few want you're gonna have to packet for Yeah, you'll
Speaker 1: be close to in your part, but you may have
Speaker 1: to pack in a couple hundred yards. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: the podcast, Yanni, and I hopefully I can do it again.
Speaker 1: It's been great. You're just a great guest. Thanks. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Johnnie the great lot Peen Eagle, who is Steve's right
Speaker 1: hand right hand man for everything everything meat eater. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: so my ow man, so so like he drew up
Speaker 1: with no idea boon. He was always drawn to it
Speaker 1: and really interested in it, but he didn't start hunt
Speaker 1: until after World War Two. Then he got serious about it.
Speaker 1: But um, so I was born, But I was born
Speaker 1: in the best of Michigan. We grew up hunting a
Speaker 1: mix of of farms, people that my parents knew through
Speaker 1: church and just through the community. Uh, you know, two
Speaker 1: hundred acre three hundred acre farms, and then mixed public land.
Speaker 1: The first deer I ever missed I missed on public
Speaker 1: land with my bow when I was eleven. And the
Speaker 1: first dear I killed I killed on private land with
Speaker 1: a gun when I was thirteen. And you would you know,
Speaker 1: we had long hunting seasons, so we would start kind
Speaker 1: of rule in our household was that you could take
Speaker 1: a half day off school for the opening of squirrel
Speaker 1: season on September. You could take a half day off
Speaker 1: school for the opening of bowl season on October one. Um,
Speaker 1: we could always take November one off because you could.
Speaker 1: That was the opening of trapping season, so we could start.
Speaker 1: We'd start setting muskrat traps at midnight on Halloween and
Speaker 1: then usually got to run, you know, set traps off
Speaker 1: through the first and then you could take the full
Speaker 1: day off school for November fifteen gun opener um, and
Speaker 1: you didn't have to go to school on your birthday.
Speaker 1: So I would always go ice fish and on my
Speaker 1: birthday with my dad. But on November, like, if you
Speaker 1: didn't kill a deer by about you know, like how
Speaker 1: that moment when the morning seems to kind of end
Speaker 1: right post on, you would just if you didn't have
Speaker 1: If you didn't kill a deer by like nine in
Speaker 1: the morning, you just get a sinking family and statistically
Speaker 1: you were backed up. It's like you killed if you
Speaker 1: didn't kill a deer on Open Day, like your chances
Speaker 1: are getting a deer early. Put this away. You had
Speaker 1: a greater chance of killing a deer on Opening Day
Speaker 1: then you would if you hunted all whatever it was
Speaker 1: fourteen days of the season. So more than half the
Speaker 1: deer I killed him over your day. That's crazy. It
Speaker 1: sounds like sounds similar while the step team and yeah,
Speaker 1: do you you would ever pass up any buck? It
Speaker 1: was a laughable notion back then because there weren't big bucks.
Speaker 1: Bucks got like two and a half aridle bucks were rare, rare,
Speaker 1: um in the places we hunted like Bucks just got
Speaker 1: shot and you did your fair share of the shooting.
Speaker 1: And to even and to even begin the idea of
Speaker 1: like getting on board if people are gonna start passing
Speaker 1: up Bucks just what it was just an idea whose
Speaker 1: time had not yet come. Um. And so to be
Speaker 1: a very successful deer season would be did you'd get
Speaker 1: a deer with your bow and get a deer with
Speaker 1: your gun? That was a very successful season. If there
Speaker 1: were guys you knew about, guys who would like could
Speaker 1: kill a deer every year? What they're gone and killing
Speaker 1: you every year at the Bowl? Like those were the
Speaker 1: dudes you would go and ask for advice. But are
Speaker 1: you always one of those guys? Your brothers, Well, we
Speaker 1: would get deer, but I would spend Here's the thing
Speaker 1: is like during those kind of like during those those years,
Speaker 1: I was very devoted to for trapping. So I didn't put, uh,
Speaker 1: I prioritize that I prioritized trapping. I would kind of
Speaker 1: measure the success of my year more by kind of
Speaker 1: like trapping activities. But yeah, there would never be a year.
Speaker 1: I mean from the time I was thirteen nine, there
Speaker 1: would never be a year when I wouldn't get a deer,
Speaker 1: you know, like I would. I would always get a
Speaker 1: deer with somehow usually you know, on him with my
Speaker 1: bow and then and then getting with my gun. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, I wasn't like a two deer year guy.
Speaker 1: I remember later in college up in the up of Michigan.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I shot two deer today.
Speaker 1: I killed it falling with my bow in the morning,
Speaker 1: and then killed a little Michigan eight point buck in
Speaker 1: the evening, and I felt like I was hunting guy
Speaker 1: that that didn't happen. And then I killed another buck
Speaker 1: that year, like another little Michian ate with my gun
Speaker 1: that year, and that was like yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: was just like sort of like the kind of like
Speaker 1: quit hunting after them, right. There was no more that
Speaker 1: could be done in the hunting world besides that. And
Speaker 1: I remember that we had eating all of those deer
Speaker 1: by Christmas break. Okay, we just ate deer meat and
Speaker 1: hunted deer. So it was. But here's the thing. I
Speaker 1: wasn't trapping anymore. I had quit trapping. Its trappers. They
Speaker 1: started out trapping, but they were more interesting hunting, um.
Speaker 1: And as the fur prices went down, they just got
Speaker 1: less and less interesting in it. It was funny because
Speaker 1: there was one year around when I was twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 1: I kind of like didn't really trapped that much that year,
Speaker 1: and they went out and caught to mink one day
Speaker 1: and mink, we're worth like forty bucks and um, and
Speaker 1: I was so overcome by jealousy that I got backing
Speaker 1: hard to trapping and then trapped until I was twenty two.
Speaker 1: And you're what ages of your brother? What ages worried
Speaker 1: brothers both older than you, They're like staggered out like
Speaker 1: a year and a half in the year half, So
Speaker 1: I was I was the little brother, um, which was
Speaker 1: it was kind of a luxury because you wind up
Speaker 1: getting all the get all the privileges early. You know,
Speaker 1: my parents didn't enforce multiple sets of rules. Was too confusing,
Speaker 1: so as my older brother when it would become like
Speaker 1: okay for him to do something, they were just like, okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay for everyone to do that too. So like
Speaker 1: in high school, I had no al what do you
Speaker 1: call we're supposed to be home at a certain time,
Speaker 1: not alibi. I never had one of those either curfew curfew,
Speaker 1: So like in high school, I was like I didn't
Speaker 1: have a curfew anymore because obviously my older brothers like
Speaker 1: doesn't because he's in college, and so they would just
Speaker 1: be rather than having all these rules, they would just
Speaker 1: get that rule. So what it meant was I could
Speaker 1: do it kind of like more, you know, I was
Speaker 1: able to get in and do more kinds of hunting
Speaker 1: and have more sort of freedom out in the woods
Speaker 1: earlier than he did, even because you know, because he
Speaker 1: was there, he was like the first one coming up.
Speaker 1: Kind of like I know with our own kids that
Speaker 1: you tend to be a little bit slower than when
Speaker 1: the other ones coming. You realize that knowing nothing bad
Speaker 1: has happened to anyone, yet you kind of caught them
Speaker 1: all loose. So I had like a lot of freedom
Speaker 1: be around out in the woods and to do just
Speaker 1: to be gone all day wandering around. You know, what
Speaker 1: are your your memories? I have always I've written about
Speaker 1: this before, and I know you have to just early
Speaker 1: memories that you're I don't know, with your dad, I've
Speaker 1: got little things like what we packed for lunch, and
Speaker 1: how he'd sit and where he how he told the
Speaker 1: shooting sticks, and how I'd miss all the dear good memories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my mind is packed full of stuff like that about
Speaker 1: like he use just the food thing you brought it,
Speaker 1: like what you have from that prior to hunting season,
Speaker 1: prior to like small game opening, he would fill milk
Speaker 1: crates up with like a collection of food. So that
Speaker 1: would be prunes with the pits in him for what
Speaker 1: he'd like to have those in his tree stand just
Speaker 1: to like keep busy eating something. Jars of jar glass,
Speaker 1: jars of jard Venison, bags of jerky, um, boxes of
Speaker 1: saltine crackers. He had some way he would buy that,
Speaker 1: like those huge blocks of cheese that are given out
Speaker 1: like government che met a guy that would sell my
Speaker 1: dad his government cheese, so some of that and he
Speaker 1: would just like get this. I remember it was like
Speaker 1: a big part of the year be filling these milk
Speaker 1: crates up with food that was going to live in
Speaker 1: the back of his jeep grand charity as we hunted
Speaker 1: that year and um. And he would build these when
Speaker 1: we went camping to hunt up on public lay into
Speaker 1: the north, he would build these like old timey lll
Speaker 1: bean camps where you're lashing yeah sticks and and wash.
Speaker 1: It would make like wash basin platforms that it's like
Speaker 1: crazy ship that would take be so labor intensive that
Speaker 1: just like not how we camp now now you tend
Speaker 1: to camp with like you stead of stoving them, you know,
Speaker 1: in the dirt and sleep in the dirt. And it's
Speaker 1: just really simple, but it's kind of annoyingly elaborate. Old
Speaker 1: timey camps remember it all. And there's just little things
Speaker 1: like that. My dad used to pack toast cheese crackers.
Speaker 1: There's orange. I just remember, like in the morning and
Speaker 1: like the pre dawn morning. I remember opening those and
Speaker 1: him getting pissed at me because they were loud, and
Speaker 1: I'll be crunching them. Because little things like that I
Speaker 1: always remember. And I wonder how when you get to
Speaker 1: this level, when you get to this kind of hunting
Speaker 1: that we're doing now, you miss those little those little details,
Speaker 1: the things aren't special, that aren't a nostalgic just because
Speaker 1: how many you know how many days a year this
Speaker 1: year if you go on, had been down the field,
Speaker 1: Oh man, a lot a lot. I do miss them.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm gonna what I'm nostalgic or is
Speaker 1: not so much that And I'm sure that will come later.
Speaker 1: Um to be nostalgic for that time with my dad. Uh,
Speaker 1: what I think about now in terms of my dad
Speaker 1: was I think about how just kind of like off
Speaker 1: we got were always work. He was a demanding person,
Speaker 1: um very difficult person, a high expectations. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: resented that a lot, and now only see there was
Speaker 1: like a mathod to his madness, right like I see
Speaker 1: now where he was getting. Now that I had kids,
Speaker 1: I understand what he was getting. He didn't care, He
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in being anyone's friend, like I think in
Speaker 1: his mind he was like, I need to raise pete
Speaker 1: bowl that are self sufficient in hard working and then
Speaker 1: know how to figure it out. And that's all I'm
Speaker 1: really doing. I don't care about anyone having fond memories
Speaker 1: of this whole thing, of anyone feeling like we're buddies,
Speaker 1: Like that's not my priority. My priority is like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to produce something here. I'll produced it at any cost.
Speaker 1: And I resented it, but now I understand it. So
Speaker 1: but I have yet to get to a point where
Speaker 1: I'm like nostalgic for those times. What I am nostalgic
Speaker 1: for is for those times in my twenties early twenties
Speaker 1: when when we were with me and my brothers and
Speaker 1: our buddies from growing up, we're sort of just starting
Speaker 1: to realize there's this big outdoor world beyond the handful
Speaker 1: activities that we participated in. Like that we you know,
Speaker 1: we knew like the spots we hunted, the spots we fish,
Speaker 1: but also we started like would drive a long ways
Speaker 1: to go to a certain river, you know, um, and
Speaker 1: just started like really kind of like stretch our legs
Speaker 1: and check out new stuff and just go hunt stuff
Speaker 1: we've never hunted before, and fish stuff we've never hunted for.
Speaker 1: Drive down to the floor to keys and try to
Speaker 1: catch a bone fish, you're like, you know, go up
Speaker 1: and try to catch a summer run steel heads somewhere.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm nostalgic for, is that like early exploration
Speaker 1: where you hadn't seen anything yet and it was just
Speaker 1: all like this kind of moment where you're like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? Like this is all out there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought the only thing was out there was an
Speaker 1: eight mile radius in my house. Could you imagine twenty
Speaker 1: years ago this type of life that you're leading now,
Speaker 1: this this adventuring public speaking writing a leadership position in
Speaker 1: that world and hunting world. No, not really, man and no,
Speaker 1: because I think that if you look at every however,
Speaker 1: you want to chop it up, if you want to
Speaker 1: chop up life. For the point I'm trying to make
Speaker 1: a say, chop up life in five years or ten
Speaker 1: year increments, There's never been a point at which I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been if I looked into crystal ball and
Speaker 1: saw the next five or next ten years. There's never
Speaker 1: been a point at which I wouldn't have been like
Speaker 1: shocked by what I saw, and I wondered how that
Speaker 1: would possibly have come to be. I anticipate that that
Speaker 1: feeling might end at some point in time, but so
Speaker 1: far has not. I feel the same way I would
Speaker 1: have like in personal life too, like that I would
Speaker 1: have like three children because no, wait, I was you
Speaker 1: know when we I think when we first podcast at
Speaker 1: a media last year, I was just just a new dad.
Speaker 1: I'd probably had been a month, and even up to
Speaker 1: that point, I didn't believe it my entire life. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way I'm going to have a kid. I
Speaker 1: see other people that have kids, a lot of other
Speaker 1: people that I have kids, But I don't think that
Speaker 1: I'm well suited enough for that thing. I'm ever be
Speaker 1: prepared for that. I'll never know what that feels like.
Speaker 1: And I kind of just I'd like to point out
Speaker 1: and interrupt that you might not be prepared for I don't,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean that I agree. I can agree
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, I mean I still did this day.
Speaker 1: I go home and I see this kid there, and
Speaker 1: I think I'm lucky to have this, But what is this?
Speaker 1: How do I handle this? What five years ago me
Speaker 1: would have just looked on this like some kind of
Speaker 1: fictional fairy tale that I had written. I'm sure is
Speaker 1: that something you feel and you're when you're in Guyana,
Speaker 1: were sitting in a place like this and you just
Speaker 1: try to think about that kid that was squirrel hunting,
Speaker 1: or even the kid that was exploring from from graduate school.
Speaker 1: I mean, is there a comparison. No, I don't think
Speaker 1: about it like that. And I think the reason why
Speaker 1: is because it all had because I was there for
Speaker 1: it all. So it wasn't like that Chris, like like
Speaker 1: that crystal ball feeling is if you, if you a man,
Speaker 1: magine looking ahead. You didn't see all the steps, you know,
Speaker 1: But because you're kind of like there for every moment.
Speaker 1: It all has this sort of logical progression to it. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a I can't remember who the writer was,
Speaker 1: but there was a writer that describe the process of
Speaker 1: writing a book as that they equated it to driving
Speaker 1: at night where you can never see any farther than
Speaker 1: your headlights, but somehow you just keep moving and eventually
Speaker 1: get there. And I feel that like that their analogy
Speaker 1: about writing a book is kind of truth with your life,
Speaker 1: where you just see like what's ahead of you, but
Speaker 1: at all every little step, how do you kind of
Speaker 1: make sense? And you just keep moving along and the
Speaker 1: things immediately in front of you make sense, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you arrive somewhere else. What's interesting now,
Speaker 1: as if I've pushed towards, if I've pushed towards sort
Speaker 1: of these like pinnacles of hunting, and to say that
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't want to act like, um, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to seem to be suggesting that there's
Speaker 1: like kinds of hunting that that are great, and I
Speaker 1: do kinds of hunting that are great, and other people
Speaker 1: do kinds of hunting that are just fun. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to say that, but like like but like sort
Speaker 1: of and these attics not the right word either, but
Speaker 1: really kind of like challenging kind of hunts where you're
Speaker 1: like deeply immersed in the experience for days on end
Speaker 1: and just focused on doing something very difficult in a
Speaker 1: pretty wild place. Okay, like I've been able to do
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, but right now, now that my
Speaker 1: kids are getting a little bit older, I'm actually looking
Speaker 1: forward now too, sort of regressing back to like the
Speaker 1: very introductory stuff, like to be totally to be totally
Speaker 1: honest with you, like outside of purse professional things like
Speaker 1: you know, like I sort of my ideas and at
Speaker 1: work are kind of based around hunting is what I do.
Speaker 1: But to be honest with you, to go back to
Speaker 1: the to the to that farm where I killed my
Speaker 1: first dear and take my kids out there squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: on a September, dude, like that that's the hunt I want, Like,
Speaker 1: that's the hon I want to do, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to really find a way to I'm trying to find
Speaker 1: a way to be able to do that a lot more,
Speaker 1: um even though I have a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: I still have a lot of desires to do the
Speaker 1: other kind of stuff. I'm trying to find a way
Speaker 1: to like add that in because I don't really know
Speaker 1: that I want to take my kids and and introduce
Speaker 1: them to I want them to see all layers of it, right,
Speaker 1: and not just have it be that, Oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I know some guys have this big private ranch. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go out to a private ranch and hunt turkeys
Speaker 1: and you can call in ten times a day. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's like what their first experience
Speaker 1: it should be. Really, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted them to see it sort of
Speaker 1: like how I did it, because everyone feels that that
Speaker 1: there's what most people feel that how that there's some
Speaker 1: value and how you were raised. Right. I think that
Speaker 1: when people, when parents and people in other ways somehow
Speaker 1: get rid of the idea that there was any value
Speaker 1: and how they were raised and try to just do
Speaker 1: everything in this novel fashion or that they try to
Speaker 1: like read about how to do it, and they don't
Speaker 1: think that there was that there's any sense or rhyme
Speaker 1: or reason and what their own experiences were that made
Speaker 1: them a person that they might be proud of. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're the kind of person, if you've become something
Speaker 1: that you're proud of, you have to go look at like,
Speaker 1: what are the factors that made me this way? Not
Speaker 1: that all of it was great, but there has to
Speaker 1: be some components to it that were important and um,
Speaker 1: and we're just talking about like like a hunting life
Speaker 1: and life spent outdoors and life spent around Wow, Like
Speaker 1: I just I can't get away from the feeling that
Speaker 1: there's something about want around a little chunk of woods,
Speaker 1: the two looking for squirrels because a lot of the
Speaker 1: people that I enjoy most in life and want to
Speaker 1: spend the most time hunting and fishing with that's how
Speaker 1: they grew up. There has to be something that has
Speaker 1: to do something to you to kind of make you um,
Speaker 1: to kind of prime you for the bigger stuff. Like well,
Speaker 1: I think and I know you probably don't talk about
Speaker 1: this much, you know, because when you're a podcasting you're
Speaker 1: learning about people and talking to them. But I think
Speaker 1: in a way those of us, I think you more
Speaker 1: than more than most that have a platform. And honey,
Speaker 1: are you doing that? And the and with here with
Speaker 1: meat either with the podcast with the TV show with
Speaker 1: with social media? Are you leading people down the path
Speaker 1: that you've been led without being able to take them there?
Speaker 1: I try to I try to if Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that I like try to celebrate, um, some of the
Speaker 1: things that are more accessible to people, like like in
Speaker 1: I'm gonna handle that question a couple of ways, because one,
Speaker 1: I try to celebrate the kind of outdoor activities that
Speaker 1: are easily accessible to people. Um, I'll go and every
Speaker 1: year we go to fish catfish. You know, we go
Speaker 1: to fish one and two pound channel cats. I take
Speaker 1: my kids to fish with their uncle Mat for one
Speaker 1: and two pound channel cats. Like I try to put
Speaker 1: as much of an emphasis on that, which means a
Speaker 1: lot to me and I love doing it, or with
Speaker 1: small game and squirrel, and I try to celebrate those
Speaker 1: experiences so that everyone sees it. There's like try to
Speaker 1: help people see the value in the resources and activities
Speaker 1: that they're able to engage in. The Other thing I
Speaker 1: tried to do, like if I have sort of a
Speaker 1: you know, a mission. Yeah, If if there's a thing
Speaker 1: that I would like try to convince people love, it
Speaker 1: would be that I would try to teach people something
Speaker 1: that I learned very slowly, and I wish I maybe
Speaker 1: would have learned it a little bit quicker. Would be
Speaker 1: that you need to look and find out in this
Speaker 1: world what you love, okay, and identify the feeling you
Speaker 1: have as love. I was obsessed with nature as a kid.
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with animals as a kid. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be out hunting and fishing all the time. It
Speaker 1: took me a long time to just make the very
Speaker 1: obvious realization that this is something that I loved, That
Speaker 1: these things in these places where things that I loved
Speaker 1: and had a lot of affection for, and that I
Speaker 1: would ultimately be willing to make sacrifices on the behalf
Speaker 1: of those things. Better me we I had no idea
Speaker 1: about um, and grown up, it just wasn't something I
Speaker 1: really thought of thought about that there in my mind. Resources,
Speaker 1: wildlife resources, landscape resources. In my mind, they had just
Speaker 1: kind of fallen from the sky and they were there,
Speaker 1: not because anyone did anything to make them be there
Speaker 1: or not, not that you'd make them be there, not
Speaker 1: that anyone did anything to help ensure that they were there.
Speaker 1: It just it just was right almost as like it's
Speaker 1: almost just like biblical sense that it just always was there,
Speaker 1: always would be there. And it took me a long
Speaker 1: time and to see some loss in fact, to go like,
Speaker 1: oh man, this thing that I loved so dearly is tenuous,
Speaker 1: like it's not a given that it will always be around.
Speaker 1: And so I try to like if I could have
Speaker 1: some thing that I could do, it would be helped
Speaker 1: ease people through that transition of being like, yes, admit,
Speaker 1: just admit to yourself and you love it because everyone knows,
Speaker 1: like you love your children and love your wife and
Speaker 1: would take a bullet for him, like literally would take
Speaker 1: a bullet for him, right, you take a bullet for
Speaker 1: a lot of your best friends. And so to go
Speaker 1: and work and be like, here's this other thing I
Speaker 1: love too. It's not it's like it's not as like
Speaker 1: sort of immediately tangible like my kids. You know, there's
Speaker 1: just a little contained units that live in my house.
Speaker 1: It's just different. We're talking about landscape wide ship. But
Speaker 1: to recognize that um, that that these things that we
Speaker 1: care about um and that give our lives so much
Speaker 1: meaning like require something of us. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: that that initial feeling when you're a kid and I
Speaker 1: had the same thing we had public land up. It
Speaker 1: was just where we went. There's no philosophy or ideology
Speaker 1: behind the reasons why I loved it. I just love
Speaker 1: being that went trees like the next ship that we enjoyed.
Speaker 1: We play a game called remember the show named that tune. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course we had a game Chopped that Tree. And
Speaker 1: you say, like Dan, I believe I can chop that tree,
Speaker 1: and three strikes you taken it, just like Daous. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of guys I didn't have that would like
Speaker 1: to try to give to my children a little bit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but I don't think he went from the message.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can get to where you are
Speaker 1: and I am of that appreciation the devotion to it,
Speaker 1: and I think it probably goes back to the headlights
Speaker 1: in the dark road. You can't get to the devotion
Speaker 1: that you currently have or that I currently have, without
Speaker 1: first having the feeling of it being this serendipitous thing
Speaker 1: that you happen to live on the earth with, you
Speaker 1: happen to be created on the same plane as this landscape.
Speaker 1: I don't know that you can have a devotion that
Speaker 1: as pure as what yours seem to be off that
Speaker 1: other steps. Yeah, it's probably true. But I think the
Speaker 1: thing that I tried to do, or I like to
Speaker 1: imagine myself doing, would be that because I have the time, UM,
Speaker 1: because I have the time and sort of a developed ability,
Speaker 1: you know, to articulate some of these things, um, and
Speaker 1: and have the luxury to be able to spend professional
Speaker 1: time on it. And I'm trying to learn how to
Speaker 1: articulate certain viewpoints that you can provide people with a
Speaker 1: little bit of short of a short cut in the
Speaker 1: thought process. Where I think that, um, because I know
Speaker 1: that there are things that could have been said to
Speaker 1: me when I was in my late teens. Um, there
Speaker 1: were things that that could have been said to me
Speaker 1: that would have helped me to understand uh, a little
Speaker 1: bit of what I eventually became to understand, and much quicker.
Speaker 1: And it would have helped me make some better choices
Speaker 1: and not have made some of the mistakes I made
Speaker 1: in the woods. And I don't mean mistakes, I mean
Speaker 1: moral transgressions that I would have not done some unethical
Speaker 1: things that I did. Uh, had someone took in a
Speaker 1: taken a minute to talk me through some of the things,
Speaker 1: like if I could talk to myself, then now I
Speaker 1: would probably give myself a swift kick, and then I
Speaker 1: would explain some stuff, you know, like I had, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to be a very successful trapper,
Speaker 1: right and and there was like a financial component to trapping,
Speaker 1: and I would take shortcuts. I would at times play
Speaker 1: pretty fast and in loose with the rules, this sort
Speaker 1: of arrogance that I knew better or that just like
Speaker 1: a kind of agreed, but not even like thought out.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I laid in bed and had this
Speaker 1: sort of debate like well, here's the pros of being
Speaker 1: you know, here's the pros of being a bad person,
Speaker 1: here's the car. It's just like impulsive stuff. Did I
Speaker 1: not wonder how I had got there? You know? And
Speaker 1: none of it was like truly I never did anything
Speaker 1: it was like actually damaging but just looking now, um,
Speaker 1: looking now, yeah, I did some things that I'm like
Speaker 1: a little bit a little bit embarrassed. What don't you
Speaker 1: feel like when you start round trapp when you start
Speaker 1: hunting or maybe trapping the same way. I've never done it,
Speaker 1: but it could be when you start hunting, you don't
Speaker 1: unless someone has specifically said this to you, you don't
Speaker 1: think about the value of life. There's more to the
Speaker 1: activity than the value of life. You're learning how to
Speaker 1: do so many things. You're you're learning about nature, you're
Speaker 1: learning about animals, You're learned about your own abilities to
Speaker 1: do things. Shoot a gun, shoot a bow, walk in
Speaker 1: the woods while quietly sit for a long time. Be
Speaker 1: patient that the value of the life on the other
Speaker 1: end of the gun or the or the archery tackle.
Speaker 1: Doesn't it There's no room for that in the beginning,
Speaker 1: because it's almost too heavy when you start. You know,
Speaker 1: that's a that's such a heavy thing to say, Like
Speaker 1: you're nine or ten or eleven or twelve years old,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the value of this life in this
Speaker 1: grandly complicated exercise. I think that I always understood the
Speaker 1: value of what I now think of as the ness,
Speaker 1: meaning I understood the value of dearness. Yeah, I understood
Speaker 1: the value of like muskrat ness, the first animal that
Speaker 1: I've really just became just kind of like fascinated with.
Speaker 1: And one understands the bad where river otters right well,
Speaker 1: because river rotters are really valuable, but I like really
Speaker 1: wanted no river rotters, and in seeing them was so
Speaker 1: exciting that I understood sort of like the otterness and
Speaker 1: how much, but no, it was. It's only much later
Speaker 1: that you untangled all. But I think that the important part, though,
Speaker 1: and I think it's like a thing that hunters understand
Speaker 1: and people that don't hunt don't understand, would be that
Speaker 1: I think hunters put a very high value on elkness, dearness, turkeiness,
Speaker 1: sort of the idea of them or the well being
Speaker 1: of the thing in perpetuity, and not a ton of
Speaker 1: individual value, where I find that animal rights activists put
Speaker 1: a tremendous value on the individual nous with no real
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say no real would would generally with very
Speaker 1: little understanding of the nest. So a hunter might look
Speaker 1: and say, like a certain type of hunter might look
Speaker 1: and say, yeah, I kill a deer every year. Let
Speaker 1: let me take my friend Doug durn All right, Doug
Speaker 1: Durren kills a deer or two every year, but three
Speaker 1: sixty five days out of the year, Doug durn is
Speaker 1: looking at his family's farm and and also his state's
Speaker 1: wildlife policies, and thinking about what will make what will
Speaker 1: allow the deer on my farm in my county, in
Speaker 1: my state to continue to thrive and to continue to
Speaker 1: hold cultural value and what will allow us to have great, dear,
Speaker 1: healthy deer herd going into the next generation, next generation,
Speaker 1: next generation. He sees that and he would take a
Speaker 1: bullet for that notion. But does he feel bad shooting
Speaker 1: an individual deer? No, because the nest, like a dear
Speaker 1: ness matters. So I think that that's things an animal
Speaker 1: rights person would look at the picture of a dead
Speaker 1: deer and they don't see the things that created that,
Speaker 1: the situations that created that, the landscape that created that
Speaker 1: and would allow it, and what sort of what what
Speaker 1: parameters need to be met, what what things need to
Speaker 1: be satisfied in order to continue the producing that they
Speaker 1: just see, here's this individual thing that died, and um,
Speaker 1: it's just two different world views that can't really be reconciled. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what I never wanted to start this talking about
Speaker 1: the idea of what this podcast is going to be,
Speaker 1: But this is a good segue into that. I think
Speaker 1: this the idea that it's called the hunting collective and
Speaker 1: that there is a collective idea of what we are.
Speaker 1: What you just described very well. I think I want
Speaker 1: to try to answer the question, is there a way
Speaker 1: to take those two worldviews, the idea of wildlife in
Speaker 1: its totality as hunters see the value, and the idea
Speaker 1: of the individual having value, having maybe more value than
Speaker 1: than the whole. Taking those two ideas and finding a
Speaker 1: middle road and saying we both value the thing, but
Speaker 1: we value at a different end of the spectrum. You
Speaker 1: value it's cuteness, it's it's it's life, it's you know,
Speaker 1: you always see like the it's individuality, the sanctimonious nature
Speaker 1: of the way it lives and dies, like it should
Speaker 1: be able to live and die in a wild way.
Speaker 1: And maybe hunters say it should be able to live
Speaker 1: in perpetuity, maybe maybe a few of them have to die,
Speaker 1: and what some would consider an humane way or an
Speaker 1: unnatural way. That's all probably a whole another deeper level
Speaker 1: of the argument, whether it is unnatural or not hunt something,
Speaker 1: but the idea of that value system. I find that
Speaker 1: we're on the same plane and much the same as
Speaker 1: a vegan is on the same plane as a hunter.
Speaker 1: You're both trying to mitigate or or meter in some
Speaker 1: way your consumption, trying to find a way to better
Speaker 1: understand how your consumptive habits affect the world. Around you
Speaker 1: what you're trying to do. And so I think in
Speaker 1: the same way that the animal rights actifice and the
Speaker 1: hunter disagree, maybe the vegan and and the hunter disagree
Speaker 1: in the same way, But there's you're living with the
Speaker 1: same reality that this is an important and valuable asset
Speaker 1: to the natural world. How do you feel like there is?
Speaker 1: How do how do you Is there a middle road
Speaker 1: or isn't there not one? Yeah? I don't. I hope,
Speaker 1: I hope that you explore so much that you wind
Speaker 1: up finding it. But I can't really picture it because
Speaker 1: here's what it would take. Like like, here's what would
Speaker 1: take the bridge the gap. If I were to die
Speaker 1: right now, Okay, I would die feeling that I had
Speaker 1: given something to the idea of American wildlife. Okay, I
Speaker 1: would feel that I had contributed to a system it
Speaker 1: allows for the continued existence of American wildlife. I had
Speaker 1: contributed to it financially, I had contributed to it in
Speaker 1: a sort of um in a sort of spiritual sense,
Speaker 1: and that I feel like I had contribute to it
Speaker 1: to maybe help people see how much it means to
Speaker 1: them and how much it helps them, how much it
Speaker 1: represents the world that they believe in and want to
Speaker 1: have around. And I would feel that I had contributed,
Speaker 1: even like even in a much more minor way and
Speaker 1: some kind of like policy sense right about how should
Speaker 1: we be doing this? How should we govern ourselves? But
Speaker 1: I think that if you went and asked, you know,
Speaker 1: if you went and asked an animal rights advocate, hey
Speaker 1: has this person contributed American wildlife? I think that there
Speaker 1: was nothing but a trail of death. But that too
Speaker 1: gets into so much more difficult things because that too,
Speaker 1: another commonality that like brings us together but also tears
Speaker 1: as a part is the idea of wild animals because
Speaker 1: if you it's much more upsetting to people too. For
Speaker 1: let's just reason animal rights, like as though it's just
Speaker 1: this monolithic thing that all animal rights people are the
Speaker 1: same way. But like an animal rights person is gonna
Speaker 1: get more upset about the idea of a wild animal
Speaker 1: dying because they value wild animals more. And it's like,
Speaker 1: here's the thing, I value wild animals so much more.
Speaker 1: So there's another way, like how are we ever going
Speaker 1: to see eye to eye on at Because if you
Speaker 1: if you think that, like if deer hunting is upsetting
Speaker 1: to you, we're we're killing more cows in a day. Yes,
Speaker 1: So it's like, how could you even live? Like if
Speaker 1: if an animal rights and this getting little off track here,
Speaker 1: but if an animal rights person feels that all life
Speaker 1: is absolutely equal and a cow and a deer and
Speaker 1: the same thing as a person, then I would have
Speaker 1: to point out and be like, you are um spineless,
Speaker 1: because if I thought that we were systematically slaughtering hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of Americans right now in factories, I would
Speaker 1: take up arms. So we've got we've gotten to taken
Speaker 1: up arms against the cow murners. So but you're the
Speaker 1: point you're making is that deer hunting is down the
Speaker 1: list of things to be Yeah, yeah, point, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm being I want to back that up and saying
Speaker 1: but being ridiculous a demist or something that seems a
Speaker 1: little ridiculous in them. But the point is all these
Speaker 1: places where we have common out here, Like I like
Speaker 1: wild animals more than domestic ones. They mean more to me.
Speaker 1: I like to watch them, They're the ones I'd like
Speaker 1: to eat. So it's like, and I find I find
Speaker 1: that in common with people who have a real problem
Speaker 1: with honey is oftentimes they value well the animals more too.
Speaker 1: So it's like here we are being like, I love animals.
Speaker 1: I hope they exist into the future. I especially like
Speaker 1: the wild ones. They'll be like yeah, yeah, like and
Speaker 1: I eat them. They're like, you what, you bastard? Suff
Speaker 1: a bitch. Yeah. I don't know where the intellectual hurdle lies.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's an emotional hurdle moreover than than than something
Speaker 1: that just that people emotional hurdle because it's it's just confusing,
Speaker 1: it's just confusing. It's like these ideas are talking about
Speaker 1: are so confusing. People have an easy time understanding them
Speaker 1: if they're looking at like an indigenous group. We have
Speaker 1: a thing where we're able to say, I think that
Speaker 1: there's a thing in the American psyche of people who
Speaker 1: think about this a lot. We're able to look at
Speaker 1: an indigenous group and say it's okay, like it's good
Speaker 1: that they hunt, It's okay that they hunt because they
Speaker 1: feel a deep connection to the animals and almost spiritual
Speaker 1: connection to the animals. And I would say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm right there with them, right there with them. It's
Speaker 1: something that I have devoted my entire life too. Is
Speaker 1: something that my father devoted a good amount of his
Speaker 1: life too. Is something that my paternal and maternal grandfathers
Speaker 1: were interested in. I carry with me like I have
Speaker 1: a sense of of um ownership for in deep concern
Speaker 1: for the well being of the animals that sustained me.
Speaker 1: What trips people up is there's this idea that, well,
Speaker 1: you don't need to hunt. And I always wanted like, okay,
Speaker 1: so who who is the cultural force here? Who's going
Speaker 1: to step in and declare when people need to hunt
Speaker 1: and don't need to hunt? There are when when the
Speaker 1: Spanish can keus the doors were in the American Southwest,
Speaker 1: there are letters that were written back to Spain by
Speaker 1: people on the ground and the American Southwest complaining about
Speaker 1: how the Native Americans would not stop hunting. And these letters,
Speaker 1: I honestly say, I can't figure it out. We gave
Speaker 1: him homes, we gave him livestock, we taught him to farm.
Speaker 1: These people insist on roaming around hunting. So would would
Speaker 1: some of these people go like, okay, that's the point
Speaker 1: at which once they had access to another lifestyle, they
Speaker 1: should have quit. They should have ended their life by
Speaker 1: that logic. Should we be striving for a time when
Speaker 1: we would ease the wolf off of meat? Is that
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal? And of course not being like like
Speaker 1: I entered into a highly theoretical realm. But if, if,
Speaker 1: if all society is pushing towards this point when you
Speaker 1: graduate into not hunting, who is the arbiter of when
Speaker 1: people should make the leap? Well, I thank you. I
Speaker 1: think that comes to the next thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to you about it, and it is. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting question. There's the arbiter when they're looking at that
Speaker 1: the point of arbitration, you know, you look at British Columbia.
Speaker 1: The recent bear said, yeah, that was an arbitration of
Speaker 1: when can you hunt? And what can you hunt? And
Speaker 1: what are the reasons you can go? Um, And so
Speaker 1: I think as hunters we now have to better work
Speaker 1: as a group to define what hunting is for us
Speaker 1: and what acceptable forms of hunting can can maintain themselves
Speaker 1: in this conversation, because trophy hunting or the term trophy hunting,
Speaker 1: which is a very difficult and we'll try here, We're
Speaker 1: gonna try right the trap or we'll find a bug
Speaker 1: before we get finished talking about it. I think that
Speaker 1: that idea and we'll talk about it the idea of itself,
Speaker 1: but that idea has become in the popular sense, not
Speaker 1: the same type of honey that you're talking about, not
Speaker 1: the same type of ancestral urge that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: So to define the urge that you have, which in
Speaker 1: my mind is a legitimate ancestral and just just a
Speaker 1: lifestyle choice, to define that and then to define the other,
Speaker 1: like what parts of our honey community are unacceptable and
Speaker 1: the ideas that we're just not going to change who
Speaker 1: we are, But what what parts of the honey community
Speaker 1: have already changed? Beyond that incestral word that you have
Speaker 1: than I have and that folks haven't, and beyond the
Speaker 1: feeling of I've got to protect this thing, I've got
Speaker 1: to protect the idea of hunting, the idea of wildlife. Um,
Speaker 1: how many hunters are thinking more about the size of
Speaker 1: the animal than those types of things? And does that
Speaker 1: disqualify them from this conversation? I think that you would
Speaker 1: have to have a much more sophisticated and nuanced lexicon
Speaker 1: to begin talking about kinds of hunting and types of honey,
Speaker 1: because it just winds up being it winds up being
Speaker 1: way too complex. Right now, for instance, UM, we're out
Speaker 1: hunting deer, We're out looking for large mature bucks. Now,
Speaker 1: I would rather get any bucked in a large mature one,
Speaker 1: or what am I trying to say? If it came
Speaker 1: down to it and I needed the meat, I would
Speaker 1: just shoot any buck. But if I can have, if
Speaker 1: I have the time to put into it and have
Speaker 1: the location to do it, I'm also gonna try to
Speaker 1: find a large mature one because I'm gonna eat the meat,
Speaker 1: and I like to have the antlers around if I
Speaker 1: didn't eat the meat. Let me approach this different. But
Speaker 1: sees you a big giant buck, and you said to me,
Speaker 1: God comes down, puts a gun to my head, says
Speaker 1: you can take that head. You can take that meat.
Speaker 1: Can't take both. Every single time, I would take the meat,
Speaker 1: not just from the pragmatic standpoint, but morally, I would
Speaker 1: feel like that would be my choice. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: would just do it naturally because I'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: I want to meet me, and that's what our family eats,
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, I would do it sort of.
Speaker 1: I have a moral obligation of like boild be maximum value.
Speaker 1: Okay's like the maximum used to like the maximum way
Speaker 1: to pay like the greatest respect to the idea of
Speaker 1: the thing, and like having a pragmatic approach of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of calories there, there's like a kind
Speaker 1: of approaching there. I'm gonna utilize that whether utilize something
Speaker 1: small symbolic portion of the animal, which is the antlers.
Speaker 1: So time and time again, I'm gonna make that choice.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to talk about a good kind like
Speaker 1: in my mind, like a good kind of deer hunting, um,
Speaker 1: just specific to deer, I would have to say that
Speaker 1: that when someone was faced with that choice, I think
Speaker 1: if they said, screw the meat, I'm gonna take the antlers,
Speaker 1: I feel that you might need to that you might
Speaker 1: need to re examine your perspective on it. But but
Speaker 1: it's it's all it's it's all too complicated because there's
Speaker 1: more factors in it than just that, Like am I
Speaker 1: a worst person or a better person? Because if I
Speaker 1: shoot a buck I keep the antlers on a bookcase
Speaker 1: in my house. I feel that probably I feel that
Speaker 1: it's probably because to me, what does it wind up meaning?
Speaker 1: To me? It's just winds up being this like some
Speaker 1: this symbol of the antlers, this is token of the
Speaker 1: animal that I always look at and remember. Now, if
Speaker 1: I knew that I had wasted the meat, I would
Speaker 1: look at that set of antlers and all would do
Speaker 1: is bring me shame. But as that look at the
Speaker 1: things that in my home, I look at him like, dude,
Speaker 1: that was like the greatest trip, the coolest thing. Always
Speaker 1: remember that place, remember the people I'm with, And it
Speaker 1: winds up being like this emblem of something that I'm
Speaker 1: very proud of, them feel very good about. So to
Speaker 1: act like to be like, oh, he you you have
Speaker 1: hunting trophies in your home, therefore you must be a
Speaker 1: trophy hunter, It's like, I don't really know what that means.
Speaker 1: This is a trophy of something that I care a
Speaker 1: lot about. It would take a bullet for that's the
Speaker 1: That's the I think that's the point. Do we are
Speaker 1: we able as a hunting community to say the difference
Speaker 1: trophy hunting is the idea of trophy hunting that there's
Speaker 1: no value in the life of the animal besides what's
Speaker 1: on top of its head is wrong like that the
Speaker 1: valuation of the animal is I only want to kill
Speaker 1: it if it's or two. I value that and I
Speaker 1: don't value the other being the meat or the experience
Speaker 1: or whatever. Are we willing to say that that. Let's
Speaker 1: judge whether you're in our boat as hunters, and that
Speaker 1: ancestral boat and that boat of of people that are
Speaker 1: wildlife stewards and conservations, we're all in a boat. Are
Speaker 1: we willing to push the people out of the boat
Speaker 1: who do not have or share the same values for
Speaker 1: the life that you do? Right? I like the boat?
Speaker 1: Now do you use it? I stole it from you? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I had put it one time would be like, um,
Speaker 1: people say like, we're all on the same boat, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, one of the guys in this boat is
Speaker 1: shooting holes through the hole. Let's push that motherfucker out.
Speaker 1: But that's that that that means all sabotaging. That's been
Speaker 1: the most interesting thing for me always to think about,
Speaker 1: how do we determine if there was a plank on
Speaker 1: our hunting boat. We're all in the same boat and
Speaker 1: there's a plank, and we're determining who's gonna walk the plank,
Speaker 1: And I say to you, do you value the life
Speaker 1: of the animal? And you say yes. So my second
Speaker 1: question is what parts of that life do you value,
Speaker 1: and you get that question wrong and you fucking walk
Speaker 1: the plank. Okay, the only way you can the only
Speaker 1: way I can start doing it is I tend to
Speaker 1: like go towards extremes, so because extremes are helpful, and
Speaker 1: this causes a lot of friction when I'm arguing with
Speaker 1: my wife about things, because I'll tend to um instead
Speaker 1: of dealing in the gray that we're actually focused on.
Speaker 1: I'll be like, well, let's imagine that we each pursued
Speaker 1: extremes of what we're talking about and see what that
Speaker 1: would look like. Okay, And to give you a sense,
Speaker 1: like we're having an issue about the kids, say like
Speaker 1: safety of the kid, my extreme um that I would
Speaker 1: be like, my extreme will be that you're keeping them
Speaker 1: in a bubble, all right, you're keeping them in a
Speaker 1: bubble and in this and her extreme would be that
Speaker 1: you're arming them, you know, with sharp with with a
Speaker 1: bunch of sharp objects that are laced with disease. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we just like to think that. So in order
Speaker 1: to take an extreme of like a kind of hunting
Speaker 1: that I really don't understand and that I think might
Speaker 1: be getting at what you're talking about, the value and
Speaker 1: yam or not. It's like, let's say, when you hear
Speaker 1: about a case of high like high fence hunting. Okay,
Speaker 1: in a very small enclosure where a deer is raised
Speaker 1: up in a place and then it's turned loose into
Speaker 1: a small enclosure on the day that a gentleman is
Speaker 1: going to go up and shoot it. Now, he would
Speaker 1: have had ample of opportunities to shoot it when it
Speaker 1: was in the back of a truck. But they're opting
Speaker 1: in order to sort of lend this appearance of hunting.
Speaker 1: They're gonna turn it loose into some sort of enclosure
Speaker 1: where this person can go pretend to hunt it. They hunted.
Speaker 1: They don't want the meat, They just want the rack.
Speaker 1: And so they get this thing mounted on their wall
Speaker 1: and they hang it on their wall. Now, what are
Speaker 1: they doing when they hanging on their wall. They're not
Speaker 1: telling people, Oh, that buck you're asking about. Why, let
Speaker 1: me tell you about that buck. They raised it in
Speaker 1: a little farm, and they turned it loose into an
Speaker 1: enclosure and I pretended to hunt. No, they're putting the
Speaker 1: buck on the wall because they want people to look
Speaker 1: at the buck, and they want people to see the
Speaker 1: opposite of what that buck. Is they want people to
Speaker 1: see this sort of emblem of wildlife, this sort of
Speaker 1: or what this emblem of wildness, this thing that represents challenge,
Speaker 1: this thing that represents cultural value, this thing that represents
Speaker 1: sacrifice and dedication, because that is what a lot of
Speaker 1: people look at a big buck and they think, man,
Speaker 1: you must have done your work. You musty've done everything right,
Speaker 1: you must have been lucky, you must have had a
Speaker 1: great day, you must be very proud of all these accomplishments.
Speaker 1: And they're putting that symbol out. They know it's a lie,
Speaker 1: but they're putting it out because they know that they're
Speaker 1: dealing in those things. The same way you would go
Speaker 1: and make a fake the pluma and hang it on
Speaker 1: your wall because you want to revel in other people's
Speaker 1: impressions of what that is, even though you know that
Speaker 1: you're living a lie. In that case, I would look
Speaker 1: and be like, that is a bad kind that's a
Speaker 1: guy shooting a hole in the boat. And the most
Speaker 1: extreme version, it's not only if you saw this years ago,
Speaker 1: it was like, there's a guy actually pretending to drugged. Dear.
Speaker 1: I never saw that, but I can imagine. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: drugged it can barely stand up. Because he wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to go and show these antlers to his
Speaker 1: peers and have his peers seeing them something that he
Speaker 1: knew was a lot. They got another guest apparents from
Speaker 1: Yanni tell us, be honest, come in and want to go,
Speaker 1: but we might be blocked by all normal ridge itself
Speaker 1: to the actual blake bench sattle that we saw him
Speaker 1: on last night. But down here where you guys are at,
Speaker 1: we're looking at that really helped me oriented. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talked away on the shade on the main ridge. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're still still on the podcast by the way. Um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hang up a little signifier so you guys
Speaker 1: see where we are. But you're on the right ridge.
Speaker 1: You see us now, Steve's waving a red bag for you. Amy, No,
Speaker 1: we don't see you. Double check back in a little bit.
Speaker 1: We'll check back in a little bit. We're finishing up
Speaker 1: our podcast and a really deep ideological conversation about hunting
Speaker 1: and it's worth in the modern world. So I don't
Speaker 1: interrupt it anymore, Johnny, my apologies, man, trying to find
Speaker 1: you a bucket on the left. Damn. We'll keep smiling
Speaker 1: and keep laughing. You can't touch your baby and you're
Speaker 1: ready keep smiling. Anyway, I can agree with you on
Speaker 1: the point of that extreme. I think then we have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to identify that person within the
Speaker 1: grander scheme of hunting and not just going hunting with
Speaker 1: that person, because in the U Or I would never
Speaker 1: go do that. That's not something we would. Somebody called you, buddy,
Speaker 1: called you up, say I'm going to high fence ranch.
Speaker 1: We're gonna drug a deer and then we're gonna walk
Speaker 1: around and shoot it. Well, you'd say, I'm good, go
Speaker 1: for it. But I'm good. Some people wouldn't. They're not
Speaker 1: even hunters anyway. Yeah, it's a in the in the
Speaker 1: landscape of things. I'm not going to name the things
Speaker 1: that I think are are tending towards your notion of
Speaker 1: of trophy, but there are many organisms, there are many
Speaker 1: organizations and and things out there in the hunting space
Speaker 1: that support the kind of idea that would tolerate and
Speaker 1: support the kind of idea that you just threw out there,
Speaker 1: maybe tolerates a better term for it, but would would
Speaker 1: provide tacit support to that hunter who is misinterpreting or
Speaker 1: misrepresenting what hunting is essentially lying about it. And I
Speaker 1: wonder how we either talk those those groups and those
Speaker 1: people out of their idea of hunting, or gradually slowly
Speaker 1: change their philosophies and ideologies get them away from that,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of it's driven by the
Speaker 1: by dollars. I don't think about the groups UM. I
Speaker 1: do think about the people, and I tend to I
Speaker 1: tend to think of like how to UM. I tend
Speaker 1: not to think of how to conduct a sort of
Speaker 1: purge as much as I tend to think about that
Speaker 1: if we continue to have conversations about what is it
Speaker 1: that we value, how do we maintain the things that
Speaker 1: we value, that people will make better, that that people
Speaker 1: will come to make better, more sustainable choices. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. Usually I don't find myself thinking about UM
Speaker 1: kicking people out of the club as much as I
Speaker 1: imagine making the UM more clearly, identifying the goals of
Speaker 1: the club and having people come to see value in that.
Speaker 1: And I have a conversation around what it should look
Speaker 1: like and and and we all improve our ways the
Speaker 1: same way that I feel that over the course of
Speaker 1: my life I have. UM. I thought a lot about
Speaker 1: the things I care about and figured out better ways
Speaker 1: to try to maintain the things I care about. Like
Speaker 1: you could go back and look and UM, when I
Speaker 1: was like earlier I mentioned when I was in my
Speaker 1: late teens setting snares in a zone where you weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to set snares, you might look and say, like,
Speaker 1: here's this guy, he's just you know, let's kick him out,
Speaker 1: and I would have UH. Now I would like to
Speaker 1: think that, UM, I'm thankful that I wasn't like kicking
Speaker 1: kicked out of something like. I came around to see
Speaker 1: the value in having uh. Wildlife commissions and state fishing
Speaker 1: game agencies work with teams of biologists and policymakers to
Speaker 1: craft as that we all agree to live by so
Speaker 1: that we have an even playing field and don't overexploit
Speaker 1: our resources. I didn't see that at the time. I
Speaker 1: don't think that I needed like a bullet behind my ear.
Speaker 1: I just needed to have, like some experiences, he spent
Speaker 1: some time thinking about things to see that if someone
Speaker 1: says don't set a snare in this zone, it's not
Speaker 1: like your position to just defye that there's a way
Speaker 1: you can do, but you can go to the commission
Speaker 1: and you can say, hey, it seems kind of like
Speaker 1: arbitrary and weird, like why can't I do it that
Speaker 1: side of the highway but not this side of the highway?
Speaker 1: Can you please explain to me how would I go
Speaker 1: about changing this rule. I think that it's not a
Speaker 1: fair rule, it is not well thought out. Whatever, it's
Speaker 1: not just my position to be like screw that rule.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad I wasn't like thrown out um, because
Speaker 1: I eventually came to see the value in that, Like
Speaker 1: I can see value in that type of cooperation. So
Speaker 1: in my mind, it's like, you know the guy that
Speaker 1: let's just say and I don't even know it, you know.
Speaker 1: I hate to take like a single thing, like like
Speaker 1: we got the drug dear right, Like the single thing.
Speaker 1: I don't even know the full story behind it. It's sickening.
Speaker 1: It's just this like probably a very isolated occurrence. I
Speaker 1: don't want to put too much way down it, but
Speaker 1: let's just talk about the drug deeper guy. I don't
Speaker 1: know that that guy could be rehabilitated. It's so weird.
Speaker 1: It's justice. Yeah, it's just too weird to begin to
Speaker 1: think about. But I think that if people if you
Speaker 1: have a person who looks at an animal and recognizes
Speaker 1: its symbolic value, I feel that that person could come
Speaker 1: around and through some thinking and reading and kind of
Speaker 1: understanding our conservation history in this country and how we
Speaker 1: came to have the richest the richness of resources that
Speaker 1: we enjoy. I don't know, I feel that they might
Speaker 1: come to it and be like, you know what, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm changing over time and my value system is changing.
Speaker 1: And I think you're right on because there isn't any way.
Speaker 1: There's no tangible way. There isn't a boat that we
Speaker 1: can we're going to push people off of, and there
Speaker 1: isn't a set of rules beyond the game laws that
Speaker 1: we have that are going to allow us to kick
Speaker 1: anybody out of anything. As long as it's legal, it
Speaker 1: can be done. So I think, what the reason why
Speaker 1: we're talking on a podcast, and I'm sure the reason
Speaker 1: why you do what you do is to continue I
Speaker 1: think the way to to fight what we see as
Speaker 1: a negative force in hunting is to continue to talk
Speaker 1: about this kind of stuff, is to continue to examine
Speaker 1: the important measures that we've taken, continue to examine important
Speaker 1: ways to adjust our philosophies and ideologists for the future,
Speaker 1: and that the discussion is really the only one of
Speaker 1: the only ways that we can continue to change people's
Speaker 1: value systems. I'd tell you what I think that like
Speaker 1: in in some of them, I'm a professional, you know,
Speaker 1: a professional talker in some ways. Um, it sounds horrible
Speaker 1: when you say it, but just like kind of reality.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that that would value intercourse like
Speaker 1: I would value like people having interactions and discussing things
Speaker 1: and time with things, because I know that there were
Speaker 1: the thoughts and words of other people wind up having
Speaker 1: a tremendous impact on me. My my older brother, We've
Speaker 1: talked about quite a bit. I have two older bones.
Speaker 1: But when I've alluded to more than the other, I
Speaker 1: remember he had a conservation epiphany when he read I
Speaker 1: will leave Old Sand County eliminat Okay. Because here's a
Speaker 1: person and sort of framing the natural world and the
Speaker 1: things that he cared, elderly pods, a hundred fishermen, and
Speaker 1: the conservations. And he explained, like in this book he
Speaker 1: lays out in Ethos, and my brother must have saw
Speaker 1: so much of himself in there, and it was such
Speaker 1: a challenging way to view it that it changed him.
Speaker 1: I remember, and I remember an essay by Tom mcgwaen
Speaker 1: where he said a thing and I'm like, I had
Speaker 1: never thought about it that way, but that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I do feel that way, and I'm so glad I
Speaker 1: just heard it because it now makes it seem valid.
Speaker 1: And it's a quote that I've quart a thousand times
Speaker 1: and now quarts of the day I died. Where mcguain,
Speaker 1: who's a novelist, you know, you know, his written screenplays
Speaker 1: and may novels. But years ago, I feel like it
Speaker 1: was in Maybe or something, he wrote a um essay
Speaker 1: about hunting, and in it, the he's sort of imagining
Speaker 1: this conversation between a hunter and a non hunter, and
Speaker 1: the non hunter says that the hunter like, you know,
Speaker 1: why do you why do you kill a deer? What
Speaker 1: did you ever do to you? And the hunter says,
Speaker 1: I can't talk about it this way? And the nounhn
Speaker 1: says no, like, why do deer have to die for you?
Speaker 1: Would you die for deer? And the hunter says, if
Speaker 1: it came to that, And I think that, like, in
Speaker 1: that perspective, there's such like I was like, it just
Speaker 1: hit me like and like they say in Apocalypse Now,
Speaker 1: it hit me like a diamond bully that thought, which
Speaker 1: is one of the most impossible things to explain to
Speaker 1: other people. But it has to do like like you
Speaker 1: if you have If you take a lifelong hunter who
Speaker 1: spends all of their free time out in the woods,
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing and enjoying nature, I can tell you
Speaker 1: one thing. They're not doing it because they hate it.
Speaker 1: They are not if you spend your entire life in
Speaker 1: your house in front of your TV fretting about the
Speaker 1: well being of a mountain lion that you would never
Speaker 1: be able to find if you needed to. I think
Speaker 1: that there might be something a little bit disingenuous there
Speaker 1: because you haven't done anything to demonstrate to meet your
Speaker 1: actual love for the natural world, because you're ignoring it
Speaker 1: and living in existence entirely outside of it. So if
Speaker 1: there's a love there, I feel like you might love
Speaker 1: it the same way that guys in high school who
Speaker 1: had pin ups a Pamela Anderson loved Pamela Anderson loved
Speaker 1: the idea of no idea by anything, but there's just
Speaker 1: something about it you love. You like the look of
Speaker 1: it baseless because if you like the guys I know
Speaker 1: that live outdoors are living outdoors because they love the
Speaker 1: stuff that's out there. That's true, And I think that's
Speaker 1: the idea. I mean, this conversation and all the conversations
Speaker 1: and the words you've written, things you've done in your
Speaker 1: life are are leading to those moments where someone else
Speaker 1: has that epiphany, or someone else listens to this or
Speaker 1: listens to one of your media or podcasts or reason
Speaker 1: for one of your books and has relatively small or
Speaker 1: large epiphany in and of itself, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's when you think about hunting into
Speaker 1: totality and where it is today and the decrease in numbers,
Speaker 1: and I would imagine the decrease in public acceptance of
Speaker 1: some parts of it. It could be pretty daunting. You
Speaker 1: can look at that and think we're never gonna win,
Speaker 1: That this thing might go away on our watch. We
Speaker 1: may be my your kids generation, my kids generation maybe
Speaker 1: looking at it an entirely different landscape when they are
Speaker 1: are age. But I think the way we can push
Speaker 1: back against that is to have these conversations and talk
Speaker 1: about the ways that we need to get better in
Speaker 1: the ways that that we can establish a system of
Speaker 1: values that works into the future, because I don't know
Speaker 1: that we've done that yet as a hunting community, uh,
Speaker 1: as a whole the There's an environmental historian that I'm
Speaker 1: friends with name Randall Williams, and he was telling me
Speaker 1: about another writer who said that hunting is like the
Speaker 1: constellations in the sky, where they're like constituent parts are
Speaker 1: always fixed, they don't change. The Big Dipper doesn't change shape,
Speaker 1: but it's position relative to the horizon is constantly shifting.
Speaker 1: So every time you look at this thing, it hasn't changed,
Speaker 1: but it appears different depending on where it is. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's it's a very helpful way to
Speaker 1: think about, Honey. We are a couple of guys sitting
Speaker 1: up on a mountainside in a bed of rabbit ship
Speaker 1: trying to find a deer. We're engaged in an activity
Speaker 1: that has been going on, no matter how you define
Speaker 1: it has been going on for millions of years, and
Speaker 1: we're doing it and it at its core, like bare
Speaker 1: bones parts. We're out on the landscape pursuing animals that
Speaker 1: we will eat. That's the constellation. But how what we're
Speaker 1: doing would look to someone else constantly. Yeah, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: Can I You can't really quote yourself on a thing,
Speaker 1: can you okay say something like I always think? I
Speaker 1: always say. Something I said one time is that the
Speaker 1: landscape of hunting will all will change, but the pursuit
Speaker 1: and the pursuer will remain the same. Those two things
Speaker 1: will always be constant. We will always as long as
Speaker 1: there is hunting, we will pursue animals, and they will
Speaker 1: run the hell away from us when we scare them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's important to realize that you have
Speaker 1: in this country. You have a small percentage of people
Speaker 1: who hunt. You have an even smaller percentage of people
Speaker 1: who oppose hunting. And what you have in the middle
Speaker 1: is some seventy percent of Americans who are generally kind
Speaker 1: of like ambivalent above the object, don't give it too
Speaker 1: much thought. If you pull them and ask them do
Speaker 1: you support regulated hunting, they buy a wide margin say yes.
Speaker 1: When I talk about hunting and I represent hunting, I
Speaker 1: am not talking about it and representing it in a
Speaker 1: way that is meant to antagonize or piss off that
Speaker 1: very small percentage on the other extreme. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: it and representing it in a way that I hope
Speaker 1: will wind up making sense to that vast, vast middle
Speaker 1: ground who doesn't think about it too much. But now
Speaker 1: and then is presented with a question at the ballot
Speaker 1: box that basically the question changes, but it basically is
Speaker 1: asking is this activity constructive and positive or is a
Speaker 1: destructive and negative? And if you're living your hunting life
Speaker 1: in a way that is constructive and positive, I think
Speaker 1: that it will help guide those decisions down the road.
Speaker 1: And I do not have a fatalistic pastimistic view towards
Speaker 1: the future. Nor do I I don't. I don't have
Speaker 1: that either realistic, I mean, pragmatic. But this is the
Speaker 1: last thing I'm gonna say, is you imagine the day going.
Speaker 1: You're like a dimmer switch kind of light where there's
Speaker 1: no clicks, right, it's just a smooth turn. You imagine
Speaker 1: like days would pass sort of as like a smooth turn.
Speaker 1: But out here it's like a clickie it's click. It's
Speaker 1: like this like pre dumb dust. And also it's like
Speaker 1: click and there's this kind of like long morning and
Speaker 1: someone goes click and it's like very definitely all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, like mid day dead. Then also click and
Speaker 1: it's evening. They're better ready clicking day evening the evening,
Speaker 1: and it won't be grand, it'll just be almost something like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, it's time to look for deer. We've solved
Speaker 1: a few problems. We'll get back to the reel problem,
Speaker 1: which is a buffe we gotta kill. We're headed back
Speaker 1: to America tomorrow and uh back to that big Thanks dude,
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Well, Damn, that was a good conversation. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I hope you did too. Thanks for bearing
Speaker 1: with me. I'm a rookie podcaster, so I may suck completely,
Speaker 1: but hopefully we'll get better every week. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: do this every Tuesday morning. We're gona launch a new
Speaker 1: podcast for the Uncollective with a new guest or a
Speaker 1: new group of guests, and we'll see how she goes,
Speaker 1: So stay tuned in the weeks to come. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have folks like Adam Greentree, Remmy Warren, hopefully guys from Hushing.
Speaker 1: We'll stop by enjoying us at some point. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do our best to round up some of those interesting
Speaker 1: people in hunting and delve into some of the issues
Speaker 1: that you guys want to hear about, so make sure
Speaker 1: you check us out The Hunting Collective, dot com, iTunes, Stitcher,
Speaker 1: all that fun stuff. Appreciate you hanging out, See you
Speaker 1: next time.