WEBVTT - Ep. 357: Render - All About The Florida Bear Hunt 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.200 My name is Clay Nukleman. This is a production of 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.400 the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:25.759 we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:30.520 of the actual bear Grease podcast. Presented by f h 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:35.360 F Gear, American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.560 that's designed to be as rugged as the place. As 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:50.560 we explore. We got an incredible podcast lined up very 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:53.760 We're gonna have a very interesting conversation. We're joined today 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:59.400 by Travis Thompson from Florida and we are going to 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.440 talk about Florida bears, I mean, one of our favor 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.039 no willy nilly and around here like how was your week? 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:10.280 What have you been doing, Josh, You've been fly fishing. 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.640 Nobody cares about your fly fishing. We are we are 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:15.000 getting into. 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.720 There are a loyal few that email me and say 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.959 Clay needs to lay off the fly fishing comments and that. 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:22.240 That could be me. 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:27.399 I could I have alienated half of our listenership by 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:31.319 my by my my Adamacy talking about fly. 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:33.280 And support fly fishing on the. 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.360 Well baron newcom told me we should have Dwayne Hayda 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:38.880 on this podcast. Wayne had would be an excellent well, 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:42.360 I would like to extend the formal invitation to Dwayne 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:43.720 Hayda on the podcast. 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:45.200 If we can talk about fly Have you noticed there's 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.320 a ven diagram that is a complete overlap of fly 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.680 fishermen and then it just barely shifts in the turkey hunters. 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:54.320 Is that they're almost I yeah, they're the same people 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:58.520 that I'm telling you in Florida. They're the same people. 0:01:58.640 --> 0:01:59.440 That's interesting. 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:02.120 Yeah, they're consumed with those two practices, and those two 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:02.880 practices only. 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:06.240 That is very interesting. I can't I can't, I don't. 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.239 I can't describe it, but I understand it. 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:10.440 It's like CrossFit, like you go somewhere and that's all 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:12.240 they could talk about is fly fishing or turkey hunt 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:13.640 depending on the time of year. Yeah. 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:19.840 Interesting, So Josh saved the fly fishing small talk. My 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:25.440 moment is here, man. There was just just to give 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:27.240 a small introduction of what we're going to spend the 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:30.359 next hour and a half talking about. Is that last 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:38.320 week in Florida, the Game Commission approved a Florida bear hunt, 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:40.760 which we're going to get into all the history, but 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.960 that's what we're talking about. This is major, this is significant, 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:49.600 and Travis was heavily involved in everything that went on 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.080 around that. Now, Travis, tell me who you work for, 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:55.040 what you do, kind of your history. 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:57.840 Yeah, so I got kind of a three throng three prong. 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.639 Who I work for? I run ironically for talking about bears. 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:05.200 I run the largest waterfowl hunting operation in the state 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.120 of Florida. Oh so I'm a big duck hunter. So 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.960 you're an outfitter. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll call it that 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:12.720 in Florida. I don't have a lodge or anything like that, 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.080 but most of what we do is by the day stuff. 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:17.360 And I used to be a fishing guide before I 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:21.840 got into hunting. More so, I do ducks, alligators, snipe, 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:25.399 and some hogs. I don't love hog hunting, but that's 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.400 a different story anyway. And then I grew up. I'm 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:30.720 fifth generation Florida and grew up there hunting fishing my 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.240 whole life. My dad worked for a department environmental protection, 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.040 so I kind of grew up with a dad that 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.320 was carrying a gun around and was a tree hugger, 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.000 so like, very heavy in the conservation space. I have 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:45.760 a nonprofit in Florida. It's called All Florida where we 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.520 work on issues like this. Anything Nick touches conservation, so 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:54.760 ag ranching, timber, prescribe fire stuff, water quality, and consumpt 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.200 of use. You know, I heard Ranella say years ago 0:03:57.280 --> 0:03:59.960 on The Stars in the Sky that a conservation is 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.320 as an environmentalist with a gun. Yeah, I'm trying to 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.839 reclaim that in Florida as a conservationists environmentalist with a gun. 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.120 I like that. And then the other thing I do 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:10.600 kind of my day jobs. I work for a group 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:13.840 called the International Order Theodore Roosevelt, and we do constitutional 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:16.719 rights to fish and hunt in states. So I got 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.679 hooked up with those guys a couple of years back, 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:22.359 and in the state of Florida, we did a constitutional 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:25.039 right to fish in hunt, which like the bear hunt. 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:26.720 Everybody said, well, you're never going to get a bear 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:28.559 hunt again. Everybody said you're never going to get that passed. 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:30.800 We passed it with sixty seven percent, with a huge 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:34.000 grassroots movement in the state, and so that was a 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:35.640 big deal. But that's that's who I am. That's kind 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.400 of how I entered the conversation, is like, I'm passionate 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:42.640 about keeping Florida wild. Yeah, and I believe hunting fishing 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.200 are two of the most important tools on that landscape 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:45.560 to do it. 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.520 So Florida, let's start off by describing Florida. I've not 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:52.520 spent a lot of time there, but but I'm aware 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:59.240 of kind of culturally, what's what's going on in that 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.400 Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the country. 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:03.039 Yep, I don't. 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:06.480 I don't know the exact stats, but but I've heard 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.960 it said that, you know, there's there's a band around 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:15.720 the coast of Florida of development, of massive development, massive cities, 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:21.360 massive development. But the interior of Florida, essentially, I mean, 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.039 I'm putting stop me and you take over this, But 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.240 I mean, like the interior of Florida is like the 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:29.240 rural rural America. 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:32.159 Yeah. So the joke used to be the further south 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:34.240 you go in Florida, the further north you get. That 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:35.760 used to be kind of the joke because it was 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:38.839 so developed, like in Miami or Fort Myers or these places. 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.080 But in reality, Florida is deep south. Like I live 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:44.200 in Polk County, which is the dead center of the state. 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:48.279 It's I mean, it's a different terrain, but it's like 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.240 driving out here, right, there's a lot of cattle a 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:53.800 lot of Florida was the first state with cattle, right, 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.240 so cattle ranching in the United States, originating cattle, and 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.360 I think it's in the top ten now still. 0:05:58.120 --> 0:05:59.839 For huge cattle production. 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:04.599 Cowboys, real cowboys. We call them cow hunters because Florida 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:08.200 didn't have fences until the fifties. So cattle you branded 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:10.040 them and just let them go and then you would 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:12.200 go round them up and take them sell them. So 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:14.200 we didn't have fences that so they called them cow hunters. 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.360 You went into this really rough stuff and rooted out 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:21.279 your cows. Florida's the only state you know, there's a 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.880 conservation easement program called in rcs they have Eastman's Florida 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:26.440 is the only state where you're allowed grazing on the 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:28.960 easements because it's such an important tool for keeping our 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:33.360 state wild. And about Man is probably ten years ago. 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:36.160 A friend of mine, a gentleman named Carlton Ward. He's 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:38.960 a National Geographic guy, real big in panther stuff. He 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.160 did Path of the Panther. It's on National Geographic. I 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:43.880 don't know if you'll ever seen that, but and Carlton 0:06:44.400 --> 0:06:47.040 is a hunter, was a hunter, but he's very much 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:51.200 into environmental stuff. He kind of helped originate or codify 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:53.960 this idea of a Florida Wildlife Corridor, which was the 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:55.800 idea that if you took a panther and you stuck 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:57.400 him in Flamingo at the south end of the state, 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.919 he could walk to the Okefinoki Swamp in Georgia and 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.760 never cross the road, you know, have prey along the way, 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:09.600 and create this green infrastructure through our state. Florida's got 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:11.960 the most public lands, I think east of the Mississippi River. 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:14.760 We have seven million acres six point eight million acres 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.560 of public lands. So we've got a lot of public 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:19.800 land out there and a lot of that's available to hunt. 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:24.200 So Carlton and a team and there's an organization called 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:28.080 the Florida Wildlife Corridor. They went and passed a legislation 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:32.360 to codify the Florida Wildlife Corridor and create this green infrastructure. 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.400 And the animal they used was not the panther. The 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.360 animal they used was a black bear. They wanted a 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:40.240 black bear and to show that this black bear could 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:44.640 go from Big Cypress National Preserve and wander two Okala 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.559 National Forest or Appalachicola National Forest or Osciola National Forest 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:50.920 and they use that and they kind of created that 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:53.120 animal as at avatar. And there's days where I'm like, man, 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:55.080 that's a game species, so we want to make sure 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.560 we talk about it as a game species. But they 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.600 did a really good job of kind of go into ranchers, 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:05.640 go into private landowners, and then inter working those properties 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.160 with public lands so that we had these corridors for 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:11.560 animals to traverse. And it's not just bears, it's deer 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.880 and turkeys and quail and go for towardous and everything else. 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.080 And so the black bear has kind of become this 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:23.120 avatar for protecting what's wild in in Florida, in the 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:25.440 heartland of Florida, what we would call the heartland of Florida. 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:27.960 And you talk about the coast being all developed out, 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.680 and we want to grow, like there's there's places that 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.560 need economic development in the state, good development, and there's 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.960 good development and bad development. Right, there's some places that 0:08:38.000 --> 0:08:39.160 need some of that, but we want to grow in 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:43.440 a way that allows species to thrive and work. A 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:45.960 friend of mine, he's a new commissioner, but he, Josh 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:48.120 Kellum said last week, we want to we want to 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:50.840 make sure conservation and development are able to work together 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:53.480 so that we have these wild places and wild things 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:55.320 that are able to exist a long time. So that 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:57.400 was a roundabout way of answering your question. But I 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.000 think yes, Florida is still real wild. Yes, we got 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:03.320 the oat trees with the moss growing on them. And 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:06.120 for us, it's it's cabbage palms. I don't know if 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.760 y'all have seen cabbage palms, but cabbage palms. They're critically 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:10.920 important to black bears as a forest source. 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:13.760 But they're eating the leaves of them, the berries they 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:16.120 get berries and cabbage palms, they love them. 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.240 And uh, we just got force of cabbage palms. You know, 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.000 have thickets of cabbage palms, and it's just a unique 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.040 landscape even to just see like silhouetted it's very different 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.040 than an oak hamick or a pine thicket or something 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:30.439 that you'd see someplace else. You see these cabbage palms 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.319 with their like pointy leaves and everything. It's it's a 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:36.120 really unique landscape. It's it's special, man, it's special. 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:41.840 So this this corridor is it down to the granular 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:47.000 understanding where they're actually mapping like they could show on 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:51.240 a map. Oh, like like this property connects to this property, 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:53.080 which connects to this So it's not just kind of 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.800 like an arbitrary like there's like a like a bike 0:09:57.240 --> 0:09:59.640 not a bike trail, but it's exactly like a map. 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.040 The idea, and so University Florida doctor Tom Hogger at 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.400 University of Florida got involved in it, and the Corridor 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:07.959 Foundation itself. They've sat down and mapped it all out. 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:10.839 And so if you were to protect it all it 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:13.400 would be eighteen million acres protected lands. That's not all 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:18.080 public lands. That's private conservation easement sold or land put 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:22.240 into less than fee acquisition or whatever. But today we 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:25.040 have about ten million protected in it and the rest 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:26.920 isn't developed yet. So we're trying to figure out ways 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.480 that we can protect it. And Travis a guy that contends. 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:32.920 You know, I talk about Aldo Leopold's plow cow ax 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.560 match gun. Those are the five tools that are going 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.880 to save wildlife. We don't talk about that gun nearly enough. 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:41.320 And when we talk about a species like black bear 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.840 or you know, in North Florida, we got timber, heavy timber. 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.400 Those guys run qual hunting operations or turkey hunting operations, 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:50.120 and that's another revenue stream that's helping off set the 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:51.720 pressure because the developer is going to come in there 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:54.360 and offer you x thousand dollars a year to turn 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:56.640 this into a subdivision or a solar farm or whatever. 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.679 If you can stack some revenue streams on top of 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.040 an e has been and produced something like solar or 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:05.000 cattle or cross man, we can keep Florida wild for 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:05.640 a long time. 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:08.520 So I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in and I'm gonna 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:13.480 say something that you said some good but but I've 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:16.160 I've kind of said the same thing, but I don't 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:20.360 hear it enough. And that is and it's essentially encapsulating 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:26.080 what you just said is that the cultural and economical 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:31.040 value of hunting in North America will be the thing 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:36.440 that a massive factor on saving wild places. So and 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:41.439 in in today's world where where expansion of civilization, roads, concrete, 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:47.520 urban sprawl, neighborhoods put you know, going out and being built, 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.000 people wanting to have five acres in a house like 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:55.600 all that sprawl a thing. And and and you know 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.040 how much of the percentage of America's private land, like uh, 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.559 like ninety five percent or something big at least ninety 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.719 percent of America is private land. So if you think 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:08.920 about wildlife conservation on this macro scale, it's actually the 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:12.920 private land that's going to be the main thing. Like 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.040 we think about public land and habitat conservation, but private 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:21.920 land ninety percent of the country. We we when people 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:27.760 are incentivized to keep their places unfragmented undeveloped because of 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:31.720 the hunting value of that land, we win. In fifty 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:34.520 years from now, should the earth persist, they'll be like, 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:38.080 thank God that there was cultural value of hunting that 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:42.280 kept some places wild. And I mean it's a it's 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:45.719 a it's an incredible point that I don't hear enough 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:48.280 people say, and it resonates with people when when you 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:52.480 say it, it's like, you know what, hunting is incentivizing 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:56.880 the keeping places wild because just like if I had 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:00.680 forty acres right here at Arkansas and right up against town, 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:02.960 and I could sell it to a developer, or I 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:06.840 could keep it because my kids valued hunting, my family 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.080 valued hunting, or sell it to a hunter who's going 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:11.520 to put little food plots on it and cameras all 0:13:11.520 --> 0:13:14.520 over it. And I mean, like that is a win, 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:16.880 massive win for there to be a blank spot on 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:18.560 a map like Aldo Leopold would say. 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:21.040 You know, it's funny. So I mentioned a minute ago 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.000 I worked on the right deficient hunt. And what hooked 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:25.720 me on that was not that I wanted to protect 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:27.959 the right efficient hunt, although I do, like I'm a 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:29.959 hunter angler, like, of course I want to protect the 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.960 right defiicient hunt. But in that we looked at language 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:36.120 in other states, and there's these magic words you use anyway. 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:37.920 We looked at language in the state of North Carolina, 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.360 and the Supreme Court in North Carolina determined that those 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:45.200 rights can't exist in the abstract, which means you have 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:48.280 to be able to exercise them, which means in a 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:52.480 state that's feeling development pressure like Florida, putting that in place. 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:54.240 And I think this is important to put in place 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.600 everywhere before it becomes because I when I talk to 0:13:56.600 --> 0:13:58.679 guys in Montana, they're like, man, you never seen development 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:00.240 like this. I'm like, dude, come to Floria to let 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.160 me show how the big boys play. But the yeah, 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:06.040 that right can't exist in the abstract, which means the 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:08.079 state can't say you got the right to hunt, but 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:11.319 we're going to eradicate white tailed deer. You have to 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.000 be able to exercise the right, and I think that's 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:16.160 an important thing. So it folds into the same thing 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:19.880 your tastes. I think hunting is. I like to say 0:14:19.960 --> 0:14:23.600 hunting is the tool. Maybe not everywhere I know there's 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:25.800 pockets where it may be timber, or it may be ranching, 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.480 or it may be agriculture. But those tools are going 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.080 to stave off development in this country. Those are the 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.000 tools that are going to We didn't invent that Audo 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.680 did one hundred years ago, and it's gone unchanged in 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:40.160 that time period. So I'm really passionate about somebody's got 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.280 to speak up and make sure this stuff's protected, because 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:47.760 otherwise they think nothing about shaving off places where you 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.479 had a hunting lease, or's places where you publicly. 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:55.400 In this country my age, I'm forty five, that hasn't 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:56.960 lost a property to development. 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:57.600 It's exactly right. 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.360 There's not a single one of them that's spent, you know, 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.720 a good chunk of their life being a hunter that 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:07.360 hasn't lost a property literally to development. I mean, I'm 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:09.400 thinking of it probably right now that is literally a 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:11.440 subdivision that I used to hunt. 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:14.520 And so instead of demonizing the developers, what we try 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:16.320 to do is go sit down with them and figure out, like, 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:19.120 how can we develop better, how can we do redevelopment, 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:21.640 how can we grow up not out, how can we 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:26.000 protect wild lands or corridors through developments so that animals. 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:28.040 Then you got home owners that are able to see wildlife, 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.200 they're able to connect it and care about it, and 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:34.200 then you're able to continue to for me, touch it 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:35.680 in a way like I want to touch it and 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.360 need it, but there's people that just want to photograph 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:38.920 it or whatever. 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:43.280 So one thing about the philosophy that we're just talking 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:45.520 about right here that I think we've got to bring 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:50.080 up just because it's interesting, is that inside the hunting circle, 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:56.560 people when they hear about cultural value and economic value 0:15:56.560 --> 0:16:01.520 of hunting, that does mean that my forty acres that 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.560 I sell is going to have a higher value than 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.760 it did before because of its that is hunting, And 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:10.880 somebody's going to buy that, and somebody that can't afford 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:13.800 to buy that is going to say, well, the rich 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.160 guy's got it and they are are are pricing me 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.640 out of hunting. I mean, it's kind of a because 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:24.400 that's a narrative you hear inside the hunting circles. Oh, 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:26.840 we're all being priced out of hunting because it's now 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.680 becoming a rich man's sport. It's becoming like Europe. I 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:35.280 think that those two worlds kind of you can't have 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:36.880 one without the other. I mean, when I go down 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:39.880 the Mississippi River, me and Brent Reeves took a boat 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:41.720 ten or fifty miles down the Misissippi River a couple 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:46.160 of years ago. Ninety nine percent of that land is 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:51.960 owned and in hunting leases or specific properties made for hunting. 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.880 They've kept the riperian zone of that river in pretty 0:16:55.920 --> 0:17:01.400 incredible shape. Really, that land is so valuable. There's no 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.160 way that a common man is going to own that land. 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:09.840 Incredibly valuable pretty much one hundred percent because of hunting. 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:12.840 And there's people that would say that was bad. I 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:16.919 would say, thank god, at least it's protected well. And 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.600 maybe twice in my lifetime I'll get to go over 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.359 there and hunt on the Mississippi River and it's still there. 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:23.359 Do you understand what I'm saying? 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:24.920 And I think there's another point off of that. And 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:26.280 we hadn't even got a bears yet, but I think 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:29.479 there's another point off that, and that is, you know, 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:31.720 you can talk to the turkey doctors, Chamberlain or lastly 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.040 or call your any of those guys. They'll tell you 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:37.680 ninety five percent of turkeys are produced on private land. 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:41.119 But then they spread out. So it's like you and 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:43.479 I were talking off air where your bears came, they 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.640 were re established narkosas and then they spread it Outright, 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:49.919 I run a waterfowl hunting operational private land. We do 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:52.080 a lot of work to that land. There's ducks. Don't 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:54.159 all stay on that private land. They end up on 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.000 the Cokeachobee, they end up on the coast, on public 0:17:57.119 --> 0:17:59.360 land where a lot of people. And so by increasing 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:02.560 the habitat and ensuring we want the maximum return on 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.840 this land from a from a wildlife value standpoint, whether 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.480 it's white tailed deer, turkeys or ducks or whatever, squirrels, Yeah, 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.640 that's going to spill out from there and hopefully spill 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:14.680 out into areas where the average guy is going to 0:18:14.680 --> 0:18:17.080 be able to do. So. I'm always a big proponent 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:19.399 of I've heard this around ducks unlimited before. Right, Oh, 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:21.800 they're just locking up land and doing it for the Yeah, 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:23.280 but at the end of the day, they're producing more 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:25.960 ducks and more habitat for wildlife, which is going to 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.640 benefit everybody in the grand scheme. This is not it's 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.720 not just this local population. It's a it's a globe 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.600 or an international or a flyway population or whatever the 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:36.159 larger population's on is. 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:41.800 Yeah, yeah, yeah, all this is so so interesting. So 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.159 let's let's go ahead and get into give me the 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:50.439 biography of Florida bear hunting, if it just to the 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:54.800 best of your knowledge. I mean, historically they were hunting bears. 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:57.960 They're like crazy, yep. And then when did it end? 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:01.840 It did when I was in high school. So ninety 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:04.280 four is when they shut the hunt down completely, shut 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:08.200 it completely, shut it down. And if you went back historically, 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.040 and I'd encourage you, if you really wanted a deep dive, 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:13.680 FWC has on their website you could do google FWC 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.080 Bear Report. There's a two hundred page document that is 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:19.840 really good. I mean, it's if you want a history 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.280 of bears in Florida. I mean it goes into the 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:26.680 way they used to do agriculture because Florida's big in turpentine, okay, 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:29.680 and so they would burn forest, but they would burn 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:33.120 them too aggressively sometimes, and it basically wiped out the understory, 0:19:33.160 --> 0:19:38.240 which hurt bears on forge. Now we understand burning science 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:41.679 a lot better, and that's an important tool. So the 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:45.439 bear population dropped into the fifties, but it seemed like 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:47.960 it kind of stabilized from the fifties to like the 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.919 eighties or so, and then it dropped again. And so 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.879 in the early nineteen hundreds they guessed, I'm sorry, the 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:59.399 early nineteen nineties, their speculation population was as low as 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:03.160 five hundred bear. Okay, wow. So now in white history 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:07.240 and settled history, prior to that, they guesstimated there were 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.920 eleven thousand bears in the state of Florida, in the 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.040 state of floor like pre European contre pre Hernando de 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.280 Soto or whoever it was that came there first. So 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:17.320 it was about eleven thousand bears in the state of Florida. 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.879 So the sad vaka who it was, I got his 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:24.800 book up there. First guy, first European guy had coming 0:20:24.800 --> 0:20:28.080 to Florida. Incredible book two years before Desta. A few 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:30.399 years yeah, fews before Desota. 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:36.800 So we closed it down. It stayed untouched until twenty 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:40.359 fifteen when a hunt was brought back. There were a 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:43.840 couple of rules made to bear existence, like you could 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:46.240 shoot a bear to protect livestock. I think was a 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:49.040 rule that was made arow twenty ten or eleven, but 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:52.680 largely bears went untouched for whatever. That is twenty one years. 0:20:52.760 --> 0:20:55.200 Only twenty one years, right, and what do we think? 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:58.520 The population had grown to about twenty fifteen, So. 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.560 The state had science twenty fifteen, they believe the population 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:10.120 was over four thousand. 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:14.439 So in in bear management, they typically say that that 0:21:14.520 --> 0:21:19.160 an one hundred population will increase by ten percent per year. 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:24.959 And so I've done the math and extrapolated out like 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.720 if you have four hundred bears, and that this includes 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:32.040 natural mortality and recruitment ten percent per year. So if 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:35.720 you have four hundred bears year one, year two, help 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:38.320 me with my math, You're gonna have four hundred and forty. 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.440 The next year you're gonna have You're gonna have four 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.879 hundred and eighty four, four hundred and eighty four, the 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:47.520 next year you're gonna have. 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:50.800 Oh, this guy's a math wizard. Impressive. 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:56.560 By the time you get out into decades, like decades, 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:04.080 you're talking about exponential growth, exponential growth, and typically populations 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.840 that are recovering where a bear has like unlimited or 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:11.240 the habitat is not limiting, like there's not stressed on 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:15.240 the habitat because of other bears, where they'll increase by 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:20.000 as much as eighteen percent per year. And so basically 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:23.080 a nine hundred population in twenty years can triple in size. 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:26.120 That's that's pretty much. I mean, So we went from 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:29.040 a guestimate of five hundred to two thousand bears to 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:30.800 four thousand, right, So yeah. 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:34.359 It went up tenfold. Yeah, I mean about tenfold. Yeah, 0:22:34.800 --> 0:22:39.000 five hundred to four thousand, is that right? Yeah, about 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:41.880 ten eight eight eightfold eightfold eightfold. 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.400 So you got to this bear. We did a bear 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:49.400 hunt in twenty fifteen. Depending on what side of the 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:51.600 story you are about a bear hunt, it was either 0:22:51.600 --> 0:22:55.800 an unmitigated disaster or it was a wild success. Yeah, 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:58.240 I'm sure you know the story. But the background on 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:02.480 that was they issued a number of tags based off 0:23:02.560 --> 0:23:06.399 success what they believed a successful harvest would be. So 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:08.919 I don't remember the right number tags, but they had 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:10.680 a quota of three hundred and twenty bears I think 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:13.679 that they wanted to take. So they issued let's say 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:17.000 a thousand tags forty eight hours in they'd killed three 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:20.919 hundred five bears. Wow. So I believe we could all 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:22.920 sit here and say, well, that shows how many bears 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:25.800 there were, yes, how quickly they were harvested, like a 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:30.080 hunt needed to occur. There was so much anti hunting 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:35.719 pressure Florida. Hunters in Florida, and conservation in Florida does 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:37.560 not look like it does in other places. And I 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:39.639 know it's different in every place from the state, and 0:23:39.640 --> 0:23:41.520 everybody'd say that, but man, I'm telling you all, it's 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:45.000 the wild West. So there was so much public pressure, 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:48.720 you know, the polling around acceptance of hunting. And you 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:51.440 look at a bear versus a a white tail deer, 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:53.600 like a bear's way lower on the list than a 0:23:53.640 --> 0:23:56.040 white tail deer. Yes, it seemed like every one of 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:58.360 those people had a vocal voice that they were going 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:02.600 to share in that pole. So they came, and the 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:04.240 hunt was intended to come back to the next year, 0:24:04.240 --> 0:24:04.680 and it did not. 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:08.239 So let's stop right there a little bit, because that 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:12.000 twenty fifteen hunt was historic in nature. It was just 0:24:12.160 --> 0:24:15.480 it was well, it was different in that there was 0:24:15.520 --> 0:24:19.320 a lot of publicity about it before it happened, and 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:22.400 a lot of us were talking about it before, and 0:24:23.080 --> 0:24:26.640 it was one of these deals where a new bear 0:24:26.720 --> 0:24:29.199 hunt was coming on the scene in this population that 0:24:29.359 --> 0:24:33.639 was clearly doing really well, and just a couple of 0:24:33.640 --> 0:24:36.040 little nerd out facts. I mean, if they were wanting 0:24:36.080 --> 0:24:38.080 to kill three hundred and twenty bears and they felt 0:24:38.080 --> 0:24:41.919 like the population was four thousand, that's less than ten percent. 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:44.800 So typically in bear management, if you want to stabilize 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:48.840 the population, which there's a many many, many many places 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:51.680 would love to just stabilize. 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:51.880 Their bear population. 0:24:52.240 --> 0:24:55.560 Yeah, zero growth, Just let's just keep it where it's at, 0:24:55.600 --> 0:25:03.640 because human conflict is tall tolerable, habitat for bears is tolerable. 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:08.320 The bears are healthy, and that's what people and it's 0:25:08.400 --> 0:25:12.840 it's so, it's so it's such a human problem. But 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:17.480 a population of bears that is not j curving in 0:25:17.600 --> 0:25:22.560 population that's stable is really healthy. I mean, because if 0:25:22.600 --> 0:25:25.600 I'm a mama black bear and I go any direction 0:25:25.720 --> 0:25:29.000 a half mile and I'm in some other bears region 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:32.760 and there's conflict and there's there's big politian it's like 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:35.080 it's better when there's a there's just the right amount 0:25:35.240 --> 0:25:38.399 point being Florida was that three to twenty was probably 0:25:38.440 --> 0:25:42.960 a conservative management number because it was less than ten 0:25:43.000 --> 0:25:45.200 percent that they were trying to take out, which probably 0:25:45.280 --> 0:25:47.879 they were like, we really ought to kill five hundred bears, 0:25:47.880 --> 0:25:49.600 but let's kill three twenty. So I mean it was 0:25:49.640 --> 0:25:52.240 a probably a wise move by them to just enter 0:25:52.280 --> 0:25:57.520 in and then the quota phils in two days and 0:25:57.760 --> 0:25:58.600 the optics. 0:25:58.760 --> 0:26:00.919 I mean, so we had check stations where he had 0:26:00.920 --> 0:26:03.560 to take the bears to get checked. The anti hunting 0:26:03.600 --> 0:26:08.679 community was out in mass with photographs. Yeah, so there 0:26:08.760 --> 0:26:11.399 were photos of a bear under a hundred pounds that 0:26:11.480 --> 0:26:14.040 was killed. There were photos of lactating females that were killed. 0:26:14.080 --> 0:26:19.080 Like the optics that they then used, and the grassroots 0:26:19.160 --> 0:26:22.720 storm that they created on the backside of that made 0:26:22.720 --> 0:26:25.560 it to where politically no one wanted to touch bears. Yes, 0:26:26.000 --> 0:26:30.000 it became such a third rail to grab. No one 0:26:30.040 --> 0:26:33.880 wanted to touch bears, and and in hallways everybody say, man, 0:26:33.880 --> 0:26:36.480 we need to have another bear hunt for years after that. 0:26:37.240 --> 0:26:39.480 And so it's a funny story. Clay and I we 0:26:39.520 --> 0:26:41.679 reconnected the to day, and our previous correspondence was in 0:26:41.680 --> 0:26:47.160 twenty nineteen in our text messages and he came on 0:26:47.240 --> 0:26:49.240 my podcast. I used to have a podcast in Florida, 0:26:49.840 --> 0:26:52.840 and we talked about the twenty nineteen bear plan on 0:26:52.880 --> 0:26:55.040 that podcast, and we kind of candidly said, I don't 0:26:55.040 --> 0:26:57.200 know if we'll ever see a bear hunt again. We 0:26:57.320 --> 0:26:58.160 don't know if we'll ever hunt. 0:26:58.400 --> 0:27:00.639 That was interesting. He told me that today. I wouldn't 0:27:00.640 --> 0:27:04.879 have remembered saying that, but that's that's what That's what 0:27:04.920 --> 0:27:07.720 I said the other day in a little video I did, 0:27:08.000 --> 0:27:11.320 I said I didn't think that it would ever come back, 0:27:11.359 --> 0:27:12.719 but I said that in twenty nineteen. 0:27:13.000 --> 0:27:16.320 Yeah, Like it was the public sentiment was so bad 0:27:17.720 --> 0:27:21.440 that I look, man, I mean it really is, truly. 0:27:21.880 --> 0:27:24.160 People love to talk conservation, but when you talk about 0:27:24.160 --> 0:27:27.959 dead animals, Yeah, the charismatic megafauon of thing triggers and 0:27:28.000 --> 0:27:30.320 they do not want to talk about bears yep, and 0:27:30.400 --> 0:27:33.280 it becomes a major problem. And so that was a tactic. 0:27:33.600 --> 0:27:37.200 Now we got to spend the next decade getting through, right, 0:27:37.280 --> 0:27:39.800 Like we got to go from twenty fifteen to twenty 0:27:39.840 --> 0:27:42.760 twenty five, and we didn't know when this would happen, 0:27:43.240 --> 0:27:49.720 but everything from gubernatorial offices to legislators to people that 0:27:49.880 --> 0:27:51.679 would fly out and hunt a bear somewhere else, but 0:27:51.680 --> 0:27:53.959 they wouldn't talk about it in Florida, and I was like, 0:27:54.280 --> 0:27:57.840 we've got to do something different here. And I say, I, 0:27:57.359 --> 0:28:00.359 I want to be clear. The hunting commune d in 0:28:00.359 --> 0:28:02.840 Florida got this done like that was that was this 0:28:03.000 --> 0:28:06.320 was a big push from a lot of different people 0:28:06.359 --> 0:28:08.960 and a lot of different groups. The dog hunting community 0:28:09.600 --> 0:28:13.359 showed up in mass Wow, that is now Florida. I 0:28:13.400 --> 0:28:16.240 grew up doll hunting for deer, right, that was my 0:28:16.359 --> 0:28:18.040 that was my back. I've never I've never heard a 0:28:18.040 --> 0:28:21.000 bear in my life, but dog hunting for deer was like, 0:28:21.200 --> 0:28:24.160 that's how we spent our saturdays at Sundays was deer 0:28:24.200 --> 0:28:27.640 camp and we were listening to the dogs run. There's 0:28:27.640 --> 0:28:32.760 a strong, uh a hog dog community community in Florida. 0:28:33.840 --> 0:28:38.479 So dog hunting in Florida is a part of the cultural, 0:28:38.600 --> 0:28:40.400 like it's part of the culture. 0:28:40.120 --> 0:28:42.600 Of long time history of Florida's hunting with dogs. 0:28:42.680 --> 0:28:44.800 We call people, there's not a connotation to it. We 0:28:44.840 --> 0:28:48.440 call people from Florida crackers. The background on that was 0:28:48.440 --> 0:28:51.600 they would crack whips. 0:28:49.480 --> 0:28:50.160 They were. 0:28:51.640 --> 0:28:52.280 The cow hunters. 0:28:52.640 --> 0:28:58.160 I was actually gonna say that the original crackers came 0:28:58.200 --> 0:29:00.560 from Florida because they cow drives. 0:29:00.560 --> 0:29:02.880 That was the term was a cracker Florida cracker because 0:29:02.920 --> 0:29:04.880 of the whip cracking and the palmettas and you couldn't 0:29:04.880 --> 0:29:06.560 see the cows and that's how you got them out. 0:29:06.840 --> 0:29:09.440 And that's still something that the cattleman like man to 0:29:09.440 --> 0:29:11.000 this day. You go to an event and they they'll 0:29:11.000 --> 0:29:13.040 sell whips, have crack whips like it's part of their 0:29:13.320 --> 0:29:15.840 part of their culture. As Similarly, dog hunting in Florida 0:29:15.920 --> 0:29:18.440 is part of the culture of if you identify as 0:29:18.440 --> 0:29:21.600 a as a Floridian that hunts, like you've got some 0:29:21.680 --> 0:29:24.080 kind of dogs. I don't dog hunt anymore, but I've 0:29:24.120 --> 0:29:26.880 got a soft spot for dog hunting because it belongs here, 0:29:27.000 --> 0:29:28.959 it belongs on this landscape. 0:29:29.000 --> 0:29:32.480 And so man, when you when you when you get 0:29:32.480 --> 0:29:37.440 into places as thick as Florida, like literally vegetatively thick 0:29:37.480 --> 0:29:41.480 as Florida, people that don't have never been around dogs 0:29:41.480 --> 0:29:42.920 and be like, why would you need a dog to 0:29:43.240 --> 0:29:45.200 shoot a deer? Why would you need a dog to 0:29:45.200 --> 0:29:48.720 shoot a bear? They've never been to Florida, they've never 0:29:48.760 --> 0:29:51.160 been to South Arkansas that you know. I mean, it's 0:29:51.160 --> 0:29:56.880 a it's a highly functional way to hunt because animals 0:29:56.920 --> 0:30:00.680 live in stuff that you literally can't see for the 0:30:00.840 --> 0:30:02.880 length of your arm in some places. 0:30:03.040 --> 0:30:04.720 Oh am, I right, it's nasty. 0:30:05.040 --> 0:30:07.720 It's so you send some dogs in there and you 0:30:07.760 --> 0:30:10.560 get that game moving, and I mean that's the way 0:30:10.560 --> 0:30:10.960 you hunt. 0:30:11.120 --> 0:30:14.280 Yeah, I mean there's some stuff you don't want to 0:30:14.280 --> 0:30:16.600 go through. I mean, you, I'm in decent shape. You're 0:30:16.920 --> 0:30:18.560 three hundred yards in your watch is like are you 0:30:18.600 --> 0:30:22.000 working out? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And it's like, man, congratulations, Yeah, 0:30:22.080 --> 0:30:24.680 you just completed your exercise goal for the day and 0:30:24.720 --> 0:30:27.280 you've gone you can still see the truck. It's like, 0:30:27.400 --> 0:30:31.040 what is happening here? Like it's hard hunting. It's hard 0:30:31.120 --> 0:30:34.840 hunting in period. It's just a harsh environment. So we 0:30:34.880 --> 0:30:37.080 come out of twenty fifteen, the bear hunt gets or 0:30:37.120 --> 0:30:39.560 the bear plan gets released to twenty nineteen. That's when 0:30:39.560 --> 0:30:43.480 you and I first talked and constantly. And I'm gonna 0:30:43.480 --> 0:30:45.880 give credit to an old gentleman. He runs an organization 0:30:45.920 --> 0:30:48.200 called United Waterfowlers of Florida. There's this guy named Newton 0:30:48.200 --> 0:30:51.760 Earl Cook, and Newton is I think he's in his eighties. 0:30:51.880 --> 0:30:54.800 But every commission meeting we'd have a thing called items 0:30:54.840 --> 0:30:56.760 Not on the Agenda and our Commission moves around the state, 0:30:57.280 --> 0:30:59.440 so Florida to drive from one end to the others, 0:30:59.480 --> 0:31:02.800 like sixteen hours from like Pensacola to Key West, and 0:31:02.840 --> 0:31:05.880 our Commission meeting moves to make it more convenient for 0:31:06.120 --> 0:31:08.280 so it's not always where everybody has to drive. Right. 0:31:09.000 --> 0:31:11.040 Newton would show up at every single Commission meeting and 0:31:11.040 --> 0:31:13.480 then his items on on the agenda. He'd say he's 0:31:13.520 --> 0:31:15.560 got this old Tennessee voice. He says, it's time for 0:31:15.640 --> 0:31:17.560 us to bring back a bear hunt. And he would 0:31:17.600 --> 0:31:19.800 he would do this to the point where you almost 0:31:19.840 --> 0:31:22.040 rolled drys at some point, but he just stayed on 0:31:22.080 --> 0:31:23.440 it and stayed on and stayed on it. And we'd 0:31:23.440 --> 0:31:25.120 have conversations in the hallway, and there were a lot 0:31:25.160 --> 0:31:27.360 of folks in the Honey community having those conversations. But 0:31:27.400 --> 0:31:28.760 we have a conversations all the way of. 0:31:28.720 --> 0:31:31.040 Like, look, what was the guys the old guy's name Newton, 0:31:31.120 --> 0:31:35.440 Earl Cook. Newton Earl Cook. That's a great name, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:31:35.960 --> 0:31:37.840 Soon we're gonna make a bronze statue in him and 0:31:37.920 --> 0:31:39.120 being erected in Florida. 0:31:39.120 --> 0:31:41.600 When we just gave him an award at the Commission meeting, 0:31:41.640 --> 0:31:45.440 not the most reasonab one before that. But anyway, he'd 0:31:45.480 --> 0:31:48.000 bring it up in the public record over and over 0:31:48.040 --> 0:31:49.480 and over again. And I didn't want to go dial 0:31:49.480 --> 0:31:50.880 on that hill over and over again because you get 0:31:50.920 --> 0:31:52.880 death threats and everything else every time you bring it up. 0:31:54.280 --> 0:31:56.840 So but we'd start having these conversations off to the 0:31:56.840 --> 0:31:58.240 side of like, what's it gonna take to get a 0:31:58.280 --> 0:31:59.520 bear hunt back? What's it gonna take to get the 0:31:59.520 --> 0:32:02.000 bear hunt back? Can you talk in the hunting community, 0:32:02.720 --> 0:32:06.360 especially your guys that have feeders on their property. Man, 0:32:07.120 --> 0:32:09.600 it's a mess out there, Like the way that the 0:32:09.800 --> 0:32:12.560 ingenuity that's going on to protect your deer feeder from 0:32:12.600 --> 0:32:16.840 bears has gotten outlandish to where they're like they're put 0:32:16.880 --> 0:32:19.720 hard tops on their can ams and a ladder on 0:32:19.800 --> 0:32:22.400 top of that so that they can get to the 0:32:22.440 --> 0:32:24.800 winch so they can lower the feeder down to keep 0:32:24.840 --> 0:32:26.880 the bear out of it. And I mean, it's just 0:32:26.880 --> 0:32:30.160 this ongoing engineering battle between black bears and land. 0:32:29.960 --> 0:32:31.240 And corn feeders. 0:32:31.480 --> 0:32:33.840 I mean it's bad. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen it, 0:32:33.960 --> 0:32:35.400 but it's yes, it's. 0:32:35.280 --> 0:32:39.920 They're destructive on corn feeders, and you almost can't beat 0:32:39.960 --> 0:32:42.640 them unless you've got it, you know, on a wire 0:32:42.680 --> 0:32:43.720 and a pulley system. 0:32:45.440 --> 0:32:47.320 But then they had to move the pulleys up because 0:32:47.320 --> 0:32:49.880 that's there's one engineer start he figured out how to 0:32:49.880 --> 0:32:52.000 break the pulley and it was just like you'd walk 0:32:52.000 --> 0:32:53.480 out there and he's like, man, is that you know 0:32:53.520 --> 0:32:55.320 you got tree cover and you'd see these feet It's like, 0:32:55.360 --> 0:32:57.440 is that a radio tower? And then you walk out 0:32:57.440 --> 0:32:59.320 from under the trees and it's a feeder that's twenty 0:32:59.320 --> 0:33:01.640 five feet up in the air because they've they've just 0:33:01.800 --> 0:33:02.760 re engineered at these you. 0:33:02.840 --> 0:33:05.120 Know, I got I gotta interrupt you. This is such 0:33:05.360 --> 0:33:08.760 so interesting in some of the research I'm doing for 0:33:08.920 --> 0:33:16.920 my book that black bears have been academically documented as 0:33:16.960 --> 0:33:21.680 the most curious animal in North America. Really like in 0:33:21.680 --> 0:33:28.080 in in controlled tests where they've been able to test 0:33:28.800 --> 0:33:33.360 animal curiosity, the American black bear is the most curious. 0:33:33.360 --> 0:33:38.760 And they tested weasels and raccoons and we call smart yeah, 0:33:38.920 --> 0:33:43.720 polar bears. I don't know that they tested any ungulates 0:33:43.840 --> 0:33:46.000 or something, because they knew that they're not going to 0:33:46.080 --> 0:33:50.760 be curious like that. But the cats, uh more than bobcats. 0:33:51.680 --> 0:33:53.960 Like in the way they tested them, it was really interesting. 0:33:54.000 --> 0:33:57.440 They were they were confined animals, and they would put 0:33:58.000 --> 0:34:01.360 they would put objects all in the in the space 0:34:02.280 --> 0:34:05.040 and just turn an animal loose and observe them for 0:34:05.160 --> 0:34:09.040 hours and watch and document every single thing that they 0:34:09.160 --> 0:34:12.799 did with the little trinkets that were in the in 0:34:12.880 --> 0:34:17.600 the place, and the black bear like blew them all out. 0:34:17.440 --> 0:34:19.800 Of the water because you just examined everything. 0:34:19.880 --> 0:34:22.520 Yeah, black bear was like picking up chains and laying 0:34:22.520 --> 0:34:25.879 on its back and like playing the chains in the air. 0:34:26.320 --> 0:34:33.680 Point being a black bear will figure out how to 0:34:33.719 --> 0:34:39.920 get anything it wants if it's physically possible. Yas Boutell 0:34:39.960 --> 0:34:42.680 has told me, he described a scene of watching a 0:34:42.719 --> 0:34:46.400 bear get a beaver carcass that they had hung fifteen 0:34:46.440 --> 0:34:49.520 feet in the air and like ten or twelve feet 0:34:49.680 --> 0:34:53.760 out from any tree. Like basically, there's this hanging beaver 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:57.080 carcass that's like, let's say it's twelve feet in the air, 0:34:57.640 --> 0:35:00.319 I mean just out of a black bear can't jump 0:35:00.400 --> 0:35:03.520 like a mountain lion son, and it's ten feet at 0:35:03.640 --> 0:35:07.040 least from any tree. And basically, he said, he watched 0:35:07.040 --> 0:35:12.919 this bear for an hour climb up every tree within reach, 0:35:13.040 --> 0:35:17.680 you know, within side just range of that deal the bear, 0:35:18.480 --> 0:35:21.840 did you know tried to climb out, and finally the 0:35:21.880 --> 0:35:25.439 bear realized that if it grabbed the pulley rope and 0:35:25.560 --> 0:35:29.320 walked back and dropped it, that that it would cause 0:35:29.320 --> 0:35:33.400 that beaver to move. And before long he had pulled 0:35:33.440 --> 0:35:35.800 it so many times and dropped it that the beaver 0:35:35.840 --> 0:35:38.920 carcass went to the ground. Took him an hour, and 0:35:39.080 --> 0:35:41.719 basically no other animal in the world would have got 0:35:41.760 --> 0:35:42.520 that beaver carcass. 0:35:42.640 --> 0:35:44.600 I mean, think about how many times they just tear 0:35:44.880 --> 0:35:47.480 came I mean he can't tear cameras off the trees. 0:35:47.800 --> 0:35:52.000 Yeah, oh yeah, well, and it's it's then the point 0:35:52.000 --> 0:35:54.400 of all that. People might be like, well, yeah, bears 0:35:54.440 --> 0:35:58.240 are notoriously curious, and it just kind of like glaze 0:35:58.239 --> 0:36:00.239 over it. Like they tear up your cameras, they to 0:36:00.360 --> 0:36:02.360 up your four wheeler seats, they get into your feeders. 0:36:02.719 --> 0:36:04.719 That's why bears are successful. 0:36:04.520 --> 0:36:06.600 And they're intelligent. They're not just curious. 0:36:06.800 --> 0:36:10.319 Well curiosity is it correlates with intelligence? I mean, that's 0:36:10.360 --> 0:36:14.279 what we would say. But that's why they're so successful. 0:36:14.320 --> 0:36:18.040 That's why they're thriving in Florida because they can eat anything, 0:36:18.440 --> 0:36:21.960 and they they are they are generalists. They're the world's 0:36:22.000 --> 0:36:27.839 greatest generalist omnivore and they will do anything to get food. Yeah, 0:36:28.120 --> 0:36:29.880 it's pretty it's brilliant. 0:36:29.960 --> 0:36:34.520 Really, it's funny because bears, and maybe you may know 0:36:34.600 --> 0:36:36.680 more about this than I do, but bears seem to 0:36:36.680 --> 0:36:39.719 exist in Florida, in the wild bear population and the 0:36:39.840 --> 0:36:44.279 urbanized bear population that very much like are different. I 0:36:44.280 --> 0:36:46.040 think we spent at the time of that bear report 0:36:46.040 --> 0:36:47.960 I've read we'd spent two and a half million dollars 0:36:48.239 --> 0:36:52.040 on bear proofing trash cans and municipalities trying to cop 0:36:52.320 --> 0:36:55.920 out of garbage because they just My photographer lives, my 0:36:56.360 --> 0:36:59.120 videographer photographer that we use a lot. He lives like 0:36:59.160 --> 0:37:02.280 I'll say, six streets from the woods, like cross streets, 0:37:03.080 --> 0:37:06.040 and it's in a neighborhood and bears are in his yard. 0:37:06.160 --> 0:37:07.480 I mean, he can go get a bear photo for 0:37:07.520 --> 0:37:08.960 me anytime he wants with the right, like you can 0:37:09.000 --> 0:37:10.640 distort the background and take a picture of a bear 0:37:10.680 --> 0:37:13.520 because they're always in the front yard eating his mom's plants. Wow, 0:37:13.560 --> 0:37:16.600 and yes, those are bears that go back into the 0:37:16.600 --> 0:37:19.080 Wikaiva forest, but they're not I mean they're they're not 0:37:19.200 --> 0:37:21.720 just coming into the yard on the edge. They're getting 0:37:21.760 --> 0:37:25.479 they're coming six. Yeah, they're actually taking an uber Yeah, 0:37:25.600 --> 0:37:28.560 like they're in the neighborhood and they're not like just 0:37:28.640 --> 0:37:30.400 on it. You know, it's not a common in the 0:37:30.400 --> 0:37:32.759 every lage you're on the edge of. They're swamp behind 0:37:32.840 --> 0:37:35.000 you in a panther walks through your backyard, but you 0:37:35.040 --> 0:37:37.960 don't see one five streets over unless you've got a 0:37:38.000 --> 0:37:42.640 cat that's outside. But the bears are just like they're 0:37:42.640 --> 0:37:43.799 happily existing there. 0:37:44.160 --> 0:37:48.680 Yeah, Like they have an incredible awareness about them, and 0:37:49.040 --> 0:37:51.720 a lot of wildlife does inside of these urban settings, 0:37:51.719 --> 0:37:53.839 you know, like deer know that they can they're okay 0:37:53.880 --> 0:37:58.640 in your yard. But typically the big predators don't. They 0:37:58.680 --> 0:38:04.239 get shine usually aware of I am perfectly safe right here. 0:38:04.840 --> 0:38:09.799 And they then they turned to anthropogenic foods big term 0:38:09.840 --> 0:38:17.840 from human foods. 0:38:19.360 --> 0:38:22.080 I guess in twenty twenty three is when we started 0:38:22.120 --> 0:38:24.560 having some serious conversations about, Okay, what would a hunt 0:38:24.600 --> 0:38:27.799 look like if it came back, Like what what do 0:38:27.840 --> 0:38:29.560 we need to change from the last time we did 0:38:29.600 --> 0:38:35.880 a hunt to get it right, And that was presented 0:38:35.920 --> 0:38:38.200 in May of this year. So in May that was 0:38:38.200 --> 0:38:42.879 brought back to the Commission and my opinion. They got 0:38:42.880 --> 0:38:46.200 it right. Now, I want to say something. FWC is 0:38:46.200 --> 0:38:49.200 one of the leading agencies Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, 0:38:49.520 --> 0:38:51.880 one of the leading agencies in the country on social science, 0:38:52.400 --> 0:38:54.319 and we as hunters, we love to say, man, I 0:38:54.360 --> 0:38:57.279 want biological science to drive everything, not social science. But 0:38:57.360 --> 0:39:00.800 the end of the day, that's a factor. Social science 0:39:00.920 --> 0:39:04.719 is playing, man, it's playing, and so to ignore it 0:39:05.280 --> 0:39:09.120 as a tool in the toolbox, I'm telling you this 0:39:09.200 --> 0:39:10.279 is a guy that's going out there and saying, Man, 0:39:10.280 --> 0:39:11.960 I don't want to use social science. Like I've said 0:39:12.000 --> 0:39:14.200 that on the record at podiums and stuff before. I'm like, 0:39:14.560 --> 0:39:17.600 science should drive this, and I'm talking about biology. Social 0:39:17.640 --> 0:39:21.040 science is gonna play. They did an incredible job of 0:39:21.120 --> 0:39:24.160 meeting with stakeholders and figuring out what the concerns were 0:39:24.200 --> 0:39:28.240 with the last hunt and addressing those with this hunt 0:39:28.480 --> 0:39:31.600 and so kind of one of the dominant things they 0:39:31.640 --> 0:39:38.800 heard was selectivity in sex in harvest. I think in 0:39:38.840 --> 0:39:40.880 the last hunt, sixty percent of the bears that were 0:39:40.880 --> 0:39:46.080 taking were soals. Okay, And as I mentioned earlier, that 0:39:46.160 --> 0:39:48.759 was a quota that was issued and then you went 0:39:48.800 --> 0:39:51.480 out if you didn't kill your bear like you checked in, Like, 0:39:51.480 --> 0:39:52.880 if you didn't kill your bear and they called the 0:39:52.920 --> 0:39:54.719 hunt off, you didn't get to fill your task. And 0:39:54.880 --> 0:39:58.880 that's things. Yes, So what they've brought back is a 0:39:58.960 --> 0:40:01.840 hunt that is one hundred and eighty seven hard tacks. 0:40:01.960 --> 0:40:03.719 It's either I think it's a hundred and eighty seven. 0:40:03.719 --> 0:40:05.040 It's either one eighty six or eighty seven. 0:40:05.239 --> 0:40:07.120 Can I stop you because I feel I think we're 0:40:07.160 --> 0:40:09.560 gonna go over it and I'm gonna forget to say it. Sure, 0:40:10.239 --> 0:40:14.520 these quota hunts where the hunt ends at a quota 0:40:15.080 --> 0:40:18.560 caught and you insinuated it, but we didn't say it, 0:40:18.560 --> 0:40:20.719 it causes people to be highly unselective. 0:40:21.320 --> 0:40:23.759 It is selectivity because it is if you kill the 0:40:23.760 --> 0:40:25.839 first bear. Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah. 0:40:26.160 --> 0:40:30.120 Oklahoma, Oklahoma. Well, I don't know the details on it. 0:40:30.120 --> 0:40:33.920 Oklahoma had a similar thing where they where they had 0:40:33.960 --> 0:40:37.360 a quota and the quota wasn't even being met, but 0:40:37.480 --> 0:40:41.719 the very nature of the quota caused people to be unselective. 0:40:41.760 --> 0:40:44.520 And I'm pretty sure they took the quota off and 0:40:44.560 --> 0:40:46.480 they never went over it and people were a lot 0:40:46.520 --> 0:40:49.120 more selective. Yeah, if you think the hunt's gonna end tomorrow, 0:40:49.320 --> 0:40:51.360 you're gonna shoot the first bearer that you see, and 0:40:51.480 --> 0:40:53.760 oftentimes that's the juvenile or female. 0:40:53.400 --> 0:40:56.239 Which could force and it's on the hunter, right, the 0:40:56.320 --> 0:40:59.960 hunter should be a better hunter. But oftentimes, you know, 0:41:00.120 --> 0:41:02.399 we've all done it with a deer or something. You're like, man, 0:41:02.400 --> 0:41:04.759 that deer was way bigger when I looked through the 0:41:04.760 --> 0:41:06.919 scope than he was when I got up to it. Right. 0:41:07.719 --> 0:41:12.800 The so things they addressed they addressed selectivity with that, 0:41:12.800 --> 0:41:16.400 that's good. They also address selectivity by allowing bait stations 0:41:16.520 --> 0:41:19.680 and and dogs, because you know as well as I 0:41:19.719 --> 0:41:21.480 do that both of those things are going to give 0:41:21.520 --> 0:41:24.520 you time to say, hey, is that a sal? Hey 0:41:24.560 --> 0:41:26.640 does she have cubs with her? How big are the cubs? 0:41:26.680 --> 0:41:29.840 Like you can look and study this situation. Yes, and 0:41:29.840 --> 0:41:32.120 you're gonna have camera set up on your bait station, yes, 0:41:32.320 --> 0:41:34.080 to where you're gonna know the bears that are coming 0:41:34.120 --> 0:41:35.680 in and out and be like, oh, that's a sal 0:41:35.719 --> 0:41:37.480 but I got a bore over here, like that's that's 0:41:37.480 --> 0:41:41.040 what I'm gonna And it allows people, all of us 0:41:41.080 --> 0:41:44.520 as hunters, we're in it for everything, right, the meat, 0:41:44.760 --> 0:41:47.360 the hide, the fat that like we want to but 0:41:47.480 --> 0:41:48.800 the end of the day, we'd like to take the 0:41:48.840 --> 0:41:50.719 biggest thing we can or the best thing we can, 0:41:51.320 --> 0:41:57.600 and in this case, removing that that urgency allows for 0:41:57.680 --> 0:42:00.160 us to have way more selectivity in this hunt. And 0:42:01.440 --> 0:42:04.439 to me, the agency got that exactly right. The anti 0:42:04.560 --> 0:42:08.360 hunters will tell you, and I don't. I live in 0:42:08.400 --> 0:42:10.239 a world where I have to deal with them. I 0:42:10.280 --> 0:42:12.120 will tell you I don't necessarily care what they say. 0:42:12.280 --> 0:42:14.680 I do I pay attention to it. The anti hangers 0:42:14.680 --> 0:42:16.880 will tell you, well, these are barbaric methods. This, that, 0:42:16.880 --> 0:42:19.439 and the other. These methods are because you guys wanted 0:42:19.480 --> 0:42:22.399 better selectivity in the hunt. Yes, it was nothing wrong 0:42:22.400 --> 0:42:24.680 with the first hunt, but we've changed it based off 0:42:24.719 --> 0:42:27.520 your feedback, and these are the methods that we've allowed 0:42:27.520 --> 0:42:28.239 to get into it. 0:42:28.320 --> 0:42:31.279 Right, man, that I can't believe you're saying this with 0:42:31.320 --> 0:42:37.960 such clarity, because I think ten years ago the articulation 0:42:38.160 --> 0:42:43.000 of that idea just wasn't widely known inside of bear hunting. 0:42:43.600 --> 0:42:47.480 These these these methods allow hunters to be selective. And 0:42:47.680 --> 0:42:50.120 you could say that that is just big talk and 0:42:50.160 --> 0:42:52.560 that actually doesn't happen in the field, but it does. 0:42:53.239 --> 0:42:57.880 I mean, hound hunters let way more bears go they 0:42:58.280 --> 0:43:01.640 than they harvest even in play is where they could. 0:43:02.120 --> 0:43:05.240 I mean they're being selective, not everyone. I mean sometimes 0:43:05.280 --> 0:43:07.000 you got a kid with you and it's their first bear, 0:43:07.040 --> 0:43:10.640 and you let them shoot a dry sow sometimes. I mean, 0:43:10.680 --> 0:43:14.160 I'm not saying juveniles and souths don't get harvested sometimes, 0:43:14.600 --> 0:43:18.400 but in general, hound hunters are trying to be selective 0:43:18.480 --> 0:43:25.040 for older age class males period baiting bears. The cameras, man, 0:43:25.800 --> 0:43:29.479 I am the most selective period when I'm baiting a bear, 0:43:30.239 --> 0:43:32.640 because I know every bear that's coming in there, and 0:43:32.719 --> 0:43:36.040 it's very difficult to kill that older age male, and 0:43:36.120 --> 0:43:38.760 it becomes a challenge, it becomes it's what makes it 0:43:38.880 --> 0:43:41.040 enjoyable and fun to try to kill a big bear 0:43:41.080 --> 0:43:43.200 over bait, which is actually quite difficult. 0:43:43.880 --> 0:43:48.920 And anybody who says that that hunting bears over bait 0:43:49.280 --> 0:43:52.440 is unethical and easy has never baited for bears. 0:43:52.920 --> 0:43:54.440 Talk to me about that for a minute. Sure, this 0:43:54.480 --> 0:43:58.080 is one of the things old explain fair chase and baiting. Yeah, like, 0:43:58.239 --> 0:43:59.640 can you can you do that? Can you just tell 0:43:59.719 --> 0:44:00.960 me that jump in. 0:44:00.840 --> 0:44:06.600 Like to me, when you describe fair chase, you know 0:44:08.239 --> 0:44:12.560 you're you're capitalizing on that. Bears natural tendency for hyperphagia 0:44:12.600 --> 0:44:15.319 in the fall. I mean you're you're capitalizing on a 0:44:15.360 --> 0:44:20.319 biological process inside of that animal to hyper fixate on 0:44:20.360 --> 0:44:22.640 a food source, just like they would an acorn flat 0:44:23.000 --> 0:44:26.000 or a cabbage palm flat, or berries in the summer, 0:44:26.400 --> 0:44:29.520 or a salmon stream in the Northwest. So you're capitalizing 0:44:29.600 --> 0:44:31.400 on something this animal is doing naturally. 0:44:31.560 --> 0:44:32.000 Number one. 0:44:33.080 --> 0:44:39.600 Number two, if if you have this North American idea 0:44:39.800 --> 0:44:43.960 of taking an older age class male, that animal is 0:44:44.040 --> 0:44:48.440 incredibly intelligent, intelligent acts completely different than juveniles and females. 0:44:49.280 --> 0:44:51.680 And it's very difficult to kill over bait because when 0:44:51.719 --> 0:44:54.920 you're hunting over bait, you have a stationary bait. A 0:44:55.000 --> 0:44:58.200 human has got to be within a bow shot distance 0:44:58.239 --> 0:44:59.759 of that if you're hunting with a bow, which most 0:45:00.080 --> 0:45:04.839 baiting six bears is archery hunting. And that big bear 0:45:05.000 --> 0:45:07.400 knows he is made a living with his nose, and 0:45:07.480 --> 0:45:09.520 he knows when you're there, and he knows when you leave, 0:45:10.640 --> 0:45:12.880 and you got to kill him while you're there. You 0:45:12.920 --> 0:45:16.680 can't not be there and kill him. And killing a 0:45:16.800 --> 0:45:19.799 large I'm talking like a ten plus year old boar 0:45:19.880 --> 0:45:23.279 bear over bait anywhere in the country is as hard 0:45:23.320 --> 0:45:25.879 as just about as hard as any big game hunt 0:45:25.920 --> 0:45:28.720 you would ever have. And so the hunter that's sitting 0:45:28.719 --> 0:45:31.759 there that kills a big bear, he has let go 0:45:33.200 --> 0:45:35.640 a bunch of animals that came in before it. And 0:45:35.640 --> 0:45:38.640 that's just what people wouldn't understand or see why I. 0:45:38.560 --> 0:45:40.120 Would to ask you. As a beer hunting expert, I 0:45:40.160 --> 0:45:41.080 can see this, but you. 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:46.040 Well, you're so you've got to practice a high level 0:45:46.040 --> 0:45:50.680 of selection. And basically to me, when I think about 0:45:50.760 --> 0:45:52.919 fair chase and ethics and just kind of this big 0:45:52.960 --> 0:45:56.640 North American model, when you understand that baiting or and 0:45:56.680 --> 0:45:59.800 we can talk about hounds too, where baiting is a 0:46:00.040 --> 0:46:05.480 cool for selection, it's like that makes it ethical just 0:46:05.560 --> 0:46:07.880 in its own sense. If we could even just go 0:46:07.960 --> 0:46:11.160 in and extract a mail easily, that would make it 0:46:11.200 --> 0:46:11.640 worth it. 0:46:11.880 --> 0:46:13.440 But we can't. But we can't. 0:46:13.640 --> 0:46:15.680 Mails are very hard to get to come into a 0:46:15.719 --> 0:46:20.480 bait like that. And so to me, it it completely 0:46:20.520 --> 0:46:25.000 fits the idea of of of fair chase three components. 0:46:25.680 --> 0:46:28.799 You're you're capitalizing on an animal's natural tendency, just like 0:46:28.840 --> 0:46:33.400 it would in the wild. Your your you've got to 0:46:33.400 --> 0:46:36.919 be in very close proximity and you cannot hide from bear. 0:46:37.320 --> 0:46:40.000 Everybody in the planet, every white tail hunting of the 0:46:40.040 --> 0:46:43.120 planet that thinks that they can hide from a black 0:46:43.160 --> 0:46:46.520 bear over bait using all the different scent control products 0:46:46.560 --> 0:46:50.720 has never done it because you cannot. Period A thousand 0:46:50.800 --> 0:46:53.200 years from now, they're going to replay this and they're 0:46:53.239 --> 0:46:57.160 gonna say that old Hillbuilding was right because technology has 0:46:57.320 --> 0:47:00.439 never become good enough for us to eat a black 0:47:00.480 --> 0:47:03.680 bear's nose. It is supernatural. When you see a bear's 0:47:03.719 --> 0:47:06.239 nose flexing like this in the wind, he literally is 0:47:06.280 --> 0:47:09.719 talking to God. Not literally, that's a metaphor. 0:47:10.080 --> 0:47:10.760 He is. 0:47:10.800 --> 0:47:13.520 It is a super it is it's so powerful, it's 0:47:13.520 --> 0:47:14.480 almost supernatural. 0:47:14.520 --> 0:47:15.799 That's my point, John Well. 0:47:15.840 --> 0:47:18.799 And and then and then the third prong of the 0:47:18.800 --> 0:47:23.240 fair chase component to me is that it's a powerful 0:47:23.360 --> 0:47:27.439 management tool to be selective period done over and out 0:47:27.600 --> 0:47:28.800 bear hunting with bait. 0:47:29.480 --> 0:47:32.200 Well and and what like what we experienced last year, 0:47:32.280 --> 0:47:35.400 you know you can have you can have great bears 0:47:35.440 --> 0:47:38.960 coming into your bait because that's what they want. And 0:47:39.000 --> 0:47:44.400 then you're playing this this match with nature and just 0:47:44.440 --> 0:47:49.000 because you've got all this high fat, delicious bait. As 0:47:49.000 --> 0:47:50.879 soon as those acrons start falling. 0:47:51.719 --> 0:47:55.279 And they would they would rather eat natural food than 0:47:55.320 --> 0:48:01.560 any I mean, they've been built for one point five 0:48:01.600 --> 0:48:04.040 million years off eating natural food, and here in the 0:48:04.120 --> 0:48:06.520 last you know, one hundred years, we would put out 0:48:06.560 --> 0:48:09.640 anthiprogenet food for them, that would that they would be 0:48:09.640 --> 0:48:12.680 attracted to. They want to go back to natural food 0:48:12.800 --> 0:48:13.800 anywhere in the country. 0:48:14.160 --> 0:48:17.120 So it's interesting you say that. So in Florida we're 0:48:17.200 --> 0:48:20.040 not allowed we're allowing basic I don't know why we're 0:48:20.080 --> 0:48:23.719 calling them bait stations. They're feeders. We're not allowing donuts 0:48:23.840 --> 0:48:28.560 or or like we're not allowing it's corn or sort 0:48:28.719 --> 0:48:33.160 like it can be like it's natural, it's what it's 0:48:33.200 --> 0:48:36.480 what we put in at feed Yeah, it's And so 0:48:36.600 --> 0:48:39.000 this conversation has gotten high. I think it's a bad marketing. 0:48:40.120 --> 0:48:41.960 I think the agency did a bad marketing job and 0:48:42.000 --> 0:48:44.399 the anti honey community grabbed onto it because we talked 0:48:44.400 --> 0:48:46.000 about bait and then they go get pictures of a 0:48:46.040 --> 0:48:49.239 grizzly bear eating donuts or something, and it's like, that's 0:48:49.280 --> 0:48:51.680 not what we're talking about here. We're talking about trying 0:48:51.680 --> 0:48:54.080 to get a bear to come to a corn feeder. Yeah, 0:48:54.239 --> 0:48:58.560 and especially in an okaymic, this's got just a huge mast. 0:48:58.400 --> 0:49:01.320 Here like well, and and the other thing too is 0:49:01.360 --> 0:49:05.200 that you can get a bear to come to corn 0:49:05.280 --> 0:49:09.440 and grain and all this stuff during the summer very 0:49:09.520 --> 0:49:13.200 easily in the fall, which I would assume the despair 0:49:13.280 --> 0:49:15.680 hound's going to be taking place in what's in December. 0:49:15.760 --> 0:49:18.000 So the first year is a three week in December. Okay, 0:49:18.080 --> 0:49:19.440 after that it'll extend out. 0:49:19.480 --> 0:49:22.920 But go ahead, well, just just like right now in Arkansas, 0:49:23.520 --> 0:49:25.239 you get every bear in the country to come to 0:49:25.280 --> 0:49:27.880 a pile of corn. A month from now, when the 0:49:27.920 --> 0:49:31.239 acorns start to trickle down, you will have a very 0:49:31.280 --> 0:49:33.280 difficult time getting a bear to come to a pilot 0:49:33.280 --> 0:49:37.480 corn at the point being in December. The effectiveness of 0:49:37.640 --> 0:49:40.880 using this kind of natural more natural food for a 0:49:40.880 --> 0:49:42.920 bear is probably not going to be great. 0:49:43.840 --> 0:49:47.680 And that's what That's a harder nuanced conversation to have, 0:49:47.840 --> 0:49:49.200 right That's why I wanted to have it with you. 0:49:50.040 --> 0:49:53.640 It's a nuanced conversation that gets missed yea by the 0:49:53.640 --> 0:49:55.319 general public. And I'm hoping a lot of them will 0:49:55.320 --> 0:49:57.719 watch this and say, oh, well, that makes way more sense. 0:49:58.360 --> 0:50:00.560 You're not putting a feeder out there and saying I'm 0:50:00.560 --> 0:50:02.239 gonna roll out here about eleven to shoot a bear 0:50:02.280 --> 0:50:03.920 by eleven thirty because he's going to be on that 0:50:03.920 --> 0:50:04.520 feeder eating. 0:50:04.600 --> 0:50:06.839 Well, right, that's what was going and that's probably why 0:50:06.840 --> 0:50:09.440 people here as they hear, well, they're tearing down corn feeders. 0:50:09.440 --> 0:50:12.239 You can't keep my bears off corn. You know, this 0:50:12.280 --> 0:50:14.880 is just gonna be so easy. But in December it's different. 0:50:15.000 --> 0:50:18.719 And now I've never been around bears in Florida, it's 0:50:18.800 --> 0:50:21.720 possible there's a slight different everywhere they're a little different, 0:50:22.160 --> 0:50:28.160 but in general, I guarantee you that getting them to 0:50:28.160 --> 0:50:30.320 come to that in December is going to be different 0:50:30.360 --> 0:50:32.640 than getting to come to that in August during a 0:50:32.640 --> 0:50:36.920 stress period in August, probably when they're mainly hurting people's 0:50:36.960 --> 0:50:37.800 feeders and whatnot. 0:50:37.920 --> 0:50:40.240 Yeah, let me just throw this out there for color 0:50:40.320 --> 0:50:42.920 has nothing to do with bears, but it talks about Florida. 0:50:43.600 --> 0:50:46.839 Our south is on Archery opens in July, does it really? 0:50:46.880 --> 0:50:49.480 Because the rut is so early and then we have 0:50:49.719 --> 0:50:51.719 zones No that you can't hunt the key here. But 0:50:51.760 --> 0:50:55.719 this is like Everglades, like Big Cyprus and south of 0:50:55.760 --> 0:50:58.239 seventy It opens in July. Archery opens like this year, 0:50:58.280 --> 0:51:01.200 I think it was July twenty eighth night. So you 0:51:01.239 --> 0:51:03.480 want to talk about fun sitting in that in a tree, 0:51:04.400 --> 0:51:07.040 like you'll strip down to your underwear. It's bad out here, 0:51:07.080 --> 0:51:09.239 Moisquita is just going, but you. 0:51:09.280 --> 0:51:11.040 Just put and then we have fan all over your 0:51:11.040 --> 0:51:12.600 whole body and set up their naked. 0:51:14.120 --> 0:51:15.759 I am an hour and a half north of that 0:51:15.880 --> 0:51:19.480 road and the wa closest to me their rut is 0:51:19.480 --> 0:51:24.120 in February. Wow. So so just the way that landscape 0:51:24.239 --> 0:51:26.160 is is so and we have different zones around this. 0:51:26.200 --> 0:51:29.640 I think we have five different zones for deer because 0:51:29.680 --> 0:51:31.640 they rud at different times and everything. So I think 0:51:31.680 --> 0:51:33.520 we will begin to figure that out with bear as 0:51:33.560 --> 0:51:37.080 well over time of when they do feed heavier when 0:51:37.080 --> 0:51:39.960 they don't. And I think that's I think our agency 0:51:39.960 --> 0:51:41.680 has probably already looked at that, but they'll continue to 0:51:41.680 --> 0:51:43.760 look at that and study it as we see hunter success. 0:51:44.880 --> 0:51:47.239 So hunter success is a thing when we're talking about 0:51:47.239 --> 0:51:50.160 the number of permits they're issue in one hundred and 0:51:50.200 --> 0:51:52.960 eighty seven. Have you ever done a sight tag like 0:51:52.960 --> 0:51:54.880 a like a like an alligator hunt, like we have 0:51:54.920 --> 0:51:57.280 to put a tag, a hard tag in the gator. 0:51:57.600 --> 0:51:59.200 You get those two tags if you don't harvest, you 0:51:59.200 --> 0:52:00.360 send them back. At the end of the year, you 0:52:00.360 --> 0:52:03.680 gotta return them. The bear hunt's gonna be the same. 0:52:03.680 --> 0:52:05.440 It's not Siety's tag, but it's it's gonna be the 0:52:05.440 --> 0:52:07.960 same kind of way where you're issued a hard tag 0:52:08.520 --> 0:52:10.440 and when you take that bear, you've got to report 0:52:10.480 --> 0:52:13.200 it immediately. It's no longer checkstations. So we're not gonna 0:52:13.200 --> 0:52:15.360 give the antis, you know, this place where you just 0:52:15.400 --> 0:52:19.000 set up their cameras and harass hunters and then you've 0:52:19.000 --> 0:52:21.120 got to put that tag into the bear, or if 0:52:21.160 --> 0:52:24.360 you don't harvest, you're gonna return it. So the agency 0:52:24.400 --> 0:52:28.520 set the threshold for harvest. If one hundred percent of 0:52:28.520 --> 0:52:31.839 those tags are females and one hundred percent of them 0:52:31.840 --> 0:52:36.920 are successful, the population will grow zero. It will not decline. 0:52:37.680 --> 0:52:40.640 It'll it'll be at least a zero percent growth zero 0:52:40.760 --> 0:52:42.920 or greater. Then, so that's not gonna hurt the popular 0:52:42.960 --> 0:52:45.759 There is no mortality that's gonna cause it to go 0:52:45.800 --> 0:52:50.040 down from hunting. Yes, So it's really interesting in the 0:52:50.080 --> 0:52:52.359 court of public opinion, people are like, well, they're doing 0:52:52.360 --> 0:52:55.279 this because we've got too many bears. This isn't really 0:52:55.280 --> 0:52:57.719 gonna change how many bears we have, it's gonna be 0:52:58.239 --> 0:53:00.440 at least the same number of bears. We have, probably 0:53:00.520 --> 0:53:02.719 a slow growth because you know as well as I do. 0:53:02.800 --> 0:53:04.800 What is the I'm putting you all on the spot. 0:53:04.920 --> 0:53:08.680 What's the average success rate for a bear hunter? Sixty 0:53:09.200 --> 0:53:11.839 forty percent? Like, I don't know than that. That would 0:53:11.840 --> 0:53:14.320 be my guest too. One hundred and eighty seven tags, 0:53:14.320 --> 0:53:16.279 we could do some math real quick. Fifty of them 0:53:16.320 --> 0:53:18.200 get filled, one hundred of them get filled would be. 0:53:18.160 --> 0:53:20.880 Well, right, if you're talking about in general, like in 0:53:20.920 --> 0:53:23.120 North America, I would say way less than that. In 0:53:23.440 --> 0:53:25.640 a hunt like this this news, I wouldn't be surprised 0:53:25.640 --> 0:53:27.399 if they didn't fill ninety percent of them. 0:53:27.520 --> 0:53:29.879 It may be the first year. Yeah. The other side 0:53:29.880 --> 0:53:32.120 of that is we've put tools in place that are 0:53:32.200 --> 0:53:35.879 given a selectivity. So again that's based on new population growth. 0:53:35.880 --> 0:53:39.439 If you have harvest only soals and one hundred percent success, yeah, 0:53:39.440 --> 0:53:41.040 we know we're not gonna have one hundred percent success, 0:53:41.200 --> 0:53:44.000 and we know given selectivity, right. 0:53:43.880 --> 0:53:46.520 So like you're gonna choose the board worst possible scenario. 0:53:46.880 --> 0:53:49.160 It still doesn't hurt anything, does it change anything? 0:53:49.600 --> 0:53:52.000 Yeah? So I've heard so much pushback about it and 0:53:52.000 --> 0:53:53.440 They're like, how can you support this. I'm like, well, 0:53:53.440 --> 0:53:56.319 this is conservation man. Yeah, absolutely, I've got this sustainable 0:53:56.360 --> 0:53:58.200 resource that I can take. And I've said this for 0:53:58.560 --> 0:54:01.800 I've said this for a long time. In twenty sixteen, 0:54:01.800 --> 0:54:03.319 there were some number of bears we could take that 0:54:03.360 --> 0:54:07.360 did not matter five thirty seventy five. I don't know 0:54:07.360 --> 0:54:09.080 the number. I'm not a scientist, but there were some 0:54:09.160 --> 0:54:11.880 number of bears that would have fallen under compensatory mortality 0:54:12.200 --> 0:54:15.480 in the state. Yes, that could have been taken. Continually, 0:54:15.960 --> 0:54:18.040 we fell into a social science trap, a little bit 0:54:18.080 --> 0:54:21.600 of we should not hunt this charismatic megafauna. Now we 0:54:21.640 --> 0:54:23.440 are back to where we have turned on this hunt, 0:54:24.080 --> 0:54:26.480 and this hunt should stay on for forever as long 0:54:26.520 --> 0:54:29.000 as the population is say the population is not going 0:54:29.040 --> 0:54:31.280 to decline because of hunting, yes, but if a disease 0:54:31.360 --> 0:54:34.839 came in or whatever, and we could turn the hunt off. 0:54:35.480 --> 0:54:37.320 But the hunt is now on. We're not going to 0:54:37.400 --> 0:54:40.040 have to go through this iteration year after year after year. 0:54:40.480 --> 0:54:42.160 It'll be up to the agency to look at the 0:54:42.239 --> 0:54:45.799 population and say, well, we had this much success rate 0:54:45.880 --> 0:54:48.440 last year, we had this much harvest rate on boors 0:54:48.520 --> 0:54:51.560 versus south and we're going to issue three hundred tags 0:54:51.560 --> 0:54:53.239 this year instead of one hundred and eighty seven, or 0:54:53.520 --> 0:54:55.120 we're going to issue a hundred tags this year instead 0:54:55.120 --> 0:54:57.080 one hundred and eighty seven. Like the agency's going to 0:54:57.080 --> 0:54:59.520 be able to follow adaptive management is what we call it, 0:55:00.120 --> 0:55:03.440 going to use that to set the threshold for how 0:55:03.440 --> 0:55:05.239 many bears can be taken, and then they're gonna have 0:55:05.239 --> 0:55:07.800 a three month span in the fall. I think it's October, November, 0:55:07.800 --> 0:55:12.000 December that will be open for hunting. So this first year, 0:55:12.239 --> 0:55:15.880 no dogs in year one. I think actually dogs are 0:55:15.880 --> 0:55:18.720 on until twenty seven because it's kind of a staggered approach. 0:55:20.120 --> 0:55:21.759 I think you told me this a long time ago. 0:55:21.800 --> 0:55:25.160 I vaguely remember somebody telling me this long term, to 0:55:25.200 --> 0:55:27.200 hunt bears, you're gonna have to use dogs to have 0:55:27.280 --> 0:55:30.319 any measure of success, right, Like dogs are not sure 0:55:30.360 --> 0:55:34.720 I've said that, but I'm paraphrasing. Maybe, but like, dogs 0:55:34.719 --> 0:55:37.160 are one of the most effective ways to hunt bears. Yeah, 0:55:37.840 --> 0:55:40.400 but initially with this bear population, they haven't been hunted, 0:55:40.920 --> 0:55:43.440 so we'll probably have a higher success rate initially for 0:55:43.520 --> 0:55:45.840 a couple of years. Then we're going to need some 0:55:45.880 --> 0:55:48.480 other tools to move these bears around and run them 0:55:48.520 --> 0:55:51.000 out and have success because you're not going to be 0:55:51.040 --> 0:55:53.640 able to just pop one at your deer feeder. They're 0:55:53.640 --> 0:55:54.919 going to get conditioned pretty quickly. 0:55:55.000 --> 0:55:58.480 They will, they will, they'll they'll they'll learn, they'll adapt, 0:55:58.920 --> 0:56:01.400 and they'll they will get harder to hunt over time. 0:56:01.560 --> 0:56:03.279 And dogs are going to be critical to being able 0:56:03.280 --> 0:56:07.239 to hunt them. Yes, that's yes. So that's where we're 0:56:07.280 --> 0:56:09.239 at today. It's going to be five dollars for a 0:56:09.280 --> 0:56:14.480 tag to apply and then if you get issue only residents, no, 0:56:14.760 --> 0:56:17.640 it's resident and non resident are it's one hundred dollars 0:56:17.680 --> 0:56:19.640 for resident, three hundred dollars for a non resident if 0:56:19.680 --> 0:56:20.680 you get if you get drawn. 0:56:21.160 --> 0:56:22.520 Wow, So I could apply for attack. 0:56:23.480 --> 0:56:24.120 I hope you do. 0:56:24.120 --> 0:56:27.279 Don't tell them, Josh, edit this out. 0:56:28.600 --> 0:56:30.480 I love it. Man. And so the anti hunting community do. 0:56:30.560 --> 0:56:32.440 Their new movement is they're trying to get everyone to 0:56:32.760 --> 0:56:34.680 apply for as many tags as they can afford and 0:56:34.680 --> 0:56:37.200 buy a honey license. Oh. I am thrilled with this. 0:56:37.360 --> 0:56:38.759 Just stef Wire, I'm over the moon. 0:56:38.840 --> 0:56:41.080 Wow, they're going to contribute to this thing. 0:56:41.200 --> 0:56:42.560 They're contributing to conservation. 0:56:42.800 --> 0:56:45.720 I've had I had a thought, and I think I'm 0:56:45.960 --> 0:56:49.160 changing on this and it's not a conscious change, but 0:56:49.239 --> 0:56:55.359 it's my my attitudes towards towards anti hunters and some 0:56:55.440 --> 0:57:00.399 of the expressed truly ignorance. I don't mean that word drivetory, 0:57:00.480 --> 0:57:03.160 but in the truest nature sense of the nature that 0:57:03.200 --> 0:57:07.120 the ignorance oftentimes of anti hunting community, just in their 0:57:07.200 --> 0:57:11.359 lack of knowledge of conservation, why we do what we do, 0:57:11.880 --> 0:57:16.880 hunting culture, historic use practices, you know, has has caused 0:57:16.880 --> 0:57:20.480 my blood pressure to go up, and I would I 0:57:20.480 --> 0:57:24.760 would probably have been a little more like, I don't 0:57:24.800 --> 0:57:27.560 care what you think, this is who we are, kind 0:57:27.560 --> 0:57:31.400 of make it like a tribal identity thing in a way, 0:57:31.680 --> 0:57:34.560 like just personally, maybe me in the in the claw, 0:57:34.680 --> 0:57:38.640 you know, in a in private setting. I really feel 0:57:38.640 --> 0:57:43.960 like the wind is for us as a community to 0:57:44.040 --> 0:57:48.960 become a much much more understanding of people's ignorance, ignorance 0:57:48.960 --> 0:57:52.280 and be a little more merciful. Most people. There's probably 0:57:52.680 --> 0:57:57.000 three percent of the anti hunting community that are just jackwagons. 0:57:57.120 --> 0:58:01.840 Oh yeah, that are that are like not interested in changing, 0:58:02.000 --> 0:58:06.080 not interested in the facts, are just interested in causing trouble. 0:58:07.000 --> 0:58:08.960 They're probably and they're probably ugly too. 0:58:09.120 --> 0:58:15.040 They're probably ugly, yes, but most of them probably just 0:58:15.120 --> 0:58:20.280 have never set with somebody that they could make eye 0:58:20.320 --> 0:58:23.200 contact with and they could go, this is a real 0:58:23.280 --> 0:58:25.880 human I want to hear their story, and they hear 0:58:25.920 --> 0:58:30.280 about my life and eating bear and my family and 0:58:30.280 --> 0:58:35.480 me taking my kids and us literally preserving land for 0:58:35.720 --> 0:58:38.440 bear hunting, and when they hear about some of the 0:58:38.480 --> 0:58:42.080 deep history of bear hunting, and when they hear what me, 0:58:42.200 --> 0:58:43.840 you and I were talking about earlier about the eight 0:58:43.880 --> 0:58:47.360 bear species on planet Earth. They are twice as many 0:58:47.400 --> 0:58:49.840 American black bears as of all other species combined. This 0:58:49.880 --> 0:58:52.680 is a massive success story. I mean, if I sat 0:58:52.760 --> 0:58:55.320 with or you sat with, or anybody of us set 0:58:55.360 --> 0:58:58.960 with somebody, most of those anti hunters would go, you 0:58:59.040 --> 0:59:01.160 know what, I didn't know that. I mean, most people 0:59:01.200 --> 0:59:03.360 would probably be a little bit reasonable. And I think 0:59:03.480 --> 0:59:06.880 that's the play is not because right now in the country, 0:59:06.920 --> 0:59:12.080 the political the political atmosphere is to just like be 0:59:12.400 --> 0:59:17.040 vehemently opposed to your enemies, just smack them in the 0:59:17.080 --> 0:59:20.200 mouth with this is who we are. I mean, it's 0:59:20.280 --> 0:59:23.440 just all over from both sides and every side, and 0:59:23.520 --> 0:59:28.680 that just doesn't it just creates bigger enemies and I 0:59:28.760 --> 0:59:31.200 just feel like we need to and that the practical 0:59:31.200 --> 0:59:33.280 solutions and way to do this. It's hard to say, 0:59:33.800 --> 0:59:40.200 but just like a grassroots tenor change of us being like, hey, 0:59:40.200 --> 0:59:42.480 we're all on the same team. We want bears on 0:59:42.520 --> 0:59:44.400 the landscape. 0:59:44.600 --> 0:59:45.040 And and. 0:59:47.400 --> 0:59:50.800 It's okay. I understand why you might be concerned. 0:59:51.480 --> 0:59:53.680 You said it earlier in your statement. I think you 0:59:53.680 --> 0:59:58.000 said the word tribal. Yeah, it's demystifying the badge that 0:59:58.040 --> 1:00:01.520 you wear, right, Like it's easy for me to go 1:00:01.560 --> 1:00:03.800 outside and say man, meat eater man. But then you 1:00:03.800 --> 1:00:05.120 sit down and talk to Clay or you talk to 1:00:05.120 --> 1:00:07.520 another you talk to like you get to know these 1:00:07.520 --> 1:00:09.440 people and it's like, well, wait a second, they're all 1:00:09.480 --> 1:00:11.360 really good guy, you know, like I'm using it as 1:00:11.400 --> 1:00:14.520 as an avatar for this conversation, but that we see 1:00:14.520 --> 1:00:17.080 that a lot. We hate the Wildlife Agency, but you 1:00:17.120 --> 1:00:19.200 sit down and talk to this scientist or that scientist 1:00:19.280 --> 1:00:22.320 or whatever, and it's like, man, they really are looking 1:00:22.320 --> 1:00:24.640 out for our best interest, the wildlife's best interest, to 1:00:24.680 --> 1:00:29.960 making decisions that are looking at everybody broadly. I have 1:00:30.040 --> 1:00:35.400 gotten personally docked multiple times over this issue, like address name, 1:00:35.440 --> 1:00:38.000 phone number put on the internet, we pray nothing bad 1:00:38.040 --> 1:00:41.680 happens to this guy, and then my picture Remember the 1:00:41.960 --> 1:00:44.280 that actually happened to you? Oh, it's happened multiple Remember 1:00:44.280 --> 1:00:47.040 the would you rather encounter a man or a bear 1:00:47.120 --> 1:00:49.600 in the wild thing that was kind of going out 1:00:49.640 --> 1:00:51.439 on the internet. There was like this whole thing where 1:00:51.480 --> 1:00:54.360 women were like, we'd rather encounter a bear in the 1:00:54.400 --> 1:00:57.760 wild than a man in the woods. They actually took 1:00:57.760 --> 1:01:00.200 my picture and put it next to a bear and 1:01:00.240 --> 1:01:03.000 like plastered it everywhere, And there were people coming and say, well, 1:01:03.040 --> 1:01:04.400 if we're going to open a season, we want to 1:01:04.400 --> 1:01:07.480 open them on this guy, and like they were, it's 1:01:07.520 --> 1:01:09.840 easy for me to just get defensive over that, right, 1:01:09.880 --> 1:01:12.840 It's easy for me to there's a handful of people 1:01:13.200 --> 1:01:17.479 five seven nine that are responsible for that. The vast 1:01:17.480 --> 1:01:20.200 majority of the people even commenting on it don't understand, 1:01:20.200 --> 1:01:22.080 don't know the nuance. And if they walked in this room, 1:01:22.160 --> 1:01:25.760 first off, they wouldn't be that aggressive. And second off, 1:01:25.760 --> 1:01:27.160 if they sat here and talked to me for a minute, 1:01:27.160 --> 1:01:31.760 they'd realize I care. Just as the presupposition is that 1:01:31.800 --> 1:01:34.640 I don't want wild Florida to exist, Dude, I want 1:01:34.680 --> 1:01:37.480 wild Florida exists. Way more than you do. I want 1:01:37.640 --> 1:01:40.680 black bears everywhere. I want ducks everywhere. I want turkeys 1:01:40.680 --> 1:01:43.640 to wear our trip over them like I want. I 1:01:43.680 --> 1:01:46.920 want cabbage palms at oak trees and cows. That's what 1:01:46.960 --> 1:01:50.000 I want. I don't want concrete jungles. And the way 1:01:50.040 --> 1:01:51.720 I'm going to do it, I've got a solution to 1:01:51.720 --> 1:01:53.800 do it that I'm working on right here. I don't 1:01:53.840 --> 1:01:56.240 know what your plan is other than demonizing me, Like 1:01:56.280 --> 1:01:58.640 I'm on your team trying to fix this thing. And 1:01:58.680 --> 1:02:00.960 I don't say that in a defense way. I like, 1:02:01.000 --> 1:02:04.080 I'm pretty cavalier about I'll just sit down with anybody'd 1:02:04.080 --> 1:02:06.280 have that conversation, which is exactly what you're talking about. Like, 1:02:06.560 --> 1:02:08.880 let's get to it, man, Yeah, get to us the 1:02:08.880 --> 1:02:09.440 way through it. 1:02:18.480 --> 1:02:24.480 People are capitalizing on our desire to strike an enemy, 1:02:24.520 --> 1:02:28.960 and we're letting the five percent get it so riled 1:02:29.040 --> 1:02:33.800 up that we become we become radicals. Oh yeah, you know, 1:02:33.880 --> 1:02:35.800 I mean and and and. 1:02:36.720 --> 1:02:38.960 There's a game theory If you ever get a free time, 1:02:38.960 --> 1:02:40.800 there's a you can read about game theory stuff. And 1:02:40.800 --> 1:02:42.560 there's the thing called an Overton window in the middle 1:02:42.600 --> 1:02:45.160 of like a number line, and you're trying to shift 1:02:45.160 --> 1:02:48.280 that overton window your way. And so if you looked 1:02:48.280 --> 1:02:51.000 at the I'm backwards to the camera. But this is 1:02:51.040 --> 1:02:53.800 the far right, this is the far left, and and 1:02:54.200 --> 1:02:56.720 you try to fire up your base, and it pulls 1:02:56.720 --> 1:02:58.320 people this way because the people in the middle don't 1:02:58.320 --> 1:02:59.880 have a choice. They're like, well, I've got to v 1:03:00.240 --> 1:03:02.480 this way or I got to vote that way. And 1:03:02.520 --> 1:03:05.160 so you don't go to the middle, you go to 1:03:05.200 --> 1:03:07.360 the edges, okay, and you create this thing called an 1:03:07.360 --> 1:03:09.280 over the window that you're trying to shift your way 1:03:09.320 --> 1:03:10.200 on this number line. 1:03:10.560 --> 1:03:12.240 That's what touches people to be radical. 1:03:12.320 --> 1:03:13.920 It pushes people to be radical because that's where you're 1:03:13.920 --> 1:03:16.080 going to raise money, that's where you're gonna raise support, 1:03:16.080 --> 1:03:17.720 and that's where you're gonna fire up your base. 1:03:18.440 --> 1:03:20.600 But what if radical was just reasonable? 1:03:21.080 --> 1:03:22.880 And I think that's the conversation that I try to 1:03:22.960 --> 1:03:25.360 change every day, is like, what if radical didn't exist? 1:03:25.480 --> 1:03:28.720 What if we just took a common sense approach to conversation, 1:03:28.880 --> 1:03:32.000 to conservation. You know, what if we I'll go back 1:03:32.040 --> 1:03:34.720 to development in Florida, people say all the time, I'm 1:03:34.720 --> 1:03:37.800 anti development. You gotta stop, dude. Do you know how 1:03:37.800 --> 1:03:40.000 many people in Florida make their living off building houses 1:03:40.280 --> 1:03:42.200 or and then and then you're a fishing guide or 1:03:42.240 --> 1:03:44.560 a hunting guy, like do you check W two's for 1:03:44.600 --> 1:03:46.640 people when they get on your boat, like that they 1:03:46.680 --> 1:03:48.520 work for a fertilizer company, or they work for the 1:03:48.640 --> 1:03:51.720 like they're all connected to it somehow. Like economic growth 1:03:51.800 --> 1:03:55.720 is economic growth. I'm not anti development. I'm pro smart growth, Like, 1:03:55.800 --> 1:03:58.520 let's sit down and figure out ways forward that take 1:03:58.560 --> 1:04:01.840 care of my natural resources in your financial needs or 1:04:01.880 --> 1:04:04.360 economic needs, your tax base is what's going to grow 1:04:04.360 --> 1:04:08.440 your economy. I just think we get into these binaries. 1:04:08.680 --> 1:04:11.120 You have to stop growing, you have to grow at 1:04:11.120 --> 1:04:13.880 all costs. Dude, most of us are right here at 1:04:13.920 --> 1:04:16.880 some game. Most it's not binary, right, It's most of 1:04:16.960 --> 1:04:19.320 us sit somewhere here in the middle. And I think 1:04:19.360 --> 1:04:24.040 there's a whole lot of good conservation that is missed 1:04:24.560 --> 1:04:26.800 because we spend time in this fight and in this fight, 1:04:27.120 --> 1:04:29.960 and that's not the fight. The conversations right here in 1:04:29.960 --> 1:04:31.600 the middle where we can move it forward. And I 1:04:31.640 --> 1:04:35.040 think this whole thing, I think bears perfect example of that. 1:04:35.120 --> 1:04:39.080 Because I said earlier, the agency went and addressed these 1:04:39.120 --> 1:04:41.600 concerns over here were we never want to hunt. But 1:04:41.680 --> 1:04:45.120 their reasons were because you killed too many sous and 1:04:45.160 --> 1:04:46.600 he killed them. It was a blood bath. It was 1:04:46.640 --> 1:04:49.680 too fast, and the hunters could have been over here 1:04:49.760 --> 1:04:52.120 said well, we did it right the first time. And 1:04:52.200 --> 1:04:53.960 I could make the argument that quote a hunt was 1:04:54.000 --> 1:04:55.840 handled right the first time. The hunters could get over 1:04:55.840 --> 1:04:56.960 here and in turn and say, well, we're going to 1:04:57.000 --> 1:04:59.480 do it this way. By golly, we're not changing with 1:04:59.560 --> 1:05:01.720 the agency did a really good job, and the sportsman's 1:05:01.720 --> 1:05:03.800 community did a really good job was coming up with 1:05:03.840 --> 1:05:07.640 a solution that really did address their concerns. Yes, now 1:05:07.840 --> 1:05:10.320 they don't want any hunting to take place, we're not 1:05:10.360 --> 1:05:12.800 going to move there, but they did address their concerns 1:05:12.800 --> 1:05:16.120 with selectivity, with season and everything else. Man, that's what 1:05:16.200 --> 1:05:18.840 conservation is supposed to look like. I believe that in 1:05:18.840 --> 1:05:20.760 my heart that's what conservation is supposed to look like. 1:05:21.160 --> 1:05:24.800 And now we have the sustainable renewable resource that is 1:05:25.160 --> 1:05:29.200 a game species. By the way, you you're the best 1:05:29.240 --> 1:05:33.080 bear guy that I know. Why are bears considered a 1:05:33.120 --> 1:05:35.400 game species? Can you can you talk about that for me? 1:05:35.440 --> 1:05:37.040 Because that's a question I get all the time. 1:05:37.200 --> 1:05:40.520 What Lets let me put a pause right there on 1:05:40.560 --> 1:05:43.000 that question, because I want to say one thing and 1:05:43.040 --> 1:05:46.760 then I want to go to that right there. If 1:05:47.000 --> 1:05:50.439 the reason bears are so important is if we can 1:05:50.560 --> 1:05:53.560 win on bears, we can win on anything. 1:05:53.680 --> 1:05:54.200 Guard the gate. 1:05:54.320 --> 1:05:58.760 Is what you've said so to me, and we've said 1:05:58.760 --> 1:06:01.160 this for a decade, is that when you look at 1:06:01.200 --> 1:06:05.280 the whole of North American hunting, if we can protect 1:06:05.400 --> 1:06:08.960 the thing that's the gate for you know, the lowest 1:06:08.960 --> 1:06:12.960 hanging fruit, which is always going to be predators, I 1:06:13.000 --> 1:06:17.120 mean everything above it is safe essentially, you know, deer. 1:06:17.320 --> 1:06:19.280 I mean people, people aren't as going to be as 1:06:19.320 --> 1:06:25.760 concerned about if we're talking about actually legislatively hunting opportunities 1:06:25.760 --> 1:06:28.680 being taken away. I mean, when I think about bears 1:06:28.680 --> 1:06:31.640 in Florida, it's almost it's almost like the bear being 1:06:31.640 --> 1:06:35.400 the keystone species biologically, Like if you have bears, then 1:06:36.000 --> 1:06:38.320 you probably got good turkey habitat, and good deer habitat, 1:06:38.400 --> 1:06:42.960 and good habitat and good gopher gopher shorts habitat. In 1:06:43.000 --> 1:06:44.880 a way, if you've got a bear hunt in your state, 1:06:46.000 --> 1:06:47.960 you probably got a lot of things in order to 1:06:48.320 --> 1:06:53.120 even legislatively And that's why I've always said that I 1:06:53.160 --> 1:06:58.640 feel like bear hunting is probably as critical a topic 1:06:58.680 --> 1:07:02.560 of discussion and interest for us to understand and be 1:07:02.560 --> 1:07:05.120 able to articulate and talk through. Because if you can 1:07:05.160 --> 1:07:08.800 explain bear hunting to somebody that's starting from zero and 1:07:08.880 --> 1:07:10.680 get them to go, you know what, I kind of 1:07:10.760 --> 1:07:13.560 understand why you'd hunt a bear now, man, you have one, 1:07:14.480 --> 1:07:20.520 You're the hero, And I just think bears are really important. 1:07:21.360 --> 1:07:22.360 It's critically important. 1:07:22.640 --> 1:07:24.800 I'm a guy that's never hunted a bear spending a 1:07:24.800 --> 1:07:28.280 lot of time with bears because of because I think 1:07:28.320 --> 1:07:31.520 it is. I think it's crucial to saving what matters 1:07:31.520 --> 1:07:33.680 in my state, yes, And I think it's crucial to 1:07:33.760 --> 1:07:37.439 saving this tool that matters in my state, yes, right, 1:07:37.480 --> 1:07:40.080 Like it's critical to keeping the wild places wild, but 1:07:40.120 --> 1:07:43.120 it's also critical to saving hunting, which is going to 1:07:43.160 --> 1:07:44.880 help keep the wild police as wild. Man. 1:07:44.920 --> 1:07:47.040 I think it's so cool that you're such an advocate 1:07:47.080 --> 1:07:49.040 for it, and I love it that you say you've 1:07:49.040 --> 1:07:52.680 never hunted a bear. I mean, we don't need everybody 1:07:52.720 --> 1:07:55.760 to go hunt a bear. I mean they can that 1:07:55.760 --> 1:07:58.960 there's plenty of opportunity to, but it's like people getting 1:07:59.320 --> 1:08:03.640 involved in something bigger than them themselves. Is important right 1:08:03.680 --> 1:08:05.960 now in this time, is. 1:08:05.880 --> 1:08:09.840 It matters a great deal? Your question? Let me ask 1:08:09.880 --> 1:08:12.120 you again because this is and I'm asking you. I 1:08:12.120 --> 1:08:13.840 know how to answer this, but I'm asking you. Is 1:08:13.880 --> 1:08:19.599 the bear hunting experted guy, Yeah, he's the guy. Sister. 1:08:23.360 --> 1:08:26.200 I get asked all the time, why do we consider 1:08:26.240 --> 1:08:27.120 bear game species? 1:08:27.160 --> 1:08:27.280 Now? 1:08:27.280 --> 1:08:29.800 This is being asked by Florida environmentalist primary and I 1:08:29.920 --> 1:08:31.760 was like, let me ask Clay. 1:08:31.720 --> 1:08:35.479 Like, well, I think I think that there's two might 1:08:35.520 --> 1:08:38.960 be two ways to view that. Like in the past, 1:08:39.040 --> 1:08:44.200 a lot of game agencies managed bears as as a 1:08:44.200 --> 1:08:47.439 as a vermin, essentially managed them from a as a 1:08:47.479 --> 1:08:51.160 nuisance species as a nuisance species because they wanted them 1:08:51.160 --> 1:08:54.960 off the landscape. I mean that's that's actually I mean, 1:08:55.200 --> 1:08:58.519 just in the last thirty years, I think have all 1:08:58.600 --> 1:09:02.520 the states now made bear black bears a game species, 1:09:02.560 --> 1:09:06.559 which game species meaning that what that translates to, it's 1:09:06.560 --> 1:09:09.320 gonna have a lot more protection, it's gonna have science 1:09:09.360 --> 1:09:13.080 based studies going into how many are there, how many 1:09:13.080 --> 1:09:15.920 are taken? Like when an animal comes a game species 1:09:15.960 --> 1:09:18.879 all of a sudden, it's getting a lot more attention, 1:09:19.600 --> 1:09:23.320 a lot more regulation, And it's good now I think 1:09:23.439 --> 1:09:28.680 what an anti hunter and Florida might The tunnel that 1:09:28.680 --> 1:09:32.120 their question is coming from is why are we even 1:09:32.240 --> 1:09:35.519 hunting them? This shouldn't be an animal that we even hunt, 1:09:36.040 --> 1:09:38.040 so like they're not saying, let's manage it as a 1:09:38.160 --> 1:09:40.320 vermin or a nuisance animal. Am I right? 1:09:40.360 --> 1:09:41.840 You know you're exactly right, But I want you to 1:09:41.880 --> 1:09:44.479 talk about the well bears are the species we do 1:09:44.520 --> 1:09:45.360 the most with, right. 1:09:45.240 --> 1:09:50.840 The historic historic practice on this continent is humans on 1:09:50.880 --> 1:09:53.680 this place have been hunting bears since the since the 1:09:53.720 --> 1:09:58.519 time they set their feet on this continent, long deep, 1:09:58.840 --> 1:10:03.559 deep history. Utilization of BlackBerry in this continent. I mean 1:10:04.680 --> 1:10:07.240 we talk about utilization of wild game, like we kill 1:10:07.240 --> 1:10:08.840 a deer and we want to eat all the meat 1:10:08.880 --> 1:10:13.160 and you know, save the horns for a memory. 1:10:13.720 --> 1:10:13.960 Man. 1:10:14.000 --> 1:10:15.760 Black bears. We use more of a black bear than 1:10:15.800 --> 1:10:18.840 any other big game species that we harvest. How many 1:10:18.840 --> 1:10:21.759 deer hides do you have hanging in your house? Okay, 1:10:22.479 --> 1:10:25.280 bear hides on a black bear? You eat the meat. 1:10:25.960 --> 1:10:29.040 I would say eighty percent of blackberries. Their hides are 1:10:29.080 --> 1:10:34.759 tanned when people harvest them, and we render the fat, 1:10:34.800 --> 1:10:38.040 which is something that's revival. There's a bear fat revival 1:10:38.080 --> 1:10:40.599 in this country, and guys are starting to harvest fat 1:10:40.640 --> 1:10:45.240 from their animals and rendered into bear grease, so historic use. 1:10:45.360 --> 1:10:50.760 Native Americans use bear like crazy. They're incredible table fare. 1:10:51.240 --> 1:10:53.479 I mean, in the frontier days, people killed deer for 1:10:53.520 --> 1:10:56.559 their skins and bear for the meat. I mean, it 1:10:56.640 --> 1:11:00.080 was crazy to think about eating deer. Guys were the 1:11:00.080 --> 1:11:02.960 the long hunters were shooting deer and leaving the carcasses 1:11:03.000 --> 1:11:06.439 on the ground and killing bears for food. So essentially, 1:11:06.520 --> 1:11:09.720 the answer to your question would be they're an incredible 1:11:10.040 --> 1:11:15.400 animal for eating and for for utilizing for bear fat. 1:11:15.479 --> 1:11:16.800 I mean, you could go into all the things you 1:11:16.840 --> 1:11:19.080 do with bear fat. But uh, I mean does that 1:11:19.160 --> 1:11:20.240 does that answer your question? 1:11:20.240 --> 1:11:22.240 I think that is the That's what I have said 1:11:22.240 --> 1:11:23.880 to people, But I'm not a bear hunter, so it 1:11:23.960 --> 1:11:26.360 rings hollow when I say it. I'm asking you the 1:11:26.360 --> 1:11:29.439 bear expert, like, this is the animal right I. 1:11:29.439 --> 1:11:32.479 Mean, is if a white tailed deer is a game animal, 1:11:32.920 --> 1:11:36.080 manages a game animal because we eat it. A bear 1:11:36.160 --> 1:11:38.400 is managed as a game animal because it's better than 1:11:38.400 --> 1:11:39.200 a white tailed. 1:11:38.960 --> 1:11:40.679 Deer, that's the answer. 1:11:41.000 --> 1:11:44.800 I mean, it's just true. And and uh, and we've 1:11:44.800 --> 1:11:49.679 got that that deep historical data that that that says 1:11:49.720 --> 1:11:51.240 that you know, I love it. 1:11:52.439 --> 1:11:55.200 Well, I'd eat a bear burger any day over just 1:11:55.200 --> 1:11:56.120 about any other meat. 1:11:56.200 --> 1:11:57.920 What did you say. You've had two bear burgers in 1:11:57.960 --> 1:11:58.760 my house in the last month. 1:11:59.040 --> 1:12:01.439 They are the best that you can eat. 1:12:02.439 --> 1:12:06.000 Anybody that I don't know. Three out of ten guys 1:12:06.040 --> 1:12:08.080 I talked to, go man, I don't like bear meat. 1:12:08.080 --> 1:12:11.439 I had at once and it was tasted to a man. 1:12:11.920 --> 1:12:13.960 I have no idea what people are doing if they 1:12:14.040 --> 1:12:17.400 have any meat that tastes bad delicious. Yeah, I mean, 1:12:18.560 --> 1:12:19.920 I don't know. I don't know what to tell them. 1:12:20.040 --> 1:12:21.320 It's it's really great meat. 1:12:21.560 --> 1:12:23.559 I've never had a bear burger. I've had a I've 1:12:23.600 --> 1:12:26.519 had roast. I've had a bunch of roast, but never 1:12:26.520 --> 1:12:27.040 had a burger. 1:12:27.439 --> 1:12:29.800 I wish I would have cooked you one if you 1:12:29.840 --> 1:12:30.320 were here long. 1:12:30.800 --> 1:12:34.360 Well, we'll have to do Florida. Come to Florida Harvest 1:12:34.439 --> 1:12:34.920 Bear and then we. 1:12:34.920 --> 1:12:39.120 Can if I draw one of those tags. But we're 1:12:39.120 --> 1:12:41.519 not going to tell them that no non residents can't. 1:12:41.600 --> 1:12:44.000 Yeah, yeah, there's no way that a non resident could 1:12:44.080 --> 1:12:45.599 ever get a Florida bear tag. 1:12:46.320 --> 1:12:49.760 Really neat, that was a joke. Really neat thing they're 1:12:49.800 --> 1:12:52.960 doing too, is they wanted to make sure private lands 1:12:52.960 --> 1:12:54.679 were in corporated, because obviously you can't have a feeder 1:12:54.680 --> 1:12:57.200 on public land. We can use dogs on a lot 1:12:57.240 --> 1:12:59.879 of public land. We have a lot of National Force billowed, 1:13:00.360 --> 1:13:03.720 but not in this season, in this this first year, right, 1:13:03.920 --> 1:13:06.719 but not the second one. It'd be twenty seven before 1:13:06.760 --> 1:13:13.519 dogs were used. Okay, dogs would utilize but we'll see. Oh, 1:13:13.560 --> 1:13:15.720 so the private landowner will be able to apply for 1:13:15.800 --> 1:13:20.000 tags and those tags would come out of the whole quota, 1:13:20.479 --> 1:13:23.439 which you could argue, well, that's less opportunities for me, 1:13:23.720 --> 1:13:25.960 But I think it's a really good management tool, and. 1:13:25.920 --> 1:13:30.200 I think landowner isn't it has a better chance of 1:13:30.240 --> 1:13:30.880 getting the tag. 1:13:31.240 --> 1:13:33.200 Is that what you're saying? No, But if they apply, 1:13:33.320 --> 1:13:34.960 they could get those tags taken out of the one 1:13:35.040 --> 1:13:37.799 hundred and eighty seven. So if you have three thousand 1:13:37.800 --> 1:13:39.760 acres in North Florida and you got bears all over it, 1:13:40.040 --> 1:13:42.760 you can apply for the private landowner tags now. 1:13:42.760 --> 1:13:44.160 But they wouldn't go in the draw. 1:13:44.960 --> 1:13:47.719 They would have to is it their own draw? 1:13:48.439 --> 1:13:48.479 No? 1:13:48.680 --> 1:13:51.000 I think they still have to go through the draw process. 1:13:51.080 --> 1:13:52.640 But if they got drawn, it would come out of that. 1:13:52.800 --> 1:13:56.000 But I mean, I'm not understanding. I feel like there's 1:13:56.040 --> 1:13:58.520 something else you're saying. Because if me and a landowner 1:13:58.520 --> 1:14:01.120 with ten thousand acres put in, I would have the 1:14:01.120 --> 1:14:02.840 same odds as drawn as him. 1:14:03.160 --> 1:14:04.599 That's the way I understand it work. But I can 1:14:04.600 --> 1:14:05.680 get you a clarification on that. 1:14:05.800 --> 1:14:07.920 Yeah, I mean I thought maybe you were saying there 1:14:07.960 --> 1:14:10.000 with those guys were given a preference. 1:14:10.120 --> 1:14:12.679 No, they're not giving a preference. They're not giving a preference. 1:14:12.720 --> 1:14:14.320 But I think what will happen is we'll see that 1:14:14.360 --> 1:14:18.320 program grow out over the time and so this first 1:14:18.360 --> 1:14:21.120 year we may see someone in a private landowners take 1:14:21.120 --> 1:14:23.080 some of those on hundred and eighty seven tacks as 1:14:23.160 --> 1:14:27.360 through an application process. I would think arguably they're going 1:14:27.400 --> 1:14:29.519 to have a higher success rate because they got feeders 1:14:29.560 --> 1:14:31.720 and they've got private land. This man is different. You 1:14:31.720 --> 1:14:33.640 don't have the romping stamp of people like driving their 1:14:33.720 --> 1:14:36.960 cheeks and riding horses. But then long term, I think 1:14:37.000 --> 1:14:39.200 we'll see a private land program. 1:14:39.600 --> 1:14:43.800 Man, I'm all for it. See anybody that is like man, 1:14:43.880 --> 1:14:46.480 the private land guys getting any kind of a preference 1:14:46.520 --> 1:14:49.960 over non private land, I'm not for it. And I 1:14:50.040 --> 1:14:51.240 don't own big properties. 1:14:51.320 --> 1:14:51.679 I don't. 1:14:53.000 --> 1:14:56.960 But if I owned four thousand acres in Florida and 1:14:57.040 --> 1:15:00.360 I got bear, it's just crawling with bears. Give me 1:15:00.400 --> 1:15:04.439 an incentive exactly to not gut shoot those bears with 1:15:04.479 --> 1:15:07.000 a twenty two rifle, which that's very crass and I 1:15:07.000 --> 1:15:07.599 don't even. 1:15:07.439 --> 1:15:10.479 Like to say, but it's a shut up, right, Like, Oh. 1:15:10.360 --> 1:15:13.000 It happens all the time in places where there's no 1:15:13.160 --> 1:15:15.120 season and there's no outlet for. 1:15:15.800 --> 1:15:18.640 Management of that species. That's right. And oh, you've got 1:15:18.640 --> 1:15:22.000 an animal that's destructive. You said he's curious. He's destructive 1:15:22.120 --> 1:15:24.320 to I don't know that they would take a cap, 1:15:24.400 --> 1:15:26.760 but I know they take goats and cheap and things 1:15:26.760 --> 1:15:30.479 like that. Like they will opportunistically take livestock. They'll destroy 1:15:30.680 --> 1:15:33.840 fences and sheds and barns and like they just we 1:15:33.880 --> 1:15:35.400 had our first fatality from a bear. 1:15:35.760 --> 1:15:37.479 I was going to bring that up. Do you think 1:15:37.520 --> 1:15:42.240 that was part of the what helped push this hunt over? 1:15:42.280 --> 1:15:43.640 You don't think you had anything they had anything to 1:15:43.640 --> 1:15:44.920 do with it. Tell me about that fatality. 1:15:44.960 --> 1:15:47.240 When was it? This was in May so so the 1:15:47.280 --> 1:15:49.320 commission meeting, I don't remember the dates. May was kind 1:15:49.320 --> 1:15:50.800 of a blurb. But the commission meeting, it was like 1:15:50.800 --> 1:15:53.280 two weeks before the FBC Commission meeting, we had we 1:15:53.320 --> 1:15:57.479 had a guy. He lives in the Everglades and the bear. 1:15:58.840 --> 1:16:01.600 The details have not been released fully so so the 1:16:01.640 --> 1:16:03.800 report's not out there yet. But the agency calls it 1:16:03.840 --> 1:16:07.720 a predatory attack. Wow. So it's a really sad situation. 1:16:08.560 --> 1:16:10.840 And was it was it in his neighborhood or was 1:16:10.840 --> 1:16:11.519 it out in the wild. 1:16:11.520 --> 1:16:14.240 It was he kind of lived remotely, so uh, he 1:16:14.280 --> 1:16:17.400 lived in like a like a for lack of a 1:16:17.400 --> 1:16:19.640 better term, I called an in holding, like like he 1:16:19.720 --> 1:16:23.479 lived in the woods. It killed his dog and it 1:16:23.560 --> 1:16:26.040 killed him. They and the agency ended up killing three 1:16:26.080 --> 1:16:30.880 bears in reaction to that, to that attack, and it 1:16:30.960 --> 1:16:33.800 was it was there. I have heard it is some 1:16:33.840 --> 1:16:36.320 of the grizzliest stuff that people have ever seen. Wow, 1:16:36.479 --> 1:16:40.760 like really yeah, unsettling. The photos and the I haven't 1:16:40.800 --> 1:16:42.520 seen them, but it was unsettling. 1:16:43.479 --> 1:16:48.720 So black bear, it's pretty it's pretty interesting. On average, 1:16:49.520 --> 1:16:53.080 like one American gets killed a year by black bear. 1:16:53.320 --> 1:16:57.400 Really on average, I. 1:16:57.360 --> 1:17:01.479 Want to say three or four on average get killed 1:17:01.520 --> 1:17:06.000 by grizzlies, which is super interesting because the grizzly home 1:17:06.360 --> 1:17:11.040 the range of grizzlies is three percent of what the 1:17:11.280 --> 1:17:17.360 range of black bears is. On average, reported black bear 1:17:17.400 --> 1:17:22.600 attacks over the last like sixty years, there's like thirteen 1:17:23.439 --> 1:17:27.880 documented black bear what they would consider an attack on humans. 1:17:27.880 --> 1:17:33.719 So and this is general data. One death, thirteen attacks. Wow, 1:17:34.240 --> 1:17:36.559 a lot of stuff doesn't go reported. Like my friend 1:17:36.600 --> 1:17:40.760 Moe Shepherd who got charged by salve black bear and 1:17:41.600 --> 1:17:43.920 punched it in the face with his bow and kicked 1:17:43.920 --> 1:17:46.599 it in the teeth, and like it didn't hurt him, 1:17:46.760 --> 1:17:48.639 Like that wasn't considered an attack. 1:17:48.800 --> 1:17:49.560 It wasn't. 1:17:49.600 --> 1:17:52.920 It didn't counted like if it's if there's contact, Well 1:17:53.000 --> 1:17:55.439 there was contact in that one, but point bing. There's 1:17:55.479 --> 1:17:58.720 a lot more skirmishes that happen, but actual attacks where 1:17:58.760 --> 1:18:03.760 somebody gets malled. Statistically, the people that get attacked are 1:18:03.760 --> 1:18:07.280 people that have dogs because they go for the dog. Well, 1:18:08.320 --> 1:18:13.040 the dog goes for the bear. If you've got a 1:18:13.120 --> 1:18:16.639 leash dog, it's actually better. But if you have an 1:18:16.720 --> 1:18:21.000 unleashed dog, like I don't want to say the percentage, 1:18:21.000 --> 1:18:25.840 but a vast a lot of those thirteen attacks that 1:18:25.880 --> 1:18:29.280 are going to happen by a dog is running loose. 1:18:29.320 --> 1:18:31.880 You're just walking down a trail. Your dog sees the 1:18:31.880 --> 1:18:35.640 bear before you goes in barks at the bear. The 1:18:35.640 --> 1:18:38.759 bear turns on the dog, and the dog goes, oh crap. 1:18:39.479 --> 1:18:44.200 The dog runs back to you. The bear follows the 1:18:45.120 --> 1:18:50.080 dog right back to you and attacks you. Yep, So 1:18:50.720 --> 1:18:54.040 the the consistent theme inside of attacks is dogs, which 1:18:54.080 --> 1:18:57.040 people actually usually would think a dog would be protecting 1:18:57.040 --> 1:19:00.360 them from the bear. Right, But that's why people are 1:19:00.360 --> 1:19:05.080 getting attacked. And then, but the most deaths are from 1:19:05.160 --> 1:19:10.880 predatory attacks, usually juvenile males, and they literally are when 1:19:10.920 --> 1:19:14.960 a bear is stalking people. You know, there's a way 1:19:15.000 --> 1:19:18.160 that they categorize a predatory attack. It's not like a surprise. 1:19:18.280 --> 1:19:21.880 It's not a salad defending her cubs. Salad defending her 1:19:21.880 --> 1:19:25.720 cubs is not gonna kill you. She's just gonna eradicate 1:19:25.760 --> 1:19:28.400 those you're sure in the threat, in the threat, and 1:19:28.439 --> 1:19:30.000 as soon as she can get away from it, she's 1:19:30.040 --> 1:19:32.840 going to So you're gonna get whooped on a little bit, 1:19:33.560 --> 1:19:36.599 but you very unlikely she's gonna kill you. The one 1:19:36.640 --> 1:19:38.960 that's gonna kill you is a three year old male 1:19:39.520 --> 1:19:41.280 that you're walking down a trail and all of a 1:19:41.320 --> 1:19:43.920 sudden you look back thirty yards and he's following you, 1:19:44.720 --> 1:19:47.760 just like walking, looking at you, making an eye contact, 1:19:47.840 --> 1:19:51.320 lowered head, and you start walking faster and he starts 1:19:51.320 --> 1:19:55.200 walking faster, and I mean that that's a bear that 1:19:55.240 --> 1:20:00.799 will kill you. And what happens. It's happened several times, uh, 1:20:01.160 --> 1:20:06.120 where basically a bear starts coming around somebody's house, like 1:20:06.160 --> 1:20:08.559 an inn holding where they're you know, just like this 1:20:09.160 --> 1:20:11.639 lone house out in the woods somewhere, and a bear 1:20:11.760 --> 1:20:14.519 just starts coming around, coming around, getting more more familiar 1:20:14.560 --> 1:20:18.200 with who's there, what's going on, and pretty soon that 1:20:18.280 --> 1:20:21.759 bear has killed somebody. There was a story, uh believe 1:20:21.760 --> 1:20:25.000 in California a couple of years ago, I mean in 1:20:25.400 --> 1:20:28.559 modern times, in the last decade, where a bear was 1:20:28.600 --> 1:20:30.800 just coming around this lady's house. She she called it 1:20:30.920 --> 1:20:35.160 the she she actually called it the big old B 1:20:35.200 --> 1:20:37.840 A S T A R D. That's what she called it. 1:20:38.800 --> 1:20:42.160 I don't want to say the word. Uh did I 1:20:42.200 --> 1:20:42.720 spell it right? 1:20:42.840 --> 1:20:43.000 Yeah? 1:20:43.080 --> 1:20:44.800 Yeah, y'all looking at you. 1:20:45.840 --> 1:20:47.920 We're gonna have a caption on the bottom. 1:20:48.520 --> 1:20:50.880 She called she called 's what she called it. All 1:20:50.960 --> 1:20:55.000 her family knew, you know, he's here, the big B word. 1:20:56.120 --> 1:20:58.479 That's like her broken her window ate that woman in 1:20:58.560 --> 1:21:01.920 her house. Oh my, yeah, yeah, and. 1:21:03.479 --> 1:21:03.960 Very rare. 1:21:04.200 --> 1:21:08.200 I mean, yeah, you've got a much You shouldn't be 1:21:08.240 --> 1:21:12.160 afraid of black bears. You really shouldn't, but it does happen. 1:21:12.479 --> 1:21:14.600 Right anyway, I was going to ask you about that. 1:21:15.439 --> 1:21:18.080 You give them a name like that, If you give 1:21:18.080 --> 1:21:20.040 it a name like that, just expect to get attacked. 1:21:20.280 --> 1:21:22.920 Yeah, be more respectful of your names. Right, that's right. 1:21:32.200 --> 1:21:35.760 Another dynamic of the black bear situation in America, and 1:21:35.880 --> 1:21:39.120 it's happening in Florida, is never before in history has 1:21:39.160 --> 1:21:42.200 there been so much overlap with black bears and humans. 1:21:42.320 --> 1:21:45.479 Never in history. We've got more black bears today that 1:21:45.520 --> 1:21:50.040 we've had in the last two hundred years. And what 1:21:50.240 --> 1:21:52.599 was the American population two hundred years ago, I mean 1:21:52.680 --> 1:21:56.360 probably like ten million, twenty million, maybe today we've got 1:21:56.400 --> 1:21:59.559 three in a thirty million. And it's like j curving, 1:22:00.520 --> 1:22:03.479 you know, the so never before in history. So this 1:22:03.680 --> 1:22:08.479 idea that you'd think, like the American bear story is 1:22:08.600 --> 1:22:11.679 kind of this old like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett deal, 1:22:11.800 --> 1:22:13.760 you know, those are the guys that you know, had 1:22:13.800 --> 1:22:17.080 these overlaps with bears. They didn't have nothing compared to 1:22:18.000 --> 1:22:18.799 what we got today. 1:22:19.360 --> 1:22:20.960 You know, it's funny you say that too. I want 1:22:21.000 --> 1:22:23.280 to not to hijack where you're going there, but going 1:22:23.320 --> 1:22:26.840 back to like the conservation success, like you said, when 1:22:27.000 --> 1:22:31.160 when vodka got there, De Soto got there, there were 1:22:31.320 --> 1:22:35.200 probably eleven thousand bears prior to that. Then we went 1:22:35.280 --> 1:22:39.000 into this massive slump. And now we have twenty two 1:22:39.040 --> 1:22:41.160 and a half million people in this state, and we 1:22:41.240 --> 1:22:42.400 got over four thousand bears. 1:22:42.560 --> 1:22:44.519 You got almost a third of them. 1:22:44.560 --> 1:22:46.599 We have not half of We're almost back to where 1:22:47.080 --> 1:22:49.639 like and we've grown and I mean none of what's 1:22:49.680 --> 1:22:52.760 in Florida existed when they set foot there, right, And 1:22:52.880 --> 1:22:55.200 we've the species and so we talk about what's wrong 1:22:55.240 --> 1:22:57.519 in conservation all the time. Leopold talked about the world 1:22:57.560 --> 1:22:59.120 of wounds that we live in. You see all the 1:22:59.200 --> 1:23:03.559 problems in reality, that's pretty good, man, Like the species 1:23:03.640 --> 1:23:06.240 has been restored to such a place that we could 1:23:06.560 --> 1:23:09.599 take some of them as a sustainable, renewable, yeah resource, 1:23:10.160 --> 1:23:13.240 and they likely are continuing to grow. We're continuing to 1:23:13.280 --> 1:23:14.400 study them. Like that's yes. 1:23:14.720 --> 1:23:17.360 If one hundred years ago you you you said, okay, 1:23:17.439 --> 1:23:19.679 one day there's gonna be twenty two million people in Florida. 1:23:19.720 --> 1:23:21.160 All these people are gonna have a place to live, 1:23:21.680 --> 1:23:24.400 All these resources are gonna be extracted. There's gonna be roads. 1:23:24.640 --> 1:23:26.519 You don't know much about roads two hundred years ago, 1:23:26.560 --> 1:23:28.680 but there's gonna be pavement on them. Let's pavement, right. 1:23:28.920 --> 1:23:29.040 Uh. 1:23:29.760 --> 1:23:32.599 And you would have said, what's gonna happen to the bears. 1:23:33.160 --> 1:23:33.840 They're gonna be gone. 1:23:34.120 --> 1:23:37.320 You would think they're gonna be completely gone. And it 1:23:37.479 --> 1:23:41.679 is still a little bit of a mystery how bears 1:23:41.720 --> 1:23:44.600 have done so well. I mean, we do know that 1:23:44.880 --> 1:23:53.120 the magic that populations, I mean, it's it's like white 1:23:53.160 --> 1:23:59.519 tailed deer, like disturbed landscapes produce more more vegetation, more feed, 1:24:00.040 --> 1:24:04.040 potentially more cover even at times than undisturbed landscapes. So 1:24:04.360 --> 1:24:06.360 just like white tailed deer, there there are twice as 1:24:06.400 --> 1:24:08.880 many white tailed deer today in America as there was 1:24:09.120 --> 1:24:12.439 pre European settlement. I mean, they say, and I don't 1:24:12.479 --> 1:24:13.400 know what the new numbers. 1:24:13.200 --> 1:24:16.200 Are, because they thrive with disturbance ecology. 1:24:15.840 --> 1:24:18.280 One hundred percent. And they're they're they're animals of the edges, 1:24:18.640 --> 1:24:23.160 and so we've created exponential amounts of edges compared to 1:24:23.240 --> 1:24:25.519 what would have been here pre European settlements, so white 1:24:25.520 --> 1:24:27.560 tailed deer have gone. Bear kind of fit into that 1:24:27.640 --> 1:24:31.320 same category. They're not quite like deer. They don't cone 1:24:31.360 --> 1:24:34.720 in on the ecological niches. But disturbance to the landscape 1:24:34.760 --> 1:24:38.960 has has produced success. And the thing that a bear 1:24:39.040 --> 1:24:41.599 can do that a deer can't is bears have learned 1:24:41.640 --> 1:24:45.400 how to use anthrogenic foods to their advantage. So in 1:24:45.479 --> 1:24:48.719 these urban centers and and even even in rural places 1:24:48.800 --> 1:24:53.040 like Arkansas, bears are capitalizing on some man made food 1:24:53.120 --> 1:24:57.920 and agricultural areas. Their man made food is skyrocketing and 1:24:58.120 --> 1:25:00.559 so it but it's still kind of a history. It's 1:25:00.560 --> 1:25:04.400 still like, wait a minute, why are bears doing so well? 1:25:04.479 --> 1:25:07.679 And this is a stat that's in the academic literature 1:25:08.040 --> 1:25:12.679 and has been for a decade plus, is that every 1:25:13.479 --> 1:25:18.760 research population of bears in North America is increasing or 1:25:18.880 --> 1:25:26.360 stable period. I mean, what other population of hunted animals, 1:25:26.880 --> 1:25:28.800 big game animals could you say that about. I mean, 1:25:28.840 --> 1:25:30.560 there's plenty of things that are doing well. I'm not 1:25:31.080 --> 1:25:35.519 but every population study, and the reason they say studied 1:25:35.600 --> 1:25:41.720 population is because they haven't really studied every population to 1:25:41.840 --> 1:25:45.439 the extent of others. Because if you have a limited 1:25:45.479 --> 1:25:48.479 amount of resources in your game agency. And there are 1:25:48.600 --> 1:25:52.599 bears everywhere, and you got you know, the bob black 1:25:52.720 --> 1:25:56.320 quail that's about to struggling kick the bucket, like you're 1:25:56.360 --> 1:25:58.240 putting a lot of energy towards here. They're kind of 1:25:58.320 --> 1:26:01.160 like this is particularly what I There is a lot 1:26:01.200 --> 1:26:03.240 of bear research that goes on in Canada, but it's 1:26:03.280 --> 1:26:07.439 almost like, hey, the bears are fine, let's study caribou. 1:26:07.720 --> 1:26:08.880 Do you kind of see what I'm saying. 1:26:08.920 --> 1:26:10.680 Yeah, So like I gotta put your money where you 1:26:10.760 --> 1:26:11.639 think it's gonna. 1:26:11.640 --> 1:26:14.360 And and and bears are one of the most research 1:26:14.600 --> 1:26:17.519 big game animals in North America, if not the most 1:26:17.600 --> 1:26:20.719 researched animal in North America. I mean, like incredible amount 1:26:20.720 --> 1:26:24.120 of research. But all that to say they're thriving. 1:26:24.760 --> 1:26:26.720 You said something else a minute ago too that as 1:26:26.760 --> 1:26:29.120 you're talking now, reminded me you talked about them being 1:26:29.120 --> 1:26:31.479 a game species when I asked you that question, and 1:26:31.560 --> 1:26:34.600 that we fund research. We I've run through this. In 1:26:34.680 --> 1:26:36.800 Florida a few years back, they wanted to close a 1:26:36.800 --> 1:26:39.400 fishing pier over pelicans on it, and I said, well, 1:26:39.439 --> 1:26:42.520 what's our what's our mortality rate on pelicans? What's compenstory. 1:26:42.560 --> 1:26:45.080 What's additive, Like I'm I'm I'm a I'm a hunter, 1:26:45.360 --> 1:26:47.519 Like we should know these well, we don't have the 1:26:47.560 --> 1:26:49.680 money to study them like that because they're not a 1:26:49.720 --> 1:26:52.439 game species. They're not they're not regulated in that way, 1:26:52.439 --> 1:26:55.600 they're not managed that way. We're versus game species. We 1:26:55.760 --> 1:26:57.720 know those details inside and out. Like I can go 1:26:57.760 --> 1:27:00.280 down the list of ducks and turkeys and yeah, I 1:27:00.280 --> 1:27:02.800 mean we can get into it on what really is 1:27:02.800 --> 1:27:06.200 happening with those species. Bear fit into that, and that's 1:27:06.200 --> 1:27:08.599 where hunters fit into this conversation. Right. We've been paying 1:27:08.640 --> 1:27:10.840 for that for a long long time and we're going 1:27:10.920 --> 1:27:12.280 to continue to pay for it. Yeah. 1:27:12.840 --> 1:27:20.040 Yeah, So Walk may ride up to last week when 1:27:20.920 --> 1:27:23.040 this is hot off the press, Walk may ride up 1:27:23.080 --> 1:27:24.960 to the commission meeting and tell me what happened. 1:27:25.400 --> 1:27:27.840 Yeah, so we The commission meeting was in a little 1:27:27.880 --> 1:27:31.160 town called Havana, Florida. You ever heard of Havana. I've 1:27:31.200 --> 1:27:35.000 heard of Havana, Cuba. It's not near that. It's about 1:27:35.040 --> 1:27:38.760 twenty minutes outside of Tallahassee. It is where the one 1:27:38.800 --> 1:27:40.519 thing f to BC does I've alluded to this early 1:27:40.600 --> 1:27:43.360 they moved around the state, so that it's not it's 1:27:43.360 --> 1:27:44.840 not always in Orlando, and you got to go there. 1:27:44.920 --> 1:27:47.919 It's not always in Tallhassee and you got to go there. Havana. 1:27:48.120 --> 1:27:50.720 The facility didn't cost taxpayer much because it's the law 1:27:50.800 --> 1:27:53.680 enforcement training facility, so we had a kind of a 1:27:53.760 --> 1:27:59.080 cheap facility to use there. We coordinated in advance. A 1:27:59.120 --> 1:28:01.280 lot of the hunting groups ordated in advance of Hey, 1:28:01.360 --> 1:28:04.120 we need to make sure we packed this room. I 1:28:04.200 --> 1:28:06.479 don't love that game because I don't think that should matter. 1:28:06.640 --> 1:28:08.479 How many people are in attendance in their area should 1:28:08.520 --> 1:28:11.720 not matter. Science should drive wild like Paulic. But there's 1:28:11.720 --> 1:28:14.800 a social science game a foot there. And so we 1:28:14.880 --> 1:28:17.519 showed up in mass Like I mentioned earlier, the dog 1:28:17.600 --> 1:28:20.519 hunting community. That's obviously a dog hunting stronghold the North 1:28:20.520 --> 1:28:24.320 Florida world, but we had folks drive from South Florida. 1:28:24.479 --> 1:28:26.400 I mean there were guys there from around the state. 1:28:27.240 --> 1:28:30.760 The dog hunters largely wore orange. So when you looked 1:28:30.760 --> 1:28:32.719 at the room, like, I can send you some pictures, 1:28:32.720 --> 1:28:34.080 but when you look at the room like, it's just 1:28:34.120 --> 1:28:37.080 a sea of orange in that room. Wow, Sierra Club 1:28:38.280 --> 1:28:40.880 bust people in. They had three bus locations around the state. 1:28:40.960 --> 1:28:42.960 One I think in Daytona, one in Tampa, and one 1:28:43.040 --> 1:28:46.160 somewhere south, and they bust people to the event to 1:28:46.200 --> 1:28:50.960 speak in opposition to the to the hunt and staff 1:28:51.000 --> 1:28:53.200 came up there, gave presentation. It was the same presentation 1:28:53.280 --> 1:28:56.360 they had in May. And because they bring it, they 1:28:56.400 --> 1:28:58.920 bring it to May for approval as a draft, and 1:28:59.000 --> 1:29:00.920 then they give some time for people to kind of 1:29:01.080 --> 1:29:03.240 and we had one no vote in May who flipped 1:29:03.280 --> 1:29:05.559 devoted just this time. One commister voted no in May 1:29:05.960 --> 1:29:07.599 and he flipped and voted yes this time. He didn't 1:29:07.640 --> 1:29:09.400 understand think it was dogs was one of his concerned 1:29:09.439 --> 1:29:13.560 dogs in bait. So we got to we got to 1:29:14.320 --> 1:29:16.320 you know, the staff did the presentation. Then they allow 1:29:16.439 --> 1:29:21.760 public comment and bye. By rule they say they're going 1:29:21.800 --> 1:29:24.920 to allow two hours for public comments and you typically 1:29:24.920 --> 1:29:27.240 get three minutes per person. Well, we had one hundred 1:29:27.280 --> 1:29:29.439 and seventy people sign up, so what are you gonna do. 1:29:29.800 --> 1:29:32.240 What they did is they gave every person a minute. See, 1:29:32.360 --> 1:29:34.080 I mean it's hard, you got to consolidate your three 1:29:34.120 --> 1:29:35.880 minutes down to a minute, but you get to go 1:29:35.960 --> 1:29:39.320 up there say your piece. And they made sure every 1:29:39.400 --> 1:29:42.160 person got to speak in that room. Really. Oh yeah, 1:29:42.160 --> 1:29:45.200 and I get that recorded. It is, it is, it'd 1:29:45.240 --> 1:29:47.519 be an interesting thing. It is because I learned some 1:29:47.640 --> 1:29:50.639 things one minute to speak man. I learned some things there. 1:29:50.760 --> 1:29:52.640 That you could kill bears just by staring at him. 1:29:53.000 --> 1:29:54.479 I did not know that that was. That was what 1:29:54.560 --> 1:29:56.160 one of the anti hunters said. And I was like, 1:29:56.280 --> 1:29:59.679 in DDE, now don't look at me, like that's dangerous 1:29:59.720 --> 1:30:01.880 what you doing right now? Like they a lady walked 1:30:01.960 --> 1:30:03.679 up there and she was determined that you could kill bears. 1:30:03.720 --> 1:30:05.599 She could scare them to death just by staring at them. 1:30:06.439 --> 1:30:09.720 We had another woman proposed that we that we hunt 1:30:09.760 --> 1:30:13.160 white tail deer granted coon out of a tree, right, 1:30:13.320 --> 1:30:17.360 so who knows? I'm interested in digging into that. Would 1:30:17.360 --> 1:30:19.920 another person say that we could we should look at 1:30:19.920 --> 1:30:24.400 a honety white tail deer. We've checked that box already. 1:30:25.840 --> 1:30:30.000 Another woman offered to give money to the Wildlife Commission 1:30:30.040 --> 1:30:32.920 directly if they would instead of a bear hunt, fund 1:30:32.960 --> 1:30:36.320 a python hunt, which you can hunt pythons anytime in Florida. 1:30:36.320 --> 1:30:39.720 Oh yeah, there's been massive mass so like there was 1:30:39.800 --> 1:30:40.960 just like people just didn't know. 1:30:41.120 --> 1:30:44.320 It was just a detachment from reality. That was fostered 1:30:44.439 --> 1:30:46.280 in and it's it's the people we were talking about 1:30:46.280 --> 1:30:48.000 a minute ago. I don't think those people, Like I'm 1:30:48.160 --> 1:30:49.599 kind of poking fun out, but I don't think those 1:30:49.600 --> 1:30:51.880 people are probably bad people. If you could sit down 1:30:51.880 --> 1:30:55.200 and have a conversation and be like the eye lady, 1:30:55.240 --> 1:30:57.040 I'm not sure how to even start that one, But 1:30:57.160 --> 1:30:59.479 like the other ones, I'm like, man, we hunt white 1:30:59.479 --> 1:31:01.600 tail deer. That's a game species that we've hunted for 1:31:02.160 --> 1:31:07.400 since we've been hunting. Yeah, it's just like a detachment. 1:31:07.479 --> 1:31:08.800 And so they're picking up on a narrative. And I 1:31:08.880 --> 1:31:11.360 sat next to a girl. It was from Sierra Club 1:31:11.400 --> 1:31:12.800 and she said, can I ask you some questions? I 1:31:12.840 --> 1:31:17.439 said sure, And she said, this is a trophy hunt, right, 1:31:17.439 --> 1:31:19.040 And I'm like, well, no, it's not a trophy hunt. 1:31:19.080 --> 1:31:22.920 I said, trophy hunting is like a missed omer. Secondly, 1:31:23.080 --> 1:31:25.280 no one trophy hunts anything in Florida. Like we have 1:31:25.360 --> 1:31:27.800 wanting waste balls and everything else. Like, you're not coming 1:31:27.800 --> 1:31:30.479 here to trophy hunt a deer. You know you're coming 1:31:30.520 --> 1:31:32.559 here because you want to hunt, you taking the meat 1:31:32.560 --> 1:31:34.040 and everything else. I was like, this is not a 1:31:34.120 --> 1:31:36.919 trophy hunt. You could just tell she'd kind of been misled. 1:31:37.800 --> 1:31:40.040 She had a tender heart for bears. She probably is 1:31:40.120 --> 1:31:41.880 never going to go hunt. But you know, I don't 1:31:41.880 --> 1:31:43.320 know if I changed her mind or anything else, but 1:31:43.400 --> 1:31:45.360 it was it was the conversation you're talking about, right, 1:31:45.960 --> 1:31:47.679 And I looked around the room and you see people 1:31:47.720 --> 1:31:50.040 around the room having those conversations where people are sitting 1:31:50.080 --> 1:31:50.320 next to you. 1:31:50.400 --> 1:31:53.360 You feel like the guys in Orange did a good 1:31:53.479 --> 1:31:56.200 job of interacting with the Sierra, and I realized that 1:31:56.360 --> 1:31:58.920 there was some that didn't didn't Probably. 1:31:59.160 --> 1:32:01.360 I'm gonna say that this is a Polk County redneck. 1:32:01.920 --> 1:32:04.679 There is the Pole County redneck, and then the probably 1:32:04.720 --> 1:32:07.680 the conservationist hunter. That's a little more some of the 1:32:07.800 --> 1:32:11.840 Pole County redneck types maybe not so much. But I 1:32:12.040 --> 1:32:15.720 was really proud of how the hunting community showed up 1:32:15.760 --> 1:32:19.280 and conducted themselves. When you got one minute on a subject, 1:32:19.320 --> 1:32:21.439 that spend this teased out for this long. Like those 1:32:21.479 --> 1:32:26.040 commissioners are briefed like they are in Florida. The commissioners 1:32:26.080 --> 1:32:30.880 are appointed by the governor. They oversee the they vote 1:32:30.920 --> 1:32:33.360 on the rules. The scientists present the rules, so the 1:32:33.439 --> 1:32:35.479 science are saying, here, here's what we think the hunt 1:32:35.520 --> 1:32:37.920 can be. The commission asked questions and dig into it 1:32:37.960 --> 1:32:39.560 a little bit, but they vote on whether or not 1:32:39.640 --> 1:32:44.200 we approve this recommendation. So seven of them man to 1:32:44.280 --> 1:32:46.599 stay engaged that long for three hours, listening to person 1:32:46.600 --> 1:32:47.599 after person is tough. 1:32:48.000 --> 1:32:48.200 Yeah. 1:32:49.000 --> 1:32:50.840 What we did as a honey community is we went 1:32:50.960 --> 1:32:52.960 to it and everybody did this. We went to our 1:32:53.000 --> 1:32:55.559 people and said, look, if you're here and you're representing 1:32:55.600 --> 1:32:57.639 meat eater, you're here and you represent BHA or whatever, 1:32:58.000 --> 1:33:00.760 sure go up there and fly the flag. But if 1:33:00.760 --> 1:33:02.840 you got fifteen people here, have the other fourteen of 1:33:02.880 --> 1:33:04.360 them just stand up and say I wave and support. 1:33:05.160 --> 1:33:08.960 There's no reason to labor this. Yes. Yes, So the 1:33:08.960 --> 1:33:11.519 one hundred and seventy comments probably became one hundred and 1:33:11.560 --> 1:33:15.120 twenty people going to a microphone, which also it did 1:33:15.240 --> 1:33:18.040 force that number that time limit down. That wasn't intentional, 1:33:18.080 --> 1:33:20.280 but it did force that time limit down because those 1:33:20.280 --> 1:33:24.160 people all waved in support of this hunt. Really proud 1:33:24.240 --> 1:33:27.280 of how that was handled, and it was handled in 1:33:27.360 --> 1:33:29.639 a very organic I don't know everybody in the hunting community. 1:33:30.200 --> 1:33:33.360 You know, you go to the girls were there from 1:33:33.400 --> 1:33:36.960 American Daughters Conservations, this group we have down there of women, hunters, fishermen. 1:33:37.800 --> 1:33:40.040 They showed up in mass They made sure that everybody 1:33:40.080 --> 1:33:42.320 they talked to they went and said, hey, make sure 1:33:42.360 --> 1:33:43.720 you wave and support if you don't want to go 1:33:43.760 --> 1:33:45.439 to the microphone, and so you just stand up where 1:33:45.439 --> 1:33:46.799 you worry. You didn't even go to the mic and record, 1:33:46.880 --> 1:33:49.800 like your name's already up there, literally your hands, Hey, 1:33:49.840 --> 1:33:52.120 I wave and support, sit back down. And that was 1:33:52.200 --> 1:33:54.240 really well received I think by the Commission because it 1:33:54.280 --> 1:33:55.920 was respectful of their time. We had a long day. 1:33:55.960 --> 1:33:57.519 We had a lot of stuff to work on. I mean, 1:33:57.640 --> 1:34:00.920 there were other conservation issues we had to tackle besides bears. 1:34:01.560 --> 1:34:04.320 And that the next day, you and I played fone 1:34:04.360 --> 1:34:06.320 tag because I was I was in and out working 1:34:06.360 --> 1:34:09.720 on oysters and shrimp and bonefish and stuff that day. 1:34:10.920 --> 1:34:13.040 The hunting community, that was a high point. I mean, 1:34:13.080 --> 1:34:16.120 it was a really proud moment for me. Yeah, And 1:34:16.240 --> 1:34:17.800 it was a really proud moment for me because I 1:34:17.920 --> 1:34:22.120 look at I look at the broader hunting conservation world. 1:34:23.040 --> 1:34:25.599 And in the last year, we beat back Prop one 1:34:25.680 --> 1:34:28.599 twenty seven in Colorado, we beat back this Mike Lee 1:34:28.680 --> 1:34:31.280 public land sale. We passed the right to fish and 1:34:31.360 --> 1:34:33.479 hunting in Florida, which no one thought we would do. 1:34:33.920 --> 1:34:35.960 We just re established a bear hunt in Florida. What 1:34:36.120 --> 1:34:38.000 was it two years ago? They re established a bear hunt. 1:34:38.080 --> 1:34:40.840 Louisian like. It's easy for us to sit back and say, man, 1:34:40.880 --> 1:34:44.719 we are getting our butts whooked, but in fact we're 1:34:44.800 --> 1:34:46.880 drawing some pretty strong lines in the sand and saying 1:34:46.920 --> 1:34:51.639 we're reclaiming some of this ground for conservation, not just hunting. 1:34:52.479 --> 1:34:54.439 I don't talk about hunting as much as I talk 1:34:54.479 --> 1:34:57.400 about conservation. That's the verb that I use, or the 1:34:57.479 --> 1:34:59.479 now that I used to describe it, because that's the 1:34:59.600 --> 1:35:02.360 that's the activity that I care the most about, is 1:35:02.760 --> 1:35:05.360 conserving wildlife and conserving these things. I just happen to 1:35:05.439 --> 1:35:08.439 want to do it with shotgun. So really a high 1:35:08.520 --> 1:35:14.280 water moment. The commissioners, I think they asked good questions 1:35:14.439 --> 1:35:16.760 about they'll call staff back up at the end and 1:35:16.800 --> 1:35:20.839 they'll dig in, you know, clarify what dogs mean, clarify 1:35:21.000 --> 1:35:22.920 and sometimes it's something that maybe even somedd they've heard 1:35:22.920 --> 1:35:25.320 from an anti hunter and they're like, she doesn't understand 1:35:25.320 --> 1:35:26.920 it or he doesn't understand it. I want to ask 1:35:26.960 --> 1:35:29.560 a question to clarify it so that it's on the 1:35:29.640 --> 1:35:32.519 record as weird. People say, these dogs are going to 1:35:32.560 --> 1:35:34.599 go in there and attack the bears and kill them. 1:35:35.320 --> 1:35:37.560 That's not how this works. That's not the intention of 1:35:37.640 --> 1:35:41.400 dog hunting. People say, because you if you get a 1:35:41.479 --> 1:35:43.160 permit and you want a dog hunt, you're allowed to 1:35:43.160 --> 1:35:46.160 bring nine people with you. They believe that all nine 1:35:46.160 --> 1:35:47.600 people are going to or all ten people are going 1:35:47.640 --> 1:35:50.439 to shoot at the same time. That's not how it's 1:35:50.479 --> 1:35:52.320 going to work. Like you heard that over and over 1:35:52.360 --> 1:35:53.800 again in comments. It's like, this is going to be 1:35:53.840 --> 1:35:57.519 a firing squad on this bear. No, you guys know this, 1:35:57.680 --> 1:36:00.200 but like that's and so the commissioners will tease out 1:36:00.240 --> 1:36:02.400 those questions and asks like so what does this mean? 1:36:02.560 --> 1:36:04.920 What does that mean? And some of it they really 1:36:04.920 --> 1:36:06.840 were asking, and some of it they were asking to 1:36:06.960 --> 1:36:13.120 clarify for the other side. Get done, and Commissioner Gary 1:36:13.160 --> 1:36:15.360 Lester called for a vote. I think Commissioner Josh Kellum, 1:36:15.360 --> 1:36:18.080 who's our new commissioner, he seconded it, and they said 1:36:18.240 --> 1:36:21.439 let's vote, and it passed unanimously. All five of them 1:36:21.479 --> 1:36:21.800 went for it. 1:36:22.080 --> 1:36:22.639 That's awesome. 1:36:22.720 --> 1:36:25.639 So and man, I command the courage of all five 1:36:25.720 --> 1:36:28.439 of those commissioners in Florida for doing that. 1:36:29.479 --> 1:36:32.040 You know, it's sad to me that we've gotten to 1:36:32.080 --> 1:36:35.240 a societal place where these groups, these anti hunting groups 1:36:35.240 --> 1:36:38.040 have targeted their businesses because this is not their job. 1:36:38.120 --> 1:36:40.559 They're by vocational right. They don't get paid at all, 1:36:40.920 --> 1:36:45.360 they get reimbursed for travel. It's a huge job to 1:36:45.400 --> 1:36:48.160 be are and so ten days a year, eight days 1:36:48.200 --> 1:36:50.040 a year, they have to sit there and listen to again, 1:36:50.160 --> 1:36:53.320 not just bears, not the sexy stuff. We spent two 1:36:53.400 --> 1:36:55.320 hours on oysters the next day at how many we 1:36:55.360 --> 1:36:57.240 could harvest in a bucket or something like. It's not 1:36:57.439 --> 1:36:59.920 all the fun sexy stuff I love to eat ois. 1:37:00.240 --> 1:37:03.759 But they sit there and they participate and they engage 1:37:03.800 --> 1:37:06.280 well on it, and then we go and demonize them. 1:37:06.720 --> 1:37:09.200 And there's two sides of that too, right, Like that's 1:37:09.240 --> 1:37:11.439 another thing out of coming out of this is we 1:37:11.560 --> 1:37:13.120 left that meeting and I heard people in the honey 1:37:13.160 --> 1:37:14.599 community say, well, it was only one hundred and eighty 1:37:14.640 --> 1:37:16.320 seven and it was only these zones, and we need 1:37:16.400 --> 1:37:19.760 more and there's ten thousand bears, and say, guys, there's 1:37:19.800 --> 1:37:22.400 a way that this works. And we're working really hard 1:37:22.520 --> 1:37:24.439 to get as many bear permits as we can in 1:37:24.520 --> 1:37:28.519 a sustainable way, like just check yourself where you wreck 1:37:28.560 --> 1:37:30.800 yourself a little bit here, because we really are trying 1:37:30.840 --> 1:37:33.040 to navigate these things that are hard to get them 1:37:33.120 --> 1:37:35.599 done so that we can go out there and enjoy 1:37:36.640 --> 1:37:40.960 the resources that we love and experience. For me, it's 1:37:41.040 --> 1:37:42.800 never about killing an animal. It's about sitting in a 1:37:42.840 --> 1:37:45.000 stand and watching the world wake up, or being with 1:37:45.120 --> 1:37:48.000 my daughter, my son, or whoever you know. It's about 1:37:48.040 --> 1:37:50.720 the camaraderie. And yeah, I love to hang stuff on 1:37:50.800 --> 1:37:52.320 the wall and I love to eat the meat, but 1:37:52.400 --> 1:37:54.400 it's really about the time that I get to spend outdoors, 1:37:54.479 --> 1:37:56.719 and that's how I enter and exit it. It's carrying 1:37:56.760 --> 1:37:59.200 a rifle or carrying a shotgun or carrying a fishing ball. 1:37:59.479 --> 1:38:01.000 That's how I get in and out of it. So 1:38:02.000 --> 1:38:04.360 it was a watermark moment. I was really proud of 1:38:04.400 --> 1:38:06.200 those guys for standing strong. But there's people who have 1:38:06.280 --> 1:38:09.479 targeted their businesses. They are protesting. There's one who owns 1:38:09.479 --> 1:38:11.840 a car a lot in Tampa, So if you need 1:38:11.880 --> 1:38:13.479 a car, go to buy one from him, because he 1:38:13.560 --> 1:38:15.519 owns a car a lot in Tampa and he there's 1:38:15.560 --> 1:38:19.160 people protesting in front of his business targeting him specifically. 1:38:19.560 --> 1:38:22.320 And this is a guy that cares deeply about wildlife. Man, 1:38:22.560 --> 1:38:23.559 did they are. 1:38:23.479 --> 1:38:26.280 There any other species that people are doing that in Florida? 1:38:26.520 --> 1:38:29.160 I mean like protesting in the street. They're not worried 1:38:29.200 --> 1:38:31.479 about oysters, They're not worried about white tailed they're. 1:38:31.400 --> 1:38:34.600 Just bear bears. We get a lot of protests about developments. 1:38:35.400 --> 1:38:38.400 People don't have a real good understanding of private property 1:38:38.479 --> 1:38:41.439 rights and how that works in Florida, So we get 1:38:41.479 --> 1:38:43.400 a lot of protests about developments. And then we see 1:38:43.400 --> 1:38:45.280 a lot of protests around manatees. 1:38:46.640 --> 1:38:48.200 But I mean, nobody's you can't hunt. 1:38:48.080 --> 1:38:53.440 Manatees, it's not a thing, but it's a water quality manatees. 1:38:54.320 --> 1:38:56.559 That's a whole other thing. But manatees are a large 1:38:56.600 --> 1:38:59.880 grazing animal, Like there's a probably a carrying capacity for 1:39:00.000 --> 1:39:02.000 how many of them can exist in this state. And 1:39:02.080 --> 1:39:03.960 then we create more water discharges and we feed them 1:39:04.040 --> 1:39:05.640 let us and we kind of artificially inflate it. And 1:39:05.960 --> 1:39:07.880 you can get into some ecology of that. But there's 1:39:07.880 --> 1:39:09.680 a lot of protests about manatees when they die off 1:39:09.720 --> 1:39:12.040 and stuff like that, But bears are pretty much yet 1:39:12.080 --> 1:39:14.280 and the same anti honey community. What we've seen them 1:39:14.320 --> 1:39:17.280 move on now is archery. They've determined that archery is 1:39:17.680 --> 1:39:20.320 is inhumane and so we should not be allowed to 1:39:20.400 --> 1:39:23.080 archery hunt anymore. That's their next kind of ill to 1:39:23.160 --> 1:39:25.840 die on. There's no traction there. We're talking about a 1:39:25.960 --> 1:39:29.120 very small but very noisy, but very small group of people. 1:39:29.760 --> 1:39:33.040 And then they've also started dabbling into coyote honeting. They 1:39:33.040 --> 1:39:35.360 don't want. They don't want coyote honey. I don't know why. 1:39:36.760 --> 1:39:39.240 Coyote's pretty sustainable resource. We got plenty of them, and 1:39:41.080 --> 1:39:43.880 I'm not huge coyote hunter, but I've killed plenty of them. 1:39:44.320 --> 1:39:47.439 From a predator management standpoint for turkeys or whatever. It 1:39:47.560 --> 1:39:47.880 was a win. 1:39:57.280 --> 1:40:00.920 Should we expect more turbulence? Was there any thing legally 1:40:00.960 --> 1:40:03.240 about this hunt that sets it in perpetuity for a 1:40:03.280 --> 1:40:03.960 period of time. 1:40:04.240 --> 1:40:06.240 Nope, So it does not need to come back to 1:40:06.280 --> 1:40:06.799 the commission. 1:40:06.960 --> 1:40:10.080 But I mean, are they gonna last time in fifteen 1:40:10.120 --> 1:40:12.200 when we had a hunt, it was shut down the 1:40:12.280 --> 1:40:15.320 next year because of public opinion and all the stuff 1:40:15.320 --> 1:40:18.160 that happened after the hunt. Do you I don't think 1:40:18.360 --> 1:40:20.400 that to happen again. Are we kind of over it? 1:40:20.840 --> 1:40:24.599 You're asking Travis's opinion, I'd say I think we're going 1:40:24.680 --> 1:40:28.240 to be fine moving forward. Okay, I do think. Okay, 1:40:28.320 --> 1:40:30.120 so they do, and you know more about this than 1:40:30.160 --> 1:40:32.439 I do, but they do bear Den studies on a 1:40:32.760 --> 1:40:35.800 on a generational cycle, right something to this effect, so 1:40:35.880 --> 1:40:38.760 that every ten years they'll have new updated data. So 1:40:38.880 --> 1:40:42.000 twenty twenty nine is when they'll have the latest real 1:40:42.120 --> 1:40:46.240 population estimate for the state. We know that there's at 1:40:46.280 --> 1:40:48.720 least four thousand bears in Florida, and we also know 1:40:48.880 --> 1:40:51.439 that no matter what, this hunt's not going to change 1:40:51.479 --> 1:40:54.200 that population, right right, Like this goes back to what 1:40:54.280 --> 1:40:57.120 I said real early it could be five, could be 1:40:57.200 --> 1:40:59.160 twenty five, or you remember when they re established ELK 1:40:59.200 --> 1:41:02.920 in Tennessee, or they allowed seven to be taken, like 1:41:03.640 --> 1:41:05.400 it could be like that. The one hundred and eighty 1:41:05.439 --> 1:41:09.439 seven is such a it's a rounding error like it 1:41:09.560 --> 1:41:14.559 is nothing. So we're gonna see bear populations continue to thrive, 1:41:15.680 --> 1:41:18.000 and over time we're going to get better and better 1:41:18.160 --> 1:41:20.280 data to go with that because we don't not have data. 1:41:20.320 --> 1:41:22.640 We've got hair corral data and things like that. We 1:41:22.760 --> 1:41:27.000 know in different they call them BMus Bear Management units. 1:41:27.240 --> 1:41:30.559 In different BMus we know like some level of how 1:41:30.600 --> 1:41:32.960 many bears are using a particular fence line or whatever, 1:41:34.479 --> 1:41:36.280 so we know that that population is going to continue 1:41:36.320 --> 1:41:38.280 to grow. We know that the hunt is going to 1:41:38.320 --> 1:41:40.640 be very different from how it was last time, just 1:41:40.680 --> 1:41:43.439 from the removal of check stations, doing digital check in, 1:41:44.240 --> 1:41:48.840 doing the hard tag, allowing for selectivity, not forcing everybody 1:41:48.840 --> 1:41:50.960 to hunt all at once. We know that those factors, 1:41:51.000 --> 1:41:52.640 there's so many have changed. It's going to look very 1:41:52.640 --> 1:41:56.240 different coming out of it. And then we do know 1:41:56.439 --> 1:41:59.360 too that a lawsuit has already been filed by the 1:41:59.400 --> 1:42:03.280 anti honeting world, but it got dismissed out right in 1:42:03.320 --> 1:42:06.120 twenty fifteen, like they were sued at twenty fifteen for 1:42:06.160 --> 1:42:09.920 the hunt and the case was dismissed. So I don't 1:42:09.920 --> 1:42:11.640 want to be flipping about anything because you never know 1:42:11.680 --> 1:42:13.439 what's going to happen on any given day. But I 1:42:13.560 --> 1:42:16.080 just don't see any merit to that suit. Like FBC 1:42:16.240 --> 1:42:19.400 is a not to get too far in the policy weeds, 1:42:19.439 --> 1:42:22.280 but in most states you have a legislatively created body, 1:42:23.000 --> 1:42:27.479 a statutorily created body, where I think Arkansas is actually 1:42:27.479 --> 1:42:32.040 constitutionally as well. In Florida, FWBC was created by the constitution, 1:42:32.600 --> 1:42:35.160 so they're almost like a de facto fourth You got 1:42:35.200 --> 1:42:39.400 the executive, legislative, judicial, and a conservation branch. Now is 1:42:39.439 --> 1:42:42.000 the crossover with the governor appointees and stuff. Sure there is, 1:42:42.240 --> 1:42:45.439 And the legislature controls their budget, so they can force 1:42:45.560 --> 1:42:48.320 them budgetarily to do certain things. But the end of 1:42:48.360 --> 1:42:51.160 the day, FBC is an isolated body that's able to 1:42:51.240 --> 1:42:54.840 kind of make their own determinations on this stuff. I 1:42:54.880 --> 1:42:57.720 don't see how you win a lawsuit because they're constitutionally 1:42:57.720 --> 1:43:01.360 in powered to manage fish and wildlife. Like if you 1:43:01.439 --> 1:43:04.680 sue and say they breach their duty, well, their constitutional 1:43:04.760 --> 1:43:07.040 duties to manage fish and wildlife, and it's a pretty 1:43:07.040 --> 1:43:08.840 broad purview it's given to them. I just don't I 1:43:08.920 --> 1:43:09.439 don't see that. 1:43:10.360 --> 1:43:11.000 Holy merit. 1:43:11.320 --> 1:43:13.040 Maybe you get the right judge and the right jurisdiction, 1:43:13.160 --> 1:43:13.920 but I just don't see that. 1:43:14.880 --> 1:43:17.120 You know, when you when we talk about I think 1:43:17.240 --> 1:43:20.160 I think the the narrative, the way that we speak 1:43:20.240 --> 1:43:25.519 about hunting is important, and oftentimes you hear like there's 1:43:25.520 --> 1:43:27.840 a bear population in Florida, there's a new bear hunt. 1:43:27.960 --> 1:43:33.720 There's an expanding population, we're hunting them to control the population. 1:43:34.200 --> 1:43:37.799 Like that's what people will say, But that's that's actually 1:43:37.880 --> 1:43:40.760 not true because because the amount of bears that we're 1:43:40.800 --> 1:43:45.280 taking out of Florida is basically going to be ecologically inconsequential, 1:43:45.439 --> 1:43:50.240 it's insignificant. So what it comes down to really the 1:43:52.560 --> 1:43:56.400 what people like us that love wildlife and love wild 1:43:56.439 --> 1:43:59.719 places and love to eat wild game, what we believe 1:43:59.880 --> 1:44:03.719 is that, I mean, the philosophy is that a hunter 1:44:04.520 --> 1:44:09.240 should be able to take from the surplus of a 1:44:09.479 --> 1:44:14.040 of a healthy population of animals and use that resource 1:44:14.360 --> 1:44:19.240 from traditional use practice. I'm an American, I'm a eighth 1:44:19.479 --> 1:44:23.560 ninth generation American. My family has been hunting for a 1:44:23.640 --> 1:44:25.800 long time. I mean that, you know, there's all these 1:44:25.880 --> 1:44:28.840 reasons why it's like you ought to be able to 1:44:28.920 --> 1:44:31.800 hunt if it's not hurting anything. I mean, that's kind 1:44:31.840 --> 1:44:36.240 of the philosophy. And that is absolutely the doctrine is like, hey, 1:44:36.479 --> 1:44:38.200 if I can go out in my backyard and kill 1:44:38.240 --> 1:44:40.519 a couple of deer and feed my family and it's 1:44:40.600 --> 1:44:43.880 actually not hurting the population, I have the right to 1:44:44.040 --> 1:44:47.320 do that. And and and that's what we're saying. Even 1:44:47.400 --> 1:44:50.040 with bears, they're a game animal, they're they're an animal 1:44:50.080 --> 1:44:53.120 that we eat. Animal that we utilize heavily a animal 1:44:53.160 --> 1:44:56.000 that we have all this historic documentation on this continent. 1:44:56.320 --> 1:44:58.559 Since we got here, we've been hunting bears. They're still here. 1:44:58.960 --> 1:45:03.080 They're they're they're they're able to withstand human honting when 1:45:03.120 --> 1:45:06.000 it's done in the right way, which clearly this is 1:45:06.320 --> 1:45:10.519 a way that that is being done. So so could 1:45:10.800 --> 1:45:13.560 could the volume be turned up, Could the throttle be 1:45:13.880 --> 1:45:18.719 turned up to where the hunt actually did manage population numbers? 1:45:18.880 --> 1:45:21.320 It could, and in many states it does. 1:45:21.520 --> 1:45:21.680 Yep. 1:45:22.040 --> 1:45:24.920 I mean there's there's lots of states where thousands of 1:45:25.000 --> 1:45:28.280 bears are being killed and they're they're they're they're taken 1:45:28.320 --> 1:45:30.760 them out of the population because that populations are that 1:45:31.000 --> 1:45:35.000 big that you can't take a token one hundred and 1:45:35.000 --> 1:45:38.720 eighty seven bearers out of Wisconsin and expect the population 1:45:38.880 --> 1:45:42.519 to remain stable. I mean they're killing I want to say, 1:45:42.560 --> 1:45:45.320 in some of those those those states, they're killing four 1:45:45.400 --> 1:45:49.240 thousand bears a year. In Arkansas we're taking about five 1:45:49.360 --> 1:45:55.600 hundred bears, uh, which is not very many. Really a 1:45:55.680 --> 1:45:59.120 lot of a lot of Appalachian states they harvest a 1:45:59.200 --> 1:46:02.920 lot of bears. But point being, I think it's important 1:46:02.960 --> 1:46:05.000 that we be honest. I hear Rannelli's say this, and 1:46:05.400 --> 1:46:09.240 it's I like it. He's like, we shouldn't say things 1:46:09.280 --> 1:46:13.519 that aren't true, that make us that created a false narrative. 1:46:14.120 --> 1:46:17.719 I mean, could we make the Florida bear hunt actually 1:46:18.000 --> 1:46:22.680 affect the population? You absolutely could, you know, But this 1:46:22.920 --> 1:46:23.280 is not that. 1:46:23.720 --> 1:46:26.000 This is not even that, And it's not to say 1:46:26.080 --> 1:46:28.959 that they never because if you look at the BMU distribution, 1:46:29.880 --> 1:46:32.960 there are BMus that have way more bears and BMus 1:46:32.960 --> 1:46:35.720 that have way less bears. You want those BMus with 1:46:35.720 --> 1:46:38.439 way less bears to continue to grow their population, while 1:46:38.479 --> 1:46:39.880 you want to manage it in some of these others. 1:46:39.920 --> 1:46:42.840 But I also think over time, we will begin to 1:46:42.880 --> 1:46:46.400 apply more data to this and say, hey, we've got 1:46:46.439 --> 1:46:49.360 more human bear conflicts in this BMU, or we're seeing 1:46:49.439 --> 1:46:53.280 more interactions negatively in that BMU, Like we'll begin to 1:46:53.360 --> 1:46:56.600 distribute the hunt differently to maybe address this. Maybe we 1:46:56.680 --> 1:46:58.880 do want this this BMU to always be at a 1:46:58.960 --> 1:47:02.400 thousand bears or whatever the thing is. And the other 1:47:02.479 --> 1:47:04.000 thing that I heard you say that kind of stuck 1:47:04.000 --> 1:47:06.720 would be something I say all the time. This is 1:47:06.840 --> 1:47:09.479 truly and I can't stress this enough. I've said it 1:47:09.720 --> 1:47:12.439 a couple of times, but this is truly conservation. Like 1:47:12.520 --> 1:47:15.559 I say, conservation is seeking the proper use of a resource. 1:47:16.080 --> 1:47:19.479 It's utilizing a resource correctly. We are about to utilize 1:47:19.479 --> 1:47:21.680 a resource correctly that we haven't tapped into for a 1:47:21.760 --> 1:47:24.160 long time for various reasons. And now I like to 1:47:24.200 --> 1:47:27.240 say preservation is for delicious JEMs and jellies. That's nothing 1:47:27.280 --> 1:47:29.320 to do with conservation. Give me a tool that we 1:47:29.439 --> 1:47:32.040 use in certain situations, but by and large, conservation is 1:47:32.040 --> 1:47:35.040 seeking how to use it correctly. That's everything we've talked 1:47:35.040 --> 1:47:38.479 about here today, and that's everything we're talking about in general. 1:47:38.560 --> 1:47:40.280 That's everything you talk about on every episode. You do 1:47:40.479 --> 1:47:42.519 right ultimately, like you can get into the weeds, the 1:47:42.600 --> 1:47:45.519 nuts and bolts of Turkey Juton or duck hunt or whatever, 1:47:45.640 --> 1:47:48.640 but the end of the day, I want to make 1:47:48.680 --> 1:47:52.320 sure that this resource is long term, sustainably able to 1:47:52.360 --> 1:47:55.960 be used. And I'm really proud of wear Florida landed 1:47:56.000 --> 1:47:57.840 on this, and I'm really proud of everybody that worked 1:47:57.840 --> 1:48:00.920 on it because it is a I don't think people 1:48:01.000 --> 1:48:04.639 outside the bear world understand how big of a movement 1:48:04.720 --> 1:48:05.960 this was to get this done. 1:48:06.240 --> 1:48:10.400 Yeah, yeah, man, that's so cool. You said something there 1:48:10.439 --> 1:48:13.240 we hadn't talked about. And I've got a data point 1:48:13.400 --> 1:48:19.000 on bear human conflict. I remember in the last year 1:48:20.200 --> 1:48:25.560 reading that there was and I'm going to say a 1:48:25.680 --> 1:48:28.559 number and at for about six months. I could quote 1:48:28.560 --> 1:48:31.000 the exact number. I've forgotten the exact number, but I'm 1:48:31.040 --> 1:48:35.120 going to quote a number. Five thousand, nine hundred and 1:48:35.320 --> 1:48:40.200 sixty six bear calls the state of Florida received in 1:48:42.680 --> 1:48:46.240 baar nuisance complaints in a single year. Wow, like in 1:48:46.800 --> 1:48:50.080 twenty three, yeah, or twenty two back, but it was 1:48:50.400 --> 1:48:52.759 somewhere in the fifty nine hundred range. 1:48:52.920 --> 1:48:53.120 Wow. 1:48:53.280 --> 1:48:56.040 And I did the math on it, and that's one 1:48:56.240 --> 1:49:02.320 bear call for every fifteen minutes of a working day. 1:49:02.840 --> 1:49:03.120 Wow. 1:49:03.760 --> 1:49:08.600 And basically the state of Florida. And I don't I 1:49:08.680 --> 1:49:11.120 don't know that all those calls go into the same place, 1:49:11.200 --> 1:49:14.960 but theoretically they would, they would, They could hire one 1:49:15.080 --> 1:49:19.120 person that as a full time All they did every 1:49:19.240 --> 1:49:22.519 day for a forty hour work week, from the time 1:49:22.600 --> 1:49:25.000 they got there to the time they left, was field 1:49:25.680 --> 1:49:28.160 calls of people saying, A bears in my trash can, 1:49:28.280 --> 1:49:31.360 A bears eating my flowers, A bear killed chase my dog, 1:49:31.920 --> 1:49:35.960 A bear did this or that. I mean in Arkansas, 1:49:36.120 --> 1:49:39.799 I want to say we're getting like under two hundred 1:49:40.120 --> 1:49:47.960 conuisance bear calls a year. Wow, Florida pushing six thousand. Yeah, 1:49:51.040 --> 1:49:52.840 it has to do with the population. There's twenty two 1:49:52.840 --> 1:49:56.040 million people there. Yeah, people, right, and there's that much, 1:49:56.160 --> 1:49:59.759 that many roads, that many people, A burgeoning bear population. 1:50:00.280 --> 1:50:03.320 I bet there's I bet they're right on there's more 1:50:03.400 --> 1:50:07.360 than four thousand bears if you were waging I bet 1:50:07.439 --> 1:50:07.840 it's more. 1:50:08.560 --> 1:50:12.560 I read. I read in the twenty nineteen report we 1:50:12.720 --> 1:50:16.120 euthanize forty a year. Okay, so one percent of the 1:50:16.160 --> 1:50:19.880 population we kill a year, just as nuisance bears. And 1:50:20.200 --> 1:50:21.080 that's on average. 1:50:21.360 --> 1:50:23.720 I bet, I bet there's I bet there's a lot 1:50:23.800 --> 1:50:27.160 more than that. And what I learned I've just seen 1:50:27.240 --> 1:50:30.200 this with bear bare numbers is that the agencies are 1:50:30.240 --> 1:50:34.439 usually pretty conservative on bearers, conservative very so they're there 1:50:35.040 --> 1:50:37.640 if they say there's four thousand, there's probably more than that, 1:50:37.840 --> 1:50:41.840 but if they don't have the actual data, Like so, 1:50:41.960 --> 1:50:46.360 the way that they're doing bear population studies today is yeah, 1:50:46.360 --> 1:50:49.920 they're using bear bears, hair snares Josh to put up 1:50:49.960 --> 1:50:54.559 a bait station, put barbed wire up about twenty inches 1:50:55.000 --> 1:50:58.080 or however long, put it around so a bear has 1:50:58.120 --> 1:51:01.320 either step over it or crawl under it, and there's 1:51:01.400 --> 1:51:04.200 barbed wire and it catches hair. And basically they do 1:51:05.200 --> 1:51:09.960 they'll take like a grid of habitat let's say ten 1:51:10.040 --> 1:51:15.200 square miles, and they'll put five bear hair snare traps 1:51:15.240 --> 1:51:19.320 in that ten square miles. They will take all the 1:51:19.439 --> 1:51:25.880 hair samples genetically analyze it to understand exactly how many 1:51:26.120 --> 1:51:29.439 individual bears came to those traps in that ten square miles. 1:51:30.520 --> 1:51:34.360 Then they will analyze the habitat in that ten square miles. 1:51:34.439 --> 1:51:36.800 This is a generalization of how they do this. And 1:51:36.880 --> 1:51:42.639 they'll say, well, we have a thousand other ten square 1:51:42.720 --> 1:51:46.040 mile blocks that the habitat is similar, and we know 1:51:46.200 --> 1:51:50.160 there's bears there. We're going to extrapolate it. And they 1:51:50.240 --> 1:51:54.599 do this like checkerboarded across the bear habitat and they go, well, 1:51:55.479 --> 1:51:58.760 in this ten square block ten square miles, we've got 1:51:58.880 --> 1:52:02.040 seventeen bears, We've got this many soals and this many cubs. 1:52:02.720 --> 1:52:06.840 And then the block twenty seven miles away has the 1:52:06.960 --> 1:52:09.800 same numbers, and they go every block in between there 1:52:09.840 --> 1:52:13.000 probably has the same. Basically, they get a really good. 1:52:13.120 --> 1:52:13.840 Look at. 1:52:15.320 --> 1:52:18.720 How bad you know, population dynamics of bears. Yes, that's 1:52:18.760 --> 1:52:21.160 how they do it now. Used two they were doing 1:52:21.400 --> 1:52:26.679 like they were using hunter harvest, not necessarily in Florida, 1:52:26.680 --> 1:52:29.720 but another place they were using hunter harvest numbers. I 1:52:29.880 --> 1:52:33.160 told the story, Well they covered it on the Medior podcast, 1:52:33.200 --> 1:52:38.040 but in California for years they used hunter harvest numbers 1:52:38.479 --> 1:52:42.680 to decide the population. Basically, they were like, whatever the 1:52:42.760 --> 1:52:47.680 hunters kill, we've probably got x number more bears than that, 1:52:47.920 --> 1:52:50.000 and so as long as we're killing two thousand bears 1:52:50.040 --> 1:52:53.320 a year, we probably got twenty thousand bears and we're okay. 1:52:53.920 --> 1:53:00.320 Well then they they gutted the management practices of Californias bait. 1:53:00.600 --> 1:53:02.559 Yeah, and so all you could do is like. 1:53:02.680 --> 1:53:05.800 Spotting stock bears, which is very difficult. And so they 1:53:05.880 --> 1:53:09.760 started killing like a thousand bears a year in California. 1:53:10.000 --> 1:53:13.160 And then the anti hunting community, god bless them, they 1:53:13.200 --> 1:53:17.639 were like, the bears are in crisis because we tell 1:53:17.680 --> 1:53:19.479 our numbers of bears about how many bears are killing, 1:53:19.520 --> 1:53:21.599 they're not killing very many. Oh, we got to shut 1:53:21.680 --> 1:53:24.080 the whole hunt down. Yeah, this is not a joke. 1:53:24.160 --> 1:53:27.200 This happened and then the game and fish is like, 1:53:27.680 --> 1:53:30.559 oh my gosh, this is not true. This is crazy. 1:53:30.560 --> 1:53:31.960 We got to do a real study. They do a 1:53:32.000 --> 1:53:34.600 hair they do a modern hair, simple study, and they 1:53:34.680 --> 1:53:38.800 find out that there's between sixty and eighty thousand bears 1:53:38.840 --> 1:53:45.479 in California. I mean, it's a wild story, but uh 1:53:45.720 --> 1:53:49.240 but yeah, just it'll be interesting to see the numbers 1:53:49.280 --> 1:53:49.719 in Florida. 1:53:49.840 --> 1:53:51.799 It'll be really interesting to see the numbers in Florida. 1:53:51.880 --> 1:53:54.840 And I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm a Florida boy through 1:53:54.880 --> 1:53:59.000 and through. So I think, Man, I think our wildlife 1:53:59.040 --> 1:54:03.040 agency is top notch and I really trust them implicitly. 1:54:03.200 --> 1:54:06.640 Like bears weren't under We have a we have an 1:54:06.760 --> 1:54:09.160 HGM Hunting and Game Management Division, and then we have 1:54:09.400 --> 1:54:11.960 Habitat and Species Conservation, which is not honting. That's all 1:54:12.120 --> 1:54:16.160 non game and lands. Bears were under HSC and now 1:54:16.240 --> 1:54:19.800 it's becoming a it's going back under hunting. So but 1:54:19.920 --> 1:54:23.280 that HSC division, like that team has just they're incredible, 1:54:23.439 --> 1:54:25.800 Like I trust them implicitly with the science that they 1:54:25.880 --> 1:54:29.760 produced and the science that will continue to produce, They're 1:54:29.800 --> 1:54:32.839 going to get it right. And there's nobody in Florida 1:54:32.920 --> 1:54:37.680 that's affiliated with this, that that wants to see bear 1:54:37.840 --> 1:54:40.600 numbers decline at this point, like we want to see 1:54:40.640 --> 1:54:43.880 them survive and thrive. This is a win, dude, this 1:54:44.000 --> 1:54:47.560 is where we want to be. Yeah, so I'm I'm 1:54:47.600 --> 1:54:48.680 over the moon where we're at. 1:54:50.400 --> 1:54:52.440 I think it's the longest burgers we were had. 1:54:52.760 --> 1:54:53.040 I think. 1:54:53.120 --> 1:54:57.040 So we've been talking for two hours. No, that's been 1:54:58.040 --> 1:54:58.880 I've loved Memphis. 1:54:58.920 --> 1:54:59.960 Everything about this is moment. 1:55:00.600 --> 1:55:04.520 Yeah, no, this this is really really great. Well, man, 1:55:05.880 --> 1:55:07.720 is there anything we've not covered you want to cover? 1:55:08.040 --> 1:55:09.840 No? I think I think we can we How can 1:55:09.880 --> 1:55:10.320 we help you? 1:55:10.400 --> 1:55:10.640 Guys? 1:55:10.720 --> 1:55:10.760 Like? 1:55:10.840 --> 1:55:13.600 Who should we? What? Is there a call to action 1:55:13.800 --> 1:55:15.720 for for us outside of Florida? 1:55:15.960 --> 1:55:17.120 Not not right now, there's not. 1:55:17.280 --> 1:55:19.080 I mean we send anybody a thank you card. 1:55:19.960 --> 1:55:22.840 The Honey community writ large like whoever, whoever it is 1:55:22.920 --> 1:55:25.600 you love in the Honey community that I don't I 1:55:25.680 --> 1:55:28.480 don't care what group it is. They all like showed 1:55:28.560 --> 1:55:29.440 up and showed out on this. 1:55:30.280 --> 1:55:33.280 I would I would like to when I think about 1:55:33.640 --> 1:55:37.440 a hunt and in these hunters who I considered my brothers, 1:55:38.280 --> 1:55:40.680 going out and going to harvest one hundred and eighty 1:55:40.680 --> 1:55:41.200 seven bears. 1:55:41.320 --> 1:55:41.720 This fall. 1:55:42.600 --> 1:55:46.240 Man, I I just want I just hope everybody's just 1:55:46.880 --> 1:55:50.080 like the culture is just on their best behavior. 1:55:50.200 --> 1:55:52.160 Do your best yea, yeah, you know your best. 1:55:52.520 --> 1:55:55.760 And and I think I think that as as a 1:55:56.200 --> 1:55:59.280 hunting culture and as a as a as kind of 1:55:59.360 --> 1:56:04.200 a tribe, that we can we can ask that of people, 1:56:05.000 --> 1:56:07.680 and and I and and you know specifics would be like, 1:56:08.280 --> 1:56:11.040 you know, be tasteful and respectful on social media when 1:56:11.080 --> 1:56:15.600 you're posting these pictures. And in in somebody listened to 1:56:15.680 --> 1:56:19.200 this podcast, maybe maybe they learned something. I learned something. 1:56:19.640 --> 1:56:23.120 But man, for for for us to be able to 1:56:23.760 --> 1:56:25.200 for a hunter to kill a bear and him to 1:56:25.240 --> 1:56:28.800 actually understand bear management, understand a little bit about bears, 1:56:29.320 --> 1:56:31.560 understand some of the things we've talked about today goes 1:56:31.600 --> 1:56:34.560 a long ways. Like even in a social media post, 1:56:35.240 --> 1:56:36.880 to be like, man, I got this bear, and and 1:56:37.120 --> 1:56:39.840 and I love posting pictures on social media. 1:56:39.880 --> 1:56:40.000 I do. 1:56:40.200 --> 1:56:42.400 There's been times when we'd be like, don't put any 1:56:42.480 --> 1:56:45.480 gripping grins on man, I still do. No, we own 1:56:45.560 --> 1:56:49.240 what we do, and but but to to be able 1:56:49.280 --> 1:56:52.680 to to have the words, to be able to articulate 1:56:52.800 --> 1:56:55.240 the philosophy of why we do what we do with 1:56:55.360 --> 1:56:59.360 the tenor of respect to that animal, to wild places 1:56:59.440 --> 1:57:03.520 to conserve, and even inside in a set in a 1:57:03.680 --> 1:57:09.680 tone that would be sympathetic to someone who wouldn't understand. Now, 1:57:09.720 --> 1:57:11.800 And I'm not saying you know, change who you are. 1:57:11.920 --> 1:57:14.920 It's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying, we can't 1:57:14.960 --> 1:57:17.840 be mad at somebody for not knowing. We can't be 1:57:18.000 --> 1:57:21.280 mad at somebody. And I'm speaking to myself, Yeah, I can't. 1:57:21.360 --> 1:57:24.080 I can't be upset with that person because they just 1:57:24.160 --> 1:57:24.520 don't know. 1:57:26.520 --> 1:57:30.120 It is critical how we handle this. Florida hunters, how 1:57:30.200 --> 1:57:32.240 they handle this, or out of state hunters if they come, 1:57:32.960 --> 1:57:37.040 how we how we present this will determine what future 1:57:37.120 --> 1:57:43.120 rhetoric looks like. Right, and hunting is not the mainstream 1:57:43.240 --> 1:57:46.040 thing it once was. You guys immediator have talked about 1:57:46.080 --> 1:57:48.040 this for a long time, but it's not the mainstream. 1:57:48.080 --> 1:57:50.320 I mean again, I'll refer back to stars in the Sky. 1:57:50.320 --> 1:57:52.800 I think Riddella said that in the fifties, like four 1:57:52.880 --> 1:57:54.640 percent of America hunted, or it was, it was a 1:57:54.720 --> 1:57:57.280 high number. In Florida, we got twenty two andred million 1:57:57.320 --> 1:57:59.800 people in two hundred and fifty thousand Honting mices. I mean, 1:57:59.840 --> 1:58:03.480 that's a fingernail on that state, which is why the 1:58:03.560 --> 1:58:05.120 right to fish and hunt was so important to us 1:58:05.160 --> 1:58:08.400 to protect that. But that's just a backstop, like how 1:58:08.520 --> 1:58:12.200 we conduct ourselves, how we behave in this world. And 1:58:12.320 --> 1:58:14.120 again I'm not saying I'm saying the same thing you are. 1:58:14.120 --> 1:58:16.520 I'm not saying you don't post a dead animal. I'm 1:58:16.520 --> 1:58:18.400 not saying you don't. But the way you talk about 1:58:18.440 --> 1:58:19.960 it and the way you post it, the way you 1:58:20.040 --> 1:58:24.400 present it, I'll say, selfishly makes my job way harder 1:58:25.080 --> 1:58:27.280 to go into rooms and try to move needles on 1:58:27.440 --> 1:58:31.800 getting things like this reopened. Man, it could be a 1:58:31.840 --> 1:58:34.680 tremendous help. And and again the honey community has handled 1:58:34.720 --> 1:58:37.720 themselves beautifully through this entire process, Like they've done it. 1:58:38.480 --> 1:58:40.400 If I'd have asked for them to do it, if 1:58:40.440 --> 1:58:42.040 I could have just gone to everyone, I'm gon said 1:58:42.120 --> 1:58:43.280 hit this out, wants you to do it, this is 1:58:43.320 --> 1:58:46.600 how they would have done it. So I'm really proud 1:58:46.640 --> 1:58:49.680 of where we are. We continue that going. There's no 1:58:49.800 --> 1:58:51.720 telling what else we can get done, and not just 1:58:51.800 --> 1:58:54.680 in Florida, but but Nashally. I think there's a whole 1:58:54.680 --> 1:58:58.240 lot of stuff we can get done. That is hunting, 1:58:58.440 --> 1:59:01.440 pro hunting, but pro concert. That's gonna it's gonna help 1:59:01.560 --> 1:59:02.680 keep this stuff that we care about. 1:59:02.680 --> 1:59:05.800 While Yeah, well Travis, thank you so much for coming. 1:59:06.200 --> 1:59:08.680 Travis had like three when do we talk Friday? 1:59:09.560 --> 1:59:12.240 Uh yeah, Thursday, Friday, Thursday, it was it was maybe 1:59:12.320 --> 1:59:13.520 Thursday afternoon. 1:59:13.560 --> 1:59:16.920 Oh yeah, Travis came here and just like super short notice. 1:59:16.960 --> 1:59:18.760 So thanks a ton man, Thanks for all your work. 1:59:18.880 --> 1:59:19.200 For real. 1:59:19.640 --> 1:59:21.200 I know you guys probably don't get a lot of 1:59:21.200 --> 1:59:24.280 pats on the back, but you should. I mean, often 1:59:24.760 --> 1:59:27.080 the thank yous goes to people that didn't have anything 1:59:27.120 --> 1:59:29.680 to do with it, like people that you know are 1:59:30.040 --> 1:59:34.120 are I just think about I had nothing to do 1:59:34.240 --> 1:59:34.400 with this. 1:59:34.800 --> 1:59:37.640 Well this this has something to do with it, and 1:59:37.720 --> 1:59:39.520 we appreciate it. But there, like I said, there was 1:59:39.640 --> 1:59:42.800 nobody that didn't. It's like you look at a football team. 1:59:42.800 --> 1:59:45.840 I'll watch sports football team. He pay praise a wide receiver, 1:59:45.920 --> 1:59:48.840 the quarterback, running back, whatever. That guy's not snapping the 1:59:48.840 --> 1:59:50.760 ball in the middle, or that right guards not holding 1:59:50.800 --> 1:59:54.800 the blindman off like nothing's happening. The defense didn't come 1:59:54.840 --> 1:59:57.720 out there and play special team like it takes a 1:59:57.880 --> 2:00:00.160 complete team to get this stuff done. Everything that we 2:00:00.240 --> 2:00:02.360 get done, it takes a complete team, so every everybody 2:00:02.360 --> 2:00:03.880 gets to play a part, and it's it's just an 2:00:03.880 --> 2:00:04.760 honor to be on that team. 2:00:04.880 --> 2:00:08.240 What's the name of your your organization all Florida. So 2:00:08.320 --> 2:00:11.080 it's A L L F L A dot O. That's 2:00:11.280 --> 2:00:13.200 your that's just your organization US. 2:00:13.280 --> 2:00:16.600 Yeah. Yeah. And but then you work for International Order 2:00:16.600 --> 2:00:20.240 of Theodore Roosevelt. Okay, so that's t DASH Roosevelt dot org. 2:00:20.320 --> 2:00:23.240 I believe, is there, Carol. So those are great organizations 2:00:23.280 --> 2:00:26.200 that that I'm really proud of. And in Florida, there's 2:00:26.280 --> 2:00:27.880 not a room that we're not in when it comes 2:00:27.880 --> 2:00:31.280 to hunting, fishing, conservation stuff like like we are. We 2:00:31.360 --> 2:00:34.000 have somebody in just about every room that's that's incredible. 2:00:34.160 --> 2:00:36.240 So we're we're really proud of that and we love 2:00:36.440 --> 2:00:38.400 we love that place. So hopefully you guys will come 2:00:38.400 --> 2:00:44.080 down here. Man, I bear Turkey, really dear to my heart, 2:00:44.120 --> 2:00:46.440 come hunted duck. But we can figure it out. 2:00:46.680 --> 2:00:51.200 Yeah, we appreciated, man, Josh, come down there, fly fishing brother. 2:00:53.360 --> 2:00:55.760 Ah Well, I'm in thank you all for having me 2:00:55.880 --> 2:00:57.640 keep the wild place as wild because that's where the 2:00:57.680 --> 2:00:59.920 bears Living. We need a big corridor right through floor. 2:01:00.840 --> 2:01:01.240 That's right