Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by first light, Go farther, stay longer.
Speaker 1: All right, ladies and gentlemen, Yohny is gonna introduce everybody. Annie,
Speaker 1: Can I say what town we're near? Don't give a ship.
Speaker 1: We're here in southwest Michigan, at our buddy Matt's place
Speaker 1: on some turks, less than an hour from my dad,
Speaker 1: who I'm not going to see on this trip probably,
Speaker 1: but who appreciates good interest. And uh, we got what
Speaker 1: Fosburgh from TRC be Seth Morris, the flip flop Flesher Flesher,
Speaker 1: Ryan Callahan, oh cal four oh six on Instagram, and
Speaker 1: Steven Ronella speaking Instagram handles. I was wondering why Joe
Speaker 1: Surmelli from b Side Fishing, which is a great fishing
Speaker 1: show if you haven't seen it, just one episode so far.
Speaker 1: At there's two out right now, there will be two.
Speaker 1: There's two out probably by the time this thing there is,
Speaker 1: all four of them will be out Jersey fishing and
Speaker 1: what else. It's all stuff around Jersey sunny. Oh nice, nice,
Speaker 1: that's this season's theme. I've seen the new Jersey Turnpike
Speaker 1: a couple of times on the show. No, just driving
Speaker 1: on you just personally, that's all my experience. And did
Speaker 1: you love it? Um? I thought it was, you know,
Speaker 1: as far as infrastructure goes, it was a solid piece
Speaker 1: of work. You know the thing they have out east, Um,
Speaker 1: I want to get back to Joe sph Milli's instagram
Speaker 1: handled them out here. But the thing they have autise.
Speaker 1: You noticed those ones like that that have where there's
Speaker 1: a huge median, Yeah, with all the mature trees in
Speaker 1: the middle. Yeah, Like the medians so big you can't see,
Speaker 1: like if you're going whatever northbound, you can barely see
Speaker 1: the southbound traffic. When I was writing for Outside, I
Speaker 1: kept they never let me do it, I know. I
Speaker 1: kept being like, I want to do a story where
Speaker 1: I camping them there for a week and you have
Speaker 1: just someone just slow down on the highway, let me
Speaker 1: jump out and then and then backpack and camp down
Speaker 1: those long medians where no one can go because you
Speaker 1: can't even get out there. You'd find some weird stuff
Speaker 1: out there. Many. Yeah, that's a good idea, dude. I
Speaker 1: have seen turkeys out living in those, I was gonna
Speaker 1: say that no one's gonna get to him. Insurance companies
Speaker 1: must hate those things. From White Tailed Deer crossing back again,
Speaker 1: you see some of those, just like, there's no way
Speaker 1: anybody is messing around in there. I think there's dear
Speaker 1: living and dying and things, and they're owned by their
Speaker 1: their own by Department Transportation. State. Yeah, State. They never
Speaker 1: let me do that story. Uh Joe Uh Surmelli, it's
Speaker 1: like Joe Dot. It's like Joe Surmellie one thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Someone check fact check me. And I was saying, I
Speaker 1: don't know what the hell the one thirty eight is.
Speaker 1: It's based off a Misfits song. Like I saw two
Speaker 1: riddles at once. Because when we had the Nature's Metal
Speaker 1: Dude on, I was talking about Joe Surmelli, he's a
Speaker 1: metal guy, and I was saying, Joe SEMELI likes medal.
Speaker 1: He said, what kind of metal? I'm I don't know
Speaker 1: what Telly likes. Joe Dot smelly eight and it's from
Speaker 1: that Misfits tune I Want thirty eight, which I still
Speaker 1: don't know what the hell that means. But um ey,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Anyway? That's why he's Joe dot
Speaker 1: Surmelli won three eight because the Misfits song one three eight,
Speaker 1: which if the Nature's Metal guy Rick is listening, he
Speaker 1: likes that song. Maybe it's a union thing like local
Speaker 1: Pipe Fitters one thirty eight. Yeah, it's gotta be a cow. Uh,
Speaker 1: guy wrote in lifelong Resident Wyoming, this is this is
Speaker 1: a propos This is a propos of of at the
Speaker 1: time of year being the spring, when um all good
Speaker 1: men and women hunt turkeys. Uh. I didn't know this
Speaker 1: about Wyoming. In Wyoming, you can still in the spring
Speaker 1: season shoot turkeys. Do you know this? In the spring
Speaker 1: season you can shoot turkeys with a rifle center center fire.
Speaker 1: Woo no, no, no room fire, no center fire. You
Speaker 1: can you can shoot turkeys in the spring with a
Speaker 1: center fire rifle. That changed the game. Huh. It should
Speaker 1: change the game. It should change the way I feel
Speaker 1: about I mean, and I wouldn't have changed the way
Speaker 1: I feel about getting my camis on and sitting next
Speaker 1: to my decoy, especially you're full strudder. Yeah, some dude
Speaker 1: a hundred yards away, there's one wind blows and that
Speaker 1: things starts moving. Yeah, or if coals out there eight
Speaker 1: yards away, I like think you'd know a live turkey
Speaker 1: from from a plastic one. But it takes all the
Speaker 1: fun out of it. Though. The best, the best, you know,
Speaker 1: the best part about Spring Coller hunt is the interaction
Speaker 1: to calling them in and yeah, for sure they have
Speaker 1: they have the game. In Wyoming, Gaming Fish has an
Speaker 1: open public comment period on these regulations. This guy's thinking
Speaker 1: that shotguns and you know, shotguns and archery tackle is appropriate.
Speaker 1: I'll take you an apocryphal ok ahead, Ni, I was
Speaker 1: just gonna say, have an opinion and why it is
Speaker 1: that way in Wyoming. I just think it's the wide
Speaker 1: open spaces like you're probably not hunting turkeys in like
Speaker 1: the classic turkey hunt country of the eastern United States.
Speaker 1: They're right hunt creek, valley, bottoms and yeah, just more
Speaker 1: open country where the same way that where we're sitting
Speaker 1: now in Michigan, you can't use a center high powered
Speaker 1: rifle to hunting deer. It's too dense, too many people
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and Wyoming you can stretch it
Speaker 1: out a little bit. I'll tell you sort of comes
Speaker 1: out of Florida and you were here. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember this, but you might have been not
Speaker 1: here here but you were present on this trip where
Speaker 1: someone is explaining about when a sportsman's group in Florida
Speaker 1: wanted to UM address this issue. A turkey hunting group
Speaker 1: was worried about rifle use during spring turkey season for
Speaker 1: safety purposes. Like again, full camo there, flat ground, full
Speaker 1: camo decoys, jungle like have a tat landscape mimicking animal sounds. Right,
Speaker 1: you start hearing it on and you start realizing it
Speaker 1: seems like a way that there's a pathway towards someone
Speaker 1: getting shot. And they this This Turkey hunting group wanted
Speaker 1: to address UM what they thought was a real serious liability,
Speaker 1: which is being able to use rifles for spring turkey.
Speaker 1: They did not wanted to blow up into a UM
Speaker 1: firearms rights question. And they had gone through quite a
Speaker 1: bit of work too. Uh. They had gone through quite
Speaker 1: a bit of work to explain that the motivation is
Speaker 1: not a firearms restriction. This has nothing to do with ownership.
Speaker 1: This is like hunters advocating for other hunters than the
Speaker 1: spring season should be shotguns to reduce risk. And when
Speaker 1: it went for I don't know what ultimately happened, but
Speaker 1: when it went forward, it did not go the way
Speaker 1: they planned, and it very much became a UM it
Speaker 1: became like a gun rights question and not a turkey
Speaker 1: hunting questions. UM, I wonder if you can still now
Speaker 1: use rifles. And I don't know this. We heard the
Speaker 1: story a long time ago, and it might even have
Speaker 1: been what it had already gone on. But either way,
Speaker 1: I think that also it's like when when people have
Speaker 1: and I'm as guilty of his anybody not guilty. It's
Speaker 1: not that you need to be guilty of it. I
Speaker 1: have that tendency as much as anybody is. When you
Speaker 1: have the ability to do something and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you can't, right, you kind of go like, well,
Speaker 1: what's up with that? Why is that a great question being? Um?
Speaker 1: In Montana? Right, you can't look like bear hunting in Montana.
Speaker 1: You know it's not a public safety issue. But you
Speaker 1: can't bait, you can't use dogs. People are quite okay
Speaker 1: with that. If you live in a state where you
Speaker 1: could use dogs and all a sudden you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to use dogs anymore, it encounters a lot friction. But
Speaker 1: if you're somewhere where something's always been a certain way,
Speaker 1: it just becomes easier to deal with and So if
Speaker 1: you're living, you know, in Wyoming, and you got a
Speaker 1: place and every year you get a turkey with your
Speaker 1: twenty meg and all sudden someone's like, no, no, now
Speaker 1: you can picture that. You would, oh for sure be
Speaker 1: a little miffed. Yeah, especially if I haven't shot anybody
Speaker 1: super safe, never had an issue, never even came close
Speaker 1: to having an issue. So why can't I sure I
Speaker 1: can see other people, but not me? Very natural? This
Speaker 1: is a good question that came in about turkeys. Um.
Speaker 1: He was wondering. Let's say, let's say, uh, you had
Speaker 1: a pet turkey and you tethered him out in the field.
Speaker 1: Would that be a good decoy? Yeah, my Mike kids, buddy,
Speaker 1: their their family raises turkeys. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: hell kind. They're like Spanish blacks or something. Spanish. I
Speaker 1: wanna say, they don't have to be the right color. Dude,
Speaker 1: Well that's some bitch in Turkey. We went over there
Speaker 1: to get ours. I brought my boy over there with
Speaker 1: a little twenty two shorts to shoot turkey that we
Speaker 1: had they had gifted us. And I was startled, man,
Speaker 1: I was like, are you sure that sounds a regular wild?
Speaker 1: It looks like a wild turkey almost if you saw
Speaker 1: it coming through the woods, dude, you would I got
Speaker 1: nine out of ten people wouldn't be like, there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with that turkey. We had grown up, we had
Speaker 1: bronze and white turkeys, and man, they every every morning
Speaker 1: in the spring there was a flock of wild turkeys
Speaker 1: hanging out with them. Really yeah, yeah, yeah, this thing
Speaker 1: was surprised. I mean it was like different, but surprisingly
Speaker 1: it wasn't like you know, I went over there. I
Speaker 1: was expecting some big ass white turkey, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like something that looked like a Yeah, the bronze is one.
Speaker 1: It looks probably the closest, right, you know, it's like brown.
Speaker 1: Oh I can't remember that ordered one or we ordered
Speaker 1: a bunch. Actually, Jake's gonna take a few off my hands.
Speaker 1: But they're they're coming to my house, I believe in
Speaker 1: July or August. But when you're getting turkeys, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna eat some part and and then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: learn how to call better from these uh hands. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep some hands around. But another another reason I
Speaker 1: want to have them around is because yeah, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be making some noise all the time. And I hope
Speaker 1: to attract some wild turkeys. You probably attract grizzly bear
Speaker 1: here one of me to day that you might have
Speaker 1: you might have your your that might excite your BlackBerry
Speaker 1: Johnnie UM. Dr Michael Chamberlain turkey dock wild turkey dock
Speaker 1: on Instagram. UM. He says, if the bird acted in
Speaker 1: any way normal, it would be incredibly effective, which is
Speaker 1: why I don't you'll find a stay where it's legal,
Speaker 1: because I don't know that. But I'd be stunned if
Speaker 1: any states actually allow use to live decoys. He said
Speaker 1: that thing was. That type of thing was the outlawed
Speaker 1: decades ago around waterfowl hunting, and that used to be
Speaker 1: a practice put ducks. I wonder what an abnormal turkey
Speaker 1: acts like a peacock panicked. It would only be effective
Speaker 1: it was if it acted normal. If it acted panicked.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if it's like constantly like hunches close to
Speaker 1: the ground and looks over at shoulder and tries to
Speaker 1: run away. What I had, What I had a handful.
Speaker 1: I learned a new thing about turkeys, uh, because I
Speaker 1: think I was able to witness several times over the
Speaker 1: last couple of days. UM watching deer and turkeys coming
Speaker 1: uh in a food plot together. That if a deer
Speaker 1: freaks out and runs away like spooks and runs, jumps
Speaker 1: and runs whatever, the turkeys are like, they kind of
Speaker 1: lift their heads up, but I don't really care when
Speaker 1: that deer goes. Holy smokes man, it takes those turkeys
Speaker 1: ten minutes to put their heads back down, even if
Speaker 1: it's off, even if it's off in the distance. And
Speaker 1: I today watched I heard a dear blow. I watched
Speaker 1: nine hens all stick their heads up. And I watched
Speaker 1: two fox squirrels run to a tree, go up the
Speaker 1: tree and start chattering over a deer blowing close but
Speaker 1: a deer blowing. And it took those things, I'm like,
Speaker 1: definitely six minutes to stick their heads back down again.
Speaker 1: That's valuable observation. People bring up like what do animal
Speaker 1: you know? How do animals right? And I remember um
Speaker 1: Ah talking about pine squirrels that that that you know,
Speaker 1: you get irritate when you're el conning or whatever. Now
Speaker 1: a pine squirrel sees you, but then you realize that
Speaker 1: they're also doing it to elk. But then we had
Speaker 1: a squirrel. Researchers say that pine squirrels are usually doing
Speaker 1: that to pine squirrels, like, so, I think the animals
Speaker 1: they don't care at all when pine sus going. Everybody's like,
Speaker 1: the guy's always doing that. But man, the deer blow
Speaker 1: is an attention grabber. They they had these researches once
Speaker 1: took I don't know what the hell they look like,
Speaker 1: but a vervet monkey and know what that is? Verbt
Speaker 1: verbet monkey. Mhm. They went to this troop of monkeys
Speaker 1: and created a well, let me back up a little bit.
Speaker 1: They found that these monkeys have a variety of warning calls,
Speaker 1: and they have warning calls that are directed towards a
Speaker 1: threat on the ground, and they have warning calls that
Speaker 1: are used for a threat in the air, and there's
Speaker 1: they're different, and depending on what noise comes out, the
Speaker 1: animals will respond by clearing the ground or getting up
Speaker 1: against the trunk and looking up. They were able to
Speaker 1: record a specific vervet monkey doing his alarm call, and
Speaker 1: then they started playing it all the time to the
Speaker 1: troop until they blew that monkey's credibility and people quit
Speaker 1: paying attention to that monkey. He became the boy who
Speaker 1: cries wolf. Monkeys quit paying attention to that monkey. They
Speaker 1: blew his credibility by He's like, oh, there he is again,
Speaker 1: you know, but there's no problem. He's probably passed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's manipulative, man um. I noticed basically every time crows
Speaker 1: flew over the decoys, like low, they made a racket.
Speaker 1: It's like they flew over the food plot, saw that
Speaker 1: there's decoys and started calling aggressively. Oh, I thought you
Speaker 1: meant that the turkeys take note of No, the crows
Speaker 1: is just flying over. Like multiple times I noticed crows
Speaker 1: flying over silent and they flew over, hit the food
Speaker 1: plot like look down, saw the decoys and started making Uh.
Speaker 1: Aaron Warburton, the guy from the hunting public that I
Speaker 1: got to hunt within Georgia a few weeks back, he
Speaker 1: actually takes note and when continues to like keep an
Speaker 1: eye on the crows that are working the zone and
Speaker 1: if he's like, man, those crows or he'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: gobbler gobbled earlier over there. And if you've noticed those
Speaker 1: crows have sort of been hanging around over there, they're
Speaker 1: pestering that turkey and the turkeys that the turkeys, they
Speaker 1: are with that turkey, Yeah, and like messing with him.
Speaker 1: M hmm um. That that is, you know, a documented
Speaker 1: deal with with big game as far as um. You know,
Speaker 1: scavenger birds alerting predators to large praise sources, especially in
Speaker 1: the winter, because they're they're going to get a reward
Speaker 1: if something dies. Um. But I would think that like
Speaker 1: crows ravens, they probably eat or you know, try to
Speaker 1: eat young turkey polt or locating nests here and there too.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a there's a real interaction there. You know.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I had never picked up on because
Speaker 1: I didn't have such a like such a controlled concentrated,
Speaker 1: high volume area to observe it, is that we use
Speaker 1: these turkey coys d S d S. David Smith decoys,
Speaker 1: and holy sh it, I mean a dude looks at
Speaker 1: they look at it, freaking turkey turkey looks at and
Speaker 1: they look like a turkey. So turkeys will come out.
Speaker 1: I was hunting with for new season with my boy.
Speaker 1: A turkey came out, A hand came out and bedded
Speaker 1: down to to preen herself between my strawer and my
Speaker 1: hand decoy and laid down in the grass and and
Speaker 1: groomed herself. That as awesome, very contentedly. Um. Last night
Speaker 1: I had seven hens out, seven real live turkey hens
Speaker 1: out in a field with my two decoys. Totally bought
Speaker 1: into it, like totally bought into it. Some deer, and
Speaker 1: again and again I saw his having deer come out,
Speaker 1: dear man, this they the minute they stepped clear of
Speaker 1: the brush, just like something's wrong with that turkey. Like
Speaker 1: whatever they see is like, like, what they see isn't
Speaker 1: what I mean, we all know it's not what we see.
Speaker 1: It's definitely isn't what a turkey sees. They see something
Speaker 1: and then and they're stomping their foot the minute they
Speaker 1: stick their nose out. They there's something about the sheen
Speaker 1: of it. I don't know what they are, not buying it,
Speaker 1: circling it, stomping at it, trying to get down wind
Speaker 1: that deer or leaving the oir deal come out and
Speaker 1: right with a deer and be like, don't like that.
Speaker 1: I would love to know what it is that they Yeah,
Speaker 1: direction at all, man. It's real freaking turkeys out there,
Speaker 1: all right. But your decoy doesn't have like a little
Speaker 1: funk to it from just rubbing against your head. Doesn't
Speaker 1: seem it seems visual, man, It seems like you know
Speaker 1: how like this whole thing that they you know, they
Speaker 1: don't see what we see, and we know that, and
Speaker 1: people always trying to tell you what they see, but
Speaker 1: you know, they don't see what we see. And there's
Speaker 1: something about the finish on it, the material on it.
Speaker 1: They see that and they're like yeah, or maybe it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the stillness of them, the lack of movement,
Speaker 1: because I feel like a lot of times there's a
Speaker 1: real there's a real sort of sense of cure curiosity,
Speaker 1: like they kind of come towards it. They stumped their
Speaker 1: feet at it. You know, they do a lot of
Speaker 1: those sort of like hercuy jerky motions, like trying to
Speaker 1: see if like maybe when it puts its head away
Speaker 1: doesn't move, you know, and I think it makes them uneasy,
Speaker 1: how a little motion there is. Maybe maybe it's just
Speaker 1: that another thing I saw is certainly a dear decoy
Speaker 1: that's completely still emotionless. It fools a deer. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: might just be something about it's like body language or
Speaker 1: another thing. This is a small sample size. I can't
Speaker 1: say it's for sure yet, but this this is of interest,
Speaker 1: is that I was watching a fox squirrel today to
Speaker 1: fox girls that were perched up in trees and theyre
Speaker 1: was hanging around and when these turkeys came out, don't
Speaker 1: know what this, I don't know what it's. What does
Speaker 1: that planet? And up there? It's when are we um
Speaker 1: on the Why the hell the squirrels want to be
Speaker 1: out in there? Wheat seeds? Yeah, there might be. I
Speaker 1: was trying to watch him him by bnoctors. Whatever they're
Speaker 1: picking up so small you can't see it, but they're
Speaker 1: picking something up, you know, But for me to you,
Speaker 1: I can't tell the hell they're grabbing. It's probably seed
Speaker 1: or I noticed there was there was some maple trees
Speaker 1: that had the oh, they might be getting the spinners off.
Speaker 1: When the hens came out, the squirrel came out with
Speaker 1: them and basically fed underneath them. And where they went,
Speaker 1: he went, And he didn't go out there until they
Speaker 1: went out there. I don't know. Extra set eyes. And
Speaker 1: last night I was sneaking into that same spot and
Speaker 1: I could see some hens, So I stopped and waited
Speaker 1: for the hens to pass through. And as they passed through,
Speaker 1: I realized there's a scroll going behind them. It might
Speaker 1: be just him. It might be just him. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Lost his parents at a young age raised by turkeys. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I did. Uh another quick No, there's two turners in turkey.
Speaker 1: Know what. I'm sorry all people that turkeys drive people crazy.
Speaker 1: Apologies at the time, but I took my two kids.
Speaker 1: They're out there, Yanni, they are out They right into you.
Speaker 1: They are out there and they're sick of freaking turkeys.
Speaker 1: It'll end, it'll start back up again. Um. It took
Speaker 1: my two kids to for youth turkey season Wisconsin. So
Speaker 1: the state I live in, you have to be ten
Speaker 1: to hunt turkeys on anything, you have to be ten
Speaker 1: years old and then you Um, I think I'm mostly
Speaker 1: getting this right. Uh. Generally states have generally this is
Speaker 1: this is very much true. States have reduced or eliminated
Speaker 1: age barriers for hunting because they've gotten into States have
Speaker 1: gotten into these mentor hunting things. So for instance, when
Speaker 1: I was a little boy, you have to be fourteen
Speaker 1: to hunt deer with a gun, twelve to hunt deer
Speaker 1: with a bow. But you could jump right into doing it.
Speaker 1: It was like you could jump into not being able
Speaker 1: to do it at all, and then at twelve you
Speaker 1: could go out by yourself and hunt squirrels. So what
Speaker 1: a lot of states have done they've institute these these
Speaker 1: mentorship things. So in Montana, for instance, once your kids ten,
Speaker 1: they can hunt for two years without before they need
Speaker 1: to do hunter safety. So a kid can hunt for
Speaker 1: two years about doing hunter safety, but they have to
Speaker 1: be within arms reach of a mentor. And the mentor
Speaker 1: has to be a licensed hunter of a certain age
Speaker 1: twenty one years of age maybe has been licensed certain
Speaker 1: age thing license and good standing, and then they had
Speaker 1: to fill out they have to fill out a mentor form.
Speaker 1: So now my my boy who's ten, um, he was
Speaker 1: able to hunt deer with me last year. Um and
Speaker 1: you know his uncle signed up as his mentor too. Uh.
Speaker 1: Wisconsin has no age restrictions. Um, as long as your mentored.
Speaker 1: So I took my two kids, my eight year old
Speaker 1: daughter and my ten year old boy two uh Wisconsin
Speaker 1: because they could each hunt. So me and my buddy
Speaker 1: Doug were able to take those two out hunting and
Speaker 1: they each got their They each got their first turkey.
Speaker 1: My daughter got one. She had to shoot it twice,
Speaker 1: but yeah, a little bit of long story, but got
Speaker 1: one with a four ten with a red dot scope,
Speaker 1: which I think is a wonderful way to go for
Speaker 1: little kids. You think she's hooked very much. She asked
Speaker 1: Doug if she could hunt there again next year. That's great.
Speaker 1: She liked it a bunch, liked it a bunch, very cool,
Speaker 1: liked everything about it. But how they handle it getting up,
Speaker 1: they don't care, rose Mary to the other, that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're good at getting up. Um long list of things
Speaker 1: that we're always adding to it. Things that will make
Speaker 1: Turkey's gobble. The guy was picking up his son from
Speaker 1: a play date. That's a word that used to not
Speaker 1: be around. What what was the substitution? I don't know.
Speaker 1: When you were a kid, you didn't go on a
Speaker 1: plate eight the hell did you do? You hung out
Speaker 1: with your buddy. But that's why I like, I resisted.
Speaker 1: Like in our household, I don't like my wife. Everybody
Speaker 1: used that. I don't. I don't. My kid even uses
Speaker 1: his dame. I don't use that word. You don't say,
Speaker 1: you know what we should do a range of play date? No,
Speaker 1: I say you're gonna go to your buddy's house, you'd
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, for a plate date? Anyways, picking up
Speaker 1: his kid. That word was never ever said until I
Speaker 1: don't recall it either. Yeah, I remember hearing a linguist. Um.
Speaker 1: I was listening to an NPR never interview the linguists
Speaker 1: and the linguists explaining what they do, like what kind
Speaker 1: of thing they work on. And they were and they
Speaker 1: said something interesting. They were giving something that they were
Speaker 1: interested in, and they were saying it wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 1: No waiter or waitress said, are you still working on that?
Speaker 1: But then there it was, and it was everywhere. How
Speaker 1: does that happen? Right right? Good question? And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things in languages that are like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting deal. Clean plate club. Do you guys
Speaker 1: ever say that in your households? Every night? Every night?
Speaker 1: So never, it's a strictly enforced club man. Never never
Speaker 1: heard it anywhere else, never heard it anywhere else. I'm
Speaker 1: working as a busser in high school in this Do
Speaker 1: you remember McKay is on the river? Right? I had
Speaker 1: a bunch of guns all over the place. Uh, restaurant
Speaker 1: that is no longer a restaurant in Missoula. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: working as a busser in there, and I'm, you know,
Speaker 1: bussing this guy's table and and he said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't think i'd be able to get through it. But
Speaker 1: I remember the Clean Plate Club. That was the first time,
Speaker 1: and I was like, are we related? Where are you from? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because you grew up knowing it, but you had never
Speaker 1: heard it. Yeah, right outside of the family, like you
Speaker 1: just like did not exist for whatever reason, never heard it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Someways this feller picking up his kid from a plate
Speaker 1: just for you, you folks, at home, his kids playing
Speaker 1: with his buddy, and uh, he's gathered his kids bike
Speaker 1: to load it up into his truck and the kickstands
Speaker 1: scrape the concrete driveway lo and behold, Tom cuts out.
Speaker 1: So then he gets the family back out of the truck,
Speaker 1: has scraping against the pavement a whole bunch more eventually
Speaker 1: gets another goal added to the list. It's the list
Speaker 1: um in in the law. So yeah, this one, this
Speaker 1: one kills me, man, This kills me personally. We did
Speaker 1: a we did a piece about it. If you go
Speaker 1: to the meat eater dot com. Um Our our very
Speaker 1: own Sam Longren wrote up a piece on this. Uh
Speaker 1: New Mexico past a bill banning all trapping on public land,
Speaker 1: even live traps, even cage traps, public land, public land
Speaker 1: trapping is now done signing the law. Democratic Governor Grisham
Speaker 1: signing the law past thirty five to thirty four. Who
Speaker 1: all publics all? And you know what, here's the part
Speaker 1: of it gets me this, This is the part of
Speaker 1: this It becomes conversation worthy. The law was nicknamed Roxy's
Speaker 1: Law because in two thousand eighteen a dog was killed
Speaker 1: in an illegally set snare. So a person violating with
Speaker 1: a snare catches and kills a dog. The logical extension
Speaker 1: of that is to ban to make legal trapping illegal.
Speaker 1: The other part about this is law abding citizens. To
Speaker 1: penalize law abding citizens. Here's the other problem. New Mexico
Speaker 1: Fish and Game Commission had just enacted a bunch of
Speaker 1: new limits on trapping methods and equipment. Mandatory certification classes,
Speaker 1: prohibitions on trapping your population centers, prohibitions on trapping near trailheads.
Speaker 1: Never gave the rules, never even gave him a chance
Speaker 1: to take effect and see what the results would be.
Speaker 1: So in terms of all the things that are pursued,
Speaker 1: just just so people get a little bit understanding of this,
Speaker 1: I live near a links recovery zone, okay, and in
Speaker 1: our links recovery zone. You a trap that's big enough
Speaker 1: to catch the links, too big enough to hold and
Speaker 1: catch a links which is smaller than most dogs and
Speaker 1: more fragile than most dogs, has to be by law
Speaker 1: four ft off the ground over a certain size. Even
Speaker 1: if it is four ft off the ground, if it's
Speaker 1: big enough for a links, Again, it also has to
Speaker 1: be in and it's recommended to put it inside an
Speaker 1: enclosed box and over a certain size trap has to
Speaker 1: be in a recessed and closed box. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of things you can try um before you do that.
Speaker 1: And the other part of this draws into question is
Speaker 1: again and again, when you see trapping bands, it's all
Speaker 1: we's it's like dogs, dogs, dogs, And I don't understand
Speaker 1: if if people where does it become like how did
Speaker 1: it become that it's like a god given right to
Speaker 1: have your dog not leashed wherever you want to have
Speaker 1: a dog not leashed. Why isn't it that there's rules
Speaker 1: governing how you manage your dog in certain areas during
Speaker 1: certain times a year. Well, the rule is is your
Speaker 1: animal has to be under control, right, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: a leash. But you know, like Janice's dog is born
Speaker 1: to run and run far beyond eyesight to follow his
Speaker 1: nose and do his job. But Janice has a serious
Speaker 1: investment around his neck in a GPS tracking caller and
Speaker 1: has got a tone on there, and uh, you can
Speaker 1: you can zap him till you can shock him right right,
Speaker 1: But now you just use the tone that says better
Speaker 1: come back or I'm gonna zapp here right um, and
Speaker 1: I would argue that that is in control now and will.
Speaker 1: There're of areas you do have to have them on
Speaker 1: a leash, most wilderness areas. There are some that have exceptions,
Speaker 1: but Solo's got a ticket once. So houndsman can't operate
Speaker 1: in a designated wilderness and some designated wilderness unless you
Speaker 1: wants to track on a leash. I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: because they might have a um exception for you know,
Speaker 1: dogs that are pursuing or you know hunting that must
Speaker 1: be man. Yeah, I've never never heard that rule. I
Speaker 1: mean there there's I'm sure there's like some sensitive areas
Speaker 1: like watershed areas and stuff like that where they worry
Speaker 1: about like the it's whatever, what's the one south of
Speaker 1: Vale there? Um, it's the Eagles Nest Wilderness? I think
Speaker 1: it is but yeah, I'm like seven eight miles back,
Speaker 1: not even on a trail, just kind of cruising along
Speaker 1: the hillside, kind of looking at benches and scouting for elk,
Speaker 1: And just got the dog with me and and walk
Speaker 1: into a meadow and there's a force or a stranger.
Speaker 1: He happened to be there because he was looking for
Speaker 1: UM dog owners, uh pasture ground for horses because they
Speaker 1: were in there doing some work on on bridges and
Speaker 1: stuff that they needed to bring in equipment, so they
Speaker 1: needed a spot to graze the horses. So that's what
Speaker 1: he was doing there. I was just cruising along scouting
Speaker 1: for elk. We got to talking and as I'm leaving,
Speaker 1: He's like, by the way, no way. Yeah, God, I've
Speaker 1: never heard of that in my life. Boy, that guy
Speaker 1: could make a serious living walking around the Bob Marshall Yeah,
Speaker 1: righting tickets. Um, well again, I don't think I think
Speaker 1: that it's per wilderness. Yeah, I'm sure it is. Uh Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing that bugs bugs me. Okay, so like, um,
Speaker 1: you have a bad actor and illegal trapper, do any
Speaker 1: illegal things that uh then gets this crazy enforcement brought
Speaker 1: down on all legal trappers. Makes no sense to me.
Speaker 1: Um public lands are for the most part by definition,
Speaker 1: not even I mean pretty much ubiquitous land of many
Speaker 1: uses zones. They're set aside for everybody, and that can
Speaker 1: be like everybody from miners to joggers, right like hard
Speaker 1: rock miners, not spandex miners or what am I saying,
Speaker 1: you drinkers miners? There you go, thank you? Um and
Speaker 1: uh God, there is an insane amount of public land
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. I looked it up. Don't have it
Speaker 1: in front of me, but it's over thirty million acres
Speaker 1: of public land in New Mexico. I'll give you the
Speaker 1: couple of reasons why this this tears me up inside. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna speak to a state that I know well,
Speaker 1: but just so people can begin to kind of understand.
Speaker 1: Um a little bit about some of the mechanisms, like
Speaker 1: some some of the tools at hand to mitigate conflict
Speaker 1: around trapping and dog stuff. We have setback rules um campgrounds,
Speaker 1: setback rules for roadways, setback rules for designated trails. Sometimes
Speaker 1: where you're go into an area and you can't find
Speaker 1: a place that falls if you've got to roll the
Speaker 1: switchbacks or a trail network to switch backs around, you
Speaker 1: can't find a place to get clean of the setbacks,
Speaker 1: meaning a setback meaning they'll they'll take a trail. You
Speaker 1: go into your rags and says like this trail network.
Speaker 1: You can't do anything within UM the either side of
Speaker 1: the trail. No setting anything UM a type of trap
Speaker 1: that used to get dogs, be like a big body
Speaker 1: grip and traps three conno bears uh in our state
Speaker 1: for instance, that thing has to be half somemer urged.
Speaker 1: You can't set it on dry ground. You take like
Speaker 1: cable restraints UM snares. They have things like the states
Speaker 1: can come in and mandate that has a relaxing lock,
Speaker 1: meaning that the lock doesn't get tighter tighter, tighter, tighter,
Speaker 1: has relaxed. Once it's closed, you put it has to
Speaker 1: have a deer stop on it, so it can only
Speaker 1: close to a certain diameter. UM. They have to have
Speaker 1: breakaway devices on them. Okay, like a certain poundage of
Speaker 1: of pressure breaks the thing away the relaxing thing to
Speaker 1: make it non leasal lethal states will put into things
Speaker 1: that the snare can't have anything around the circle that
Speaker 1: would allow it to become entangled, so that it becomes
Speaker 1: like really like a cable so it functions as an
Speaker 1: animal restraint. There are so many things you can do, UM,
Speaker 1: so many things you can do that that best practices
Speaker 1: that can be implemented. UM. It just seems to me
Speaker 1: like a wildly just a wildly reactionary thing. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's about dogs. Because this dog, this roxy
Speaker 1: they got killed by the illegal snare, was killed near
Speaker 1: Santa Fe. I'll tell what kills dogs in Santa Fe's coyotes.
Speaker 1: Are these people anti coyote that kills a lot of dogs?
Speaker 1: Kyotes killed dogs in l A. Why don't they anti kyote?
Speaker 1: You're You're trapping knowledge is great for people who want
Speaker 1: to like care an iota enough to actually know about trapping.
Speaker 1: And then that's not the people that are banning trapping, like,
Speaker 1: it's not the people who know about trapping or want
Speaker 1: to know about trapping. UM. I guess my point with
Speaker 1: public land is I've hiked all over Hell and gone
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. I've never seen a trapper or a
Speaker 1: dog walker in any right. There's room enough for everybody.
Speaker 1: And if you want to be invested in the fact
Speaker 1: that we have public lands, you need to understand that
Speaker 1: those are set aside for everybody and man, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things that I do not do that are
Speaker 1: totally legal on public land. And if you're doing those
Speaker 1: in a respectful manner, man, I'll go to bat for you. Now,
Speaker 1: Like there's there's a lot of land to go around
Speaker 1: and to outright band trapping just because you don't want
Speaker 1: to even understand it is just assinine and like all
Speaker 1: of your crazy crud. We could come after, right, your
Speaker 1: big biker, we can come after that. Ban that on
Speaker 1: all public land. Big you know, It's just it's it's
Speaker 1: like foundationally destabilizing to the public land. Ethos powerful dog
Speaker 1: lobby man, but even live traps kind of blows my mind.
Speaker 1: That's why it's like it's not God bless Roxy. Roxy
Speaker 1: is being used as a proxy. This is not about Roxy, No,
Speaker 1: it is not. That's a great I've heard plenty of
Speaker 1: stories of horses kicking dogs on the trail. Oh better
Speaker 1: need band horses and bank Um. I did think it
Speaker 1: was funny considering like especially you bring up Santa Fe.
Speaker 1: Santa Fe is a great town to walk around and do.
Speaker 1: Some people watch him the style, the distinctly Southwestern style. Um,
Speaker 1: you talking about ponytails. I'm talking about I'm talking about
Speaker 1: leather goods because we're talking about trapping. Uh. There's a
Speaker 1: decent amount of fur around that town too, which is hilarious. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, you gotta find a new style Southwest
Speaker 1: if you want a band trapping, get rather all of
Speaker 1: your leather goods. House Bill one seventy two and Vermont
Speaker 1: Vermont House Bill one seventy two would ban all trapping
Speaker 1: other than the licensed wildlife control operator. Ban all trapping.
Speaker 1: Also band hunting bears with us the hounds can't you
Speaker 1: already can't bait in Vermont. So bas sically you'd go like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's no one should bill hunt bears, and you you
Speaker 1: roll those in together. Mm hm. Listen, man, people like
Speaker 1: I am a believer. I am a believer in the
Speaker 1: slippery slope. I think that the slope is there. I
Speaker 1: think that it's slippery. Oh absolutely, man, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just start whittling, especially in these cases, right, you
Speaker 1: just start whittling away the group of people that participate
Speaker 1: in these activities and and give a ship enough about
Speaker 1: it to like go to bad for them if you
Speaker 1: were able to whoever it is that's behind us, Okay,
Speaker 1: and it's not wouldn't be hard to find out. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing h s u S almost certainly by the Maine study,
Speaker 1: United States is almost certainly like involved here. Um, if
Speaker 1: you could sneak into their bedroom and hear what they
Speaker 1: talk about in bed at night, it would be they're
Speaker 1: not even in bed over the phone with their colleagues.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, once we can get this bare
Speaker 1: hound thing taken care of, I'm gonna hang up my spurs,
Speaker 1: m the world will be perfect. Oh sleep, No, it's
Speaker 1: just like they're like, they have it in mind what
Speaker 1: they would like to end, and it's it's it's honey
Speaker 1: and fishing and into some extremes like pet ownership. Weirdly
Speaker 1: like they'd like to see that end. And then you
Speaker 1: look and you'd be like, what are the things we
Speaker 1: can accomplish right now? What are the things we accomplish
Speaker 1: right now? Anything to do with dogs is low hanging
Speaker 1: fruit with traps. If you're a pet owner and you
Speaker 1: support hs us Man, you need to pull your head
Speaker 1: out of your butt and and take another look at
Speaker 1: who you're sending your money to. Not anybody listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast is doing that. I don't know but I
Speaker 1: guarantee you there's folks in Vermont who aren't going to
Speaker 1: write in on the trapping bill. Right, It's like you
Speaker 1: you folks better know your representative as well. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: will Clay Knucolm say, guards gate Man? Is that what
Speaker 1: Clay Newcomb and say when something gets banished? Clay he
Speaker 1: was like he wants to hang a painting of it
Speaker 1: upside down on a ceiling. Its symbolic to him. I
Speaker 1: don't really understand it. All right. We've had a lot
Speaker 1: of people here's a great here's a great tool for folks,
Speaker 1: you folks at home. A lot of people written in, Uh,
Speaker 1: we're always a hobby of ours here at the Meat
Speaker 1: Eater podcast is explain all the weird ways in which
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to barter in trade wildlife and people.
Speaker 1: The minute you say, like you can't sell wild game,
Speaker 1: the obvious ques and I'm not I'm not dogging on
Speaker 1: people who ask this question, like like you can't sell venison, right,
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't go to my buddy's farm shoot
Speaker 1: a deer, shoot a wild deer, shoot a deer, butcher
Speaker 1: and then and then go down to the farmer's market
Speaker 1: and sell my dear meat, like, you can't very illegal
Speaker 1: to do it. You can't sell wild game um from
Speaker 1: from a food perspective, And so people bring up the
Speaker 1: really logical question, well, why can't you sell it's antlers?
Speaker 1: Why can't you sell taxdermy? Why can you sell his
Speaker 1: tanned hides? Like? How do you make sense of this
Speaker 1: whole thing? Um our our colleague Corey who if you
Speaker 1: write in if you write us an email, UM, and
Speaker 1: you wanted to get red, you got a butter up?
Speaker 1: I would address it to Corey and butter hm up
Speaker 1: a little bit. Corey, calculm's butter him up and your
Speaker 1: your your email get better handled. Uh. He found an
Speaker 1: interesting website. It's an online guide to selling taxidermy. Had
Speaker 1: to state sales and auctions. I think it's answer. It
Speaker 1: helps with some of the helps with some of the legalities.
Speaker 1: Here's a question if say, say I shoot a white
Speaker 1: tailed dough and you're like, I'll take care of that
Speaker 1: for you. I'll cut it up for you, but the
Speaker 1: it's gonna cost me eighty bucks for bags and tape
Speaker 1: or whatever. Is that like if I give you eighty
Speaker 1: dollars to do that just to cover materials you can
Speaker 1: do like you could. You could shoot the deer, give
Speaker 1: me the deer. I could take the deer you gave
Speaker 1: me down and pay for processing. You could shoot a
Speaker 1: deer and drop it off at the processor. I could
Speaker 1: go down and pay the processing and bring the whole
Speaker 1: thing home. But then I can't give you five don't
Speaker 1: I don't give you five bucks for the deer got.
Speaker 1: What would have happened if you said, here's what if
Speaker 1: you reimburse the state. You said, I'm gonna sell you
Speaker 1: the hide. Here's a here's a good one for a
Speaker 1: game ward, and someone right in you shoot it here. Okay,
Speaker 1: you get your dough and you're like, I'll sell you
Speaker 1: that deer hide for a hunter bucks and I'll fill
Speaker 1: the deer in free. Then what happens, Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. What if what if you're like, I'm like Steve,
Speaker 1: I want I want your deer that you got this year,
Speaker 1: and you said, yep, no problem. Are we role playing
Speaker 1: right now? But the tag costs me seventeen bucks? Right?
Speaker 1: You couldn't do that. In Alaska they have a lot
Speaker 1: of what's called proxy hunting um and it's an interesting system.
Speaker 1: Alaska has proxy hunting where the elderly individuals, say, can
Speaker 1: buy a tag, they could buy a deer tag or
Speaker 1: by give make you their proxy and you hunt on
Speaker 1: their behalf, but the deer goes to them. It's applicable
Speaker 1: in some areas and not applicable another like applicable around
Speaker 1: some hunts and not applicable brown others. You can proxy
Speaker 1: hunt my elderly neighbor really wanted a doll sheep this year? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's limited to very it's limited and
Speaker 1: I'm not a subject matter expert, but it's but the
Speaker 1: proxy hunting is limited to more kind of meat and
Speaker 1: potatoes kind of issues, you know. Yeah, I'm guessing it's
Speaker 1: a way to uh, you know, keep the subsistence lifestyle
Speaker 1: alive and well, so you hunt for others really wanted
Speaker 1: a ten foot plus brown bear? Yeahni. Now that you're
Speaker 1: reviewing a state sales dot org, are you just as
Speaker 1: you as you give it a cursory inspection? Are you
Speaker 1: buy in it or you feeling like it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: most states are just it's just saying any taxidermy may
Speaker 1: be sold, you know, as long as it was obtained legally, etcetera. Etcetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: California now has quite a few paragraphs here, one giant paragraph.
Speaker 1: Alaska had some extra rules. Colorado everything besides bargal bladders,
Speaker 1: bighorn sheep, bigcorn sheep, capes, velvet antlers. Hmm. Connecticut everything
Speaker 1: besides endangered species. Yeah, it's all here a state sales
Speaker 1: dot org. A lot of black bear parts are out
Speaker 1: in some in some states. So there you go. People
Speaker 1: that need to dig in deep and have all kinds
Speaker 1: of crazy questions check that out. But I don't. I
Speaker 1: want to clarify we're not vouching for it. A lot
Speaker 1: of times you look at like the problem I found.
Speaker 1: You try to go to things as they give you
Speaker 1: a state by state roundups, and if you go like
Speaker 1: what are hunters orange laws in all the states? Right?
Speaker 1: The damn laws changed so fast and people don't go
Speaker 1: update the website. Absolutely. You gotta kind of go like
Speaker 1: you want to go to the source. Yeah. I would
Speaker 1: think if you want, if you really come down to
Speaker 1: brass tacks on some item on whether to buy it
Speaker 1: or sell it, I would contact probably US Fish and Wildlife.
Speaker 1: Here's good email. He poses this as of what would
Speaker 1: we do? Um, But I don't really, I don't really
Speaker 1: understand the U. Let me tell you the story. A
Speaker 1: bunch of guys are out jump shooting ducks on a
Speaker 1: neighbor's pond. Okay you with me? So yeah? And they
Speaker 1: have a dog. How do you say this dog? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: they have a draw A lot of folks just referred
Speaker 1: to they have a drawer. They got to retrieve ducks.
Speaker 1: They sneak up on the little pond. A bunch of
Speaker 1: ducks jump up, A couple dozen jump they jump up
Speaker 1: bam by man bowie to get some ducks. The old
Speaker 1: man's yelling that he um, he got one too. Now
Speaker 1: the dog. Here's where the steer story gets weird. The
Speaker 1: dog goes out to retrieve the ducks. The dog gets
Speaker 1: all the ducks, and then he wants to make He
Speaker 1: does a triple check to make sure they're not missing anything.
Speaker 1: Nothing got away. As he's walking the edge of the
Speaker 1: pond to check around um because it seemed to be
Speaker 1: some uncertainty about who got what, the dog jumps abedded
Speaker 1: deer a yearly and sets to chasing. The dry fire
Speaker 1: sets the chasing the deer. He's yelling and screaming at
Speaker 1: the um dog and has a shot collar on it,
Speaker 1: but then checks his pockets, realizes that he left the
Speaker 1: controller in the truck. The deer jumps in the pond
Speaker 1: and start swimming. The dog is on top of it,
Speaker 1: fighting the deer, well killing the deer. But here's where
Speaker 1: the story gets weird. All of a sudden, the deer
Speaker 1: vanishes vanishes, and they're thinking, well, how could that be, Like,
Speaker 1: how does a deer like a deer can't sink or
Speaker 1: you know, they don't they seem to float kind of,
Speaker 1: they float near the surface. Um, they get so curious
Speaker 1: about his body, strips down, jumps in and swims down
Speaker 1: and dives down and realizes this pond is fifteen feet
Speaker 1: deep and you can't see squat down in there. Another
Speaker 1: guy jumps in and he these guys are free that
Speaker 1: he's a free diver. Another guy strips down and jumps
Speaker 1: in there and it's so cold he can't figure anything out.
Speaker 1: Comes back later with a scuba tank. They're divers, Abaloni
Speaker 1: divers and whatnot. Comes back later to scuba tank, goes
Speaker 1: down the bottom and there's the deer lion dead on
Speaker 1: the bottom of the pond. Uh ship, So they just
Speaker 1: had to know, because they didn't believe that the deer,
Speaker 1: like how it just just sunk so to pull backstraps
Speaker 1: out of it. Yeah, I was gonna say it be
Speaker 1: well preserved down there. And he wants to know, what
Speaker 1: would you do if your dog drowned a deer on
Speaker 1: your neighbor's farm Pondum, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: I would think that it was if I drowned a
Speaker 1: deer in my neighbor's farm pond, I would have a conversation.
Speaker 1: I would have to have a conversation with the game warden. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm guessing I don't know if if you remember
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, I don't wanna, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to. She's anguish enough about this. But a
Speaker 1: friend of mine was walking her dog on a very
Speaker 1: popular how you can Trail? Her dog killed the deer
Speaker 1: killed the pont very popular dog h I can trail?
Speaker 1: She was no reason they should all be on leash.
Speaker 1: She was devastated. Did it happen? But I don't know
Speaker 1: what your obligations are. Yeah, I kind of want to
Speaker 1: be like, I don't know. It's like the dog man, Well,
Speaker 1: for sure, but again, you're supposed to have your dog
Speaker 1: under control, and they're certainly not allowed to harass while life.
Speaker 1: And I think the killing wildlife constitutes harassment. Um so
Speaker 1: I think technically, yeah, you're probably you and your dog.
Speaker 1: You're responsible for your dogs, so you're in trouble for that.
Speaker 1: I would think, I mean, I'm no game warden. I
Speaker 1: would think that they would say, cal, I'm guessing this
Speaker 1: is one time thing for snort. You're not gonna let
Speaker 1: that happen anymore, and if it does, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a ticket. Yeah. I would imagine that there's gotta
Speaker 1: be some sort of harassment well you know, animal whatever.
Speaker 1: But I mean there's gotta be I mean, I know
Speaker 1: in the state of Montana it's it is legal to
Speaker 1: shoot ah dogs chasing deer. So there's gotta be some
Speaker 1: some way to get a ticket for it too. Do
Speaker 1: snapping turtles bite underwater? We're talking about that because it's
Speaker 1: like a it's a kind of like I grew up
Speaker 1: in snamp and turtle country, as many people do, and
Speaker 1: we mess with snapping turtles a lot and trapped for
Speaker 1: him and stuff, and it was it was said that, uh,
Speaker 1: they won't bite you underwater, and we my dad had
Speaker 1: a very good friend of alcohole, and he would look
Speaker 1: for snapping turtles by feeling blind under undercut banks, just
Speaker 1: feeling his hands till he felt the shell. Then he'd
Speaker 1: feel the shell and you could, you know how they
Speaker 1: have the points on the back of the shell. He
Speaker 1: would find he'd feel the shell and could tell by
Speaker 1: the points on it what way the turtles facing. And
Speaker 1: then he'd entify the back and he just reached under
Speaker 1: and grabbed the tail, and he said that turtles lay
Speaker 1: there the whole time. He'd get the tail and jack
Speaker 1: turtle back out. Uh never got bet No, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you a story, quick quick interjection. Um, I was checking
Speaker 1: my turtle traps one time and there was a turtle
Speaker 1: that the biggest snap turtle ever caught was had gotten
Speaker 1: the door of the trap messed up and couldn't get in,
Speaker 1: but it was trying so hard to get like poking around,
Speaker 1: and somehow he had like I used to make him
Speaker 1: out of like, uh, you know that hog wire with
Speaker 1: the rectangular yeah, and which is stout stuff. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he had I don't know him or another turtle head.
Speaker 1: Somehow I got the door jacked up. Now that they
Speaker 1: know where the door is. They're just going everywhere and
Speaker 1: eventually it's a funnel and eventually poked their way in
Speaker 1: and they get caught. But he had gotten it jacked
Speaker 1: up where he couldn't get into it. The door was disabled.
Speaker 1: So I see the turtle the trap kind of like bouncing, shaking.
Speaker 1: It's is huge turtle. He was so intent on getting
Speaker 1: to the bait that I was able to paddle up
Speaker 1: in a canoe and grabbed him by the tail. And
Speaker 1: this turtle was so big. I'm not joking. I was
Speaker 1: in high school. Um, I could not get him into
Speaker 1: my canoe, try as I might, And I had the
Speaker 1: hole that's something bit by the tail with kind of
Speaker 1: the tail over the gun of the canoe and one
Speaker 1: handed paddle myself, one handed paddle myself to the bank,
Speaker 1: climb out and dragged that thing up and get the
Speaker 1: back of the truck. And I brought it to another
Speaker 1: commercial turtle guy and he said that was the biggest
Speaker 1: turtle he'd ever seen, the biggest snap turtle you'd ever seen? Nice,
Speaker 1: what did you weigh it? I didn't, I remember him saying,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say because it sounds ridiculous, But
Speaker 1: he bought it. He was a commercial guy and he
Speaker 1: bought the turtle from me. So, uh, what's funny about this?
Speaker 1: This person that rowed in, who's a fisheries there there,
Speaker 1: they're a fisheries technician um in North Carolina and they're
Speaker 1: doing the survey works for freshwater muscles. He says, a
Speaker 1: lot of times you're able to do your survey work visually,
Speaker 1: but sometimes you need to do it by feel or
Speaker 1: you're poking around. And he brings up an interesting observation
Speaker 1: that that's like I hadn't really thought about his true
Speaker 1: Like he talks about how a lot of clothes, clothing
Speaker 1: right winds up in streams, and he describes that look
Speaker 1: that it gets, you know what he when it gets
Speaker 1: full of sand, like any kind of fabric and stuff
Speaker 1: like land at the bottom of the stream. It gets
Speaker 1: full of sand. He said he has twice felt or
Speaker 1: poked what he thought was a clothing item, but it
Speaker 1: was that weird like you know that the snappers get
Speaker 1: that kind of moss that grows on him and it
Speaker 1: gets like that sandy feeling. And he said, you can
Speaker 1: do all manner. When he finds a turtle doing his
Speaker 1: survey work and that turtle thinks it's hidden. He said,
Speaker 1: you can do all manner of manipulation on that turtle,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times it's hard to get him
Speaker 1: to do anything. And when you get him do anything,
Speaker 1: they want to get away. He says, the minute you
Speaker 1: get that turtle out of the water, he's ready to fight.
Speaker 1: But he said, underwater fighting is not on his mind.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna hide, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get away. But you get them up out of
Speaker 1: the water and he's like, now I'm fighting. It's just
Speaker 1: so bizarre to me. The animal is designed to bite
Speaker 1: it under water, but just apparently not defensively. But when
Speaker 1: we talked about this before, I brought another thing that
Speaker 1: happened turtle trap is I had a turtle in the
Speaker 1: trap having a vicious battle with a turtle out of
Speaker 1: the trap, and they were definitely biting each other under water.
Speaker 1: So like territoriality, sure, eating, sure, But apparently when you're
Speaker 1: somebody gently caressing your carapace and feeling your points is
Speaker 1: not fighting. That's not worth fighting. They mean fighting words
Speaker 1: in the turn a World. Okay, with Fosburgh waiting patiently,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do is one more one more thing
Speaker 1: to touch off on. We've talked about this too many
Speaker 1: times now. This is probably probably the last corneal dermoid thing.
Speaker 1: The corner. The corneal dermoid fixation began when some people
Speaker 1: started sending in pictures of Harry eyeballs Harry eyeball disease.
Speaker 1: It all happened where a buck got a Harry eyeball disease.
Speaker 1: Each hair, each eyeball turns into hair, put it on Instagram,
Speaker 1: and a guy sent into Kyle Olk. He killed with
Speaker 1: like big, long, like three inch hairs growing out of
Speaker 1: its eyes. The buck that got the corneal dermo dermoids
Speaker 1: eventually went blind and they had to euthanize it like
Speaker 1: a blindeer run around hair his eyeballs full of hair.
Speaker 1: A lot of guys are written in about this. Guy
Speaker 1: wrote in he had a golden retriever has corneal dermoids.
Speaker 1: He thought, for sure the doctor the dog would be like,
Speaker 1: you know, couldn't see, he had a feeling, couldn't seed
Speaker 1: and know what to do. Then you realized that they
Speaker 1: could track an airplane in the sky, and that's the
Speaker 1: first thing to eat him off. That despite it having
Speaker 1: these messed up eyes. Was still pick off, you know, well,
Speaker 1: so visually aware of what's going on. But this guy
Speaker 1: gets into the human element of it, and uh. The
Speaker 1: guy wrote in that there's a wildlife and fisheries guy
Speaker 1: at Clemson University, a student there. He has corneille dermoid's
Speaker 1: in his eye. You're born with it. His aren't harry,
Speaker 1: but they're white. He says he can still see good
Speaker 1: enough to hunt. He's especially sensitive delight. He was surprised
Speaker 1: to hear that affects deer. I was surprised to hear
Speaker 1: that affects folks. This other guy wrote in he had
Speaker 1: two boys and they're twins, and he said, the only
Speaker 1: way you could tell these two boys apart is one
Speaker 1: had a real point. He knows. They eventually bring him in.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened they bring him in. He
Speaker 1: had a point, he knows because he had nase. He
Speaker 1: had a nasal dermoid, rec a fairly extensive surgery to
Speaker 1: remove it. It was in the tip of his nose,
Speaker 1: traveled up his naval cavity into his skull, real close
Speaker 1: to his brain. They removed this whole thing, and the
Speaker 1: surgeon said it was shaped like a barbell from having
Speaker 1: traveled up the nasal cavity, a bunch of hair growing
Speaker 1: out of it. Jeez, born with it. The surgeon said.
Speaker 1: They sometimes even have teeth mm hmm. And I remember, man,
Speaker 1: my brother had a girlfriend. Remember and I never really
Speaker 1: thought about this, he had a girlfriend. She was saying
Speaker 1: that they one time I had to have a surgery
Speaker 1: and they pulled out a little ball out of her.
Speaker 1: They head teeth on it. Yep. Yeah, never looked at
Speaker 1: her the same way again, nothing against it. God bless her,
Speaker 1: a little ball full of teeth inside of her. I
Speaker 1: really out your The guy had identical twins and the
Speaker 1: only way you could tell one from the other was
Speaker 1: the Harry eyeballs. I God, that's that's yeah. So they're
Speaker 1: pretty easy to tell apart. Then all right with Fosberg
Speaker 1: from TRC pe wit talk us through, give us like
Speaker 1: an update, d C update. Uh, Well, we're about a
Speaker 1: hundred days into a new administration. Which that's like a
Speaker 1: big that's like a big, big milestone. That's a milestone.
Speaker 1: Do you know where that comes from? I don't understand
Speaker 1: how that came to be a milestone. Just a nice
Speaker 1: round number. Yeah, I think right now, it's a round
Speaker 1: number as something has been used for many many, you know,
Speaker 1: presidencies in a row to sort of gauge initial for
Speaker 1: at step in priorities. So I think, you know it's
Speaker 1: but I don't know where it came from originally. Do
Speaker 1: you feel that a hundred days is fair just from
Speaker 1: your observations of home, because I mean it's it's really
Speaker 1: symbolism at this point. Is you know what you see
Speaker 1: what the administration's top priorities are. You will see the
Speaker 1: general reaction that that gets from the general public as
Speaker 1: well as from Congress. Uh, you know in Congress, you
Speaker 1: know again you have the top things tend to be
Speaker 1: the first things they deal with, the most important, the
Speaker 1: most visible, the highest priorities for whatever parties in power.
Speaker 1: So I think it's you know, the way we tend
Speaker 1: to look at it with administration is first hundred days,
Speaker 1: first year, and then four years, and you know, you
Speaker 1: can sort of break down any sort of set of
Speaker 1: priorities in those three buckets. And that's when we we
Speaker 1: did transition plans for both Biden as well as Trump too,
Speaker 1: and we laid out our priorities and all in those
Speaker 1: three sets when you do transition plans. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: transition plans because you have to draw up right, It's
Speaker 1: like when the Super Bowl, Right, they make T shirts
Speaker 1: for each win. Um, you have to drop up transition obviously,
Speaker 1: to be prepared no matter what's gonna happen. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got them to the campaigns, you know, well before the
Speaker 1: election too. Or you send it to the camp Yeah,
Speaker 1: we send them both, send them to the campaigns to
Speaker 1: really lay out what we think our community's priorities are.
Speaker 1: But how different are the two letters. Oh, they're pretty
Speaker 1: different because you know, we're well, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of its phraseology. I mean, we knew, for example, it
Speaker 1: was gonna be Trump to we weren't gonna lead with
Speaker 1: climate change. You know, we would talk about you know variety.
Speaker 1: We still talk about farm bill programs. We would talk
Speaker 1: about things that directly affect climate, but we certainly changed
Speaker 1: the way we phrase that. And we also think about
Speaker 1: you know, things like you know, the meat and potato, wildlife.
Speaker 1: Stuff like migration corridors would bubble up to like number
Speaker 1: one because you know, they started it. They have pride
Speaker 1: of ownership in it. You know, they can do things
Speaker 1: to expand it. So it's you know, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you know there are certain things were just
Speaker 1: off the table, you know, with for example, the Trump too,
Speaker 1: that we knew it weren't going to be worth pushing for,
Speaker 1: and why I hit our heads against the wall about it.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna do things that we think we can achieve,
Speaker 1: and you know, so it was different, and we have
Speaker 1: this sort of a second term of continuing administration, it's
Speaker 1: not going to be as long. So for example, I
Speaker 1: think when we sent to the Trump team was like
Speaker 1: eighty pages or sixty page ages and the one that
Speaker 1: went to the Biden team was probably an additional thirty
Speaker 1: or forty page because you already had a bunch of
Speaker 1: You've already been laid for four years with the groundwork
Speaker 1: with dexistration. Yeah, so I want to get to where
Speaker 1: we're at now, but I want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about where we uh, a little bit about where
Speaker 1: we'd been. You mentioned that the Trump administration had a
Speaker 1: lot of ownership over the migration corridor, and Bernhardt was
Speaker 1: heavily and that actually came out Secretary Interior was very heavily,
Speaker 1: and that came out with Zincio was still you know,
Speaker 1: Secretary that was first dropped Secretary Order three three six two,
Speaker 1: which basically directed the Western states to identify their top
Speaker 1: three big game migration corridors and it limited it to elk, mule, deer,
Speaker 1: and pronghorn and uh then you know it directed the
Speaker 1: federal agencies to coordinate with the states to conserve those areas.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a really good idea. They put
Speaker 1: some money behind it, National Fisher Wildie Foundation came in
Speaker 1: with some money for it, and it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that we wanted to make sure if it wasn't,
Speaker 1: you know, Trump, if Biden got elected, that they didn't
Speaker 1: immediately come in and just say, you know, Trump did,
Speaker 1: this must be But that's what that's what I'm wondering about.
Speaker 1: That's what I was gonna add that that exact question,
Speaker 1: are you do you do a lot of work to
Speaker 1: try to hand things off and be like, no matter
Speaker 1: how you feel about your predecessor, yeah, this was this
Speaker 1: is the right thing here. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 1: think we would define success not by how far the
Speaker 1: pendulum swings each time, but by things are actually durable
Speaker 1: that you know, withstand changes in political wins. And I
Speaker 1: think migration corridors is you know, a classic example of that.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes sense on a number of different
Speaker 1: levels from you know, if you're a big game hunter,
Speaker 1: which was obviously a priority of the Trump administration, you know,
Speaker 1: something that's really important. If you're in favor of biodiversity
Speaker 1: and letting animals adapt to a change in climate, you've
Speaker 1: got to be supportive of this, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: again depends on how you look at it, but it's
Speaker 1: something that should not be a partisan improven it hasn't been.
Speaker 1: I mean Deb Holland and her confirmation hearings for Secretary
Speaker 1: of the Interior talked about how important it was. So
Speaker 1: I think that we've succeeded in that just making it
Speaker 1: sure that people didn't think it was a political issue,
Speaker 1: but it made sense regardless of administration. And there were
Speaker 1: certain things that Trump guys wanted to do they never
Speaker 1: got to do. They proposed adding wild sheep and moose
Speaker 1: to that and then got a bunch of blowback from
Speaker 1: agricultural producers, so took that off the table. Yeah, we'd
Speaker 1: love to see the order expanded to that. We'd like
Speaker 1: to see more money you know that could go to
Speaker 1: for example, private landowners who are really an important part
Speaker 1: of preserving migration corridors. How do you get them to
Speaker 1: make it in their interest as opposed to them being
Speaker 1: the burden of these animals that go through their property.
Speaker 1: For them to come in and in retrofit fences to
Speaker 1: you know, compensate them for the elk that come through
Speaker 1: and eat their crops, you know, things like that, but
Speaker 1: make them an important part of the solution. So I
Speaker 1: think that Trump guys, you know, it was a great idea,
Speaker 1: but they had just really gotten started on this and
Speaker 1: ideally it gets expanded and works even better, you know
Speaker 1: now that we're in the next four years. So with
Speaker 1: the first hundred days, uh about up or up? What?
Speaker 1: What's your what are your impressions? Is it just completely
Speaker 1: new set of priorities and you've got to kind of
Speaker 1: go in a different direction if you want to get
Speaker 1: anything done. Yeah, you know, I think that's it's not
Speaker 1: completely new set of priorities in some areas, and that's
Speaker 1: a good example of the corridors. But I think it's
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the emphasis is going to
Speaker 1: be changed and as supposed to be making that scary,
Speaker 1: we want to make that an opportunity for example climate. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we have we've been working in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years to get our community and we've had
Speaker 1: forty two different groups and a letter to Congress saying, Congress,
Speaker 1: you need to engage in climate and part of the
Speaker 1: solution needs to be land and water side of it. Sequestration,
Speaker 1: resilience adaptation, which is all important for a climate in
Speaker 1: terms of sucking carbon out of the air, making our
Speaker 1: coastal communities more resilient, cleaning water, but it's also great
Speaker 1: for fishing, wildlife, and explain that. So the way we
Speaker 1: work as we're a partnership of we have sixty normal
Speaker 1: partners partners within the umbrella of TRSP, the Theatore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: Conservation Partnership, and you know, we're a coalition that willing,
Speaker 1: you know, so we don't force anybody to take a
Speaker 1: position on anything, but we lay out what we think
Speaker 1: makes some sense. And uh, we had about two years
Speaker 1: of working on climate and we put together this five
Speaker 1: page statement or six page statement that went to Congress
Speaker 1: that laid out our principles. We you know, created a
Speaker 1: website so the folks everyone can understand what it is
Speaker 1: we want and then you know, we asked groups to
Speaker 1: join on this, and forty one groups within the TRSP
Speaker 1: partnership joined on that letter that went to Congress and
Speaker 1: have their names and logos on the website which people
Speaker 1: can see at TRSP dot org. When you're doing something
Speaker 1: like that, I know we're straining a little bit from
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. When you're putting that together, are
Speaker 1: you finding that there are people who, uh, don't get
Speaker 1: back to you or they say like, don't put my
Speaker 1: name on that. There was there were some people that
Speaker 1: just you know, they didn't want to have discussion, and
Speaker 1: you know it just weren't really engaged a lot of
Speaker 1: others that they coming up from a very particular viewpoint.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're Pheasists forever, they really want to
Speaker 1: see this is a vehicle to expand the conservation reserve program.
Speaker 1: If you're Duck's Unlimited, you're gonna want to see it
Speaker 1: as a way to preserve more wellands, restore or walans.
Speaker 1: So every group comes to it with their own lens,
Speaker 1: and so the danger of any one of these is
Speaker 1: that becomes this unwieldy beast because every single priority is
Speaker 1: put in there, and the fact that it's only five
Speaker 1: and a half pages or whatever it was it went in.
Speaker 1: It was actually a triumph because we kept that into
Speaker 1: certain key areas and you know, I think we accommodated concerns.
Speaker 1: You know, any of the groups that were there. Now,
Speaker 1: other groups like you know, d you didn't sign it,
Speaker 1: but they they're doing their own. One Boone and Crockett
Speaker 1: didn't sign it, but they did their own as well.
Speaker 1: That it was. Honestly, it's stronger than the one we have,
Speaker 1: you know, so Nature Conservancy is a formal partner. They
Speaker 1: did their own. So the forty one signed with us,
Speaker 1: sent that letter to Congress. Those are the folks that
Speaker 1: just collaborate on this effort. It's not a full snapshot
Speaker 1: of everybody that's dealing with climate. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that a third of those groups aren't interested. They might
Speaker 1: have been there. They have their own because they're handling
Speaker 1: for themselves. Yeah, so or they're just you know, they
Speaker 1: don't really see that in a wheelhouse like you know,
Speaker 1: a f l c i O is a formal partner
Speaker 1: of ours. You know, they're they're dealing with climate in
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different ways. You know that, So
Speaker 1: this isn't something they were going to sign on too.
Speaker 1: But in terms of overall impressions of the first hundred days,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think we're optimistic. I think that
Speaker 1: they have you know, pretty good people put in. I
Speaker 1: look it over at Partner of Agriculture, tom Ville Sack,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously it was Secretary of the Interior before
Speaker 1: Governor of Iowa, Senator from Iowa, you know, knows this
Speaker 1: stuff really well. He brought in Robert Bonnie to oversee
Speaker 1: you know, basically the Farm Service Agency RCS as well
Speaker 1: as the Forest Service. Robert is an old hand on this.
Speaker 1: He was on our board for a while, hardcore hunter fisherman,
Speaker 1: and you know, very pragmatic about how do we get
Speaker 1: these farm bill programs working better than they have. You know,
Speaker 1: we've lost a ton of acres out of c RP
Speaker 1: in the last four years just because you know, Sonny
Speaker 1: Perdu and the Trumpet Partner Agriculture, it wasn't a priority.
Speaker 1: They'd rather just sort of send people checks, you know,
Speaker 1: in response to the terrify fight with China, then actually
Speaker 1: ask them to do something with that money. Whereas you know,
Speaker 1: we want to see, you know, instead of just sending
Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars out to agricultural producers just to make
Speaker 1: them hold in a tough economic time. You know, I
Speaker 1: think things like Conservation Reserve program where they actually were
Speaker 1: doing something. They're setting aside marginal lands, they're improving it
Speaker 1: for a wild life, for water quality, and those are
Speaker 1: the things I think we think make a ton of sense.
Speaker 1: And I think we're gonna you know, the folks that
Speaker 1: Department Agriculture now will agree. So we already know that
Speaker 1: plans are underway to amend the current sign up for
Speaker 1: c RP to make it more lucrative. So you think
Speaker 1: that'll go down, that'll go down. We'll see, we'll see more,
Speaker 1: you know, a CRP program that makes more sense for farmers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I think, you know, Robert and the team
Speaker 1: that the USDA are working on this right now, we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what's going to look like, but they
Speaker 1: have recognized they have a real problem and they're expecting
Speaker 1: another If they don't do something, another to three million
Speaker 1: acros will move out of the program this year, so
Speaker 1: they have to do something. My first experience with was CRP,
Speaker 1: like really understanding what it what it is, was watching
Speaker 1: um the end of those first round rounds of contracts
Speaker 1: in in my like hunting lifetime and watching all this
Speaker 1: prairie and sagebrush get torn up in eastern Montana and
Speaker 1: seeing an immediate effect on antelope specifically, and just going
Speaker 1: from like more antelope and and truly like fewer hunters
Speaker 1: because people were so dispersed across eastern Montana. Um, it
Speaker 1: was like the good old days of antelope by far
Speaker 1: and away in it and it just man, it tanked
Speaker 1: and you could just see it. Yeah. Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is the same story in Dakota's a pheasant. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: duck populations ride different places. So I mean this c
Speaker 1: RP is a program that benefits you know, sportsmen in
Speaker 1: a variety of different ways. But I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we see it as you know, if you want to
Speaker 1: deal with climate, and you want to if you think
Speaker 1: about climate and the overall solution to climate, you can
Speaker 1: stop emitting today. But to get ahead, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to suck a bunch of carbon out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: In the best way to do that is through natural
Speaker 1: mechanisms like forests, and you know you're putting in cover
Speaker 1: crops instead of having bare ground over the winter. You
Speaker 1: have things like that that are if you go to
Speaker 1: eastern shore of Maryland cover crops, everybody doesn't. You go
Speaker 1: to Iowa, nobody doesn't. And so we just need to
Speaker 1: give create some incentives. It's not bad for the producers,
Speaker 1: it's just not the way they've been doing things. So
Speaker 1: given a cent of to do that sort of work,
Speaker 1: which is gonna suck out a certain amount of carbon
Speaker 1: overall about it, you know, they're saying about of the solution,
Speaker 1: are these natural things that naturally suck carbon out of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. You know, we talk a lot about, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of the poor state of a lot of the
Speaker 1: national forests in the National Forest System that haven't been
Speaker 1: logged at our monoculture, their beetle infested, they're waiting to
Speaker 1: blow up and you know burn. And if we you know,
Speaker 1: if you're serious about deal a climate, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: in there and you're gonna do some selective harvest. You're
Speaker 1: gonna do some areas. You're gonna restore some of those
Speaker 1: areas that are pretty degraded now. And that's going to
Speaker 1: help wildlife and sportsmen because you'll start developing that mosaic
Speaker 1: of habitats that you really want. I mean, we have roadless,
Speaker 1: we have wilderness, but we also want to have areas
Speaker 1: that are actively managed. And you know that is far better,
Speaker 1: you know, than you know, a stagnant forest. I was
Speaker 1: with a group of other you know, conservation you know,
Speaker 1: CEO S and Louisiana, talking with a bunch of the
Speaker 1: private timberland folks and Dave Tenny, who runs the National
Speaker 1: Association of Forest Owners. You know, later statistic that managed forests,
Speaker 1: you know, private managed forests are seven times take out
Speaker 1: seven times more carbon than their counterparts on the national force.
Speaker 1: And uh and I would argue too that you know,
Speaker 1: they're probably better for if you want that mosaic of
Speaker 1: habitats and some oral accessional force, it's better for wildlife too. Now,
Speaker 1: nobody wants to return to the old days of spotted
Speaker 1: elves and clear cuts and salmon watersheds and all the rest.
Speaker 1: But there's a happy median in there some place. Well
Speaker 1: for sure. You know, a friend of mine in the
Speaker 1: Forest Service, he'd uh had a stretch of like seven
Speaker 1: years attempting to do a prescribe prescribe burning an area,
Speaker 1: you know, and it just like through you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta meet a lot of criteria to get a burn going.
Speaker 1: And um, it's even more more strict in the on
Speaker 1: the government side of things. So yeah, and it's just
Speaker 1: there's still a cottage industry out there are folks who
Speaker 1: just litigate any active management on national force. And you
Speaker 1: know that's we're gonna have to deal with that. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have to make a little bit easier to actually
Speaker 1: cut word to do prescribe burns. And obviously if you
Speaker 1: do a small prescribe burn, you're heading off that catastrophic
Speaker 1: burn that we see in California in other places. And
Speaker 1: this summer is gonna be bad, I mean moisture levels
Speaker 1: across the wester allowsy. So you know, we need to
Speaker 1: get on top of this. And Robert Bonnie at USCA
Speaker 1: understands that. And when we fix the fire funding fiasco
Speaker 1: at the Forest Service, when until I guess about five
Speaker 1: years ago, every time you know, there was a catastrophic
Speaker 1: wildfire fighting that came out of the forests versus core budget,
Speaker 1: Congress changed that to create an emergency account like we
Speaker 1: do for all other natural disasters tornadoes, hurricanes, and you know,
Speaker 1: because you know that change has been made it gives
Speaker 1: the Forest Service about a half million, half billion dollars
Speaker 1: annually in additional revenue is to actually go and do
Speaker 1: habitat management for wildlife, for fire prevention, to remove invasive ecs. So,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the challenge that Robert is gonna
Speaker 1: be facing now at U. S t A Is getting
Speaker 1: that up to speed, getting that money on the ground,
Speaker 1: which is that it sounds like a big number, but
Speaker 1: is it that that's like they can do a lot
Speaker 1: with that. They can do a lot with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's and it's not that you know, they know
Speaker 1: it all goes out to commercial sale. I mean, the
Speaker 1: Turkey Federation and you know Mule Deer Foundation have doing
Speaker 1: stewardship contracting where they actually go in and do the work.
Speaker 1: You know, they got some money to do it, but
Speaker 1: it's not the forester is doing this stuff. So you know,
Speaker 1: Turkey Federation has done remarkable projects around the country using
Speaker 1: the Stewardship Contracting authority to go in and improve habitat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think there are different models of how you
Speaker 1: can do it, but I think there's a general consensus
Speaker 1: on the science community is certainly and the sportsmen's community
Speaker 1: that you know, we need more active management a lot
Speaker 1: of places, and that dovetails perfectly with clinton solution. I
Speaker 1: know you don't speak for them at all, but takes
Speaker 1: take a group like National Wild Turkey Federation. Have they
Speaker 1: are they articulating specifically a desire to address climate Yes,
Speaker 1: they hadn't before. And it's because it pisses people off. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the word has been so politicized and
Speaker 1: you know, people just retreating to their camps. And you know,
Speaker 1: Becky Humphreys, who's I think, you know, terrific CEO. And
Speaker 1: she's on my board with you, Steve. I mean, she's
Speaker 1: you know, understands us. She comes from a science background,
Speaker 1: and she's not going to talk to a membership about
Speaker 1: climate solu. She's just gonna talk about active management. She's
Speaker 1: going to talk about, you know, doubling the size of
Speaker 1: the conservation programs in the Farm Bill, which is what
Speaker 1: we're calling for in our statement to Congress. So instead
Speaker 1: of six billion dollars a year in conservation, kicked that
Speaker 1: up somewhere around twelve billion. And that's not all c
Speaker 1: r P, it's you know, the Regional Conservation Partnership Program,
Speaker 1: it's equip it's a bunch of other good stuff that
Speaker 1: the farm bill does, you know, whatever makes the most
Speaker 1: sentence in a given region. But we want more land
Speaker 1: in conservation and less land, you know, being especially in
Speaker 1: marginal habitats being converted to row crops. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: tell a real good story about what natural prairie grasses
Speaker 1: do or native prairie grasses do. For poulse Right, you
Speaker 1: grow a lot of birds well, and then if you know,
Speaker 1: you do a soil segment on those you look how
Speaker 1: deep those roots are in native grasses versus introduced grasses,
Speaker 1: and you know that's where all that carbon is is
Speaker 1: going down in those deep root systems. You look at
Speaker 1: soil carbon maps the US. The most important area is
Speaker 1: that prairie pothole region. There is a ton of carbon
Speaker 1: in those soils and every time they get plowed up,
Speaker 1: that's getting released. So we ought to be restoring the
Speaker 1: areas we've already trashed as well as protecting the rest
Speaker 1: of that prairie pothole region. And if you care about climate,
Speaker 1: and if you care about natural infrastructure, down water, downstream
Speaker 1: water quality, you want to protect those areas. So move
Speaker 1: over from in terms of the Hunter day picture and
Speaker 1: who they've gotten placed from the Department of Agriculture to Interior.
Speaker 1: It's like, what are your what are your sort of
Speaker 1: gut a gut impressions about the nominee. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. She's now a confirmed Deb Holland, who
Speaker 1: was a congresswoman from New Mexico. She has only had
Speaker 1: one term in Congress. Um, but she's, as she likes
Speaker 1: to say, she's a thirty fifth generation New Mexican, you know,
Speaker 1: Native American. Her family grew up eating venison um. You know.
Speaker 1: So the challenge that she's going to face is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a really political, a really controversial, complicated agency. You
Speaker 1: have everything from Bureau of Indian Affairs to the US
Speaker 1: Fish and Wildlife Service to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of things that fall underneath the
Speaker 1: Department of the Interior. I didn't know that the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Indian Affairs is still an Interior Oh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's an we don't do Indian issues. But that
Speaker 1: is if there is one agency they could use some help,
Speaker 1: and one people that could use some help is the
Speaker 1: Native American community. I mean, when I worked in Congress,
Speaker 1: I spent a fair bit of time on reservations in
Speaker 1: South Dakota, and you know, the average person just has
Speaker 1: no idea of you know, how lousy it is, you
Speaker 1: know currently. So I mean some you know tribes have
Speaker 1: got it figured out and do a really good job
Speaker 1: and have plenty of money, but others just have. I
Speaker 1: when we were trying to get running waters is back
Speaker 1: in the nineties, you know, into you know, some of
Speaker 1: the Sioux reservations in South Dakota who didn't have running water,
Speaker 1: do you you know. So we've seen the Biden administration
Speaker 1: UM kind of reverse a lot of Trump era rules. Um,
Speaker 1: do you think we're gonna see um deb Holland kind
Speaker 1: of reinstate or try to get back a bunch of
Speaker 1: that monument ground. Yeah, I think she's I think she
Speaker 1: was justin in Utah visiting Bears Ears and doing her
Speaker 1: own listening tour. So I suspect you're going to see
Speaker 1: those you know bears ears in Grand staircase, you know,
Speaker 1: re established the original for there may be some you
Speaker 1: know tweaks here and there, but no those will get
Speaker 1: you know, pushed back. There's a marine monument off of
Speaker 1: New England that was taken away. I think you'll get
Speaker 1: that back. So I think there will be but I
Speaker 1: think they'll open up the bears ears thing again. Huh yea,
Speaker 1: So no, I think they'll be doing that. I think
Speaker 1: the bigger issues are gonna be things like oil and
Speaker 1: gas development on federal lands. I mean, when she was
Speaker 1: you know, congresswoman, she had called for, you know, ending
Speaker 1: oil and gas development on public lands. Or maybe it
Speaker 1: was during the campaign, but you know it was, but
Speaker 1: was friendly to wind and solar on public Oh sure,
Speaker 1: and you know that's you know she you know, that's
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the coming. You know, she has
Speaker 1: a fairly liberal district in New Mexico. You know that's
Speaker 1: the you know, feeling that renewable entered is better than
Speaker 1: you know, oil and gas. And I would agree with that.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that you can't just turn off
Speaker 1: the spick and on oil and gas. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be around for a while. And yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: my my trucks only a year old. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: driving it for a while. And uh, you know the
Speaker 1: issue isn't you know where it comes from his demand
Speaker 1: on long term because you could shut down oil and
Speaker 1: gas development on public lands, And all you're really doing
Speaker 1: is screwing states like New Mexico, which have a lot
Speaker 1: of oil and gas on public lands, and shifting all
Speaker 1: that over to Texas or to North Dakota, which don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of public lands. So you're you're not
Speaker 1: really solving a problem, You're just screwing, you know, certain areas.
Speaker 1: I think a much more thoughtful approach is you deal
Speaker 1: with the you know, you deal with the issues of
Speaker 1: methane leakage. You just make the oil and gas development
Speaker 1: of public lands better than it has been. You get
Speaker 1: smarter about where you're going to sit oil and gas development,
Speaker 1: because there's also a ton of areas have already been leased.
Speaker 1: I mean that you know the cats out there, you
Speaker 1: know the door, the cattle's you know, the horses out
Speaker 1: of the barn. If you want an analogy, you want
Speaker 1: to use. So again, even if you were to say
Speaker 1: no new leasing starting today, there are still a ton
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. So the issue really is, you know,
Speaker 1: how do we do it better? And when you know,
Speaker 1: like Ken Styles are with Secretary of the Interior under Obama,
Speaker 1: they put together something called Master Lease Planning, which was
Speaker 1: before you develop an area and this could be oil
Speaker 1: and gas, it could be solar, it could be wind.
Speaker 1: You did look at a big area and you decide
Speaker 1: the areas where you can have development, where you never
Speaker 1: want to have development, where you can consolidate roads, pipelines,
Speaker 1: just to be much smarter about the development as opposed
Speaker 1: to Yeah, when you know Trump came in, it was
Speaker 1: under the and Zinc you would talk about energy dominance.
Speaker 1: The idea was energy development. It's going to take precedent
Speaker 1: over every other use on public lands, and they're not.
Speaker 1: We're not going to get in this way wherever it
Speaker 1: wants to go. Well, I mean that was more of
Speaker 1: a political stance, but it just creates problems because you're
Speaker 1: inviting controversy when you're offering leases in core stage Graph's
Speaker 1: habitat in the middle of migration orders. You know. So
Speaker 1: I think our senses and this is probably probably will
Speaker 1: shake out when an interior is there will continue to
Speaker 1: be oil and gas development. We've just done very differently
Speaker 1: that has in the past. Uh. Do you have concerns
Speaker 1: about working with Holland or do you Are you optimistic
Speaker 1: about it? Oh? I'm optimistic. I mean, uh, I've I've
Speaker 1: spent very little time with her. She'd been really good
Speaker 1: on our issues, but I just didn't know her personally.
Speaker 1: But then during the yeah, when she got nominated, and
Speaker 1: then until her you know, basically approval by the Senate,
Speaker 1: I think I had three different meetings with her and
Speaker 1: it was you know, and she was great. I mean,
Speaker 1: she didn't know a ton, she didn't pretend to know
Speaker 1: a ton, but she took copious notes and every time
Speaker 1: we met with her she was better than last time.
Speaker 1: She had understood what we were talking about. She was
Speaker 1: able to prioritize it. I think she valued our community
Speaker 1: as an important ally and her confirmation, and we're very
Speaker 1: happy to give her the benefit of doubt and work
Speaker 1: with her. The guy that just brought in is the
Speaker 1: number two at Interior. He still has to be confirmed.
Speaker 1: Tommy Boo Drow. He was in the obaministration. Good guy,
Speaker 1: you know, solid conservation credentials. Knows the department well. So
Speaker 1: she's been smart and putting people and keep positions around
Speaker 1: there who really know how that department works, because she
Speaker 1: doesn't mean this is she's brand new there. And you know,
Speaker 1: Zinkie had that same issue that Held had a trouble
Speaker 1: being effective within department because he was complete outsider, and
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason he brought Dave Bernhard in,
Speaker 1: who had been a solicitor during the Bush administration. Knew
Speaker 1: the agency, and things, you know, improved dramatically, you know,
Speaker 1: the Trump administration when Berner came in because he was
Speaker 1: a stabilizing, steadying hand. He understood what the agency could
Speaker 1: and couldn't do. Remember when you know, after he got
Speaker 1: picked to be Secretary of the Interior, we had a conversation.
Speaker 1: I mentioned energy anomous. He said, you will never hear
Speaker 1: me say that again because it's not legal. We are
Speaker 1: a multiple use agency. We have to we can't just
Speaker 1: arbitrarily pick one of these things and make it more
Speaker 1: importan and everything else. I came to like him quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Um. I mean, there's plenty of things that
Speaker 1: that I didn't agree with him about, but I did
Speaker 1: like and valued there uh stance on expanding access and
Speaker 1: doing some other things that rolling back some things like
Speaker 1: there was things a thing in Alaska I found particularly
Speaker 1: I somewhere they stripped the state of certain management practice
Speaker 1: abilities if they wanted to do it. I thought that
Speaker 1: was a bogus play and they moved that back. But
Speaker 1: do you do you think that in the new administration
Speaker 1: there's going to be like we will sportsman's access be
Speaker 1: a thing that ever comes out of their mouths? You think? So?
Speaker 1: I think, you know, they were I got a call
Speaker 1: from Interior that they were going to I don't know
Speaker 1: if they've done it yet or whether they were going
Speaker 1: to do it you know, shortly, but they're going to
Speaker 1: open up another ninety you know, areas within the refuge system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going there and that was the fraight you're
Speaker 1: gonna tell me that that would be rolled back? And
Speaker 1: that was one of the things we made sure that
Speaker 1: this this is something that Obama did, This is something
Speaker 1: that Trump did, This is something you guys ought to do.
Speaker 1: And it's you know a lot of it is not
Speaker 1: you know, sort of rocket science. It's you know, their
Speaker 1: areas are closed for no good reason and have been historically,
Speaker 1: and nobody really knows why. I just never been open.
Speaker 1: And and then the other issue was, and I give
Speaker 1: the Trump guys a lot of credit on this, you
Speaker 1: may have your particular rules on the refuge that are
Speaker 1: totally different than next door on state Land or general
Speaker 1: statewide legs, and that may make sense, but if you're
Speaker 1: gonna make them different, have a reason for them being different.
Speaker 1: Don't just have them different for being different, because it
Speaker 1: just makes it harder for all of us to participate.
Speaker 1: To know what the rules are. So that you know,
Speaker 1: Trump guys did a good job of basically conforming the
Speaker 1: refuge rules with the state rules, and I hope that continues.
Speaker 1: M hmm. We're earlier, we're discussing New Mexico's new trapping band. Uh,
Speaker 1: I understand, Like sitting here, I understand perfectly well, Um,
Speaker 1: why that it's not t RCPs fight, Okay, Like I
Speaker 1: I want to hear from you why it's not, and
Speaker 1: then I want to question you why it's not a
Speaker 1: little bit because um, it's a hunter angler based conservation organization.
Speaker 1: And I know that you can't get bogged down in
Speaker 1: in the constant legislation and referendums about what you would
Speaker 1: call method of take issues, so like how the particulars
Speaker 1: of how people access game. But at a point, if
Speaker 1: rights continuously get stripped down, it will become an existential
Speaker 1: thing for you. True. So the way you know, first
Speaker 1: we're we focused on federal policy and not state policy.
Speaker 1: So that's an easy out as to why we wouldn't
Speaker 1: engage in something like that. Second, you know, we've always,
Speaker 1: you know, tend to defer to the states in terms
Speaker 1: of fishing game management because the states have always had
Speaker 1: primary jurisdiction, and you know, we don't want to sort
Speaker 1: of I'd like just keep Congress out of it as
Speaker 1: much as humanly possible in terms of every now and
Speaker 1: then you have something like you John Tester and Mike
Speaker 1: Simpson having to deal with the wolf issue and a
Speaker 1: greater Yellowstone. But Congress should not be in the business
Speaker 1: of dictating fish and wildlife management. That should be left
Speaker 1: to the professionals within the states. And now if states
Speaker 1: sta start going, you know, very much down a bad path,
Speaker 1: then yeah, maybe we have to rethink, Yeah, our stance.
Speaker 1: Maybe we do have to engage in some of those
Speaker 1: But because I agree with you, But if you got
Speaker 1: to your point where you thought, wow, it really is
Speaker 1: a slippery slope and we've split off the slope, I
Speaker 1: could just I'm not inviting you to do it, but
Speaker 1: I but I think I've expressed this to you in
Speaker 1: the past. I have a small amount of like I
Speaker 1: have a teensy bit of frustration with wildlife groups who
Speaker 1: I feel could probably could perhaps be impactful around defending
Speaker 1: hunting rights, angling rights, trapping right, that they might be
Speaker 1: impactful because it would be an unexpected voice for wildlife,
Speaker 1: like hunter based environmental groups, hunter based wildlife groups, to
Speaker 1: say like, this matters to our constituency, this matters to
Speaker 1: our supporters. You need to understand that this is this
Speaker 1: is upsetting to us because I feel like it would
Speaker 1: help us defeat some of these things that some of
Speaker 1: these losses we're having. Yeah, and I think that you know,
Speaker 1: you'll see a lot of our community will engage and
Speaker 1: those you know, the different groups that do engage in
Speaker 1: those state fights, from you know, maybe Boone and Crockett
Speaker 1: on a you know, sort of intellectual level, to the
Speaker 1: Association of state Fish and Wildlife agencies, to any individual
Speaker 1: group that happens to be a strong in a particular area.
Speaker 1: But it just hasn't been our issue in the past.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we can be supportive to our partners
Speaker 1: who are engaged in these things, we will, and it
Speaker 1: may at some point maybe we will have to recalculate
Speaker 1: and engage in some of these but we have enough
Speaker 1: stuff going on in Congress right now and on the
Speaker 1: federal side that we're not looking for any you know,
Speaker 1: new fights. No again, man, I totally understand. You can't
Speaker 1: be everything everybody. If you just were like a drunk
Speaker 1: guy in a bar throwing wild punches, right, you get
Speaker 1: a bottle, you get the bout as far so I
Speaker 1: understand it. But I think it's just you know, helpful
Speaker 1: to have. Yeah, yeah, And I think that there, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some allocation issues we will engage in. I mean
Speaker 1: issue like you know, girlfriend snapper, Yeah, which you know
Speaker 1: is you know, you could argue with sort of you know,
Speaker 1: feeds versus the state and a very parochial issue down there,
Speaker 1: but it had much broader implications about how we managed
Speaker 1: recreational fisheries and federal waters. So we would we engaged
Speaker 1: on that issue. Meaning, uh, just like to to express
Speaker 1: differently that you engage in in a state issue if
Speaker 1: you feel that it's something that has potential implications that
Speaker 1: would occur around the nation in a similar some sort
Speaker 1: of direct federal next us. And in that one, it
Speaker 1: was about federal fisheries management. And essentially the solution is
Speaker 1: let the states take over and which we did. They
Speaker 1: say they took over red snapper management and read there
Speaker 1: are a lot more red snapper out there than you
Speaker 1: know people used to think, there we are, and that
Speaker 1: fishery is very well managed right now. And so that worked.
Speaker 1: But that was a case where you know, we were
Speaker 1: arguing about state versus federal jurisdiction on that one. Generally
Speaker 1: we don't engage checked your federal box. But I'll give
Speaker 1: you another example of a place where we have engaged
Speaker 1: of state issues, like when the Trump administration basically rolled
Speaker 1: back Clean Water Act and you know, it took out
Speaker 1: half the wetlands in the country and you know, a
Speaker 1: large percentage of headwater streams from jurisdiction. It was very
Speaker 1: clear that Congress wasn't gonna deal with the issue. We're
Speaker 1: gon we're going to get any place the administration. So
Speaker 1: we helped, like in Pennsylvania, an effort to increase their
Speaker 1: water quality standards, recognizing that that was where the game
Speaker 1: was going to be played. And if we could help
Speaker 1: a couple of states essentially developed prototypes about how they
Speaker 1: can protect their own waters, we could bypass you know,
Speaker 1: the federal legislation until or federal problem until at some
Speaker 1: point Congress wanted to deal with this issue. So again
Speaker 1: that was an area where I felt that there was
Speaker 1: we can get into it because you know, this is
Speaker 1: relevant given the lack of federal engagement on an important issue.
Speaker 1: That is, you know, not just Pennsylvania. If they have
Speaker 1: shitty water quality in Pennsylvania, that means the Chesapeake Bay suffers.
Speaker 1: So you know, if we can create some prototypes and
Speaker 1: states like Pennsylvania about how they can protect their own
Speaker 1: streams better, then that's you know, worth putting out there.
Speaker 1: What do you think is going to happen? This is
Speaker 1: my last one for you right now. What do you
Speaker 1: think is going to happen with And you've got to
Speaker 1: kind of explain a little bit too. Now that the
Speaker 1: administrations have switched, what do you think it's going to
Speaker 1: happen around the tong is roleless stuff. I think that
Speaker 1: will get again go back to you know, the previous
Speaker 1: roadless rule, you know, so those areas will get protected
Speaker 1: again and again we would like to see you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, not have this flip back
Speaker 1: and forth every four years who's in power. So I
Speaker 1: think we would be you know, perfectly happy to sort
Speaker 1: of do what we did with Idaho or Colorado state
Speaker 1: specific roadless rules, and maybe a blanket roadless protection and
Speaker 1: tongas may not be perfect. Maybe there are areas where
Speaker 1: you want to have, you know, some changes to that.
Speaker 1: Let's have that discussion. Um. But opening the entire area
Speaker 1: to development was not a good solution, I do have.
Speaker 1: I lied it was one more pebble mine. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of in its death throws wriothing on the ground
Speaker 1: right now. Is someone gonna, you know, well and put
Speaker 1: put one behind its ear. That's certainly what we want
Speaker 1: to have happened there. You know. Obviously the Pebble partnership
Speaker 1: is appealing. You know, it's denial of a permit. So
Speaker 1: this is still actually alive from an administrative standpoint. Now,
Speaker 1: I do not expect the Biden administration corp of Engineers
Speaker 1: to reverse the Trump administration to say you go for it,
Speaker 1: you got a permit, you can develop this mine. But
Speaker 1: long term, yeah, we've got to figure out a way
Speaker 1: to permanently protect that area. And we've been in quiet
Speaker 1: discussions with Center, Murkowski and Sullivan about you know, what
Speaker 1: would it take to you know, it could be a
Speaker 1: land swap that creates in Upper Bristol Bay National Wildlife Refuge,
Speaker 1: which in theory it would still allow you can do
Speaker 1: mining on refuges, but you can't do it if it's
Speaker 1: gonna impact salmon um, you know, is that one of
Speaker 1: the solutions. Is there a state solution, you know, states
Speaker 1: protecting those lands? You know, I think that Alaska is
Speaker 1: probably gonna want, you know, a chunk of flesh to
Speaker 1: sort of take development off the table, because that's the
Speaker 1: way Alaska works. So they're gonna want to either pile
Speaker 1: the money or they're gonna want to you know, land
Speaker 1: transfer someplace where they can actually make money. You know,
Speaker 1: long term, you can't. I mean, you can't blame them.
Speaker 1: I agree. I know you're saying that's how Alaska works,
Speaker 1: but that's how a lot of places work. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Alaska is just got it down to sort of in
Speaker 1: our the They have a lot of opportunities, and there's
Speaker 1: just so much federal land up there. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to be able to develop some of it
Speaker 1: if you're gonna ach a living in Alaska. And there
Speaker 1: are certain areas that are far better for development than
Speaker 1: you know, the Pebble Mine area, that's for sure. Okay,
Speaker 1: any you want to add. I just say there's a
Speaker 1: couple of other things to keep your eyes on as
Speaker 1: you move forward. Thirty by thirty initiative that was talked
Speaker 1: about during the campaigns that was in the executive order.
Speaker 1: Not nothing to do with the ESPN. No, nothing to
Speaker 1: do with that, which I always love those, But this is, uh,
Speaker 1: this is actually you know, this came out internationally and
Speaker 1: it was around the biodiversity crisis, the idea of protecting
Speaker 1: of the world's lands and waters by and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the how you do that is, you know, the challenge.
Speaker 1: So you know, the Biden administration, you know, during the
Speaker 1: campaign talked about it, and the initial Climate Executive Order
Speaker 1: came out of the White House they mentioned you know
Speaker 1: this thirty by thirty. Now it can go one of
Speaker 1: two ways. It could become a preservationist protect strategy where
Speaker 1: you're drawing lines on maps and not allowing any activity.
Speaker 1: And there's obviously the wilderness. You know, the hardcore environmental
Speaker 1: advocates are pushing in that direction. What the case we're
Speaker 1: trying to make is you've got to think much more
Speaker 1: broadly than that. First of all, it ought to include
Speaker 1: restoration because drawing a line around something that's degraded doesn't
Speaker 1: help you anyway. So there ought to be a restoration focus.
Speaker 1: We need to engage private landowners. If a land is
Speaker 1: under a conservation easement, but you know somebody is still
Speaker 1: cutting timber on it or making a doing agriculture, my mind,
Speaker 1: that's conserved. It's never gonna have Walmart there. It's never
Speaker 1: gonna have condos if it's got a permanent conservation easement.
Speaker 1: If you have you know, working for ESTs someplace again
Speaker 1: that are under conservation easement, there are certify sustainable by
Speaker 1: a third party FSC s f I, the two outside
Speaker 1: forest certifying bodies, my mind, that aut account is protected. Again,
Speaker 1: it's never going to get developed. And if your goal
Speaker 1: is climate or biodiversity, as we talked about that mosaic
Speaker 1: of habitats, having some young habitat is a good thing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, so we've been arguing that define. You know,
Speaker 1: to find this broadly and use the word conserve and
Speaker 1: not protect, because you instead of making this scary, say
Speaker 1: to western landowner who thinks you're going to go in
Speaker 1: and lock up their land, they've become part of the solution.
Speaker 1: You know, you can incentivise them to protect an area,
Speaker 1: to put a conservation he has been on it, to
Speaker 1: plant things that you improve soil health, to deal with
Speaker 1: carbon still make a living, and I just think that
Speaker 1: makes a lot more sense. So when the executive order
Speaker 1: came out of the White House, uh yeah, we won
Speaker 1: round one. It had the word conserve in their and
Speaker 1: not protect, which was important symbolically. It also laid out
Speaker 1: a stakeholder process that includes private landowners to talk about
Speaker 1: how are we going to define this and what's going
Speaker 1: to go into it. And that process will probably be
Speaker 1: rolled out by the Interior Department in the next week
Speaker 1: or so. I don't know what's going to be in there,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely gonna be worth something to watch because
Speaker 1: it can blow up and be here thrown out and
Speaker 1: perceived as a land grab and the top down approach,
Speaker 1: or it could be aspirational and you know, has a
Speaker 1: lot of folks behind it trying to make it work,
Speaker 1: including private landowners. The goal is do you know what
Speaker 1: percentage is protected? Again, it depends on how you define that.
Speaker 1: You know. The USGS did some sort of you know
Speaker 1: study a while back, and they said that twelve of
Speaker 1: the nation's lands are currently protected but they only use
Speaker 1: the definition of I think national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments,
Speaker 1: you know, the hardest core protection that we have. They didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, they did not look at conservation easements on
Speaker 1: private lands. You know, they did not look at you know,
Speaker 1: like regular Forest service lands that are well managed but
Speaker 1: are not quite protected in that sense because there may
Speaker 1: still be timber harvest on them. I'd imagine if you're
Speaker 1: going to do that right, you'd want to find a
Speaker 1: way to um begin to consider even like recreational properties,
Speaker 1: like the more we're sitting on right now. Sure that
Speaker 1: a recreate that that a recreational property would have UM
Speaker 1: and I know there's conservation easements stuff, but that they
Speaker 1: would have pathways. Would it would have pathways to become
Speaker 1: that what I would are you even you know, like
Speaker 1: a CRP, which maybe are a ten or twenty year contract.
Speaker 1: I mean, we want as much land and that type
Speaker 1: thing as we can get. That's not going to get developed,
Speaker 1: we know for ten or twenty years. And uh, let's
Speaker 1: count that, you know, so let's you know, air on
Speaker 1: the side of counting more as supposed to lesson if
Speaker 1: we have more than protected, great, well that's what. I
Speaker 1: feel like they raised the goalposts, they got the car
Speaker 1: in front of the horse. I feel like you'd have
Speaker 1: to get your hands around. Uh, there should be like
Speaker 1: gold Star, Okay, gold Star being wilderness areas, Like how
Speaker 1: many gold star lands do we have right down to
Speaker 1: bronze Star? And maybe that catches CRP lands. Add that
Speaker 1: up and then say like are we satisfied with that
Speaker 1: or should it be more? I would argue that we'd
Speaker 1: probably want to increase it. But to just throw out
Speaker 1: some wild ass number when no one even though it
Speaker 1: came out from the international perspective, you're thinking about sub
Speaker 1: Saharan Africa, South America and the Amazon or Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: a lot of these really rich biodversity areas that you
Speaker 1: know are not protected at all. I get it. I
Speaker 1: get why they're laying out these, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: what it seems like very ambitious goals for us. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got a ton of protected land. You know, we
Speaker 1: have six D forty million acres of public lands in
Speaker 1: this country that are never getting developed. Now you may
Speaker 1: argue that, you know, having a solar array or oil
Speaker 1: and gas development or timber harvest's development. Okay, we can
Speaker 1: have that argument those of three real different things, because
Speaker 1: I would go no, no, yes, right, yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think that you know, again, it depends on how you
Speaker 1: define this stuff. And that's a great conversation to have.
Speaker 1: Let's have that conversation. And I think that we win
Speaker 1: on the merits. When you're talking about biodiversity and carbon
Speaker 1: I'm thinking sixty doesn't have the ring. I think they
Speaker 1: did it because the ring, right, Oh yeah, no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But I think you have to consider private lands and
Speaker 1: and you know, recreational properties. When you look at the
Speaker 1: amount of private ground that that is, you know, on
Speaker 1: the tax record, like dedicated to recreation specifically wildlife. Um m,
Speaker 1: that that outshines. That makes that six million acres look
Speaker 1: like million acres. We got a lot more in private
Speaker 1: because that approach is also saying that this this thirty
Speaker 1: and I know you're not like sitting here, you're like
Speaker 1: ready to take bullets for the thirty by thirty, but
Speaker 1: that this thirty will all happen to be west of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River. No, yeah, it's gotta be, you know,
Speaker 1: that's it's got to engage private land, I think, and
Speaker 1: I think there's beginning to be broad agreement on that
Speaker 1: even within the Biden White House, so which is good.
Speaker 1: And then you know, then we can think about things
Speaker 1: like a farm bill and how that can be used
Speaker 1: properties like this where it may not even be under conservation.
Speaker 1: He has been and probably would need to be to
Speaker 1: be counted. But you know, given the work that's been done,
Speaker 1: the bio diversity we have here, you know, the myriads
Speaker 1: of habitats, you know, this is exactly what you want.
Speaker 1: And we ought to be figure out ways that we
Speaker 1: can encourage folks like the guy who wants this land
Speaker 1: to enroll, you know, be a part of that accounting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's I mean, you know, we talked about them
Speaker 1: all the time, but like Doug Durren's place, man, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, they got their families, got a few hundred
Speaker 1: acres of land, but I mean they they obsessed over
Speaker 1: every square inch of it. You know what's gonna look
Speaker 1: like in the future. What we need to do now,
Speaker 1: how can we keep it the way it is? How
Speaker 1: do we not break it up? You know? And I
Speaker 1: think that even the habitat side, I mean, let's make
Speaker 1: sure we have some snags for woods, and it's all
Speaker 1: happening there and then you imagine that um, and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't have any proposals, but if we really
Speaker 1: wanted to get serious about this thing, um, that there
Speaker 1: would be more of a sort of I guess some
Speaker 1: really smart person would come up with some expression, like
Speaker 1: like a more sort of elastic uh, expression of like
Speaker 1: the nation's goodwill towards that consideration and activity. That it's
Speaker 1: not that that if a family is thinking about it
Speaker 1: in a certain way, it's not just like one person's death,
Speaker 1: Like it's not one person's death away from development, you know.
Speaker 1: And I know we have mechanisms in place, but I
Speaker 1: know they're like they're sometimes ownerous and and hard for
Speaker 1: people to deal with. And I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: have the answers, but I imagine that we have any
Speaker 1: There's just a I'm just thinking about anoxially think about this,
Speaker 1: this this percentage thing. We have an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: land in this country. That's that people are thinking about,
Speaker 1: right for not just like waiting for it to hit
Speaker 1: a certain dollar figures so they can cash out and
Speaker 1: and turn into houses. They're like, man, I'd love for
Speaker 1: it to stay like this. Well, we haven't even talked
Speaker 1: about the ocean side too, and that's really what it
Speaker 1: got the you know, the hunting and fishing community kind
Speaker 1: of spooked on this whole thing to start with, because
Speaker 1: there was a process back in California, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of decades ago that set up marine protected areas
Speaker 1: off of California that did not allow recreational fishing and
Speaker 1: even well managed recreational fishing like catch and release something
Speaker 1: like that, and uh, you know, and that was so
Speaker 1: when thirty by thirty I was starting to be talked about,
Speaker 1: and there was you know, there was a bill in
Speaker 1: California to you know, to be the first state to
Speaker 1: adapt thirty by thirty and it died in the California
Speaker 1: legislature because the sponsors you know, basically would not put
Speaker 1: in writing that recreational fishing should be allowed. So that
Speaker 1: ought to be a warning sign to the preservationist community
Speaker 1: that you know, let's be sensible here. We want people
Speaker 1: to get on the water, to enjoy it, to be
Speaker 1: a part of it, because you know, they're gonna be
Speaker 1: the you know, the future generation that's going to be
Speaker 1: there to protect this thing. They're not they're the best
Speaker 1: stewards out there where you know, you and I going
Speaker 1: out there fishing and catching a couple of fish for dinner.
Speaker 1: That's not the threat. The threat or bottom trolls that
Speaker 1: are trashing the habitat. It's ocean dumping, it's ocean mining.
Speaker 1: You know, it's that sort of stuff that ought to
Speaker 1: be you know, out of bounds in a protected area,
Speaker 1: not you know, us going out there and maybe killing
Speaker 1: a couple of fish to take home for dinner. As
Speaker 1: well as people want to feel good about themselves, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to feel like they're like totally screwing
Speaker 1: themselves to get there. Yeah, exactly. And plus it's just
Speaker 1: you know, if you're just you're create division and you
Speaker 1: create dissension where there shouldn't be any if you did
Speaker 1: something like the has no biological basis, like banning recreational
Speaker 1: fishing area the ocean. Now, if it's a spawning area
Speaker 1: and there's a good biological reas, gonna do it, fine,
Speaker 1: do it. There's a there's a every year we take
Speaker 1: our kids down to the area in Baja Peninsula in
Speaker 1: there's a small closed area there and it's uh, they
Speaker 1: really go out of their way to express the value
Speaker 1: of that closed area. So the signage around this this
Speaker 1: marine this marine preserve. The signage has calculations of the
Speaker 1: number of fish caught by small commercial harvesters thanks to
Speaker 1: the closed area because it becomes a fish producing and
Speaker 1: it's like very it's like it's articulated in many ways
Speaker 1: in many places that that's what this is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's you could see that there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a psychological game there. Um, don't be pissed, Like what
Speaker 1: you're harvesting comes from here. And that's I think a
Speaker 1: very reasonable way to look at it, because obviously that
Speaker 1: they've done some science there. They know the key or
Speaker 1: spawning areas, you know, and they've made a public education
Speaker 1: outreach a program around it. But before you just go
Speaker 1: off and zone off huge areas of the ocean just
Speaker 1: so you can meet some mystical goal, let's be thoughtful
Speaker 1: about this stuff. You guys, got any more questions? Nope?
Speaker 1: Good job? What kel kel seriously thought about whether he
Speaker 1: had a question or not. He didn't just say no,
Speaker 1: I did, like what direction? Can we start a new direction?
Speaker 1: And all certain? You know, No, you did a great job.
Speaker 1: That was great, all right, guess always good talking to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. With again with Fosburg. The Theodore
Speaker 1: Roosevelt Conservation Partnership can be phone at TRCP dot org.
Speaker 1: Right on, send him a big old check, thank you?
Speaker 1: What'll write? What'll write you? Thank you? Note many right
Speaker 1: your reminder next year. He might convinit you if checks
Speaker 1: begging up? All right? Thanks with um. Remember when we
Speaker 1: used to do closing thoughts. I don't even remember what
Speaker 1: we used to call him? Is that what we call
Speaker 1: the closers? Closers? I just I still believe in them,
Speaker 1: especially got to the point where people would just I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just thought that people would know what
Speaker 1: to say him. Yeah that and if you've been going
Speaker 1: for two hours, then you know, closing thoughts just got
Speaker 1: another half an hour. But I have one today to
Speaker 1: actually one I found. I saw a tree. There's an
Speaker 1: old dead snag. Speaking of snags, I was near the
Speaker 1: power line and I see an old dead snag and
Speaker 1: about I don't know, head high. There's a plastic collar
Speaker 1: on this dead snag. This doesn't ring a bell. I
Speaker 1: mentioned it to guy. The guy says, yeah, your buddy
Speaker 1: Steve a dog collar. Oh yeah, I'm doing this with
Speaker 1: my arms. I know, but I don't know, man, I
Speaker 1: thought you meant the tree was like that and the
Speaker 1: snag was smaller and there was a plastic. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: we've been talking about that too. Oh yeah, we did
Speaker 1: tell a nasty story about a dog collar. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why I thought you meant a play. I got you,
Speaker 1: UM tell me about this plastic. I was walking along
Speaker 1: with guy uh and saw a wood duck come out
Speaker 1: of that tree, and I said, you ought to wrap
Speaker 1: that tree and something so the rack the raccoons, of
Speaker 1: which there are plenty, um, so the raccoons can't get
Speaker 1: up there and kill the wood ducks. And the way
Speaker 1: I remember the story is he was already planning on
Speaker 1: doing it. I think he's giving me credit for because
Speaker 1: he's a generous person, but I think it was on
Speaker 1: his radar. And now, is that something that you can
Speaker 1: just buy or is that cost him what I meant
Speaker 1: for him to do and what the practice I was
Speaker 1: familiar with, And it's probably expensive. If you had a
Speaker 1: lot of wood duck trees, is you remember people used
Speaker 1: to wrap them in Uh you'd buy sheet metal like aluminum,
Speaker 1: flashing whatever and wrap it in that. But I mean
Speaker 1: if you went out and if you wanted to do
Speaker 1: a dozen trees. You're probably you know, big trees. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a hit to the pocketbook. So I'm glad
Speaker 1: there's some kind of plastic. What you do see is
Speaker 1: those things people sometimes put on, or those things that
Speaker 1: look like you're trying to keep squirrels out of your feet,
Speaker 1: are a flange that comes down to the angle. But
Speaker 1: I knew that. You know, in the old days you
Speaker 1: used to put flashing around it so they can't get
Speaker 1: purchased with their fingernails on it. But there's gotta be less,
Speaker 1: you know, cheaper less sort of visually. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like a tree wrapped in aluminum from yeah,
Speaker 1: a million miles away. So I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: He glad to hear they did it. Yeah, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, because at first it looks you think like
Speaker 1: that's kind of weird, unsightly, but then you know it
Speaker 1: has such a good purpose stoked about it. My other
Speaker 1: closing thought is, uh, you've seen this big, giant oak
Speaker 1: that we called the gobbler from yesterday and killed him
Speaker 1: and we went we took a walk around that oak
Speaker 1: now a few times during this turkey hunt and uh,
Speaker 1: standing next to that oak in awe of it. It is,
Speaker 1: but you were off looking at it from afar when
Speaker 1: we killed the bird. But I've also stood now. I
Speaker 1: sat underneath and he called a bird from it, and
Speaker 1: he called a bird to it, because they show up
Speaker 1: at that so you founded turkeys around. See. I've just
Speaker 1: been looking at that field and seen him. I've described
Speaker 1: to people like there's one by the you know, gallant.
Speaker 1: I might go sit under that oak here in the
Speaker 1: next an hour too. But it's like, it's a a
Speaker 1: big tree. I mean, what do you think the diameter
Speaker 1: of the base at least six ft? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean if you're on one side of it, you could
Speaker 1: hide three grown humans on the other side and not
Speaker 1: see them no problem. Yeah, it's a big tree. Huge.
Speaker 1: The first branches are long enough that they could be
Speaker 1: their own tree if you just cut them off and
Speaker 1: were able to just to plant them into the ground.
Speaker 1: They're like, I mean they might be sixty I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a giant and it sits right in the big
Speaker 1: in the middle of this. Uh, it's a cornfield. You
Speaker 1: like whoever you kind of have a soft spot for,
Speaker 1: whoever was clear in the land. Well, I got to
Speaker 1: notice and there was a there was a chunk of
Speaker 1: rebar drove down in the ground at the base of
Speaker 1: that tree. There's probably a corner at some point in time.
Speaker 1: Well I felt I thought it was either a corner
Speaker 1: or it had lightning protection. I was gonna say, somebody
Speaker 1: tried to ground. I think someone had such a off
Speaker 1: spot for a big old tree that they left it there.
Speaker 1: That's what I'd like to think. Well, you'd have to
Speaker 1: be some sort of evil person to cut that thing down. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got me to thinking about like the
Speaker 1: way that like like whatever you want to call it, preservation,
Speaker 1: conservation um, the way that it can hit you. And
Speaker 1: I was just really standing there like in awe of
Speaker 1: the special thing and thinking how like like you're saying,
Speaker 1: you have to be evil to cut it down now,
Speaker 1: but like some special person had the forethought back in
Speaker 1: the day, and now you could take anybody from anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world and put them twenty ft from that
Speaker 1: tree and they would sit there and awe. And I
Speaker 1: think that we all need to like have that try
Speaker 1: to have that mindset sometimes, you know, when you're just
Speaker 1: going about the world, just have forethought to think what
Speaker 1: stuff gonna be like for future generations, you know, when
Speaker 1: it comes to nature, because something like that is just spectacular.
Speaker 1: But you also got to be the person that can
Speaker 1: look at an old dead snag and know the value
Speaker 1: of that too. That too, that too. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of wildlife value in that. Ok, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: ship using it. Bunch of coon crap at the base
Speaker 1: of it. Oh yeah, cardinals, rubs, it's it smells like
Speaker 1: a like a farm. There's so many deer laying underneath it.
Speaker 1: When you're sitting there you catch that. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: it's like elky almost, but I think it's just so
Speaker 1: many deer, so much stuff uses it. Yeah, that's cool,
Speaker 1: all right. Thank you Johnnie for the closers. Now you're welcome,
Speaker 1: and thank you everybody out there for listening. See you soon.