Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben O'Brien, and this week we are joined by
Speaker 1: Charles Post, a great Charles Post for another conversation around ecology,
Speaker 1: around wildlife, around fires, around grizzly bears, brown, how to
Speaker 1: be a better hunter, and just a bunch of jabbering
Speaker 1: about idealistic notions and philosophies of being better hunters. So
Speaker 1: hopefully that works for you. Hopefully you listen to all
Speaker 1: almost three hours of it, and it was a wonderful conversation,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites of all time, and an invigorating
Speaker 1: exchange with a very smart dude, Charles Post. So please
Speaker 1: enjoy Charles Post. Then O'Brien, Hey, buddy, how's it going. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's going great. It's going great. We both made it.
Speaker 1: Ice Roads. Yeah, Ice Roads Man Bozeman. I've been talking
Speaker 1: so nice about Bozeman lately, But now I just I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna go back to Texas. I really it's
Speaker 1: too cold. Yeah, today was pretty frosty. It's pretty frosty,
Speaker 1: but it's still not bad. In fact, my family is
Speaker 1: back in Maryland right now and they got eight inches
Speaker 1: of snow they like two days ago, So we're behind
Speaker 1: the we're behind. Can you can you crab in the snow? No,
Speaker 1: you can't crab in the snow. Well, we're just red.
Speaker 1: Next man, we squirrels. Stuff in your garbage can? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know if we live in western Maryland, which is
Speaker 1: like the it's like east West Virginia or South Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: It's just like the little sliver that of Maryland that
Speaker 1: disconnects those states like very limital. Yeah, Northwest Virginia, it's
Speaker 1: all yeah, it's just right there. So where do you
Speaker 1: We're definitely squirrels. You could do um deer right now.
Speaker 1: Opening days coming up, people getting excited. Yeah, the Orange
Speaker 1: Army is that? Do you miss? Do you miss home?
Speaker 1: I do? I like home, but I like you could
Speaker 1: tell me from comp moving out here and being away
Speaker 1: from home that for me, like, I I appreciate going
Speaker 1: back and like having a perspective that I wouldn't have gained.
Speaker 1: But sometimes I feel like an asshole for thinking people
Speaker 1: that never left are are aren't as worldly as me,
Speaker 1: because that's that's an asshole thing to say. Yeah it is,
Speaker 1: So we'll cut this part out. It's too honest, it's
Speaker 1: too honest. But yeah, I think I think I'm glad
Speaker 1: I left, but I do miss it there, man, because
Speaker 1: I'm every time I read something or I think about tribalism,
Speaker 1: or I think about hunter gatherers, I think about um,
Speaker 1: you know, societies that were important to our humanity. It's
Speaker 1: always family, It's always it's you know, it's always tribal.
Speaker 1: So when you move away, like our modern um style
Speaker 1: of moving away from our tribe only like to seek
Speaker 1: success is natural in some way, but also a little
Speaker 1: that's a shitty way to live life. It's something it's hard.
Speaker 1: I've been here about two years, you know, my wife's
Speaker 1: families from here. But yeah, I feel like this year
Speaker 1: kind of just connecting with UM, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: creating that tribe, kind of creating that place of like
Speaker 1: stability and comfort. And it sounds like we're gonna be
Speaker 1: neighbors now, neighbors. I got a new house closing soon.
Speaker 1: You got one closing soon. Yeah. We should take a tunnel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we could do it. You doing the summer
Speaker 1: be a little tough to do right now. Our wives
Speaker 1: is like, and what are you guys actually doing? I'd
Speaker 1: like to tunnel over to your house, like, come on, son, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're coming with Get on your belly. It's only a
Speaker 1: half mile the Charles, could we drive? Sure? This is
Speaker 1: more fun. That is more fun like shaw Shank redemption
Speaker 1: popping up out of them popping up? Well, um yeah,
Speaker 1: you feel you feel like you're starting to get a
Speaker 1: tribe here in Bozeman that people that feels like home,
Speaker 1: like you can have over for dinner and doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like strangers. Yeah, definitely starting to get that way. And
Speaker 1: I think just starting to get familiar with the seasons
Speaker 1: and starting to get excited about um, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a great word in ecology called phrenology. It's like the
Speaker 1: timing of events and nature is kind of calendar, and
Speaker 1: that's getting really fun. Starting to just getting familiar with
Speaker 1: like the way things work outside. Yeah, it's super different
Speaker 1: from me too, because people talk about different you know,
Speaker 1: weather events or the way things are and not being
Speaker 1: from Montana, somebody flippantly talks about all the weather from
Speaker 1: the east or this you know, this time of year,
Speaker 1: this is this is what happens. I'm like, that's I'm
Speaker 1: excited to learn. I have no idea what you're talking
Speaker 1: about In a lot of ways, and it's cool getting
Speaker 1: getting your spots. Like I grew up surfing is what
Speaker 1: I did my all the places they did my field
Speaker 1: research from, mostly in this year, Nevada and the coastal mountains.
Speaker 1: So you have these little kind of honey hooles that
Speaker 1: you know really well, and depending on what you're after,
Speaker 1: you can go and kind of like make sure you
Speaker 1: get that. I feel like this year I kind of
Speaker 1: keaton on a few spots that really feel like they're
Speaker 1: mind So that's fun, like whether it's bringing friends and
Speaker 1: family out there, or you know, just maybe Rachel skiing
Speaker 1: for the day of my wife and I can just
Speaker 1: go like split and go to my little zone. That's
Speaker 1: where I'm That's what I'm excited to do. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've in the transition to get here. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's been a long time. Um you were saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: last time we podcast is like because we were just
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do we moved here
Speaker 1: and now it's like, Okay, that's I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: thirty years of that, you know. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the unique things about living in a
Speaker 1: place where there's public lands to tramp around on right,
Speaker 1: and there's so much. I mean, people ask me if
Speaker 1: I've been to this range of that range, or this
Speaker 1: valley or that valley, and I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: the last two years I've just spent poking around our valley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just two of the multiple ranges that encircle it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't I can't wait. I'm most stressed about all
Speaker 1: the stuff all that need. Yeah. Right, I gotta buy skis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta get all this fly fishing equipment. I gotta
Speaker 1: look really fashionable out on the water. I can't be
Speaker 1: out there fly just any clothes. I gotta get like
Speaker 1: sims waiters, and I gotta look the part. But I
Speaker 1: want to get especially in Yeah, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be out there. I gotta get like a
Speaker 1: wicker basket ready. And people still do that because river
Speaker 1: runs through it an accurate depiction of that's what I
Speaker 1: should just dress exactly like those guys, cut my hair
Speaker 1: like them. That'd be great. Well, It's it's funny because
Speaker 1: you know, I think, especially I'm not traveling as much,
Speaker 1: it's just been awesome. But for so much as the loss,
Speaker 1: you know, better part of the last two years, Like
Speaker 1: you're reminded that you live at an epic place getting
Speaker 1: off the plane with all these excited people with their
Speaker 1: fishing gear and their hunting gear and their cameras and
Speaker 1: their packs ready for Yellowstone, and if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: are you gonna go do this? Like I'm actually just
Speaker 1: knew home and go to sleep, probably unpacking pretty days.
Speaker 1: I told my wife that the other day. I'm like,
Speaker 1: do you realize we're going to live for the first
Speaker 1: time in our lives in a place where people come
Speaker 1: to go on vacation. You realize public land? Yeah? Do
Speaker 1: you realize that that this is how lucky that we are?
Speaker 1: And I think she she absolutely does. Um And to
Speaker 1: raise a kid here, you know, I know you just
Speaker 1: got married, but hey could be on the horizon to
Speaker 1: raise a little human, to mold a little human um
Speaker 1: in a place that has this immense amount of freedom, right,
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool totally. Because that's why I would describe
Speaker 1: like the feeling, because I talked that on the podcast
Speaker 1: a couple of times, Like the feeling of being here.
Speaker 1: It's just when you wake up, it's just a little
Speaker 1: bit different. The knowledge that there's this large tract of
Speaker 1: freedom just waiting for you. Like that's that's pretty pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean last spring, I had a black wolf running
Speaker 1: in front of my car ten minutes from town, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of I think in that moment
Speaker 1: it kind of dawned on me because back home, you know,
Speaker 1: we lived north of San Francisco, right on the banks
Speaker 1: of the Ocean um huge marine wilderness area, tons of life,
Speaker 1: but bald eagles were kind of rare. Definitely enough wolves,
Speaker 1: had a few black bears. But I remember being a
Speaker 1: little kid and see my first bald eagle, you know,
Speaker 1: which being somebody he grew up bird watching like Grandma
Speaker 1: since I was real small. It was awesome, but it
Speaker 1: was in a bed bath and beyond parking lot as
Speaker 1: I was loading shotguns on it A's truck to go
Speaker 1: bird hunting, and I was like, man, this is amazing,
Speaker 1: but this kind of sucks, you know that my first
Speaker 1: bald eagle. Think that might be the title of your autobiography.
Speaker 1: I saw my first bird eagle beath and beyond bald
Speaker 1: eagle in the bed bath and beyond. It could definitely
Speaker 1: be a chapter. It was the title, probably first chapter.
Speaker 1: But now, like my little spot right deer hunt. The
Speaker 1: other day, I had two bald eagles in the tree
Speaker 1: over my head. I was like, this is normal, you know,
Speaker 1: And how amazing is it that there are places where
Speaker 1: you still have relatively wild ecosystems, where you just get
Speaker 1: to be, you know, right right over the back fence.
Speaker 1: Really you can't say that, you know, you can't say
Speaker 1: it enough. And I think folks UM I was. I
Speaker 1: had Lantaani in here the other day and we were
Speaker 1: talking around we just it just came up randomly, Like
Speaker 1: there's a term going around UM in some circles now
Speaker 1: called like West East people are calling the people that
Speaker 1: live out west west East, like I thought West Falia
Speaker 1: like the but like the van life UM. People in
Speaker 1: the Midwest and the East like have this UM. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what it is, angst around the way that
Speaker 1: you you know, that you're so proudly talk about the
Speaker 1: thing that you have. You know, if you got all this,
Speaker 1: you know, these awesome photos of you install on top mountains,
Speaker 1: and and I think the beautiful thing about I'm not
Speaker 1: from here, You're not from here, like we moved here
Speaker 1: for this, you know, we have other reasons to be here.
Speaker 1: But I'd say my primary one is for what we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now. And if you live in Iowa,
Speaker 1: or if you live where I'm from in Maryland, or
Speaker 1: if you live in North Carolina, if you live in Florida,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take long a kid here like come once
Speaker 1: a year, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, anywhere anywhere where you can
Speaker 1: get out and do stuff like that. It's it's the
Speaker 1: sitiation for it should be there for everyone because it's
Speaker 1: pretty important. Well I think what it does, you know,
Speaker 1: for somebody like us who or for anybody listening who
Speaker 1: you know, really spends time, um kind of appreciating nature.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we talked a lot about
Speaker 1: when I was in school, mostly a lot of graduate
Speaker 1: school really was like turn our restoration ecology, like returning
Speaker 1: the system back to a relatively pristine state. What we're
Speaker 1: trying to improve the situation. It's hard to know where
Speaker 1: you should be headed if you don't know where you've
Speaker 1: come from. In a lot of states, you know, East
Speaker 1: Coast colonized a long time ago, lost apex predators a
Speaker 1: long time ago, pretty uh, human influenced ecosystems, you know,
Speaker 1: up to the Rocky Mountain Front. In a lot of places.
Speaker 1: So it's nice to know that there are places that
Speaker 1: you can reference as benchmarks, you know, places where you
Speaker 1: can see an ecosystem that's functioning in a relatively pristine way.
Speaker 1: And that's something really informative because you can bring that
Speaker 1: home and you can say, wow, you know, New England
Speaker 1: would have had bald eagles and wolves and bears and
Speaker 1: moose in a lot of places, you know, and even
Speaker 1: by the time listen, yeah, listen, I will you, you
Speaker 1: would have had elk and grizzly bears and wolves, and
Speaker 1: you did at some point right before you Iowa. And
Speaker 1: if you've read Saint Kenny Almanac, the first fifty pages
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, the depletion of wildlife and not
Speaker 1: to resources across you know, the up and Wisconsin in particular.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that long ago that we had passenger pigeons,
Speaker 1: you know, blotting the sky out and heard a bison
Speaker 1: that Colonel Dodge spent multiple days in the saddle riding
Speaker 1: one one herd. So it's cool because you come to
Speaker 1: a place like this, you're like, wow, like this is
Speaker 1: what's been lost in a lot of places. You go
Speaker 1: to Alaska, you know, you see the salmon migration. I
Speaker 1: grew up in California. By the time I was in
Speaker 1: high school, the salmon that had migrated at my backyard creek,
Speaker 1: they disappeared, you know, functionally, that population was extinct. So
Speaker 1: it's funny though, I'm sorry, I think it's funny. One
Speaker 1: thing that that you're saying really like, you know, wory
Speaker 1: relatively young men. You and I, um, but I my
Speaker 1: father talks about being in the hills of western Maryland
Speaker 1: hunting grouse and quail and pheasants. In my lifetime, I
Speaker 1: think I've seen one pheasant that was on YouTube probably yeah,
Speaker 1: beautiful birds from China here was like that. That change
Speaker 1: happened within my and my you know, within my generation
Speaker 1: there were upland birds. That was like my dad's best pastime.
Speaker 1: It used to be small game and upland birds and
Speaker 1: then kill a orm opening day. And that changed within
Speaker 1: my lifetime. Now there are no very few upland birds
Speaker 1: because the way that habitat changed, right well, you know,
Speaker 1: and you see things in the news or you see
Speaker 1: these headlines that are kind of uh, I can be
Speaker 1: quite depressing at time, especially for people like I guess
Speaker 1: you probably keep our pulse. You around the pulse of
Speaker 1: the environment or the outdoors. And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the statistics that constantly runs through my head, for better
Speaker 1: or worse, is the idea that not the idea of
Speaker 1: the reality, that the extinction right on Earth is a
Speaker 1: hundred to a thousand times greater than would be without humans.
Speaker 1: So for us, like I had salmon disappear in my backyard,
Speaker 1: you grew up in a place that has changed dramatically
Speaker 1: since your dad was a young young guy. I mean
Speaker 1: that phenomena is is taking place across the globe and
Speaker 1: it's resulting in extinctions, Like there are still quail, there
Speaker 1: are still grounds, there are still Pacific salmon. But I
Speaker 1: mean it's hard to fathom, you know, growing up in
Speaker 1: a place like Southeast Asia where you're there was a
Speaker 1: rhino that you would have grown up with and there's
Speaker 1: no more rhinos. Like that's crazy. I mean the California
Speaker 1: grizzlies extinct. I mean it's and I think I mean
Speaker 1: what eastern elk I mean going further back but there, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's these these very familiar your species that
Speaker 1: will never see again, right, And I think those are
Speaker 1: the canaries in the coal mine, These like big, charismatic
Speaker 1: things that generations have told tales of, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: Eastern Elk, and it's like, wow, they're not there anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The amount of hunters that don't know that Eastern elk
Speaker 1: ever existed or ever seen you know, what one might
Speaker 1: have looked like, or what you know, depictions of them
Speaker 1: is is crazy. I think when you read about them
Speaker 1: and see what they were, it's amazing, right, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean just to think like bison grazing from Canada
Speaker 1: to Mexico like insane. You know, when you read all
Speaker 1: the trappers journalist, that little naturalist Hudson Bay journals, they
Speaker 1: did the wonderful job of documenting you know, pray or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever they able to harvest. I mean, you just
Speaker 1: can't hardly imagine like what it must have been like.
Speaker 1: And I think again back to Montana and the public
Speaker 1: lands and the wildlife we have. It's such an important
Speaker 1: reminder for people from across the country to come out
Speaker 1: here and say, wow, like this is something we can
Speaker 1: work towards. Places that have you know, wild ecosystems still,
Speaker 1: places for wildlife are abundant, you know, and communities that
Speaker 1: you know, we sure certainly have growing pains in areas
Speaker 1: that we don't necessarily see eye to eye on. But
Speaker 1: I think people generally rely on nature in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, whether it's to grow their their crops, or
Speaker 1: to hunted harvest, or just to find an escape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a That's one of the things that
Speaker 1: perplexes me most about. And I think what I've gained
Speaker 1: from you in our time talking on on record and
Speaker 1: off record is is just the hunters can be, you know,
Speaker 1: agents of healthy ecosystems. And that ends up being at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, if you're if we're really
Speaker 1: about what we say we're about, which I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure we are, Like there in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: we hunters are virtuous in a lot of ways. They're
Speaker 1: not modern hunters at least and probably all hunters through history,
Speaker 1: I would say, um, but what what it's help me
Speaker 1: to understand, It's like the most virtuous thing to be
Speaker 1: about as a hunter is a healthy ecosystem. You know,
Speaker 1: like meat will happen, conservation will get funded. Those things
Speaker 1: are there's what they're happening, their byproducts. That's there's nothing
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, and due to change the fact
Speaker 1: that I have to pay a duck stamp or I
Speaker 1: have to pay a license fee, and it it feels
Speaker 1: I used to want to celebrate that, like we can
Speaker 1: look at all the boddy I give you right, but
Speaker 1: I have no choice. I have no choice. I'm either
Speaker 1: a poecher or I pay and so, but I do
Speaker 1: have a choice to to whether to be an agent
Speaker 1: for an healthy ecosystem or not. Like that's my choice
Speaker 1: because I can be out there too and understand the
Speaker 1: natural world, or I can be out there just to
Speaker 1: fill my tag and pay my dues. Right, and and
Speaker 1: you can do there are so many opportunities to do more.
Speaker 1: We don't have community groups on road maintenance necessarily, or
Speaker 1: bridge maintenance. Even if you want to start a club,
Speaker 1: you probably couldn't go and fix a pothole leakal But
Speaker 1: you know along that same line pain and we've talked
Speaker 1: to us before. You know, paying your involuntary tax is
Speaker 1: just like putting money in the pot for roads or schools,
Speaker 1: which is an amazing thing about the American system that
Speaker 1: we were part of. But we also are blessed that
Speaker 1: we have all these opportunities to be more involved and
Speaker 1: be that agent of change and contribute not only to
Speaker 1: carry ourselves in a certain way when we're out hunting,
Speaker 1: we're engaging with non hunters or people in our community,
Speaker 1: but there's also a million opportunities to participate, and whether
Speaker 1: that's being involved in trail maintenance, picking up trash as
Speaker 1: you go, you know, leaving by example, being a part
Speaker 1: of a Christmas bird count, or being a part of
Speaker 1: a resta stream restoration project. I think you and I
Speaker 1: have saved many indigo buntings. That's right. That think that
Speaker 1: was the bird out the window hashtag it's been. There's
Speaker 1: a few of them out there. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: the ending of people watch. Oh my god, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's happened. Well, next year we should do a
Speaker 1: live pot cast the Boson Raptor Fest. Yeah. I heard so.
Speaker 1: Litle Hilba from Stone Glacier we had lunch the other day.
Speaker 1: He had a bunch of scraps from a deer he
Speaker 1: killed in the back. He's like, I'm taking these over
Speaker 1: to the raptor. Like, what are you talking about? Veloscopy raptors.
Speaker 1: That was my first thought because I have a child,
Speaker 1: I have a child's mind, So I was like, veloscopy
Speaker 1: raptors put your crans down. Yeah, but and I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, dude. You know so he's a lot of
Speaker 1: hunters have started taking their scraps rather than chucking them
Speaker 1: out for codes or whatever and taking over the Raptor Center.
Speaker 1: Like great, right, that's just another thing. But I think
Speaker 1: you know, well, you and I probably repeat ourselves on
Speaker 1: that point a lot around. You know, you're paying your
Speaker 1: taxigo hunt. You know, I don't go stand by the
Speaker 1: bridge when they're finished the new construction be liked, you're welcome.
Speaker 1: I don't do that because I could. I could. We
Speaker 1: can all get together and be like, wait did bridge
Speaker 1: every Sunday? But hunters do that all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: we did at what you didn't really do because you
Speaker 1: don't have a choice. Um. We It is okay to
Speaker 1: celebrate the history that this happened, but celebrating the money
Speaker 1: that you're paying is not. It's not enough. It's not
Speaker 1: it's just not enough. And do you know do more? Um?
Speaker 1: And I love the deer scrap you know that's creation
Speaker 1: because I've done some work with BOS and Raptor Center
Speaker 1: and they're awesome. They're just outside of town. You're telling
Speaker 1: all about that I'm very ignorant to what they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're um, they're are rehabilitation center. They're also an
Speaker 1: education center. UM. They do a lot of outreach as well.
Speaker 1: So a typical situation is, you know, an alv I
Speaker 1: hit by a car. Somebody picks it up, either calls
Speaker 1: and they'll come and retrieve it, or you bring it
Speaker 1: out there and they have It's just an incredible staff
Speaker 1: of people that will, you know, with with the skills
Speaker 1: and the knowledge and resources to try to bring some
Speaker 1: of these birds back to back to life. UM, you
Speaker 1: know a common thing, uh, which we don't have to
Speaker 1: get into because it's a hunting issue topic, but you know,
Speaker 1: lead poisoning is a big deal for a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of migratory um, you know, eagles especially, So
Speaker 1: the times that I've gone over there and shot some
Speaker 1: photos for them and helped them kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it's of interest, but it's also it's nice to be
Speaker 1: able to you know, support groups like that. And I've
Speaker 1: shot photos of these birds that have been picked up
Speaker 1: by hunters. Actually, the bald Eagles story that I did
Speaker 1: last year for them, there were two hunters somewhere in
Speaker 1: eastern Montana. I want to say, who you know. Bald
Speaker 1: eagles are big birds, old and eggles are even bigger.
Speaker 1: You see him in the groups. Like I've been to
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, Prince of Wales and there's
Speaker 1: like seventeen bald eagles ripping apart of you know, blacktail deer.
Speaker 1: You're like, they'll like take your groceries from the car. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, so these two hunters in this one
Speaker 1: circumstance where we're out um rifle hunting and found this
Speaker 1: bald eagle that was obviously super sick, and these guys
Speaker 1: were super brave and probably lucky, but they went never in,
Speaker 1: literally picked it up with a towel, put in their truck,
Speaker 1: drove it a few hours to the Raptor Center, and
Speaker 1: it had incredibly high levels of of lead. So basically,
Speaker 1: what happens from a physiology perspective as you have these birds, um,
Speaker 1: I've done a little research learned from them, and oftentimes
Speaker 1: they're migratory birds. You have your resident eagles and you
Speaker 1: have migratory eagles. The resident eagles have a diet like
Speaker 1: you and I are home and we have certain things
Speaker 1: we eat, but if we're traveling at the airport. We're
Speaker 1: going to a new city. We're gonna be a little
Speaker 1: bit more opportunistic. So that's the same program with these
Speaker 1: migratory birds. They're coming through Bozeman, Montana. They've never been here.
Speaker 1: They see a pile of guts and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's food. I gotta put calories on and I need
Speaker 1: to go eat that. Whereas the local bourbon like, I
Speaker 1: love fish, I know my spot to go kill over
Speaker 1: that dead deer to get to their spot where they
Speaker 1: know there's fish totally, and they just have their preference.
Speaker 1: So oftentimes these migratory birds are more predisposed to this
Speaker 1: lead poisoning. So what happens is the way these birds
Speaker 1: bodies were because they're sitting there. You've probably seen an
Speaker 1: eagle or or a vulture, even a raccoon. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these animals like, I gotta get as
Speaker 1: much down my throat as possible because I don't know
Speaker 1: when when my next meal is coming. I don't know
Speaker 1: if some bigger bird or bears and kicking me off this.
Speaker 1: So their bodies are basically ingesting rapidly, and then they
Speaker 1: have these digestive systems that are just like burning through
Speaker 1: the food. So they're metabolizing not only the meat at
Speaker 1: a rapid pace, but that lead. So instead of drinking
Speaker 1: like six beers over six hours, they're chugging six beers
Speaker 1: at one time, and it just punches them. So they
Speaker 1: get really sick. And a lot of birds will die
Speaker 1: from that lead poisoning. Um. So the raptor center, you know,
Speaker 1: they will stabilize the bird. UM. I'm sure there's a
Speaker 1: lot of other things. I don't know that they do,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, basically getting back on his feet,
Speaker 1: and a lot of birds do die. But in this case,
Speaker 1: we were able to let that bird go. So what
Speaker 1: makes a bird like that migratory as opposed to resident?
Speaker 1: You know, I know with with someone it's it's more
Speaker 1: of a of a fitness thing. If you're a rainbow
Speaker 1: trout and you saw up a stream, say, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you have ten thousands, you know, little eggs that
Speaker 1: hatch and there's you know, and uh say twenty fish
Speaker 1: that that survived to a young age. Certain OFFICI will
Speaker 1: stay as rainbow trout. The ones that get really big
Speaker 1: and exceed a certain size speciold will say, like ship,
Speaker 1: I can move on from this little creek and I
Speaker 1: can go to the ocean get way bigger, and the
Speaker 1: bigger I get, the more eggs I can have, or
Speaker 1: the more reproductive I can be. More of a cound
Speaker 1: that's the word we use, so usually it's like a
Speaker 1: size thing like that. Maybe that's the hashtag from this Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely the hashtag this podcast. The condity that sounds
Speaker 1: like like a cool band name for something or like
Speaker 1: a bumper sticker. Yeah, for coundity. Yeah, all right, continue,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. That'll be the hashtag for the episode. You
Speaker 1: can look at the bottom of the podcast. Both eagles,
Speaker 1: you know, probably a lot to do with um where
Speaker 1: they were born, you know, because it's hard to make
Speaker 1: a living being an eagle Northwest Territory. It's probably a
Speaker 1: little bit easier being a resident bird in the Bay area. Um,
Speaker 1: so whether it'll push these birds down and um, you know,
Speaker 1: there's also only so many you know, habitats are available.
Speaker 1: You know, on eagle has a home range and they're
Speaker 1: not going to be super psyched on another bald eagle
Speaker 1: moving into their spot. You know, nest sites are often limited,
Speaker 1: so it's probably a suite of factors that determine whether
Speaker 1: birds days or goes um locality is probably one of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I was gonna say. That's where they're, where
Speaker 1: they're born, and where they where they come up. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so they lead things interesting, you know. And I'm
Speaker 1: not a ballistics expert, but you know, lead has been
Speaker 1: outlawed in a lot of places where there's condors in
Speaker 1: certain waterfowl zones. Maybe maybe across the board, I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure about that. Most Yeah, it's hard to find
Speaker 1: a place where you can use lead now and they're
Speaker 1: they're you know, in the past was it was a
Speaker 1: huge debate hunters, you know, on the side of you
Speaker 1: lead a lot of in a lot of cases, I think,
Speaker 1: but I think mostly you know, the steel shot has
Speaker 1: become you know, prevalent. Most most hunters you run into
Speaker 1: understand what's going on there. Well, it's hard, you know, um,
Speaker 1: because it happens when you shoot an animal with lead,
Speaker 1: is it fragments? So maybe the birds not swalling the
Speaker 1: whole bullet, But it's getting quite a bit of you know,
Speaker 1: it's the leads pretty well spread out through the end
Speaker 1: of Google that how many states lead shot? Yeah, for hunting,
Speaker 1: because that that's something not something I know off hand,
Speaker 1: but it's hard, right because the alternative might be tungsten.
Speaker 1: And if we're talking about like impact on the environment,
Speaker 1: you know, everything's kind of impact. Well that's yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean I think in the past that the hunting point was, hey,
Speaker 1: if we can't use lead and aim, it gets way
Speaker 1: more expensive and less people go hunting. And it was
Speaker 1: always like, well, this is a submerge of tact to
Speaker 1: have less hunters, and that was always So it's not
Speaker 1: a ballistics thing. People aren't saying lead shoots better than
Speaker 1: a steel I've never heard that. Yeah, I know, not
Speaker 1: a shot shell expert, but I remember early in my
Speaker 1: career that that was a lot of the you know,
Speaker 1: this makes this makes AMMO so much more expensive, and
Speaker 1: that is true in some ways and for all was listening.
Speaker 1: We'll be giving out Ben's personal cell phone nowhere you
Speaker 1: can call and provide feedback on the There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are like, I know what this is about.
Speaker 1: He's an idiot, and I don't know much. No, I
Speaker 1: don't how many states allow lead shot hunting. I gotta
Speaker 1: get out like a Googler person so I don't have
Speaker 1: to do it and talk to you the same time
Speaker 1: next time. But yeah, it's interesting thing because it seems
Speaker 1: like the United States banned lead shot for hunting waterfowl,
Speaker 1: and at least states of instituted lead shot restrictions beyond
Speaker 1: those mandated for waterfowl hunting. Yeah, and I probably say
Speaker 1: that most places that support condors are included in that
Speaker 1: list of regions where you can't use lad that says
Speaker 1: there will be a complete ban on the use of
Speaker 1: lead ammunition for any hunting purposes anywhere in the state
Speaker 1: by July one. And this is, um what state is that?
Speaker 1: Now We're going down this rabbit hole. Ammunition other than
Speaker 1: lead required for waterfowl and went hunting with a shotgun
Speaker 1: on wildlife refugees and wildlife production areas. So there's a
Speaker 1: lead Free Hunting dot Com if you want to get
Speaker 1: all the state by state rundown like free Hunting dot
Speaker 1: Com has every single state, UM, and most of them
Speaker 1: are required non toxic ammunition. Yeah, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: it's we talk about stewardship, We talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: being that better hunter, kind of going above and beyond
Speaker 1: in it. You know, we're obviously revealing we're not the
Speaker 1: experts on the topic. But it does seem that, you know,
Speaker 1: avoiding lead if possible, is one way that we can,
Speaker 1: you know, reduce our impact in terms of some of
Speaker 1: these wildlife that kind of get caught up and it's
Speaker 1: something like that this you know now it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's understood that lead shot has negative effects on
Speaker 1: on birds. UM, that's an understood thing. And if I'm
Speaker 1: just scrolling down and reading through this, really what I'm
Speaker 1: picking up is, you know, if I were just to
Speaker 1: read Kentucky non toxic gam unition required for dubs in
Speaker 1: thirteen wildlife Refugees Louisiana, non toxic gammunition required for dubs
Speaker 1: at certain wildlife management areas. UM, there's just a bunch
Speaker 1: of different a bunch of different rules and regulations on it,
Speaker 1: but it's generally it's generally accepted. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that's that's cool about this topic I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought about this is that, you know, I just made
Speaker 1: this film called Skymigrations. It's a film about um raptors
Speaker 1: migrating across two hemispheres in some cases, and you can
Speaker 1: check it on a Vimeo. But the kind of the
Speaker 1: thesis of that film was that a lot of these
Speaker 1: birds of prey require at least two hemispheres worth of
Speaker 1: stewardship to be sustained. You know, there was a famous
Speaker 1: study that I referenced in the film We're Swainson's Hawk Hawks.
Speaker 1: This bird of prey that can migrate from BC all
Speaker 1: the way to the grasslands of Argentina was dying off
Speaker 1: in these huge spates. And what researchers found was that
Speaker 1: if you are poisoning crickets in Argentina, you're going to
Speaker 1: impact a bird that would over summer or reproduce in
Speaker 1: the forest of BCS. So these are these are continental
Speaker 1: wide issues. So the way that we choose to treat
Speaker 1: or stewart or care for our ecosystems in wildlife has
Speaker 1: these repercussion repercussive um you know, kind of impacts that
Speaker 1: go far beyond the in the region of the county
Speaker 1: is that we call home. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm just reading.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a short break. I don't take a
Speaker 1: short break, and I could get educated on this very
Speaker 1: important subject. We'll go back to it now that these
Speaker 1: are good like we're talking about the y podcast that
Speaker 1: are cool prior to this, like this is one of
Speaker 1: the cool things because I guarantee maybe you will too.
Speaker 1: And this is over, I'm going to dive deep into
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole of lead ammunition. You're FaceTime like two am, Like,
Speaker 1: guess what, let's start on association already got shirts. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's gonna be great. Um, but yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's there are some things in the hunting community that
Speaker 1: you're as a part of the community. I find that
Speaker 1: we have been traditionally pretty rigid, um and there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of things over the years that we pushed
Speaker 1: back on with initial you know, hey, listen, let's maybe
Speaker 1: not do this, let's maybe not do that, let's maybe
Speaker 1: change our ways there. And in the rigidity of the
Speaker 1: community has always been hey, this is our right, this
Speaker 1: is it's a tradition. And I think there's a new
Speaker 1: generation of of especially my generation that that and yours
Speaker 1: as well, I think a little bit differently around those things.
Speaker 1: So if for example, we were we were all all
Speaker 1: too come upon you know, an issue, we knew like
Speaker 1: you were to bring up an issue, say okay, this
Speaker 1: is happening, hunters are causing this. Um. The honey community
Speaker 1: is a little more malleable nowadays, I think to change
Speaker 1: those things. Yeah, and we kind of talked about it earlier,
Speaker 1: where you know, with the rise of social media and
Speaker 1: podcasts and content outlets, opportunities to learn. I think the
Speaker 1: general public is has blessed this opportunity to be exposed
Speaker 1: to a suite of perspectives. You know, it's not just
Speaker 1: what you might find in Peterson's or what you see
Speaker 1: at Cabela's or what you see in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: You know, there are thousands of perspectives that are packaged
Speaker 1: up and put it your fingertips if you want them.
Speaker 1: And that's awesome because I think it gives people an
Speaker 1: opportunity to be flexible and be plastic and not necessarily say, well,
Speaker 1: this is my news source, so this is my mentor,
Speaker 1: and not swimming to think, um, you know and we don't.
Speaker 1: There's also something to be said for being open to learning, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I was vegetarian for a few years in college. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons was I was broke and the house
Speaker 1: I lived in a lot of the people with vegetarians
Speaker 1: ate mostly plants. I also ate some you know, meat
Speaker 1: here and there, but it was mostly a plant based diet.
Speaker 1: Um I changed people change. You know, you're exposing these things,
Speaker 1: new ideas, new tastes, the concept of knowledge changes for
Speaker 1: us as humans. When I was a kid and you
Speaker 1: were a kid, they were pushing out, they were pushing
Speaker 1: across the table this pyramid. They're like, hey, checked this
Speaker 1: pyramid out. This is how you should eat. It's called
Speaker 1: the food pyramid. Like m hmm. Interesting, Like I don't
Speaker 1: see Simnto's crunch on that. But now, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a you know, many many, many people. You know, there
Speaker 1: are experts in that in those fields that that look
Speaker 1: at that and shake their heads like that's you should
Speaker 1: invert that pyramid. Some people will tell you. But um,
Speaker 1: the one thing about you know I've found about the
Speaker 1: human died and really listening to a lot of podcasts,
Speaker 1: Rogan does a great job, Joe Rogan do is a
Speaker 1: great job of having a bunch of you know, varying
Speaker 1: perspectives on is that it's a it's a fairly personal
Speaker 1: thing of what works for you. But the knowledge you
Speaker 1: can have about you know, calorie intake and heart health.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of different really smart
Speaker 1: people that that disagree on on those important issues right,
Speaker 1: and every everybody's ecosystem personal ecosystem. As we know, we
Speaker 1: have millions and millions of you know, flora living our guts.
Speaker 1: Those are all different. My wife, she has had, you know,
Speaker 1: some um health issues, not major fortunately, but some things
Speaker 1: that bother her. And she just got some body work done,
Speaker 1: some tests back, and they're like, you're allergic to these
Speaker 1: six things, and she cut them out of her diet.
Speaker 1: She feels great, you know, And that's not a I
Speaker 1: have some ideological issue with this plant or this type
Speaker 1: of food. This is just straight up I feel like
Speaker 1: ship when I eat it, and I'm not gonna eat
Speaker 1: it anymore. You know. Doctors recently told me all gluten.
Speaker 1: He's like, you should eat everything should you should have
Speaker 1: gluten in it? In the hunter percent gluten diet. I
Speaker 1: was like, well, that's odd. But things, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: You're like, I love nachos, what everything that's been maybe
Speaker 1: a T shirt everything glue um, But yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I think that all those things are All those things
Speaker 1: are true, and and it's hard to navigate this world
Speaker 1: with the amount of information that is that would be
Speaker 1: required to do it right. It would really be you
Speaker 1: know even in even if you know the topic of
Speaker 1: this podcast happens to be hunting, even to be holistically
Speaker 1: pure and your hunting pursuits is it's impossible, I believe,
Speaker 1: because things are changing so rapidly. But it's also takes work.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of work. It takes physical work,
Speaker 1: emotional work, dedication to skills, acquiring of new ones and
Speaker 1: refining the ones that you have. Like that, it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of work. And just like the mental game.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have conversations about things that pop up
Speaker 1: in environmental news or wildlife management. You know, we'll speaking
Speaker 1: for us both. I know we'll spend hours trying to
Speaker 1: understand the issue. I don't. Yeah, there's some stuff that
Speaker 1: I even like. One thing I am sure you could
Speaker 1: say this, dude, that I like about being a writer
Speaker 1: is it gives me time, Like gives me an excuse
Speaker 1: to like really dive into subjects. And sometimes I'll finish
Speaker 1: an article, whether it's long short, Uh, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: I'll get done the article and people will enjoy it.
Speaker 1: And by the time it's a day old, I want
Speaker 1: to write a new one because you've you've learned something
Speaker 1: or I've kind of it opens up a new pathway
Speaker 1: to knowledge and you go down that path and now
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, now I found this and this and this,
Speaker 1: And I think that's just how how how it works,
Speaker 1: it has to be, and I think it speaks this
Speaker 1: this truth that nobody's perfect and growth is all about
Speaker 1: evolving and changing and totally being cool with the fact
Speaker 1: that at one point you had no idea what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, or weren't skilled or weren't experienced. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm not you know, in the hunting space too, and
Speaker 1: especially in the in the hunting media space for a
Speaker 1: long time and and even probably now like you, weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to be popular or influential unless you were an
Speaker 1: expert and and unless you put yourself out there as
Speaker 1: I'm an expert um. And that was important because you know,
Speaker 1: people need to hear from people that are experts in
Speaker 1: the actual act of going hunting, because you need that.
Speaker 1: I mean you need not you know, there's no way
Speaker 1: to gather all the knowledge for um, for archery without
Speaker 1: somebody like John Dudley telling you how to how to
Speaker 1: tune your bow and how to shoot it and how
Speaker 1: to take care of it, how to how to hown
Speaker 1: your skill. I think I watched this video yesterday. Seriously,
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I'm I'm in the knock on nation man,
Speaker 1: because because I really do want to get better at
Speaker 1: that specifically. But we should hold up guys like that, right.
Speaker 1: But I think now it seems there's two things happening. One,
Speaker 1: I think social media allows anybody to gather followers for
Speaker 1: you know, virtuous or otherwise reasons, reasons that will not
Speaker 1: be listed on this but also people that aren't experts,
Speaker 1: that just have interesting perspectives or are are like intrigued
Speaker 1: by what we do, are able to then also gather
Speaker 1: folks around what they are. So it's starting to diversify
Speaker 1: the type of information people can get. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: always have to be um of self reclaim expert telling
Speaker 1: you exactly how to do something. You can expand your
Speaker 1: knowledge in other ways well, And the experts will always
Speaker 1: tell you that they're constantly learning, they're constantly tweaked defining
Speaker 1: their perspectives. I mean, that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: I revert back to being somebody who spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time in the science academic world. It's like those
Speaker 1: professors every year are trying to improve their previous work.
Speaker 1: And that's the those the underpinnings of scientific exploration. Right,
Speaker 1: You're always improving, and you realize that you put something
Speaker 1: out in the world, as quote unquote truce, there is
Speaker 1: a high chance and you, as a scientist, are dedicated
Speaker 1: to that chance of it being wrong. That's a beautiful Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seeming to be the beauty about science is like
Speaker 1: you're going to be wrong a lot, and that's almost
Speaker 1: the point of it. That is the point of it,
Speaker 1: is that you stand on the shoulders of your predecessors. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: scientific discoveries is this game of who's wrong next totally
Speaker 1: and and to what degree? To what degree? How how
Speaker 1: wrong are you right? And that's and I think when
Speaker 1: we talk about wildlife management, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: remind people that when a wildlife professional says something about
Speaker 1: an ecosystem or a population of animals, they are doing
Speaker 1: their best job, presumably to interpret something that has identifiable
Speaker 1: unknowns and has probabilities that they can't control, and drivers
Speaker 1: they can't control, and things that they're predicting. And in
Speaker 1: the scientific world, we have when somebody says it's significant
Speaker 1: significant ice loss, significant declines of population you are using
Speaker 1: this thing called the confidence interval. So you're saying this happened,
Speaker 1: and I am confident. This is why there's that five
Speaker 1: percent that is like freaking the X factor. That could
Speaker 1: be anything that could just totally ruin your study. And
Speaker 1: that is an inherent part of the process. So when
Speaker 1: people say things, there's a everybody's admitting out the gates
Speaker 1: there's a chance five at least that you are totally wrong,
Speaker 1: or you are wrong to a certain degree. I say
Speaker 1: that'd be a good way to live your life everything.
Speaker 1: I might write that on the white board. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm right about what I'm telling you, right always, But
Speaker 1: I think that's the most most that's a high. That's
Speaker 1: that's on a good day. Mostly it's a fifty fifty.
Speaker 1: But I'm that confident. But you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: you know, it will be a good way to approach
Speaker 1: all things. I think, especially wildlife is so unpredictable, and
Speaker 1: nature is so unpredictable. You know, you just have to
Speaker 1: identify trends and identify how things you like you said,
Speaker 1: use history too to guide you well. And you know,
Speaker 1: as we all know, we all have our hunting spots
Speaker 1: and like the place that you hunt down the road
Speaker 1: is different than place you hunt two counties over, and
Speaker 1: that is an indication that ecosystems change every space and time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's, you know, one of the more
Speaker 1: successful ventures around the successful parts of our model of conservation.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the North American mileth Conservation,
Speaker 1: it says very um. It says wildlife belongs to everyone,
Speaker 1: held in trust by the states, and what the states
Speaker 1: will then do is use science and wild if biology
Speaker 1: to determine how best to manage that wildlife. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something I've always come back to. Is you know,
Speaker 1: if if I would ask you, and I don't know
Speaker 1: near as much as you, um, but I'll have to
Speaker 1: ask you this question, why do you think when do
Speaker 1: you think do you think the North American model of
Speaker 1: wildlife controvation has been successful? Your answer would be yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely great Now again, yeah, we're friends again. Uh. The
Speaker 1: second question in there is why, Like at its heart,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there's many, many reasons, but why
Speaker 1: if you had to give one, I think the hy
Speaker 1: is illustrated in our successes. I mean, we have brought
Speaker 1: species back from the brink of extinction big like mega fauna, bison, wolves, ungulus,
Speaker 1: you know, white tailed deer. There was a point where
Speaker 1: King Ranch and Texas was sending year into the southeast.
Speaker 1: Now we have more white tailed deer on the continent
Speaker 1: than ever before, maybe in his history. I think looking
Speaker 1: at the successes and is an indication the models working. Um,
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt try to come out and shoot a bison,
Speaker 1: you had trouble finding one? Yeah, what's what's the U?
Speaker 1: The quote is I was never in sight of a
Speaker 1: live one and out of sight of a dead one,
Speaker 1: you know. So I think they're in lies the the
Speaker 1: impact of that model on North America. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we're also blessed to have political, you know, relatively stable
Speaker 1: political and social landscapes, economic landscapes, economic landscapes. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of other countries that come to mind where
Speaker 1: a wildlife are Dwin blame is is maybe not necessarily
Speaker 1: a function of lack of effort, but lack of stability
Speaker 1: across those different landscapes. Um. So we kind of have
Speaker 1: like the suite of drivers, I think has given us
Speaker 1: the opportunity to leverage that model and and be successful.
Speaker 1: I think also we have a culture and American culture
Speaker 1: that truly does value the outdoors, that you know, do
Speaker 1: value public lands and wildlife. So there's that social incentive
Speaker 1: to kind of push science and push conservation. But we
Speaker 1: also have an amazing, um, you know, body of checks
Speaker 1: and balances. Right. Science is there to inform the way
Speaker 1: that policies are incorporated into law, and we also have
Speaker 1: a legal framework that says are these policies being done
Speaker 1: in a legal way through different acts, whether it's the
Speaker 1: s A or the Clean Water Clean Air Act. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I think we we've done a good job. And I
Speaker 1: think you know, the fact that we still have the
Speaker 1: Yellowstone River cranking out clean water filled with trout, and
Speaker 1: we have herds of elk and you know, flocks of
Speaker 1: birds flying overhead, is we're doing a pretty darn good
Speaker 1: job given the circumstances. Yeah, I mean, yeah, given the circumstances. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what I always wondered about our
Speaker 1: mild conservation, which obviously, when we talk about little North
Speaker 1: American math of conservation, we should say that that wasn't
Speaker 1: a thing until the eighties when Dr Valarious Geist and
Speaker 1: folks like Shane my Owny decide we need to codify
Speaker 1: it and call it something. Um. But when we talk
Speaker 1: about it, you know, I wonder, you just I always
Speaker 1: wondered what you know it was. It was a reaction
Speaker 1: to a problem, right, it was medicine to an illness.
Speaker 1: And so will there be a time in our society
Speaker 1: again where we're ill enough that we need to create
Speaker 1: a new medicine? You know, right now we're fine, I
Speaker 1: would say, I would say relatively fine in terms of wildlife, um,
Speaker 1: relative to where we've been. Sure, you know, I wonder
Speaker 1: if they will ever be time again, whether it will
Speaker 1: be so ill that we need to, you know, create
Speaker 1: some new medicine. I think so. I mean, the ESA
Speaker 1: came about in seventies three, It wasn't that long ago,
Speaker 1: and those are like that's our parents hera, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean at that point, a lot of species we're
Speaker 1: pretty much close to gone. Our oceans are dealing with
Speaker 1: some serious things, a lot of them that we can't control.
Speaker 1: It's it's one thing to manage an elk population within
Speaker 1: the borders of our country. It's another thing to manage
Speaker 1: Pacific salmon that are using waters from the Korean Peninsula
Speaker 1: all the way to you know, southern California perhaps in
Speaker 1: some cases. So I think there will be remedies and
Speaker 1: and prescriptions that need to come about to address our
Speaker 1: changing planet and these changing threats to our wildlife and
Speaker 1: natural spaces. UM. Is there any you think that are
Speaker 1: broad enough that would have the same effect that this
Speaker 1: that model has had as they're going to even on
Speaker 1: a conceptual level, it's worked. Well, yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's it's um. It's a complicated, UM issue. But one
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is the Bristol Bay Watershed. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was a bill, a measure, ballot measure one that
Speaker 1: failed in Alaska this midterm election that would have past
Speaker 1: legislation to make it quite a bit more difficult to
Speaker 1: develop or create minds or do make big changes to
Speaker 1: the landscape and Bristol Bays Watershed. Um. Bristol Bays Watershed
Speaker 1: is the last real home to a robust salmon population
Speaker 1: where millions of fish return every year. I think that's shortsighted,
Speaker 1: you know. I think it's it's like a mini es
Speaker 1: A that should be that I believe should have been
Speaker 1: passed to protect something that you can't bring back, that
Speaker 1: that's impossible, Like you can restore a creek in your
Speaker 1: local community, and maybe you get like to salmon that
Speaker 1: come back, you know, the East Coast, they're taking down
Speaker 1: historic mill dams in Atlantic Salmon are coming back in
Speaker 1: some cases, but not ten million Atlantic salmon. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have millions of fish coming to Bristo Way Watershed
Speaker 1: and all the wildlife that rely on that ecosystem. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I do think there will be times in history in
Speaker 1: the near future, if not the current day, where do
Speaker 1: you have opportunities to pass legislation and policy that can
Speaker 1: have sweeping, you know, benefits ecosystems that are very much imperiled. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And again it's it's it's one thing to manage a
Speaker 1: landlocked population of elk. It's another thing to manage a
Speaker 1: migratory bird, or a or a fish, um or animals
Speaker 1: that rely on an ocean, an international ocean. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think I was, just as you're talking, googling the North
Speaker 1: American Midle of conservation because I feel like I've never
Speaker 1: on this podcast. We've always talked about it, but we've
Speaker 1: never kind of went through it right in much detail.
Speaker 1: Um So, let's do that in a little bit of detail.
Speaker 1: So the tenants I could I can rattle off like
Speaker 1: maybe five of the seven tenants, but I haven't in
Speaker 1: front of me now, so I'll just rattle them off.
Speaker 1: This is the the core principles of this model, of
Speaker 1: our model conservation are are built around some tenants, and
Speaker 1: there's seven of them. I just reading to you. Wildlife
Speaker 1: is public trust resources, which we've discussed already, elimination of
Speaker 1: markets for game, which we've talked around already, allocation of
Speaker 1: wildlife by law, which we've talked about already. Wildlife should
Speaker 1: only be killed for a legitimate purpose, which we've certainly
Speaker 1: talked about. You know, I would say mining, it's not
Speaker 1: a legitimate purpose for killing wildlife. Well, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of repercussions, right, you build a highway or you
Speaker 1: you frack a landscape, and that has repercussive implications. Absolutely does.
Speaker 1: Wildlife is considered an international resource. Science is the proper
Speaker 1: tool for discharge of wildlife policy sure makes you happy,
Speaker 1: me too. And then the democracy of hunting. So I
Speaker 1: mean that you know, those are just overarching tenants. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's more details for each of those. But if if
Speaker 1: you're out there and we're talking about this model, and
Speaker 1: you're not aware. There's your starting point. Go and learn
Speaker 1: about those tenants and try to get yourself educated on
Speaker 1: actually how the success story came to be, because I
Speaker 1: think it's important, absolutely, And I think having that context
Speaker 1: and also that framework to inject your personal experience into
Speaker 1: gives um, it gives meaning to I think the way
Speaker 1: that you approach your time hunting, or your time get
Speaker 1: an advocate, or your time just being part of the community. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then and then it informs things like the E
Speaker 1: S A and and and some of the legislation you'll
Speaker 1: see on ballots if you have an understanding of like
Speaker 1: what what makes a successful And again, folks that are
Speaker 1: voting vote on these complex value system based decisions. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think having a general you know, as you're
Speaker 1: voting on something like that, you know, Connecticut's UM amendment
Speaker 1: to or the the amendment for Bristol Bay in alask
Speaker 1: because like if you if those things come up on
Speaker 1: mid term elections or whenever they come up. Um, having
Speaker 1: a general idea of the framework of our model of
Speaker 1: conservation can even a je real idea, even if it's
Speaker 1: not as nuanced as yours, even a general idea can
Speaker 1: help you test you know, put that seven tenants to
Speaker 1: test when you see something on a ballot, like is
Speaker 1: this in line with these seven things? And it gets complicated,
Speaker 1: right because you know, we just um, we had the
Speaker 1: Grizzly Bear decision, and we've had some other big decisions
Speaker 1: like the Bristol Bay decision. I mean, these are decisions
Speaker 1: that are made that lean on science, but also are
Speaker 1: determined through the lens of law, and law by nature
Speaker 1: is interpreted. Right. Our constitution is pretty darn vague, but
Speaker 1: our our country works, our world as Americans functions through
Speaker 1: the interpretation of that law. So that's good and bad
Speaker 1: for the people who disagree with it in whatever case
Speaker 1: we can think of. Um. But I also think it
Speaker 1: provides checks and balances, you know, and I think having
Speaker 1: faith in the process, even though sometimes doesn't come out
Speaker 1: the way you'd like it to, you know. I think
Speaker 1: about the Alaska issue that didn't pass, but having worked
Speaker 1: with some of the folks behind the campaign to promote
Speaker 1: Measure one, they look at that losses an opportunity to
Speaker 1: build more ground swell and do better the next time. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and if we want to get into it,
Speaker 1: you know, we can. But like the Grizzly Bear thing,
Speaker 1: but we're going to yeah, you know, I think I
Speaker 1: think that's why, you know, talking through all these things
Speaker 1: and like a very you know, feet is great. It's
Speaker 1: easy to do. But I think the Grizzly Bearer decision,
Speaker 1: I think both sides of that decision want to make it.
Speaker 1: We want to turn it into a slippery slope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I hate slippery slopes because I think slipper slopes
Speaker 1: are fucking lazy except slipping slide, except as a sprinkler
Speaker 1: in it. But I think slippery slopes. I first came
Speaker 1: to this opinion around gun rights, right, I truly believe
Speaker 1: in in I believe it wholeheartedly that gun rights are
Speaker 1: important part of my freedom as an American. Like, I
Speaker 1: believe it, and I've thought it through. And it's not
Speaker 1: because I like thirty round magazines, but it's part of
Speaker 1: defending my family in any situation that may come up,
Speaker 1: all right, And so when somebody challenges that, it's easy
Speaker 1: for me to fall back on it. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: slippery slope. If you take this one little thing away,
Speaker 1: then then all of that may fall. But again, I
Speaker 1: just think that's lazy. And the more passionate you are
Speaker 1: about an issue, the more you feel like it goes
Speaker 1: to your freedoms and your humanity or your citizenship of
Speaker 1: this country, I think, the more you fall back on
Speaker 1: the rather lazy, an idealistic, slippery slope. Don't take any
Speaker 1: of it because I need all of it, right. Um,
Speaker 1: But that's not to your to your That can't always
Speaker 1: be right the it happens, and it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be a reaction, right, um. You know, and I think
Speaker 1: the grizzly Um, so let's set up the grizzly thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's take as far back as your knowledge will will
Speaker 1: allow us to go. And I'll hold out shine in
Speaker 1: if I know something. But yeah, and just as a
Speaker 1: as a disclaimer, you know, I'm an ecologist, but not
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear biologist. And I'm just a guy with
Speaker 1: a podcast. I don't know anything. So I've done my
Speaker 1: I've done my homework, you know, as best as I can.
Speaker 1: There's obviously more to be done, but the general gist
Speaker 1: of it is that ye Yessa comes about. Um. The ESA,
Speaker 1: the Endangered Species Act is an act that intends to
Speaker 1: identify species that are threatened or endangered threatened species or
Speaker 1: species that are at risk of becoming close to extinction,
Speaker 1: And how do they determine that. It's going to be
Speaker 1: looking at number of individuals, number, amount of critical habitat
Speaker 1: that's available, um pending or foreseeable threats to those populations,
Speaker 1: species at large or subspecies. Does any of that have
Speaker 1: to do with their historic population numbers? It does, but
Speaker 1: within that context, they're looking at available critical habitat. So bison,
Speaker 1: for example, bison would have existed from you know, ah,
Speaker 1: the Canadian border to the Rocky mountain front, maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit west of the Rockies in some places down
Speaker 1: to uh to Mexico over to the Mississippi River. So
Speaker 1: that would have been there like historic range to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: and and they continuous, you know, lower forty eight. Obviously
Speaker 1: bison are a fraction what they were. But we're not
Speaker 1: you know, bison conservation or restoration. Granted they're not listed.
Speaker 1: This is maybe not a good example, but point being,
Speaker 1: they're not looking at putting them back across that available habitat.
Speaker 1: They're saying, where can we put bison yea where they
Speaker 1: can thrive once again? And right? And what makes sense?
Speaker 1: So when we talk about you know, wolves, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing. They're not trying to reintroduce wolves to tire
Speaker 1: lower forty eight. They're saying wolves, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: upper Peninsula of Michigan are listed. Where can we put
Speaker 1: wolves where there's habitat that's available. So you're taking an
Speaker 1: inventory of animals that exist, habitat that exists or could exist,
Speaker 1: and and then creating basically a blueprint to make opportunities
Speaker 1: for more animals to uh you know produced, be produced,
Speaker 1: and to have that available habit to be occupied. And
Speaker 1: the important thing about putting more animals on in the
Speaker 1: in the in the mix and having more habitat, and
Speaker 1: then you have more distinct populations. And the reason why
Speaker 1: distinct populations are important is because then you get genetic diversity.
Speaker 1: If you have an island of inbreads, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: be very resilient to UM issues that could drive declients
Speaker 1: that population. Whether it's exactly so you're looking at it
Speaker 1: through this like matrix of of UM kind of Uh.
Speaker 1: It's like a safety net, right, More animals a better
Speaker 1: and more populations, the better diversity is the best UM.
Speaker 1: So with the grizzly bears, you know pre seventy three
Speaker 1: you would have had grizzly bears would have been extinct
Speaker 1: in California, you would have had a lower forty eight
Speaker 1: population that was I don't know the numbers off the
Speaker 1: top of my head, but you know, to the point
Speaker 1: they needed to be listed. It was in the hundreds, right,
Speaker 1: I mean the hundred and thirties. Maybe, yeah, I bet
Speaker 1: you that's close to it. Um but depleted, you know,
Speaker 1: I would venture to say, like well over with very
Speaker 1: little available habitat relative to what was once available pre
Speaker 1: European settlement. So you have seventy three, yes, a comes
Speaker 1: about I believe it was seventy five they were listed.
Speaker 1: Then something interesting happened in seventy eight where there was
Speaker 1: an amendment made to the Danger Species Act that allowed
Speaker 1: um distinct population segments to be listed are unlisted. That
Speaker 1: was the year that gray wolf was added to the ESA.
Speaker 1: So people are probably thinking, okay, well, with the gray wolf,
Speaker 1: you can have a distinct population that was listed as
Speaker 1: endangered in the Upper Peninsula Michigan area, and then you
Speaker 1: can have gray wolves in Montana that you can hunt
Speaker 1: and are managed by the states, and they're not listed.
Speaker 1: Grizzly bears, to my understanding were listed before that amendment
Speaker 1: was made, so they were listed as a sub, as
Speaker 1: a species, as a lower forty eight collective. Because I
Speaker 1: think that becomes that would become a big part of
Speaker 1: this conversation around those distinct populations and how we managed
Speaker 1: and so so I guess you would posit that it's
Speaker 1: not that's the fact. That's the reason why this is
Speaker 1: a larger issue. It's complicated. There's you know, I have
Speaker 1: the entire printed out UM decision by We're gonna turn
Speaker 1: on some elevator museum and have you read the entire
Speaker 1: It's only forty something pages. It's not bad, it's not no,
Speaker 1: and it's actually written. There is some legal jargon, but
Speaker 1: you can if anybody's listening is interested, you can download
Speaker 1: this on the internet. UM, it's readily available. It's actually
Speaker 1: not that complicated. There's you'll skim over some of it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense because it's illegal, but there is some uh,
Speaker 1: some well written stuff in there that anybody would should
Speaker 1: be able to pull apart and understand. Um. Super informative. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so this the population segment thing is one
Speaker 1: aspect UM. So without getting too far ahead of ourselves,
Speaker 1: grizzy bears were dwindled to a point of needing protection.
Speaker 1: They're listed they established have protection in seventy three and
Speaker 1: then seventy they were listed as a species in lower
Speaker 1: forty eight, Alaska's its own thing. And then population there
Speaker 1: were some population ecosystems that were identified. Um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kind of butcher this, but the main two that that
Speaker 1: actually have viable populations are the the Continental Divide population,
Speaker 1: which is like the Bob and Glacier National Park, and
Speaker 1: then you have the Good or yells On ecosystem. You
Speaker 1: also have the cell Kirks and the Cascades, and I
Speaker 1: believe there's six and full, but really the only two
Speaker 1: that really matter on like a functional level is the
Speaker 1: Continental or the Continental Divide and the Greater Yellowstone because
Speaker 1: between those two populations conservatively there's maybe close to two
Speaker 1: thousand bears. Those other four ecosystems have handfuls, so they're
Speaker 1: functionally from like a eco from a species preservation standpoint,
Speaker 1: are valuable but not being considered, you know, to a
Speaker 1: certain degree, because it really this this determination, this court
Speaker 1: case was around the dealist you know, the Greater Yellowstone population.
Speaker 1: So we get to this point where grizzly bears are
Speaker 1: relegated to Glacier in the Bob and Yellowstone and the
Speaker 1: states work in a conjunction of the federal agencies, say
Speaker 1: we're going to put together a recovery plan, an inter
Speaker 1: agency group of federal, state, local biologists and constituent and
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to get these bears back to a
Speaker 1: place of stability. The Bob population and the Glacier populations,
Speaker 1: I know, like, um, so yeah, the Bob Marshall is
Speaker 1: just a little south of Glacier National Park. It's this
Speaker 1: kind of big swath of pretty wild landscapes so known
Speaker 1: for its remoteness. Yes, um, and so the Greater Yellasun
Speaker 1: population gets to a point where the of US Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife and the States Idaho, Wyoming in Montana in
Speaker 1: this case, say we've got this place. This population a
Speaker 1: pretty healthy number. You know, we're looking at conservatively seven
Speaker 1: hundred bears and this is two thousand seven. This I
Speaker 1: think it happened twice. It was like seven. There were
Speaker 1: efforts to dealist and those efforts were um stifled. I
Speaker 1: guess that is the word you could say. You're not
Speaker 1: stife rejected on various grounds. One of the grounds that
Speaker 1: comes to mind that that's kind of interesting is the
Speaker 1: judge saying, we'll wait a second. A lot of grizzly
Speaker 1: bears in the Greater Yellowstone rely on white bark pine.
Speaker 1: So what's happening on planet Earth? As we're having in
Speaker 1: northern Northern Hemisphere ecosystems are having warmer winters, we're having
Speaker 1: drought in a lot of places, especially in the Inner
Speaker 1: Mountain West in California for that matter. Um that those
Speaker 1: dry winters, warm winters and droughts are causing these pines
Speaker 1: to die. One of the reasons it's because you have
Speaker 1: a pine beetle that used to be kept in checked
Speaker 1: by cold winters sub zero that would keep those pine
Speaker 1: beetles from from proliferating. But now with these warm winters,
Speaker 1: these pine beetle infestations are killing millions and millions of treats.
Speaker 1: This happens in other populations too, I know, like moose
Speaker 1: up north in Minnesota are have been you know, they'll
Speaker 1: positive that there've been ticks that are alive longer because
Speaker 1: it's warmer into this summer time. So, yeah, read about
Speaker 1: that a lot if you really look. Yeah, so these
Speaker 1: warmer winters are are a big deal and that was
Speaker 1: something that that uh, the judges used to halt the
Speaker 1: de listing. Then in time more research was done, it
Speaker 1: was presented, UM, and that was one of the things
Speaker 1: that was presented before this court case, the most current
Speaker 1: one and what the judge and the professionals that were
Speaker 1: involved in the de listing or the regulatory process determined was, yes,
Speaker 1: white bark pines are declining throughout their range and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the California fires to that's a big thing there.
Speaker 1: But on the top of grizzly bears, Um, that is true.
Speaker 1: But we also have found three more throw research that
Speaker 1: these grizzly bearers are very flexible and in biology called
Speaker 1: it plastic. They're omnivorous. They can eat anything from a
Speaker 1: nut to a dead moose, to a berry, to grass
Speaker 1: to a fish. That's one of the great things about
Speaker 1: Christy bears. So what's happening is the the biologists said, Okay,
Speaker 1: well they've actually they're doing well. They've just adapted. So
Speaker 1: that was kind of checked as addressed. We're moving on
Speaker 1: in the in this most recent hearing. What the two
Speaker 1: main things, um, So let's set let's set up some
Speaker 1: of the history to this, and folks that are UM
Speaker 1: hopefully listen to this have have some background on this.
Speaker 1: But there's two essentially two sides, right. There are animal
Speaker 1: rights activists on one and on the other side there
Speaker 1: are I mean, I just tell me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: hunters and state game officials from Wyoming on the other.
Speaker 1: Is that it's about right. Yeah, And i'd hope probably
Speaker 1: a certain degree. Montana opted to not partake in the YEP.
Speaker 1: They went on a zero zero tag basis something the
Speaker 1: guida who had what to one one to my understanding,
Speaker 1: and well, I mean had twenty two UM. And so
Speaker 1: you have UM one side of the coin, which is
Speaker 1: we've expressed as advocates for hunter groups and um biologists
Speaker 1: state in state game officials for state of Wyoming and
Speaker 1: Idaho who are saying these populations is created Yelstone populations
Speaker 1: is at a point where we if if done correctly
Speaker 1: UM and if done in science and has told us
Speaker 1: that two is the number based on the current population
Speaker 1: what we feel UM would be appropriate, and then we
Speaker 1: can take out a certain number of bears through this
Speaker 1: tag draw system and it would allow us to and
Speaker 1: really I think it goes. What you'll see a lot
Speaker 1: from those folks is um well, like private landowners, ranchers, um,
Speaker 1: folks that live in those areas complaining about interaction with
Speaker 1: the grizzly bears right is one of their big ones.
Speaker 1: And so in the animal rights activistic set up that
Speaker 1: side like what's that? What are those folks thinking? You know,
Speaker 1: because there's we can go through. Um well, there's a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think through mind how you approach,
Speaker 1: but give give the other side of the coin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the other side of the coin is eco tourism,
Speaker 1: you know, and a lot of people we can't deny
Speaker 1: go to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons or go horse packing
Speaker 1: the Bob Marshall and seeing a bear at a safe
Speaker 1: distance is something that they're after for a photograph or
Speaker 1: an experience or whatever and their trophy. Um. So there
Speaker 1: is this conflict of interests where you have a very real,
Speaker 1: thriving eco tourism industry that none of these states can
Speaker 1: deny is a huge part of their economy. You also
Speaker 1: have people who live kind of in the wild urban
Speaker 1: or not wild urban, but wild kind of rural interface
Speaker 1: where you have grizzly bears in the backyard. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are trying to make a living raising livestock
Speaker 1: or crops or just living there. Um. Then you also
Speaker 1: have hunters who would like to participate in this very
Speaker 1: limited you know, this resource that would be very limited,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty three animals in this case. Um. And
Speaker 1: then there's probably a certain group of people who feel
Speaker 1: like this is a threat to their ability to hunt
Speaker 1: or a threat to their the way they identify with
Speaker 1: hunting as a as an opportunity that we are privileged
Speaker 1: to have here. And I think it's it's um, we
Speaker 1: can take both sides. But and I'd like to I
Speaker 1: think if you take the hunting side first, right, And
Speaker 1: we talked about the our model of conservation um successful
Speaker 1: e s a listing to me. And I think that
Speaker 1: everyone that you know is aware of the model. Conservation
Speaker 1: starts with dwinding the population, and like you said, the
Speaker 1: availability of critical habitat is also dwindling, right, and these
Speaker 1: distinct populations, assessing that, determining that which was done with
Speaker 1: with with these bears and then saying, okay, what do
Speaker 1: we gotta do to get them back to you know,
Speaker 1: there's all us always in these cases markers like when
Speaker 1: are when are they healthy again? What number of these
Speaker 1: animals allows this to be? Allows us to pull them
Speaker 1: off this list, say this is a healthy population center.
Speaker 1: Now we've done it right, we did it party, we
Speaker 1: did it Now the value and success of our model
Speaker 1: of conservation then says it's a successful es A listing two.
Speaker 1: Then hunt these animals again because that allows us to
Speaker 1: dictate our interaction with them in in in a way
Speaker 1: that's uh scientific works off sound wildlife management practices and
Speaker 1: works off wildlife biology. And so I think that's what
Speaker 1: hunters I think gets lost. And I'm not argue. I'm
Speaker 1: not I want to argue. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: both sides and then continue forward. But I think what's
Speaker 1: disappointing to me is that it gets lost. Like the
Speaker 1: motivation of why someone would shoot a grizzly bear, which
Speaker 1: is is something I'll probably never do. In fact, unless
Speaker 1: I change, I won't do I don't have any I'm
Speaker 1: a hunter. I just don't have any need to do it.
Speaker 1: I don't have any want to do it. It's not
Speaker 1: something I would participate in. UM and says like I,
Speaker 1: as a hunter would challenge the why of those twenty
Speaker 1: two people that draw those tags or the hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people that applied. I would challenge their while
Speaker 1: and legitimately challenge their why. Um. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: here we are with this model that says, if we
Speaker 1: do this, it's worked for other species, distinct population centers
Speaker 1: or not. We can't then, So there's like this ideological
Speaker 1: or philosophical this works, Let's do it. It's hunting, right,
Speaker 1: and the person the more personal explanation of why would
Speaker 1: you then be the person to pull the trigger killed there? Um.
Speaker 1: So that's where I think the work lines up for
Speaker 1: me where it gets difficult on the hunting side, because
Speaker 1: there's there's easy inroads to start shipping away at the
Speaker 1: why that the personal why. It was easy inroads. Oh,
Speaker 1: you just want to kill it. It's a big bear,
Speaker 1: it's charismatic, it's seen as it's a unique in its landscape.
Speaker 1: People love to come and watch watch it, people love
Speaker 1: to interact with it, and and hunters do as well. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's a lot of reasons that
Speaker 1: goes into those personal wise that I think whether I
Speaker 1: don't I don't even like the term anti hunters but
Speaker 1: like animal rights groups, as I guess probably the right
Speaker 1: right terms, you get into really examining those individuals why
Speaker 1: and using that those personal wise as a reason to
Speaker 1: stop the critical use of hunting is a tool to
Speaker 1: make this process be complete. So you agree with that
Speaker 1: kind of characterization of the personal why and the the
Speaker 1: conservation why. Yeah, And I think the one thing I'd
Speaker 1: add is that both non hunters, anti hunters, animal rights
Speaker 1: and hunters, I think we all agree that the Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act exists to bring animals back from the brink
Speaker 1: of extinction to the point at which the populations are stable,
Speaker 1: and law says once populations are stable, states have the
Speaker 1: right and the legal obligation to manage those wildlife. And yeah,
Speaker 1: historically hunting has been one of the you know, better
Speaker 1: ways for them to raise money too, to conserve habitat,
Speaker 1: to do other things to raise value of these animals.
Speaker 1: And then also um the actual act of taking some
Speaker 1: animals away from the population to stable. Right. And for
Speaker 1: everybody listening, I know a lot of people listening to hunts,
Speaker 1: but for those who don't hunt, there are wildlife biologists
Speaker 1: and agencies doing their best job of saying okay, well,
Speaker 1: if you have bears across this known area, we should
Speaker 1: hunt this many and this part of the area, and
Speaker 1: this many and this part of the area. It's not
Speaker 1: this free for all. There are quite a few checks
Speaker 1: and balances. And that's why, Yeah, that's why I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting, you know, to read those tenets of
Speaker 1: our model of conservation before we get into this, because
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, well, okay, how we're elk successful,
Speaker 1: How we're you know, how were the how is the
Speaker 1: Mallard duck successful? Like there's a system. There's our American
Speaker 1: system of conservation funding and then and then there's North
Speaker 1: American model wildlife conservation. Those two things interact in such
Speaker 1: a way that those animals were given value and those populations,
Speaker 1: distinct population centers in in their species entireties were allowed
Speaker 1: to then be forward and they've done well right. And
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think anybody. I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the things that pisces me off in this situation
Speaker 1: is anybody that characterizes hunters is uncaring assholes. There may
Speaker 1: be a few, but the greater population, hopefully, if you
Speaker 1: found in your time hunting is not like that. That's
Speaker 1: not what's happening. Well, I think that's a function of media. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Like we can all think about the person on the
Speaker 1: far left who is popped up on our feet or
Speaker 1: on the headline like they're insane, and we can also
Speaker 1: probably think of somebody in our own hunting space that
Speaker 1: has done things you're like, that's crazy, that was a
Speaker 1: stupid thing to do. But unfortunately the people on the
Speaker 1: other side of the aisle only see those assholes. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just limit from this point forward in
Speaker 1: the conversation, will just eliminate the assholes. It makes it
Speaker 1: way easier. Because there's an assholes hunters. Asshole hunters they
Speaker 1: just want to shoot a bear for so they can
Speaker 1: hang it on their wall and do and say that
Speaker 1: they did it right. And to me, that's not a
Speaker 1: good enough reason. And there's asshole animal rights activists who
Speaker 1: just blankly want to save every animal they see and
Speaker 1: don't think twice and are easily inflamed by the by
Speaker 1: any harm to any animal, like, let's release all of
Speaker 1: the wild horses back on the range along, let's do
Speaker 1: even though they're fair on have brands they're destroying. Yeah no,
Speaker 1: but I think, but I think that all. You know,
Speaker 1: if if in this situation, you would eliminate the assholes
Speaker 1: and the outliers, and the outliers be like, listen, there
Speaker 1: are some animal rights activists that are so extreme that
Speaker 1: they almost eliminate themselves from this conversation. Uh, and they're
Speaker 1: so hunters. There's some hunters they are so extreme that
Speaker 1: we would eliminate them from this conversation. I wish we
Speaker 1: could do that with this federal court case. It's ruling.
Speaker 1: I don't I'd be interested to think to see your
Speaker 1: opinion and whether it was or not right, whether when
Speaker 1: we made this decision or when this ruling was made,
Speaker 1: whether we eliminated all of those folks. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And my interpretation of it, you know, high level, is
Speaker 1: that I think the judge delaying his decision. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make a decision in court today.
Speaker 1: I'm going to hear both sides and gonna go home
Speaker 1: two weeks, fourteen days. Yeah, I'm gonna do my homework.
Speaker 1: I think he understand, and he says it outright in
Speaker 1: the first few pages. He says, I realized the emotional
Speaker 1: baggage and social commitment people have to both sides of
Speaker 1: the eye all of this topic. Let me stop you
Speaker 1: when we start talking about this judge, this judge, right right,
Speaker 1: Let's just go forward thinking that this judge is acting
Speaker 1: in good faith. Yes, is anybody that listened to this
Speaker 1: conversation and writes in or comments and says that the
Speaker 1: judge was a liberal a whole You're gone. I'm deleting you.
Speaker 1: Get out of my life. I want to live in
Speaker 1: a world where I believe that all judges are acting
Speaker 1: in good faith of the law and doing their jobs.
Speaker 1: So let's just we're not even gonna have that conversation.
Speaker 1: So I was like, children, No, we're just gonna do this,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna we're gonna act like this person even
Speaker 1: if that wasn't the case. I don't know this judge,
Speaker 1: never met him, and you can look at his decisions
Speaker 1: and make your own decision. But for this conversation, we're
Speaker 1: gonna act like he did the best job he could.
Speaker 1: And then we're also going to eliminate the outliers. Now,
Speaker 1: let's go because I think we're living now, let's have
Speaker 1: this conversation. Um, so he and he, so, he points
Speaker 1: out this is a complex issue. He brings up things
Speaker 1: that led to a decision that had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the people who might go to the park I
Speaker 1: want to take a photo of one or the people
Speaker 1: who just want to shoot on the put on their wall.
Speaker 1: He made a decision based on the legal confines that
Speaker 1: he works within as a federal judge, and one of
Speaker 1: the main things that he brings up was the fact
Speaker 1: that if you, if we're we, as the Greater Public
Speaker 1: of America and the Danger Species Act, as the most
Speaker 1: important piece of wildlife legislation, are in the business of
Speaker 1: returning species from the brink of extinction to a place
Speaker 1: of stability where they can be managed by states and hunted.
Speaker 1: If the states determined that's what they should be, that's
Speaker 1: the way they should be managed. Which in Montana you
Speaker 1: can pretty much shoot everything you want, except you need
Speaker 1: a tag for a few big corn swans whatever, but
Speaker 1: generally you can hunt most things. So what he says
Speaker 1: is that the determination to dealist the Greater Yellston population
Speaker 1: was illegal because the species is listed. There's not a
Speaker 1: distinct population segment like in the wolf situation that can
Speaker 1: be delisted. Furthermore, what he's saying is that if you
Speaker 1: delist the Greater yell a stone population, a population that
Speaker 1: has no proven emigration or connection to the Continental Divide
Speaker 1: population in Glacier, or to the North Cascades or the Selkirks,
Speaker 1: or some of these populations in Idaho. You will jeopardize
Speaker 1: the future of those other populations that would benefit from
Speaker 1: genetics from their yellow Stun population connectivity. You would you
Speaker 1: would jeopardize their future. So he's he's not saying that
Speaker 1: the Wyoming, Idaho Montana inter Agency didn't do a good
Speaker 1: job and that this population is not doing well. He
Speaker 1: is saying that by delisting this population, which one is illegal,
Speaker 1: but two, if you could, would jeopardize those other populations
Speaker 1: from rebounding populations where you have four, twelve, twenty individuals
Speaker 1: or zero. And there there are just there are ecosystems
Speaker 1: identified as grizzly bear habitat that haven't had a grizzly
Speaker 1: bearing him in a hundred years. So let's unpack that
Speaker 1: a bit, because there's some things there. Um. The legality
Speaker 1: of it comes to your earlier point around the entire
Speaker 1: species being listed. Um, So hopefully everybody understands that we're
Speaker 1: talking about there. It seems unfortunate that they're these distinct
Speaker 1: populations weren't listed, you know, separately and able to be
Speaker 1: manned separately. Do you think that the E. S A
Speaker 1: in this case, I would say I could get on
Speaker 1: this train. The E s A in this case didn't
Speaker 1: do its job very well. I think it's hard. Foresight's hard, right,
Speaker 1: and saying saying like hey, seventy three, we can go
Speaker 1: back seventy three and be like, hey, guess what do
Speaker 1: Yeah two doesn't the pine beetles, Hey guess what, pine beetles.
Speaker 1: They're gonna they're gonna have a big issue. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have pine up problems. We can't we can't go back
Speaker 1: and change that. But but I think where what to
Speaker 1: me wrapped up is our model of conservation and what
Speaker 1: we say in the model of conservation around wildlife UM
Speaker 1: states managing that wildlife and trust and that scientific science
Speaker 1: and biology specifically science being the tool on which to
Speaker 1: manage those populations on a state level. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's a sound way to do it, and it's been
Speaker 1: proven as a sound way to do it. UM. The E.
Speaker 1: S A in this situation is because the entire population
Speaker 1: is listed, goes against that idea. Those two things are
Speaker 1: now at odds you have the e s A that's
Speaker 1: saying the entire population goes as listed, so you can't
Speaker 1: do the thing or the entire species. Yeah, the entire
Speaker 1: species sorry uh is listed, so you can't do the
Speaker 1: thing you did for these other populations. Is that accurate
Speaker 1: in your mind? Like those two things are up against
Speaker 1: each other. I think from a from a conceptual level,
Speaker 1: I the the maybe the disconnect or the the inefficiencies.
Speaker 1: But from a from a from a biology level, the
Speaker 1: gray wolf and the bald eagle are inherently different than
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear. Grizzly bear that's reproducing that at age
Speaker 1: six uh, an adult female might not replace herself in
Speaker 1: the population until not maybe nine years have passed. So
Speaker 1: we're talking at an animal that is inherently different than
Speaker 1: many animals we've ever protected in the past. So these
Speaker 1: are they're slow reproducing, dispersal, they don't have wings. They're
Speaker 1: not an elk that's migrating perhaps hundreds of miles, and
Speaker 1: they're not a wolf that's having litters of three, four
Speaker 1: or five uh, you know offspring where maybe three or
Speaker 1: three survive. You know, these are bears or maybe having
Speaker 1: twins and and maybe one survives and they're not reproducing
Speaker 1: until there maybe age six. So I think inherently you
Speaker 1: have some just different biology. Also, I think that's a
Speaker 1: that's a great point to make, um, and we have
Speaker 1: to be we have to really say, look, I love
Speaker 1: this model, right, I love it. It's working well, but
Speaker 1: your science and what you do says that you can't
Speaker 1: that umbrella works until it doesn't. Yeah, and it's not.
Speaker 1: Everything is not a square peg in a square hole.
Speaker 1: I think that's the problem. I've seen the hunting community
Speaker 1: around this is like and I and and I've been
Speaker 1: guilty of it too. But I and when my reading
Speaker 1: about this prior to this conversation and throughout this process, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is these are different species there are they're in
Speaker 1: different situations. We can't the s A can't do it,
Speaker 1: and in our model, wild life conservation and state biologist
Speaker 1: can't do it. Right. Um, we'll get into later once
Speaker 1: we get through this conceptual, we'll get into the actual.
Speaker 1: But let's continue. Well, and it's hard, right because like
Speaker 1: it's interpretation. So it's we have these things that are
Speaker 1: pretty find or that are you know, you can put
Speaker 1: them in a box like the ESA is a thing.
Speaker 1: With these tenants, the model of wildlife management and with
Speaker 1: the North American model has tenants. There are there are,
Speaker 1: you know, aspects that we can't deny exist when we're
Speaker 1: talking about the management of an animal over space and
Speaker 1: time space. That's different yellowstones different than glacier glaciers, different
Speaker 1: the selkirks. There are different realities on the ground, there
Speaker 1: are different ecosystem aspects. We require it, you know, we
Speaker 1: have to lean on interpretation. Somebody's saying like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: grizzly bears are little different than wolves. Grizzly bears are
Speaker 1: different than elk or or bald eagles. So what we
Speaker 1: get down to is this reality that yes, the law
Speaker 1: treats animals differently, like with the wolves and the grizzly
Speaker 1: bear functionally different. My interpretation of this genetic issue, this
Speaker 1: lack of connectivity, is that if our goal, if you're
Speaker 1: a hunter and your goals to hunt grizzly bear one day,
Speaker 1: give it some time, because if things keep going the
Speaker 1: way they're going, and this population continues to grow, and
Speaker 1: federal resources are put into connectivity and creating corridors and
Speaker 1: creating more stable populations outside of the greater Yellowstone. Then
Speaker 1: in the not too distant future, we will have more distinct,
Speaker 1: healthy populations that might merit dealisteine. And at that point,
Speaker 1: what a success like We've brought these animals back from
Speaker 1: nothing to six distinct ecosystems where there's populations that have
Speaker 1: genect diversity or thriving, and that's awesome. And I think
Speaker 1: we're getting to that point. And for the people who
Speaker 1: are anti grizzly bear hunting, they should realize that we
Speaker 1: have this amazing legal precedent that says, once species are
Speaker 1: back to a place of stability, it's up to the
Speaker 1: people who live with those animals to decide how they
Speaker 1: want to be managed. Yeah, because I think there's that
Speaker 1: the actual part I talk about that I think about it.
Speaker 1: I would say for the migration and the seating thing,
Speaker 1: I would would admit to not having a lot of
Speaker 1: around grizzly bears knowledge of how that exactly works. But
Speaker 1: when I see a species like a meal deer migrate
Speaker 1: across the West in a lot of cases, I wonder
Speaker 1: how you compare those things, right? Because was we hunt
Speaker 1: because there's state? Um, we're because we're not regulating mule
Speaker 1: deer across their migration. We're not saying like, hey, follow
Speaker 1: these guys. You know, Wyoming has their system for how
Speaker 1: you hum mule deer, how many tags you can draw,
Speaker 1: where you can draw them, the units that are you
Speaker 1: can hunt them. So does Idaho. So does other states
Speaker 1: where these these animals migrate across, and there's migration corridors
Speaker 1: are critical habitat to protect for these species. So here's
Speaker 1: an example of a healthy population. I mean, mule dey
Speaker 1: or healthy I don't know. Let's let's not go that
Speaker 1: far of I mean, would you consider me like those
Speaker 1: migratory mule deer to be seed to be seeding populations
Speaker 1: in other places? Absolutely? I think know a lot of
Speaker 1: those migrations are summer to winter as opposed to mule
Speaker 1: deer moving into novel habitat like I'm gonna blaze a
Speaker 1: new trail and I'm gonna like set up shots over here. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and and there that is happening as white tails. A
Speaker 1: great example. You have white tailed like I'm gonna head
Speaker 1: that way and like, oh ship, I'm the first white
Speaker 1: tail in this meal there country. And now there's white
Speaker 1: tail coyotes did that in in droves to sting totally.
Speaker 1: I think with grizzly bears it's a little different because
Speaker 1: you don't have three hundred grizzly bears in a line
Speaker 1: hopping through the stage. You might have one or two.
Speaker 1: And along the way, those grizzly bears might be young
Speaker 1: males who have no manners, and they're like, well, ship,
Speaker 1: there's a cow, there's a chicken, there's a sheep. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go rip its head off because I'm a bear
Speaker 1: and I'm i'm and I'm a teenager and I don't
Speaker 1: know what the hell I'm doing. And then that causes
Speaker 1: conflict and that bear gets shot. And the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is there were twenty three bears slated to
Speaker 1: be hunted. There are more than twenty three bears this
Speaker 1: year that have been killed by other vehicle strikes or
Speaker 1: wildlife professionals coming in and killing of problem. That was Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was my actual. That's what I was talking about. Actual.
Speaker 1: So we need the conceptual is is? I think it's
Speaker 1: a it's an interesting argument, and conceptually I can see
Speaker 1: what you're saying. I can see, um, there being a
Speaker 1: larger threshold for the health of this population, right, I
Speaker 1: could see not being so shortsighted as to think that
Speaker 1: conceptually this we've done it. We did it, We got that, um,
Speaker 1: and has somebody who never really wants the hunt grizzy
Speaker 1: bear whatever, you know, but respects like our model and
Speaker 1: how it works. And some people do, and that's there,
Speaker 1: and that some people do. People I want to hunt
Speaker 1: grizzle bears, go for it, um. But the actual is
Speaker 1: is it more interesting to me because you're talking about
Speaker 1: twenty two dead your twenty three dead grizzly bears or
Speaker 1: twenty three dead grizzly bears, yeah, or like fifty dead
Speaker 1: grizzly bears. They are already dead this year, So it's
Speaker 1: dead grizzly bears or dead grizzly bears. So the other
Speaker 1: thing around this that that confounds me a bit is
Speaker 1: around the human interaction with grizzly bears and is hunting.
Speaker 1: Would hunting decrease the number of those interactions you're talking
Speaker 1: about where wildlife officials are shooting them or they get
Speaker 1: hit by cars? Do we know that? Can we say that?
Speaker 1: I mean, the bears that have bad behavior are probably
Speaker 1: already dead, you know, and the bears that are dumb
Speaker 1: are probably already dead. And well, I mean, there are
Speaker 1: certainly not to say that, like you should go strap
Speaker 1: a you know, a highd quarter of an elk over
Speaker 1: you know, behind your your on your bag and go
Speaker 1: run around the Bob Marshall because you might bump into
Speaker 1: a bear and that could be scary and dangerous, and
Speaker 1: that happens to people. But there are already a lot
Speaker 1: of checks and balances in place that are removing problem
Speaker 1: bears from the ecosystem. And as more and more bears
Speaker 1: get pumped out of Yellowstone and the Continental Divide, population,
Speaker 1: vehicle strikes around the rise, so or the number of
Speaker 1: people driving cars around these wild basically to hit a
Speaker 1: bear with your car totally. Somebody hit one, like right
Speaker 1: in Big Sky Canyon last year, you know. So it's happening,
Speaker 1: you know. And and and I think the argument to say,
Speaker 1: like us hunting twenty three bears and like the woods safer,
Speaker 1: or it's gonna keep the bears from eating the sheep
Speaker 1: in my yard, it's like no, no, no, more bears
Speaker 1: than you're gonna hunt this year are being killed. So
Speaker 1: that's that's where I come to again. It's like more
Speaker 1: of the wildlife officials that are shooting problem bears, right,
Speaker 1: probably because I just like it's I have his exhale
Speaker 1: because it gives me anxiety to think about these things
Speaker 1: because they're super complicated. But right, it's not like you
Speaker 1: call in a hunter to shoot the problem bear totally.
Speaker 1: So I think let's anybody who says, like, hey, if
Speaker 1: we go hunt, it will limit the interactions with problem bears.
Speaker 1: That's not all the way true. One thing I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe you do, is how they you know, of the
Speaker 1: twenty two bears, how they choose exactly where in these
Speaker 1: populations you're gonna take a bear out, And I think
Speaker 1: there's ways that you can marry those things up together.
Speaker 1: So the reason around, like the actual reasoning saying if
Speaker 1: we hunt these twenty three bears, the population will decrease
Speaker 1: by twenty two and there'll be less problems with interactions
Speaker 1: with humans. Yeah I'm not I'm not, I'm not there,
Speaker 1: But where I am is we have to pay a
Speaker 1: wildlife manager to shoot a problem bear. Hunters are paying
Speaker 1: to go and so to eliminate that money is um
Speaker 1: something I just don't agree with. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: if if we're saying that we have problems with interaction
Speaker 1: with humans. We have problems with car strikes, we have
Speaker 1: problems with bears ripping the heads off cattle. All this
Speaker 1: ship costs money. And if we can shoot twenty two
Speaker 1: of them, and science and biology say it's not going
Speaker 1: to limit this population so so much that they can't
Speaker 1: see to other populations, why wouldn't we do that? Take
Speaker 1: the money and still and then use that money to
Speaker 1: address us car strikes and bad bears and pay for
Speaker 1: better ways for ranchers to interact and and teach them
Speaker 1: how to do it. Like that's where the line ends
Speaker 1: for me, But there's prior to getting there. It's it's
Speaker 1: a really a whole lot of like I can see it,
Speaker 1: but I also I mean it's complicated. There's no perfect solution,
Speaker 1: right because, like it was up to me and I
Speaker 1: could rewrite the law, I would say, keep him, keep
Speaker 1: him endangered. Get the hunters who want to spend whatever
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars for a tag and go shoot the
Speaker 1: problem bearing that guy's ranch that's killed a sheep. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe we just did it. Why is this judge not
Speaker 1: doing this? But like that that's to me, Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I hate to be I hate to be so presumptive
Speaker 1: is to say, yeah, hunting is the answer. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not the answer. Our model of conservation says it is
Speaker 1: the answer, right, it was the answer for wild turkeys
Speaker 1: and mallard ducks and elk and white tail. These are
Speaker 1: and these are varying populations across different landscapes, with different
Speaker 1: histories and different interactions with humans, and they've all been
Speaker 1: fine being managed on a state basis by science in
Speaker 1: this model. So I trust that enough to say, like,
Speaker 1: let me, I'll fall back on that. I trust that
Speaker 1: enough to say that. So I think that's maybe why
Speaker 1: I'm always like, let's let's let's kill the bears. I
Speaker 1: guess let's do it. Well, it's hard because all those
Speaker 1: animals are inherently so different than grizzly bears. They're either
Speaker 1: geese that you agree though, that they're inherently different than
Speaker 1: each other, absolutely, But I think that some of the
Speaker 1: key differences are that they reproduce quickly, they are far ranging,
Speaker 1: they can fly, or they have these migrations. They aren't
Speaker 1: killing you, and they're generally not on T shirts and
Speaker 1: sell gift shops. Yeah you know elk, yes, but they
Speaker 1: don't kill you and there's a lot of them, there's
Speaker 1: not seven. But I think that sets it up well.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, look there's this unique animal, right that
Speaker 1: is not unique in the fact that we drove, we
Speaker 1: killed a ship ton of them, and now there were
Speaker 1: a few, because that happened with the other species we
Speaker 1: just named. So in that, in this way, it's not unique.
Speaker 1: It is unique in a lot of other ways. It's megafauna,
Speaker 1: super charismatic. They show up and you were gonna wear
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear was. They show up, they show up
Speaker 1: in your kids crib, they show up on TV. Like
Speaker 1: I truly do believe that that ends up being the
Speaker 1: heart of this anyways, right, because let's live in Let's
Speaker 1: say we live in a world that there there are
Speaker 1: no anti hunters and there are no animal rights groups
Speaker 1: to argue this and to put this in front of
Speaker 1: the judge. Texas, Yes, Texas, put up offense around, put
Speaker 1: the fence up around. The grizzly bears ain't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll grow, Yeah, they'll they'll be huge. There'll be
Speaker 1: thousands of them. Those just benefense. But let's say we
Speaker 1: live in that world where there isn't any anti hunters
Speaker 1: and nobody, nobody challenged the way this went down. Um okay,
Speaker 1: and that in that world, I not not having the
Speaker 1: knowledge of you know, grizzly bear gestation and the way
Speaker 1: they interact with national worth that you do. And that's
Speaker 1: why I wanted to have you on because I don't
Speaker 1: have that knowledge, and and I think most hunters don't,
Speaker 1: almost all of them. If anna hunters didn't exist and
Speaker 1: this was never challenged, and this went forward, and these
Speaker 1: twenty two folks, unencumbered went out and shot twenty two bears.
Speaker 1: I think if the next year you went back and
Speaker 1: you said did so, if you were looking at a
Speaker 1: few things that we just talked about, did problem bears
Speaker 1: the interactions with humans and problem bears decrease, I would
Speaker 1: guess no. Right, so that that would be my guest,
Speaker 1: just because the random nature of killing an animal and
Speaker 1: another animal another area doing something we don't like. No,
Speaker 1: would that population of bears, the Yellowstone Great yellostone population
Speaker 1: of bears be unable to to see those other populations
Speaker 1: of bears the other four or five that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: there are four critical ones that you mentioned, I would
Speaker 1: say yes, they will still be able to do their
Speaker 1: job in allowing the same to grow. Um, So in
Speaker 1: the end, both sides are a little bit wrong. Like
Speaker 1: when I think in the end it would work and
Speaker 1: still not do in this one case, still not do
Speaker 1: any real damage to the future grizzly bears. And I
Speaker 1: think you know in the court decision, there's nothing about
Speaker 1: hunting twenty three bears. Yeah, I know, it's about the law,
Speaker 1: the connectivity, the genetics. Uh have you said you you're
Speaker 1: saying you read it a few times, Like, what's you know?
Speaker 1: Give us to the crib notes on this this guy,
Speaker 1: I mean basically what he's saying. It's like it's complicated.
Speaker 1: I realized, appreciate I'm saying that it's emotional. Guys, this
Speaker 1: is easy. Yeah, I'll tell you what to do the
Speaker 1: things with won in your shirts, let them live well
Speaker 1: in I'm sure if you had to be with this guy,
Speaker 1: he would be like, that was a challenging decision because
Speaker 1: there are there are rights on both sides of the
Speaker 1: there are truths on both sides. Yeah, but he made
Speaker 1: his decision based on the law that exists, and and
Speaker 1: if he didn't make this decision, he would have not
Speaker 1: been doing the law of justice. Or he would have
Speaker 1: had to change the law, which gets into a scary
Speaker 1: place where we say, oh, we really give a shit
Speaker 1: about this issue. Let's change a holistic law that manages
Speaker 1: wildlife at large. Yeah, I mean I think in I
Speaker 1: don't have this all in my head, but I think.
Speaker 1: And then if you talk to like the guys that
Speaker 1: Sportsman Alliance or or or pro hunter advocate groups, you
Speaker 1: would find that around this e s a thing. They
Speaker 1: lose a lot. They lose a lot because the law
Speaker 1: is really kind of in this way, even in like
Speaker 1: in semantics, really not on their side in a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases. Um, then they might tell me I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but I'd like in just anecdotally having been trying to
Speaker 1: get educated about wolves and bears, and in some of
Speaker 1: these situations, I feel like they lose a lot just
Speaker 1: based on the legal precedents. Well, and it's hard right,
Speaker 1: like sage grouse, it's a hard thing. People run cattle.
Speaker 1: People don't want critical habitat on their backyard. I know.
Speaker 1: I've done work in sane just country with people deeply
Speaker 1: invested in that research who no of ranchers. Obviously it
Speaker 1: is not indicative of the whole, but like when they
Speaker 1: were on the table to be listed, ranchers destroyed the
Speaker 1: lex on their property because they didn't want critical habits
Speaker 1: on their land. It's a real thing. There's more people
Speaker 1: every year on earth trying to make a living, and
Speaker 1: there are fewer animals with an opportunity to make a living.
Speaker 1: And I think that trend. Gosh, that's a good way
Speaker 1: to put it, man, because every time, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: Republican versus Democrat right now in this issue, right it is.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's jobs versus environment and not making
Speaker 1: more environment. No, we can make more jobs. And that's
Speaker 1: what I think I always come back to. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there's some logical fallacy in the jobs. You know,
Speaker 1: we we need to attract because we need jobs. We
Speaker 1: need a healthy consistants, healthy have a healthy country. Um.
Speaker 1: I think Governor meat and Waowings and what he said
Speaker 1: about sage Grouse said it, well, in that particular state,
Speaker 1: they need healthy habitats. So you can have a healthy
Speaker 1: state economically, right, and so any hindrance of that bye
Speaker 1: by ridding yourself of that critical habitat and that and
Speaker 1: that wildlife in exchange for extraction or cattle ranching or
Speaker 1: whatever you might be doing is short sighted from an
Speaker 1: economic standpoint um, which is which has been the argument
Speaker 1: a lot. Well, the hard thing about it is that
Speaker 1: it boils down to people trying to support their families,
Speaker 1: you know, and we can assume that most people are
Speaker 1: trying their best and ecosystems and wildlife who don't vote
Speaker 1: yeah or or and don't need cash to pay their mortgage. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's. This is one of those situations where
Speaker 1: and there's a few of them in politics or in life,
Speaker 1: where it's human nature versus human nature. Human nature is
Speaker 1: to thrive and survive and feed your family and and
Speaker 1: be and in the game of life succeed. And if
Speaker 1: you have identified this one way to succeed, and that's
Speaker 1: a being, there's an impediment that is a bird or
Speaker 1: a bear, or your human nature says to rid yourself
Speaker 1: of that impediment, so then you can't succeed. And I
Speaker 1: get that all the way, but I feel like also
Speaker 1: somewhere in our human nature is the ability to have
Speaker 1: empathy for other living beings. And if we lose that empathy,
Speaker 1: we become sociopathic assholes. And rather not do that and
Speaker 1: we delete your comments. We delete your comments. I love judges,
Speaker 1: all of or impartial um. But but I think that
Speaker 1: empathy is also part of human nature. So your human
Speaker 1: nature should allow you to be empathetic for animals and
Speaker 1: allow you to understand their plight because, like you said,
Speaker 1: they can't speak for themselves. What human nature also says,
Speaker 1: survival is key. So what do we do? You tell me, Charles,
Speaker 1: I got nothing. I mean, it's so hard because I
Speaker 1: get it, like more than anything. I want to move
Speaker 1: into my new house, take care of my wife and
Speaker 1: raise a family. Yeah, I get that. Now. If there
Speaker 1: was now let's say there's if there was a you know,
Speaker 1: situation where having stage dress on your land impeded your
Speaker 1: like cost you money to where you had to go
Speaker 1: get a night job and didn't see get your kid
Speaker 1: and your kids get depressed because you were never around.
Speaker 1: But there were ship tons of stage grouse on the
Speaker 1: ten ten acres. You have to make some decisions there.
Speaker 1: I mean. A story that comes to mind is my
Speaker 1: friend Chris Boys. He's doing the in the Okavongo Dell,
Speaker 1: the research project for Nagio. It's the wildest watershed left
Speaker 1: in Africa. He came across a bunch of elephant poachers recently,
Speaker 1: these guys who have nothing. When poachers kill elephants, they
Speaker 1: usually cut their head off and bury it, and then
Speaker 1: they basically wait. They'll sit there at camp, bury the
Speaker 1: body or the head, and wait for the head to
Speaker 1: decompose the point where they can pull the ivory out.
Speaker 1: So my friend Chris, who's a South African explorer, he's
Speaker 1: an awesome guy. He comes up on these guys guns scared.
Speaker 1: They got a few elephant heads in the ground. He's like,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. He talks these guys, they say, I can
Speaker 1: kill one elephant. That I realized is a bad thing.
Speaker 1: I realized it's illegal and makes me sad. I grew
Speaker 1: up here, born here watching elephants. I respect them. I
Speaker 1: also have no money. I have a family to feed.
Speaker 1: I cut this thing's head off because I need to
Speaker 1: feed my family. That's the reality. And he's like, I
Speaker 1: can't argue with that. It's shitty. It's sad that guy
Speaker 1: is desperate that elephants dead there in decline. But it's real, ship,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think you can't blame the guy
Speaker 1: necessarily who might have the stage grouse in this yard.
Speaker 1: Who does something that's maybe unethical, but that's real stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think with the grizzly bear, people who lose
Speaker 1: livestock even though there are funds available that give money
Speaker 1: to replace those animals, Like, that's a real thing and
Speaker 1: you feel like your life or your lifestyle is threatened. However,
Speaker 1: it also is just a complicated pr narrative where that
Speaker 1: guy is getting sued by a Portland lawyer on behalf
Speaker 1: of Center for Biological Diversity. That looks bad. He doesn't
Speaker 1: live there, he doesn't have a stage grouse or grizzly
Speaker 1: or wolves in his backyard. But the fact the matter
Speaker 1: is one that guy on the ranch is probably not
Speaker 1: gonna get the tag shoot the grizzly bear. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing. Like I always cater remove that
Speaker 1: from the hunting conversation. Right again, all this stuff is
Speaker 1: just my opinion. It's not very educated. I read a
Speaker 1: lot and I try my best as well, I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: but I just almost always eliminate from the conversation because
Speaker 1: I don't I truly don't believe unless unless somebody from
Speaker 1: the State Wyomi would come on and say we are
Speaker 1: we are targeting problem bears in areas around suburban and
Speaker 1: urban you know, in in the case of where where
Speaker 1: people live where targeting areas problem bears, when people live
Speaker 1: in these twenty two tags are going to that, and
Speaker 1: then you're not as a hunter, You're like, well, why
Speaker 1: am I going? Right? That doesn't give me all the
Speaker 1: things hunting gives me. Now, I'm just just paying to
Speaker 1: be shooting, paying to shoot a past and so like
Speaker 1: that to me, if I'm looking at as a non
Speaker 1: grizzly bear hunter, I've killed a lot of bears, So
Speaker 1: I could say I wouldn't go in that hunt. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't pay to go in that hunt. I would not
Speaker 1: pay to go and eliminate that pest and call it hunting. Well,
Speaker 1: it's unique in that in this case we're talking about
Speaker 1: the deal listing of a potential game animal that threats people,
Speaker 1: where you, as the hunter, are not saying I'm using
Speaker 1: my bullet, arrow or shotgun two manage a population. You're
Speaker 1: saying I'm going to maybe you make the wood safer.
Speaker 1: There's a Disknecht there, Yeah, No, there definitely is. And
Speaker 1: I think you could argue that a well managed population
Speaker 1: is is less apt to have problem animals, you know,
Speaker 1: doing what they're doing. If there's if there's less bears,
Speaker 1: less competition for the things they need to survive, food
Speaker 1: and all those types of things you have less, it
Speaker 1: would be a less problematic situation. Now. You could say that,
Speaker 1: but I would need you to prove that to me,
Speaker 1: because it seems right. It seems like, hey, if we
Speaker 1: have seven bears, if we have and they're all competing
Speaker 1: for you know, a relatively they're not relatively small, but
Speaker 1: but in an area for for food and for all
Speaker 1: the things they need to survive, that shrapnel from that
Speaker 1: competition ends up being what we're talking about. Right. If
Speaker 1: it's spill over, it's spillover. Now, if there's less animals,
Speaker 1: that be less spillover, right, I could get with that.
Speaker 1: I just but I just don't think twenty two in
Speaker 1: this situation is enough. I don't. And then again I don't. Haven't.
Speaker 1: I'm not a wildife followed it, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: But that's that would be my just regular dude thoughts on. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, and the corollary to that is
Speaker 1: like the bison in Yellstone. Every year, the Park Service
Speaker 1: kills hundreds of every winter they kill hundreds of bison
Speaker 1: because bison, like elk, carry brucellisis can carry brucellosis which
Speaker 1: can cause cattle to abort cats. That's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Yelisa National Park as an oversupply of bison, the excess
Speaker 1: are killed. Ye. Also in National Park has an excess
Speaker 1: of grizzly bears, the bad ones are killed. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's would you would you say um again,
Speaker 1: like going back to like why hunting for me? What
Speaker 1: what hunting ends up being? It's like healthy ecosystems and
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Would you say that that's
Speaker 1: we can define those interactions. You're just talking about the
Speaker 1: killing of an animal for something other than um, you know,
Speaker 1: hunting purposes, virtuous hunting purposes, or however we'll put that
Speaker 1: term is unhealthy interactions with wildlife. That's like an unhealthy
Speaker 1: killing it with a car, killing it with a with
Speaker 1: a gun because it carries a certain type of disease,
Speaker 1: killing it with a gun because it's threatening someone's life.
Speaker 1: For someone's livelihood is like the example of human wildlife
Speaker 1: interaction that is unhealthy. Yeah, but I mean we live
Speaker 1: in the anthropscene, like the epic we live in is
Speaker 1: the one defined by humanity. So it's not like we're
Speaker 1: making these decisions based on science alone necessarily. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but like the only the only opportunity, the only option
Speaker 1: we have is to determine, like what's an unhealthy interaction,
Speaker 1: what's a healthy one, and promote the healthy one, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And but sometimes a healthy one conflicts with with society.
Speaker 1: I mean a great example in the segue into the
Speaker 1: California fire situation, there are a hundred and twenty nine
Speaker 1: million dead trees in California. Many of them are dead
Speaker 1: because of drought that's exacerbated by warming winters. Also pine beetles,
Speaker 1: same thing in Montana. Californians don't want to see, you know,
Speaker 1: people coming in and cutting down dead trees and building
Speaker 1: walking roads. People who live in California and elsewhere we
Speaker 1: had fire this summer. It was shitty. You don't want
Speaker 1: your backyard forest being burned as a prescribed burn because
Speaker 1: you don't want to have your kids breathing in the air.
Speaker 1: Those are real things. The results of those realities, or
Speaker 1: that you have this excess timber that's dead that turns
Speaker 1: our force into potential bonfire, which is what happening now,
Speaker 1: and it's freaking horrible hundreds, you know, And that's a
Speaker 1: real thing. It's like you're telling people, hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: let your back out in fire this summer. It's gonna
Speaker 1: help you out in ten years. Or we understand that
Speaker 1: California is environmentally a very environmentally progressive in friendly state,
Speaker 1: we need to build a bunch of logging roads through
Speaker 1: this national force and cut down a ship ton of
Speaker 1: trees to save. And that's that's I think ends up
Speaker 1: what ends up happening around the more pragmatic approach of
Speaker 1: someone that's involved with wildlife, you know, like on the
Speaker 1: ground um decision making to say, hey, here's I love
Speaker 1: the environment, but I don't love it so much. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna love it to death, right, which is what
Speaker 1: you're talking. Wow, So you talk about a pragmatic love,
Speaker 1: which is I think what most hunters hold and what
Speaker 1: most health fishermen hold and most outdoorsmen hold, which is
Speaker 1: the healthiest type of love, and an unhealthy type of love,
Speaker 1: which is love something without any context of how to
Speaker 1: really do it justice. Well, in my argument, my counter
Speaker 1: that would be you have the far left that are
Speaker 1: like I need this many grizzly barras because I want
Speaker 1: to get photos of them. But a lot of hunters,
Speaker 1: I bet you aren't super verse in genetics, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's I would say, are neither. Neither of those
Speaker 1: two folks are versed in genetics, right, neither. But I
Speaker 1: would say, like, those are probably two gaps that lead
Speaker 1: to opinions that are maybe uninformed to a certain degree.
Speaker 1: And then I'm not very willing to call out hunters
Speaker 1: right for what I believe is a deficiency and knowledge
Speaker 1: and opinion like that. I get super frustrated with certain
Speaker 1: groups in our world that fit that start their communication
Speaker 1: with their constituency of hunters by telling them hunting is
Speaker 1: always the always a solution, Hunting is always right, Hunting
Speaker 1: is the best thing to do always. Bullshit, bullshit, No,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, not happening, Not happening. Um It's it would
Speaker 1: be just as well to say, like, here's the history
Speaker 1: of why this is good. Here's what's happened in the past,
Speaker 1: why our monologue conservation works, Here's why we here's why
Speaker 1: we is. The Rocky Mountain Foundation of Ducks Unlimited protect
Speaker 1: nesting grounds and and critical habitat for elk, and these
Speaker 1: are the things, these are why we do these things now,
Speaker 1: that should inform the way we think about grizzly bears.
Speaker 1: But that isn't We can't just blindly walk up to
Speaker 1: that and say hunt them, right, I can't do it. Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard because in the nineteen of any three, when
Speaker 1: a lot of these precedents sending setting legal measures were
Speaker 1: enacted into law, our environments weren't changing like they are today.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to say we have the numbers where
Speaker 1: we want them to be today, but we don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to the rest of the pine trees.
Speaker 1: We don't know what's gonna happen to the snowpack. We
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen to you know, white
Speaker 1: deal white tailed deer populations. You know those girzly bears
Speaker 1: that you see pine nuts are now eating more meat.
Speaker 1: There's more hunters and people in the woods than ever,
Speaker 1: right for conflict, more cars than ever, more development than ever.
Speaker 1: So it's like, those are things that I think lead
Speaker 1: me to like I don't freaking know, Like I don't
Speaker 1: know what the answer is. It's yeah, I mean really
Speaker 1: damn complicated it's me, would you like, is I think
Speaker 1: you get to a point where, like, is your opinion
Speaker 1: that the least amount of bears killed possible is the
Speaker 1: right thing to do. My it's a hard answer for
Speaker 1: the short term, I know. Yeah, I know. It's just
Speaker 1: saying like, once, okay, let's let's say, let's let's get out,
Speaker 1: get off the table. Um, what might happen in the future.
Speaker 1: You know, for like the current that current population, um,
Speaker 1: there's seven hundred of them. The least number of those
Speaker 1: things killed, the better for the next three years, so
Speaker 1: we can see how that affects these other populations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that don't just say well, you
Speaker 1: know what, Okay, this is but I don't know. I don't.
Speaker 1: I will start just saying don't I do not disagree. No,
Speaker 1: And and I'm certainly they're like, my goal is to
Speaker 1: have grizzly bears off the es A managed by the States,
Speaker 1: because that means we succeeded. Conservation was a success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that yeah, that's I think we like, we get
Speaker 1: in a lot of these conversations where it's like I
Speaker 1: believe totally different. Again, I think most people that care
Speaker 1: about wildlife feel the same way. I feel exactly the
Speaker 1: same way. Anti hunters and hunters feel the same way.
Speaker 1: They're just really crappy. They're really crappy at getting like
Speaker 1: communicating or just remembering that Like you might speak to
Speaker 1: different languages, but you're like end results the same, Yes,
Speaker 1: you know and not and and listen because I'm not
Speaker 1: somebody who wants to run out and crack a grizzly bear. Um.
Speaker 1: I would say like if if, if this is if
Speaker 1: somebody presenting me a solution said like, just give me,
Speaker 1: give me five years, and you could, you know, scientifically,
Speaker 1: say here's here's how grizzly bears breed, how they grow,
Speaker 1: how they travel, how critical populations can seed other populations,
Speaker 1: and if you give me six years as a scientist
Speaker 1: an ecologist, six years, I can come and report back
Speaker 1: and tell you that that worked, like which it sounds
Speaker 1: like could be done, right. I would be like, cool, great,
Speaker 1: let's give it a shot. But if you fail, we're
Speaker 1: coming in with our guns. But like something like that
Speaker 1: would probably be you know, because it gets the legal
Speaker 1: thing starts to just get frustrating. Well, I think that's
Speaker 1: kind of what he says here. He's like, here's some
Speaker 1: things like here's your homework. You know, this is what
Speaker 1: I this is the these are the flaws that I
Speaker 1: found from a from illegal and also uh conceptual place
Speaker 1: address that and let's get these things that this species
Speaker 1: to a place of stability, then the states can do
Speaker 1: what they want. Well if somebody can, like, please everybody
Speaker 1: agree on stability, because I think that's the thing here now,
Speaker 1: because you get into this, like let's make him stable,
Speaker 1: and anti hunters and rights folks will say, we'll always
Speaker 1: move the goalpost, right, I'm gonna just keep moving the
Speaker 1: goalpost back, back, back back, and you're never gonna get there.
Speaker 1: Ha ha ha. But history would say the opposite, we
Speaker 1: can hunt wolves. Yeah, well ten years ago. But would
Speaker 1: you agree that that's that's a tactic, right, because because
Speaker 1: any any uh animal rights person with where AsSalt that's
Speaker 1: got a brain is going to say, like, man, I
Speaker 1: can I'm not really gonna be able to argue very
Speaker 1: much with that model of conservation. Right, I'm gonna ail there,
Speaker 1: but I still don't want him to kill him. Well,
Speaker 1: I think those I think that's the left that won't
Speaker 1: ever like invite us to dinner, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: like but I know that they're out there, and I
Speaker 1: know the other sides out there, and they're never That's
Speaker 1: why I like, I hope people listening to this can
Speaker 1: gain the perspective that, like, I think there is a
Speaker 1: faction on on the animal right side that wants to
Speaker 1: continue to move the goal posts. I'm sure there is.
Speaker 1: It's it's evident, and I would imagine there's a faction
Speaker 1: in the hunting community that wants to move the goal
Speaker 1: post closer. I disagree with both. I mean it's to
Speaker 1: kill them all or save mo mentality. I disagree with
Speaker 1: both right, and I disagree with that the disingenuous like
Speaker 1: connection between that person who who on the animal right
Speaker 1: side wants to move the goal post connecting themselves with tourism,
Speaker 1: and I disagree with the person on the other side
Speaker 1: who's a hunter connecting themselves to the rancher. Sorry, you
Speaker 1: don't get to play right. I just That's part of
Speaker 1: what I hope people can take away from this conversation
Speaker 1: is like, don't let somebody can that that has this staunch,
Speaker 1: rigid idealism like idealistic view on one side or the
Speaker 1: other connect use use a real world problem to convince
Speaker 1: you that they're right. No, man, no, it's it's way
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. And I think that's the key.
Speaker 1: This is a freaking complicated issue. This is like really
Speaker 1: smart people who spend way more time thinking about this
Speaker 1: than you and me. I would say, like, this is
Speaker 1: freaking complicated, and we're gonna do our best, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna try to to create a blueprint moving forward that
Speaker 1: will be uh judicious and and as fair as possible.
Speaker 1: But like I guarantee you, this judge wasn't like this
Speaker 1: is easy. Let's like, let me just tell you what's up.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite that's my favorite part about society today.
Speaker 1: That's like, if something happens that you disagree with, the
Speaker 1: person who made that decision that you discroe with immediately
Speaker 1: is some sort of evil bought Like oh, it's that
Speaker 1: dark money must have bought that because anal rights guys
Speaker 1: must have paid that judge off. Maybe they did. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're right, but I'm not. I'm not interested in that
Speaker 1: conversation because if that happened, hopefully somebody finds it, they
Speaker 1: arrest that fucker and put him in jail. Otherwise, otherwise,
Speaker 1: let's just have the conversation because we can't. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to start the conversation with some crazy conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: like that. And and I think what I trust in
Speaker 1: your readings of that is that that that decisions a
Speaker 1: person who looked at the law, which is his job
Speaker 1: and his determination, was the way this law is written,
Speaker 1: this isn't the right thing to do. And I think,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, and if learn anything
Speaker 1: from interm elections is the public is hungry for people
Speaker 1: who straddle the middle and who are flexible and the like.
Speaker 1: I had a vegan dinner yesterday, but I shouted during
Speaker 1: my dough. I shot it, tearing my daddy. I shot
Speaker 1: a deer in my yard it last night. That was
Speaker 1: kind of my weak story, you know. But that's I'm
Speaker 1: hungry for that. I am hungry for that in my
Speaker 1: daily life. And and I think I'm sure there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that are hungry for that too, that
Speaker 1: are hungry for that type of world where, um, it's
Speaker 1: not easy because it's super easy to be rigid because
Speaker 1: then you don't have to think just a reaction. You
Speaker 1: don't have to if if everything as a hunter, if
Speaker 1: all I was doing was looking for validation for my opinions.
Speaker 1: Life would be easy because I would know who to hate,
Speaker 1: I would know who to like, I would know who
Speaker 1: to have dinner with, I would know who to keep
Speaker 1: out of my yard. It just makes life easier. And
Speaker 1: and I think at some level, I I care about
Speaker 1: the hunting community. I care about humanity, but I don't
Speaker 1: feel like I can do much with that hunting community.
Speaker 1: I think we can work with here and we can say, Look,
Speaker 1: I care about you. I don't want you to be that.
Speaker 1: I don't want you to be so rigid that you
Speaker 1: can't see. I don't want you to be so so idealistic,
Speaker 1: you know, or idealist not the right word, but so
Speaker 1: rigid that you're blind as I guess what I would say, Well,
Speaker 1: not to be nerdy. But there's a theory of island biogeography.
Speaker 1: So if you think about the condaday, if you think
Speaker 1: about your little island out in the middle of the ocean,
Speaker 1: the number the probability that new species will show up
Speaker 1: is small the further from the mainland you are on
Speaker 1: the smaller island. So if you're a person and you
Speaker 1: have your little island with your little tribe of people
Speaker 1: who are all saying the same thing. I hate all
Speaker 1: of you. I love all of you. You're not getting
Speaker 1: a lot of new information because you're way the hell
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the ocean. You're on a
Speaker 1: small island. The bigger the island and the closer yard
Speaker 1: the to the mainland, the more other species will show up,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have a more diverse suite of perspectives
Speaker 1: of an ecosystem. And I think it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that that it's all about saying I'm not going to
Speaker 1: cast myself out into the abyss until everybody go fund
Speaker 1: themselves if they're not speaking my language. But instead it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: coming to the table, let's have a conversation. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: change my mind. And I think that's the mindset that
Speaker 1: makes progress and makes things like this grizzly berry issue
Speaker 1: all the more palatable because you realize it's these are
Speaker 1: people trying their best, trying to manage an animal that
Speaker 1: is scary and lovable. Well, And I think I think
Speaker 1: that's why UM, as a journalism uh trying to be
Speaker 1: a student of journalism. I try, and I was at
Speaker 1: some point they gave me a piece of paper. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that's why true journalism. Honest, true, unimpeded information
Speaker 1: is being suppressed in our world because that's dangerous, right,
Speaker 1: it's dangerous. You can't manipulate people if they're educated. You can't.
Speaker 1: And the one thing that scared me around the midterm
Speaker 1: elections was the amount of people that I heard, even
Speaker 1: whether I agree with him or not, I think public
Speaker 1: Lands is a huge you know, I love public Lands.
Speaker 1: We talked about that in the beginning of this, but
Speaker 1: public Lands is it's becoming something that people just say,
Speaker 1: and that's just dangerous just because I agree with it.
Speaker 1: Let's say I didn't agree with it, I would be
Speaker 1: mortified that everybody was just parting the same thing. And
Speaker 1: so I feel the midterm elections scared me because of
Speaker 1: the amount of people I saw that were just rolling
Speaker 1: out the campaign at jargon and comments on things that
Speaker 1: I saw. It's like, boys, you ought not to want
Speaker 1: to be a sheep. You should strive to be more right,
Speaker 1: you know, and for the health of the hunting community,
Speaker 1: we should, you know, strive to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more and to be it's good to be provocative, but
Speaker 1: from a place of curiosity, you know, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things it's hard for me
Speaker 1: not to, you know, be thinking about my friends and
Speaker 1: family back in California. Um, but it's also hard to
Speaker 1: ignore something that Trump was saying the other day where
Speaker 1: he's like, this is a state issue. When the governor
Speaker 1: asked for federal support, he said no, because you're not
Speaker 1: managing your force. Well, the force in California owned by
Speaker 1: the federal government, owned by private companies or private individuals,
Speaker 1: three owned by the state. So he's putting that out
Speaker 1: there into the world, polarizing people. People who aren't going
Speaker 1: to go and do their homework and figure out the
Speaker 1: distribution of ownership are gonna be like, oh, well, they
Speaker 1: asked for it. I hate when needed Trump goes into
Speaker 1: the conversation because he is the lead asshole. He is
Speaker 1: what we're just talking about. I was thinking that you
Speaker 1: said it. I don't care. I don't care if you listen,
Speaker 1: If you're out there and you support Donald Trumping, you
Speaker 1: don't think he's an asshole? Boy, what, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you're reading, because, yeah, it's about to be Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: pretty soon. If somebody that acted like Donald Trump does
Speaker 1: on Twitter was at your Thanksgiving, you would want to
Speaker 1: kick them out. Immediately, and and and so I hate
Speaker 1: what you hate what I hate When he whether you
Speaker 1: agree with what he was saying or not, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: why is this guy at the table spouting offer and
Speaker 1: just talking ship? That's not true, that's not true, and
Speaker 1: it's really a pity dated and and I can't bring
Speaker 1: facts to the table. Maybe one thing if he was
Speaker 1: off by a few percentage, but California owns three percent
Speaker 1: of their forests, and the fact that there's one million
Speaker 1: dead trees is not we can we can all. It's
Speaker 1: it's so like we just elected the lead person of
Speaker 1: what you like, the person we're just talking about, like
Speaker 1: the person like really, let's let's be a radical centrist,
Speaker 1: let's really think through issues, let's really be you know,
Speaker 1: have have uh sound processes around how we come to
Speaker 1: our opinions. Here's a person who we elected to run
Speaker 1: our country, who got elected in part because he doesn't
Speaker 1: do that or give a ship or give right. I
Speaker 1: can't I hate even to talk about it, but but
Speaker 1: I think what what he's saying. He's not saying something
Speaker 1: that's totally inflammatory. Manage your forest, manage your forest. But well,
Speaker 1: and that's if but if that state voted for him,
Speaker 1: they'd be flying in the helicopters. I think like if
Speaker 1: that wasn't you know, if they had didn't have a
Speaker 1: democratic they have a democratic governor in California. I really
Speaker 1: think if that was a Republican governor asking, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have got he would have got a different answer. But
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's horrible when in this case, people
Speaker 1: and ecosystems are caught in the polarized crossfire of humanity
Speaker 1: and in the case the grizzly bear, these are air
Speaker 1: is just trying to be freaking bears. You burning it
Speaker 1: up there out there, just they're burning it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just being fund Is that right? Is that how
Speaker 1: you use that term? Yes, that would be that the
Speaker 1: right episode. Yeah, that would actually mean they're reproducing or
Speaker 1: their potential for countity is is how many offspring you're
Speaker 1: able to have? Like ron Berg, anyway you win in Rome, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it means. I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1: I'll get there. It's crazy because like in this case,
Speaker 1: the grizzly bears are in this case, people and ecosystems
Speaker 1: are just caught in between our inability to find common
Speaker 1: ground or be radical centrists, you know, and instead it's
Speaker 1: like fuck you, fuck you and nothing really gets done
Speaker 1: and then get Yeah, when people are dying, we should
Speaker 1: do the right thing always like hundreds, maybe up to
Speaker 1: a thousand. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's unbelievable. And
Speaker 1: then just so people know that, you know, this is
Speaker 1: your your home statement. You know. I worked with somebody
Speaker 1: from Paradise, the guy used to dunk duck hunt with.
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to him, um hopefully. I don't think
Speaker 1: he lives, Aren Moore, But yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what was happening in my area of
Speaker 1: the world. I mean, it is, it's terrible. I mean,
Speaker 1: my dad has respiratory issues because of the smoke, and
Speaker 1: he's talked to the last night. He's sitting in front
Speaker 1: of the air filter with all the doors and windows
Speaker 1: shut in a room, you know. I mean it's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it just goes back to the fact that
Speaker 1: we should all strive for health, Like do you healthy ecosystems?
Speaker 1: Do you like both sides anybody, whatever side you fall
Speaker 1: on that you read a love and that forest death
Speaker 1: or want to cut it up? You know, like you
Speaker 1: should act with the health of that ecosystem always in mind.
Speaker 1: If you if you did, you wouldn't be breathed in smoke,
Speaker 1: right in. A healthy ecosystem affords a healthy society, and
Speaker 1: I think people now unfortunately being reminded of that through
Speaker 1: horrible things, these hurricanes and these fires, and it means
Speaker 1: something when like your world is destroyed, you know, And
Speaker 1: I think people will in the Southeast will continue to say, like, ship,
Speaker 1: whatever we want to call it, hurricanes are getting worse,
Speaker 1: waters rising, Let's figure out how we can address that,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. Our forests are going
Speaker 1: up in flames, and let's figure out how to address that.
Speaker 1: Because if you're because there's just this like level of
Speaker 1: having an opinion about something you very much know nothing about,
Speaker 1: right like in the example of even me, like I've
Speaker 1: seen the California fires on TV, but I've never experienced that.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it feels like to have to
Speaker 1: leave your home. People that have people that are well
Speaker 1: off that that happens to you can go get a hotel,
Speaker 1: hang out, drink some sparkling water. We're all good. It
Speaker 1: was fun, maybe like a vacation. People that aren't well
Speaker 1: off that are scraping to get by they have to evacuate,
Speaker 1: are fucked right, They're just not that they can't do
Speaker 1: what um other folks can do. So when you're displaced
Speaker 1: by a natural disaster, man, there's no there's no there's
Speaker 1: nothing to rip away your safety. All the all the
Speaker 1: work we do to build this, to isolate ourselves, to
Speaker 1: insulate ourselves from the real world, there's nothing like a
Speaker 1: natural disaster to rip that from you. Nothing like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it boils down to a lot of it,
Speaker 1: this idea that we can be bombarded with information that
Speaker 1: is polarized or just straight up bullshit. And I think
Speaker 1: about social media just for an extent, and the people
Speaker 1: who the people who will chime in and say things
Speaker 1: as though they're an expert and get away with it.
Speaker 1: This is crazy. I mean, I think about the environment.
Speaker 1: I went to school for ten years at UC Berkeley
Speaker 1: studying ecology. That was my profession. Like a mechanic goes
Speaker 1: and becomes a professional fixing cars, or you fly planes,
Speaker 1: and that's what you do. There isn't a group of
Speaker 1: people on the internet telling people how to fly planes.
Speaker 1: There isn't a group of people who have never climbed
Speaker 1: l caps saying, oh, ship, this is how I did it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't do it that way. But there is an
Speaker 1: incredibly loud group of people who have zero ecological, environmental
Speaker 1: scientific background spouting off about ship they don't get. But
Speaker 1: that becomes gospel in a lot of places and a
Speaker 1: lot of communities, and it's crazy. I get it. You
Speaker 1: can look out the way and say force on fire,
Speaker 1: ships messed up. But to start pointing fingers and being
Speaker 1: like this is why. It's like I'm not going to
Speaker 1: napple out of parts and be like you don't know
Speaker 1: how to fucking put a tire on? I do this way.
Speaker 1: But for some reason or know, the environment is this
Speaker 1: like free for all where anybody can be an expert
Speaker 1: overnight and talk about whatever they want to talk about,
Speaker 1: over fishing, wildlife management, rising seas, forced, you know, ecology.
Speaker 1: It's my brother. When we were moving up here, my
Speaker 1: brother and I and my dad were driving through North Texas,
Speaker 1: rolling through in a U haul and um, we're driving
Speaker 1: through an area where there's windmills, I mean probably a
Speaker 1: thousand of them within site of the highway. When I
Speaker 1: see that, when I saw that, I'm like somebody who
Speaker 1: like loves while places, like appreciates landscapes. Like my first
Speaker 1: reaction was like, God, that sucks. And my brother, who
Speaker 1: you know, like really cares about the environment and is
Speaker 1: really hyped up about that like me, they got pissed
Speaker 1: at me. And the conversation we had around it was
Speaker 1: very much like windmills are always good. Yes, He's like
Speaker 1: gas and oil drilling is always bad. Windmills are helped
Speaker 1: as a solution. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I get that. I can get on more with that,
Speaker 1: like just as yes, my the pragmatic nature of like
Speaker 1: the way I see that, I'm like, yeah, but they
Speaker 1: had the I've seen those big windmill propellers going down
Speaker 1: the highway on on eighteen wheelers. I've seen it. I
Speaker 1: used to live in the corridor and in Illinois where
Speaker 1: they ran them stuff Like I've seen that, and I
Speaker 1: know that they haven't cut roads to get in there
Speaker 1: and put those things up, and I know they kill
Speaker 1: a lot of birds, and I know like it. And
Speaker 1: my I guess my point was like it's complicated. So
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I know. I'm just saying I
Speaker 1: know it's complicated. I mean it's like domestic oil versus international.
Speaker 1: Do you want the Niger River Delta that lightening on
Speaker 1: fire because illegal oil is such a big part of
Speaker 1: their economy, Or do you want oil that's offshore that
Speaker 1: could come up, you know, like the Horizon oil spill.
Speaker 1: Where it's in our backyards. Maybe we have more regulation
Speaker 1: and higher standards of of practice, but it's like it's
Speaker 1: freaking complicated. You know. Maybe it makes our economy uh
Speaker 1: stronger and less reliant on others, but it's in our backyards.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know if there's a if there's
Speaker 1: a solution, Well, doesn't it get scary when I think
Speaker 1: it gets really scary when the course correction doesn't happen
Speaker 1: Because yeah, fires, hurricanes, We start to identify really bad
Speaker 1: things that are happening right and happening more frequently and
Speaker 1: more intensely. But what what scares me not that they happen,
Speaker 1: because disasters have happened through time, and humanity has marched
Speaker 1: on in our environments, have have thrived and in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. But what scares me is that we
Speaker 1: can't course correct right like right now, we're not like
Speaker 1: would you agree we're not course correcting. Is it a
Speaker 1: yearly in California? These fires are happening getting worse. Well,
Speaker 1: so we've there was six years of historic drought. Top
Speaker 1: ten droughts took place in the two thousands ever on record.
Speaker 1: So that collection of droughts I think predisposed California to
Speaker 1: the extreme fires it's experiencing now. Also a legacy of
Speaker 1: fire suppression. You know Smokey the Bear, that was one
Speaker 1: of the worst things we ever did for forests in
Speaker 1: the Inner Mountain West, in the Mediterranean coastal California environment.
Speaker 1: What if we have a we do a film about fire.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it. Fire is one of the
Speaker 1: most misunderstood aspects of our planet. If you read early
Speaker 1: journals of folks who explored California and horseback, they described
Speaker 1: the stare Nevada as a park like setting, those words
Speaker 1: because you could ride a horse at a gallop through
Speaker 1: the foothills or the mountains and not hit a tree.
Speaker 1: Because fire exists across the spectrum of intensity and frequency,
Speaker 1: and fires are returning to these patches of earth every
Speaker 1: one to three years, burning frequently, but low intensity, thinning
Speaker 1: the forests, creating that park like setting where you had
Speaker 1: some understory, but a lot of mature trees with some
Speaker 1: young ones where it didn't burn, and you would have
Speaker 1: had this patchwork. Now after you know the brilliance of
Speaker 1: the smoky the bear, you know motto came out and
Speaker 1: fire suppression became this huge thing that was necessary in
Speaker 1: some respects because people were moving into these wild interfaces.
Speaker 1: You're left with forests like we have up here at
Speaker 1: our local reservoir, where you literally have deadfall that you
Speaker 1: can't walk through because it hasn't been able to burn
Speaker 1: in ten twenty years. And when you have millions and
Speaker 1: millions of trees that are dead and you have warming winters,
Speaker 1: and I asked the dumb question real quick, why why
Speaker 1: doesn't it burn? Why can't it burn? We suppress it
Speaker 1: when a fire is in a lot of place except
Speaker 1: wilderness areas. If a fire starts, most fires are not
Speaker 1: started by lightning. Most fires started by people. They are
Speaker 1: put out to save property, in life or air quality.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately it's society saying protect me first that compounded
Speaker 1: over decades and decades has been like has led to
Speaker 1: the situation where we basically are surrounded by tinder boxes
Speaker 1: and that can't fire that cigarette or that you know,
Speaker 1: those sparks from that toe chain that weren't wasn't wrapped
Speaker 1: up properly. Doesn't just light a little one acre fire.
Speaker 1: These fires are hundreds of thousands of acres. I mean,
Speaker 1: California has had records setting fires like multiple in the
Speaker 1: last five years, and it's not you know, I was
Speaker 1: reading today that the our agency efforts to suppress or
Speaker 1: to control that fuel load, they've removed eight over eight
Speaker 1: hundred thousand trees. There's a million dead trees. So we've
Speaker 1: removed eight hundred thousands so far, and there's more trees
Speaker 1: are gonna be dying because right now it's like tropical
Speaker 1: in California. I'm gonna talk to my friend yesterday and
Speaker 1: Taho and he says, it's cold Levins. We didn't had
Speaker 1: to look a ring, so it's you know, I think
Speaker 1: California in a lot of Western states are gonna be
Speaker 1: forced to say, hey, I realized the public might not
Speaker 1: want us to log our forests and put fire, um
Speaker 1: you know, uh, logging roads through there or use prescribed
Speaker 1: prescribed fire, but we're gonna have to do that if
Speaker 1: we want to save people in property in the future.
Speaker 1: You know, And I mean I was in Nevada shooting
Speaker 1: the film on the Feral Horse issue this summer, and
Speaker 1: there's a five hundred thousand acre fire that burned through
Speaker 1: northern Nevada like insane. Twenty years ago fire big fires
Speaker 1: were ten thousand acres, twenty thousand acres. Yeah, man, that's
Speaker 1: I was trying to think, like what a good analogy
Speaker 1: would be for what's happening there. But I feel like
Speaker 1: it would fall short. I feel like anything you'd say
Speaker 1: would fall short of. It's just like we don't understand.
Speaker 1: It's like we we bought a house, we build a house.
Speaker 1: We don't understand how to take care of the land
Speaker 1: right especially now, because it's not we've we've we've pushed
Speaker 1: our environment past this threshold of normalcy where we can
Speaker 1: say in the past, things have happened this way, so
Speaker 1: we should prepare for that. Things that are happening or
Speaker 1: everybody's looking at the situation and holy shit, this is
Speaker 1: not even within the realm of possibly that we knew existed.
Speaker 1: This is I mean that fire that burned in Malibu.
Speaker 1: If you read the interviews of the firefighters, they're saying
Speaker 1: the Wolsey fire they're saying that fire can't even be managed,
Speaker 1: like water doesn't do anything that fire that fires creatings
Speaker 1: on weather systems. I mean, that's what's happening. These are
Speaker 1: these are fires that are that are creating their own
Speaker 1: life that doesn't exist in a textbook that says, let's
Speaker 1: teach you about fire ecology. These are like outliers to
Speaker 1: the tenth degree. We can't if the guy we're paying
Speaker 1: to have knowledge of how to stop something like well, listen,
Speaker 1: like that doesn't exist in books. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: it's hard too. It's like, you know, back to wild life,
Speaker 1: we're dealing with situations where it's like, okay, you have
Speaker 1: a bear, you have people populations increasing at incredible rates.
Speaker 1: Never you know, we're we're doing things to the environment,
Speaker 1: drawing on the environment in ways that have never been
Speaker 1: done before. So you can't. You kind of got to
Speaker 1: hand it to these people who are managers who are
Speaker 1: tasked with interpreting ship that's like totally foreign, and we
Speaker 1: the public like you should do better, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what's like, I don't even know
Speaker 1: what this is anymore. It's talking about. But but there's
Speaker 1: so many throughout human history there. I always think about
Speaker 1: it this way. There are things we do we don't
Speaker 1: do now that if you win thirty years into the past,
Speaker 1: they would laugh at you said they don't do that.
Speaker 1: There's there's knowledge we've acquired that's changed our habits so much.
Speaker 1: That's something that your parents might have done you would
Speaker 1: laugh at today, you'd be like, how foolish smoke and
Speaker 1: while pregnant, what do you what like our knowledge base
Speaker 1: in our in our our species, our humanity changes so much.
Speaker 1: What type now? It's rapid with technology and what we
Speaker 1: can learn and what we can do. It's like, what
Speaker 1: are we It's like, we should know that we're ill equipped.
Speaker 1: We should know that we're ill equipped, because all you
Speaker 1: gotta do is look a few years back in the
Speaker 1: in the past and be like, well, we were ill
Speaker 1: equipped back then. You think right now, we gotta figure
Speaker 1: it out. So there's things we're doing right now, and
Speaker 1: fire suppression seems like it's one of them that years
Speaker 1: from now we'll look back and be like, boy, we
Speaker 1: were children when it comes to knowledge about these issues,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think it speaks to this like
Speaker 1: broader environmental we've been of of awareness and carrying and
Speaker 1: reducing impact. And you said everywhere, whether it's at Walmart
Speaker 1: or Target, or somebody's Instagram claiming there an environmentalist, or
Speaker 1: even our daily lives, like we probably wake up to
Speaker 1: a certain degree and say, like, I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to do the best I can to reduce
Speaker 1: my impact. And one thing that I talked about the
Speaker 1: other day, you know I made a post about on
Speaker 1: my Instagram, talked about my wife, is you know, you'll
Speaker 1: get shipped for shooting a deer, but you won't get
Speaker 1: shipped for buying that new coat. If we're talking about
Speaker 1: like net impact, everybody in America should go shoot a
Speaker 1: white tail deer because they're doing irreversible harms a lot
Speaker 1: of ecosystems. They're incredibly abundant at zero risk of disappearing
Speaker 1: in a lot of place and and I would say
Speaker 1: the entire country. Yet nobody thinks twice if you go
Speaker 1: to Target and buy a bunch of stuff you probably
Speaker 1: don't need, which is destroying ecosystems or having this tremendous
Speaker 1: negative impact. We're very like I think we're just we're
Speaker 1: children in a lot of ways, like are and I
Speaker 1: was I always try to look at things like, hey,
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, what are we going to look
Speaker 1: back at and say, what the hell was happening over there? Right?
Speaker 1: You know? For now, I think it's like, prescription drugs
Speaker 1: is probably one of them. That's fast food is probably
Speaker 1: one of them. Twenty years from now that hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: be like, whoa boy, we were killing our folks with that, right,
Speaker 1: And in wildlife and hunting realms, there's there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's things we're doing right now twenty year from now
Speaker 1: we're gonna look back at and be like, wow, boy,
Speaker 1: gladly course corrected that one. But that's that's why I
Speaker 1: come back to course correction, because because then I think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we're always going to be stupid now, like now, we're
Speaker 1: always stupid. But if we can if we can continue
Speaker 1: as as a species to correct the things we're doing
Speaker 1: now we shouldn't be, then we'll always at least be
Speaker 1: somewhat Okay. There's some irreparable things that we can't change,
Speaker 1: but the environment seems like that the rare occurrence where
Speaker 1: it is evident that the thing we're doing right now
Speaker 1: isn't right. You know, when that person was pregnant and
Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes. It took some time for babies to be
Speaker 1: born and for the cause and effect to happen. We
Speaker 1: are seeing the cause and effect in front of our faces.
Speaker 1: We don't have to study those fires. They're right there, like, okay,
Speaker 1: well there they are. Let's just keep doing what we're doing,
Speaker 1: and it will light on fire next year and eighty
Speaker 1: more people will die, thousands more people will die, and
Speaker 1: we'll just keep keep on going. Well, and I think
Speaker 1: you know one of the things, it's Alda Leopold, who
Speaker 1: we've talked about, the author of the Sand County Almanac.
Speaker 1: He said something in along the lines of the trouble
Speaker 1: with an environmental education, as you live alone in a
Speaker 1: world of wounds. And yes, that's true, and it's easy
Speaker 1: to get hung up on like the complexities or the
Speaker 1: things we could be doing better, or the lack of
Speaker 1: force that we have. But we also live in a
Speaker 1: time where information is now have been more readily available,
Speaker 1: where communication is is you know, broaching topics that are uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and people are thinking outside of the box. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look at our midterm elections, a lot of
Speaker 1: first happened. There are incredible gains in the environmental kind
Speaker 1: of whatever you wanna call it movement. I mean the
Speaker 1: American Prayer Reserve. I was just learning about that. It's
Speaker 1: the biggest contiguous piece of protected short grass perry in
Speaker 1: the country. It's up near the Breakes and and here
Speaker 1: in Montana. I mean, amazing steps are being taken to
Speaker 1: address noise pollution in the ocean, marine debris in the ocean,
Speaker 1: the way that we manage wildlife here in North America.
Speaker 1: I mean there is a robust, healthy, active, energetic group
Speaker 1: of people joining b h A, getting involved in environmental issues,
Speaker 1: learning how to hunt. You know, I'm one of the
Speaker 1: editors at Modern Huntsmen. The number of people who hit
Speaker 1: us up, he say, I never thought I was gonna hunt,
Speaker 1: and I just harvarded harvested my first, dear doctor Turkey,
Speaker 1: and we're like, hey, yeah, regardless of who you voted
Speaker 1: for the fact that you're connecting with the land, developing
Speaker 1: this relationship, putting food on the table, understanding where meat
Speaker 1: comes from. I mean, that's inspiring and it's easy to get.
Speaker 1: You know, turn on the news and be like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: the world is messed up. Then you can pause and
Speaker 1: say it wasn't Raptor Center. They're doing an amazing words
Speaker 1: for sure, Yeah, I think. But even the push pool
Speaker 1: we're talking about, the push pool of should we shoot
Speaker 1: grizzy bears and should we not shoot you eil wars,
Speaker 1: that push pool is causing conversations like this one and
Speaker 1: a lot of conversations like this one about what's good
Speaker 1: for grizzly bears and that's good like that, you know,
Speaker 1: I think as humans were set up that way, you know,
Speaker 1: like grizzly bears hopefully be better off because of this
Speaker 1: debate because most, hopefully most everybody that's in it is
Speaker 1: thinking about what's best for grizzly bears, just happen to
Speaker 1: disagree about what to do. Um And like you said,
Speaker 1: a lot of it's disagreeing on the path to take
Speaker 1: to the same goal. And that's been my biggest one
Speaker 1: of the guesse things I've found over the last year
Speaker 1: or two, you know, really diving into the hunting industry
Speaker 1: and getting involved with b h A and then and
Speaker 1: trying to just like wrap my head around why I
Speaker 1: believe hunting is this medicine. It's like this this thing
Speaker 1: that we can all take to be a little bit
Speaker 1: better right, it has. It has a direct effect on
Speaker 1: our world, but everything does. And so living in that
Speaker 1: thought process, hunting is is this enriching pill you can
Speaker 1: take to bring you a little bit closer to the
Speaker 1: things you need to be close to nature. Animals are environment,
Speaker 1: your skills, all that ship and so that's at some
Speaker 1: point it's it's how do we go from a how
Speaker 1: do we go from a moment where we're standing back
Speaker 1: to back and we both agree with something, and we
Speaker 1: and then we start walking away from each other, and
Speaker 1: by the time we turn around to have the conversation,
Speaker 1: all we can do is argue. I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: everybody cares about wildlife. That's the reason our model, That's
Speaker 1: the one reason I believe our modelogue conservation works because
Speaker 1: everybody cares about wildlife. And I think it's I think
Speaker 1: you bring up a good point. And I also think
Speaker 1: that more people are stopping halfway and saying, wait a second,
Speaker 1: we actually have a lot more in common than you'd
Speaker 1: like to believe, or that the public is telling us.
Speaker 1: We do as you know, by on paper, I should
Speaker 1: be very different than you. But when we sit down,
Speaker 1: maybe we see things in different lights. But I think
Speaker 1: from an ideological perspective, we have a lot of the same.
Speaker 1: That really matters at the end of the day, because
Speaker 1: if if if you could agree, if if you and
Speaker 1: I could agree that we're not gonna be at the
Speaker 1: same spot on everything, but we're trying to get to
Speaker 1: the same goal, then every interaction we have is positive, right,
Speaker 1: even if we're yelling at each other. They were like, fucky,
Speaker 1: that's before the recordings. Yeah yeah, yeah, um yeah, even
Speaker 1: if we're are doing even if what we could say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: let's before we start. We want grizzly bears to be healthy, thrive,
Speaker 1: and to be doing their thing. Okay, good, great, great,
Speaker 1: let's go right, nothing you can do from that point forward,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, would would would be negative. And I
Speaker 1: think your point about like having space for discussion is huge,
Speaker 1: And that's you know, I'm doing some workover at SITCO
Speaker 1: next door, and we have this ecosystem thinking grant that
Speaker 1: we're putting together in all these different measures that I
Speaker 1: think some people would be surprised by. But it's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: We're in the business of hunting, and we're in the
Speaker 1: business of the outdoors and the environment and those three
Speaker 1: things hinge upon the health of our ecosystems. So if
Speaker 1: we're not putting that ecosystem thinking hat on, then we're
Speaker 1: not doing the resources and these systems that we care
Speaker 1: about justice. And that's what you guys do so well
Speaker 1: over here is like, let's create a space for conversations
Speaker 1: that shanna light on what we can do better or
Speaker 1: what we're doing well that benefits the resources that we
Speaker 1: identify with. Yeah. I mean, I'm wearing a hoodie right
Speaker 1: now as this public landowner, like I'm into that. I
Speaker 1: want people to wear these shirts. It's over his ghostly
Speaker 1: bar t shirts. Yeah, well that's that's a tank top, sir,
Speaker 1: with sequences. Um, and now I'm thinking about me wearing
Speaker 1: a jazz tanks out. Thanks. Bro can make serious points
Speaker 1: that environment. But yeah, I think like this publicly and ownything.
Speaker 1: I always come back to that. I think, yes, I
Speaker 1: want public lands, Yes, of course I do. It's too
Speaker 1: easy to just want that. Is not that I just
Speaker 1: want public lands, is that I want healthy public lands
Speaker 1: that contribute to our world. I just don't want to
Speaker 1: be It's I'm not arguing for the right to go somewhere. Really,
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about public lands. I'm not arguing for
Speaker 1: the right to go on public lands. I want that.
Speaker 1: I'm arguing for the right to have them so we
Speaker 1: can keep them healthy and so they contribute to our world,
Speaker 1: like healthy habitat, healthy wildlife populations. That's what I'm at
Speaker 1: they're doing. I'm not saying I want it so I
Speaker 1: can do whatever I want on it. No, I'm saying
Speaker 1: I want it so we can make it better and
Speaker 1: make us all better. That's the point of wearing a
Speaker 1: shirt like this. And that's where I come back to, like,
Speaker 1: don't you get in this boat with me if you
Speaker 1: don't want that to if you just want public land
Speaker 1: so you can cut roads through them and ride around
Speaker 1: and shoot you off an a TV, like, that's not
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. And what if somebody went up
Speaker 1: to you and said, you're a public landowner and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you can't do what you want to do
Speaker 1: because of these three reasons. We can do that over there, fine.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a big thing too, because there
Speaker 1: are things that happen, you know, like you're into off
Speaker 1: roading and somebody says, well, that's critical habitat for this tortoise,
Speaker 1: and like well, screw the tortoise. I've never seen one.
Speaker 1: I drove my truck out there all the time. I think,
Speaker 1: you get up. People get hung up in these these
Speaker 1: purported threats on their ability to do what they want
Speaker 1: on public land. And the beautiful thing about public land
Speaker 1: is it's a collective resource. And if somebody is saying
Speaker 1: I get off cutting off you, you know, by cutting
Speaker 1: off huge cutting up huge trees, and somebody says, well,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. We have this beautiful suite of
Speaker 1: checks and balances. Were like, if you do want to
Speaker 1: go cut down trees, you can go to a beauticual
Speaker 1: force and cut down big trees. You can't do it here,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that that that's another big thing.
Speaker 1: It's not a it's not a threat in your ability
Speaker 1: to be a public land owner. Public land is owned
Speaker 1: by the collective, which means everybody gets a vote. And
Speaker 1: there's a few people that say, are these votes done
Speaker 1: in a in a an appropriate way and are they
Speaker 1: being you know, used and leaned upon in an effective way?
Speaker 1: And and that's the beautiful thing, right that. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that National Monument thing was a great example of that.
Speaker 1: Both sides got that's so wrong. That couldn't be It
Speaker 1: could be worse. One s I was like, well, we're
Speaker 1: protecting the land and the other side's like we're given
Speaker 1: access to the people. And wait, you're both kind of
Speaker 1: being assholes around this one. Because if we really wanted,
Speaker 1: like if we really broke it down, throw out the
Speaker 1: Antiquities Act, who cares it was past three? Write something new,
Speaker 1: Write something new that says protecting this ecosystem, the critical
Speaker 1: habitat um, the important artifacts that are there. Let's do
Speaker 1: that first, right, Okay, first, check that off. Got it.
Speaker 1: That's we can all agree we need those things. And
Speaker 1: even if you don't, if you don't agree that we
Speaker 1: need those things, I don't know what to do with you,
Speaker 1: Like go look at the fires or go like I
Speaker 1: just don't know what to do with you. Kindly leave.
Speaker 1: If you can't agree that we need habitat for animals
Speaker 1: and we need a healthy ecosystem, and if it's it's
Speaker 1: a historic artifact for human humankind or some some culture
Speaker 1: and we need to protect it, boy, we're gonna like
Speaker 1: you're just not going to be in this conversation. We
Speaker 1: need little sound design button with Will Ferrell. Same. Kindly leave,
Speaker 1: kindly leave. So let's say say like, let's let's say
Speaker 1: we're all still in the room when I say that
Speaker 1: to you. So, okay, good, we got that. What do
Speaker 1: we need to do to get to that? Okay, let's
Speaker 1: figure that out. That's not an easy one, but we'll
Speaker 1: figure that out next. We want we do not want
Speaker 1: to limit people's access to that area for any reasons
Speaker 1: other than the first check. Right, So we want roads cut,
Speaker 1: We want um places for people to go and view
Speaker 1: wildlife and and hike and hunt and uh perfect, great,
Speaker 1: that's second check. Like we keep inverting this ship all
Speaker 1: and mixing it all up and be like step one done,
Speaker 1: Step two done. Everybody happy, Great, go see you like,
Speaker 1: go out and run around. We don't care. But but
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't do like the most important thing
Speaker 1: and the second most important thing have to stay one
Speaker 1: and two because if you start flipping around, then they
Speaker 1: start to hurt each other. Right, it's like uranium mind check,
Speaker 1: ecosystem check. Yeah, they don't know. The second goes first,
Speaker 1: like is that uranium? Like, okay, do we have a
Speaker 1: healthy ecosystem? How do we define that? Like that's a
Speaker 1: really tough one. But then once that's done, then you
Speaker 1: can have your fucking ranium on all you want. I
Speaker 1: love Uranie's one of my favorite so one of my activities.
Speaker 1: I've been minding uranium since I was a kid. But
Speaker 1: it's like, there has to be a better way to
Speaker 1: set those checks and balances because we certainly I haven't
Speaker 1: strived to do that. We've strived to to be right.
Speaker 1: You know when one of the like the precedents that
Speaker 1: really explains what we're talking about here was back during
Speaker 1: the gold rush time, back before we had conflicting uh
Speaker 1: you know groups where it was miners against ranchers or
Speaker 1: farmers against loggers, there was a river system in California
Speaker 1: where gold mining was being done in such a blindly
Speaker 1: horrific way, a destructive way. Setent was filling up these
Speaker 1: rivers and coming down stream and destroying crop lands and
Speaker 1: along the way, making these huge levees that flooded these
Speaker 1: mining towns. So that burst and flood these mining towns.
Speaker 1: And that was the first time in our country's history
Speaker 1: where that I know of, I know it was a
Speaker 1: it was a kind of a landmark case in California
Speaker 1: where the government was tasked was saying, okay, well, if
Speaker 1: this group of people is looking at this landscape as
Speaker 1: a resource for trees or gold, and this group of
Speaker 1: people looking at this landscape as a resource for crops,
Speaker 1: and these people in the middle are just trying to
Speaker 1: live there, but they're caught in the crossfire, how do
Speaker 1: we manage with all constituents in mind. It's a challenging thing,
Speaker 1: right because you look at bears ears and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a homeland of people who were here
Speaker 1: long before us, who got short end of the stick.
Speaker 1: It's an ecosystem that's the Danes, wildlife, plants, and animals.
Speaker 1: It's a resource that private enterprise would love to mind
Speaker 1: and extract, and it's just a place the hike for others.
Speaker 1: And I think your point is brilliant because we've got
Speaker 1: to say, like, what is the most important thing here,
Speaker 1: and that is a functioning, healthy ecosystem that provides cleanary,
Speaker 1: clean water, and everything else a secondary or tertiary. And
Speaker 1: it's okay to have secondary tertiary things that are also
Speaker 1: important in that. I don't hate roads because I hate
Speaker 1: when people arguing like a wilderness is the only way. No,
Speaker 1: it's not the only way. Roads through through public playing areas,
Speaker 1: roads through wilderness. Boy, I'm fine with it. You can
Speaker 1: take your Segway on them. I love my Segway drove
Speaker 1: off a cliff um. But yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: I think the priority is where I find the most problem.
Speaker 1: And that's what I love. You know about the hunting thing, because,
Speaker 1: honest to God, ten years ago, if somebody had said
Speaker 1: you're gonna be in the hunting space, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: working with brands you know that identifies hunting brands. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be working with people and friends with people who
Speaker 1: are hunters. Grow having grown up hunting. My dad was
Speaker 1: on the board of California. Try to grew up in
Speaker 1: a sportsman's house. But there's something awesome about this space
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing because by default, you give a ship
Speaker 1: about animals, and you give a shit about the systems
Speaker 1: that support you know, you can't help it, you can't
Speaker 1: help it. Without those you're identifying, interest doesn't exist hunting
Speaker 1: or fishing. And it's kind of like being an ecologist
Speaker 1: with like a potential and little cherry on top, which
Speaker 1: could be your deer or your duck or your trout.
Speaker 1: And I love that and it it's it's awesome because
Speaker 1: it gives us common ground to work from where we
Speaker 1: can say you and I both want to kill deer,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, we need to
Speaker 1: focus on how to get to that place where we
Speaker 1: have dear to kill or dear to watch, because we
Speaker 1: both know we spent a lot of time in a
Speaker 1: tree or out in the woods watching animals and not
Speaker 1: ever fire narrow a bullet. Yeah, well, I think like
Speaker 1: the one of the one of the things I want
Speaker 1: to have a segment about this. It's called like what bothers?
Speaker 1: What's bothering me? Like maybe I have like a little
Speaker 1: like what's grinding my gear? Is really like that, But
Speaker 1: one of the things that bothers me is around what
Speaker 1: you just said. Right. So our value stem and hunting
Speaker 1: is is it's rhetorical in nature in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: but it's it's very valuable. Like it it helps the things,
Speaker 1: the animals that are involved in that value system. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's clear that the value hunting provides helps animals
Speaker 1: almost always in in the umbrella sense of a population.
Speaker 1: It may not help that single animal, I guess got
Speaker 1: shot and eaten, but it helps the greater whole. And
Speaker 1: I think that's you know, as a human, that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I'm into. Okay, well it might it might
Speaker 1: not help me today, but does it help us always?
Speaker 1: So that's good. So one of things that bothers me is,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this in a podcast previous with Bryan Callahan,
Speaker 1: is that like the outfitting industry, and I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, groups like I'll call him out by name,
Speaker 1: fuck it s C, I's Far Club International. I got
Speaker 1: problem with you guys. Okay, I think our value system
Speaker 1: is infallible. I believe that to be true, but I
Speaker 1: believe it's being hijacked by people that are just using
Speaker 1: it as an excuse to do what they want. And
Speaker 1: that bothers me. I think it's being hijacked by outfitters
Speaker 1: that are making money from people that are using it.
Speaker 1: And the users are the clients that are traveling across
Speaker 1: the world, are traveling across this country and using that
Speaker 1: value systems excuse to do things they ought not to
Speaker 1: be doing, or or using it as reasoning that they
Speaker 1: don't truly believe. And I, you know, I will say, honestly,
Speaker 1: I have thought some days, you know, before I was able,
Speaker 1: probably before I had a podcast, and this is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I have a podcast, is because I
Speaker 1: got so dejected by that and so pissed by that
Speaker 1: that I thought, you know, maybe I'm just gonna stop hunting,
Speaker 1: you know, And then pretty quickly I'm like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let it. That's crazy talk. This sake
Speaker 1: is delicious. But yeah, but but I think, like I've
Speaker 1: had those moments where it's like me, this is exhausting,
Speaker 1: Like here's here's something I know to be, you know,
Speaker 1: as infallible as it can be, as something can get
Speaker 1: that's this broad being used by people that don't believe
Speaker 1: in it and caring is exhausting. Yeah, like you pointed out,
Speaker 1: it's easy to be on one end of the spectrum.
Speaker 1: It's easy to look at the media of those people
Speaker 1: who are doing things they ought not to be doing
Speaker 1: and taking that as a wholesale representation of the of
Speaker 1: the greater population or the greater community. Yeah, go go
Speaker 1: to Yeah, I'm it's not my nature to call people out,
Speaker 1: but go to this far Clip International Convention. I've been
Speaker 1: there for the last five years and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of really good stuff happening there. I mean lots of
Speaker 1: really good lots of money going and conservation. I mean
Speaker 1: just just a lot of immense and wonderful things happening there.
Speaker 1: But there is also there's an example. There was a
Speaker 1: booth at across from the booth I was at last year,
Speaker 1: and that booth had a sign this is an out
Speaker 1: there I believe in South Africa, not the matters where
Speaker 1: they're coming from. And it was like one of those
Speaker 1: signs you might see out in front of bail bonds
Speaker 1: place or maybe like get your money today type of
Speaker 1: cash or paychecks. It was like, I just want everybody
Speaker 1: to just think about what this sign looks like. It
Speaker 1: was it had like a gray background, but it had
Speaker 1: florescent lights blinking all around the outside and on the
Speaker 1: inside they had written in fluorescent pink and yellow, ah,
Speaker 1: come for an elephant, fifteen thousand dollars get a free impaula.
Speaker 1: And I had to spend the whole week looking at
Speaker 1: that sign, and that sign got like burned into my
Speaker 1: retinas to the point where I was like, is this person, wait,
Speaker 1: is this person selling an animal? Like It's like first
Speaker 1: I thought maybe everybody got a Chevy impaula, which was
Speaker 1: what I thought how are you going to get those
Speaker 1: cars back to America? And you're thinking I would like
Speaker 1: to Chevy. I was like, I would maybe go an
Speaker 1: elephant hunt because that's almost like a deal because Chevy
Speaker 1: and Polos are worth more than fift k leather seats?
Speaker 1: How do I get it back to America? But then
Speaker 1: I was like, these people, I'm making an assumption here,
Speaker 1: but it's an educated one that the people that were
Speaker 1: running that booth. If they were pulled out of that
Speaker 1: scenario and somebody ran up to him, we're like, why
Speaker 1: do you do what you do? You shouldn't be killing
Speaker 1: those impolos and selling them like they're you know, cars,
Speaker 1: use cars. That person would be like, well, let me
Speaker 1: tell you about the value system of hunting, because now
Speaker 1: I don't have this sign right next to me. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you about the value system. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you why this allows her to be more of these animals.
Speaker 1: And that's where I'm like, boy, I can't get with that.
Speaker 1: I can't get with it. That's I'm sorry, but don't
Speaker 1: use don't use this wonderful thing that we've got to
Speaker 1: excuse your selling an ampollo like it's you know, a
Speaker 1: gift bag, just don't do it. And I think that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's a representation of those outliers. That's a
Speaker 1: representation of people who were not hunting with ant we're
Speaker 1: not inviting to Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, but you you'll see
Speaker 1: like all of these and I'm sure you've lost all that.
Speaker 1: I can't think of the exact names of the documentaries,
Speaker 1: but normally, as an anti hunting documentary on killing rhinos,
Speaker 1: some British dude goes to Sei and walks around like,
Speaker 1: hell and look at this hand and there's like just
Speaker 1: some you know, like yeah, yeah, Trophy, there's the perfect example.
Speaker 1: And they walk around there like this is something like
Speaker 1: Alien World where a bunch of people, um go up
Speaker 1: to a booth and say, oh, that's a giant animal.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll want to pay fifty, yeah, or ninety or
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then that British dude um in trophy.
Speaker 1: I think those it was a couple I believe, eventually
Speaker 1: said like, hey, we get now that we were over
Speaker 1: there and we did it, we get what hunting brings
Speaker 1: to the table. But but what they never did get,
Speaker 1: in my opinion from watching the film, is how you
Speaker 1: could go to a place like that and connect that
Speaker 1: with the value system on the ground in Africa or
Speaker 1: on the ground in America, like that that thing didn't
Speaker 1: represent the good totally. And I also think Africa's a
Speaker 1: slippery slope. You know, it's something that we get talked to,
Speaker 1: you know, their topics that arise with the modern huntsman.
Speaker 1: And I when people say Africa, I'm like, hey, um,
Speaker 1: I'll be in the other room me too, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's not something I'm familiar with. I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert in it. It's too it's complicated. That's why it's
Speaker 1: easy for to be called out totally. And I think
Speaker 1: the representative narrative in hunting in America in November is
Speaker 1: white tail honey, which is very different than shooting an elephant.
Speaker 1: And if people watched me in my backyard hunting my
Speaker 1: white tailed dough, which I was super fired up on
Speaker 1: because it's going to be great food, and I sat
Speaker 1: for days and days and days and picked right one
Speaker 1: and felt like that was a choice and an animal
Speaker 1: at harvest personally, regardless of what other people would say,
Speaker 1: I felt good about that. And that's what a lot
Speaker 1: of people are dealing with. People are putting themselves outside
Speaker 1: and making a conscious decision to harvest to particular animal
Speaker 1: for reasons that are probably pretty darn good, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's not I'm here's eight grand. It's not a
Speaker 1: let me play games with a relatively stable, developing country
Speaker 1: and in a continant and nothing about. It's a I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go in my backyard or to next day over,
Speaker 1: meet up with some guys who are probably even keeled
Speaker 1: and harvest an animal that there's an abundance of. And
Speaker 1: that's representative hunting in America November. But that's not what
Speaker 1: people in Portland, San Francisco, or people watching Trophy are scene.
Speaker 1: They're not being presented that purposefully because it's easy. But
Speaker 1: it's also real. It's not fake, it's not being made up.
Speaker 1: And so for me, it's like, yeah, here's here's these
Speaker 1: two very different and it spins right back to grizzly bears. Man,
Speaker 1: it spins right back to them, because like I said,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't uh I would shoot a grizzly bear.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I wouldn't, but I don't. As I
Speaker 1: sit in this chair field the need to do it
Speaker 1: um and if I met someone who truly believed that
Speaker 1: it was their duty as a hunter to take part
Speaker 1: in the system of conservation, whereas they went out and
Speaker 1: had a great experience that enrisk their lives and they
Speaker 1: killed a grizzly bear. And I'm with that all day long.
Speaker 1: But what I'm not with there's somebody who wants to
Speaker 1: wants it for other reasons that we could we listen
Speaker 1: all days. It's not no need to hammer on that.
Speaker 1: But I'm not with that. We're just not with it.
Speaker 1: And so I hope generationally we can start to clearly
Speaker 1: define what that is and when it's not. And I
Speaker 1: think that's I think if we do that, then, um,
Speaker 1: anybody that's an animal rights activist or an anti hunter
Speaker 1: will lose the ability to to change the rules based
Speaker 1: on that, because they certainly didn't. British Columbia, you know,
Speaker 1: they changed the rules. They tried, they changed the rules
Speaker 1: because they knew they were people out there that were
Speaker 1: shooting the bears just to shoot the bears. Which sucks. Boy,
Speaker 1: that sucks for the bears and for everyone. Um, but
Speaker 1: they weren't wrong. There were people out there shooting the
Speaker 1: bears just to shoot the bears. And it's like we
Speaker 1: talked about you know, if if the hunting community didn't,
Speaker 1: I think so aggressively published photos that were less than
Speaker 1: thoughtful on the internet, representing our community industry at large,
Speaker 1: we'd have a better time. And if the alternative was
Speaker 1: that thoughtful image of the dinner you're prepared or the
Speaker 1: experience that you were after, because we all know that
Speaker 1: hunting is not about killing something every day, because one
Speaker 1: that's not possible, not legal, and not realistic. You know,
Speaker 1: like the narrative that that the public would then be
Speaker 1: presented with is the one of drinking coffee, the drive,
Speaker 1: the flight, the adventure of the food, the camaraderie, the sunrise,
Speaker 1: the sunset, all the cool ship you see. You know,
Speaker 1: that's when we get out and hunt. You know. It's
Speaker 1: like I harvested my dough, and yes, it was an
Speaker 1: awesome experience sitting in my tree for all those days.
Speaker 1: But I brought some of that meat to my father
Speaker 1: in law's birthday and I was like, here's some meat
Speaker 1: that I worked my ass off for and I'm going
Speaker 1: to cook at the best I can, even I suck
Speaker 1: a cooking. My wife's gonna help me, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: serve this up. And I'm gonna be proud and know
Speaker 1: that that was a sustainable, awesome contribution to our dinner.
Speaker 1: I felt freaking good boy. And I think in general
Speaker 1: nobody disagrees with that. I think if you were pull
Speaker 1: the country, you get about a nine to five. And
Speaker 1: I wish that was the ship that ends up in
Speaker 1: the headlines where it was like like pseudo hippie hunter
Speaker 1: trails post harvest's dough and feeds it to his father
Speaker 1: in law, Like that should be the Actually, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think like they like we can all go back to
Speaker 1: like all these I think the hunting industry. What's funny
Speaker 1: that I've realized this is the last couple of controversies
Speaker 1: around air quotes, around you know, people shooting animals in
Speaker 1: different places, and the guy that shot the baboons or
Speaker 1: the young lady in Scotland that shot the feral goats.
Speaker 1: I think hunting is just over that, Like the hunting
Speaker 1: community is over over that conversation. And and hopefully it's
Speaker 1: because we know that's just it's not worth our time.
Speaker 1: When we see that stuff and we're like that's freaking crazy,
Speaker 1: like I want to have done that. We and when
Speaker 1: we disagree with it, and so it ends up being
Speaker 1: this like Ricky Gervais and the celebrity crew that's out
Speaker 1: there trying to find examples of bad hunters, and and
Speaker 1: they're I mean those people traffic in publicity. The people
Speaker 1: a lot of people that don't agree with hunting traffic
Speaker 1: in messaging, marketing and publicity and so and a lot
Speaker 1: of them are celebrities, are big followings. So when that
Speaker 1: when somebody like Ricky Gervais or who did he just
Speaker 1: person comes to mind, grabs a photo sometimes from like
Speaker 1: years ago and says, oh, this fits my agenda, puts
Speaker 1: it up there like what's in the media takes it on,
Speaker 1: which they always do. The guy the shot at Baboos
Speaker 1: is on Good Morning America. He wasn't but a story one.
Speaker 1: It's like, what's like, do we spend our time fighting
Speaker 1: this is I don't know the answer to this, it's
Speaker 1: fighting that bullshit or do we spend our time doing
Speaker 1: what you were talking about and just doing it right,
Speaker 1: talking about it consistently and ignoring Ricky Gervais and his crew.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think my experience hunting that dough and
Speaker 1: that narrative being communicated to my community will do more too.
Speaker 1: Two bring support and interest to the hunting space from
Speaker 1: non hunters. Then the the one bad story a here.
Speaker 1: If we all find our good story and pass it
Speaker 1: off to our community and remind the people who were
Speaker 1: connected with Hey, this is the most beautiful thing. I
Speaker 1: got to go, have this experience, share this thing with
Speaker 1: you have this, you know, food to put on the plate.
Speaker 1: If we can propagate that as our currency, we will
Speaker 1: outshine that little bit of noise that the far other
Speaker 1: side of the spectrum likes to just re you know position.
Speaker 1: I think they've already found themselves in an echo chamber
Speaker 1: in that way totally. I mean, at that point, it's
Speaker 1: like people that hate hunting see that and like this
Speaker 1: is confirmation that it's gnarly. But I think the rest
Speaker 1: of the middle ground of America, Okay, maybe he shouldn't
Speaker 1: have shut that giraffe. I can agree with that, But
Speaker 1: that's the all the deeper it goes. It doesn't go
Speaker 1: much deeper than the right um and even this conversation
Speaker 1: around being able to call out like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: there's I can see holistically, holistic, good and virtuous reasons
Speaker 1: to shoot that graffe. I'm getting. I'm with that. I
Speaker 1: can have that conversation. Um, but I would hope as
Speaker 1: time marches forward, just like just like what we were
Speaker 1: talking about with smoking while you're pregnant, that rich globe
Speaker 1: trotting hunters shooting things for what's on their head is
Speaker 1: something that we can treat like smoking while pregnant. Just
Speaker 1: be like, look, I know the money is important. I'm
Speaker 1: with you, I want and I know the concessions in
Speaker 1: Africa have done wonders for wildlife. I am with you,
Speaker 1: can can and yeah, there's plenty of evidence that you
Speaker 1: can spit off. You can spit off what in how
Speaker 1: many African analope antalope species were in Africa and what
Speaker 1: were the populations and do it now and you'd say, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. That seems to be working. So I'm with
Speaker 1: that conversation. I don't have any problem with that. But
Speaker 1: I think it's it's the I think we're already starting
Speaker 1: to as a honey community. Just move away from that
Speaker 1: a little bit. Because when um Blake Fisher goes to
Speaker 1: African and shoots his baboons, I had all my non
Speaker 1: hunting friends, all my people in my life that aren't
Speaker 1: a part of the industry calling me that day, what's
Speaker 1: about this? What you know about this? What do you
Speaker 1: know about this? What's going on with this? I think
Speaker 1: most of my hunting friends are like, I didn't even
Speaker 1: know that happened. So it used to be like when
Speaker 1: cease a lion would happen or something something like that
Speaker 1: would happen, that we would be immediately on it and
Speaker 1: defending it and defending it and defending it and saying
Speaker 1: all I was degraded it. Now it's kind of like heah,
Speaker 1: you go for it. Yeah, what have you gotta do? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: if you know, if we're looking at the hunting, the
Speaker 1: future of hunting, we can be getting more people outside
Speaker 1: because that breeds stewardship, that breeds people who care, and
Speaker 1: that breeds just more voices from diverse backgrounds that can
Speaker 1: add to the broader effort to protect our wild spaces,
Speaker 1: wildlife in public lands. And the end of the day,
Speaker 1: that Good Morning America story is not getting new hunters
Speaker 1: in the door listening to this podcast or walking over
Speaker 1: there to said to go to buy a new vest.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, what's getting people outside
Speaker 1: is saying, hey, look, we're normal people trying our best,
Speaker 1: working hard, trying to raise a family. We enjoy hiking.
Speaker 1: We probably bike or snowboard. I surf. I also hunt.
Speaker 1: I eat plants, ate some meat too. That meat that
Speaker 1: I eat I like to get myself. It's generally a dough.
Speaker 1: It's generally a buck. It's generally an elk that's three out,
Speaker 1: like you saw like a normal person. Right, Does that
Speaker 1: make hunting normal if you're doing it totally? And then
Speaker 1: they're like sweet? So I can just take a hunter's
Speaker 1: d course. I can go buy an entry point bow
Speaker 1: or rifle or shotgun, get a friend going to public land,
Speaker 1: give it a shot. Maybe get a duck, Maybe get
Speaker 1: a deer, not a big deal. Doesn't need to be
Speaker 1: a bood and Crockett. It can be a deer, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think the industry and the community at large
Speaker 1: needs to remind people that, like, that's what's up. And
Speaker 1: it's about taking your kid out to do that. It's
Speaker 1: about taking your friends out to do that. It's about
Speaker 1: saying I'm not like I have a job. I don't
Speaker 1: get paid to hunt. Yes, I like hunting, but it's
Speaker 1: like an escape, it's a release, it's an activity. I
Speaker 1: also USA have a vegetable garden. I also used to surf.
Speaker 1: I do all these other things. I do the dishes
Speaker 1: you know I do, and I enjoy listen your podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm doing it. Don't tell my wife, you'll expect me
Speaker 1: to do. But you know what I'm saying, It's not
Speaker 1: this like we're not flying around on jets, smoking drafts
Speaker 1: with like high powered rifles and like putting the trophies
Speaker 1: in our huge halls like you said. I mean that
Speaker 1: that when that when that can be identified as an outlier,
Speaker 1: which I believe it is. I mean the numbers say
Speaker 1: it is. You know, how many people hunt deer, white
Speaker 1: tailed deer in America versus how many people go to Africa.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like ten thousand millions, ten thousand, ten millions,
Speaker 1: right number. Um, So again, like if somebody's seeming to me,
Speaker 1: like you know, so I was thinking about so, well
Speaker 1: with ten thousand and ten million, that does that that
Speaker 1: work for you? Right? There's ten thousand people and ten
Speaker 1: million people. Can we have that conversation now like yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that guy shouldn't have done that, but yeah, so
Speaker 1: I think that ends up being I've had that just
Speaker 1: just a recent kind of reality, Like I don't really
Speaker 1: need to talk to anybody about that got killing the monkeys,
Speaker 1: because he'll get land based and he'll get what was
Speaker 1: coming to him for something he probably shouldn't have done.
Speaker 1: And that's just noise. Life will go on and the
Speaker 1: noise will go and he'll probably his life will go
Speaker 1: on too, and he'll have learned a lesson to not
Speaker 1: do that, you know. And it's like you eat you
Speaker 1: eat plants with your meat, right generally, I really do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like, you have to remind people that
Speaker 1: we're not just like cutting a backstread out. He's just
Speaker 1: you go on Instagram, you just see like meat. There's
Speaker 1: never any other gonna be like just me like, but
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I'm excited to look at you know,
Speaker 1: Steve bron Nell's cookbook because those recipes I assume have
Speaker 1: plants as components in them, maybe small fun factory pages asparagus.
Speaker 1: It exists. Increasing I love it. Well, good man, we've
Speaker 1: been talking for how long almost three hours as a
Speaker 1: full roguan podcast. That's good man, it's fun. I um,
Speaker 1: That's why I appreciate. I just appreciate a good conversation.
Speaker 1: That's why I like podcasting because it's good, too good
Speaker 1: to rip it up. Well, that's awesome, because I think
Speaker 1: while we talked for a while and we cover some topics,
Speaker 1: I think what they all boil down to is this
Speaker 1: idea that wildlife management is complicated, policy is imperfect. People
Speaker 1: are trying their hardest, we should assume, and I think
Speaker 1: that that's something that you'll find in a lot of people.
Speaker 1: They're really putting their best foot forward most days. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, most people aren't freaking crazy.
Speaker 1: Most people are just trying to get after it and
Speaker 1: do the best they can. And and yeah, and then
Speaker 1: don't dig in too hard. If you have a position,
Speaker 1: dig in if you think it's right. I'm all for that.
Speaker 1: I do that all the time. Don't take in too far.
Speaker 1: To be a little bit flexible and have an understanding
Speaker 1: that of what the other person you're talking to or
Speaker 1: you're disagreeing with, wants to do, and if you want
Speaker 1: to both do the same thing, then be a little
Speaker 1: bit more flexible. Even then. I think that's something that's
Speaker 1: helped me and hopefully that can help other people, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like grizzly bears or any
Speaker 1: hot topics around wildlife management just just don't dig in
Speaker 1: too damn far, and that you can't get yourself out
Speaker 1: and there's more to know always um, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: know we will see. I mean, I think I think
Speaker 1: we might have to have you write a grizzly bear
Speaker 1: piece for the Mediator dot com. Well after reading this
Speaker 1: court decision for five times, been writing a bunch already. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's fun to be a part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: I hope people out there who are listening, you know,
Speaker 1: and enjoy our perspective. And you know, while we may
Speaker 1: seem like we can't land on an answer, I think
Speaker 1: that's just us trying to give it our best go.
Speaker 1: You know, it's complicated, Yeah, I mean fecundities, but I
Speaker 1: always say no, I mean, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's just a conversation that
Speaker 1: this podcast is not is not designed to be the answer.
Speaker 1: It's not because it will never be. It's designed to
Speaker 1: be the conversation. And so hopefully you guys listening come
Speaker 1: with that. And if if Charles or I ever in
Speaker 1: the public eye or on this podcast or any future media,
Speaker 1: um say anything that's typic retal to what we said today,
Speaker 1: and we don't try to strive to be educated and
Speaker 1: be centric in our thinking and strife healthy ecosystems first,
Speaker 1: then let us know absolutely because because it's easy to talk,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot harder to walk. So hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: do that and continue to Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: It's second third one we've done. You've been on This
Speaker 1: would be like thirty, this will be in the mid thirties.
Speaker 1: You've been on roughly, like, I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. The percentage in my head roughly ten
Speaker 1: of my podcast. You're like, yes, but it's I really
Speaker 1: enjoy these conversations and I hope you have to do
Speaker 1: more of them. And like I said, it's something that
Speaker 1: I makes my day better because it's it's better than
Speaker 1: just washing TV. You're running errands or doing anything. Well,
Speaker 1: you can keep calling him, just don't FaceTime yet. Midnight
Speaker 1: every like every night I'm like, Charles, guess what I
Speaker 1: found the Andy go bud. But also to close it out,
Speaker 1: you did get a sticker there. You're the first one ever.
Speaker 1: I'll be getting a hammerd pretty hard by people around
Speaker 1: like not having any like what do they call that? Paraphernalia. No,
Speaker 1: it's not it swag. It's not paraphernalia. That's illegal. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there's a sticker. You're the first person ever
Speaker 1: to receive the Hunting Collective podcast sticker. It's pretty slick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's made of biodegradable plastics. Um. But we also have
Speaker 1: some other stuff coming out. So what do you have? Oh,
Speaker 1: we got hats, you know, I get that next time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something to look forward to, something look forward to. No,
Speaker 1: I have. This is the investment I'm willing to get
Speaker 1: at this point. This is a sticker. Okay, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: thanks brother, awesome, Thanks so much. That's it. That's all.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Mr Charles Post for joining me for the
Speaker 1: longest podcast and the history of the Hunting Collective that
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to February. But this is
Speaker 1: a great one. Um. I'm just just proud to know
Speaker 1: to know Charles and proud to have access to his
Speaker 1: knowledge and and as uh folks who are relatively the
Speaker 1: same age like it. It would be great too to
Speaker 1: go through this journey of hunting and life, you know,
Speaker 1: with Charles nearby to hang out with us. So thank you, Charles.
Speaker 1: Hopefully everybody enjoyed those three hours. What else have we got?
Speaker 1: We got We have the mediator dot com as always,
Speaker 1: that's the place to go if you want to find
Speaker 1: honey collective stuff, all the good stuff, all the podcasts,
Speaker 1: all the things articles. Anything I do is going to
Speaker 1: live there. So go there and see what's up. And
Speaker 1: if you could do me a huge favor and sign
Speaker 1: up for the newsletter. It's so on every page it
Speaker 1: says a little thing up in the right corner that
Speaker 1: says sign up for the news letter. If you go
Speaker 1: do that and sign up, you're gonna get every hunting
Speaker 1: collected podcast, every article UM by folks like Steve Ronella,
Speaker 1: April Fokey, Mark Kenyan and so much more. And you'll
Speaker 1: be able to track our company, Media Incorporated as it grows.
Speaker 1: And I do want to say before we go, you've
Speaker 1: been listening for a while now, so just hang with me.
Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone for the encouragement around Media or Incorporated. UM.
Speaker 1: It's been a while now since we announced the company,
Speaker 1: and it has been really awesome to see the support
Speaker 1: for what I'm trying to do, even though if what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do is a bit of a mystery
Speaker 1: on a tangible level. It's it just enforces to me
Speaker 1: that being in the hunting community and being part of
Speaker 1: this thing is was the right thing for my career,
Speaker 1: my life, and for my family, for my friends to
Speaker 1: all be in some way a part of this granted conversation.
Speaker 1: So thank you very much. I very much appreciate that,
Speaker 1: and we're going to continue to work hard to better
Speaker 1: this conversation. And so that is it for Honty Collective
Speaker 1: this week. Join us next Tuesday morning forget another awesome
Speaker 1: guest as we round out and look forward to all right,
Speaker 1: bye bye,