Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening hunt, don't
Speaker 1: eat podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first, like
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to
Speaker 1: technical outerwear for every hunt first like go farther, stay longer. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is Steve. This sounds weird is because I'm using
Speaker 1: the voice memo function on my phone and fills passionate
Speaker 1: into the show. It's a very important message I have
Speaker 1: for you. Unmay three, We're doing a live show in Billings,
Speaker 1: Montana at the Alberta Bear Theater. So Alberta like you
Speaker 1: know Canada and bear not like a bear that you'd
Speaker 1: go hunting for it, but be a I r Berta
Speaker 1: Bear Theater. Get tickets through them live show May three.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be there, uh j honest, But tell Us
Speaker 1: will be there old Cow for the entire show. The
Speaker 1: flip Flop flesher seth Morris will be fleshing beaver and
Speaker 1: raccoon hides off on I believe what's called stage left
Speaker 1: in a beautiful spotlight Chester. The Divester will be there
Speaker 1: and everyone that buys a ticket gets a signed copy
Speaker 1: of my new book, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World.
Speaker 1: Get your tickets now. Go to Alberta Bear Theater website.
Speaker 1: May three billings, Montana. Can't wait to see you guys.
Speaker 1: Love y'all. All right, everybody, Uh, here's the deal. Normally,
Speaker 1: the way the show works as we do, Um, like
Speaker 1: what kind of intro? I don't know if anybody out
Speaker 1: there actually listens that carefully enough to notice this, but
Speaker 1: you guys probably don't even realize this they're in here.
Speaker 1: I think we do. We'll do like a light intro
Speaker 1: of a gas right, like a light intro, a little banter.
Speaker 1: Are you explaining to us how this works? And listeners,
Speaker 1: I think we got it, but okay, tell me then
Speaker 1: what happens? Do light intro? Light intro? Then we introduce everybody,
Speaker 1: if you remember, and then what happens? And then we
Speaker 1: go into talking about ship that either people wrote in
Speaker 1: about or stuff that we did that week, or a
Speaker 1: couple of rabbit holes maybe yeh, go on a few tangents,
Speaker 1: and then we sometimes argue about ship, and then we
Speaker 1: go to the guests and talk about that that's been
Speaker 1: paying attention. We're gonna change things up because we're gonna
Speaker 1: do a light I'm gonna do a couple of talking points,
Speaker 1: then the light intro. Cool Um. This is going to
Speaker 1: further test people's ability to pay attention because just because
Speaker 1: of a weird issue, I don't want to get into
Speaker 1: where we we recorded a show that we're gonna release
Speaker 1: after this show. It's It's it's features are beloved, your
Speaker 1: honest to tell us who's sitting here right now? Uh?
Speaker 1: And I don't want to miss it. In it, I
Speaker 1: allude to a fleet at the end, I allude to
Speaker 1: a flee story that I wanted to tell but ran
Speaker 1: out of time. So now people are going to in
Speaker 1: the future hear me allude to a flee story that
Speaker 1: I want to tell, but I have already told it.
Speaker 1: Can I can? I can? I tee it up for you?
Speaker 1: So Steve had me come over and put a rack
Speaker 1: on his canam the other day. Well I would I
Speaker 1: wouldn't put it that way. Well, we we worked out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just want to run in the project. Though
Speaker 1: I was I was happy that I was happy to
Speaker 1: do it. But I show up, Steve comes out of
Speaker 1: his garage and he's hold on you can't just say
Speaker 1: I just he has me to come over to put
Speaker 1: a rock installing installing a cargo rack. Chester was Jester
Speaker 1: came over to help me install a cargo right, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to give it my full attention because
Speaker 1: of my problem. Yeah, so I show up, you know,
Speaker 1: and Steve kind of comes out of the garage and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh man, guys. He's kind of frantically moving
Speaker 1: around a little bit. He's like, I'm in deep trouble
Speaker 1: right now, guys, I'm in big trouble. Just hold on,
Speaker 1: Just do your thing. And this is why I had
Speaker 1: brought a kyo at home at night. And my dog
Speaker 1: hates kyle and hates kyote fur skin, hates kyles, won't
Speaker 1: go near it. If you come in with a kyote hide,
Speaker 1: even a pelt, she goes the other end of the house.
Speaker 1: She can tell she loves dogs, but she knows that
Speaker 1: that dog never met a dog she didn't like. But
Speaker 1: she can smell something on that that like that son
Speaker 1: of a bitch is not a right. She just knows.
Speaker 1: So I laid on the floor of the garage and think,
Speaker 1: you well, she'll never go into that. Then I'm down
Speaker 1: here in the studio and I'm looking at my text
Speaker 1: messages in my wife and our babysit are having this
Speaker 1: like ongoing thing about holy shit, the fleas on the dog.
Speaker 1: And they're like, is it from the dog park? How
Speaker 1: could it be? They're like they're all over I mean,
Speaker 1: her head's crawling and fleas, And I'm thinking, no one
Speaker 1: knows about the thing in the garage except me. I
Speaker 1: gotta be like, I think I might have a little
Speaker 1: something to add here. You wouldn't have believed you should
Speaker 1: have had just Chester roll over there and grabbed that
Speaker 1: coyote and just hide it. Oh and it just played dumb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really should. It's like she went, you know, like
Speaker 1: when something's body tamp gets to like there's a point
Speaker 1: at which fleas they're on a sink and ship they're
Speaker 1: on a sink and ship. It's like she laid down
Speaker 1: and spooned with that thing. There's no way to explain
Speaker 1: the number of fleas on that dog. I've heard um
Speaker 1: like trappers that have a have something that's got fleas
Speaker 1: will put like a warm rabbit next it, so they
Speaker 1: like a like a cold that something they trapped that's cold,
Speaker 1: it's got fleas, they'll put a warm rabbit next to it,
Speaker 1: so all the fleas get on there. Who told you that?
Speaker 1: I don't know where I heard it and then put it?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm saying I heard it, and then
Speaker 1: you burn the mouse the on it didn't make a
Speaker 1: warm rabbit? Is that like forty five seconds on medium high?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I look, I'm just saying it's a
Speaker 1: funny story. I hear all kinds of stuff. I don't talk.
Speaker 1: You had a warm dog next to a cold Oh? Really? Yeah,
Speaker 1: give me an example of something funny. You heard that,
Speaker 1: then you decided not to talk about something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want another good, real quick flee story. Yeah, but okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, because I'm gonna finish my fleet story up.
Speaker 1: But go ahead, holdout. Fitter I worked for. He used
Speaker 1: to collect rabbits for a mink farm in Colorado. That's
Speaker 1: how I put himself through college, partially anyway. And he
Speaker 1: would load up the trunk of his car with jack
Speaker 1: rabbits every night, and his roommate was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: can I borrow his car? He used he did this
Speaker 1: business in a car with a trunk. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: fields at night and and just thump rabbits with with
Speaker 1: his front bumper. You know, maink farmer wasn't real particular
Speaker 1: about how the meat showed up field care um, and
Speaker 1: so he didn't get a chance to drop the rabbits
Speaker 1: off to the mink farm. Lets his buddy take his vehicle,
Speaker 1: and his buddy and his date seemed to really hit
Speaker 1: it off, and they were using the backseat up until
Speaker 1: point where they neither one of them could concentrate due
Speaker 1: to the itching involved. And apparently these two were just coated.
Speaker 1: Had to tail in uh in fleece. That was me
Speaker 1: this day I'm talking about. I went to the gym.
Speaker 1: So I got in the morning and took the kyle
Speaker 1: out of my truck and I almost a bear hugged
Speaker 1: that some bitch without thinking about it. I'm at the
Speaker 1: gym just itching like blue blazes. I'm sitting here itching
Speaker 1: like blue blazes and not like man, I gotta freeze
Speaker 1: these clothes, which I did. I gotta go home and
Speaker 1: put these clothes in the freezer and take a shower.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was like I wasn't even think
Speaker 1: about the damn dog. I'm still got, I got, I'm
Speaker 1: still itchy. Is that I got a question. Is that
Speaker 1: the coyote that's sitting by my desk right now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I froze it, alright, I froze the hide. Garrett's
Speaker 1: using it as a wall he wants, he's keeping it
Speaker 1: as a wall hanger, Dude, that I'm surprised that you
Speaker 1: didn't get in trouble. You probably did. Actually, No, the
Speaker 1: smell of that thing was you know, they don't they know.
Speaker 1: I'm not even I don't even care to hear about
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. That was. Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a really fecund odor. Uh oh a another pre
Speaker 1: talking I was getting checked by a game warden in
Speaker 1: Arizona a couple of weeks ago, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: after you checked my license and realized that I was cool,
Speaker 1: he goes. He says, oh, you were talking on the
Speaker 1: podcast and why we do grip and grin's with confiscated material,
Speaker 1: He goes. It's not like a grip and grin he
Speaker 1: said later in court, it's to demonstrate the magnetude. It's
Speaker 1: to later in court for a jury. It's just to
Speaker 1: like demonstrate the magnitude of something. Because you can tell
Speaker 1: people all day long about X pounds of whatever, And
Speaker 1: it's kind of in one year and out the other.
Speaker 1: But when you're like out, you the same thing with
Speaker 1: when they lay all the narcotics out. It's just so
Speaker 1: people can be like, my goodness, and you weren't like
Speaker 1: and so it's not because you guys are a little
Speaker 1: bit proud that you guys, he said. It's it's just
Speaker 1: a it's just a thing to present in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: Just too, he said, saynything with drugs, like you tell
Speaker 1: people like key lows or whatever, and then they see it,
Speaker 1: they're like, holy cow, look at all that stuff. So
Speaker 1: that's why he does that. Uh Oh. Another funny thing
Speaker 1: is I on Sunday was ice fishing and stood up
Speaker 1: my phone iPhone twelve right down the ice hole of
Speaker 1: water and we had a flasher going and you could
Speaker 1: watch that phone not if you call his phone a
Speaker 1: perch pick. So yeah, I wouldn't stood over the whole yesterday.
Speaker 1: And it was like, it's so like Chester was off
Speaker 1: doing something twenty roughly thirty ft away, and I'd like
Speaker 1: to think Chester that my phone that I'm as close
Speaker 1: to you as I and my phone, but it's so
Speaker 1: far away. So you guys were fishing yesterday, which was
Speaker 1: a Monday, kind of took picture. We were it was
Speaker 1: Sunday after this Monday, and Monday was worse than Sunday. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was worse than fishing. I was sitting
Speaker 1: friend the computer all day about that, it's day day
Speaker 1: of fishing is better than a bad day work. Uh.
Speaker 1: That was me saying I have a pretty good quote
Speaker 1: on that. Actually, we're not ready for you yet. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get into you hardcore in a minute here. Uh oh,
Speaker 1: another thing people need to start. I want people need
Speaker 1: to start. Uh go go on Clay Nucombe so like
Speaker 1: Newcomb Clay underscore NUKEM and start pressuring Clay for Beargreas podcast.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to get Clay to do a deep
Speaker 1: dive on the Wetzel brothers. Lou Wetzel and the Wetzel brothers.
Speaker 1: They won't do it. Start to piss me off. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us why? What's interesting about the Wetzel brothers
Speaker 1: very controversial frontier figures um and very controversial frontier figures
Speaker 1: from the Indian Wars along the Ohio River. Why don't
Speaker 1: you just do something on them? Because the Clay should
Speaker 1: do something to them. If you're so interesting. I used
Speaker 1: to call him the death Wind. There bringing it up,
Speaker 1: and we're all interested to death Wind. There were sociopaths, Um,
Speaker 1: you could like they were psychopathic killers who were sort
Speaker 1: of tangled up in the Indian Wars. They haven't made
Speaker 1: a movie about those guys. Fascinating, blood thirsty little bastards. Um.
Speaker 1: He should really do a dive on the Wessels. But
Speaker 1: he's like, he likes to do things that have redemption,
Speaker 1: and there's no redemption. With lou Wessel it sounds like
Speaker 1: a Tarantino movie. Yeah, I mean his family was like
Speaker 1: his family was mostly killed off by the tribes. He
Speaker 1: didn't like to do vengeance through the military. They just
Speaker 1: like to go with their go their own, go with
Speaker 1: their own. They would cross the Ohio and just go on.
Speaker 1: He's like murderous trips. Fascinating dudes, Horrible people, but fascinating
Speaker 1: And and he won't do it because there's no redemption.
Speaker 1: So you could just put a comment on everything that
Speaker 1: Clay posts, just start writing the death Wind. Last quick
Speaker 1: note before we get to our guests is if anyone
Speaker 1: knows if someone could write in there's gotta be like
Speaker 1: a like a ten twenty two experts out there? Who
Speaker 1: does souped up ten twenty two? Mm hmm, Well then
Speaker 1: you guys cover all the buy afflon and shoot stuff
Speaker 1: and all that. I mean, no, but but but I
Speaker 1: bought my boy a Ruger ten twenty two for his birthday.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like it because it's not a tack driver.
Speaker 1: I an't got to do a lot, like a lot
Speaker 1: of money making those things. And they spent a lot
Speaker 1: of money. Yeah, the Olympic ten twenty target, right, A
Speaker 1: lot of guys use it for dialing in big game
Speaker 1: rifles too. But you know, so, why is it a
Speaker 1: ten twenty two target. It's not just a target, it's
Speaker 1: it's the target that they use for like competition twenty two.
Speaker 1: It's not ten twenty two. You just said, yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm trying to find someone who get a bunch
Speaker 1: of Amma all as many manufacturers you can dig up,
Speaker 1: get that target and little Jimmy and try to solve
Speaker 1: the problem that way. I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: tweak and that goes on with those. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: curious about, because it's got like I'm just curious, like
Speaker 1: what people do the competition you do yourself a CZ
Speaker 1: The only you need to do is tume and re
Speaker 1: barrel them and what you're saying. But as far as
Speaker 1: the the ammunition to like, we had one of the
Speaker 1: like the top tier twenty two manufacturers up in Kallus
Speaker 1: Bell I'm not sure if they're still there. Um, but
Speaker 1: even even those rounds like competitive shooters, we'll go through
Speaker 1: and look for flaws and deformities and and then go
Speaker 1: with like the most uniform batches and and set them
Speaker 1: aside and batches and yeah, there's a big, big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Barbara was running I think, but pretty much just had
Speaker 1: a bull barrel? What else you had done with it? Alright, Brent,
Speaker 1: you're ready, I'm ready. Okay, Brent West is here from
Speaker 1: High Peaks Alliance. Tell us what High Peace Alliances and
Speaker 1: Karrent thinks you might be the first Native maner. What
Speaker 1: do you guys call each other maners? Not a few
Speaker 1: of us montane each other by name Mainers. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: the actual thing, ye mainers. Huh. Okay, High Peaks Alliance, Yeah.
Speaker 1: High High Peaks Alliance is a conservation and recreational nonprofit
Speaker 1: in Franklin County, Maine. So our major goals are to
Speaker 1: conserve land and access for our communities, and we do
Speaker 1: that through a number of different projects, whether it's trail
Speaker 1: projects or land conservation projects. UM. But the real thread
Speaker 1: is that everyone who grew up here, lives here, visits here,
Speaker 1: have a lot of things in common. We all have
Speaker 1: a woodpile, a garden out back, a little buck meat
Speaker 1: in the freezer. All these things kind of tie us
Speaker 1: together as people who love to live in rural Maine
Speaker 1: and visit rural Maine. It's not enough hassle up there,
Speaker 1: and it's a really great place to live because you
Speaker 1: just have this freedom to rome. You want to keep
Speaker 1: it that way? Yeah, absolutely, tell us what's in that
Speaker 1: bag right there? I brought you some new Portland wood fired,
Speaker 1: hand tapped. I used an old hand drill, buckets, spiles,
Speaker 1: maple sugar, not syrup, mind you. Well, so this got
Speaker 1: me in some trouble at the airport. UM had a
Speaker 1: big bag of brown cocaine. I got pulled out a
Speaker 1: line and the lady tested it and sniffed it. No,
Speaker 1: but she was She did stick her pinky out a
Speaker 1: little bit. She didn't do like in the movies where
Speaker 1: she rubbed it into her lip. It turned blue. I
Speaker 1: imagine in class, like when you're training for that job,
Speaker 1: they're like, if you come across powder, don't sniff it. Well,
Speaker 1: I was thinking away, how how we could give you
Speaker 1: something a piece of maine here that kind of in
Speaker 1: line with um your values and cal actually has had
Speaker 1: some of this already, but this is the first time
Speaker 1: I've ever uh came into physical contact. I think, with
Speaker 1: plenty of the syrup, which is maple syrup. But tell
Speaker 1: me how you got it down, Like how do you
Speaker 1: get down to crystal form and real paint and the
Speaker 1: ass Well what I what I do is you make
Speaker 1: an abundance of this. So like my father boils a
Speaker 1: lot of it, I tap a lot of the trees.
Speaker 1: We kind of do that together. He has an old
Speaker 1: um oil tank cut in half that we put a
Speaker 1: pan on top, and we burned wood under it to
Speaker 1: boil it off. So it takes about forty two gallons
Speaker 1: of sap to make one gallon of syrup. One gallon
Speaker 1: of syrup will probably reduce again by or so when
Speaker 1: you boil it to I forget the temperature, but it's
Speaker 1: like threefty two degrees or something like that that you
Speaker 1: have to boil the syrup to and then starts stirring
Speaker 1: the crap out of it, and it just starts crystallizing
Speaker 1: and then most of it is fine. But you can
Speaker 1: run it through a few food processor to break up
Speaker 1: the big pieces. But you you could put that in
Speaker 1: water and make it back to syrup if you got
Speaker 1: the right amount. But ye, snorting some right now off
Speaker 1: a key. My. We pretty much only use maple sugar
Speaker 1: now for we don't really buy any sugar anymore. Do
Speaker 1: you guys call it? It's really good. You guys call
Speaker 1: it a up in Maine too, like your little operations. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people do maple syrup right now.
Speaker 1: Like literally, my father sent me a picture he's boiling today. Um. So,
Speaker 1: what what you want is sugar. Maples are the best,
Speaker 1: but pretty much any maple species will work. Um. And
Speaker 1: you want freezing at night and about high thirties low
Speaker 1: forties during the day. And what that happens is the
Speaker 1: ends of the branches will freeze and when they thought
Speaker 1: during the day, they create a vacuum and that's what
Speaker 1: makes the saffron. That's what's going on in there. Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is tap. I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew it ram, but I didn't know it was
Speaker 1: related to that. SE's probably do that because he's trained
Speaker 1: up in forestry. My family's got a little sugar bush
Speaker 1: back home, cousin Jake. So yeah, Yanni's ordered some of
Speaker 1: this era. But it's pretty fascinating, that whole whole scene.
Speaker 1: It's fun. Guys nowadays do it very technically. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's reverse osmosis oil fired. We do it pretty
Speaker 1: old school. So that what we got here is we
Speaker 1: got a court size ziplock that's good, probably full, and
Speaker 1: that's the result of what volume of sap. I'm unshare
Speaker 1: had a huge, like two gallon bag that I just
Speaker 1: scooped that out and through it to my carry on,
Speaker 1: So that I mean, they say it really doesn't reduce
Speaker 1: that much from liquid because it's already very viscous as syrup,
Speaker 1: so you're really not taking that much more water out
Speaker 1: of it. Um, so you could take a quart of
Speaker 1: maple syrup and maybe get you know of that in
Speaker 1: volume and sugar. Do you bake with it? I don't
Speaker 1: do much baking. My wife loves to use it, but
Speaker 1: you're married, Um sick going on six years. All right,
Speaker 1: it's going really good. Now, she's actually I got one. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think we all need to get get strapped down
Speaker 1: as good American men. She actually is. Well, if you
Speaker 1: are into population dynamics, we're going towards a pretty uh
Speaker 1: crazy cliff of not many young people and a whole
Speaker 1: lot of old people like main for instance, will have
Speaker 1: from there will be increase in our population of plus
Speaker 1: anywhere from an eight to twelve decrease in all of
Speaker 1: the age groups. Short term net sounds scary. Long term
Speaker 1: I like it, yeah, I mean it might be difficult.
Speaker 1: I'm just in a global sense, like globally, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anyone out there thinking that globally we need
Speaker 1: a higher human population. I don't know. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people think, in conservation and land and natural
Speaker 1: resources that human are the scourge of the earth. I
Speaker 1: think that's a poor way to look at people. I
Speaker 1: think I did say that. Well, I think have you
Speaker 1: heard anyone on the global level. Have you heard do
Speaker 1: you know of any global thinker or like on the
Speaker 1: global level someone saying what this earth needs is more
Speaker 1: billions of people? Anyone? Jordan Peterson talks about that dynamic
Speaker 1: of that more people isn't a bad thing. Does he
Speaker 1: hunt and fish a lot? He doesn't look like, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's the that's the biggest roblin. When I look
Speaker 1: at Jordan Pearson, I don't see I'm not like there's
Speaker 1: a there's a hard hitting outdoorsman. No. I think he's
Speaker 1: a you know, questioning change and stuff like that too,
Speaker 1: So now he's a thinker. Um, I'm coming at this
Speaker 1: from a hunting and fishing perspective kind of thing. Just
Speaker 1: global population. Listen, man, you guys are starting to make
Speaker 1: you act like I'm saying something crazy. I don't think
Speaker 1: that says what we really need is nine billion human
Speaker 1: global citizens. It just like no one is saying this
Speaker 1: if you relate it to the amount of piles of
Speaker 1: human feces at a trailhead, like the relationship to the
Speaker 1: population to the relationship of human piles of feces at
Speaker 1: a popular trailhead. Yeah, I mean less people is just
Speaker 1: from a poop perspective. Well, that's a conund vest. When
Speaker 1: you're losing more access by default, you're going to get
Speaker 1: more of those piles at your public access points. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. So if I don't. I don't want to
Speaker 1: dwell in this bonus case. Like if I if someone
Speaker 1: said to you, you can, you can. You're you're not
Speaker 1: causing any pain and suffering. But someone said to you,
Speaker 1: you can choose that in a decade the earth. What
Speaker 1: are you right now? Seven billion, seven something billion? Okay,
Speaker 1: someone says you you can choose there's no you're not
Speaker 1: making pain and suffering. You can choose it. In a decade,
Speaker 1: there's six billion global citizens, or there's eight billion global citizens.
Speaker 1: Up to you, no pain and suffering. But what do
Speaker 1: you choose? What would you choose? I I think I
Speaker 1: get your point. The point I'm trying to look at
Speaker 1: So you have a number of kids too, right, three
Speaker 1: of them? Three of them. So in the last twenty
Speaker 1: so years, though, we've had a big decline in families
Speaker 1: having four kids, three kids and to deal with well.
Speaker 1: But it's also you know, all these guys are getting
Speaker 1: married later and they're having kids later, and that also
Speaker 1: affects you know, more people getting into the outdoors liking
Speaker 1: these things. So it's just, uh, the original point I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make is you shouldn't look at people as
Speaker 1: necessarily the problem because there's a lot of good that
Speaker 1: comes with people having kids, having families. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: having those relationships in your community. You know, I think
Speaker 1: those things lead to better outcomes for the land in general. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're allring new guy who has three kids. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: part of the problem. And it's a new guy who
Speaker 1: I think the dudes should be married. Yeah, exactly, because
Speaker 1: I think it allows them to focus on a was
Speaker 1: in the focus on productivity, well house chores. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Before I was married, I focus a lot of time.
Speaker 1: I'm just drinking alcohol. That was my focus and shooting pool. Really,
Speaker 1: Oh dude. When I was a graduate school man, we'd
Speaker 1: sometimes finish up and if like whatever, I got good
Speaker 1: at it, we'd sometimes go down there to get we'd
Speaker 1: like finish up doing something or another and go down
Speaker 1: like at noon or one down to the Dinosaur Cafe
Speaker 1: to get like a poll boy. Then the the next thing,
Speaker 1: you he was last call. But man ship, it's like
Speaker 1: we just shot poop for twelve hours. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that's the attraction of going so long. You know, all
Speaker 1: your twenties being free, hunting fish, do whatever. All right, Uh,
Speaker 1: Chrins said you had some some main factoris who generated
Speaker 1: these factoids? They're facts? Did you generate them? I reached
Speaker 1: out to many. Actually we enlisted a Jeopardy champion to
Speaker 1: come up with some of these. Are you playing tribute
Speaker 1: with us later? I would love to. Are you intimidated?
Speaker 1: Do you think you're gonna do what? I'm not scared
Speaker 1: a bit. See Kela tell me you were like a
Speaker 1: contraryan in uh, like a real fact based contrarian. Well,
Speaker 1: I am from New England. You know, we we liked it.
Speaker 1: That's one thing I noticed in the Westerners. You guys
Speaker 1: take offense fairly quickly. What do you think of that?
Speaker 1: Ye from Michigan? You know you notice where we're just
Speaker 1: out and about, you know, just like a level of play.
Speaker 1: You gotta talk to Cal because Kell's from the area.
Speaker 1: Brent Canvas, the town yesterday talking with that. Everybody talked
Speaker 1: to you was offended. There must be the town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But nobody that lives here is from here. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone's really nice. I actually got a pretty good low
Speaker 1: down on what's happening on the Madison River. The damn blowout.
Speaker 1: I hear that's fairly contained. Contentious round here, just gonna
Speaker 1: make bigger trout listen. Okay, we covered that, Okay, but
Speaker 1: him here some main factories. We gotta get the show
Speaker 1: rolling here. Well, I would just want to tell you
Speaker 1: more about, you know, Maine as a place that kind
Speaker 1: of steeped in sporting heritage. Seven Henry David Throw you know,
Speaker 1: wrote his book on the main Woods, went up to
Speaker 1: He's a candy. He did inspire Teddy Roosevelt falls. Well,
Speaker 1: he's like obsessed with his mom. Even when he was
Speaker 1: doing that stuff about living in that cab, he's still
Speaker 1: walking home to his mos every other day. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean he had it a little harder than you and us,
Speaker 1: right like hour he didn't help. I think he was.
Speaker 1: I think he Wasn't he like running off someone else's
Speaker 1: money and stuff. Well, probably he was dabbling. He's a dabbler.
Speaker 1: You go on though. Well, anyways, my point was that
Speaker 1: kind of started Maine as a tourist, uh do nation um,
Speaker 1: and I went to the woods to live deliberately kind
Speaker 1: of at my mom's though I actually haven't read The
Speaker 1: main Woods. It's a fact toy that was brought up
Speaker 1: to me that they thought would be important to say.
Speaker 1: He was a missing thrope. What a missing thrope? What's
Speaker 1: that hated people like Steve Well and you're like pro people,
Speaker 1: go on pro people is good man. Yeah, we're to
Speaker 1: showdown now. But I was gonna reach its climax during this.
Speaker 1: I noticed in the trivia he's very competitive, and I
Speaker 1: like that about someone. So, um, he's already playing hardball.
Speaker 1: I see. But anyways, I brought you a book to peruse.
Speaker 1: It's called Becoming Teddy Rosevelt. I thought you'd like this, Um,
Speaker 1: and that's just buying bookmark. It's not. That's gonna be
Speaker 1: the only Teddy Roosevelt photo I've never seen. There you go.
Speaker 1: Have you seen that picture before? Yeah? I own the book.
Speaker 1: Besides his book, look at that and let me see it.
Speaker 1: Talk about having a weird relationship with your mom, this
Speaker 1: guy and running off of somebody else's money. That's true.
Speaker 1: But I still like something well that books about his
Speaker 1: time in the main Woods and how Bill Sewell in Wilmo.
Speaker 1: Now two main guides kind of had a big impact
Speaker 1: on his life. Um, so he went up in Hyke
Speaker 1: Todd and and Moccasins. He did all sorts of crazy stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: Is a great book because it gives you, at the
Speaker 1: time a lot of people are going to main because
Speaker 1: it was so accessible to New York and Boston, and
Speaker 1: it was a wild country. Get some wild ass wilderness
Speaker 1: on a train, Yeah, exactly, And that's what kind of
Speaker 1: drove a lot of things, Like in our neck of
Speaker 1: the woods. The train came through late eighteen hundreds. Um,
Speaker 1: same time. Fly Rod Crosby was the first ever main
Speaker 1: guy I licensed, and she was pretty interesting. Lady fly
Speaker 1: Rod Crosby was a woman. Correct not her birth name
Speaker 1: Cornelia Thursda Crosby. And um, this is what she said
Speaker 1: about herself. I am a plain woman of uncertain age,
Speaker 1: standing six ft tall in my stockings. I scribble a
Speaker 1: bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish
Speaker 1: any day than go to heaven. You have took me
Speaker 1: with her? Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. She's passed way now.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'll find a feller for it, but
Speaker 1: she would. She went to like the first Sportsman's expositions
Speaker 1: in New York, and she brought like a whole log
Speaker 1: cabin down there, and it was the main Woods, and
Speaker 1: she wore a scantily short doe skin skirt which showed
Speaker 1: her calf. Um. That was scandalous. Back then friends with
Speaker 1: Annie Oakley and yeah, so very interesting. She catched a
Speaker 1: ton of this is the same area. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if anyone's fly fisherman, but really a lot of
Speaker 1: history there. You have, um Kerry Stevens inventing a ton
Speaker 1: of different flies, four of these people in his room
Speaker 1: or fly fishing guides. Good. Well do you guys know,
Speaker 1: uh great ghost, the old black black Ghost. Those are
Speaker 1: all invented in high peaks of main. Well, so that
Speaker 1: was that was like what like in the twenties ten Well,
Speaker 1: so what was interesting The rail companies hired fly rod
Speaker 1: in these people, and uh they said, don't talk about
Speaker 1: how good our trains are, talking about how good the
Speaker 1: fishing is. And so people be by default taking the
Speaker 1: main Central Railway up to range le and and catch
Speaker 1: these huge brook trout. Um. The railroads used to host
Speaker 1: like big fish competitions too, right, so they'd like give
Speaker 1: away cash to whoever gets the biggest fish. But it
Speaker 1: was based off of like these gotta get on the train,
Speaker 1: go a long way to go fish. And there you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of history out west of like people
Speaker 1: going out to Alaska catching big salmon. But you couldn't
Speaker 1: get there back then in a reasonable amount of time.
Speaker 1: So you even have accounts of some of the ponds
Speaker 1: in this neck of the the woods getting stocked with like
Speaker 1: soaki salmon and stuff like that, Like just really bizarre
Speaker 1: histories of uh sporting camps. America's longest running sporting camp
Speaker 1: ever is in this Franklin County Tympon Camps. But there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of old logging camps that turn sporting camps,
Speaker 1: and so there's a big tradition of that in this
Speaker 1: neck of the woods where people would come up from
Speaker 1: the smog of the city to get some fresh air
Speaker 1: and stay for two weeks a month. Are you gonna
Speaker 1: hit on how fly Rod Crosby ended up being the
Speaker 1: last person to legally harvest the Caribean Maine. What year
Speaker 1: was at that was? I think it was around um
Speaker 1: but I think that also that was I I couldn't
Speaker 1: drill down on exactly what year that happened. I know,
Speaker 1: like was like the last time they saw them up
Speaker 1: in northern Maine, like so it was in that time
Speaker 1: period where she had shot the last legally one, so
Speaker 1: I think the population was declining. They probably stopped hunting
Speaker 1: him Yeah, is there ever any that that you've been
Speaker 1: privy to, Like we just in our own lifetimes watched
Speaker 1: caribou blink out in Idaho and Washington. Um, is there
Speaker 1: any serious conversation ever in Maine about trying to uh
Speaker 1: restore caribou herds in Maine? Or is that just ships sailed?
Speaker 1: They did that, They tried hard for a number of
Speaker 1: years and it didn't didn't work out as well. I
Speaker 1: think there's probably too many land changes in northern main
Speaker 1: forestry wise too to support them. And I think you're
Speaker 1: already coming in on a radically receding environment anyways. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you go back to like the tail end of
Speaker 1: the place of scene they were down in Ohio and Indiana,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I think you're sort of
Speaker 1: like we kind of arrived in time to watch them
Speaker 1: blink out. Anyway. Well, I think like they have records
Speaker 1: of the red paint people in our neck was twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand years ago, and so I'm guessing that's when
Speaker 1: it would have been more tundra. Like that's probably you know,
Speaker 1: more when a lot of those were running around. Tell
Speaker 1: me about how Eisenhower, Um, I I understand that Eisenhower
Speaker 1: Dwight Eisenhower. He there's a famous picture of him like
Speaker 1: holding up his hand two paratroopers on D Day, and
Speaker 1: they've used this picture a lot. But apparently the backstory
Speaker 1: is that he found out some of the troopers there
Speaker 1: were fly fishermen, so they all just started talking about
Speaker 1: their favorite fly fish. And that's what he's doing his hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's hold the fly. Really. I heard a story I've
Speaker 1: heard us a couple of times that after he addressed
Speaker 1: the airborne that he went and he gave him like
Speaker 1: a rousing speech, but went and wept because he knew
Speaker 1: it was a death sentence. Yeah. I couldn't imagine all
Speaker 1: the guys coming on gliders. He knew that I'll be
Speaker 1: down in the morning and so many more imagine that. No,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine anything like that. And they had like
Speaker 1: all these calculations like they're all gone. Well, you can
Speaker 1: imagine why he needed to go do some fly fishing.
Speaker 1: His favorite fly was old dry fly called the H
Speaker 1: and L variant House and lot. The hell of a flytor?
Speaker 1: You ever fished that one? Yeah, it's crazy how you're
Speaker 1: still like flies invented so long ago are like still
Speaker 1: some of the best fliers today. Uh, federal ammunition. This
Speaker 1: is interesting because it's just interesting for a bunch of reasons.
Speaker 1: Federal ammunition so like a part of a publicly traded company.
Speaker 1: Vist outdoors on federal ammunition. It's a publicly traded company.
Speaker 1: Federal ammunition is itself sending um a million rounds of
Speaker 1: ammunition to Ukraine? Like the president was offered the President
Speaker 1: of Ukraine. It's it's weird, like speaking of this, how
Speaker 1: do you Zelenski is how he pronounced his name. This
Speaker 1: guy used to be a comedian. He's like a commentator,
Speaker 1: would be like a John Stewart. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know if it'd be like that, but he used to
Speaker 1: be like a like an entertainer or comedian. The President
Speaker 1: of Ukraine he's emerging as this kind of Churchill figure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're freusing to leave the capitol um rousing speeches, which
Speaker 1: is like total defiance. He's been putting out all these offers,
Speaker 1: like uh, not offers. He's putting out like requests. We
Speaker 1: need this, we need that, we need this. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: the US offered to get him out of there, he
Speaker 1: replied with, I don't know what he doesn't need a ride,
Speaker 1: he needs ammunition. Um, that's a hell of a line.
Speaker 1: I need an I need ammunition, not a ride. Hell
Speaker 1: of a leader. Uh. Federal Premium's parent company, vist Outdoor,
Speaker 1: has committed to donating one million rounds of ammunition to
Speaker 1: Ukrainian forces. They're also launching a fundraiser to raise money
Speaker 1: to help Ukrainian refugees. When on a spokesman, I want
Speaker 1: to say, there are some callings in life we just
Speaker 1: have to answer. This is one of those callings. We
Speaker 1: think it's the right call to help our allies defend themselves.
Speaker 1: That's bold. But I wonder if I just don want
Speaker 1: to know, I would be curious how all this I
Speaker 1: need to We have an article about this on the
Speaker 1: meat eater dot com um with a bunch of quotes
Speaker 1: and people and kind of give some of the background.
Speaker 1: But it's just not something I would have thought. What
Speaker 1: I got to read about how uh something I would
Speaker 1: have thought would be possible. Well, they already have contracts
Speaker 1: with military people all across the world. That's what I think.
Speaker 1: It's easy and quick to do it. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, like the announcement of the amount, like
Speaker 1: the sheer amount dollar amount of aid that the um
Speaker 1: beds have authorized, right, Like, I imagine this has to
Speaker 1: stand aside from contracts. If you're gonna say we're gonna
Speaker 1: send out a million rounds, right, otherwise the press release
Speaker 1: would be like, hey, we just got paid our normal
Speaker 1: rate to send out a bunch of rounds. So I
Speaker 1: did see that the lotbying government issued um a statement
Speaker 1: saying like, you know, because there's that call for aid
Speaker 1: that Zelensky set out for a foreign legion, uh and
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, different countries are saying, yeah, like
Speaker 1: if you go, don't fight, you know, there's lots of
Speaker 1: ways to help or stay here. There's lots of way
Speaker 1: ways to help. But I saw the lobbying government issued
Speaker 1: a statement saying like, if you feel like it's your duty,
Speaker 1: go for it, and they're gonna let people cross. What
Speaker 1: was that saying? Honest, that Latvian saying that you said
Speaker 1: is getting revived these days, not uh yet yet Soviet.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's just what used to be on T
Speaker 1: shirts and placards and everything when we were kids going
Speaker 1: to protests, when we when Latin was still in too
Speaker 1: the USSR. We used to walk around. Now they're using
Speaker 1: it again. Get yet, Sylviet that mean it's just mean.
Speaker 1: It's in Russian it just means no, no yet does know?
Speaker 1: And in Russian here's one great I got with America.
Speaker 1: This thing that like people now complain about turkeys. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. It's like just like municipalities
Speaker 1: that are like at war with turkeys because the turkeys
Speaker 1: are two mean. So there's a there's like this this
Speaker 1: huge dispute in Sacramento between mail carriers and wild turkeys.
Speaker 1: Like it's come to blows. There's an article out in
Speaker 1: the l A Times mail carrier accused of killing aggressive
Speaker 1: wild turkey. This guy Sacramento County, UM. The mail carriers
Speaker 1: have been quote terrorized by wild turkeys, at times disrupting deliveries.
Speaker 1: This week, tensions between the foul and one US Postal
Speaker 1: Service worker reach a violent climax. Do they use the joke?
Speaker 1: Went postal in here when the carrier killed a turkey
Speaker 1: while on duty, prompting an investigation by the California Department
Speaker 1: of Fishing Wildlife. The mail carrier was carrying a stick
Speaker 1: of some kind quote a some kind of a stick
Speaker 1: unquote in his mail carrier vehicle. Im an aggressive male
Speaker 1: turkey attacked him. He retaliated and killed it with a stick,
Speaker 1: which is no small feat. Yeah, like, you don't unless
Speaker 1: you got a full on baseball bat and really cocked
Speaker 1: back and had that turkey stand still. It ain't a
Speaker 1: one strike, No, it's it's not a swing and beyond
Speaker 1: your way scenario. Yeah, they don't. There was. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: be like whacking a grouse like they fall over death.
Speaker 1: Oh but I do you think if you like had
Speaker 1: the right velocity and the right stick, you could wind
Speaker 1: up on him. I don't even know how much. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: just like a you in the head, Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: head or in the neck and you break it, snack
Speaker 1: or smash his brain with the whack he's gonna go.
Speaker 1: The best thing about this is the This is the
Speaker 1: actual headline, Steve. A feud between mail carriers wild turkeys
Speaker 1: comes to a deadly climax near Sacramento. I was like
Speaker 1: a turkey killed him. Yeah, there's these turkeys are getting serious.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be on the serial podcast. I'll be like
Speaker 1: a couple episodes of like the Turkey's Life prior to
Speaker 1: How I grew up. Other turkeys when he was a
Speaker 1: little kid. That Jake's the other Jake's always beat him
Speaker 1: up and it like really impacted him psychologically. So they
Speaker 1: don't know if they're gonna press charges on the dude.
Speaker 1: A guy from Fishing Game was like, our job is
Speaker 1: to determine what exactly happened, and then we fill out
Speaker 1: of report. We might send it to the district attorney,
Speaker 1: and the district attorney decides whether or not a crime
Speaker 1: has been committed. The Postal Service that is an investigating
Speaker 1: the incident, noting in a statement that employees quote have
Speaker 1: had several altercations with aggressive turkeys in the area, including
Speaker 1: a recent attack on a letter carrier. Then they go
Speaker 1: on to say, however, this allegation is alarming and if true,
Speaker 1: is inexcusable and does not reflect the efforts of our
Speaker 1: more than six hundred and fifty thousand employees who faithfully
Speaker 1: serve and deliver for America every day, so pointing out
Speaker 1: that all six hundred and fifty thousand employees of the
Speaker 1: Postal Service are not stick wielding turkey killers. Lest one
Speaker 1: start stereotyping, what would be their response if it was
Speaker 1: a domestic dog, an unchained, unfenced domestic dog and he
Speaker 1: whacked it with a stick. Well, and they don't stand
Speaker 1: with their employees and defend themselves. Well, the plot thick
Speaker 1: it self defense the illegal means of take Well. Attention
Speaker 1: is turning to area residents as the plot thickens here. Uh.
Speaker 1: So far, the Department of Fishing Wildlife's investigation into the
Speaker 1: incident has revealed strange details about the area's turkeys and
Speaker 1: their behavior and treat it. Investigators found that some residents
Speaker 1: had been feeding the turkeys quote copious quantities of food unquote.
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna go math. Turkeys on us
Speaker 1: had pen feeding turkeys math. They're saying it probably contributed
Speaker 1: to the massive size of the turkey in question. This
Speaker 1: is a quote, because it was eating just an unlimited
Speaker 1: amount of food every day from this particular household. The
Speaker 1: turkeys seem to have been targeting delivery workers. Really, the
Speaker 1: attacks had also disrupted deliveries. They're indiscriminate in their delivery attacks.
Speaker 1: These turkeys had also disrupted deliveries from FedEx and ups,
Speaker 1: So the private sector, I ain't there's something to that.
Speaker 1: Do you ever remember Popeye and Jimmy Miller's house, The
Speaker 1: one eyed turkey. Well that's own bitch, was not. This
Speaker 1: can be for years to me. Come up strut for you,
Speaker 1: you can, Millwood, No Popeye has one eyed turkey, Like
Speaker 1: I know you guys had something like that going on. Okay,
Speaker 1: go on, now we're still cool and uh never was aggressive.
Speaker 1: Then one day I roll over get out of my
Speaker 1: truck and I can see him coming for him and
Speaker 1: I could see the look in his one eye. I'm like,
Speaker 1: something has changed, and like I'm just foolishly, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: hanging out just like to see and I mean it
Speaker 1: didn't really have time to think about it. And he
Speaker 1: was on me like the full on, like breasts kind
Speaker 1: of pointed towards the sky, feet coming at me and
Speaker 1: wings trying to beat you. Oh yeah, And uh so
Speaker 1: I run around the truck. I'm like, really, what's up,
Speaker 1: pop out, you know, and I look around the corner
Speaker 1: He's coming against I quickly boog it into the house.
Speaker 1: Well lo and behold, someone else very similar in stature
Speaker 1: to me had recently been a finale Popeye and kicking
Speaker 1: him and booting him and whatever. Since then whatever, that
Speaker 1: person just like wasn't into having like farm pets, be
Speaker 1: like pets, right, so he's he's like probably just shooting
Speaker 1: it off, but like in in a more aggressive way
Speaker 1: than I ever had. And from that moment on, it
Speaker 1: didn't matter if you were roughly a two pounds six
Speaker 1: ft plus dude. Popeye was coming after you. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the kids would get out of the car. Nobody would
Speaker 1: bother them. M Uh. They've been suggesting that these mail
Speaker 1: carriers start holding these turkeys with pepper spray. They're allowed
Speaker 1: to carry pepper spray, but they've been to finish my point.
Speaker 1: I thought that I thought you wrapped it up nicely. No.
Speaker 1: The point is I think that the turkeys can can
Speaker 1: if that had happened from one delivery driver like some
Speaker 1: aggressive they see a truck roll up and they're like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: anybody that rolls out of a truck that's not normally
Speaker 1: around her and it's wearing a uniform like hitting boys,
Speaker 1: I got what. Yeah, you didn't bring it full circle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they learned to be like watch out for that. They're
Speaker 1: they've been telling them to shoot him with pepper spray,
Speaker 1: and they've been also beating them with their mail bags.
Speaker 1: Brent here has sixteen turkeys on order, and uh, he
Speaker 1: happens to know what the maximum butterball turkey waste. We
Speaker 1: grew turkeys for the first time a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and we didn't know how many weeks to let them grow.
Speaker 1: So when we slaughtered them ourselves, we weighed them and
Speaker 1: we had pound to two pound dressed turkeys, dressed tressed.
Speaker 1: These were big because I was gonna I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna be I was gonna one up you. What
Speaker 1: what what branded turkey did you get? They were? I
Speaker 1: think the broad breasted. I was gonna one up. But
Speaker 1: I can't one up that. Well, that's a big turkey, steve. Um.
Speaker 1: So anyways, I we didn't know how to cook these turkeys.
Speaker 1: We gave him out his presence due to like all
Speaker 1: the in laws like for their thanksgivings, like turkey for you,
Speaker 1: turkey for you. How long did it take for him
Speaker 1: to get to forty pounds? Uh, twenty two weeks something
Speaker 1: like that. Maybe maybe a few more weeks. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but they had open they could eat as much as
Speaker 1: they want. Um. But anyways, I call a butter ball
Speaker 1: has a hotline and you can call this and get
Speaker 1: any turkey question answered that. Yeah, And so I was like, why, Well,
Speaker 1: why not. They well, I gonna have We're gonna call
Speaker 1: we should get a do a live called butter Ball.
Speaker 1: I heard about it because on the radio they were
Speaker 1: talking about all the funny calls they've had, Like does
Speaker 1: bar and chain oil? Is that okay to cook your
Speaker 1: turkey with barn chain oil? Because like obviously someone people
Speaker 1: deep frying them in barn. No, they like cut the
Speaker 1: turkey in half with their chainsaw. But anyway, so I
Speaker 1: call him up because this is a big bird. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to dry it out. I wanted he's gonna
Speaker 1: fry it barn chain. I think they just got a
Speaker 1: little bit on it. But um, anyways, I call him
Speaker 1: up and I said, you know, is there any recommendations
Speaker 1: for a thirty eight pound turkey? And she said, well, sir,
Speaker 1: that's not a butterball turkey. We only grew up to
Speaker 1: thirty pound turkeys. And so they told me just based
Speaker 1: it in twenty minutes pound. They helped me out anyways,
Speaker 1: even though they called me out. And I can't want
Speaker 1: up you with this, but I can back you up good.
Speaker 1: That's that's the relationship on my boys. My boy's body
Speaker 1: raised turkeys and we went over there and we took
Speaker 1: a twenty two over there to get our two, and
Speaker 1: my kids shot it with a twenty two just in
Speaker 1: a little pen there, you know, and I'm like, grab it,
Speaker 1: grab it because it's jumping all over place. And he
Speaker 1: couldn't get ahold of its neck. They're very strong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't get ahold of his his neck. I took that
Speaker 1: turkey on a on an actual like like digital luggage scale,
Speaker 1: and the turkey was fifty pounds on the hoof. I
Speaker 1: didn't know they guy like that. Well, have you huge
Speaker 1: presidential pardon turkey every year? They're like a fifty pound bird.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Yeah, they're big. One of our guys, Garrett Long,
Speaker 1: he claims to have raised the seventy five pound turkey.
Speaker 1: I believe that because these things quably kept growing, these
Speaker 1: for stale juveniles. I caught it. I had to cut
Speaker 1: the ones I had in half. You couldn't even like,
Speaker 1: you couldn't have put that some bitch in your oven,
Speaker 1: No way did Yeah, just barely had about a half
Speaker 1: inch touch on the roof. I did some butcher twine,
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah. I want to give one last quote,
Speaker 1: my favorite quote from this article about these man eating turkeys.
Speaker 1: One of these guys says, I've been around about only
Speaker 1: five years, so I kind of know what turkeys. And
Speaker 1: I just looked at it and I'm like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is the biggest turkey I've ever seen. All right, seth,
Speaker 1: tell the give us, tell us your your bear story.
Speaker 1: Don't name names, just tell your bear story. All right?
Speaker 1: So was it gone wrong? It was at least three,
Speaker 1: three or four years ago. Chat was with me when
Speaker 1: I killed the bear. I killed a bear hunt. It
Speaker 1: sat in my freeze. The hide sat in my freezer
Speaker 1: for a year because I didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with it. We all shot a turkey right before you
Speaker 1: shot your bear. Yeah, it was a great spot. Um.
Speaker 1: So fast forward a year after I killed the bear,
Speaker 1: I got talking with Steve and uh, he recommended really well,
Speaker 1: was that really the deciding factor? Oh? He just told
Speaker 1: you to take it to this guy. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I asked around. I asked around. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a recommendation, but you said there there's someone that Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you didn't want to take ownership to. You
Speaker 1: would have known if I hadn't sent you there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just this is just part
Speaker 1: of the story. UM, take my meet up. So this
Speaker 1: guy actually sent someone that was working for him at
Speaker 1: the time to pick up my bear here in the
Speaker 1: parking lot at work, and I wrote a check in
Speaker 1: full for this guy to um paying the hide for me. Um.
Speaker 1: So this was two years ago when that exchange happened,
Speaker 1: and I waited roughly I don't probably tendered tanned a year.
Speaker 1: So he was just tanning it, just just flashing it
Speaker 1: and having it sent off to get tanned. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: waited probably about a year before I started bugging him, um,
Speaker 1: wondering where my bear is. And you probably didn't even
Speaker 1: bug him originally. You probably just like, hey man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: originally it was just questioning when it might be done.
Speaker 1: And I think this this was like right around the
Speaker 1: time when COVID hit, So I got like the COVID excuse,
Speaker 1: like tanneries are backed up because of COVID or whatever, so,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking nothing of it, just let it go
Speaker 1: and then waited roughly another year and then I started
Speaker 1: bugging him. Like for a while, there was like once
Speaker 1: a week, um or no, it was like once every
Speaker 1: other week, once every three weeks. Something like that, and
Speaker 1: then it got to like once a week. Finally, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a lot of like, um, like
Speaker 1: I'd say, hey, man, like can I get my bear
Speaker 1: this week? And He'll be like yeah. He'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's meet whatever day and I'll hand it off to you.
Speaker 1: And then that day would calm, I text him, be
Speaker 1: like we're still good to meet up and get you know,
Speaker 1: I can get my bear, and it would there would
Speaker 1: always be some excuse um to why he couldn't meet. Um.
Speaker 1: Finally the day comes where he can actually meet up
Speaker 1: with me to give me my bear. So we meet
Speaker 1: at a local gas station here. He pulls in hops
Speaker 1: out of his truck and hands me a black bear. Hi,
Speaker 1: black face black bear. Um. And the bear that I
Speaker 1: had shot was not black. It was a chocolate face
Speaker 1: black bear. So I told him that that's not my bear,
Speaker 1: and he gave me like, oh I was in a rush,
Speaker 1: must have just grabbed the wrong bear. Um, my bad.
Speaker 1: I'll go grab I'll go grab your bear and meet
Speaker 1: you back here. I had to go to a meeting
Speaker 1: network here, so I was like, let's meet back up
Speaker 1: later in the day. So what was going through your mind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to know too. Were you excited? You're like sweet?
Speaker 1: Tried to get he tried to get Chester to go
Speaker 1: to the meet up, and Chester chickened out, would go,
Speaker 1: mat Seth go alone. I went. I went the second time,
Speaker 1: second time because because of the brow beating I gave you.
Speaker 1: Did you think there was gonna be something gonna go
Speaker 1: down or well? I just kind of just seems like,
Speaker 1: I don't know Chester should have been there. Old fishing
Speaker 1: buddies go on, um So, and I should say there's
Speaker 1: been lots of rumors going around town about this particular
Speaker 1: text them. He tried to give a he tried. My
Speaker 1: buddy had a black Phase full amount, paid full price
Speaker 1: for a full amount black bear, and he tried to
Speaker 1: give him a blond Phase, a small blond Phase full amount.
Speaker 1: So I kind of went into this meet up knowing
Speaker 1: that I most likely wasn't going to get the bear
Speaker 1: that I had given him two years prior. Um So
Speaker 1: he tries to give me the black bear. I tell
Speaker 1: him it's not mine. He leaves. UM meet back with
Speaker 1: him a couple hours later and he pulls out of
Speaker 1: the out of his truck chocolate phase bear and I
Speaker 1: take one look at it and immediately, no, it's not
Speaker 1: my bear. But I'm thinking to myself in my head,
Speaker 1: I am never getting my bear, and like, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna take this one so I have something to show
Speaker 1: for it. Because I could have been like, listen, this
Speaker 1: is not my bear, um, and it wouldn't like who
Speaker 1: knows what had happened. He probably would have gone back
Speaker 1: to his shop and grabbed a different bear, or I
Speaker 1: never seen him again. Yeah. So, and I know this
Speaker 1: is not my bear because my bear when I um
Speaker 1: skinned in the field, I didn't take the time to
Speaker 1: like skin the palls out. I just cut the palls.
Speaker 1: Just wanted to Yeah, I just wanted to hide it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't I don't need all shriveled up Paul's hanging
Speaker 1: off my my bear hide. It wasn't interested. And this
Speaker 1: bear he gave me has paws on it. I went
Speaker 1: him man. Yeah. Another indicator was when you know, for
Speaker 1: people that have gotten stuff tanned before, when you get
Speaker 1: something back from the tannery, it has like that nice
Speaker 1: soft white, white leathery. Yeah, this thing was like yellow, dirty,
Speaker 1: like something that had obviously been sitting around for many years. Um.
Speaker 1: So he handed to me like thinking that I know
Speaker 1: that you're thinking that he you know, he thinks that
Speaker 1: I think it's my bear. I just said to him, like,
Speaker 1: you know that'll do and grab it and top my vehicle.
Speaker 1: And but what about the person whose bear? It was
Speaker 1: so old? It's like, do you think that that would
Speaker 1: have wound up in the right guy's hands? No, but
Speaker 1: it's just something he had laying around. Yeah, asked for cash,
Speaker 1: be like, all right, let's just follow you to the
Speaker 1: bank and you can pull out a couple hundred bucks
Speaker 1: that I already paid. Yet did that hide have like
Speaker 1: did you see like the stamp they gotta put on
Speaker 1: it or like any you know there was there is
Speaker 1: some sort of stamping on it. Um, I didn't really
Speaker 1: look into it. And they yeah, they hit him with
Speaker 1: those little turn or stamp. I'd literally just bowlted up.
Speaker 1: And do you have any advice for people for people
Speaker 1: that might in the future be look going to get
Speaker 1: a deposits and right, man, I guess just do your research,
Speaker 1: don't listen to Steve or um. But if the guy
Speaker 1: is such a mess too, like I mean, we know
Speaker 1: from our previous podcast gas like good record keeping. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess just do your research on your taking your
Speaker 1: stuff to. Um, if you're in Montana, take your stuff
Speaker 1: in John Hayes because he's, yeah, go to like an
Speaker 1: established that's some dude that's working out of his garage.
Speaker 1: If you're going to someone that's like if you hear
Speaker 1: through the Greek grapevine that like, oh, this dude's cheaper
Speaker 1: than everyone else, Like that's that should be a red flag.
Speaker 1: I'm biting my tongue so bad on a contract or
Speaker 1: just be I feel like piling on. Not about that,
Speaker 1: but I feel like being like, oh, man, I got
Speaker 1: a story for you. I'm not gonna tell it right now,
Speaker 1: but you know what I'm talking about. Um, not you,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, so yeah. And then I I ended
Speaker 1: up texting them later, UM, just to let him know
Speaker 1: that he didn't pull the wool over my eyes. UM.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure you knew that I
Speaker 1: knew it's not my bear. No reply, no reply. UM.
Speaker 1: I sent you a text on this last week. Brent.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can. You can weigh in on this
Speaker 1: this too, but um, and so, the Wyoming legislature just
Speaker 1: past a bill that would extend the ability for people
Speaker 1: to raise this very controversial sage grouse program. Right, that
Speaker 1: starts with people going out and stealing the eggs from
Speaker 1: free ranging, live huntable populations of sage grouse, so game birds,
Speaker 1: taking those eggs, rearing them to adult sizes. Um, you
Speaker 1: know there's a lot of a lot of eggs don't
Speaker 1: make it, and then taking those birds and releasing them
Speaker 1: back out onto uh the landscape. And you know, for
Speaker 1: folks who don't know, like birds that are raised in
Speaker 1: captivity don't have any sort of awareness of predators. Um,
Speaker 1: the studies that exist are pretty hand in hand and
Speaker 1: they're pretty much for pheasants, um, chucker quail, you know,
Speaker 1: birds that are are very commonly raised in captivity for putting.
Speaker 1: And it used to be um, I thought that that
Speaker 1: these pen raised populations would like help build wild populations.
Speaker 1: But if you believe in math, there's like a mortality
Speaker 1: typically within the first twenty four hours. Um. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just standing there like the yeah, kell, do do you
Speaker 1: think these people, these folks know when they're raising them
Speaker 1: that they're going to basically release these birds and they're
Speaker 1: gonna die. Do you think they're releasing them for their
Speaker 1: own personal hunting? Like he's for the Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: huge like bird dog training type of deal around this,
Speaker 1: and there's there's lots of like our three stuff around this,
Speaker 1: but not for sage grouse. Um. And what this is,
Speaker 1: this is like this test period that was suggested that said, hey,
Speaker 1: let's let's try this avenue that would allow um, folks
Speaker 1: who are buying up this prime habitat, this keystone habitat
Speaker 1: for this species in order to develop it and maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get lucky. And instead of them having to purchase
Speaker 1: other habitat that would replace this habitat that they destroyed,
Speaker 1: they could instead invest in this rearing population and just replace,
Speaker 1: like physically replace the birds. So there would be you know,
Speaker 1: a study that goes out and says, okay, well, the
Speaker 1: amount of habitat that you guys destroyed, uh, would have
Speaker 1: produced x amount of birds, so you guys need to
Speaker 1: replace x amount of birds elsewhere. Um. However, it just doesn't.
Speaker 1: You're not replacing any birds. You're just net net losing birds.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, you're stealing birds that could
Speaker 1: grow up to make more birds at the egg stage.
Speaker 1: And that's what's going on wyoming right now. Um. The
Speaker 1: governor over there has already said that he's in support
Speaker 1: of this. Prior to the state legislature UM voting yes
Speaker 1: to extend the it was supposed to sunset. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to stop this year, but they voted
Speaker 1: to extend it. And there's no good science supporting this. So, UM,
Speaker 1: if you don't like your game birds to be stolen
Speaker 1: and you'd like responsible development to go out and be
Speaker 1: responsible with our wildlife as well, Uh, let's make sure
Speaker 1: they do so. Call the governor a whyleming and tell
Speaker 1: them to uh, not only not signed this bill, but
Speaker 1: veto if you were, you're a dumb this down as
Speaker 1: much as possible. Let me let me say a statement asked,
Speaker 1: this is a fair statement. Um. The greater stage grouse
Speaker 1: has been flirting with Endangered Species Act protection, like there's
Speaker 1: a case be made that it should be listed. Yes,
Speaker 1: a listed. UM years ago, they struck a deal that
Speaker 1: people thought was gonna be very impactful on stage grouse recovery.
Speaker 1: A lot of that stuff wasn't implemented. It became highly politicized.
Speaker 1: That's failing. And so they're suggesting that to hit the
Speaker 1: numbers they need to hit it, they just pen raise
Speaker 1: them and then periodically release pen raised birds, count them
Speaker 1: up and be like, oh, see it does enough. Is
Speaker 1: it not as simple as that? Well, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that Yeah we could say sure, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're saying, nope, we in theory destroyed this amount
Speaker 1: of land which would have produced this amount of birds.
Speaker 1: Here are the birds without a place for them to be. Um, well,
Speaker 1: they would they would then be released into a into
Speaker 1: suitable habitat. However, they're they're just not built at that
Speaker 1: stage to survive in anything outside of a cage. For
Speaker 1: is the rationale viable period they'll get like, they'll get
Speaker 1: them because there there's like a lot of attrition and
Speaker 1: you know, a wild brood like maybe survives or something
Speaker 1: like that. They're getting them like passed the vulnerable stage
Speaker 1: and then letting them go. And yeah, with the with
Speaker 1: the idea that then they're gonna run around to eat
Speaker 1: a bunch of food, bump into another sage grouse and
Speaker 1: mate and make more sage grouse um. And and there's
Speaker 1: a great study out of South Dakota again on pheasants
Speaker 1: um where they took a couple of different release points
Speaker 1: and did like severe predator suppression um and they were
Speaker 1: able to get some hen pheasants two survive long enough
Speaker 1: to mate and nest, and but you know, like their
Speaker 1: nesting ability was low. However, when they were able to breed,
Speaker 1: they could have the same like a viable, competitively viable
Speaker 1: amount of eggs as a wild as an actually wild
Speaker 1: hen pheasant salvaging is a real long term practice. So
Speaker 1: like when I was banning ducks and uh um San
Speaker 1: Francisco area, Fairfield area, California, with California waterfowl, they had
Speaker 1: a practice of egg salvage with ducks and so out there.
Speaker 1: I think it was partially trying to get more opportunity UM.
Speaker 1: I guess because because it's pretty contentious as far as
Speaker 1: a lot of people believe if that egg didn't hatch,
Speaker 1: maybe there was a genetic defect that you would not
Speaker 1: want to introduce into the population. The other side of
Speaker 1: it is that it's such a difficult thing hatch eggs
Speaker 1: out in the wild. You know, you water conditions, predation,
Speaker 1: that egg salvaging takes away a lot of those variables.
Speaker 1: I think that's the case for it UM, and I
Speaker 1: think in when they've tried to re establish populations of
Speaker 1: game birds elsewhere, more successful model is to go where
Speaker 1: they have a lot of um and take some of
Speaker 1: those and put them in another place, versus this sounds
Speaker 1: more like I don't know this situation at all. But
Speaker 1: this sounds more like there's no previous knowledge of life.
Speaker 1: They're just throwing them out there. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if that would be successful. If there was, if this
Speaker 1: was a tool in the toolbox, right, I wouldn't instinctively
Speaker 1: be against it. I mean, if we're doing everything we
Speaker 1: can to preserve habitat right, and that wasn't even on
Speaker 1: the table, like we're preserving habitat doing all things we
Speaker 1: need to do, and then someone proposed it like, in
Speaker 1: addition to doing all the right things, uh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: attempt to do some of this to see what the
Speaker 1: efficacy is. I wouldn't be like no. But if you're
Speaker 1: taking and saying like, oh, no, we're gonna allow people
Speaker 1: to develop sage gross habitat, we're excusing them from from mitigation.
Speaker 1: As long as they can turn out x number of
Speaker 1: chicks on the ground somewhere which will have no long
Speaker 1: term they won't solve the problem. The problem is habitat
Speaker 1: loss in a handful of other factors. Um, it just
Speaker 1: seems like a bunch of mental masturbation. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a It's just it's a waste of time when we
Speaker 1: know what the answer is, and you know, it's like
Speaker 1: gas prices are climbing up. I get it, But I
Speaker 1: think responsible energy is something that like everybody can get behind.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it's a wind farm, a solar
Speaker 1: farmer pumping crewed out of the ground. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: if those companies do it in a responsible way, then
Speaker 1: you know people will buy responsibly. Even more so, Like
Speaker 1: I don't understand why it's like necessary to give them
Speaker 1: this end around situation, like a workaround. Yeah, to reach
Speaker 1: around with a work around isn't part of the issue
Speaker 1: with the e s A listening that, um, the states
Speaker 1: haven't listed it yet, Like is that a state managed species? No,
Speaker 1: the listing is federal, The listings federal, but these are
Speaker 1: being managed state by state? Correct correct right now? And
Speaker 1: that almost changed. It almost changed during UM, I guess
Speaker 1: I was during the Obama administration. They were very considered
Speaker 1: it and decided not to based on this like deal
Speaker 1: that have been put together by Matt Mead and govern
Speaker 1: Hicke Looper and the interior, and it's a big deal,
Speaker 1: like you doing the work on the front end instead
Speaker 1: of being like we Brent and I just talked about
Speaker 1: this last night, Right, It's like nobody wants to fight
Speaker 1: unless something's getting taken away from him. Right, So our
Speaker 1: ability to be proactive on this stuff and prevent the
Speaker 1: bird from going on the list is severely diminished by
Speaker 1: people who were like, well, let's just see how it
Speaker 1: works out. Yeah, And once they go on the list,
Speaker 1: then these people are immediately going to have to do
Speaker 1: some Oh all these cattlemen out there and in Wyoming
Speaker 1: with public land grazing a lotments and stuff, It's like,
Speaker 1: that's that's gonna hurt. Yeah, it's like, oh, there's an
Speaker 1: endangered species out there. Yeah. That was when we had
Speaker 1: got Wyoming's Governor Matt Meat on the show to talk
Speaker 1: about stage grouse before he at that time felt that
Speaker 1: the energy companies saw the writing on the wall and
Speaker 1: knew they needed to get with it, because he because
Speaker 1: their ability to operate on the landscape was gonna be
Speaker 1: dependent on their ability to recover that bird. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's I don't know if he'd tell you
Speaker 1: the same thing right now, that was many years ago
Speaker 1: that he he was feeling optimistic about that that like
Speaker 1: they were going to be that he felt that they
Speaker 1: were taking the driver's seat on it because they wanted
Speaker 1: to stay in business and they knew that when that
Speaker 1: bird hit, the endangered species listing business is going to
Speaker 1: be crippled. You know, Brody makes every mad all time
Speaker 1: about dogs. I'm at it. What's what's the breed of
Speaker 1: the week. I'm at at him? Now? Why what did
Speaker 1: I do? First? Tell what happened Brody to this R
Speaker 1: one oh nine? Oh? Yeah, while back we talked about O.
Speaker 1: R the one that the one what the wolf that
Speaker 1: wandered from Oregon way down in the southern California corne
Speaker 1: and got hit by a car is a collared wolf.
Speaker 1: Another collared wolf in Oregon just got killed. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't an accident. Um this this wolf O R one
Speaker 1: oh nine, a collared female was shot and killed the
Speaker 1: morning of February. And there's been a series of killings
Speaker 1: of wolves in the state. Legally, no, they're they're federally
Speaker 1: protected and shooting him and shooting him and leaving him land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Brody's condemnation is very weak. What you're like, you do
Speaker 1: that little thing people do where you're like, no, of
Speaker 1: course we know that no one should. This just a
Speaker 1: note to myself. Like here I'm saying, if you're the
Speaker 1: kind of person that like hates wolves and you're gonna
Speaker 1: go out and kill a federally protected wolf with a collar,
Speaker 1: like you're shooting yourself in the foot. So okay, so
Speaker 1: you're offering advice, Yeah, don't do it. So you're you're
Speaker 1: offering advice to the kind of paters. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is Brody's advice to shooting yourself in the foot, because
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that like just draws
Speaker 1: more attentions to keep keeping wolves protected, like in the
Speaker 1: long run, It's like, that's what you're saying. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought you were doing. I thought you were had a
Speaker 1: tip pretty tepid. No, no, no, At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's a wildlife violation. It's yeah, broke off
Speaker 1: federal wildlife and I thought you were being a little tepid.
Speaker 1: No no, no, whatever that word on this ship. It's
Speaker 1: like's gonna backfire on you in the long run, is
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Do you have a lot of other
Speaker 1: advice for wolf haters not really smoke a pack a day.
Speaker 1: That that was your second. This just in from the
Speaker 1: wolf desk. Um. This one. This one's great because it's
Speaker 1: a it's a great example of a bipartisan you know,
Speaker 1: reaching across the aisle for the greater good. Um. In Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Who knows if it will result in anything, but in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin introduced a bill
Speaker 1: to remove protections for the wolf in the state of Wyoming.
Speaker 1: I misspoke in the state of Wisconsin. Correct. Um. They
Speaker 1: were backed up by some some Republicans and uh and
Speaker 1: uh Wyoming. Um. Johnson said that Wisconsin resident should have
Speaker 1: a say in wolf management. Baldwin issued a statement saying
Speaker 1: she believes the wolf population is strong and federal officials
Speaker 1: should let the state manage wolves. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: the reason they're doing this is is a federal judge
Speaker 1: in California last month ordered federal protections to be restored
Speaker 1: for wolves after they were lifted. What just last year
Speaker 1: they were the wolves were delisted, now they're listed again. Um.
Speaker 1: This keeps going on like constantly. Um, you know the
Speaker 1: wolves here up and down. Oh God, yes. Since the
Speaker 1: crazy thing is that the wolves in the Upper Great Lakes,
Speaker 1: the Western Great Lakes, they've been met recovery goals for
Speaker 1: I think over twenty years. Um, there's over four thousand
Speaker 1: of them up there. Now, Yeah, that's what that's the
Speaker 1: thing people lose sight of. There's more wolves in the
Speaker 1: Northern Great Lakes then in the Northern Rockies right and
Speaker 1: here the state's Wyoming, Montana, Idaho. They all have state
Speaker 1: management of these wolves. If these wolf protectionists would stop
Speaker 1: spend all this money on lawyers and making fishing, game
Speaker 1: agencies and other people spend all this money on lawyers,
Speaker 1: imagine what you could do with take all that money
Speaker 1: you put into stage grouse. Yeah, or when one's gonna
Speaker 1: fight over sage grouse, yeah exactly. Um. You know it's
Speaker 1: been on again, off again, like they were. You were
Speaker 1: able to the states had management in Minnesota for like
Speaker 1: a year, maybe you could hunt them, and the same
Speaker 1: thing happened in Wisconsin recently. Um, but now they're back
Speaker 1: to being that that whole Upper Great Lakes population is
Speaker 1: back to being federally protected. Well it's funny too, because
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're really into wolves, why don't you
Speaker 1: leave these ones alone and talk about the Mexican wolf
Speaker 1: or the red wolf, the ones that are really hurting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or are the wolves that used to be running around
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. Yeah. I mean if you use Montana, Idaho,
Speaker 1: Wyoming as an example, like, it's a great example of
Speaker 1: state management of wolves, right, Like why can't Wisconsin, Michigan,
Speaker 1: Minnesota manage them the same way? Well? It's it's interesting
Speaker 1: here too because like some of the language is if
Speaker 1: you break it down, is like very it does make sense,
Speaker 1: it's agreeable. It's like you're you're talking about populations that
Speaker 1: don't see individual state borders. Right, So it's like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: if we are concerned with the overall population, isn't right
Speaker 1: to segment off these populations making it out a Wisconsin population,
Speaker 1: let's say, like a Michigan population. Can we do that
Speaker 1: and then still take into context the overall population recovery
Speaker 1: goals um and thinking about it that way, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do get that, But everything we've done that with
Speaker 1: elk are only recovered across of their historic range. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big horn sheet. So black bears a fraction of the
Speaker 1: historic range. Yet in states they have a bunch of
Speaker 1: a loud of hunt them. No one says like, well
Speaker 1: we can't. You shouldn't hunt elk in Utah, because what
Speaker 1: does that mean for outcovery in Illinois. No one makes
Speaker 1: that case. That's very true, that's very true. Um. The
Speaker 1: difference being though, right is elk in Illinois aren't on
Speaker 1: the endangered species list, right because all that stuff predated
Speaker 1: the endangered Species list, And we're dealing with the Endangered
Speaker 1: Species Act and this is the language that we're miring through.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it is just like this horrid, crappy political
Speaker 1: football that goes back and forth. I want to give
Speaker 1: people a little context here. It's the thing we've talked about.
Speaker 1: I was going to retalk about it real quick. There's
Speaker 1: a thing and anytime you hear about wolves, anytime you
Speaker 1: hearing about grizzly bears, you're gonna hear a thing called
Speaker 1: dps um. You take something like like so people know,
Speaker 1: like everything in the lower forty like everything was wolf habitat.
Speaker 1: There are wolves all over the damn place. When wolves
Speaker 1: got listed by the the endangers under the Endangerous b Sect,
Speaker 1: they got listed across the Lower forty eight. Later, someone said,
Speaker 1: that's not a very good management decision. Um, like, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna recover wolves, uh in downtown Nashville. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: just pointing that out because people wouldn't be surprised when
Speaker 1: you read about the market hunters like Daniel Boone and
Speaker 1: his cronies, I mean when they're running around Kentucky, Tennessee
Speaker 1: either interacting wolves all time. Right. So some of the
Speaker 1: later said, you're not gonna recover wolves in downtown Nashville.
Speaker 1: So let's do this thing where we look at like
Speaker 1: where could you actually have them and create these things
Speaker 1: called distinct population segments, and let's manage these distinct population segments.
Speaker 1: And everybody thought this was a good idea at the time, right,
Speaker 1: So we made how many other for grizzy bears six seven,
Speaker 1: five or six? Northern Cascades, Northern Continental Divide stone cabinet
Speaker 1: yack um would be Alaska, right, No, that's lower forty
Speaker 1: eight dps. So they made a bunch of these dps
Speaker 1: is um with wolves. Okay, Northern Great Lakes. They made
Speaker 1: these like and they're like, let's manage this. So the
Speaker 1: cruxities arguments keeps coming down to you could point and
Speaker 1: say the Northern Great Lakes. Distinct population segment of wolves
Speaker 1: looks strong, it looks great. But someone who wants to
Speaker 1: block any kind of state management wolves is always gonna
Speaker 1: go like, yeah, but what about the neighboring area and
Speaker 1: and so they're sort of rehashing this thing that everybody
Speaker 1: agreed on is to manage these distinct population segments. Um,
Speaker 1: like you're never gonna recover the grizzly bear in Golden
Speaker 1: Gate Park. You're not gonna recover the grizzy bear and
Speaker 1: Golden Gate Parks, which it's part of its historic range
Speaker 1: parvasy storage range. Absolutely, So let's stop talking about areas
Speaker 1: that aren't gonna have them, and let's start talking about
Speaker 1: these areas that have the possibility of having a population,
Speaker 1: have a population, had that do or could possibly again
Speaker 1: like your your point of like all this crap and
Speaker 1: the billboards and the pr firms and the legal firms,
Speaker 1: like had that money been put uh into like a
Speaker 1: big wildlife easements on the Rocky Mountain Front, what that
Speaker 1: would do for grizzly bears and wolves would would outweigh
Speaker 1: all the back and forth bowl crap that they're going
Speaker 1: through right now, like like prevent this stuff from turning
Speaker 1: into condos. You're gonna you're gonna do more for wildlife
Speaker 1: than than all your back padding enriching lawyers. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to hit in this real quick. It's
Speaker 1: kind of this just came home for us in Montana.
Speaker 1: Get rid of tag man, Like remember the old days
Speaker 1: you had to have a back You had to wear
Speaker 1: a back tag on your back. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of states still gotta do that. Like you're hunting, you
Speaker 1: have to wear like a thing on your back with
Speaker 1: your license in it. Col you ever had to do
Speaker 1: that out west here? Not ever a thing Wisconsin. Ship man.
Speaker 1: If you don't anymore, you only recently didn't need to
Speaker 1: when we started uh kicking around like our tree gear
Speaker 1: or you know like tree stand ar tree gear. At
Speaker 1: first light, Um, they had the back tag hangers probably
Speaker 1: like eleven, yeah, two thousand and eleven, two twelve. He
Speaker 1: was like, it's gotta have this, you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of little metal groments that you can stick this giant
Speaker 1: safety pan crew for your for your and the last
Speaker 1: time I hunted deer in Wisconsin you still had to
Speaker 1: have that sun bitch and thing. How many years ago
Speaker 1: was that the last time I hunt a deer there,
Speaker 1: I don't know, five six years ago. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I don't think you have to wear him anymore. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And you had like you couldn't obscure it, like I
Speaker 1: had a backpack on. And so all the armchair experts
Speaker 1: are writing in like he's actually a violation because his
Speaker 1: back tags obscured by his backpack. Can you know what
Speaker 1: I was? It dougs too. He still he was telling
Speaker 1: me about those regulation changes, and he he said that
Speaker 1: the regulations read that if you choose to wear a hat,
Speaker 1: it has to be orange or just go nothing. Right.
Speaker 1: It was like, so, my bald, highly reflective head. The
Speaker 1: way these apps so are are here in Montana, they
Speaker 1: just went to an app it's called the e tag.
Speaker 1: In your future, you're not going to carry a tag
Speaker 1: around anymore. You might still, you might be in a
Speaker 1: state where you still do, but just gonna be all
Speaker 1: app based. Now here's the weird thing about the apps.
Speaker 1: I heard through the grape vine. A little birdie was
Speaker 1: telling me that in designing the app, they were wondering
Speaker 1: about the ability that when you were when you were tagged,
Speaker 1: when you were E tagging, So you're using an app
Speaker 1: that works offline, you don't need to have a cell signal,
Speaker 1: and you fill out information mail right, right, date of kill,
Speaker 1: method of kill, male, female, how many times on each side, right, whatever,
Speaker 1: biometric information thereafter. You just do this all on your
Speaker 1: app and it files it um. There was talk about
Speaker 1: why not have it also pulled a location since if
Speaker 1: you read your rag any Reagan the Planet, a game
Speaker 1: warden can ask you take me to the kill site,
Speaker 1: and you have to take them to the kill site.
Speaker 1: It's just a thing. Any warden, anytime can make you
Speaker 1: take them to the kill side of where he killed
Speaker 1: an animal. Also, when you do your surveys, like if
Speaker 1: you trap and you trap h Martin's otters, you hunt
Speaker 1: black bears, you hunt wolves, there's a part and the
Speaker 1: thing where you say where it was right. They had
Speaker 1: this chance where you could have captured that for every
Speaker 1: tagged animal in the state and you would not need
Speaker 1: to do surveys right, just be that, you know, imagine
Speaker 1: like the detailed look you'd have on harvest. But they
Speaker 1: felt that it was a privacy issue. When you download
Speaker 1: the app, it asks you if you want to have
Speaker 1: location services turned on while you're using that app, and
Speaker 1: it'll take when you don't know the app. I didn't
Speaker 1: notice that I ask you the question. And also you
Speaker 1: can opt in. You can opt in, and when you
Speaker 1: validate that tag, it's gonna record right where you're staying.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you could opt in. Yeah, I didn't know,
Speaker 1: because it's like, like I said, they can go they have.
Speaker 1: It just is weird because they have the right to
Speaker 1: make you take them there anyways, but that doesn't violent privacy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just like a given. But they like, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to be leery of saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead and track me while I'm oh, yeah, no
Speaker 1: one was. Um, but what's so funny is everybody's like,
Speaker 1: you know, open arms about being tracked. But like, dude,
Speaker 1: what do you think your phone is doing? I thought
Speaker 1: your phone monitors when you talk about and serves you
Speaker 1: ads about it an articles. Yeah, but I posted about
Speaker 1: how much I like the idea of not carrying around
Speaker 1: ten pages of paper in my backpack. Um, and a
Speaker 1: game warden sent me a message and he said that
Speaker 1: these apps, you know, they sound great, but there are
Speaker 1: like cons to them too. Um, there's like he believes
Speaker 1: there's gonna be issues with officers inspecting people's phones, perhaps
Speaker 1: like privacy batteries. Yeah, yeah, and it'd be like I
Speaker 1: left it at home, I forgot it. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know how to do it, but I get his concerns.
Speaker 1: It's just that ain't gonna stop anything. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be how it's gonna be in ten years. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Five years, you're gonna be like, remember tags. I bet
Speaker 1: you I already feel that way now, remember tags, because
Speaker 1: they've gotten this chantzier and like it used to be,
Speaker 1: like a substantial tag was printed on fancy papers like indestructible,
Speaker 1: and now for years, like you know, Montana, you just
Speaker 1: print him at home, Nebraska for probably fifteen years, and
Speaker 1: when it gets wet, you watched it dissolved. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And um, I kind of like the heavy duty tags.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a little collectible thing at the
Speaker 1: end of Oh yeah. I have a folder that's you know,
Speaker 1: two inches thick now of you know, twenty years plus
Speaker 1: of tags. And when I started doing a while back,
Speaker 1: I just take a sharpie and after a hunt, I
Speaker 1: just make a few notes on it. With Chester, we
Speaker 1: hunted Link Creek didn't get nothing. You know, never punched
Speaker 1: this one. But if I did, you know who may
Speaker 1: be helping? You know? I figured, as an old manuals
Speaker 1: will be nice memories to flip through. Yep, enough enough
Speaker 1: unpunched tags to stuff a pillow case. Kind of what
Speaker 1: I'm working on right now. Does anybody understand this conservation
Speaker 1: easement tax for AU deal? I don't understand it well enough.
Speaker 1: It's pretty confusing because it's eloquently. Can you speak to it?
Speaker 1: I can bring up some questions about it? Tell me
Speaker 1: how do you use? How do people? How would people
Speaker 1: use something where they hear like conservation easements? Like? Who
Speaker 1: would be opposed to that? That sounds fantastic. So what
Speaker 1: you're referring to is syndicate conservation easements. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that is. So there's two types of transactions when
Speaker 1: you talk to conservation easement. Can you go real high level?
Speaker 1: Can you back up one step and tell people what
Speaker 1: the hell conservation easement is? You hear about it a
Speaker 1: lot in some areas, and like, growing up, I've never
Speaker 1: heard anybody talking about a conservation easement into West Michigan. Well,
Speaker 1: they've been pioneered last thirty plus years that explain that
Speaker 1: wouldn't um. The land trust movement has really caught a
Speaker 1: lot of excitement last thirty years, like the main For instance,
Speaker 1: we have eighty land trusts because we don't have much
Speaker 1: public land. So it's been responsive to that. And so
Speaker 1: when you can serve a land, there's fee simple, which
Speaker 1: is you're buying all of the land. I own all
Speaker 1: this land, it's my land. And then a conservation easement
Speaker 1: is a type of easeman that restricts um certain uses
Speaker 1: of the property. So most of it is development rights,
Speaker 1: and so like a land trust would buy the development
Speaker 1: rights on this piece of property because you want to
Speaker 1: stay wild. There can be a bunch of other prescriptions
Speaker 1: in an Eastman like no two easements are the same.
Speaker 1: Some allow public access, a lot of them don't. UM.
Speaker 1: That's one big misconception as you see, conservations meant does
Speaker 1: not imply access no now. And there's actually you know,
Speaker 1: with federal funds like Force Legacy other things like that
Speaker 1: they've actually required that to happen as part of that
Speaker 1: program is that that Eastman has to have public access.
Speaker 1: And public access isn't necessarily vehicular acts this or anything
Speaker 1: like that. It's foot access, like just the legal terminology
Speaker 1: of public access UM. So the thing corencent um is
Speaker 1: less interesting from a conservation and our standpoint and more
Speaker 1: interesting from tax law I guess. And so when you
Speaker 1: donate a conservation easeman, there's in tax code UM if
Speaker 1: you're donating it to a charitable organization, the value. Like
Speaker 1: let's say you donate a chunk of swamp two ducks unlimited.
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that a good example. Well, let's
Speaker 1: say you you in Maine. This is this happens. You've
Speaker 1: owned a hundred acres for your whole life, and you
Speaker 1: want to donate that hundred acres of woodland um to
Speaker 1: a university or a land trust, and you want them
Speaker 1: to keep it for the public good. And the public
Speaker 1: good can be defined through scenic resources, natural resources, a
Speaker 1: public access. A bunch of different metrics apply under that
Speaker 1: public good. Even a certain amount of income, like you
Speaker 1: can have it defined as needs to be managed in
Speaker 1: a certain way. So if it's an active wood lot, right, well,
Speaker 1: like forever wild easements are very popular now, which means
Speaker 1: like you can't do anything to it, let nature take
Speaker 1: its course um and working forest easements or another example
Speaker 1: where they allow for that commercial use like you can
Speaker 1: log it, you can have roads anything associated with that use. Um.
Speaker 1: But when there's a donation of fee land or easement land,
Speaker 1: there's a value associated with that, so you can get
Speaker 1: an appraisal for just like a fee land. So the
Speaker 1: total land donation, how much does this land worth? That's
Speaker 1: what the person could deduct as a tax right off,
Speaker 1: like a charitable donation tax. Yeah, and there's a number
Speaker 1: of ways they can do that. And that's like literally
Speaker 1: as a land trust, you say, we can't you could
Speaker 1: qualify for this, but we can't give you advice on
Speaker 1: this um. So they have to do all this so
Speaker 1: they have to go give me Like you know what's
Speaker 1: so confused about land, Like a land trust has always
Speaker 1: mean like a plethora of organizations in this country that
Speaker 1: by help preserve land. There's now an airbnb for hunting
Speaker 1: called land trust, which is like kind of made it.
Speaker 1: It's like makes a lot of name confusion because it's like, well,
Speaker 1: there's also a community land trust where for affordable housing.
Speaker 1: That's a big terminology issue too, So there is a
Speaker 1: lot of it like that you have to like go
Speaker 1: think of another term now. Yeah, so I'm a land
Speaker 1: trust so conservancy you know, UM, these are mostly not
Speaker 1: what that article is talking about. But when you say that,
Speaker 1: when you talk about the tax right off part, like
Speaker 1: let's say I don'tate my hunter acres and I say
Speaker 1: to you, hey, man, I need to know the value
Speaker 1: so I can do a tax right off, you're saying
Speaker 1: that you don't. You You're like figure that out on
Speaker 1: your own. Like, I'm not going to give you what
Speaker 1: we would have to say, give you an acknowledgement. We'd
Speaker 1: have to substantiate that it is a charitable um within
Speaker 1: that our mission, you know, and it falls within those
Speaker 1: values that we're protecting, and we have to substantiate those values.
Speaker 1: And most reputable land trusts either go by the standards
Speaker 1: and practices or are accredited by the Land Trust Alliance
Speaker 1: UM and they have, you know, very long list of
Speaker 1: standards and practices UM, like getting an appraisal before you
Speaker 1: buy any land UM. And for conservation easements, this is
Speaker 1: kind of a sub sect. These have come in favor
Speaker 1: because the private landowner can continue to own the land,
Speaker 1: but their development rights are restricted. So this is very
Speaker 1: popular main forest land because the forest owners can get
Speaker 1: income from the Eastman purchase us. It's not really in
Speaker 1: conflict with their current use i e. Forestry and um,
Speaker 1: you know they can continue to cut the forest after
Speaker 1: that in place, but they're ruling out that it will
Speaker 1: be turned into a subdivision. Yeah, exactly, we can't subdivide it.
Speaker 1: You can't. There's limits on structures and commercial use and
Speaker 1: those are all defined differently. Um. But what's happening in
Speaker 1: that syndicate conservation ease meant there's a loophole where um,
Speaker 1: as a business you can buy land and in this situation, UM,
Speaker 1: simply put, you get investors to invest. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: buying a two d dollar piece of property. Um, you
Speaker 1: get everyone four guys to invest. The issue is you can,
Speaker 1: through in agreement, say any charitable donation by donating an
Speaker 1: Eastman can go to those people in this agreement. So
Speaker 1: at that point they found a lot of people in
Speaker 1: violation of this where they go get an appraisal that's inflated.
Speaker 1: So say you get your body Jim, you pay him
Speaker 1: on the side to say, hey, can you do an appraisal.
Speaker 1: Can you make this praisal come out to be food dollars?
Speaker 1: And then you donate the value and so all those
Speaker 1: guys who are part of the syndicate get a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars each UM tax deduction. So it's that it's
Speaker 1: to me that's the crime at place, Well, it's there's
Speaker 1: a legal way to do it now as a tax shelter,
Speaker 1: but most likely UM. A lot of these these deals,
Speaker 1: which I'm not an expert on UM, are taking advantage
Speaker 1: by getting inflated estimates of value and stuff like that
Speaker 1: UM and put it in perspect active. I think the
Speaker 1: article cre incident was nine billion dollars a year in
Speaker 1: the syndicate. Organizations are getting UM put in for tax
Speaker 1: write offs, whereas the Land Trust Alliance says out of
Speaker 1: all the ones just within their organizations that they deal
Speaker 1: with is one billion. So it's being used pretty much. Well.
Speaker 1: At the center of all these deals is usually a
Speaker 1: law firm, so they're kind of figuring out, you know,
Speaker 1: when you do a development, when you do land purchases,
Speaker 1: asset transfers, this could be a tool in their toolbox
Speaker 1: where they can give people higher value tax deductions than
Speaker 1: the investment they're putting in. That's the kind of the
Speaker 1: basic of two cents of it. I'm not familiar with
Speaker 1: it because literally, anyone with a logo that says land
Speaker 1: trust or anything like that is not a party to
Speaker 1: these deals at all. Like, that's not that's the confusing
Speaker 1: part about this. Well, that's why you were trying to
Speaker 1: create a distance between yourself and these fraudulent activities because
Speaker 1: you're just not involved in it. There's not there's no
Speaker 1: one who really does these. Back in the day, there
Speaker 1: were some of the bigger organizations that before the Land
Speaker 1: Trust Alliance started, did stuff like conservation easements on golf
Speaker 1: courses um and you know, obviously that's kind of outside
Speaker 1: the point of a conservation easemen, but golf course could
Speaker 1: have a tremendous value, so you would get that donation receipt.
Speaker 1: And so that's like the Land Trust Alliance came came
Speaker 1: around because there's a lot of us that are very
Speaker 1: passionate and integrity. Like it says trust right in the name, right, so, like,
Speaker 1: you know, your integrity is very important, and so to
Speaker 1: have companies lobbying for this tax shelter, uh, it's kind
Speaker 1: of adverse to what we want to do, which is
Speaker 1: build trust and not undermined it through you know, just
Speaker 1: doing backdoor deals. And that's A big misconception when you're
Speaker 1: doing land trust work is that everyone's doing it for
Speaker 1: a charitable deduction. And in my experience working with a
Speaker 1: couple of different land trust most, I would say a
Speaker 1: majority of the people who donate the properties do not
Speaker 1: take that deduction. That's a shrewd trick. You can imagine
Speaker 1: the golf course or a ski hill or something being like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna come in, we're gonna develop the piss out
Speaker 1: of it. Then we're gonna take the parts that are
Speaker 1: meant to be skied on and say that they'll never
Speaker 1: be used for anything but skiing, and get a tax
Speaker 1: deduction off it and hand it back to people as
Speaker 1: a conservation easement. Well, and there's two two issues. Is
Speaker 1: that they can create charitable nonprofits that may not be
Speaker 1: that um true blue, so they that's a legal process
Speaker 1: to create that, and so they can create a fake
Speaker 1: nonprofit so to speak to act is that conservation. He's
Speaker 1: been holder man, so that you know that's where I
Speaker 1: don't you know, I think it's an issue that the
Speaker 1: Lantrust Alliance is right now they're lobbying to try to
Speaker 1: close that going. So that's the point you were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: you're saying that they're showing these like nine billion dollars
Speaker 1: of land trust conservations some activity. But then when you
Speaker 1: go and ask the actual groups they're doing like legitimate
Speaker 1: land trust work, they can only show a billion bucks. No, specifically,
Speaker 1: that nine billion is syndicate conservation easements where it's a
Speaker 1: company who's passing the charitable gift down to investors, so
Speaker 1: versus a nonprofit who may be getting a donation from
Speaker 1: a individual or you know, even a business, but not
Speaker 1: in that situation where they're passing on the charitable gift
Speaker 1: through some investor agreement. And and these are it's important
Speaker 1: to make the distinction because these are incredible tools for
Speaker 1: you know, mon paw rancher out there who uh want
Speaker 1: to stay on the way and they want to be
Speaker 1: able to pass it down and they need to like
Speaker 1: be competitive right with like rising tax costs like Gallatin
Speaker 1: Valley is a great example, right, Like you have property
Speaker 1: tax values that are are outweighing um the value of
Speaker 1: farming of agriculture here. But you could work with a
Speaker 1: number of trusts and the UH federal government to figure
Speaker 1: out ways to put wildlife ease months on that property
Speaker 1: that that do pay something. Um Wells Main Farmland Trust
Speaker 1: has a program called by restrict and resell and agriculture
Speaker 1: is a charitable um use of the land public good
Speaker 1: and so you don't necessarily have to link it to
Speaker 1: other wildlife resources. Um SO their easements are quite different
Speaker 1: than the ones we've worked with because there sole goal
Speaker 1: is to keep farmland at a price point that farmers
Speaker 1: could have um buy them at. So they'll buy the property,
Speaker 1: they'll put a conservation easement on it, which reduces the
Speaker 1: value of the property because you're taking away those development
Speaker 1: rights and when you appraise land, mostly you're appraising on
Speaker 1: development rights, unless you're talking about large swaths of like
Speaker 1: forest land. They would then you know, value those based
Speaker 1: on like timber receipts and stuff like that. But um
Speaker 1: SO that their hope is that will allow farmers to
Speaker 1: stay on these properties productive farm soils. Um So that's
Speaker 1: the easement is to me for public access an imperfect
Speaker 1: tool because you still have that private landowner issue. So
Speaker 1: like if you want to build trails and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: you have to be very explicit with what you're trying
Speaker 1: to preserve with an easement because you still have the
Speaker 1: burden of going to court if that said landowner or
Speaker 1: even a third party violates your easement terms, you have
Speaker 1: to be ready to then go defend that in the courtroom,
Speaker 1: which can be extremely expensive. Um So because of that,
Speaker 1: most land trusts have legal endowments, that's one of the
Speaker 1: standards and practices stuff like that to help ensure against
Speaker 1: those inevitable costs. I want it get a little bit
Speaker 1: into your organization, High Peaks Alliance. Can you tell the
Speaker 1: story of just we can be talking about like how
Speaker 1: people sort of abuse the system. Can you tell can
Speaker 1: we talk about the Shiloh Pond project, you guys ran,
Speaker 1: can you talk about can you explain to people how
Speaker 1: your organization and what you did and how that worked
Speaker 1: out to demonstrate sort of like what we're talking about
Speaker 1: when we talk about like these sort of access projects. Well,
Speaker 1: so Shilo was interesting because High Peaks Alliance has been
Speaker 1: board driven for the past ten fifteen years, and so
Speaker 1: we finally got to a point, uh, through the good
Speaker 1: work of our board, to be able to hire me
Speaker 1: full time. So when we started the Shiloh Pond project,
Speaker 1: it literally started with a Facebook post from a god
Speaker 1: whose local lady, she's a teacher too, who said, how
Speaker 1: do we preserve our you know, redneck yacht club. Here
Speaker 1: are a small pond the place we love. I had
Speaker 1: grown up fishing this pond because I grew up in
Speaker 1: this area. I pretty much fished any pond up there
Speaker 1: at fish, so it kind of doesn't limit it. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's this small pond and it does have
Speaker 1: some natural occurrence trout and some stock trout. But it's
Speaker 1: close to town and it's completely undeveloped, which is rare.
Speaker 1: Who owned it. So that's what's kind of really gets
Speaker 1: my passion going because Maine in general has switched from
Speaker 1: forest landowners to investment owners. And so the Winter family
Speaker 1: own this and they also ran the H. G Win
Speaker 1: Your Mill in Kingfield, Maine. So they had owned a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of land across the landscape. And
Speaker 1: so when you know exactly saw mill, they ran a
Speaker 1: sawmill um And this story could replay a million times
Speaker 1: over Maine where it's a pulp and paper sawmill company
Speaker 1: owns the large tracts of land um and through technology
Speaker 1: advances and changes in markets and uh, you know this
Speaker 1: Wall Street asking these companies to divest these properties, meaning
Speaker 1: they used to run these as zero assets on their
Speaker 1: balance sheet to say, wait, there has a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Let's bring back more money to our shareholders. Let's sell this.
Speaker 1: So we've gone from I think from two thousand five
Speaker 1: of mains forest land change hands. Um, I'll give me
Speaker 1: that figure again. If from and this has happened before,
Speaker 1: if you, if you took a bigger window would be
Speaker 1: even larger. But for to mid two thousand, two thousand
Speaker 1: five of mains forest lands change hands. So not just
Speaker 1: land mass, but forest lands. You know ac count like
Speaker 1: every house that's sold and stuff like that. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking about the twelve million acres of northern Maine. Huh
Speaker 1: So and these I mean these have but huge tracks
Speaker 1: probably well some of them can be really massive. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands acres. I mean John Malone,
Speaker 1: he's the number one landowner in the US, owns over
Speaker 1: a million acres in our neck of the woods as
Speaker 1: one individual. Um, he's the guy bartender that cheers you
Speaker 1: remember that. No, but did he pass up? He passed
Speaker 1: up ted turner No, yeah, left him in the dust. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was mean, Well it's got a hurt. Peter back.
Speaker 1: Big Owners was like a subway founder. You know Apple,
Speaker 1: like main Forest. I mean there's foreign ownerships, there's Yale's
Speaker 1: en Dowmond owns a big portion of the main woods. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, these these are all investment owners. So they're
Speaker 1: looking to extract as much value for their purposes investments. UM.
Speaker 1: And all of us are semi um responsible if you
Speaker 1: think about like we all have four one ks and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and in those you will have a
Speaker 1: line called natural resources, and so you know their forest
Speaker 1: lands of one of the mechanisms that would go into that. UM.
Speaker 1: So getting back on topic, UM, this parcel of land
Speaker 1: was the last piece this family owned. There's five siblings.
Speaker 1: They had always let people use the property. That's kind
Speaker 1: of the tradition because everyone worked. There was a social
Speaker 1: contract that like you worked at the mill, you knew
Speaker 1: the landowner. It was that um. You know, you got power.
Speaker 1: The forest companies got a lot of influence at the
Speaker 1: Statehouse and otherwise in the communities, and they got employees.
Speaker 1: And in exchange for that, you know, we got access
Speaker 1: to the land, We got good relationships. And so that
Speaker 1: that culture has evaporated in Maine to where the best
Speaker 1: you can do now is work with a local forrester
Speaker 1: of said investment group. UM, So that that social contracts
Speaker 1: kind of evaporating. That's what High Peaks Alliance is kind
Speaker 1: of focused on creating, so that much access is evaporated. Well,
Speaker 1: some of the access, Like let's take Warehouser for example,
Speaker 1: in Maine. UM, they have all their land open. You
Speaker 1: can camp on their land. Heck, I even got a
Speaker 1: Christmas tree permit from them this year. UM. But if
Speaker 1: you look at their practices and other states, I don't
Speaker 1: think they've allowed that much access like that West stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So there's still some of that goodwill by
Speaker 1: some of the companies in Maine because of our landowner
Speaker 1: liability protections and such like that. UM, but you know,
Speaker 1: there has been a lot of trail closures, like we
Speaker 1: don't want four wheelers on our land, we don't want
Speaker 1: you to camp on our land. And because of the
Speaker 1: reduction and staffing, you're getting more gates. So they start
Speaker 1: out at seasonal gates like let's protect our road during
Speaker 1: mud season. That's a reasonable thing to do, but you're
Speaker 1: not going to spend the staff time or build a
Speaker 1: relationship locally to give anyone access to open those gates.
Speaker 1: Back up, and so you know, for instance, an area
Speaker 1: I used to go swimming in as a kid, brook
Speaker 1: Trout Fish. Um, I wanted to bring my whole wedding
Speaker 1: party there and uh like have a wedding picture of
Speaker 1: us jumping off the cliffs, and just thought it'd be
Speaker 1: a cool picture. Had everyone from Maryland, Florida, all these
Speaker 1: family friends got them back of the trucks. We had
Speaker 1: our beers in hand, we roll up the dirt road.
Speaker 1: Within a week of my wife and I scouting this
Speaker 1: and bringing up my entire wedding party, there was a
Speaker 1: gate and people it was a real bummer because it's
Speaker 1: like a mile from where the swimming hole was that
Speaker 1: we went and did something else. But it kind of
Speaker 1: underscores how it's just this slow erosion of loss of access.
Speaker 1: You couldn't point to one thing. So Shilo Pawn, you know,
Speaker 1: people love it. People tend to love the ideas of landscapes,
Speaker 1: but specifically gems on the landscape, like this is the
Speaker 1: viewpoint I love the most, this pond I love the most.
Speaker 1: And so this is one of those places that a
Speaker 1: lot of people loved. Um. We wanted to get the
Speaker 1: town to own it because I was still part time
Speaker 1: at the time. Um. And so we talked to them,
Speaker 1: would this be something you would own if we could
Speaker 1: figure out how to fundraise for it? They said, yeah, people,
Speaker 1: see you have to go to a town boat. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some interests. So we asked the Trust republic Land,
Speaker 1: who explicitly just does transactions um in our neck of
Speaker 1: the woods. They don't hold any land. So they said
Speaker 1: they would come on and help us because I laid out,
Speaker 1: here's the property, here's some potential funding sources we could
Speaker 1: apply for. This is my case. Can you guys help us?
Speaker 1: And so I put Betsy Cook, she's the state director
Speaker 1: there in a boat in Shiloh, like. I convinced her
Speaker 1: to come up to Shilo Pond and uh, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: let her out until she said yes. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So then we a very Kennedy move. Yeah. Well you know,
Speaker 1: I mean you get to this pond and it's completely undeveloped,
Speaker 1: and I hope you never visit it to all your listeners. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, because this is a community project, right,
Speaker 1: and so the idea is people like, where the money
Speaker 1: come from? How do we do this? This is impossible? Um?
Speaker 1: And so that's one of our goals, high peaks, a lines,
Speaker 1: just showing our communities that things are possible. So we
Speaker 1: we have to get the landowners on board. You have
Speaker 1: to sign a purchase and sale agreement, you have to
Speaker 1: get an appraisal, you have to do due diligence hazards assessments, surveys,
Speaker 1: look at land access rights like going over the right
Speaker 1: of ways into the road. So it's not simple. We
Speaker 1: I got Betsy out there to talk about when it
Speaker 1: was listed in two thousand eighteen, we closed on the
Speaker 1: property in So it's a saga sometimes to conserve land.
Speaker 1: Like the quickest you ever do land conservation would be
Speaker 1: like six months, and that's if you have the money
Speaker 1: right like so you it's a slow process. So the
Speaker 1: landowner has to be okay with um that fundraising period
Speaker 1: and you have to have an agreement to that with
Speaker 1: my with my minimal involvement to watching these transactions occur
Speaker 1: here again and again of conservation groups, they just can't
Speaker 1: conservation groups or federal agencies, state agencies, they can't move
Speaker 1: quick enough. No, it's and like a sweet property will
Speaker 1: come up and it's like people want to do it
Speaker 1: as a habitat thing, but for the owner the owners
Speaker 1: like I could sell the thing to borrow for cash,
Speaker 1: Like I can't sit around a way for you guys
Speaker 1: that pull all this ship together, especially now with the
Speaker 1: market as we locked out in that I think the
Speaker 1: family had some sentimental care that this could be a
Speaker 1: conservation property, so they're willing to work with you over
Speaker 1: the course of three years. But we well, I mean
Speaker 1: it was more more like late to very early a
Speaker 1: couple of years. But um, and that's about as long
Speaker 1: as you ever want to draw one of these things out.
Speaker 1: It's just, um, you know, you have fundraising hiccups. We
Speaker 1: had a right It turns out there was a gap
Speaker 1: in the right of way because these owners had sold
Speaker 1: a piece of property but didn't retain a right away
Speaker 1: on it. So we I had to go get five
Speaker 1: different landowners on a zoom call. I read Chris Boss
Speaker 1: Never Split the Difference FBI Tactics to negotiation, like like
Speaker 1: the day before, because I'm like, not screwing this up.
Speaker 1: I mean like we already were in bed with you guys,
Speaker 1: you had already sent you Chris Boss Never Split the Difference.
Speaker 1: It's one of the best books you can read. FBI
Speaker 1: negotiate or I mean, his point is you really got
Speaker 1: to understand your counterpart to then have them care about
Speaker 1: what you care about. He said, the guy that did
Speaker 1: that master class on negotiation. I haven't taken that in there,
Speaker 1: but he's really good. Lost interest. Did you take the class? No?
Speaker 1: But I was kind of interested in master class, just
Speaker 1: like I don't want to explain why I was interested
Speaker 1: in that whole world. And I happen to watch this
Speaker 1: one and I thought it was like, uh, that was pointless.
Speaker 1: It was he had good tips on small How to
Speaker 1: small talk is we got five We got five landowners
Speaker 1: to sign the conservation, the right away access deal, so
Speaker 1: you've got to have something working right for him. But yeah,
Speaker 1: well no, I just want to just for listeners, I
Speaker 1: want to just digress real quick. So let's say you
Speaker 1: got a small talk with someone but you don't feel
Speaker 1: like it, but your whatever, your wife makes you go
Speaker 1: to something. UM say something to me, calic, just say whatever.
Speaker 1: Say I got a new laptop. Hey, it's good to
Speaker 1: see you here. I don't know. UM say let me
Speaker 1: let me adad Let me show you a picture of
Speaker 1: a buck I killed. A book you killed? Yeah, a
Speaker 1: nice one a nice one. Yeah. Here it is just
Speaker 1: whatever they say, you just say it back to him
Speaker 1: with an inquisitive tone. And like people that just want
Speaker 1: to talk about themselves, it will go for hours. So
Speaker 1: Cay'll be like say, yeah, I got a new laptop. Hey,
Speaker 1: I got a new laptop. A new laptop. Yep, it's
Speaker 1: silver and uh big screen, big screen. Now you like that?
Speaker 1: What if? What if you? What if you come across
Speaker 1: someone that wants to talk more about you than themselves,
Speaker 1: that's usually not a problem. Go on, Well, I think
Speaker 1: the intent is to actually try to understand the person.
Speaker 1: I read the book. Yeah you should. I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: I'm sold on just for this one. TRANSI you got
Speaker 1: the deal done. I got the deal done well. And
Speaker 1: we had to raise funds for road maintenance fun because
Speaker 1: they had been maintaining all the road for all these years.
Speaker 1: So it's just complex and so anyways, um, you know
Speaker 1: what was cool. We had a town boat on this
Speaker 1: to see if they would accept the property. And that
Speaker 1: was really heartening because you can't get town boats that
Speaker 1: are landslides usually, but this was two to one in favor. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I couldn't imagine there'd be anyone against it.
Speaker 1: But that ship blows my mind to call you remember
Speaker 1: when they did that, they did the Savanosa and they're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're trying to give you the ranch. I
Speaker 1: want to give you the ranch, and like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you take that ranch. Yeah exactly. There's
Speaker 1: even like people in the political sphere like to make
Speaker 1: a point, we're saying like nope, I'm not gonna take it.
Speaker 1: Come again now what like why and de elaborate on this.
Speaker 1: The sabinos So Wilderness area was our I think our
Speaker 1: only at the time completely landlocked, inaccessible other than through
Speaker 1: permission crossing private land. So it was a wilderness area
Speaker 1: you couldn't get to. Yeah, seventeen thousand acres I think, um.
Speaker 1: I think it grew to twenty three thousand acres with um. Shoot,
Speaker 1: I can't remember that. Anyway, these folks had put together
Speaker 1: this ranch that bordered the wilderness their kids. Unfortunately for them, like,
Speaker 1: let's let it be known that they had intended to
Speaker 1: sell the ranch when mom and Pap passed away, and
Speaker 1: uh mon, Paul were like, we're not seeing this thing
Speaker 1: gets sold off to whoever, and so they kind of
Speaker 1: deal with the wilderness LAMB wilderness trust. Yeah, and remember
Speaker 1: being a sticking point where they the BLM right had
Speaker 1: to accept it. The BLM we're not in the public
Speaker 1: land business anymore and we won't accept I mean they did,
Speaker 1: but it was like, how could people not want it?
Speaker 1: I think it's like to prove a point. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean there's also small towns you have, like the worry
Speaker 1: of long term maintenance and you know, fixing up the
Speaker 1: road and you know you're talking about it's like, what's
Speaker 1: it gonna do the tax bases. Well, yeah, exactly, it
Speaker 1: costs land. Yeah, and I mean that's all dependent on
Speaker 1: the level of investment in development you want on your
Speaker 1: recreation lands like ball fields obviously or not cost a
Speaker 1: lot more than undeveloped force land, you know, so I
Speaker 1: don't think there'll be a tremendous cost. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about these projects, you always want to
Speaker 1: think about those costs when you're fundraising. So like we
Speaker 1: have a fund to help them with some of their
Speaker 1: startup costs. Oh that's good idea. Well, like you know,
Speaker 1: the bridge needs to be redact, the road needs a
Speaker 1: little fixing up, and and yes, so you're not handing
Speaker 1: them a total pile of headache without some way to
Speaker 1: mitigate it. Well, not only that is we've helped them
Speaker 1: develop a town committee and they actually uh we tapped
Speaker 1: it in I members. There was more applicants than available slots,
Speaker 1: and so this like board actually had to interview some
Speaker 1: of these people. So we got a really good mix
Speaker 1: of passionate people and most of them all had some
Speaker 1: personal connection to them loving Shiloa Pond. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the big benefits I find of local conservation is
Speaker 1: you're building some of that self governance across the landscape.
Speaker 1: Is like you have a say in the land. So
Speaker 1: that's important. You guys. What was interesting, um, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the part of the fundraising was your help,
Speaker 1: you know with the land Access initiative and that was
Speaker 1: really um fun grant so to speak for me, because
Speaker 1: it was so different than everything else we do. What
Speaker 1: was the normal way you were getting the money? Well,
Speaker 1: like you a lot of these deals, you try to
Speaker 1: structure it around. One had large grant so far as
Speaker 1: was this main natural resource conservation program. It's a mitigation
Speaker 1: fund um and then you have trust for public lands costs.
Speaker 1: The survey costs, other land costs, all these deals and um,
Speaker 1: you know, so you have a number of private philanthropies
Speaker 1: that solicit grants and individuals and so you you know,
Speaker 1: you guys were a little different on that. I saw
Speaker 1: the the posting and I said, well, what what the
Speaker 1: heck all put in something? I don't know? Why not?
Speaker 1: I do a lot of these, So it's not like,
Speaker 1: explain the cal explain the posting. So yeah, it's our
Speaker 1: our the meat Eater Land Access initiative, which started around
Speaker 1: the Ronnella Who tell Us campaign merchandise that we built
Speaker 1: up and then we got it. We're like, oh, we
Speaker 1: should do something good with this money, and it became
Speaker 1: like the campaign promise, which was provide more hunting and
Speaker 1: fishing like and so we decided to fun to raise
Speaker 1: fundraise through merch fundraise through some auctions and uh even
Speaker 1: got a couple of direct donations that that we were
Speaker 1: able to funnel to Brent the High Peaks Alliance there
Speaker 1: at the end, but our ask was for anyone who
Speaker 1: listens to our shows, goes to our website, watches our
Speaker 1: stuff on on Netflix, if you know of a place
Speaker 1: that could use more access, ideally, like you know, granny's
Speaker 1: passing away and doesn't want to see the farm go
Speaker 1: to just anybody. So you guys can buy it. And
Speaker 1: it provides like a a pathway to a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: acres of landlocked public land, the only way to get
Speaker 1: down the river, or the only way to get on
Speaker 1: the river, or an easement that we could help pay
Speaker 1: for that goes through a new subdivision into the National Forest.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of different things that we'd be interested.
Speaker 1: And so he kind of put out that call to
Speaker 1: action a couple of times, and we have a If
Speaker 1: you go underneath the conservation tab at the meteor dot com,
Speaker 1: you will see our land Access Initiative. Through there, you
Speaker 1: can go in there and click the button that uh
Speaker 1: says you submit submit a property. We have it on
Speaker 1: there twice just in case you miss it the first
Speaker 1: time and you just found it like that. I saw
Speaker 1: the um runella tell us and I gotta kick out
Speaker 1: of that, and I said, I'll go look at it
Speaker 1: by campaign. Hat are you guys running in? We gotta
Speaker 1: wait and see, wait and see how how the field
Speaker 1: shakes out. Um Yeah, no, So I checked out. Most
Speaker 1: programs from companies are really horribly executed in that they're
Speaker 1: normally worried about how it's going to look for them.
Speaker 1: And when I saw your program the questions you're asking,
Speaker 1: I could tell you actually wanted to do a project
Speaker 1: and help a project. So most of these things I
Speaker 1: just cut off, like I don't attempt them, because you
Speaker 1: can when their first question is what's your social media following?
Speaker 1: You know you know that their intent is not the project.
Speaker 1: Their intent is to do cause marketing, which can be
Speaker 1: a benefit. But it's hard for me to put in
Speaker 1: a lot of effort into a grand application when you
Speaker 1: know it's just going to be an extractive process. Because
Speaker 1: these these are pretty difficult, and you have to respect
Speaker 1: the donors and respect the granters, but you know you
Speaker 1: want to work with people who want to do the work.
Speaker 1: And so the questions we just used cause what cause?
Speaker 1: Cause marketing? That's interesting, Uh, it's been a lot. It's
Speaker 1: been uh an exciting term for nonprofits, I guess um.
Speaker 1: But also you think of like tom Shoes, that would
Speaker 1: be an example of cause market It wouldn't be like that,
Speaker 1: we're gonna name the sports arena Kinko's stadium well cause
Speaker 1: marketing that you know that I wouldn't call that cause marketing.
Speaker 1: I call it like, these companies are showing as part
Speaker 1: of their business model. Um, it's not about profits, it's
Speaker 1: about like mission, and so a lot of times they
Speaker 1: use a nonprofit to align that way. Um, Whereas like
Speaker 1: I keep thinking of tom shoes, like you buy a
Speaker 1: shoe and they don'tate a shoe how to go? But
Speaker 1: homet But I don't get where where? Why is that bad?
Speaker 1: It's not bad. It's that when I am a nonprofit
Speaker 1: trying to get this project done, it's expensive money. I
Speaker 1: see where you might be in a situation where like
Speaker 1: that's all good and fun, but I gotta move and
Speaker 1: I don't want to bog this down with well, how
Speaker 1: you know, it's more like a job, right, So I
Speaker 1: would call that fee for service, like sometimes we do
Speaker 1: work for other organizations like writing management plan stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But I would consider that a fee for service or
Speaker 1: a sponsorship versus a grant or yeah, just how it
Speaker 1: will it's and it's there's legal terminology obviously, but then
Speaker 1: there's just the reality of limited capacity to work and
Speaker 1: please a business to the fullest extent that they want
Speaker 1: because they have an outcome in their head versus Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to get this this deal done?
Speaker 1: What so how do how do we do be? I mean,
Speaker 1: be honest, it was our first year, so well, I
Speaker 1: I think we can do a crass course on conservation
Speaker 1: just because um, you know, like the examples you're using
Speaker 1: of like hopefully your grandmother has access to this. It
Speaker 1: simplifies a pretty complex process of finding opportunities, vetting opportunities,
Speaker 1: vetting funding sources. You know. So I think with us
Speaker 1: it's worked. We had a benefit because most conservation organizations
Speaker 1: are so put together in their approach to projects that
Speaker 1: something like this might have been hard to fit in.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you've got for applications, Um, how
Speaker 1: many applications? How many things did you get? Caliber? Serious? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think we ended up with close to like four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty submissions, and of those I would I
Speaker 1: would only consider like a hundred and fifty to be
Speaker 1: like worth a second look, and of that one fifty, uh,
Speaker 1: twenty three, and then got down to eight where you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is real, real deal stuff. Yeah, you know, And
Speaker 1: that's I mean, when you're working with reputable organizations, we're
Speaker 1: doing the research to highlight through our strategies, what are
Speaker 1: the best opportunities, what what are the most bang for
Speaker 1: your buck? Because there's not a single nonprofit that's not
Speaker 1: working under restricted funds, and so you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of effort going into looking across the landscape. What
Speaker 1: are the landowner willingness, what are the ecological values, what
Speaker 1: are the constituents values that want to donate to such things?
Speaker 1: And so you get to a point of a lot
Speaker 1: of people who call you up and say, hey, you
Speaker 1: want to conserve my land. Uh, there's this idea that
Speaker 1: there's this endless amount of money and conservation because there's
Speaker 1: some people that donate lots of money, but it's not
Speaker 1: like compared to what land costs. It's a difficult thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So when I applied, the questions were pretty straightforward, you know,
Speaker 1: like what's the opportunity, Uh, what do you guys need
Speaker 1: help with? How do you see meat eat or helping
Speaker 1: There's a few others, um. And what was exciting to
Speaker 1: me is, you know, I've really enjoyed the Mediator series
Speaker 1: on Netflix. I have not consumed as much on everything
Speaker 1: else just because of time. Um, But your ability to
Speaker 1: describe what hunting is beyond the kill is you know
Speaker 1: what I've reflected with, and so that's like why I'm
Speaker 1: in conservation is that you get uh to see people's
Speaker 1: love of the land and you get to describe that
Speaker 1: in different ways. And so you know, in real terms,
Speaker 1: everyone in Kingfield loved that piece of property for a
Speaker 1: different reason. Like one guy talked about ice skating there
Speaker 1: as a kid. You know, Um, you know trout fishing,
Speaker 1: caught my first trout there, used to camp there, used
Speaker 1: to throw parties there, you know. Like so people have
Speaker 1: different ways to relate to the land. So we used
Speaker 1: to burn tires and have keggers out there. Yeah they're
Speaker 1: still letting high school kids have keggers. No, No, while
Speaker 1: it's not kids these days don't have the same fire
Speaker 1: in their guts. So yeah, I don't want to pack
Speaker 1: tractor tires a mile back in the woods. I think
Speaker 1: that died my generation maybe when that died. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so we applied cal reached out. Um. That's that was
Speaker 1: refreshing to me because usually as these things unroll, your
Speaker 1: first few opportunities or your best opportunities, and then people
Speaker 1: encumber these things with process and make them more cumbersome.
Speaker 1: It's just the way you apply um. Because you get
Speaker 1: more committees involved, you get more people involved and becomes
Speaker 1: more difficult to you know, grants in general are like
Speaker 1: those foundations in general are like this. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think I don't know if Cal remembers the email, but
Speaker 1: I got an email from Ryan Cal Calhan. I got
Speaker 1: a big kick out of that, and um, I woke
Speaker 1: up four thirty in the morning because you have to
Speaker 1: get in your tree stand early. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: I wrote that in the email, Like I'm writing this
Speaker 1: in the golden hours, so I'm most focused, meaning like
Speaker 1: if I was to be hunting, this would be the
Speaker 1: best time to hunt. And that's why I'm writing you
Speaker 1: back at this time, so I'm like super focused. Um.
Speaker 1: So your goal is just to present the best case possible.
Speaker 1: And Cal did a great job. He flew out very
Speaker 1: soon after to make sure I wasn't full crap. Got
Speaker 1: a famous red main hot dog great like a lot
Speaker 1: of extra phost fates. Well, I don't know what makes
Speaker 1: it red, but makes it taste better. If you read
Speaker 1: so much about dog, have you ever had a red hot?
Speaker 1: You don't have to read about it. I'm talking to
Speaker 1: the listener, took a paddle around, took a paddle around
Speaker 1: the lake, checked out the waterfall. So did cal seem
Speaker 1: like a shrewd negotiator when he came out. I think
Speaker 1: he just wanted to find out if what I was
Speaker 1: saying was the truth, and that you know, it was
Speaker 1: easy too. UM. I was excited to show him around
Speaker 1: the area because the the area in this area of Maine,
Speaker 1: it's we call it the High Peaks, which is puny
Speaker 1: compared to your mountains, but it's the ten of the
Speaker 1: fourteen tallest peaks Maine. And it's that aggregation. UM, it's headwaters,
Speaker 1: a lot of the river's main and so you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of big landscape conservation happening now to UM.
Speaker 1: You know, Boston University put out a study of looking
Speaker 1: at Biden's thirty by thirty goals and if you look
Speaker 1: at like species diversity, carbon storage, ability to protect large landscapes, UM,
Speaker 1: all those things on their own. UM have different areas
Speaker 1: of the US that those could be the highest values.
Speaker 1: But like Maine really lights up when you start laying
Speaker 1: all those value was on top of each other. People
Speaker 1: that talk about you know, people on talking about thirty
Speaker 1: by thirty by thirty for a while, and uh, and
Speaker 1: they point out the necessity to sort of like uncoupled
Speaker 1: that with the Biden administration. Yeah, you know, we because
Speaker 1: now you're going to fall into this thing where the
Speaker 1: next administration they'll jett is in it because it was
Speaker 1: the Biden thing, or vice versa would be like, you know,
Speaker 1: throwing out whatever anybody had the head you did. Do
Speaker 1: you know, I think it out of like E O. Wilson,
Speaker 1: is that okay called the Wilson thirty thirty. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think he wanted fifty by fifty exactly to your point,
Speaker 1: is that the landscape by two thousand fifty that I
Speaker 1: think E O. Wilson that was what he wanted. The
Speaker 1: Arizona legislature, you had a bill um that I can't
Speaker 1: I don't know if it passed or not, but said
Speaker 1: it was just a flat out no to the thirty
Speaker 1: by thirty plan, which isn't actually a plan yet. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's a concept right now. But no, you
Speaker 1: can't hold that concept in your head exactly. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a little polar as Yeah, and I guess the they
Speaker 1: just latched onto it as like a good marketing piece.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have pointed that out, um where
Speaker 1: you put those lands, Like, for instance, I think Montana
Speaker 1: is something like thirty seven percent um publicly owned state
Speaker 1: and federal something. I had thirty to thirty. I got
Speaker 1: two different numbers. One's thirty. I think that was the
Speaker 1: federal land. So it's like maybe Montana already has their
Speaker 1: job done right, But Maine mains conservation land is um
Speaker 1: easman and otherwise it's land, whereas all of other all
Speaker 1: the other New England states combined is twenty seven percent land.
Speaker 1: So that's four point two million acres of conserved land
Speaker 1: and Maine versus five point eight in the rest of
Speaker 1: New England. So like Maine has cheaper, cheaper land which
Speaker 1: is changing rapidly in large landscape. So it's like a
Speaker 1: place where you have a lot of opportunity that is
Speaker 1: us more easily executed on because it's all privately owned already.
Speaker 1: Did kel Uh ever make a suggestion that you change
Speaker 1: the pond to okale OCALI pon. Yeah, Well there is
Speaker 1: the sulation here. I forgot to mention, yeah, your checks
Speaker 1: are spent um. There was a debate and I have
Speaker 1: never solved it, but on the older maps it's called
Speaker 1: Dutton Pond, and sometime it was renamed Shiloh. And I've
Speaker 1: debated whether this was because of the biblical references that
Speaker 1: sounds very old Testament or was it like Battle of Shiloh,
Speaker 1: like did they change it after you know those wars
Speaker 1: this so you know, I don't know. I haven't been
Speaker 1: able to find it. I did find a cool Forest
Speaker 1: and Stream article, which is um the precursor to Field
Speaker 1: and Stream, and they talked about how they brought up
Speaker 1: a guided group to the three ponds up there and
Speaker 1: they caught five hundred trout over the three days. And
Speaker 1: they're not start bringing up more and more people. They
Speaker 1: had them all stinger. So since the since the you
Speaker 1: guys finished the pond deal, done got all the money
Speaker 1: I bought the thing. Um, has there been any uh,
Speaker 1: have there been any cons to come out of the
Speaker 1: whole thing. It's been interesting, has been heavily visited. There's
Speaker 1: been increased visitation for sure. Um mostly non. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's hunting fishing crowd really. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the local press brought some of the resort people
Speaker 1: down to check it out. Um, there's definitely an interesting
Speaker 1: um study we could do on canoe storage. So we've
Speaker 1: been debating because in Maine there's a tradition that you
Speaker 1: dragon old canoe uh to a body water and you
Speaker 1: just leave it there for any one to you case
Speaker 1: you ever need again. It's the way to get a
Speaker 1: canoe out of your yard exactly. And the problem was
Speaker 1: people sometime in my lifetime started locking their canoes. They
Speaker 1: put nicer canoes out there and locked them, and so
Speaker 1: that's led to like way too many canoes. When everyone
Speaker 1: just used some old, beat up, you know, aluminum canoe,
Speaker 1: it was fine. You know, you got wet, but that
Speaker 1: was the deal is, like there was a canoe there,
Speaker 1: you didn't need to bring another one. But what was
Speaker 1: interesting is we've had old canoes leave a new canoes
Speaker 1: show up, but it's uh net negative. So we've set
Speaker 1: a policy of thresholds of canoes that if it reaches
Speaker 1: this specific threshold, that will consider it an issue. But
Speaker 1: for now we're gonna keep it as is like traditional
Speaker 1: main like you leave your canoe because we're gonna keep
Speaker 1: the parking lot out where it is. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: on to be a walk in pond um So that's
Speaker 1: the idea. Is what we've heard from everyone on the
Speaker 1: committee is that they want to keep it primitive. They
Speaker 1: don't want to build it up too much. They want
Speaker 1: to do more traditional signage um and have it because
Speaker 1: it's just so rare to have something with that feeling
Speaker 1: of wilderness be so close to you know town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know a spot that the people's stage boats and
Speaker 1: there's they've brought three up over the years. Two of
Speaker 1: them are unusable now. One of them is huge and
Speaker 1: bright blue. It's hard to get him in there. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not bringing them out, are you? Just? I want
Speaker 1: you so bad though, because it's so beautiful to give
Speaker 1: the like, oh there's that stupid things. Well, like in
Speaker 1: Northern Maine Major Conservancy MC, they do programs, they have volunteers,
Speaker 1: they go out and drag out these broken up let's
Speaker 1: call those guys, you know, see what the budget is.
Speaker 1: It's pretty funny though, like the you get underneath, like
Speaker 1: the canopy of the trees right on the pond shore
Speaker 1: Molo and it's just like a long hist of paddling
Speaker 1: on that lake laid out right there. It's like and
Speaker 1: that those people on the end or debt, well we
Speaker 1: joked that, like is there are some of these boats
Speaker 1: here like past their owner's demise, Like you know, we
Speaker 1: I don't know if we'll ever find out. You need
Speaker 1: to do like you gotta do when you leave an
Speaker 1: ice shaney um out on the lake. If you leave
Speaker 1: it there, you gotta put your name in address on it. Well,
Speaker 1: there's been debates about the boat registry, and that doesn't
Speaker 1: sit well with some people, imagine, but I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of this whole boat. Well while you're
Speaker 1: registering your guns and oh yeah, I firmly I stay
Speaker 1: in firmly against canoe register exactly. But I can see
Speaker 1: in the case of something like that, it might be
Speaker 1: that if you're gonna ditch your canoe at this pond,
Speaker 1: since we own the pond, we would like you to
Speaker 1: leave your name on it. That's not big government telling
Speaker 1: you to register your canoe. Well, so we have a
Speaker 1: system worked out. There's one boat that's irritating me. They
Speaker 1: most everyone's respectful, bring us to back up into the forest,
Speaker 1: like in this area that's been culturally appropriated here, just uh,
Speaker 1: there's one guy that keeps leaving it on the sand
Speaker 1: gravel bank, and you know, it's just being lazy. And
Speaker 1: so I've dragged this canoe three times. Now my new
Speaker 1: approach is going to be dragged back to the parking
Speaker 1: lot with the note. So like every time they want
Speaker 1: to leave it on the shore, they have to bring
Speaker 1: it all the way back into the ponds. Big Woods
Speaker 1: Canoe politics. I was gonna ask Brent if he would
Speaker 1: be excited to know how much funding we have in
Speaker 1: the land of Access right now? Yeah, you gotta that's what.
Speaker 1: That's what now. You gotta lay it out with cal
Speaker 1: So year one when we I don't even know what
Speaker 1: we really started with like five grand or something after
Speaker 1: our initial kind of push, and then we started forming
Speaker 1: this thing up and eventually, um, we cut you guys
Speaker 1: at chet for like thirty five grand, is that right? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: with the donors you helped link us up with, it
Speaker 1: was all said and done and then um yeah, so
Speaker 1: that was like cash on hand fund raising and then
Speaker 1: uh some some last minute donors. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you guys, because I was pretty blown away with like
Speaker 1: the doss boat and um, your rifle. You know, I've
Speaker 1: never considered ever putting my rifle up for anything, so
Speaker 1: I thought that was I got a bunch more up fixed.
Speaker 1: So we auctioned off the original Doss Boat from our
Speaker 1: series Doss Boat, Lefty rifle from Steve Janice through in
Speaker 1: at least backpack and some things. I think we had
Speaker 1: some really good donations. I got a steel chainsaw on
Speaker 1: the mix and some some good conservation books and UM
Speaker 1: and that. That was a fun, fun thing and we
Speaker 1: are obviously it's live on the website right now. The
Speaker 1: Land Access Initiative lives again. We're taking um both donations
Speaker 1: if you make a purchase at the store and and
Speaker 1: round up you can choose to round up into the
Speaker 1: Land Access Initiative. Uh. The Auction House of Oddities is
Speaker 1: going to come back in mid April that soon with
Speaker 1: a bunch of awesome stuff, uh in including we're working
Speaker 1: on the makeo the Doss Boat three, which I honestly
Speaker 1: want a bid on, so you got some competition if
Speaker 1: you see that boat three. Boat will be an auction item,
Speaker 1: not a raffle item because it's some legal thing. You
Speaker 1: can't paying the butt and we're trying to do good
Speaker 1: stuff with it. Like is somebody really gonna get you
Speaker 1: guys like that? It's so cliche, like dog on lawyers.
Speaker 1: But holy cow, those guys up just make stuff just
Speaker 1: so complicated. So yeah, you can you can contribute that way,
Speaker 1: or we would ab slutely love And I know Brent
Speaker 1: has a bunch of good ideas. He's going to be
Speaker 1: one of your competitors. Suggest a property, Submit a property
Speaker 1: that we can explore and hopefully help fundraise and and
Speaker 1: secure to provide more access to hunting and fishing. You'll
Speaker 1: know you're getting close with Callahan shows up and paddles around.
Speaker 1: That's right, no water, water whatever, He's still kind of paddle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the tip off. And they're not they're not
Speaker 1: sent him out here on a flight. Right, if you're
Speaker 1: not interested, how do people like like give it a
Speaker 1: give a snapshot of what kind of stuff people should
Speaker 1: be keeping their eyes out for. Well, you know, Brent
Speaker 1: had something that really was like a beautiful situation. Right,
Speaker 1: They've done a lot of the legwork. The property that
Speaker 1: they wanted to secure was going to be held in
Speaker 1: perpetuity for public access, two things that we hold near
Speaker 1: and dear, which is just like going out and experiencing
Speaker 1: and enjoying nature plus fishing. Um, I think if you
Speaker 1: if you drew a moose tag, you might be able
Speaker 1: to get a moose out there. Yeah, we have some pictures. Um.
Speaker 1: And again they had like a goal line like we
Speaker 1: got to have these funds by this closing date. Here
Speaker 1: we go come in and help. And so that that
Speaker 1: was a great one. But funds for let's say, phishing
Speaker 1: access sites, funds for uh public ease months through private ground.
Speaker 1: Um is something as simple as you know, canoe or
Speaker 1: kayak launches into rivers. There's anything that provides more access
Speaker 1: to a place that doesn't have it. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the best case scenario, like if you imagine, if you
Speaker 1: want to imagine, like the extreme good one, it would
Speaker 1: be let's say there's some five section I'm stowing the
Speaker 1: number out. There's five sections of landlocked public land. There's
Speaker 1: no legal access to it, but all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they knew about their granny had an acre of land,
Speaker 1: and if someone owned that acre land and made it
Speaker 1: a trailhead, people would be able to screw around on
Speaker 1: all that landlocked land. That would be well, sweet deal.
Speaker 1: I would say some practical tips people suppressed, so I
Speaker 1: do a lot of what's wrong with that? Well that,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a few good things there. If someone
Speaker 1: finds that piece of properis that is granny owned it
Speaker 1: well perfect, then that guy one has to figure out
Speaker 1: if Granny is willing to sell. But that that a
Speaker 1: lot of times would be your best bet is to
Speaker 1: get a group organization in your area involved. So like
Speaker 1: let's say you find that one acre piece you've been
Speaker 1: cruising on X, you've been on your tax rolls, which
Speaker 1: most towns have public tax roles. You can find pretty
Speaker 1: much where a one you know, any piece of property
Speaker 1: exists on earth. Uh, you can find who owns that.
Speaker 1: You can start compiling that information um and then figure
Speaker 1: out who are the players in your area. So state
Speaker 1: states usually have boat launch um, you know departments, and
Speaker 1: there's I F and W there, which is inland Fisheries
Speaker 1: wild Life Maine, there's federals. So you would look at
Speaker 1: in your area who has done work before and reach
Speaker 1: out to them with this opportunity to say, not only
Speaker 1: do I think this would be awesome for all these reasons,
Speaker 1: like it connects to your conservation land, it protects this stream,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, um that there's also this
Speaker 1: group that I think would help fund it, there's this
Speaker 1: opportunity through the Land Access Initiative that we could suggest
Speaker 1: this because it would be right up their alley. And
Speaker 1: so your goal is always to link good projects with
Speaker 1: donor interests. So your donor interests here as I would
Speaker 1: describe it as like it has to be something to
Speaker 1: do with hunting, fishing. I know you you casted a
Speaker 1: wider net as far as other access. But my understanding
Speaker 1: of you guys, which you lay it out there fairly obviously,
Speaker 1: is the project probably should have some fishing and hunting
Speaker 1: values added. Yeah. I mean if there's a river, assuming
Speaker 1: there's a fish in that river, which is the safest thing,
Speaker 1: but not uh you know, a mild multi use trail
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um so yeah, that that is
Speaker 1: the big thing. Go to the Meteor dot com you'll
Speaker 1: see our land Access initiative and this this is our
Speaker 1: big conservation push. So we've raised and you're gonna assess
Speaker 1: the stuff that comes in. Yep, assess stuff that comes in. Ideally,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have so much good stuff that I'll need
Speaker 1: some help to and we got that lined up. So
Speaker 1: and when when we fire up the auction house of odities,
Speaker 1: how long we gonna run it for this time. I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna run it for two weeks only, so
Speaker 1: lots of good stuff, high turnover. Uh, you know, this
Speaker 1: is your chance to make a big impact to access
Speaker 1: and get something awesome. So that's great. And then Brent,
Speaker 1: are you gonna send in some submissions to OCALE. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we got we have one right now. The
Speaker 1: Nature Conservancy is trying to purchase seven thousand acres for
Speaker 1: the state, and our role into it is to try
Speaker 1: to keep the road open that for a length to
Speaker 1: be determined because this area, like the book I gave you,
Speaker 1: that moose hunting book, the Great Main Moose Hunt. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of those balls in there were
Speaker 1: shot up in that land and so you know a
Speaker 1: lot of that lands on going to a forever while
Speaker 1: management scenario. And uh, it's good. We wanted to be conserved,
Speaker 1: but we want to keep road access into this area,
Speaker 1: so we have to raise some money to help out
Speaker 1: with that. I see, you know, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: That's a great example. But then we have two in
Speaker 1: Maine in a row. Yeah, but this is landscape. You
Speaker 1: can show the progression Steve, a small project leading to
Speaker 1: larger project right, send your thing and keep that in mind. Folks,
Speaker 1: send your thing, and everybody send your pitching and also
Speaker 1: do stuff like well, we'll have various ways coming up
Speaker 1: or you can support the Land Access Initiative, and people
Speaker 1: done a lot of support already. But just like you
Speaker 1: know auction house roundups when you go on to meetia
Speaker 1: dot com and you buy something to the roundup, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have some round up matching stuff coming into play.
Speaker 1: So stay tuned and all that send ideas. We're trying
Speaker 1: to find a really cool freaking project. Man. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: if you're in Maine, you can always reach out to
Speaker 1: Brent West the High Peaks Alliance. Talk to him about,
Speaker 1: you know, being our first ever recipient of the Land
Speaker 1: Access Initiative grant. Let's call it and see where you
Speaker 1: can help out in your home state of Maine. If
Speaker 1: you're listening at home and you've been meaning to go
Speaker 1: get that old canoe you got tied to a tree
Speaker 1: up at Shiloh Pond, look forward to the parking lot
Speaker 1: Brent West, High Peaks Alliance find them if you're If
Speaker 1: you're a maner, that's maners. If you're a mainer um,
Speaker 1: jump on and do support there because they're obviously doing
Speaker 1: real work on the ground to give people places the
Speaker 1: recreate outside, including but not limited to hunting and fishing.
Speaker 1: Fair Yeah, definitely, And I would say, you know, anyone
Speaker 1: who visits or loves this neck of wood should reach
Speaker 1: out because we have a a tremendous seasonal population. You know,
Speaker 1: in this area is the recreation basket for the Northeast.
Speaker 1: You know, there's sixty million people within a twelve hour drive,
Speaker 1: and you know this might be our last opportunity to
Speaker 1: keep an area that you can drive to with your family,
Speaker 1: for your kids, that's within striking distance of those big
Speaker 1: Eastern cities. Keep this big landscape intact before it's all
Speaker 1: bought up, locked up exactly, all right, man, Thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: stay too for trivia. Got trivia coming up? I know
Speaker 1: smoke brnt West, bring it. Thanks Brett,