Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening Hunt podcast, you
Speaker 1: can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are
Speaker 1: the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the
Speaker 1: Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor
Speaker 1: where you stand with on X. Hey everyone, quick announcement
Speaker 1: before we get started. So this is a special addition
Speaker 1: to part podcast. Get your regular part which happens next,
Speaker 1: and then we got an extra special part which happens
Speaker 1: after that, so make sure you stay tuned. An extra
Speaker 1: special part has to do with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation
Speaker 1: Partnership working in conjunction with on X, and together they
Speaker 1: just released a new report called Inaccessible State Lands in
Speaker 1: the West, The extent of the landlocked problem and the
Speaker 1: tools to fix it. Now, if you remember if you
Speaker 1: listen to the show, and you obviously do, because here
Speaker 1: we are. We did a show with t RCP and
Speaker 1: on X a little over a year ago in which
Speaker 1: we outlined the findings of their Federal land Landlocked Report,
Speaker 1: meaning all kinds of land you and I could be
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing and covorting around on but we can't
Speaker 1: because there's no legal access to it. It's just like
Speaker 1: chunks of public land sitting there, but you can't legally
Speaker 1: get on it because it's surrounded by private land. And
Speaker 1: so they looked at that and how to take care
Speaker 1: of that, and they followed that up now with the
Speaker 1: State Land Report, which has some pretty like staggering findings
Speaker 1: in it with very real implications for anyone that likes
Speaker 1: to spend time outdoors. So stay tuned and thanks to
Speaker 1: t R C P and on next for pulling us together,
Speaker 1: and stay tuned to hear all about it after this
Speaker 1: here show. Okay, a couple quick things here. First, Mark Kenyan,
Speaker 1: here's one for you. Have you ever heard, you know,
Speaker 1: like words for big stuff like huge or toad, jumbo, mondoga.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard a guy wrote in one and
Speaker 1: about where he's from in southern Ohio a big buck?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think this might just be in
Speaker 1: his social circle. The big buck is a slender. You know,
Speaker 1: it's been g being pronounced the same as in giant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have heard of that slender. Now how I heard
Speaker 1: of it is there was a video production team out
Speaker 1: of Ohio. This substantiate it, and I'm pretty sure they
Speaker 1: were called slender hollow. And I just remember this because
Speaker 1: when I was in early college, they were they they
Speaker 1: specialized in big bucks from hollows. While I watched this,
Speaker 1: you could get the TV show online. I watched it
Speaker 1: in college. It was called again slender. I think it
Speaker 1: was slender hollo if I remember so? Did that? Is
Speaker 1: that why people started calling him slenders? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: I've never heard it used in that way, but that
Speaker 1: would make me think that could be where it came from,
Speaker 1: given their birth from Ohio. You don't even know about this.
Speaker 1: I never heard of a slender. Have we talked about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know if people in Ohio I should use
Speaker 1: the word hollow. I feel like it's cultural appropriation. No.
Speaker 1: I think if they say hollo, it's fine. Yeah, a hollow,
Speaker 1: that's fine. UM. I had a guy from his Missouri
Speaker 1: once I had dropped him off somewhere where I was
Speaker 1: guying him elk hunting, and I came back to him
Speaker 1: and he was telling me about how the bolt was
Speaker 1: hollering down there over in the holler. Have you guys
Speaker 1: heard this one dude rode in that. Um, he's saying
Speaker 1: he's saying, if you want tender backstrap, you hang the
Speaker 1: deer's carcass by the pelvic bone. Do you hear this?
Speaker 1: There's no strain. I have not heard that. I have
Speaker 1: a hard time buying hank. You're not in your head.
Speaker 1: I've heard this. But they put even a professional butcher
Speaker 1: will put a hook in the cavity and hanging like
Speaker 1: that because you don't want You want to stay by
Speaker 1: that microphone. Sorry about that? You want? You want? Then
Speaker 1: you want the hind quarters ninety degrees angle from the
Speaker 1: hanging carcass upside down. Yeah, when when you hang him
Speaker 1: under tension, the rigor mortis does more damage to the meat.
Speaker 1: I've heard it. I think you just made that up.
Speaker 1: You heard it by having executed on it. No, No,
Speaker 1: I still hang my dear and I don't know him hanging.
Speaker 1: I don't have a walk in cooler or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But you have heard this. And if you go to
Speaker 1: like a processor, I've noticed they hanged the ear and
Speaker 1: the cows that way. Do you um doing? You guys
Speaker 1: electrocute your dear right after you shoot him? Electric cute? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Not once? Never heard of? Did you ever hear there's
Speaker 1: this company, and I never got around to trying it. Man,
Speaker 1: I wanted to tender It's called tender buck because you know,
Speaker 1: you ever been to you ever watched them slaughter cattle
Speaker 1: and slaughterhouse. How they hit him with that captive bolt
Speaker 1: then they hang them up. I think they cut their
Speaker 1: jugglar and Na's app him with electricity. Uh and it
Speaker 1: does a number of things. But man, when I hit
Speaker 1: him with that, they just relax. So this guy made
Speaker 1: this thing and he was marking it to hunters. You
Speaker 1: run it off a car battery, but apparently you're supposed
Speaker 1: to like run over there, so damn, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: pretty quick over there, Like so damn quick that you
Speaker 1: there's there's like a there's a time limit. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like when they do with cattle, it's within seconds.
Speaker 1: I mean, and you have to have a car battery
Speaker 1: with you. I've heard that guys like I've heard that
Speaker 1: like commercial shooters like down in Texas, that shooting on
Speaker 1: the go out and you know, shooting non natives that
Speaker 1: that going to the meat market that they did they
Speaker 1: use I don't know if they use that product, but
Speaker 1: they're out there shocking them. So what's the advantage. We're
Speaker 1: trying to get a meat scientist. There's this meat scientists
Speaker 1: I want to get on who's at Purdue University. And
Speaker 1: because I could tell you why, I think what it
Speaker 1: has to do with like how the animal goes through
Speaker 1: has to do with how the animal goes through rigor
Speaker 1: mortis mhm um, and there's some other complicating factors there.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to do it because I want
Speaker 1: to have a guy come in who really really knows.
Speaker 1: So for the hanging thing I did, uh, it was
Speaker 1: a professional butcher who who didn't gave him presentation. I
Speaker 1: was at a professional butcher you know. Um another one, Mark,
Speaker 1: we'll introduce everybody in a second. Here, Mark, what's the
Speaker 1: name of your trailer? Camp with trailer? Oh? I mean
Speaker 1: I haven't like named it. No, I don't mean that.
Speaker 1: If you did, I wouldn't even want to know. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to know. You mean, what's the model? The model?
Speaker 1: What is it? It's a Fleetwood Pioneer. I think we
Speaker 1: were I've been paying or Frontiers Pioneer Frontier one of
Speaker 1: the two. Yeah, that's a reasonable name because I've been
Speaker 1: me my wife are shopping for a new camper trailer.
Speaker 1: So I've been paying a lot of attention to camper trailers,
Speaker 1: like we're kind of like kicking around, you know, looking
Speaker 1: at the our our pod and other kinds. Was Now
Speaker 1: whenever I drive by a trailer, I check them out.
Speaker 1: And there's been like a weird shift in trailer names
Speaker 1: where now they give them like really aggressive names and
Speaker 1: paint like aggressive like claw marks in them and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about it Yeah, uh, it
Speaker 1: just means that generation acts has come of trailer buying.
Speaker 1: It's like bone names. In the nineties, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of names like that executioner yo so I saw
Speaker 1: in their day called the Vengeance, like it's wants out
Speaker 1: to get vengeance upon you and they hook up their
Speaker 1: fifth wheel. And then there's one called the Prowler, which
Speaker 1: is weird. I've seen that one, But that's weird because
Speaker 1: if you have if you have a problem, you call
Speaker 1: the cops. True, he wouldn't want to haul it around
Speaker 1: behind you. Yeah, like the Spider. But yeah, they used
Speaker 1: to have names. I feel like they used to have
Speaker 1: names like yours, like the Pioneer I saw in the
Speaker 1: other day called the Solstice, which I can see Johanni liking.
Speaker 1: There's a lot like After States. There's the Montana, there's
Speaker 1: the I've seen the Wye Homing, I've seen the Forester. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but now it's like they're trying to be like that.
Speaker 1: They're badass, and they got like like claw marks or teeth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it just feels like it just feels like a
Speaker 1: camper trailer. It's like you can't put lipstick on a pig.
Speaker 1: It seems like a hard cell. But are you happy
Speaker 1: with yours? I know you had to remodel it. Margar
Speaker 1: remodels trailer. Now, why are you laughing at that? States
Speaker 1: the idea of remodeling the trailer. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: was old and decrepit when we bought it. We got
Speaker 1: a great deal on it and but ended up finding
Speaker 1: that there was a lot more damna. So we had
Speaker 1: to replace the roof, putting new floors in, putting new hardware,
Speaker 1: and redid a lot of interior stuff, completely renovated the interior.
Speaker 1: So now it looks like a you know, our own design,
Speaker 1: all painted, all new cabinets, new stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: it's cool. It's nice. I've been inside of it. How
Speaker 1: many people sleep in there? Uh? To my wife and
Speaker 1: I and our son. But how many could sleep in there?
Speaker 1: You could do four? I guess if you put two
Speaker 1: like young kids on the pull out table. Yeah. See
Speaker 1: we had a third kid by accident, Yeah, which really
Speaker 1: like I like, and I knew that it was trouble
Speaker 1: when it happened, but I didn't even know about um
Speaker 1: the implications for camper trailer shopping. Yeah, you could stick
Speaker 1: one on the floor. They're like they camper trailer companies
Speaker 1: are generally don't like families of five. Yeah. I need
Speaker 1: to find one of those companies out of Utah where
Speaker 1: they make you know what I mean, because a lot
Speaker 1: of them don't see where you're going there. A lot
Speaker 1: of them don't cater to people who had too many children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's no joke. I spent two years in Utah and
Speaker 1: it's just one giant family after another. Oh yeah, people
Speaker 1: there would be like, how do you guys even't have
Speaker 1: more kids? When I walk around feeling like there's too
Speaker 1: many of them. Restaurants don't even have two tops and
Speaker 1: four tops. It's just nothing but sixes and eights. Like
Speaker 1: I told you, you're welcome to give it a test
Speaker 1: drum if you want to see how the family fits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I might go out and take your camp
Speaker 1: or trailer out. It's cool. It's cool though. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got new solar set up in it now after everything
Speaker 1: got stole, we got new batteries, we got new propane.
Speaker 1: Everything's fresh and radar rock and roll. Yeah. Did you
Speaker 1: hear this that Mark Um parked his camper trailer. I
Speaker 1: was in the car listening to that conversation. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then someone ripped all of his stuff off, and the
Speaker 1: owner of the place he parked it was like, huh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he parked it in a secure a lot, supposedly locked
Speaker 1: the monitor. You explain that it was like park at
Speaker 1: your own risk, Like he assumes no responsibility for this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't remember, you know, last summer when I put
Speaker 1: it in there, if he gave me a rundown or
Speaker 1: maybe it was in the fine print, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: But now we we just dropped it off in a
Speaker 1: new store facility because we're still you know, we're still
Speaker 1: going to try our luck. But this place seems much
Speaker 1: more reputable. They've got surveillance cameras, barbed wire, fans great Gate.
Speaker 1: There seems to be something. There's human presence there more often,
Speaker 1: and they very clearly articulated, had a much more professional contract.
Speaker 1: The whole process seemed a lot more legit looking back.
Speaker 1: This guy, you know, he was the only one available,
Speaker 1: so we just went with what we could get. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm go on a place with like a dude with
Speaker 1: the eight seventy over his shoulder walking walking to the premier.
Speaker 1: I feel better about this one. But she did this
Speaker 1: time made it clear, like, hey, we do everything we
Speaker 1: possibly can. We have monitoring, we have the gate, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: But you do need to understand there's two people that
Speaker 1: have access to this facility. People can come out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might have got ripped off by another camper trailer
Speaker 1: or possible. You should go look through all the windows.
Speaker 1: They could. At this point I'm kind of over it,
Speaker 1: but I could. Yeah, look in their camper window, there's
Speaker 1: my battery. It's weird, though, is whoever did it had
Speaker 1: a strange agenda because, for example, they took our forks
Speaker 1: and knives but left the spoons. Were they sterling and
Speaker 1: the spoons were no? It was all just really cheap stuff.
Speaker 1: They took some paintings that my wife, but some cool
Speaker 1: artwork just kind of make it feel different. They took
Speaker 1: some left others they left that makes sense. They left
Speaker 1: yettie mugs, but took like cheap plastic wear. They took
Speaker 1: our batteries and our solar inverter, left the panels. They
Speaker 1: took some of my tools, didn't take some what kind
Speaker 1: of tools did they have? What are they like? They
Speaker 1: took like my ratches set, they took cordless drill took
Speaker 1: left my hammer, left some screwdrivers. Ah, did they go
Speaker 1: into your drill bit assortment and just pull out a
Speaker 1: certain diamond drill bits because they might have been doing
Speaker 1: something really specific man influence. Yeah, no, they took both
Speaker 1: of I had like two nice boxes full of bits
Speaker 1: and stuff all gone. So yeah, on the bridg how
Speaker 1: much money did you get wiped out of? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I probably put another like five bucks into replace stuff
Speaker 1: just to get going again. For the batteries, propane inverter,
Speaker 1: some basic tools, which just like to kill that guy. Man,
Speaker 1: it was it was shitty, like we just we were
Speaker 1: all excited to get to the camper because we've been
Speaker 1: traveling for ten days and we're like, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: get to the camper that's our home for the next
Speaker 1: six weeks. We can get in a routine. You know,
Speaker 1: it's challenging with a one and a half year old
Speaker 1: in the tent and trying to do that whole thing
Speaker 1: leading up to it. So when something like that happens
Speaker 1: to me, I spend months just thinking about how cool
Speaker 1: it would have been if I could have caught him
Speaker 1: and just defiled them, like like the things that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even want anyone to know about. Um last thought
Speaker 1: on campers, and we got get to our business at hand.
Speaker 1: Is a complicating factor with the camper trailers. You know,
Speaker 1: I have an F one fifty. I want to pull
Speaker 1: up behind the F one fifty. I don't want to
Speaker 1: go buy a new Imferey going buying a whole new truck.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't need to have, no, but mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna put like some five mile long fifth wheel on.
Speaker 1: Well you don't want that anyways, do you know? I
Speaker 1: want to be able to get into cool little spots.
Speaker 1: Yanni or he. Yanni's incredulous of a camper in general.
Speaker 1: He thinks it's stupid. I mean, I didn't like the
Speaker 1: Eddie either, but when it came to having kids and
Speaker 1: stuff and doing long trips like we're doing several months
Speaker 1: at a time. Um, it was the option, best option
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, I want to be clear, this is
Speaker 1: strictly a function of having children. Yeah, we usually camp
Speaker 1: under a truck like car camp would be like if
Speaker 1: it rains, you've slide under the truck, like have a tent.
Speaker 1: But it's just now I want to be like all
Speaker 1: rigged up because by the time if all five of
Speaker 1: us are going camp and by the time you get
Speaker 1: five sleeping bags, fix sleeping pads to I just want
Speaker 1: all that stuff to be in something. Yeah, I get it,
Speaker 1: you know, load up the crayfish traps and hit the road,
Speaker 1: get after I like the size of those R pods
Speaker 1: like that. It's the size if I was going to
Speaker 1: get a new one, I would get something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but someone's got to sleep out under the trailer, which
Speaker 1: is fine. I mean the youngest, a four year old.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, sorry, buddy, you gotta sleep under
Speaker 1: the trailer and enjolia. I just feel like it limits
Speaker 1: yet a little bit where you're gonna go that. That's
Speaker 1: the only reason I'm a little it does. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but you Understand what I'm saying with the whole packing
Speaker 1: up situation. Understand. And then we're like a turn packing
Speaker 1: my truck with all that ship to set up a
Speaker 1: car camp. It's a pain. Yeah, And then like Turkey
Speaker 1: camp this year starts raining and we're out in the
Speaker 1: gumbo and then just everything just goes downhill. Then my
Speaker 1: wife's like, you know what, my time to head home.
Speaker 1: Once every you know, it's just like it's hard with
Speaker 1: We just had this conversation last night about marking the
Speaker 1: new kids coming. It's different. Oh, that's right, you're having
Speaker 1: a whole another one. Yeah, are you still being all
Speaker 1: secret you about your you know which thing that the
Speaker 1: other one? Remember the advice I had for you that
Speaker 1: was the contradicted your publisher's advice. Yeah, we can talk
Speaker 1: about its. Got a book coming out coming out, tell
Speaker 1: everyone real quick. Then we gotta get on what we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing. Yeah, I got a book coming
Speaker 1: out December one. It's called That Wild Country, an epic
Speaker 1: journey through the past, present, and future of America's public lands.
Speaker 1: So taking a look at you know, we all talked
Speaker 1: about this public land stuff, but I got into it
Speaker 1: from Outsider's perspective. Right, I'm from Michigan. The last decade, though,
Speaker 1: I've gotten to experience these places a whole lot, spent
Speaker 1: a few months every year. UM. So decided, like I
Speaker 1: personally wanted to learn more about what led us to
Speaker 1: this point that we're in where there's so much contention
Speaker 1: around the topic. So the book examines everything that that
Speaker 1: got us to this point, and it's told through a
Speaker 1: series of my own hunting, fishing all around the country,
Speaker 1: rafting trips, cross country, top to bottom. What's the fur
Speaker 1: to south? You get m hmm, Arizona. What's the fur
Speaker 1: to the east? Get Michigan. North is Alaska above the
Speaker 1: Arctic Circle. We're close to the Arctic circle west. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: Nevada covered the whole damn country pretty close. Yeah, it's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next time someone to ask you that, do think
Speaker 1: of something better? Because Nevada and Arizona are close together,
Speaker 1: you want to make it northern Nevada at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that makes me think, like northwestern Montana. That's pretty
Speaker 1: pretty far west. Um, And it comes up when can
Speaker 1: people go? By December one? I got a ways to go.
Speaker 1: You can pre order you can pre order that it's
Speaker 1: the best title. It's pretty good in any book in
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I
Speaker 1: also like Larry Mertry's all my friends are going to
Speaker 1: be strangers. But that Wild Country is a close second.
Speaker 1: Stems from a quote from Walt Stegner talking about you
Speaker 1: know how we still need that Wild Country if for
Speaker 1: no other reason than to, you know, sit there in
Speaker 1: the office and think about or walk to its edge
Speaker 1: and look over it. It's part of the geography of Hope,
Speaker 1: he said. And uh, and I that resonated with name.
Speaker 1: Did you think about naming it the geography of Hope? Uh?
Speaker 1: It seemed to to Uh. I don't want to say cliche,
Speaker 1: but it's been used, like people talk about this article
Speaker 1: titles the Geography of Hope and stuff like that. It's great,
Speaker 1: it's a great title. But I thought that that Wild
Speaker 1: Country would be a little bit off of that. But
Speaker 1: still speak to it. Okay, you can come back on
Speaker 1: in December when people can actually buy it. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: will pre order stuff, but they don't like to. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I get that. Um, okay, everybody's got to do themselves. Now, Hank,
Speaker 1: we already heard from you. You're talking about uh, hanging
Speaker 1: deer up, yep, yep, Hank Forster. Quality Deer Management Association
Speaker 1: A round the hunting heritage programs. So anything that educates
Speaker 1: or recruits a new hunter, that kind of stuff. One
Speaker 1: of the younger Hanks on the planet. Possibly, I haven't
Speaker 1: looked into that yet. Go ahead. Ryan fior Um, senior
Speaker 1: regional director, kind of in charge of grassroots operations, call
Speaker 1: the Dear Management Association, leaving Eagle Long Long Tong, Jannie
Speaker 1: and Matt Ross with the Quality Deer Management Association UM,
Speaker 1: the assistant director of conservation and I appreciate you having us. Yeah, great.
Speaker 1: How do we Let's say someone, you know, you're at
Speaker 1: a party or whatever, an elevator and someone's like, hey,
Speaker 1: what is uh, what's q d M A, What do
Speaker 1: you guys do? What do you guys rip out? What
Speaker 1: do you say? That elevator speech? Right? Like what do
Speaker 1: you stay? Uh? You know, probably the first thing I
Speaker 1: would say is, uh, we're a deer hunting organization. UM.
Speaker 1: If the person deer hunts, they might get that and
Speaker 1: they may not have heard of us, UM, but our
Speaker 1: conservation organization for deer hunters, that's what we are. When
Speaker 1: you say they might not. Yeah, every I think everybody,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's do this real quick explain where
Speaker 1: like q D M okay and q D M a
Speaker 1: and where one ends and the other begins. So, quality
Speaker 1: deer management is a concept that arrived around the mid seventies,
Speaker 1: and it actually came that early. Yeah, seventy four, there
Speaker 1: was a book UM named Producing Quality White Tails, that's
Speaker 1: the title, and al brothers Murphy Ray Jr. Wrote the
Speaker 1: book the both biologists out of Texas, and uh, that
Speaker 1: book was kind of the beginning of a paradigm shift
Speaker 1: and how people were thinking about deer um starting you know,
Speaker 1: at the turn of the century. Really we had started
Speaker 1: a program of protection and recovery and we can talk
Speaker 1: about the histological part of that, but uh, dear populations
Speaker 1: were starting to really skyrocket. And that book, the concept
Speaker 1: of quality deer management was more about managing for dear
Speaker 1: health UM habitat health. So it centered on three principles
Speaker 1: quality deer management. And you can really manage any game
Speaker 1: species really UM in the same way. But QDM is
Speaker 1: based on trying to manage the dear the population of
Speaker 1: what other whatever, and weal you're talking about UM to
Speaker 1: not exceed what the habitat could support, so not to
Speaker 1: exceed carrying capacity. That's the first principle. Second is to
Speaker 1: have a balanced sex ratio, so have as many males
Speaker 1: as females on the landscape. If you walk away from
Speaker 1: the dear population and there's no human influence, eventually gets
Speaker 1: close to one to one, two to one, where because
Speaker 1: they're born, they're born at one to one, straight up
Speaker 1: one to one basic humans. Uh, yeah, slightly heavier to
Speaker 1: to the males, but they're born yeah, slightly heavier. Um.
Speaker 1: So that that concept, like if you really walked away
Speaker 1: from a deer population, it would it would correct itself. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the third, the third principle of quality deer
Speaker 1: management is to make sure that their deer or whatever
Speaker 1: animal in all age classes, so you have young, middle aged,
Speaker 1: and older individuals represented, not in equal parts, but that
Speaker 1: there existent on the landscape. Again, walking away, Um, that's
Speaker 1: what would happen naturally and uh, but but but but not,
Speaker 1: it would be there'd be a stark drop off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it would be heavy. Like honestly, if you
Speaker 1: looked at naturally occurring population where humans aren't influenced, Uh,
Speaker 1: you would have like forty at least percent of the
Speaker 1: population be the first age class because it's it's correcting
Speaker 1: itself every time. Um. But go go back to that
Speaker 1: thing a minute ago about that they're born at a
Speaker 1: one to one male female ratio. Um. But but the females,
Speaker 1: like an unhunted population, both the females love way longer
Speaker 1: than the males. Uh they can, they do, yes, they do.
Speaker 1: But when you account for all individuals that are born
Speaker 1: in a year, you're seeing a slightly higher male to
Speaker 1: female ratio, but not by much. It's just a couple
Speaker 1: of percent. Like. But the reason I bring that up
Speaker 1: is if the females are longer living. If you went
Speaker 1: and looked at a total whole population, it's either they'd
Speaker 1: stick around longer. Like, what's the oldest male you've ever
Speaker 1: heard about? Uh, well, the oldest buck you've ever heard
Speaker 1: about in the wild. Uh, there's been bucks that have
Speaker 1: been killed in their teens, No kidding, really, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: in the wild, even in the wild, I think the
Speaker 1: oldest yeah, late teens. Yeah, they look pretty haggard, they
Speaker 1: got to look pretty yeah. Yeah, and in captivity they
Speaker 1: can live older. I mean just where I hunt and
Speaker 1: I'm from New York and uh, the property that I
Speaker 1: hunt on before I started hunting there and kind of
Speaker 1: talking to people about quality deer management and hunting that way,
Speaker 1: they basically abstained from shooting doors, and we could talk
Speaker 1: more about that too, but I convinced them that we
Speaker 1: need to reduce the deer population. U let's start shooting
Speaker 1: some doughs. And they had had abstained from shooting doors
Speaker 1: for so long that within the first couple of seasons
Speaker 1: we sho had some really old deer and I'm I was,
Speaker 1: I'm very interested to see those ages. So we age
Speaker 1: all the deer that yeah, um box, not so much.
Speaker 1: I mean it was very skew because they were shooting
Speaker 1: all the bucks. Yeah, they were shooting all the bucks.
Speaker 1: It was very very skewed. Most of the box were
Speaker 1: young one one and two year old, but certainly one
Speaker 1: year old, but we had sent teeth away. I we
Speaker 1: aged the jawbones by their wear, but we I also
Speaker 1: send an incisor in for any deer that looks really old,
Speaker 1: including the does, and we one of the hunters on
Speaker 1: the property killed the dough second or third season. That
Speaker 1: was twenty and a half. Woh man, you should look
Speaker 1: this up, Steve, I think you'd like it. But I
Speaker 1: saw photos of a buck that made it to sixteen
Speaker 1: and his antlers kind of ms reverted to row deer shapes.
Speaker 1: They and I don't know if it's common, but they
Speaker 1: they're antlers just kind of deform or like backtrack into
Speaker 1: a different animal. Huh. It was really weird. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were kids, like you know, wow, we had so many
Speaker 1: weird things, we believe. But if you got any kind
Speaker 1: of misshapen antler, like alimation, and we'd be like, that's
Speaker 1: a really old buck who used to be big. He's
Speaker 1: like always always what we thought, you know, and usually
Speaker 1: usually followed by the thought, we got to call that
Speaker 1: deer right, because there's something wrong there was you didn't
Speaker 1: know as a boy, and I remember this chance like
Speaker 1: I remember this. Kind of part of my interest in
Speaker 1: q d M is as a boy, everybody shot. If
Speaker 1: you shot, like you just shot any buck you saw,
Speaker 1: it would be a laughable idea that you would, like
Speaker 1: let a buck walk past. I remember the first guy,
Speaker 1: and I'm still friends with him. The first guy ever
Speaker 1: heard of passing a deer up was a guy, a
Speaker 1: gentleman by the name of Tim's Elton Rust who grew
Speaker 1: up on a farm, and everything in deer hunting changed
Speaker 1: all like two things happened at the same time. Three
Speaker 1: things happened. Uh, you started to be able to hunt
Speaker 1: from an elevated platform with a rifle, and that changed.
Speaker 1: How it just changed, how like people that had access
Speaker 1: to land, how they started to perceive the land. Because
Speaker 1: it used to be that if someone had a farm, everybody,
Speaker 1: not everybody, but like like everyone from church or whatever
Speaker 1: hunted that farm, and you just sit in the field
Speaker 1: corners or whatever. Then when alst you can home from
Speaker 1: an elevated platform, um, people who own the farms or
Speaker 1: their immediate family, right would all a sudden build these
Speaker 1: giants platforms, and then you needed less people out because
Speaker 1: you you can see so much more. And it was
Speaker 1: right around the time when people started like thinking about
Speaker 1: like bucks became like valuable. You know. It was used
Speaker 1: to be just like, oh, everybody comes out, we shoot
Speaker 1: deer and philidor tags, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it became that like it just became much more restrictive
Speaker 1: because deer kind of co modified a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: and then people then people will be like, well, they
Speaker 1: didn't want other people hunting because they were trying to
Speaker 1: grow big bucks well. And and then then the whole
Speaker 1: culture of deer hunting change in my area of Michigan.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a wave across the country. Really.
Speaker 1: I mean that that book was written, but this didn't
Speaker 1: happen till that. This didn't happen till the early to
Speaker 1: midnight nineties, right. So the way, the kind of the
Speaker 1: order of how things happened was that book was written,
Speaker 1: which is where quality, the word quality came from Quality
Speaker 1: Deer management, the concept and h our founder was a
Speaker 1: biologist for the South Carolina Department and not to Resources.
Speaker 1: What was the name Joe Hamilton's Yeah, and he's still
Speaker 1: with us today. He's he's been with us. We were
Speaker 1: thirty first year UM he uh was responsible And I
Speaker 1: don't remember the exact year, but it was in the eighties.
Speaker 1: UM of hosting a regional conference that happens in the
Speaker 1: South called the Southeast Dear Study Group meeting. Each state
Speaker 1: agency takes turns hosting it and it's where all of
Speaker 1: the agency folks get together and a lot of academics
Speaker 1: and they talk about the latest concepts of deer research.
Speaker 1: UM monitoring all all types of deer management related things,
Speaker 1: and South Carolina hosted it that year. Joe was an employee,
Speaker 1: and uh he invited the author of that book, producing
Speaker 1: Claudie white Does, to be the keynote speaker, because it
Speaker 1: was this new concept. It was five ten years five
Speaker 1: years older so at the time. And he took that
Speaker 1: thought and that and and hearing that person speak and
Speaker 1: went back to his job. Joe worked in a part
Speaker 1: of South Carolina, he didn't cover the whole state, and
Speaker 1: he worked with about eight hundred hunt clubs. And uh,
Speaker 1: the book really was starting a change in how people
Speaker 1: were thinking about dear going from you know, a time
Speaker 1: of trying to build a lot of the southern states
Speaker 1: were actually uh um, bringing deer in and and trying
Speaker 1: to build population restocking them. And a lot of hunters
Speaker 1: had that thought process of you don't shoot those it's
Speaker 1: you know, that would be almost a sin. We want
Speaker 1: to build deer populations. But at the same time, if
Speaker 1: you looked around, the habitat was really suffering. You could
Speaker 1: see brows lines everywhere, and the age structure was out
Speaker 1: of balance. Um, most males in the state, we're young.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about they wouldn't see past their first birthday.
Speaker 1: So Joe said, you know what, I think I'm going
Speaker 1: to start this local group. It wasn't meant to be
Speaker 1: a what is now an international organization to communicate good
Speaker 1: ways to manage those club properties. So we created a
Speaker 1: newsletter and named it something like the South Carolina Quality
Speaker 1: Deer Management Association. And these are clubs out of South Carolina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a region of South Carolina. UM, I think that
Speaker 1: was generally the low country. And uh, that just fast
Speaker 1: forwarding through time, grew to to a state specific organization.
Speaker 1: Within a short period of time, it was they covered
Speaker 1: all of South Carolina, and then eventually we were named
Speaker 1: the North American Quality Deer Measurement Association. And then just
Speaker 1: cut and may at some point, because around the time
Speaker 1: of the nineties, that concept almost burned like a fire,
Speaker 1: going from South Carolina up through the Midwest and everywhere.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that it didn't grab holding Texas first. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's the birthplace of quality deer management. The concepts Texas
Speaker 1: whole is. Yeah, Al Al Brothers and Murphy Ray and
Speaker 1: a lot of their cohorror just they gave birth to
Speaker 1: the idea. But the Association was born in South and
Speaker 1: not hodifying it and organizing and the group was a
Speaker 1: South Carolina idea. Yeah, and you know, organizing deer hunters
Speaker 1: has historically been a pretty difficult thing. I mean trying
Speaker 1: to get deer hunters to agree on something. And Joe
Speaker 1: also that just help people, help people understand what you're talking.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of dissension among deer hunters
Speaker 1: in terms of weapons used, UH stra adages, whether they're
Speaker 1: doing using dogs or drives or stand hunting, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to get deer honors. Also to see that there's
Speaker 1: a need for conservation in terms of there's a need
Speaker 1: for an organization to tell him what to do, because
Speaker 1: a lot of deer hunters feel like what grandfather, Grandpappy
Speaker 1: told me is what we do, right, So it's that
Speaker 1: that was difficult. But Joe had been spending some time
Speaker 1: in Australia UM and also uh Tasmania and UH. He
Speaker 1: had seen that they organized deer hunters through a group
Speaker 1: called the Australian Deer Association I think is the a
Speaker 1: d A and UH the way that they structured their
Speaker 1: UM grassroots activities and even what they name like we
Speaker 1: name instead of chapters, we have branches. That's that's fashioned
Speaker 1: after the ADA Australian Deer Association. And he had spent
Speaker 1: some time, he had been brought over there to speak
Speaker 1: as a keynote speaker on some events and came back
Speaker 1: and that's what's their program. I mean in Australian Tasmania
Speaker 1: they have a quality deer management Tasmania wide for all
Speaker 1: pretty much all the deer species down there. Deer all introduced. Deer, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all introduced, but there again just trying to say,
Speaker 1: all right, looking at the deer, is there too many
Speaker 1: for what the land can support? What's the buckado ratio?
Speaker 1: And our deer represented in generally all age classes. That's
Speaker 1: the concept your night. I was out to eat with
Speaker 1: my wife and her body and uh guy puts a
Speaker 1: piece of fish down in front of me and says
Speaker 1: that's a Tasmanian UH ocean trout And I'm like, is
Speaker 1: that right? So I look online and it's a someone's
Speaker 1: like has an aquaculture facility and he's raising Pacific steelhead
Speaker 1: and Tasmania marketing and under Tasmanian Ocean trout. I was like,
Speaker 1: no one, I haven't heard of this fish literally a
Speaker 1: bait and switch. So when you said Tasmania at Perk Ducts,
Speaker 1: reminded me of my meal here at night, or a
Speaker 1: portion of my meal there at night. Um okay, So
Speaker 1: every gets all excited and it sweeps like wildfire. But
Speaker 1: you know, I got another question about this because I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I think of all this in context of
Speaker 1: where I grew up. Is it do you think it's
Speaker 1: possibly true that there were no like we didn't have
Speaker 1: trail cams. We didn't have trail cams when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, so late eighties, early nineties. But my feeling
Speaker 1: looking back on it is that no dear like that
Speaker 1: you could go out to a large property and say
Speaker 1: that there are no dear living here that are older
Speaker 1: than two, and if there's any of older would be surprising.
Speaker 1: Is that ever true for real? That no dear where
Speaker 1: you would actually walk into no box. I'm sorry because
Speaker 1: like looking at the enormous pile of deer that our
Speaker 1: collective group of family and friends at a property to
Speaker 1: kill every year, and the fact that I could point
Speaker 1: to one buck which is hanging on my mom's wall
Speaker 1: to this day, which was like a freaking giant because
Speaker 1: there was a hundred twenty in white Tail. Was like
Speaker 1: people came from far and wide to look at that
Speaker 1: deer and at a property scale, absolutely, and talking about
Speaker 1: a statewide scale in those years. Being Ryan's from Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: of the statewide harvest of bucks was one and a
Speaker 1: half years old before they started changing some of the
Speaker 1: things they did in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania kills thirty thousand
Speaker 1: deer year, yeah, Ben, a hundred fifty thousand bucks a
Speaker 1: year and n or year in anifold. I wrote this
Speaker 1: into the show one time. I think you talked about
Speaker 1: covered it in the Mexico episode. He was the guy
Speaker 1: that wrote in about Pennsylvania's age class. Oh yeah, because
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania were similar, you know, And I would just imagine
Speaker 1: those statistics were pretty close. But to your point, our
Speaker 1: camp same thing, you know, maybe it had a like
Speaker 1: man like there was nobody passing a spike in arcamp. Man,
Speaker 1: it's going down. I remember we had a late season
Speaker 1: a late season bowl hunt once, not at once, but
Speaker 1: they they'd run like late archery. And I remember sitting there.
Speaker 1: It was in December, um and I remember sitting in
Speaker 1: the field and counting nineties does yeah, and not a
Speaker 1: single buck, and like, man, you shot if you shot
Speaker 1: every buck you saw. We were just talking about that
Speaker 1: as far as habitat, regeneration and everything. But I still
Speaker 1: hunt the saving camp in gun season that I did
Speaker 1: as a kid, and I mean we shot the deer,
Speaker 1: but no, it was sacrilegious to shoot at them. He
Speaker 1: there was just no way you were doing that. And
Speaker 1: you would go to stand the first day of buck season.
Speaker 1: That that's what it was. Was the first day of
Speaker 1: buck season the Monday after Thanksgiving, And it was almost
Speaker 1: like a badge of honor. Who saw the most dear?
Speaker 1: You know, you come in for lunch, I'm a dear.
Speaker 1: You see this more at forty seven? You saw forty seven?
Speaker 1: You know, it's just your your spots better in mind
Speaker 1: you saw thirty you know. Yeah, yeah, that's just waiting
Speaker 1: for a buck. Yeah, I mean we never had that.
Speaker 1: Like it was taboo and a lot of circles and
Speaker 1: even among my father's friends, it was taboo to kill doles.
Speaker 1: But he really encouraged dose shooting, but not from a
Speaker 1: management perspective. He just it was just stacking up deer,
Speaker 1: that's just And even in Pennsylvania then we had two
Speaker 1: weeks of buck season and then the fount that we
Speaker 1: couldn't hunt on Sunday, so Saturday the buck season went out.
Speaker 1: After the second Saturday, the following Monday was the opening
Speaker 1: day of doze season. And it was almost like, you know,
Speaker 1: the guys that hunted for two weeks in camp and
Speaker 1: hadn't shot a deer, They're like, no, we get to
Speaker 1: we get to unleash here. And just for three days
Speaker 1: it was that shooting you know, everything that walks in
Speaker 1: front of us type of deal because you finally get
Speaker 1: some shooting, kind of get some shooting in. You know,
Speaker 1: we're warm this gun up here. And then we were
Speaker 1: talking about I was just thinking, I remember being a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, like you and all you know of the
Speaker 1: of the hunters bringing deer back and camping. They were
Speaker 1: all looking back, know what I know now I probably
Speaker 1: remember I can count on one hand how many of
Speaker 1: the more two and a half years old. They were
Speaker 1: all a year and a half old. But I remember
Speaker 1: like the calm and conversation was, you know, you know
Speaker 1: that much for hamlers man, they got a big body,
Speaker 1: you know, every year and a half old, ninety pound,
Speaker 1: you know, white tail buck you know he's a big
Speaker 1: body or big The one guy on our camp used
Speaker 1: to age them. I swear to God he would call
Speaker 1: him slow walkers. You know, I'm looking for one of
Speaker 1: them slow walkers like that, and I still use that
Speaker 1: to this, uh slow walking slunger. Uh. So q DAM
Speaker 1: girls out of South Carolina and starts spreading around the country.
Speaker 1: And what does people's primary like, what is the primary
Speaker 1: motivation do you feel that most people who were getting
Speaker 1: into it? And when did it blow up? Like when
Speaker 1: did it become a national thing? I think in the nineties.
Speaker 1: I I joined and heard about it in the late nineties. Uh.
Speaker 1: And now I lived in New Hampshire at the time,
Speaker 1: so I think it took a while to get up
Speaker 1: to New England. But um, it became pretty commonplace, seeing
Speaker 1: like the outdoor literature, you know, all the hunting magazines
Speaker 1: out there. You'd see QTM throwing around in there. And
Speaker 1: we have this discussion internally, I think organically the hunting
Speaker 1: community was gunning that direction. If you think about when
Speaker 1: outdoor television started and then people started shooting bigger bucks
Speaker 1: on outdoor television and you know that, and then that
Speaker 1: magazine articles. You know, I remember when a hundred forty
Speaker 1: inch buck was huge and then fast you know that
Speaker 1: was probably the mid nineties of the late nineties, and
Speaker 1: then fast forward ten years and it had to be
Speaker 1: a hundred eight inch buck, you know, So it just
Speaker 1: kind of all happened together. You know, we ask you,
Speaker 1: we ask ourselves. You know, where will we be if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for television and vice versa? You know, we're
Speaker 1: quality your management. Do you mean you mean that television
Speaker 1: popularize the idea of shooting a big buck? I know,
Speaker 1: I don't want I think it say popularize that. You
Speaker 1: can look back at wait tail buck polls. You know,
Speaker 1: like in my community we have art the club. That's
Speaker 1: a good point, man. People have always wanted to kill
Speaker 1: big bucks. It's always been there. The one hunt club
Speaker 1: I go to. It's that they still have on in
Speaker 1: the bar their first buck pulls. You know, they're the
Speaker 1: people signed up for it and they kept you know,
Speaker 1: over all those years. So the attraction of shooting big
Speaker 1: bucks was all has always been there. But I think
Speaker 1: through the outdoor channel or outdoor media however you want
Speaker 1: to look at it, that just really boosted it. For sure.
Speaker 1: That that wasn't I mean, we talk often about QDM
Speaker 1: and a byproduct of it is Bigger Dear because you're
Speaker 1: trying to push dear into older age classes. But when
Speaker 1: Joe formed the organization, certainly that was probably the apple
Speaker 1: that he hung in front of some of those clubs.
Speaker 1: But he designed the logo with a basically a two
Speaker 1: year old buck. He didn't want to make it a
Speaker 1: gargage wan buck. Uh. It's standard eight point probably hunting
Speaker 1: hundred engineer with a doll next to it. Because it's
Speaker 1: all about trying to balance box and dolls. That's what
Speaker 1: QDM is really about, all right. This gets to like,
Speaker 1: I think, like a pretty important question is as people
Speaker 1: adopt QDM or joined q d M A, the primary motivation,
Speaker 1: regardless of regardless of what the mission is or the
Speaker 1: side benefits or whatever, the primary motivation is that you
Speaker 1: could grow a trophy buck on your property for the
Speaker 1: for the joiner, yeah, I mean just for the for
Speaker 1: the public, like that's what they see, right. I think
Speaker 1: it depends we have a pretty good mix. Some people
Speaker 1: want to learn how to manage the habitat for a
Speaker 1: lot of different species. Um, we have a lot of
Speaker 1: that information out there, But at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: And I I tell people this all the time. I
Speaker 1: mean especially you know, predominantly males or hunters. And just
Speaker 1: like buck poles started, you know, sixty years ago. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that the byproduct of bigger antlers is certainly
Speaker 1: an attraction for sure, especially if you're managing your own ground,
Speaker 1: you know. But I wouldn't say that that's the sole
Speaker 1: reason people seek us out. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: mention that we really try to deliver the science. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what we do, is we keep abreast of all
Speaker 1: the search from the universities, and we try to communicate
Speaker 1: that to the deer hunter. And uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: you go out there and you talk to deer hunters,
Speaker 1: and there's so many urban legends or misconceptions of what
Speaker 1: dear do and how they work. And and I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the strong suits of Q. Main what
Speaker 1: they've done is we've really gotten people to understand, you know,
Speaker 1: how they view the world and what they see, what
Speaker 1: they smell, you know, all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: but but to what end, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: what is the like if you had like let's say
Speaker 1: you had a vision statement, what's the q d M
Speaker 1: A vision statement. Remember where were the statements we're talking
Speaker 1: about their day annie vision and mission. Yeah, what's the
Speaker 1: like the vision like where would it lead? Like it
Speaker 1: would lead to what, you know, the goals that I
Speaker 1: was talking about. But you know, habitat herd and hunters.
Speaker 1: You know, we want to look out for the deer,
Speaker 1: their habitat and the future of hunting and what's like
Speaker 1: the in your mind, what's the worst thing that could
Speaker 1: happen to deer hunting? I think hunter loss. I mean
Speaker 1: that's what I'm paid to do. But I think hunter
Speaker 1: loss is the worst thing. You know, that's one of
Speaker 1: our dark clouds. And CWD of course, Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: what I think. That. Yeah, that I think if if someone,
Speaker 1: if a hunter were to contract c w D from
Speaker 1: a deer, it would be the end of the game. Catastrophic.
Speaker 1: Well that's talking about trivializing the actual service that hunters provide.
Speaker 1: We do it because it's self serving. We want to
Speaker 1: go out, we want to experience out the outdoors, we
Speaker 1: want to get meat for our families, um, but we
Speaker 1: also provide a very big service to to to everybody,
Speaker 1: to all public by removing deer and keeping deer populations
Speaker 1: at bay. And if that was trivialized or even fractured
Speaker 1: to a point where people don't support hunting because right now,
Speaker 1: most hunter, most of the non hunting public supports hunting
Speaker 1: when when it's done for meat, it's two for deer
Speaker 1: and turkeys. Yeah, but if you who's that that support, um,
Speaker 1: it's not you know, we don't. We don't have it's
Speaker 1: a privilege to go hunting. It's not a right. So
Speaker 1: if we're not even allowed to do that to to
Speaker 1: sustain that, it would be catastrophic. On a byproduct of
Speaker 1: all that is that we fund the most of the
Speaker 1: conservation in this country today. I don't think you can
Speaker 1: say you hunt for conservation, but us hunting a byproduct
Speaker 1: of that is funding our state agencies and most of
Speaker 1: the conservation in this country. Yeah. I think that that
Speaker 1: byproduct thing is interesting because um, now that now that
Speaker 1: there's more public awareness among hunters or over around funding
Speaker 1: structures for wildlife management. Um, like there's even this this
Speaker 1: slogan like hunting is conservation, right, Uh, we could say
Speaker 1: like conservation is a like even at its most base level,
Speaker 1: conservation is a by product of hunting. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that that's one's motivations. And to get into
Speaker 1: that by product thing is I think that that's like
Speaker 1: a little bit of what I imagine happens around quality
Speaker 1: der management, is like people are motivated to do it
Speaker 1: because they want to grow a large white tail on
Speaker 1: their property, and a byproduct of that, like an unintentional
Speaker 1: byproduct of that is probably like perhaps healthier deer hurts.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of the kin to lots of
Speaker 1: times we'll talk about the natural progression that many hunters
Speaker 1: go through. Right, It's like you just want to figure
Speaker 1: out how to kill a deer, and then you want
Speaker 1: to kill a lot of deer, and then maybe you
Speaker 1: want to hold out for a bigger deer. Many people
Speaker 1: go through that kind of trajectory, not that you have to.
Speaker 1: Then eventually you're you're older and you just want your
Speaker 1: kids to kill a deer, and then you just want
Speaker 1: to see it. So then I think there's something maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit similar to that. As people get introduced
Speaker 1: to QDM, many people, no doubt about to your point, Steve,
Speaker 1: are drawn to it because they want to see bigger deer.
Speaker 1: They've seen it on TV or they've read about, Man,
Speaker 1: it'd be awesome to see deer like that, or two
Speaker 1: experience two big bucks fighting in front of me, Like
Speaker 1: that looks great, but I've never seen it in my
Speaker 1: neck of the woods. And then you find out like
Speaker 1: there's things that I can do here on my back
Speaker 1: forward that might lead to better experiences like that. That
Speaker 1: definitely lures people in. But I have found from my
Speaker 1: own experience and like talking to a lot of people
Speaker 1: that have taking a step into that world and explored it,
Speaker 1: is that many people go in with that initial idea,
Speaker 1: but then realize there's this whole breadth and depth to
Speaker 1: quality deer management. So you get these people that are
Speaker 1: interested in trophy bucks that five years from now though,
Speaker 1: are all of a sudden thinking about quality, the habitat,
Speaker 1: making sure that the dough harvest is in line, making
Speaker 1: sure that age structure and sex ratio and all these
Speaker 1: different things fall in place too. So you're kind of
Speaker 1: getting them in with that candy, that apple. But then
Speaker 1: there's a lot of byproducts benefits that people identify with
Speaker 1: and and follow through in the long term. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see that, Like it awakens you to this whole world. Hey,
Speaker 1: what was the what was the you said, two of Americans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the most current data says that of the in public
Speaker 1: approve of hunting deer in Turkey, and when you go
Speaker 1: into other species like elk and stuff, it drops not
Speaker 1: not significant. We can't drop that much for elk, does it.
Speaker 1: I think it's in a low seventies or something, But
Speaker 1: there is a significant you know. I think it's just
Speaker 1: because you know, deer in Turkey in our backyards and
Speaker 1: you know, I saw a headline this morning that, um,
Speaker 1: seventy five of the people in Britain oppose quote cruel
Speaker 1: trophy hunting. So like you call them up and say,
Speaker 1: do you support cruel trophy hunting? And if that's not
Speaker 1: I want to hear from I don't like to hear
Speaker 1: what the dude. It's like, oh yeah, sure it's cruel, right,
Speaker 1: you sure it's cruel, because if it's cruel, I get
Speaker 1: behind it. We have it, which I think a better
Speaker 1: headline would be like, um, of the people in Britain
Speaker 1: are sadistic. We have the same data though, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: before this it was always at seventy percent of Americans
Speaker 1: have proved hunting for food. If you put trophy in
Speaker 1: that question. Yeah, what do you think that means? The people?
Speaker 1: I mean, I got all kinds of ideas of what
Speaker 1: it means. I think that they mean. I think they
Speaker 1: think it means that you didn't eat it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's all kinds of negative connotations. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of ah, We've talked about the thousand time of song.
Speaker 1: I want to get into it, but it's pretty um
Speaker 1: that word needs a higher a pr agency. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's important also point out is what you're seeing
Speaker 1: on a lot of the hunting shows is trophy deer management.
Speaker 1: And we of course kind of taught a lot of
Speaker 1: people the science of quality deer management and they took
Speaker 1: it a step further, and so we are all ignored
Speaker 1: other parts exactly, and so we are we're often viewed
Speaker 1: as like trophy deer preachers, but it's not. It's people
Speaker 1: have taken our stuff further than we you know, our
Speaker 1: guidelines and and if that's what they want to do,
Speaker 1: all power to them, but we're not slowly about that.
Speaker 1: You know, there is a traditional dear management of quality
Speaker 1: deer management and what trophy deer management. So you feel
Speaker 1: like you've got the lessons from your organization, where um,
Speaker 1: there's like a radical fringe who took the lessons from
Speaker 1: your organization and went off off campus. And how would
Speaker 1: one do that? Trophy deer management, Yeah, a lot of it.
Speaker 1: Where does one end and the other one? So trophy
Speaker 1: management is where um, there are some similarities in that
Speaker 1: you're trying to um do the same three principles, but
Speaker 1: where where you take it the next for the three
Speaker 1: balance a deer her within the habitat, have a balance
Speaker 1: sex ratio, and have deer in all age classes for
Speaker 1: both males and females. It's hard to argue those three principles, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. Trophy management is keep keep deer within where
Speaker 1: the habitat can sport in fact exceed nutrition, so that
Speaker 1: each individual animal has excess nutrition, not just we try
Speaker 1: to optimize it with q d M where there's maximum
Speaker 1: hunting recreational opportunities where hunters get to see deer but
Speaker 1: they also get to shoot deer. Um. With trophy management,
Speaker 1: you're pushing deer populations to a point where there's lots
Speaker 1: of deer out there, but they still have lots of food. Um.
Speaker 1: You're also protecting bucks until they are at the maximum
Speaker 1: size of antler growth, which research shows is anywhere between
Speaker 1: five and seven years of age. All we say is
Speaker 1: past year links two and older is up for game
Speaker 1: where necessary. There's a lot of places in this country now.
Speaker 1: In um our latest White Tie Report, we have statistics
Speaker 1: tracking the percent of yearling bucks in the national harvest
Speaker 1: and eight when we were formed, it was close to
Speaker 1: sixty five of all bucks in the United States were
Speaker 1: one and a half in the harvest, and fast forward
Speaker 1: today it's about thirty and it drop. That's just and
Speaker 1: that's the box that could kill in this country or
Speaker 1: one of to have your yeah and you kind of
Speaker 1: can put up the mission accomplished sign. And in a
Speaker 1: lot of areas where there are deer that are now
Speaker 1: in all age classes, you don't need to protect the
Speaker 1: youngest age class anymore because by volunteerism, people shoot what
Speaker 1: they want and they're represented. Some people will shoot small
Speaker 1: deer and young deer. Some people will shoot older dear.
Speaker 1: You don't have to protect the youngest age class at
Speaker 1: all stages. It's only when it's imbalanced. Um so trophy
Speaker 1: management is pushing bucks until they're at least five or older.
Speaker 1: That's not quality deer management that's pushing deer intil. That's
Speaker 1: where they have their largest set of antlers is between
Speaker 1: five and seven. There's multiple research that shows those are
Speaker 1: the ages where they hit the largest size. And then
Speaker 1: for the sex ratio part, it's you would actually want
Speaker 1: to skew it a little bit and have it more
Speaker 1: males to females to make sure you meet that habitat requirement.
Speaker 1: Let's say there's a Let's say there's a fellow hypothetically
Speaker 1: and he manages a large ranch and he builds a
Speaker 1: dossier on all the deer that lived there as much
Speaker 1: as you can um and has candidates that he's selected
Speaker 1: for eventual harvest. And in order to not stress those
Speaker 1: bucks kills all that they kill, kills, all the books
Speaker 1: he can that aren't in the in the candidates for
Speaker 1: future harvest. With the end goal of every year he
Speaker 1: makes two giants and then he's got two giants coming
Speaker 1: up and then little ones that he's eyeball and based
Speaker 1: on whatever to to get him up through. What's that
Speaker 1: trophy management that's not cutem What what's he doing wrong? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean not wrong, but what what would acute like?
Speaker 1: What would be the difference there he's just taking it
Speaker 1: to an extreme. I mean it's intensive management that's biologically
Speaker 1: that the land is still healthy. So there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of positive still happening with that. It's just is
Speaker 1: there a negative. It may be loss of opportunity for
Speaker 1: some folks, Yeah, but I can like an ecological negative. No, Nope.
Speaker 1: Often they're actually overharvesting those because I mean, these old
Speaker 1: bucks they don't want to be pestered by young deer.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you create a void, that's
Speaker 1: where these old secluded bucks will will pull up. And
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're finding a lot from the research
Speaker 1: that you know, the bucks that live longer don't travel
Speaker 1: as much. They might not be prolific breeders. You know,
Speaker 1: the deer get in trouble when they walk across roads,
Speaker 1: are in front of our stands and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So kind of these homebodies are the ones that are
Speaker 1: surviving um and especially to these super old age books
Speaker 1: that's also been shown site fidelity or their likelihood to
Speaker 1: be in the same place and also have home ranges
Speaker 1: that shrink goes with age, So as a as a
Speaker 1: buck ages, their home range doesn't expand they actually shrink, like,
Speaker 1: is he most likely to be most uh ones the
Speaker 1: deer most likely to wander the most in the fall
Speaker 1: and in and oh yeah, definitely in the younger age
Speaker 1: classes they move around more. Yeah they there, they will
Speaker 1: every year they will. Their home range and core area
Speaker 1: shrinks a little bit. And there's research out there. I
Speaker 1: think it was done on the King's Ranch. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: two and a half year old age class did most
Speaker 1: of the breeding. Even the year and a half old
Speaker 1: age class will still make up. Even in a trophy
Speaker 1: management situation where you're pushing dear into extreme, you're still
Speaker 1: gonna have yearling bucks out there, and they still contribute
Speaker 1: about a third of the breeding to uh, the general population.
Speaker 1: You can't stim me stymy that to the point where
Speaker 1: they're not part of it. So the doll like so
Speaker 1: the dolls even was a big buck around the dolls.
Speaker 1: Let the dolls, let little bucks breed them. And sometimes
Speaker 1: it's multiple paternity. There's been cases where twins or triplets
Speaker 1: have different fathers sored a bout different fathers. How many
Speaker 1: how many bucks might have dough breed I believe or not.
Speaker 1: That's also been done in Texas. Um, how many will
Speaker 1: he breed. Don't know how many bocks will one dough
Speaker 1: have sex with? Uh, they will, they will in a
Speaker 1: in a in a cycle, and they will cycle. They
Speaker 1: will do it until she her extrius ends, so it
Speaker 1: could potentially be multiple times. No, but how like, has
Speaker 1: any ever paid attention to how many different bucks bread
Speaker 1: and individual dough. I don't know the record on that,
Speaker 1: but it's been at least three or four at least
Speaker 1: three or four. Yeah, because there's that those cases of
Speaker 1: triplets having three different fathers. I think it's of all
Speaker 1: twins have different fathers, and I have twins, and that
Speaker 1: was one of the first things he told me. You
Speaker 1: know that twins are sorry about different fathers, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So when you see a dough with two fawns, of
Speaker 1: those pairs of fawns have different fathers, they're they're like
Speaker 1: half brothers and sisters. Yes, Now what about the opposite?
Speaker 1: How many different does might a single buck breeding a
Speaker 1: given fall? Has that been looked at? Yeah? So that
Speaker 1: and again not necessarily breeding occurrences, but in terms of
Speaker 1: contribution to the general population um out of Texas, Randy
Speaker 1: DeYoung at of Texas and m Kingsville did some really
Speaker 1: interesting research that showed that at least on the scale
Speaker 1: that they were operating, and it's a free range population,
Speaker 1: that the average buck sired no more than two or
Speaker 1: three fawns that made it to adulthood in their life,
Speaker 1: in their life, in their life. Because that would be
Speaker 1: that that would be like replacement. Yeah, you know, that'd
Speaker 1: be like enough to sustain a population. But again, you
Speaker 1: you think about the misconceptions or myths that hunters were
Speaker 1: taught years ago, was that bucks would have home ranges
Speaker 1: that would uh you know, expand every year into every
Speaker 1: until they were the king of the forest. Um, they
Speaker 1: would hair them up their dos much like elk, and
Speaker 1: that they were contributing the biggest antler bucks were just
Speaker 1: pumping out lots of offspring and that's how you get
Speaker 1: all these other older bucks. Yeah, yeah, he's gonna walk
Speaker 1: over the Yeah that's not the case. But there has
Speaker 1: been some advantage of being a big buck. Well, wasn't
Speaker 1: there some research that showed that large antlers were a
Speaker 1: sexual chosen They were chosen for a little bit, they
Speaker 1: were selected for a little bit more by dose. And
Speaker 1: that was just a couple of years ago. They were
Speaker 1: at our convention actually they were those in a pen
Speaker 1: would actually there were different bucks sectioned off in a
Speaker 1: pen with different sized antlers, and the does would pick
Speaker 1: which one they had to make with. Yeah. The Mississippi State,
Speaker 1: uh Dan Marina I think his last name was, did
Speaker 1: a study where they actually were able to use captive deer.
Speaker 1: They cut they're antlers off once hard and secured a
Speaker 1: attachment to the bottom of the antlers so that they
Speaker 1: could swap antlers out from individual bucks so they could
Speaker 1: make that buck who was big small and that buck
Speaker 1: who was small big antler wise, and would pair them
Speaker 1: with receptive dos, and the doughs generally chose bucks with
Speaker 1: larger antlers. Shellow Man, Yeah, Shellow really, Yeah, that's really fascinating.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea for a study. It was cool.
Speaker 1: It was really cool. Then they had the does were
Speaker 1: pinned up and they would literally like back themselves into
Speaker 1: in front of the buck of their choosing. It was
Speaker 1: really cool. I mean from that perspective. No, that's fascinating, man,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea. This is Hank mentioned it earlier.
Speaker 1: I mean that's really fun stuff like that. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: been really concentrating again the big issues and what Our
Speaker 1: vision is what's the biggest uh, you know crises that
Speaker 1: are happening with deer and and hunting and conservation is
Speaker 1: we're trying to shift a lot of that and we
Speaker 1: are towards chronic wasting disease. But we have funded a
Speaker 1: lot of research on habitat management, teaching people, UM things
Speaker 1: on fire forest management. UM. This latest magazine has a
Speaker 1: really cool study in there out of Tennessee looking about
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people think if you fertilize
Speaker 1: oak trees, they're gonna make more acorns. Uh. That's when
Speaker 1: a that's not true. So we found Yeah, we funded
Speaker 1: a lot of research. Hank mentioned it earlier that you know,
Speaker 1: think of us broader wildlife implications all of that and uh,
Speaker 1: hunters working together cooperatives. There's a really cool study that's
Speaker 1: going to be published soon about when you get neighbors
Speaker 1: working together and form cooperatives, which are huge in Michigan,
Speaker 1: UM in Texas and many other places. The conservation of
Speaker 1: biodiversity that happens at the landscape scale is better and
Speaker 1: more intensive than places where people are not working together. UM.
Speaker 1: So that landscape level management, what's the cooperative look like? Uh?
Speaker 1: The average cooperative in the country is probably about fire
Speaker 1: acres and where between five and ten land owners working together,
Speaker 1: but it varies. There's ones out there that are hundred
Speaker 1: thousand acres with hundreds of landowners and it's a bunch
Speaker 1: of mugs who all agree to like a certain set
Speaker 1: of principles. Yeah, they met preseason and say, uh, you
Speaker 1: hunt your place, I'll hunt mine. But let's all agree
Speaker 1: to do this and we'll meet up next year and
Speaker 1: see how things are going. In Michigan today. These are formal, Uh,
Speaker 1: they don't have to be. It could be as simple
Speaker 1: as that. Erators we have some they're much more complicated.
Speaker 1: They meet, you know, quarterly even, but just some sort
Speaker 1: of immigram. But the important part is that I guess
Speaker 1: the successful ones you don't punish anybody. I mean you,
Speaker 1: you're part of a really good co ops. So you
Speaker 1: can just speak to that how yours works well at
Speaker 1: a at a kind of a scale in Michigan. Just
Speaker 1: to give you an idea of how popular they are.
Speaker 1: UM Michigan, there's an organization there that we partner with
Speaker 1: called the Michigan Michigan United Conservation Clubs. We I used
Speaker 1: to be a member of that when I lived there, because, uh,
Speaker 1: to sell for at the Ravana for auction, you had
Speaker 1: to be a member of Michigan Trappers Association, and if
Speaker 1: you remember Michigan Trappers Association, by default you were a
Speaker 1: member of muc C. And then you got the MUCC
Speaker 1: publication Michigan out of Doors, right, not outdoors but out
Speaker 1: of doors. Out of doors a good magazine. Man TV
Speaker 1: show like that too, there, Fred Trolls TV show. I
Speaker 1: believe that was Freends. Yeah, he was ahead of his
Speaker 1: time man, because you'd have a wild game segment. Kid.
Speaker 1: He always liked everything people made. He was never like dah,
Speaker 1: tastes like shit. He always like that's great. He seemed nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he would get dear ras and to count the
Speaker 1: antlers if he could hang his wedding ring on it,
Speaker 1: they counted there. And he was running a metal ring nowadays,
Speaker 1: if he had a silicon ring, you have a lot
Speaker 1: more antlers on deer, yeah, a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: our points. You han't has some bitch on anything, man,
Speaker 1: but a metal ring was hard to hang on a
Speaker 1: little degger you have, he'd have a lot of thirty
Speaker 1: forty pointers coming off. But okay, Mucca said, I took
Speaker 1: a little trip on memory lane there. Man, that's okay. Uh,
Speaker 1: we have there's a person that works that's uh an
Speaker 1: m UCC employee, but q d M a pheasants forever
Speaker 1: we all fun part of that person's sality that works
Speaker 1: with cooperatives. And today there's over acres in Michigan in
Speaker 1: private landowner cooperatives in that state, which now exceeds actually
Speaker 1: more than what the state game area. Uh yeah, Now
Speaker 1: what are some of the tenants Like, let's just say
Speaker 1: you took some average cooperative So it's okay, Just just
Speaker 1: people understand we're talking about a bunch of different properties.
Speaker 1: They all border each other. Um that forms this contiguous
Speaker 1: block land. It doesn't have to be and it's like
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be continued. It could be a
Speaker 1: hot like a checkerboard. Checkerboard. Now, a cooperative doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you all get to go ever you want. You
Speaker 1: hunt your own place, but you hunt under certain guidelines.
Speaker 1: We will be an example of some of the guidelines.
Speaker 1: They hunt like we're all going to agree to shoot
Speaker 1: a shipload of dolls that would be one yeah, or
Speaker 1: we're all gonna pass yearling Bucks if they want to
Speaker 1: grow bucks and older age classes or and sometimes they
Speaker 1: advance that and individual properties go higher than others. UM
Speaker 1: certainly habitat management, coordinating habitat management, or even purchasing equipment
Speaker 1: together so they can get price deals on things because
Speaker 1: they're all in it together. Fertilizer, and then and then
Speaker 1: sharing information during the season after I found personally from
Speaker 1: being involved with some loose type cooperatives, UM, just the
Speaker 1: you kind of get the deer camp effect but expanded,
Speaker 1: and I have multiple people that are sharing stories. I
Speaker 1: saw this buck, I saw that one too, and after
Speaker 1: this season you kind of know what happened to different
Speaker 1: degree might have seen or there's other folks to help
Speaker 1: you get in there and track a deer down and
Speaker 1: then like oh I found this deer shed or I mean,
Speaker 1: it just builds that community effects. So there's benefits both
Speaker 1: socially and ecologically. But everybody's still gaming for sure. There's
Speaker 1: still everyone's got their own self serving sides to like,
Speaker 1: you know, you couldn't say to one dude, like we've
Speaker 1: decided that your place is the sanctuary. He's like, oh man,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool though, And they don't need there's no
Speaker 1: they don't formalize it, but people will help them organize it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have employees in other states that do the same thing.
Speaker 1: In Alabama, we work with Alabama Wildlife Federation have employed there.
Speaker 1: We got two guys in Missouri that are co funded
Speaker 1: with the Missouri Department Conservation. They pay part of the salary,
Speaker 1: We pay part of the salary. But that's their their jobs.
Speaker 1: And you say you see increased biodiversity, about what measure
Speaker 1: It's a thesis that hasn't been published yet, but looking
Speaker 1: at digitizing those properties and looking at the the UM
Speaker 1: delineation basically the straight line of where different habitat types
Speaker 1: meat or those vegetation type will meet, and looking at
Speaker 1: nearby properties of similar scale and seeing if the diversity
Speaker 1: at least from the sky um is the same, and
Speaker 1: then asking the hunters that hunt those co ops questions
Speaker 1: about satisfaction. That's also been shown UM in Michigan. There's
Speaker 1: a published study that shows uh, generally, hunters that hunt
Speaker 1: in those situations have higher satisfaction up to like, whereas
Speaker 1: hunters that are just hunting their own place is not
Speaker 1: working with their neighbors are generally satisfied with the way
Speaker 1: that things are going in their state. So and one
Speaker 1: of the strongest things that's kind of an unofficial byproduct
Speaker 1: of them is state agencies being able to communicate something
Speaker 1: super effectively to a lot of landowners quickly. And in
Speaker 1: Michigan is a perfect example. When c W D hit
Speaker 1: in Michigan, um the the Michigan DNR was able to
Speaker 1: communicate with all of these private landowners basically through this
Speaker 1: one employee and her contacts with all of those leaders
Speaker 1: of those colors where they needed sampling, where they needed
Speaker 1: to do town hall meetings. And they could have done
Speaker 1: that equally but not as efficiently by just doing them
Speaker 1: in public places and announcing them. They were able to
Speaker 1: go and target certain places and uh collect more samples
Speaker 1: that way too. The biodiversity thing on managed properties, I
Speaker 1: think that's something people don't really understand well, where people
Speaker 1: manage for wild like you know, you can say like
Speaker 1: I managed for deer, but in some ways you're managing
Speaker 1: for wildlife. Earlier I mentioned a friend of mine from
Speaker 1: back home, Tim's eln rust. He's got he's got not
Speaker 1: a small property like by Western stands would be small.
Speaker 1: He's got a property he manages for deer. You go
Speaker 1: out there in the wintertime. It's unbelievable. The amount of
Speaker 1: bird life, rabbits, squirrels, birds, deer, bobcats, like, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: This is an area that's not like that, Like a
Speaker 1: a lot of this area's managed from maximum yield, maximum
Speaker 1: egg yield, or it's just getting developed. We have that
Speaker 1: and it's all disturbed. It's all disturbed like in that area.
Speaker 1: It's all disturbed landscapes. There's no like like it's it's
Speaker 1: a fiction to think that there's like a pristine right.
Speaker 1: This is like West Michigan, man. I mean people have
Speaker 1: been there and everything. There's no old growth timber anywhere.
Speaker 1: Everything's been disturbed. Virtually, everything's been killed at some point. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: everyone logged multiple times. There's no there's nothing like natural
Speaker 1: um isn't a thing there because you're not having like
Speaker 1: six you're not like forests aren't going through natural succession,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. So he would like he
Speaker 1: to go in and take a piece of ground and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do wildlife on this piece of ground, Dude,
Speaker 1: Like you can. You could go in there with a
Speaker 1: blindfold on and just listen. You'd be like, there's something different.
Speaker 1: About this point Ryan just mentioned, we actually did some research.
Speaker 1: There was ten at least years ago, but University of
Speaker 1: Georgia did a study that we funded where they went
Speaker 1: to properties that had been doing dear management and specifically
Speaker 1: had been putting in and food plots because we wanted
Speaker 1: to see the impact of food plots in forested environments
Speaker 1: and did small mammal trapping and bird surveys and found
Speaker 1: that within a buffer zone around food plots where they're
Speaker 1: punching holes in the forest canopy and putting a food
Speaker 1: plot in where their hadn't been, that there was higher
Speaker 1: species bio diversity in those areas compared to places that
Speaker 1: were just open or forested and not had been changed
Speaker 1: because the amount of how how very the area is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got like he's got thickets, you know, hinge cut
Speaker 1: trees for betting areas. He's got food plots around, he's
Speaker 1: done water stuff, and it's like this big mosaic of
Speaker 1: all these different kinds of you know, hiding areas, feeding areas, trapped.
Speaker 1: Like he pays attention to travel corridors, allowing things to
Speaker 1: move around, and my god, does it make a difference.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest components. That's missing is you either
Speaker 1: have straight uh just land that's agg or you have
Speaker 1: forests that are overmature and they go through those stages
Speaker 1: of succession and those earlier succession young forest stages that
Speaker 1: we call him a seer uh serial stage one and
Speaker 1: two and a little bit of three is what is
Speaker 1: declining throughout a lot of the country where we're not
Speaker 1: letting those things kind of revert because once they start happening,
Speaker 1: you get kind of the hair standing up in the
Speaker 1: back of your neck, and people want to want to
Speaker 1: do it. They want to clean it up, they want
Speaker 1: to bushog it, they want to make it look like
Speaker 1: something that we visualize as nice and neat and clean.
Speaker 1: And there. You know, there's a lot of generalist wildlife
Speaker 1: out there. Deer one of them. They do well in cities,
Speaker 1: they do and well in grasslands and forests. They live everywhere.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of species of animals that are
Speaker 1: niche specific, that rely on very specific stages of succession.
Speaker 1: Like you wouldn't expect to find a gray squirrel, which
Speaker 1: relies on forests in the middle of a grass fland
Speaker 1: savannah because they wouldn't be there, and you wouldn't find
Speaker 1: an Eastern meadow lark in the middle of the forest
Speaker 1: because they like grasses. So that was younger forest succession
Speaker 1: stages where you have thickets and young trees coming in
Speaker 1: um hosts a very wide birth of animals, and a
Speaker 1: lot of deer hunters are getting involved in programs like
Speaker 1: CRP or their hinge cutting, or they're doing something because
Speaker 1: they want to hold deer on their properties. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of food benefits to not just cover and that's
Speaker 1: why you're seeing the response from animals like that, and
Speaker 1: that's that's a byproduct of hunting. The hunters are trying
Speaker 1: to do that for deer, but you're seeing the response
Speaker 1: in other ways. Yeah, it gets into the this thing
Speaker 1: we got earlier, like the intended and unintended consequences, or
Speaker 1: it gets into this idea that that someone enters into
Speaker 1: that motivated by something that might be regarded as fairly superficial,
Speaker 1: meaning man, I wish I could have a big buck
Speaker 1: on my farm, and then a decade down the road
Speaker 1: you have these other sets of realizations about what you've
Speaker 1: kind of accomplished from a wildlife perspective, and that you
Speaker 1: like create some kind of menagerie. Yeah, And that's what
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier, is that you get a lot
Speaker 1: of guys and gals that get involved in it for
Speaker 1: the first first reason, but then they realize how much,
Speaker 1: you know, how much they enjoy the other part of it.
Speaker 1: That that getting dirt on your fingernails and doing something
Speaker 1: and watching wildlife respond. It's it's a it's an extremely
Speaker 1: satisfying thing to do. You guys have been involved in
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong, and I I don't think I am.
Speaker 1: You've been involved in promoting UH states putting up antly restrictions.
Speaker 1: Talk about that a little bit, like what kind of
Speaker 1: what the pros and cons are? What the public perception
Speaker 1: of that is? Why do some people? You know, why
Speaker 1: would one support it? And why would one not like it?
Speaker 1: All Right, so we have a a policy on Antler
Speaker 1: restrictions where we want them to pass a three part
Speaker 1: test in our eyes before we would support anything remotely
Speaker 1: close to that. The first would be, um, is it
Speaker 1: biologically needed? You do? You might explain Antler restrictions, no problem.
Speaker 1: An restrictions are a tool that that state agencies or
Speaker 1: private land managers will use. Let's talk about just like
Speaker 1: government level state agency level to move dear into older
Speaker 1: age classes, they can be UM something that would be
Speaker 1: selective and harvest, where you're saying only deer of a
Speaker 1: certain characteristic will be able to be shot. Point restrictions,
Speaker 1: so if a deer has so many points, spread restrictions,
Speaker 1: if it's antlers are so wide or why, or you
Speaker 1: can shoot them. Um. Sometimes there's combination approaches. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: if they're antler beam lengths are long enough and you
Speaker 1: can judge that by looking at the deer in the profile.
Speaker 1: Those are all um antler restrictions where they would they
Speaker 1: would actually make select of harvest to the hunter who's choosing.
Speaker 1: There's other ways to actually move dear into older age
Speaker 1: classes too that are not part of that, which would
Speaker 1: be reducing total buck harvest by changing seasons, moving days, weapons, um,
Speaker 1: going from something that's easily uh, you know, like going
Speaker 1: from a modern firearm to a primitive weapon and all
Speaker 1: of those tools to say, instead of a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand bucks being killed in the state, let's killd
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand next year, and we're automatically moving twenty
Speaker 1: five thou more deer into the next age class. So
Speaker 1: that's another form of moving dear. It's it's a it's
Speaker 1: more of a quota based thing than selective harvest. So
Speaker 1: there are restrictions in over twenty states today, either statewide,
Speaker 1: um as the only buck you can shoot, as a
Speaker 1: selection of if you can kill a couple of bucks,
Speaker 1: maybe applied to one of those bucks that you can shoot,
Speaker 1: or in smaller areas. UM, what's the most typical antler
Speaker 1: restriction A point restriction because it's the most easily enforced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like in Texas, there's some width ones. Yeah, Mississippi too,
Speaker 1: I've heard all that's true enough. We've had people right
Speaker 1: in and say that the width ones leave a lot
Speaker 1: of deer laying out in the woods. There's just too
Speaker 1: hard people to make a call, and they shoot him
Speaker 1: and they're shooting find him. You know, there's a valley
Speaker 1: we passed, We walked through a valley sheep hunting once
Speaker 1: hunting doll sheep. You know in the Alaska there's a
Speaker 1: lot of areas where it's gotta be a uh you know,
Speaker 1: there's a width requirement, like a fifty in requirement. And
Speaker 1: we found two moose skulls in a valley and almost
Speaker 1: like a forty seven and amost forty nine. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: always thought like, man, that seems pretty weird. You know,
Speaker 1: I've heard that comment before, and I know that it's
Speaker 1: older data, but it's been proven to be not be
Speaker 1: true to be true. Yeah, that that people aren't just
Speaker 1: shooting deer and let letting them lie. Um, did they
Speaker 1: get up and put a tape measure on there? Like? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Point restricted are the most common, but um, they're also
Speaker 1: the the they're not the best in terms of protecting
Speaker 1: to hear because you can have deer if if the
Speaker 1: goal is to move to hear from one to two, Um,
Speaker 1: you can have bucks that are spikes to ten points
Speaker 1: that are that are one years old. So a point restriction,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more slack in that, which is why
Speaker 1: some states are trying to push hunters either into with
Speaker 1: more reliable it's a more reliable predictor of age, but
Speaker 1: again it's subjective because it's harder to judge the spread.
Speaker 1: That's a good point about the point thing, man, because
Speaker 1: you could have like a little you could have anything
Speaker 1: from a spike to like a little eight point. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and if it's a statewide restriction, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: variety there in terms of the productivity of a certain states.
Speaker 1: So you have parts of some states that are super productive.
Speaker 1: You know, the soils are there, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: agg and those deer are going to primarily produce larger
Speaker 1: sets of antlers in their first age than ones that
Speaker 1: might be on lower productive areas. UM. So, a lot
Speaker 1: of states, well it will uh make sure Like in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania they have a split between the state and where
Speaker 1: part of the state it's a four point on a
Speaker 1: side and part of its three. But there it just
Speaker 1: comes down to law enforcement. That's where the Antler restrictions
Speaker 1: UM typically come to. Points point restrictions is because it's
Speaker 1: easier to judge. You should be able to count and
Speaker 1: uh you know, if a law enforcement officer catches up
Speaker 1: with you and checks your harvest and says, okay that
Speaker 1: one doesn't have enough UM or it does, it's easy
Speaker 1: for you know, black and white in terms of what
Speaker 1: the loss does. So the pros of Antler point restrictions
Speaker 1: is be that it just allows more dear to pass
Speaker 1: and do it allows more dear to pass through their
Speaker 1: year and a half old birthday. That is the goal
Speaker 1: and the best case scenario that first kind of rule
Speaker 1: of thumb that we use is is it is it biologically? Um?
Speaker 1: Is it created where it will protect the most yearling
Speaker 1: bucks if that's the goal, but allow the maximum number
Speaker 1: of two and older to be able to be harvested.
Speaker 1: Some of them there's enough slack there that it starts
Speaker 1: bleeding into the two year old age class. We don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. So you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that the ant restriction, if it's necessary, is protecting the
Speaker 1: most uh first age class, but no other ones have you?
Speaker 1: Have you, guys ever supported or have you heard anybody
Speaker 1: put an idea that if the goals that have If
Speaker 1: the goal is to have um dear like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: having dear of all ages, why don't you do a
Speaker 1: deal where once they're two and a half, you can't
Speaker 1: shoot them anymore, because then you have a whole shipload
Speaker 1: of deer that were of all kinds of age classes.
Speaker 1: Like if you made it you can only shoot spikes
Speaker 1: and forks, that would achieve your goal. There of all
Speaker 1: kinds of old bucks running around, it would have the
Speaker 1: least palatability probably by hunters. But it's yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if we're just talking about true core mission. Yeah, like mission, Like,
Speaker 1: the mission isn't The mission isn't that people shoot big
Speaker 1: giant bucks. The mission is that you have dear of
Speaker 1: all ages. Why do you want to kill them all
Speaker 1: once or two and a half just for maximum opportunity?
Speaker 1: Hunter satisfaction is to come into place somewhere. So that's
Speaker 1: what that that's that just has to do with it.
Speaker 1: That would be untenable to people. Well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: a big part of managing wildlife is uh the hunter,
Speaker 1: the hunter side of it. And that's actually one of
Speaker 1: the other things that we look at with a restriction
Speaker 1: is is it biologically protecting the most uh the right
Speaker 1: number of deer and allowing maximum harvest on the other
Speaker 1: one to the majority of deer hunter support it. If
Speaker 1: deer hunters in that state or that region or you know,
Speaker 1: management unit don't support it, it's not worth doing. And honestly,
Speaker 1: even before I go any further, we are fans of
Speaker 1: not mandating this stuff. Oh yeah. In my home state,
Speaker 1: New York, we have avoluntary educational program that the State
Speaker 1: of New York launched three years ago and it is
Speaker 1: showing a shift in deer harvest just by the state
Speaker 1: agency saying if you'd like to see deer of older
Speaker 1: age classes, don't shoot young bucks. There's no law or restriction.
Speaker 1: It's education. Oklahoma is probably the place that is the
Speaker 1: poster child for successful voluntary programs through education. They started
Speaker 1: a slogan in the early two thousands hunters in the
Speaker 1: know let young bucks grow. You could buy bumper stickers
Speaker 1: or they gave them away and uh that state routinely
Speaker 1: is in the top five in the country in terms
Speaker 1: of older bucks in their harvests, just by telling their
Speaker 1: hunters through education, no and no legal point restriction. Now
Speaker 1: tell me if this is correct or or add to
Speaker 1: this however you might want to met. But would you
Speaker 1: say that it is true that cdm A is a
Speaker 1: strong advocate of educating on the benefits of having bucks
Speaker 1: across all age classes. But it is certainly still in
Speaker 1: support of and encouraged, you know, hunters to make whatever
Speaker 1: decision they might want. If you want to shoot a
Speaker 1: your inn aff buck, if whether you're four to or four,
Speaker 1: and if that makes you happy, go for it like you.
Speaker 1: I don't think i've ever seen you guys say you
Speaker 1: can't shoot your inn aff hole bucks. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: you get these people There are individuals who do that,
Speaker 1: and I think kind of bastardize your message many times,
Speaker 1: but that's not what you guys ever manned it right.
Speaker 1: There's there's been plenty of cases where we've opposed aniler
Speaker 1: restrictions because they just they either didn't make biological sense
Speaker 1: or the hunters didn't support it, So I no, I
Speaker 1: just won't do it there. I've actually spoken in front
Speaker 1: of commissions in places and said, we do not support this. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys much more. You much rather goal with like
Speaker 1: education and voluntary Absolutely in Layman's Army, who are we
Speaker 1: to tell anybody what to do with their hunting lis
Speaker 1: especially in Pennsylvania. I mean, we we have antler restrictions,
Speaker 1: but we could almost see ourselves getting behind with the
Speaker 1: hunter recruitment decline and such. You know, of time is
Speaker 1: a big issue. We're not allowed to hunt on Sundays
Speaker 1: there you have you know, as you put it, mugs
Speaker 1: working six days a week. They can't buy a hunting
Speaker 1: license if you can hunt Sunday, I mean, or if
Speaker 1: you get one day a week. It's pretty tough to
Speaker 1: tell somebody, hey, don't shoot that deer when you go out.
Speaker 1: You know, can you imagine when you were a kid
Speaker 1: saying that to your camp. You know in Michigan, definitely
Speaker 1: wouldn't have flowne. Do you guys push against blue laws? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: who don't somebody out there? It blows my mind, man.
Speaker 1: I I recently heard a rumor that, um that when
Speaker 1: you actually saf like, who in the world would support
Speaker 1: a Sunday hunting band. I heard a rumor that like
Speaker 1: a lot of outfitters don't A lot of outfitters support
Speaker 1: Sunday hunting bands. And someone's like, because the reason I
Speaker 1: think it's not true is because they're like, oh, we'd
Speaker 1: have to work on Sundays. One decides this or not.
Speaker 1: It's been an ongoing battle in Pennsylvania and I just
Speaker 1: did a newspaper art a couple of weeks ago or
Speaker 1: an interview. UM, I've debated the head of you know,
Speaker 1: some of the people from the Farm Bureau in Harrisburg.
Speaker 1: They have a big stronghold on that, and I mean
Speaker 1: I've heard every reason under the sun. They don't want
Speaker 1: to have people bother them on Sunday like Diday. I've
Speaker 1: heard everything from the deer need to break you know
Speaker 1: shot you know that I want to be able to
Speaker 1: enjoy my property. I mean just and some of some
Speaker 1: of the arguments I get that, some of them just
Speaker 1: like come on, I mean, and my argument is especially
Speaker 1: they like to the One of the biggest arguments is
Speaker 1: the safety factor. And you're literally it comes in Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: with a two week guns season, it comes down to
Speaker 1: one Sunday, you know, like you're literally only talking about
Speaker 1: one day here. I mean, let's face it, like bow season,
Speaker 1: Like you know, how many bow hunters are gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: stumble across the hiker you know what I mean on
Speaker 1: Sunday on the state game lands or what have you.
Speaker 1: I mean, grouse hunters, how many squirrel hunters on it?
Speaker 1: I mean from the safety standpoint, I don't think that
Speaker 1: makes it pretty good. Oh yeah, the argument that Sundays
Speaker 1: are for hike and yeah, Sundays I don't want to shooting.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I've never participated in civil disobedience. Well no,
Speaker 1: I kind of dicause I used to pick up road
Speaker 1: kill uh here before it was legal, and I did
Speaker 1: that with and I did it in a very brazen fashion,
Speaker 1: hoping to go in front of a judge and be like, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I found a deer dead on the side of the
Speaker 1: road and ate it like ye, you knocked me up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I could have left it. I could have
Speaker 1: left there to rot, but I ate it. Uh. But
Speaker 1: I would imagine the Sunday hunting thing. If I lived
Speaker 1: in a state where you couldn't Sunday hunt, I would
Speaker 1: try to organize civil disobedience and just to have a
Speaker 1: big Sunday hunt. You know what's interesting, big Sunday squirrel
Speaker 1: drive me growing up not hunting on Sunday, I mean,
Speaker 1: growing up, and it's just it's just how it is.
Speaker 1: I've never had the urge to hunt on Sunday. Like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I go to other states, but I guess
Speaker 1: in my mind in Pennsylvania, I'm just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. Years. I have to go to
Speaker 1: Ohio or West Virginia or you know whatever. So you
Speaker 1: go hunt other people's stuff on Sunday. Yeah, I go
Speaker 1: to Ohio. Yeah, sure, dude, that's hilarious. If on the
Speaker 1: border and just like get like a hunt, licensing hunt
Speaker 1: Sunday in the neighboring states, that has to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where I grew up. So I grew up six miles
Speaker 1: from the Maryland border and three miles from the West
Speaker 1: Virginia border in Pennsylvania. And I just grew up hunting
Speaker 1: all three states, and I can hunt Sundays and the
Speaker 1: other two on private land in West Virginia. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just I'll just hunt in West Virginia though,
Speaker 1: this is how it was. Yeah, And then do you
Speaker 1: think it's gonna go away? I don't want. We don't
Speaker 1: need to spend too much time on because they don't
Speaker 1: have any wins. There's no state that you used to
Speaker 1: be able to hunt on Sundays a night you can't. Well,
Speaker 1: it's further anything, It's further right now than it's ever been,
Speaker 1: uh to passing. So eventually it will definitely go away.
Speaker 1: But just time will tell. I guess we've only had
Speaker 1: Sunday hunting. Like in North Carolina probably ten years ago,
Speaker 1: you couldn't hunt on Sundays, and then they allowed our
Speaker 1: tree hunting on private land. And now it's to some
Speaker 1: point I think you're not allowed to rifle hunt on
Speaker 1: public land on Sundays, and you can't hunt within two
Speaker 1: yards of a church or between nine thirty and eleven
Speaker 1: or something. I mean, it's just absurd because they don't
Speaker 1: want the fears that people coming out of church. I
Speaker 1: guess it'll interte people going into church. We'll see something
Speaker 1: a buck, You'll be like, never mind, I was gonna
Speaker 1: worship this morning. They grab their going to run off
Speaker 1: into the woods. Wasn't different than you can't buy a
Speaker 1: drink between before noon or one. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: all those kind of blue laws in the South. And
Speaker 1: do you think it sends people to church because you
Speaker 1: can't buy booze? But there's this historic perception of alcohol
Speaker 1: being like not a great thing right for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. But those same people, I would think, would
Speaker 1: view hunting as like a pretty wholesome activity. And let
Speaker 1: me get here's an interesting fact. You're like, in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: you can't hunt deer on Sundays, but you can hunt
Speaker 1: crows and coyotes. You're only a lot because yeah, you're
Speaker 1: allowed to hunt crows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday only,
Speaker 1: So you can't hunt crows Monday through Thursday. Coyotes are
Speaker 1: open game man seven days a week. Day later dark
Speaker 1: it's it's free rain on them babies. But dear no,
Speaker 1: we can't do it. It's just because you need a break,
Speaker 1: and you needn't break. You gotta take a Sunday. Off said,
Speaker 1: there was a couple of arguments that you could sort
Speaker 1: of relate to. What are the couple of the ones
Speaker 1: where you go, yeah, I can kind of get that.
Speaker 1: So you know, when I the somebody that opens their
Speaker 1: ground up to the public, you know some you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I just Sunday a farmer maybe, you know, just give
Speaker 1: me a day to feed the cows and get the
Speaker 1: horses moved around, etcetera, etcetera. I can almost see that.
Speaker 1: My argument against that is and your it's your property.
Speaker 1: Say that's where That's where I don't understand it, because
Speaker 1: the argument that guides don't wanna it's like you still
Speaker 1: have some level of autonomy in life. I mean, you
Speaker 1: make decisions, right. I used to. I used to trap
Speaker 1: fox uh uh Mennonite property and he wouldn't let you
Speaker 1: check on Saturday because they kept the historic Sabbath of sundown.
Speaker 1: I think it's sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Could be
Speaker 1: getting something's wrong, but it was it was not Sunday.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Sunday. It was like they I can't remember
Speaker 1: what I wish I could I feel like they're Mennite. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyhow, sundown Friday, sundown Saturday was their sabbath. He
Speaker 1: was like, I don't want to check in traps on
Speaker 1: my property during the sabbath, which meant on Friday you
Speaker 1: have to go poll because you couldn't know. You don't
Speaker 1: want to leave them out, you have to go pull
Speaker 1: and then reset on Sunday. And no, there's no loss
Speaker 1: saying this was just the guy was pretty clear about
Speaker 1: what he wanted going down on his property, right, And
Speaker 1: it wasn't like I didn't like try to debate him
Speaker 1: on it, right. Yeah, Well if you look at him
Speaker 1: my way, you know he's just like cool man, got it.
Speaker 1: I won't be all here, you know, I won't be
Speaker 1: on here on Saturday. Uh. Back to point restrictions, what
Speaker 1: are the cons like, Like, Okay, you solved the question
Speaker 1: that you guys like categorically think that every state should
Speaker 1: adopt a mandatory point restriction. That's not true. No, And
Speaker 1: in fact, if you look at the data that we
Speaker 1: talked about in the eighties, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: states that had and imbalanced in buck age structure, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist today. A lot of states have uh
Speaker 1: deer that represent two and three and older in their
Speaker 1: naturally occurring deer populations, they're in the harvest, So that's
Speaker 1: that's There are definitely small sections of states um and
Speaker 1: probably even in some cases whole states where a significant
Speaker 1: part of the harvest is still young bucks. But that's
Speaker 1: not the cases it was, you know, twenty five years ago,
Speaker 1: so we don't need to hunters have adopted this philosophy.
Speaker 1: One of the things that that also shows where people
Speaker 1: are really thinking about quality deer management differently is the
Speaker 1: general acceptance of shooting dose. It took until was the
Speaker 1: first or nationally the hunters in the United States killed
Speaker 1: more doze than bucks. So that was the first time
Speaker 1: in well talking about what that's a vest because that's
Speaker 1: a defendable we laugh about it now, but but talk
Speaker 1: about what drove that reluctance to kill those What was
Speaker 1: the the concept that you don't shoot those because that's
Speaker 1: what we were taught growing up because there weren't because
Speaker 1: there weren't any deer. But at the point of the
Speaker 1: mid seventies and going into the eighties, deer were almost
Speaker 1: at the highest point they've ever been, and definitely by
Speaker 1: later in that decade it was happening. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: guess the point being, once upon a time that mentality
Speaker 1: was necessary. It was yeah, like when you had you could.
Speaker 1: I was looking at this chart that showed like what
Speaker 1: counties and again Michigan, I just know because my home state,
Speaker 1: but showing like every it was sort of like by
Speaker 1: five year increments or something, what counties you were allowed
Speaker 1: to hunt deer in. Going back into the early I
Speaker 1: mean there were times when you there were times when
Speaker 1: you were hunting just one little dinky corner in Michigan
Speaker 1: and the rest of it wasn't even open to deer hunting.
Speaker 1: And so that drove this thing like if we're gonna
Speaker 1: if we want to hunt deer at all, um, we
Speaker 1: need to grow dear population. So you can imagine you
Speaker 1: you'd sort of engender this great reluctance on the part
Speaker 1: of hunters. Two want to grow the hurt and now
Speaker 1: we act like it's like, oh, they're so not that
Speaker 1: not that you act this way, but but people perceive
Speaker 1: it like that it was just this macho that everyone
Speaker 1: was too macho to kill dose. But it was a
Speaker 1: really important thing at a time to not kill those
Speaker 1: because there was no deer. So to that end, quality
Speaker 1: deer management and really any game management is should be
Speaker 1: site specific. It should be at the property or management
Speaker 1: unit scale where you're looking at the popular population and temporally,
Speaker 1: what does it look like right now and where do
Speaker 1: we need to go. That's what a management plan is.
Speaker 1: When some state writes a statewide anment plan, or an
Speaker 1: individual property owner gets somebody to come in either through
Speaker 1: federal assistance or has a private consultant right them in
Speaker 1: management plan, they should say, Okay, here's the current inventory,
Speaker 1: this is what it looks like, the habitat the deer,
Speaker 1: whatever what other animal it is, and our goal is
Speaker 1: to get to be point be on the path within
Speaker 1: three to five years. But then you have to reevaluate
Speaker 1: not only annually, but at the end of that time
Speaker 1: period and say, okay, what direction do we go now.
Speaker 1: It's it's like accepting, uh, you know, you can't throw
Speaker 1: the baby out with the bathwater in terms of just
Speaker 1: because it was good once, it's always going to be good.
Speaker 1: And QDM has been definitely thrown into that bathwater of
Speaker 1: we're always going to tell people to shoot older bucks
Speaker 1: and not shoot younger bucks. That's not the case, or
Speaker 1: that you always have to shoot dose. That's not the case.
Speaker 1: It's really site specific and time specific. So you could
Speaker 1: picture coming into a place and seeing a situation where
Speaker 1: you're like, man, don't shoot any dose because so I
Speaker 1: where I live in New York, I'm on the kind
Speaker 1: of the foothills of the Adirondacks, and there are definitely
Speaker 1: places north of me that have low deer density um
Speaker 1: their parts across many places in the country where the
Speaker 1: productivity of the land is not quite that good, and
Speaker 1: you would not need to shoot any dose because it
Speaker 1: just doesn't sustain it. Broad broad pieces of northern New England,
Speaker 1: the White Mountain National Forest, Green Mountains, Adirondacks, those places,
Speaker 1: there's in some places no dose season. It's not necessary,
Speaker 1: and people would like to see hunters would like to
Speaker 1: see more of them on the ground. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so in those cases, where would we go and talk
Speaker 1: to a hunter about adopting QDM. In those cases, they
Speaker 1: might want to improve the habitat and say, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: you can build the dear population up a little bit um.
Speaker 1: That would be a way to abstain, abstain from shooting dose,
Speaker 1: because that's what's needed. What's your what's cute m as
Speaker 1: relationship with the agricultural community, and um, I hear about this,
Speaker 1: but I was gonna say that the automobile insurance industry,
Speaker 1: But I've had other people in your world, like in
Speaker 1: your community, say that the automobile insurance industry isn't really
Speaker 1: a main driver and trying to lower deer numbers like that.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a fiction, which I've always been told
Speaker 1: was true. They're like, they don't want to pay out
Speaker 1: so many claims on people crashing into deer, and so
Speaker 1: that they're one of the voices for that we need
Speaker 1: to kill deer, kill deer, kill deer, and then the
Speaker 1: agricultural community. It's indisputable. I don't mean to low them
Speaker 1: all together, but there are components of the egg community
Speaker 1: that generally advocate, Um, we would like to see lower
Speaker 1: deer numbers and have in lessen crop damage because we
Speaker 1: lose so much food to uh well, in terms of
Speaker 1: the the insurance companies, that's generally that is a falsehood,
Speaker 1: Like you don't get calls from them every day being
Speaker 1: like by god, no, yeah, yeah, I mean, oh you
Speaker 1: hear that. I grew up hearing that. But I've had
Speaker 1: a lot of people say like they're just not big
Speaker 1: players and deer management. Like I always say, like I
Speaker 1: just want to be part of that meeting where somebody's
Speaker 1: writing the check and handing it over like I hate
Speaker 1: you more deer this year. Yeah, here's a hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So you've really never heard of it never. I mean
Speaker 1: I've heard those stories. I never heard any like substantiation that,
Speaker 1: like all states calling up the calling up the Fishing
Speaker 1: Game Agency being like you go, boys, better kill all
Speaker 1: the deer. I mean, put it this way. I've heard
Speaker 1: it for probably twenty five plus years. I've heard that story,
Speaker 1: and I've never heard of a case where like it's
Speaker 1: never been substantiated, like nobody's I would feel like by
Speaker 1: this point, thirty years down the road, somebody would be like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna blow the whistle on this.
Speaker 1: This is what I called me and Matt. You have
Speaker 1: insight and other people than the ORG, like kept have workforce,
Speaker 1: state game agencies. Right, so you've seen the inside the
Speaker 1: belly of the beast and that's just not happening, right. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. You guys being paid off and you try
Speaker 1: to cover it. Up. That's funny parallel the I'm trip
Speaker 1: will get into chronic wasting disease a little bit, but
Speaker 1: the thought that states are making money off of chronic
Speaker 1: wasting diseases to make money off you can't. But that
Speaker 1: is a misconception that people say that they can't. They're
Speaker 1: they're spending money on it. But the same thing with
Speaker 1: the insurance companies is how are you making money off
Speaker 1: of that? I mean it just making money on cw D.
Speaker 1: So that the theory there what some of these I
Speaker 1: like it, I just can't. I'm not tracking. They're saying
Speaker 1: that this like they're getting all this funding appropriated to
Speaker 1: cw t D management. That's lining the pockets are keeping
Speaker 1: these guys in. Yeah, c w D turns into new pool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I saw them fishing game boys, got them
Speaker 1: new Tronic. We got a bunch of R pod campers.
Speaker 1: There's been recently new R pods. There's been a couple
Speaker 1: of recent bills trying to get new funding appropriated research stuff,
Speaker 1: which seems like a universal Yeah, absolutely, like let's support that.
Speaker 1: Even if you don't think cw is a big deal,
Speaker 1: even for those people, you should want that funding because
Speaker 1: it's going to help answer the questions regardless, though, those
Speaker 1: guys I'm seeing people post about online like yeah, of
Speaker 1: course they're trying to get more money. That's how all
Speaker 1: these guys are getting rich, just more and more money
Speaker 1: put into it. And it's it's it's crazy. It's just
Speaker 1: the general population of of hunters themselves, and I feel
Speaker 1: like they seek us out on were somewhere. But my
Speaker 1: two favorite conspiracy type theories are rattlesnakes being dropped out
Speaker 1: of helicopters to eat the turkey eggs. I hear that
Speaker 1: one was, Yeah, what is that one? I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know, and they don't because they don't like turkeys.
Speaker 1: They don't like turkeys, I guess, yeah. And then so
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of rattlers and load them into
Speaker 1: a chopper and throw them out that they'll eat the eggs.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I haven't. I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: have heard it, but I love like how round about
Speaker 1: like if you task someone and you're like, dude, um,
Speaker 1: I need you to lower for whatever the hell reason,
Speaker 1: I need to lower turkey numbers. And this guy goes
Speaker 1: and he like he's like, hey, let me formulate a
Speaker 1: pant plan. This is when he comes up and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's here's how I'm spending the money. You got the
Speaker 1: you know what a rattlesnake is, right, So like it's
Speaker 1: so funny like with these things like how bad. You know,
Speaker 1: he really didn't come to it. If you really did
Speaker 1: come to a group of wildlife professionals and said I
Speaker 1: want to lower turkey numbers, I just don't think that
Speaker 1: they would that would be the proposal, right, I feel
Speaker 1: it would be like a different plan. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: the next one is the introduction of coyotes, and I
Speaker 1: just I get that one a ton and I just
Speaker 1: got My favorite was this past fall, a guy cornered
Speaker 1: me in a gas station like four thirty in the morning.
Speaker 1: I was because he had a QTM shirt. No, he
Speaker 1: didn't know me from around town. I was going bow
Speaker 1: hunting and he was going bow hunting. And he actually
Speaker 1: worked in the coal mine in Southwest in Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 1: in their break room, one of his buddies knew a guy.
Speaker 1: This is how it went. His buddy knew a guy
Speaker 1: who was at the same gas station and we were
Speaker 1: getting coffee. You know, three weeks prior and there was
Speaker 1: a guy coming from Missouri with a trailer load of coyotes,
Speaker 1: said he was working for the Game Commission, and and
Speaker 1: I'm like, come on, you know that type of dealing.
Speaker 1: He's like, he has never lied to me before, why
Speaker 1: would he start now? You know that that type of deal.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you don't even Like, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I can't even argue that. Okay, Like what am I gonna?
Speaker 1: I mean, their mind's made up. But I've heard and
Speaker 1: he saw that they were just real quick, uh, bringing
Speaker 1: in coyotes to kill all the deer. Presumably yes, with
Speaker 1: what goal? I don't know. That's another thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you if you know anything about business, and you
Speaker 1: know the amount of money that I'm talking Pennsylvania that
Speaker 1: the white tail deer bring to the bottom line, the
Speaker 1: last thing you do is want less of them from
Speaker 1: a state agency endpoint. But even when you you make
Speaker 1: that logic, it's like, nope, nope, no, no, the state
Speaker 1: agencies are just a bunch of greenis and they don't
Speaker 1: want anybody hunting anymore. That you know, I can see
Speaker 1: that like line of thinking. It was like our famous
Speaker 1: one that we talked about too much. But it was
Speaker 1: the remember the one that the Clintons Clinton the Clintons that, uh,
Speaker 1: I would be covered it so off. I'll say it
Speaker 1: again that the Clintons wanted wolves back because they'd kill
Speaker 1: all the animals and no one would have any occasion
Speaker 1: to hunt anymore. Therefore it would destroy the firearm industry,
Speaker 1: which is another roundabout play. But yeah, conspiracy theories are fun.
Speaker 1: Man Um, we should get onto something that's more serviceable. Uh. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got one question that I do want to talk
Speaker 1: about c w D for a while. But here's my question,
Speaker 1: and you kind of already answered it, because you do
Speaker 1: feel an ovel gay and to like, as an organization,
Speaker 1: you feel an obligation to help people achieve what they want, right,
Speaker 1: because you want hunters to be engaged, involved, happy. But
Speaker 1: let's say you knew some thing. Okay, let's say you
Speaker 1: knew some truth that, uh, that you knew some truth
Speaker 1: where the best thing for deer like that the really
Speaker 1: the best thing for dear was in opposition to what
Speaker 1: hunters wanted. And it was turned out that some unforeseen
Speaker 1: thing like big box were detrimental to wildlife in America
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, I don't know what it is. How
Speaker 1: would you weigh that out? That would be a difficult
Speaker 1: conversation because we need hunters. Yeah, I mean, we will
Speaker 1: always stand behind the science, and ultimately would we would
Speaker 1: end up trying to educate hunters about what? But but
Speaker 1: I don't, Okay, that's that's because what does that I
Speaker 1: I say that all the time too, But like, what
Speaker 1: does that mean to you? To stand behind the science?
Speaker 1: Look at the preponderance of evidence that's out there, evidence
Speaker 1: based science that says what is beneficial to the environment,
Speaker 1: what is what is good for dear? Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at. So let's say there what that's
Speaker 1: what That's what informs my my hypothetical. And it's a
Speaker 1: goofy hypothetical example though called this it's CWD related. But
Speaker 1: the one of the that's this is I'm doing SHREWD hosting.
Speaker 1: So because I'm getting into jump in the gun, go
Speaker 1: ahead and do it for me. So, so, some people
Speaker 1: are saying that you should not allow younger age class
Speaker 1: bucks to advance to older age classes in CDWD management zones,
Speaker 1: theory being that that would be detrimental and lead to
Speaker 1: the spread further, etcetera, etcetera. So how do you, as
Speaker 1: q d M A tackle that? So but here, yeah,
Speaker 1: great job. But but earlier what was interesting is how
Speaker 1: they decrease their home range, which is yeah, great point
Speaker 1: because my body this is his burning question, his burning issues,
Speaker 1: he feels. And he used to he used to he
Speaker 1: used to practice QDM you personally, I think so he
Speaker 1: used to practice QDM, but now he's concerned about where
Speaker 1: they have prevalence. I think it's some's prevalence, which is
Speaker 1: disturbing to him. And so now his like thing, like
Speaker 1: his whole focus has shifted, like the way he sort
Speaker 1: of views everything. And he was an early adopter and
Speaker 1: like really big into q d M. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know he I don't know if he used it, if
Speaker 1: he used that term. Yeah, he know. He's got QDM
Speaker 1: posters handle over his house and ship. But anyhow, his
Speaker 1: whole focus is shift now where he thinks the primary
Speaker 1: concern right now is stopping CWD spread. So and he
Speaker 1: feels that that a lot of the QDM practices are
Speaker 1: anathema to slowing the spread of c w D because
Speaker 1: bucks have higher prevalence and travel more good word by
Speaker 1: the way, um okay, that means against so thanks for that. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Mark's asking about that specific thing. We q m A
Speaker 1: does not employ anybody that's a c w D expert expert,
Speaker 1: but we are not. It seems it could be like
Speaker 1: the high priority. I mean, I went to school for wildlife.
Speaker 1: I'm not a disease expert. You guys don't have like
Speaker 1: an epidemia like we We we align with the people
Speaker 1: that are the experts that we try to bring that,
Speaker 1: whether they work for you or not. In your dialogue. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the person you're talking about, we're in
Speaker 1: dialogue with him. We're on an advisory committee with about
Speaker 1: thirty other people and trying to push the c w
Speaker 1: D message across many different platforms. You know, he's staying
Speaker 1: at my house right now. He should have been here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's fishing. He's on a fishing vacation. Should be fishing. Yeah, geez,
Speaker 1: he would have been good too. Absolutely away. Anyway, he's
Speaker 1: actually sussing out my garden project when I left him.
Speaker 1: But go on, Okay, So Mark Mark's question about that
Speaker 1: point of c w D. There is a flead the
Speaker 1: Association Fish and Wildlife Agencies put put out in late
Speaker 1: eighteen Best Management practices that covers everything from surveillance to
Speaker 1: UH monitoring to management, um, all of these different strategies.
Speaker 1: We are in agreement with all of those things, and
Speaker 1: even to the point of pushing deer into older age
Speaker 1: classes to a point. Some of the science is a
Speaker 1: little quirky behind that I kind of got lost from it. Okay,
Speaker 1: back up, Association Fish and Wildlife Agencies put out of
Speaker 1: best management practices for all states and that's like all
Speaker 1: the fifty state all the fifty state game management agencies. Yes,
Speaker 1: they have a they generated best practices for themselves for yeah,
Speaker 1: for the agencies on how to communicate to the public
Speaker 1: um how to best And it's a living document. It's
Speaker 1: changing all the time. It's a really good document. Um
Speaker 1: how it covers the whole gamut of game management of Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think that the CWD is a part of
Speaker 1: this broader package. It's it's a cw D specific doctum
Speaker 1: understand and uh, you know, looking at what are the
Speaker 1: biggest risks, where is c w D spreading the fastest,
Speaker 1: We're all in general agreement that is, uh, moving live
Speaker 1: deer and moving dear parts. Like if you're a hunter
Speaker 1: and you're shoot a deer that is in a c
Speaker 1: w D area and moving the entire carcass either home
Speaker 1: or you're crossing boundaries where it doesn't exist. Has has
Speaker 1: that's happened? For sure? Absolutely? Yeah? And I mean that
Speaker 1: they they've traced they've traced the movement to carcasses. I know,
Speaker 1: their trace movement to to moving captive servants. They have
Speaker 1: done that. I thought you meant. Has legis have they
Speaker 1: have actually ever found somebody moving a dead deer? You
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Has there ever? Has there ever
Speaker 1: been a c w D outbreak that was somehow traceable
Speaker 1: to the movement of a deer's carcass. There's a there's
Speaker 1: an assumption in one place. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: been proven, but you're not in your head, Hank, do
Speaker 1: you know? No, I don't know if it's proven, but
Speaker 1: it's definitely assumed that some you know, taxidermist had you know,
Speaker 1: thrown out some dear parts that have been brought to
Speaker 1: them that they think created you know, they created an outbreak. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: So those are the biggest, the biggest factors that we
Speaker 1: see thought more so than just dear moving. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: more so because dear don't they do disperse. We needn't
Speaker 1: talk about dispersal, but at younger ages, dear will leave
Speaker 1: where they're born and set up a new home range.
Speaker 1: That has been a concern with c w D UH
Speaker 1: and from a lot of folks are thinking about when
Speaker 1: deer dispersed, they're carrying that with them. You can't stop dispersal.
Speaker 1: It's natural, um and one of the one of the
Speaker 1: thoughts on antler restrictions and that thought process of removing
Speaker 1: antler restrictions in cases where dear dispersal might be moving
Speaker 1: the disease faster UM, that can be arguing. It's confusing
Speaker 1: for hunters because some states have remove them in some
Speaker 1: say states don't. Uh. Pennsylvania is a good example where
Speaker 1: they didn't remove antler restrictions. They got c w D
Speaker 1: and said that's not going to solve the problem because
Speaker 1: the majority, in fact, almost all of dear dispersal occurs
Speaker 1: before the deer is old or not old enough to
Speaker 1: actually carry the disease. So deer moving from when they're
Speaker 1: between eight eighteen months or or so of age and
Speaker 1: twenty months of age, they're moving to a new new place. UM. Anyway,
Speaker 1: dispersal is one of those factors that has looked at UM,
Speaker 1: but also dear movement outside of their home range. Yes,
Speaker 1: we talk talked about their home rerange shrinking as they
Speaker 1: get older, but deer also do something called excursions. That's
Speaker 1: probably the bigger culprit. Where deer will leave where they're
Speaker 1: where they are in the fall and go out on
Speaker 1: these one to three mile excursions looking for breeding opportunities,
Speaker 1: and then they return that may also be moving the
Speaker 1: disease are our thought process. Originally, some of the original
Speaker 1: research that came out was formed by models UM. One
Speaker 1: of the papers pop pav at all looked at disease
Speaker 1: transmission of chronic wasting disease through bucks and had some
Speaker 1: pretty quirky assumptions in there. They assume that of all
Speaker 1: bucks would be harvested annually UM to be able to
Speaker 1: to limit that. That was one of those things that
Speaker 1: we didn't think was quite realistic, So some of the
Speaker 1: assumptions were a little bit quirky. But originally we set
Speaker 1: a rule and and kind of our policy on managing
Speaker 1: hunters and managing c w D in those areas where
Speaker 1: c w D exists is that don't push deer to
Speaker 1: advanced age structures of like four or older, which would
Speaker 1: be trophy management, but continue harvesting deer at least at
Speaker 1: two or three UM and excel that harvest at that point.
Speaker 1: I have heard some cases though, in the West in
Speaker 1: Colorado where they're showing evidence of some of the management
Speaker 1: units where some of that has been shown to UM
Speaker 1: be the case where in places where they're managing for
Speaker 1: mature bucks they are seeing a higher prevalence rate existing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is starting to show up. And we at
Speaker 1: q d m A we do base it on science,
Speaker 1: and we continually review our policies, and we're going through
Speaker 1: a pretty thorough review right now. It wouldn't shock me
Speaker 1: if at some point we have to revamp that. And
Speaker 1: in places where c w D exists, we say, you
Speaker 1: know what, starts shooting bucks at any age instead of
Speaker 1: uh waiting until they're two or older. Our contention there
Speaker 1: has always been you need hunters to be able to
Speaker 1: manage the gear, and in places where we don't have
Speaker 1: good science on it, a lot of this was based
Speaker 1: on modeling, not on real world scenarios. Before the Colorado
Speaker 1: examples popped up, we were talking a bit two hunters
Speaker 1: and saying, if we don't have hunters out there regulating
Speaker 1: the dear populations, we're kind of at a loss. You
Speaker 1: can look at Wisconsin as a perfect example of that,
Speaker 1: where they lost a lot of hunter support and with
Speaker 1: c w D management and a lot of people backed off,
Speaker 1: and now the prevalence rate in that state has hit
Speaker 1: In some places, the disease actually makes a UH. It's
Speaker 1: it's interesting somewhere around one percent prevalence, the disease goes
Speaker 1: from a density dependent disease to a frequency dependent, which
Speaker 1: in essence means it doesn't matter how many animals are
Speaker 1: on the landscape. It's the prevalence rate that really is
Speaker 1: impactful of how quickly it spreads. Explain that. So in
Speaker 1: frequency dependent UH diseases, instead of trying to regulate dear
Speaker 1: population numbers, you need to start monitoring how much UH
Speaker 1: interaction those deer have with each other through movements, through
Speaker 1: congregations and other things. So in those places where they're
Speaker 1: outlawing things like mineral blocks, feed, those all make a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. They do they do, yes, because in
Speaker 1: those places, that's where they're concentrating deer and they're going
Speaker 1: to be dispersing the misfolded proteins are called prions into
Speaker 1: the environment, and other deer are going to contract that.
Speaker 1: So we're fully supportive of that. UM. You know, uh
Speaker 1: Ted Nujam makes the point that you can't stop dear
Speaker 1: from All they do is walk around and smell each other,
Speaker 1: rub noses, roll up against each other, that they're gregarious,
Speaker 1: and that you can't you're not gonna prevent deer under
Speaker 1: your contact. He like describes him as the licking nous
Speaker 1: rubbing these things on the planet. Wouldn't you say, though,
Speaker 1: that mineral licks or baiting stations, that is just a
Speaker 1: disproportionately high concentration of that kind of stuff. So yes,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be interaction, there's gonna be contact, but if
Speaker 1: we can at least minimize those super high concentration zones,
Speaker 1: we're not going to get rid of it all. But
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it's a three better situation, and we should
Speaker 1: take a three percent better situation. Yeah, and that's probably
Speaker 1: going back to the discussion about UM telling hunters to
Speaker 1: shoot young bucks or not in those cases. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of hunters have adopted the
Speaker 1: qdm UH concept, and really, what folks are saying is
Speaker 1: if we can educate the masses like we did, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago, maybe we can push people to
Speaker 1: shooting young bucks again to reduce that that disease. But
Speaker 1: it's we've we've looked at it pretty objectively and felt
Speaker 1: like if you don't have hunters managing the population and
Speaker 1: and luckily, you know, the disease is a very serious thing.
Speaker 1: But luckily it's still in a small, relatively amount of
Speaker 1: the of the country. What percentage of the country the
Speaker 1: landmass sense has cw I think the last statistic it's
Speaker 1: a little old, but it was about eight percent of
Speaker 1: counties have it in the country. And then how bad
Speaker 1: could it get? It could? Yes, how long do you
Speaker 1: think it would take? Well, if you look at if
Speaker 1: you look at a snapshot of ten years ago of
Speaker 1: the U. S g S puts out a map of it,
Speaker 1: it has probably expanded three times a size since two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, and where it was in the US and Canada.
Speaker 1: The only thing I care about, um, I only care
Speaker 1: about one I aspect to c w D is the
Speaker 1: risk of human transmission. That is the biggest risk. That's
Speaker 1: really all I care about. If not, it's just like
Speaker 1: another thing that kills deer and the tons of stuff
Speaker 1: that kills deer. Yeah, except for probably a secondary thing
Speaker 1: to really worry about is in those places, um, where
Speaker 1: it gets. Once it gets to about five prevalent, it's
Speaker 1: basically hard to stop. You can control it when it's
Speaker 1: before that. That's what a lot of state have been shown.
Speaker 1: Comparing Wisconsin Illinois as a standard peat thing, a lot
Speaker 1: of experts look at they've managed the same way. They've
Speaker 1: had it about the or they've they've had it about
Speaker 1: the same amount of time, but their management strategies changed
Speaker 1: at one point and Illinois today continues to have about
Speaker 1: a one percent prevalence, whereas Wisconsin in some places it's
Speaker 1: fort within the herd. And what do they maybe do differently?
Speaker 1: Uh In in Illinois, they the state has always maintained
Speaker 1: a UH when it's found in a new place, going
Speaker 1: with a target of removal. A lot of hunters here
Speaker 1: that and they think dear eradication, which is not the case.
Speaker 1: It is you go in and you remove a certain
Speaker 1: percentage of the deer to test and sample to see
Speaker 1: how prevalent it is. UM. Not eliminating all deer, but
Speaker 1: removing a percentage of it to be able to not
Speaker 1: only surveil and see how many, how how prevalent it is,
Speaker 1: but also to knock the dear density back so that
Speaker 1: the population is huntable in the future, but also keeping
Speaker 1: prevalence at bay. And since you know, the two thousands,
Speaker 1: Illinois has kept it around one by going into outbreak
Speaker 1: areas and shooting a lot of deer in the beginning,
Speaker 1: not every year, they do it. At the very beginning,
Speaker 1: they shoot a lot of deer. They reduced the deer density,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to maintain that deer density. So there's
Speaker 1: always deer in this and they manage it from the
Speaker 1: from further on by hunters. So they come in and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, you know whatever, we want to take
Speaker 1: deer out of here, and they do that, and then
Speaker 1: the years after that it's just they adjust hunter hunter numbers,
Speaker 1: hunting licenselles, dough allocations and yeah, but it's managed by
Speaker 1: hunters after that. And they started in oh seven, I believe,
Speaker 1: and it's been at one since then. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure the exact year. But in Wisconsin, Uh, they've had
Speaker 1: it a long time and in the areas that have
Speaker 1: it had have had it the longest um they lost
Speaker 1: a lot of hunter and landowners to port based on
Speaker 1: going in and trying to remove a lot of deer
Speaker 1: with the help of hunters, um asking hunters to do
Speaker 1: certain things, but they basically lost trust and a lot
Speaker 1: of those landowners and a lot of landowners just held
Speaker 1: their hands up and said, you know, we're we're not
Speaker 1: going to allow access anymore. We're not going to shoot
Speaker 1: these deer anymore. And it's started to climb. And then
Speaker 1: there were a lot of political influences in terms of
Speaker 1: how the states started managing it, and in some cases
Speaker 1: has been kind of a let's watch it and monitor
Speaker 1: it and see how how it reacts. And that is
Speaker 1: now really exacerbated and there's a lot of issues. So
Speaker 1: the other thing I would worry about it, besides jumping
Speaker 1: the species barrier, is in those places where it starts
Speaker 1: reaching above five prevalence, it's always fatal disease. In those cases,
Speaker 1: we will lose dear, Dear populations will decline. It's been
Speaker 1: shown in Wyoming, Colorado, in Wisconsin that you're once the
Speaker 1: aigles above, it's a rain going downwards, and you're it's
Speaker 1: going to be hard to bring that population back up
Speaker 1: at any point, and it's always going to be in
Speaker 1: the environment, so whenever a new deer immigrates into that area,
Speaker 1: it will likely contract it and born and all those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know this is beyond your like, this isn't your
Speaker 1: area of expertise, But do you feel like, in ten
Speaker 1: years or in the people you speak to, is there
Speaker 1: any path towards us knowing for certain what the diseases
Speaker 1: capabilities are in terms of that it would jump to cattle,
Speaker 1: that it would jump to sheet, that it would jump
Speaker 1: to humans. Will we ever? Will someone ever say, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, turns out it can't. I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody will say that because it's it's part of the
Speaker 1: family of t s S and other ts ese that's transmissible.
Speaker 1: Sponge deform and cephalopathys um have have done that, and
Speaker 1: the more interactions it has with those other animals and humans,
Speaker 1: every case is a possibility where it could. Uh they
Speaker 1: are um changing over time, disease has changed, so as
Speaker 1: it grows, it is possible. But right now there's research
Speaker 1: out of Colorado that says it won't jump to cows
Speaker 1: to livestock um and the best science out there that
Speaker 1: we there's conflicting evidence, but the best science is also
Speaker 1: saying that the species barriers to humans is pretty strong
Speaker 1: that it likely won't drink. Remember they came out with
Speaker 1: that some guy comes out of some people out of
Speaker 1: cannon like, oh, we gave it to a monkey the
Speaker 1: macaw thing turn out not being true. Dude. Stories like
Speaker 1: that pick up a lot more traction than the retraction faster.
Speaker 1: Not even fake news, just like like, that's a study
Speaker 1: that was done. It wasn't even reviewed and and there's
Speaker 1: a question in terms of how it was performed, and
Speaker 1: the sample size is pretty small. Um. But there's the
Speaker 1: other there's another study that's out of UM the National
Speaker 1: Health Institute at a Colorado UM that used the same
Speaker 1: kind of monkey and used a lot more of them.
Speaker 1: It was about a fifteen year study and they showed
Speaker 1: that the species barriers are pretty strong. So UM, right
Speaker 1: now the evidence is leading towards it being a strong
Speaker 1: species barrier. But I don't know if anybody would say
Speaker 1: it's never going to there's another cool um opportunity, and
Speaker 1: you might know it's I think it's like New Yorker
Speaker 1: p a. But somebody like a wild game dinner later
Speaker 1: realized that they served the CWD positive deer to like
Speaker 1: a group of a couple hundred people. They got like
Speaker 1: over a hundred people their tracking tracking them for a decade. Now,
Speaker 1: yeah it was New York and there was it was
Speaker 1: like two hundred people and a hundred some submitted, right,
Speaker 1: they submitted and they've been looking at it for a
Speaker 1: long time and haven't seen it. You know, do you
Speaker 1: find that the I find that most like this gets
Speaker 1: a little bit complicated. The other day I was asking Mark,
Speaker 1: what does the c w D denier nowadays, Because the
Speaker 1: c w D denier a couple of years ago was
Speaker 1: someone who's like it's make believe. But now c w
Speaker 1: D deny or doesn't deny c w D. They're just
Speaker 1: like it's not a big deal. Like you're running out
Speaker 1: of people who you're running out of c w D
Speaker 1: deniers who think it's make believe. Now they're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: it's for real. But don't worry about it. I have
Speaker 1: found and this like I hope they're right, Like I
Speaker 1: really root, like I root every day for c w
Speaker 1: D deniers to be right, Like I can't wait for
Speaker 1: them to be right, and that I was wrong and
Speaker 1: I'll be like, I'll be the first guy to go
Speaker 1: out and you know, buy him a beer. Like I
Speaker 1: hope they're right. I just don't know that they are,
Speaker 1: and I can't think they're not. But um, I have
Speaker 1: found that most of your big like don't worry about
Speaker 1: c w D people tend to be from the deer industry,
Speaker 1: captive deer industry. Is that what we mean? No, notice
Speaker 1: that like baiting supplements, like, they tend to have a
Speaker 1: connection interest. Yeah, they tend to have a connection to
Speaker 1: um selling ship you feed a deer, or move buying
Speaker 1: and selling deer and trade and deer and breeding deer.
Speaker 1: And is that do you find it that's true? We
Speaker 1: do find that that's true. And we held a special
Speaker 1: press conference at a t A this year about c
Speaker 1: w D and try to get as many of the
Speaker 1: people in the industry there to to that press conference
Speaker 1: to talk about that. And our CEO went on record
Speaker 1: of saying almost that exact thing at that press conference. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't I understand the thought process there
Speaker 1: because what what is hunting I mean, is so tied
Speaker 1: to nostalgia and tradition and all of these good thoughts
Speaker 1: and good things that have happened to a lot of us.
Speaker 1: And you you you said the word hope. I hope
Speaker 1: it's you know, not going to be the case too.
Speaker 1: But the majority of vast majority of people know that
Speaker 1: it's a serious disease. And we we as hunters, you know,
Speaker 1: talking to the general listener here, we have to we
Speaker 1: have to align with that. We have to realize that
Speaker 1: it is serious and we need to do our part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the other thing about the like like again, I
Speaker 1: don't even know what a c W deny or is anymore,
Speaker 1: but I would think that anyone would be really happy
Speaker 1: about funding because if you're convinced that it's not a
Speaker 1: big deal, I would think that you'd be very eager
Speaker 1: to see this born out by the academic community exactly
Speaker 1: that they would look and but they would say that
Speaker 1: they wanted to be I think they would tell you
Speaker 1: that they wanted to be a big deal. My new
Speaker 1: thing was c W D deniers is I wanna get
Speaker 1: a bunch of positive deer and make and get a
Speaker 1: dozen or so of them and make a batch of
Speaker 1: burger and I'm even gonna grind some spinal cord into
Speaker 1: that that blend and make him a patty. I don't
Speaker 1: know fry that patty. And I'm gonna say, once you
Speaker 1: eat that burger, we'll talk. But if you won't eat
Speaker 1: that burger, I don't want to talk. Would be good.
Speaker 1: It's a good litmus test because if I see the
Speaker 1: slightest Yanni brought up, No, he's got to bring in
Speaker 1: his kid marks, No, he's got to bring in his kids.
Speaker 1: Maybe your kid eats that burger, we'll talk about And
Speaker 1: if you if you tell your kid to eat and
Speaker 1: he eats, and I'll be like, kid, this dude's a
Speaker 1: true believer. Now I want to hear he has to say,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know burger to eat, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If there's anybody out there willing to
Speaker 1: do that, it would be a tough burger. And and
Speaker 1: we you know, we agree that. Uh, there are less
Speaker 1: of those people, thankfully. Unfortunately they have a pretty big
Speaker 1: platform the detractors of of how serious it is. And
Speaker 1: we just need more folks out there talking about the
Speaker 1: seriousness of it. And luckily there's been some pretty good
Speaker 1: press about seed due to the general public through some
Speaker 1: of the larger publications like the Post. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: been some hysterical there has as much as you want
Speaker 1: people to know and take it seriously. The minutes, this
Speaker 1: whole zombie deer that just it wants to being counterproductive
Speaker 1: man being It's that old adage like the only thing
Speaker 1: worse than not being written about is being written about. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you guys have a blanket policy on baiting deer? Uh?
Speaker 1: We do, um, and that's also being looked at right now.
Speaker 1: But the policy on I'm I'm beyond c w D now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on baiting deer is in places where it's legal, legal,
Speaker 1: and it's already there. Um, we are supportive of it,
Speaker 1: but we are definitely we are not supportive of introducing
Speaker 1: it into new places. Yeah. Uh because the general public
Speaker 1: does not like baiting deer. Yeah, And we want support
Speaker 1: for hunting and uh, you know, if it's been there
Speaker 1: traditionally in a lot of a lot of hunters, that's
Speaker 1: part of the way they hunt. Um, instead of removing opportunity. Now, again,
Speaker 1: we also have thought processes with diseases, you know, so
Speaker 1: if something like chronic wasting disease pops up in there,
Speaker 1: we would support the state agency and removing that. Yah. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's a part of game management that I like. And
Speaker 1: I learned the principle from my brother who lives in Alaska,
Speaker 1: where they look at there's a prevalent there there. They
Speaker 1: put a lot of weight on traditional use practices, which
Speaker 1: I like, yeah, um that's what the hunters now, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's like it's kind of like, uh, if you have
Speaker 1: like what's regarded as a successful system and you're not
Speaker 1: you know, you're not imperalleling species and there's a thing
Speaker 1: that has worked and it's how people have behaved and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like woven into the culture that you
Speaker 1: when it comes to management decisions, you prioritize traditional use practices.
Speaker 1: Um Like, generally I think it's like a pretty it's
Speaker 1: an interesting way of looking at and I generally find
Speaker 1: that Yeah, like I support that because for instance, like
Speaker 1: can't you never nailed bait bears in Montana? Um I,
Speaker 1: I probably, like I wouldn't support emotion to begin it,
Speaker 1: but in places where you can bait, I actively resist
Speaker 1: efforts to remove the right. Yeah, But that it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I want to like introduce it in places where
Speaker 1: you cannot, you know, just like like honoring traditional use
Speaker 1: practices and what sort of things have worked for hunters. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest Uh you know, what do you
Speaker 1: got right now? I like to touch on what they're
Speaker 1: doing to get some for the recruitment. I watched some
Speaker 1: videos of the q d M A put out and uh,
Speaker 1: get some new hunters on board if we have time
Speaker 1: for that. Oh yeah, lea, go ahead do it. Uh well, hey,
Speaker 1: I think that's tanks forte right, that would be me.
Speaker 1: I don't know where to start, man um, crossbows. Seems
Speaker 1: like you guys are putting new crossbows and all the
Speaker 1: new hunters. You guys like cross that's all you think
Speaker 1: people should be able to hunt with no no, all right,
Speaker 1: So I mean our goal is to create hunters. It's
Speaker 1: not you know, there have been recruitment programs in this
Speaker 1: country for decades and decades and decades, and really none
Speaker 1: of them are have been working. Well. We've focused on
Speaker 1: the kids of traditional hunters. Uh. You know, I'm down
Speaker 1: the gamut. It's really hard to kind of get into
Speaker 1: these new audiences. And that's that's what we've been doing.
Speaker 1: What you saw. We're about to release a video. UM,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a summary of our field of fork
Speaker 1: in Athens. Last year. But um, we set out, you know,
Speaker 1: with this our three movement Recruit, Retain, Reactivate, we're trying
Speaker 1: to stem the tide of declining hunting. And and the
Speaker 1: cool thing about our three what I love it's it's
Speaker 1: to increase hunting participation but also to increase the tidal
Speaker 1: acceptance of hunting. I think that's really big, and y'all
Speaker 1: touch on that a lot, but it was my best
Speaker 1: of my brother's view that he wishes he's the only
Speaker 1: guy that hunted, but he had a percent public support. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, like you've you've touched always credit you
Speaker 1: on venison diplomacy. I don't know if that's correct, but
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's really what we're doing. Um, But
Speaker 1: we realized that the most efficient audience to create a
Speaker 1: hunters an adult, and um, the highest societal approval of
Speaker 1: hunting is food. So a buddy of mine, a colleague,
Speaker 1: Charles Evans, he's a George R three coordinator, and set
Speaker 1: on his steering committee. One day we were having lunch,
Speaker 1: like I had this idea to do like a game
Speaker 1: breakdown at our local farmers market because they were doing
Speaker 1: chef demonstrations and I just couldn't get my schedule to work.
Speaker 1: And I didn't feel like I was the expert to
Speaker 1: break down a deer in front of you know, a
Speaker 1: group of people at that point in my life. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, fast forward a year, I was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: let's just go set up a booth at the farmers market,
Speaker 1: offer samples of venison and see what happens. See if
Speaker 1: people would you know, we lead off with hey, would
Speaker 1: you like to try some venison? And um, and people
Speaker 1: are very receptive. It's amazing. Um. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of the vegetables that come to the farmers market are
Speaker 1: they're you know, they're hunting deer over even in in
Speaker 1: the months that we we can't hunt here with depredation permits.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you're supporting you know, veganism or
Speaker 1: food plant based, I mean there's still if you're don't
Speaker 1: have an eight foot fence or better there you're still
Speaker 1: you know, there's deer being harvested. So really, when you
Speaker 1: when you present hunting for food and you and you
Speaker 1: tell the actual story behind it, it's really hard to attack.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we've done, is we've just gone
Speaker 1: to a to a new audience. You know, I know
Speaker 1: that people that go to the farmer's market care about
Speaker 1: where their food comes from, local, sustainable, whatever. And we've
Speaker 1: got the the you know, the best bang for your buck.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing more local and sustainable than the
Speaker 1: deer that are in our backyards. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: what we're teaching these people. And we do like cross
Speaker 1: spose because I can. We we recruit current hunts to
Speaker 1: mentor these non traditional or new hunters, and so we
Speaker 1: we leave them opening day. We're very fortunate down in Georgia.
Speaker 1: I mean we have dear season from September twelfth this
Speaker 1: year to January fifteen. I mean it's season. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we're very fortunate. Are our limits are two bucks? Nintendos?
Speaker 1: I mean, we we have this opportunity here and and
Speaker 1: I'm a firm believer of the response and all this
Speaker 1: is there are so many people out there they want
Speaker 1: to learn to hunt, um, but they just they're daunted
Speaker 1: by it. They don't know where to start. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: my whole point is access as an invite. I don't
Speaker 1: care how much public access, private access you have. No
Speaker 1: one goes hunting without a mentor somebody to really get
Speaker 1: them through the steps. There's your outliers. There's a few
Speaker 1: of them, but we set up we use crossbows because
Speaker 1: we hunt the second weekend of both season, and that
Speaker 1: gives them the longest opportunity to continue their trial phase.
Speaker 1: Some take it up a immediately and they hunt with
Speaker 1: us or or tell us stories of hunting you ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty times that year. Some people, Um, it's about the
Speaker 1: rule in life. We're seeing a percent of our participants
Speaker 1: continue hunting to interrupt. I'm sorry, but we rewind just
Speaker 1: a little bit to to get people from the farmer's
Speaker 1: market to the crossbow because there's a bunch in the
Speaker 1: middle of it. Right, So you set up the farmers market,
Speaker 1: you give up venison samples, and then what are you doing?
Speaker 1: They take a bite, they're like, man, that's good. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing. We're getting people who don't eat
Speaker 1: meat too. They're they're willing to eat the venison because
Speaker 1: and so um lead off with, hey, would you like
Speaker 1: to try some venicine? You know, nothing at the booze.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a flyer and um, but it's
Speaker 1: not like there's not a lot of antlers or you know,
Speaker 1: firearms or anything. But it's hey, would you like to
Speaker 1: try some venicine? And then I'll fill them out and
Speaker 1: say do you eat a lot of vincent? And oddly
Speaker 1: enough there I don't know if it's like if they
Speaker 1: won't to seem like they're a part of the fold
Speaker 1: or whatever, but a lot of people say that they
Speaker 1: eat a lot of innicine, so they're getting it somewhere,
Speaker 1: whether they have a family member or a friend or someone.
Speaker 1: A lot of them say they're any medicine. And then
Speaker 1: I just continue the conversations that hey, we're actually here
Speaker 1: to recruit fifteen hunters to go through this program locally.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's two afternoon trainings in my office
Speaker 1: for three hours, and we take them on to organize
Speaker 1: deer hunt. Um it's a Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning deer hunt.
Speaker 1: But we're pairing them with local mentors and we try
Speaker 1: to get them to form that bond or that relationship
Speaker 1: to continue into you know, there's multiple levels of mentorship.
Speaker 1: I think becoming a hunters to confidence levels. We know
Speaker 1: that if you don't teach somebody how to take care
Speaker 1: of an animal, they'll never go out again because that
Speaker 1: fear of waste. Uh, just not being so you have
Speaker 1: to have the confidence. Yeah, we hear that a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm gonna do once it's dead.
Speaker 1: And so if you aren't confident that you're not gonna
Speaker 1: go the responsible person and the majority UM. And then
Speaker 1: I think self identifying a hunter is the ultimate goal
Speaker 1: of our three. But that's confidence, you know, to go
Speaker 1: knock on somebody's door, or or even just self identify
Speaker 1: as a hunter. Like if you don't know what you're
Speaker 1: doing to get knock on somebody story like hey can
Speaker 1: I hunt your back fifteen or whatever, it just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I think it's important too, especially the age demographics that
Speaker 1: you're seeing. You could touch on that. I think the
Speaker 1: first one was from like eighteen to sixty four. It
Speaker 1: was so mid sixties. We've we've evolved over the years.
Speaker 1: The first year, UM, we recruited a fairly young group.
Speaker 1: We had a couple of undergraduates where Athens, Georgia college
Speaker 1: towns where we piloted it UM. But moving forward, we've
Speaker 1: had people of all different walks of life, from engineers
Speaker 1: to roofers to organic farmers to the farmers market manager.
Speaker 1: This year, UM, you know, both male and female UM,
Speaker 1: just all walks of life, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: common desire to learn to hunt for food. We really
Speaker 1: do pre select we we do a very diligent we
Speaker 1: use surveys and before we select them, I want make
Speaker 1: sure that they didn't grow up hunting, that they don't
Speaker 1: have immediate resources, like their father didn't hunt, and they
Speaker 1: just didn't take them up on the opportunity as a kid.
Speaker 1: We really want to get those that wouldn't otherwise have
Speaker 1: the opportunity. But um, I mean, now it's eighteen to seventy. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's really just uh, it's fun to do. Um,
Speaker 1: it's inspiring, but it just shows that how many people
Speaker 1: out there are interested and and to train them up.
Speaker 1: Your training them up and shooting cross boats like half
Speaker 1: of our training and shooting cross bus. The reason behind
Speaker 1: that is it's it's to become a new hunter. And
Speaker 1: think about this two points. If you're mid thirty five,
Speaker 1: forty years on, hadn and hunted yet, it's pretty intimidating
Speaker 1: thing to go up your buddy and go, hey man,
Speaker 1: we take me hunting this weekend with you. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you haven't done it at that point in your life,
Speaker 1: you know, forties, You're probably not gonna go seek somebody
Speaker 1: out to do that. I mean, statistics are low. So
Speaker 1: now the rules are reversed. You know, Hank and No.
Speaker 1: R three program or the Field to Fork program are asking, hey,
Speaker 1: do you want to hunt with us? Right? And then
Speaker 1: where the crossbow comes in play is it's it's a
Speaker 1: less of an intimidating weapon. You know when you start,
Speaker 1: you know, you put a thirty out six in someone's hand.
Speaker 1: There a first time hunter, especially for a female, whoa
Speaker 1: wait a minute here, this is you know, this is
Speaker 1: quite the undertake. I don't know if I feel comfortable
Speaker 1: with that. Crossbow is a little bit different. You know,
Speaker 1: they're less recoil. You know, they don't shoot that far
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera, etcetera. So that's probably it opens up
Speaker 1: more opportunity. Yeah, two nights ago, I had some I
Speaker 1: have some outtown visitors that I alluded to earlier, and
Speaker 1: we actually we cooked a whole deer leg on a
Speaker 1: pellet grill eight dinner. And then one of my bodies
Speaker 1: was talking to another body of mine and he's talking
Speaker 1: about that he never bowl hunted and he got a
Speaker 1: cross bowl, and I overheard him saying, man, it's like
Speaker 1: shooting him with a rifle. I've heard another guy bring
Speaker 1: up to me once. He's like, because you know, like
Speaker 1: the cross a community well often talk about, oh, efficacy
Speaker 1: rates aren't that much higher with crossbows. But we had
Speaker 1: a listener right in he had an interesting point. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you don't have lifelong hunters shooting them. If you
Speaker 1: had all these stone cold killers who've been shooting compound
Speaker 1: bowls their whole life and they really know how to hunt,
Speaker 1: if you gave them a cross bowl, they're gonna mop up.
Speaker 1: But like crossbow hunters are typically people who don't know
Speaker 1: a lot about deer, don't know a lot about deer hunting.
Speaker 1: They don't know about all the tricks of the trade,
Speaker 1: and so they tend to be less effective and less efficient.
Speaker 1: But if you gave like, you know, the real uh,
Speaker 1: the real pros that piece of equipment, it would be
Speaker 1: the you know to beat both season will be gun season.
Speaker 1: Another interesting angle too, is there's a difference I think
Speaker 1: in taking somebody hunting and teaching them to be a
Speaker 1: hunter and doing the field the fork in Athens per
Speaker 1: Se in other places we've done it. Most of these
Speaker 1: people living around suburban communities where a crossbow allows them
Speaker 1: to hunt. They can hunt in their their back half
Speaker 1: acre if they want to. They have then taken a
Speaker 1: right for etcetera, etcetera. So the idea is, we're gonna
Speaker 1: teach you how to shoot across bow. You're gonna become
Speaker 1: a hunter, and hopefully you're gonna replicate this and do
Speaker 1: it yourself on your own time, maybe even on your
Speaker 1: own property or an uncle's properly your cousin's property. You know,
Speaker 1: Ryan Zex absolutely right. You know, we we wanted to
Speaker 1: use crossbows to take advantage of the early archery seasons.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not cold long, you have daylight hours
Speaker 1: after work. I mean, somebody can show up him at
Speaker 1: hunting property at five thirty and hunt for a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, and you know, once they like seven time switches,
Speaker 1: you lose that. Um, there is a stigma against guns
Speaker 1: in this country, especially in these uh you know what
Speaker 1: we call, you know, a non traditional audience or something
Speaker 1: we found that. You know a lot of people at
Speaker 1: the booth will say I don't know if I could
Speaker 1: really do that, and then you can say, well, we're
Speaker 1: actually using archery equipment and they just perk up. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's there, it's it probably has a little bit more
Speaker 1: to that like Native America. Can you know, you just
Speaker 1: feel like you're a little more um um, you know
Speaker 1: it's intimate. Yeah, people say, well, people, there's this misconception
Speaker 1: to that people feel that it's ethical. Yeah, like that,
Speaker 1: it's more it's it's like such a weird piece of logic,
Speaker 1: but it's pervasive that it's like more ethical to shoot
Speaker 1: an animal with a bow than it didn't shoot animal
Speaker 1: of the gun, which is like I could see all
Speaker 1: kinds of reasons why bo hunt, Like I love the
Speaker 1: bo hunt bo hunt in my entire life. Um. And
Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with how the hunter's perception,
Speaker 1: meaning it's more challenging, it takes a greater it takes
Speaker 1: more skill to master it. It's like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a thousand things but to say ethical, Like the most
Speaker 1: ethical way to kill a deer probably a captive bolt
Speaker 1: gun to the head, but probably like I mean that's
Speaker 1: what like with cattle, they've kicked around a thousand ways
Speaker 1: to kill coles and they eventually settled on the idea
Speaker 1: that a big pneumatic you know, a one inch diameternumatic
Speaker 1: thing driving down into their brain pan is a very
Speaker 1: ethical way to kill cows. So there's this, there's this
Speaker 1: that misperson that that miss it's like a misarticulation or
Speaker 1: like a kind of a confusion about what your personal
Speaker 1: journey is, and you're confusing that with sort of like
Speaker 1: how best to like put an animal down and kill it.
Speaker 1: And I don't make all my decisions based on what's
Speaker 1: the best way to put an animal down and kill it,
Speaker 1: because if I did, it would it would change aspects.
Speaker 1: There's a huge personal element to it, right, there's a
Speaker 1: huge personal element to it. I don't think anyone really
Speaker 1: is trying to strive towards like what is the absolute fastest,
Speaker 1: easiest way to kill things? No? No, And and we've
Speaker 1: actually seen you know, it takes in three hours. We
Speaker 1: can make somebody perficient with a crossbow and we limit
Speaker 1: their sh oh yeah, I mean it's as opposed to
Speaker 1: three years. Oh yeah, No, that's the difference is we
Speaker 1: couldn't do it with the vertical best. So you can
Speaker 1: get someone ready to kill a deer in three hours.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well they just make crossbows. Why not just
Speaker 1: make it that you can use a crossbow doing gun season,
Speaker 1: you can not even why not just have it be that,
Speaker 1: have bow season be bowl season and then crossbows is
Speaker 1: part of gun season. That way, they don't if they're
Speaker 1: afraid of guns, they think guns are bad, they can
Speaker 1: just go hunt during guns season with a crossbow. That's
Speaker 1: a good idea, right, Yeah, I mean you can use
Speaker 1: a crossbow anytime. And in some states like Kentucky has
Speaker 1: a crossbows season, they don't allow them in their regular arches. S. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if that's the argument, like, oh, you're like you
Speaker 1: think guns are naughty, I would just be okay. Then
Speaker 1: the home of the crossbow during gun season. Oh, I
Speaker 1: mean I've had people tell me that Phill the Fork
Speaker 1: is BS because we use crossbows. You know what I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that that's a stretch. Yeah, but um, but
Speaker 1: they're not saying it's naughty. They're just they're just more
Speaker 1: comfortable with it. Yes, I like, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just like, I haven't formed. I don't
Speaker 1: have a big Crossbowl opinion yet. So I can tell
Speaker 1: you this though, Like I can tell you this part
Speaker 1: of it, I would be bummed. I'm generally bummed when
Speaker 1: I see them without even knowing why I feel this way.
Speaker 1: I'm bummed when I see states opened up for cross bowls. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always like a really well, I'm not like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go with like protests and like pick up the
Speaker 1: state capital or even like write a letter, but I'm
Speaker 1: always like, uh, that's my feeling, and it's like a
Speaker 1: lot of old man kind of stuff. Well, I can't
Speaker 1: hated crossbows. Yeah, probably where I can't support it because
Speaker 1: I'm looking for opportunity. I want to increase hunting participation,
Speaker 1: but that will cost I guess that the kicker is
Speaker 1: of our participants. It's probably even out now, but in
Speaker 1: our first couple of years, they went out and purchased rifles.
Speaker 1: After learning to hunt with a crossbow, they went and
Speaker 1: purchased guns. They wanted to get even better. I mean
Speaker 1: toward a lady from Philadelphia last year, and she actually
Speaker 1: seeked us out. She was a vegan. At one point
Speaker 1: their doctor told her she needed protein, so she wanted
Speaker 1: the most organic form of protein and thought, I want
Speaker 1: to become a hunter, and I just did that. She
Speaker 1: shot shot a deer. A video was awesome and really cool.
Speaker 1: She broke down and cried and you know, but it
Speaker 1: was really neat move moment. But literally two weeks two
Speaker 1: weeks later, she sends me a picture of a deer rifle,
Speaker 1: like I'm going on. It was funny because you know,
Speaker 1: she was very skeptical at first, and then when she
Speaker 1: got it behind her, it was a matter of two
Speaker 1: weeks and it was almost like now they're all done. Now,
Speaker 1: Like I got a gun and it's just how many
Speaker 1: am I allowed to stack up here. I've never I've
Speaker 1: never I've taken a lot of first time hunters out
Speaker 1: over a long long period of time. I have never
Speaker 1: ever had someone regret that they did it. I've had
Speaker 1: people not pick it up. I've had people be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was great, and then what they think they're gone,
Speaker 1: and then they don't. I've never had someone be like, man,
Speaker 1: I really wish Like when I went to Disneyland or
Speaker 1: Disney World, what ones in California. I went to Disneyland
Speaker 1: and I wish I hadn't right. I was like, I
Speaker 1: regretted going. But I've never had I've never taken someone
Speaker 1: hunting and been like, man, I really wish I had
Speaker 1: made a different decision and hadn't gone and done it. Everybody.
Speaker 1: This is like it changes people's worldview and they might
Speaker 1: not start, but they liked having done it, and it
Speaker 1: totally rewrites their understanding what it's and it changes you
Speaker 1: as a as a mentor. I found I much rather
Speaker 1: watch someone else get something to me get as long
Speaker 1: as I get half of it. Yeah, No, I'm serious, man,
Speaker 1: If you asked me like to go turkey, and I'd
Speaker 1: much rather watch someone get like calling a turkey and
Speaker 1: watch someone get a turkey than than than me get
Speaker 1: a turkey, unless it's, be honest, for someone who's got
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of them. Now, now, Hank tell me this,
Speaker 1: there's a big leap from going out hunting once too
Speaker 1: then converting that into a future hunter. And I think
Speaker 1: you guys have kind of dialed in a scalpel way
Speaker 1: to do that and correct me if I get these
Speaker 1: details wrong. But you kind of a system where you right,
Speaker 1: there's a couple days of education and then there's a
Speaker 1: mentor hunt. But then the key thing is there's follow up.
Speaker 1: So it's not like we take your hunting once and
Speaker 1: you go and then that's it. You have a follow
Speaker 1: up meeting with everyone again again and then also have
Speaker 1: mentors that stay in touch afterwards, right, can you kind
Speaker 1: of explain that? Yeah, that's good because I think that
Speaker 1: it's Remember a body mind participate in a program like
Speaker 1: this and he's like, oh, you can get people to
Speaker 1: come out on a hunt all day if you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll take you to my this participating farm, and then
Speaker 1: they have a great time and then they go home
Speaker 1: and like, what the hell is he gonna do? Yeah? No, Um,
Speaker 1: the one and done events don't work. And we know
Speaker 1: that that's a big part of the our three movement
Speaker 1: stuff is just let's actually evaluate and track the data,
Speaker 1: like let's see if we're being successful. And that's how
Speaker 1: I can say that Actually this year, six of our
Speaker 1: hunters continued hunting program. Yeah, but you know, and what's
Speaker 1: your guys, like, what what's the secret to success there? Well,
Speaker 1: the secret is is there self selecting. We're it's not
Speaker 1: it's not Billy's dad that signed them up for this hunt.
Speaker 1: They see me at the farmers market and they're like,
Speaker 1: this is something I want to do, and actually it's
Speaker 1: usually a good point. I've been wanting to do this
Speaker 1: for ten years or five years. I mean, and you
Speaker 1: meet him, You meet him where you go to them.
Speaker 1: That's what no one's doing. You know, we're noting hunting. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the philled to fork made the Wall Street
Speaker 1: JOURNALI it got all these views, but that's the first
Speaker 1: time we got it in front of a new audience,
Speaker 1: you know, having filled and stream right about field, the
Speaker 1: fork is only going to a hunting base. Mostly they're like,
Speaker 1: and so we've yeah, we've got to get hunting in
Speaker 1: front of new audiences. And by going to the farmer's
Speaker 1: marking that happens. But to your point, that's a good point, man.
Speaker 1: The self selection rather than being that that you know
Speaker 1: someone's like, damnit, son, you're going to know they're they're
Speaker 1: self selecting. There they went to a place where there
Speaker 1: it's like, here's people that are interested in there, in
Speaker 1: there interesting food. You're meeting them in on in common
Speaker 1: ground where they where they are already focused on that
Speaker 1: type of environment, right and important factors. They don't think
Speaker 1: Hack mentioned it filled the forks in Georgia and then
Speaker 1: I didn't want in Pennsylvania. But there's always a wild
Speaker 1: game component at every meeting. So whenever they're there for
Speaker 1: the training, we're cooking wild game when and then the
Speaker 1: post uh, you know, the post mortem if you will,
Speaker 1: cooking old game. And then we didn't want In Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: my brother in law is an executive chef, and we
Speaker 1: had a whole butchering segment and cooking. Every meal we
Speaker 1: ate was a wild game. He taught us how, taught
Speaker 1: him how to make sausage, you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it gave them ownership of you know, they they left.
Speaker 1: They're very confident in you know, I can actually kill
Speaker 1: this animal, I can take care of this animal, and
Speaker 1: then I can cook and eat this It's delicious, you know.
Speaker 1: So it was now it does. That is some work
Speaker 1: on the mentors part to pull that off. But when
Speaker 1: you do it, I think that's what has why you
Speaker 1: get successful. That's what that's that's the thing I like,
Speaker 1: because I think you're creating like a good I mean
Speaker 1: say like good hunters and bad hunters, but you're creating
Speaker 1: good hunters because I think everyone now, like in the
Speaker 1: last few years, everyone likes to pay lip service to
Speaker 1: whatever field, the table, feel, the fort because it's because
Speaker 1: like people like it, they're interested in it. But then
Speaker 1: you'll have guys will be like, oh, I killed thirty
Speaker 1: five big game animals this year. It's like, is that right?
Speaker 1: And you're big field the fort guy, Huh, pretty hardy
Speaker 1: couple of meals, you may. It's like it's just gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where people just use it now as
Speaker 1: like a tool, as a marketing tool, and it's so
Speaker 1: it's so full of ship with some people who like
Speaker 1: are talking about something they really don't care about. It's
Speaker 1: like they're harping on some things. They know it cells
Speaker 1: and that, and I just know they don't care, like
Speaker 1: they talk about it because people like it and then
Speaker 1: they live with hypocrisy. But I think that like in
Speaker 1: this idea of like finding people through interest and food
Speaker 1: is it's it's it feels like honest to me because
Speaker 1: people are coming into it with that interest and going
Speaker 1: into food. I think it's also important to talk about
Speaker 1: wild game consumption among hunters and and educate hunters about
Speaker 1: it better. Yeah. No, um, I mean I could go
Speaker 1: back to Mark's point of our our you know, our
Speaker 1: schedule of how we do it, but he's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: We do. We do two after nuds of training, we
Speaker 1: do an organized hunt. Really, the value of that is
Speaker 1: to get it on the calendar. It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: a date that they have to do it, you know
Speaker 1: that that they they start. But the success of the
Speaker 1: program is in the follow up opportunities whether um, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got a local landowner now who's thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: giving a lease per se, not not a monetary exchange,
Speaker 1: but you know, allow create a hunting camp for these
Speaker 1: new hunters. Yeah. Um, you know they're seeing the success.
Speaker 1: They're they're a part of it. But we we do
Speaker 1: serve wild game at every you know, at the farmer's market.
Speaker 1: At both trainings, I'll cook you know, vincent tacos or
Speaker 1: burgers or whatever I have at the time. Um, and
Speaker 1: then we have a culinary social We usually back it
Speaker 1: up a couple of weeks from the organized hunt so
Speaker 1: more people will get out hunting because I really want
Speaker 1: them to share their story as the group. We're finding
Speaker 1: that you know, it's social support that creates that hunter.
Speaker 1: And it's the same thing I talked about earlier, like
Speaker 1: different levels of mentorship. We're creating a group and it's
Speaker 1: all local. It's not like hey, let's go you know,
Speaker 1: five hours away and let's go hunt it just wouldn't
Speaker 1: be as sustainable. We've got this community now, we've got
Speaker 1: like fifty people in Athens and and we've expanded to
Speaker 1: we'll have twenty field to fork events this fall. People
Speaker 1: have to pay to goal. We we charge fifty dollars
Speaker 1: and some have gone away from that. I mean, as
Speaker 1: it's replicated, it's different. I don't we do it just
Speaker 1: as like a little bit of buying, like hopefully they'll
Speaker 1: show up for fifty bucks. And I mean everybody on
Speaker 1: on the back ends, like, man, this is like the
Speaker 1: best investment I've ever made in my life. Give it.
Speaker 1: Give example of how those follow up opportunities might work.
Speaker 1: Where a mentor might send and like a group email
Speaker 1: out to everybody, and we've we've done you know, group
Speaker 1: texts which can get a little text and we have
Speaker 1: a hidden Facebook group for the Athens one. I see
Speaker 1: email chains and it'll just like hey, I've got you
Speaker 1: know it'll be a first time hunter or whatever. And
Speaker 1: it's like I've got Thursday and Friday afternoons free, you know,
Speaker 1: anybody want to take me hunting or a land donner.
Speaker 1: You know, be like, hey, guys, I'm available this weekend
Speaker 1: if you want to come hunt. Come on. So it's
Speaker 1: not like they always pair up with the same one.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I'll take four four of them hunting with
Speaker 1: just me, you know, because I can take Cara and
Speaker 1: if if we get lucky and stuff and you go
Speaker 1: out somewhere where someone's trying to get some doles removed
Speaker 1: after person and um, yeah, we're not selective. I mean,
Speaker 1: if if it makes them happy and they want to
Speaker 1: put it in their freezer, let's you're married. That's an
Speaker 1: interesting Have you like found people to date through this?
Speaker 1: You probably can't talk about it because you're like at work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have, we have a filled to fork matchmaking service
Speaker 1: and no, no legitimate we there is a field match.
Speaker 1: It is not a true matchmaking service. But it has happened,
Speaker 1: not personally. But you don't stand in the way of
Speaker 1: it happening. And now because yeah, I'm always like gaming,
Speaker 1: like I'm so far away from being single, but I'm
Speaker 1: always like imagining single. Oh, I mean that's what I'm
Speaker 1: always thinking about. Yeah, and I try a lot of
Speaker 1: my theories my wife. But you know what I do
Speaker 1: if I was single and then no, But I mean
Speaker 1: it's just created this community. It's people of all different
Speaker 1: walks of life that are you know, share this common
Speaker 1: bond of wanting to have a better connection with their food.
Speaker 1: I mean what we hear is they won't. It's for
Speaker 1: the meat, it's a connection with nature, it's the meditative
Speaker 1: aspect of sitting in the woods. What it really is,
Speaker 1: they don't know what it really is. Yeah, no, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you what it really is is that you'll never
Speaker 1: put your finger on it. Well, it's more than just
Speaker 1: the meat. Because if you said to them, if you said, hey,
Speaker 1: man um, you found him at a farmer's market and
Speaker 1: you get to talk about it, you're like, hey, there's
Speaker 1: one or two things we could do here. I just
Speaker 1: dump a deer off at your place, or you can
Speaker 1: come do this thing. If it was just the meat, yeah,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, we'll just drop it off whole package
Speaker 1: of things. But the meat does the meat does? The
Speaker 1: people have it like it's a huge part and it's important.
Speaker 1: But people have a thing where they need to like
Speaker 1: make this balanced image in their head of wildlife management, sustainability,
Speaker 1: self sufficiency, and they and they and the people that
Speaker 1: are suspicious to hunting or didn't grow up around it
Speaker 1: are checking boxes in their head, and it's like yeah,
Speaker 1: not not. I don't even like justify makes this sound negative,
Speaker 1: but it's like they're like they're they weigh this thing
Speaker 1: out and they're like, I need to know it's good
Speaker 1: for me because I want to eat the stuff, but
Speaker 1: I also need to understand some basic things about like
Speaker 1: how wildlife works, Like what does the story of wildlife
Speaker 1: in America? And you need to answer that in a
Speaker 1: satisfactory way because people aren't gonna go like you might
Speaker 1: give them all the meat in the world. They might
Speaker 1: kill all the meat in the world, need everything, but
Speaker 1: if they feel that they're doing something it's detrimental to
Speaker 1: the environment, yeah, that's not it. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: self sufficiency, being like a constructive participant in um like
Speaker 1: a sustainability or betterment for wildlife, not eman for the
Speaker 1: environ RMIT. Like people got to know all this stuff
Speaker 1: like I'm talking about when dealing with people who are
Speaker 1: like completely outside of hunting. Yeah, it's like the meat, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like that's very important, but there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of other things that need to be satisfied in their mind. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And and that was one of the shocking things for me,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of starting this program is they're so
Speaker 1: interested in the ecology of money and it's and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, part of where I see the success of
Speaker 1: the program is they're going back to their perspective peer
Speaker 1: groups and they're sharing their venisine and they're sharing their
Speaker 1: story and that it's venisine diplomacy to entirely new groups.
Speaker 1: And they also need want that ecology and an understanding
Speaker 1: of the value of hunting because they've got to go
Speaker 1: back to their peer group and explain what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, like I imagine you probably don't
Speaker 1: create closet and hunters. No. Now these people are out there.
Speaker 1: They're my best advocates. Um, you know, we have a
Speaker 1: waiting list for the Athens program. We wouldn't we probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't never have to get to the farmers market again.
Speaker 1: But I can't call me these How many of these
Speaker 1: you do it every year? Just one in Athens? Uh,
Speaker 1: we know your How many is q d M A
Speaker 1: putting on? We'll do about twenty five this year and um,
Speaker 1: you know about twelve states. And here's one of the
Speaker 1: things really powerful about what you guys have done here
Speaker 1: is you have developed you've systematized this thing. So for
Speaker 1: a long time people have said, you got a mentor hunters,
Speaker 1: you gotta take them out there and connect them with food.
Speaker 1: But you guys have put in place a structure and
Speaker 1: a curriculum, a toolkit that can scale. So you guys
Speaker 1: have correct if I'm wrong here, but right, you guys
Speaker 1: have a toolkit that if someone listening says, hey, I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to do this, this sounds looks such a
Speaker 1: great program. The numbers bear it out. You have the
Speaker 1: resources people need so that Joe Blow can go get
Speaker 1: this information, get the curriculum, get the whole plan, print
Speaker 1: out the stuff and show up with their farmers market
Speaker 1: next week and and start executing on this with your
Speaker 1: guys support. Right, yeah, no, And and that's what I'm
Speaker 1: doing as I'm HOWL, being to facilitate the expansion of
Speaker 1: this program and working with people of all walks of life,
Speaker 1: all different conservation organizations in w T F, B H A. UM,
Speaker 1: you know, all the different state agencies from each state.
Speaker 1: We're partnering with them. I want to try to bring in,
Speaker 1: you know, a collective make these more sustainable. But um,
Speaker 1: we have a standardized education. We we wrote an e book,
Speaker 1: you made this guide, the Successful Deer Hunting. It's probably
Speaker 1: been four years ago, but it's a great resource. We
Speaker 1: just got back from Massy Oak in Films about a
Speaker 1: fifteen part video series on how to deer hunt, which
Speaker 1: will be a great resource for curriculum for Filled the Fork.
Speaker 1: But I am of the mind set that we need
Speaker 1: to do the education necessary in person. But I want
Speaker 1: to give these people the resources where they can go
Speaker 1: home and learn video. You know, we give them resources
Speaker 1: like your website. Um. You know, we actually sit down
Speaker 1: with them at the UM this second afternoon and say
Speaker 1: what what are we missing? What you need from us?
Speaker 1: And we do the same thing at the Culinary Social
Speaker 1: it's what do you need now? What are what did
Speaker 1: we not touch on? You know? A lot of it's
Speaker 1: always like hey, places to hunt, you know what about
Speaker 1: local public lands. We send a lot of information for
Speaker 1: it on that. But we are trying to create this
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not trying to keep it all
Speaker 1: under the qum A banner. I'll run. I'll run for
Speaker 1: Filled to Forks this year with b h A OK.
Speaker 1: So I'm participating in mentoring a cutum A slash B
Speaker 1: h a joint Field of Fork event this year in Michigan,
Speaker 1: and I think that's such a cool opportunity. It's important
Speaker 1: to note too that it doesn't have to be I say,
Speaker 1: limited to a group thing. I mean, any one of
Speaker 1: your listeners can do this on their own. Basically. That
Speaker 1: that's what we want. That's for the program to be successful.
Speaker 1: That's what has to happen. People need to introduce new
Speaker 1: people hunting outside of their proverbial box. Yeah, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I mean, organized programs aren't going
Speaker 1: to move the needle. I mean, we we want to
Speaker 1: scale it, we want to get it, but it's going
Speaker 1: to be individual hunters that that either increase hunting participation
Speaker 1: or not. We need individual hunters to mentor um and
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we're going. But we've taken field
Speaker 1: to Fork and as we've replicated around the country, I've
Speaker 1: tried to prove a few different models. I've gone to
Speaker 1: Texas and done destination filled the forks on large branches
Speaker 1: where people travel in and and it works. But I
Speaker 1: will only take people from Texas because to take somebody
Speaker 1: from New York and take him to Texas to teach
Speaker 1: them that deer hunting. It doesn't work, but um, I've will.
Speaker 1: We're gonna host a field to fork for TRIGGER employees
Speaker 1: this year. Last year, I hosted a field to fork
Speaker 1: for twenty four employees of Ruger and six Hour American
Speaker 1: firearm manufacturers. And that was because an engineer, a young
Speaker 1: lady when we held our first field to fork and
Speaker 1: posted about it on Facebook, reached out. Her name was
Speaker 1: Emily Monroe, and I clicked on her Facebook profile and
Speaker 1: she was an engineer at Ruger. Seriously, she was a
Speaker 1: M I T small bore national champion. I mean she
Speaker 1: she didn't get a scholarship to M I T. I
Speaker 1: have misquoted that many times, but she even you know,
Speaker 1: competition small bore rifle shooting and always wanted to learn
Speaker 1: how to hunt. That is how bad we've done as
Speaker 1: an industry and as a group. We're not even recruiting
Speaker 1: our own. We've hosted Phillip the Forks for q MA employees,
Speaker 1: where I just hosted from my you know, twenty office
Speaker 1: employees who want to learn to hunt. But yeah, we
Speaker 1: had to cap it at twenty four in American firearm
Speaker 1: manufacturers who wanted to learn how to hunt. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just we're doing a terrible job, and and you know,
Speaker 1: we've just I think a lot of hunters have kind
Speaker 1: of been isolation us. If it's a terrible job, it's
Speaker 1: just a job that's never really been needed to be done.
Speaker 1: When I when you look in the grand scheme of
Speaker 1: things years ago, most people hunt it that's just what
Speaker 1: you did, especially in the Northeast, right, everybody was a hunter.
Speaker 1: I mean, I want say everybody very relative. It's still
Speaker 1: at ten percent or less, right, Yeah, but it felt
Speaker 1: like it felt like that's just what you did where
Speaker 1: I grew up, Like, I mean, you when you were
Speaker 1: twelve years old, you got a deer license and you
Speaker 1: went hunting. Us is how this is how it was.
Speaker 1: But now again in gram scheme of things, twenty five
Speaker 1: years isn't that long a time. It's a different game
Speaker 1: out there, you know. So it's not that we've done
Speaker 1: a bad job, but just didn't recognize that the job
Speaker 1: needed done. I think now it's very apparent that you know,
Speaker 1: we're trying to play catch up. I think to almost
Speaker 1: a certain extent. Yeah, I mean four and a half
Speaker 1: percent of American population hunts. We have to understand that
Speaker 1: becoming a vast minority of the population is going to
Speaker 1: have negative consequences. And I don't know how many of
Speaker 1: the percentages of American population we could actually support as hunters,
Speaker 1: but we we need to do what we can to
Speaker 1: try to increase high participation. Alright, man, that was your question.
Speaker 1: Thank you, good job. Anymore, we gotta wrap it up.
Speaker 1: You gotta wrap it up. And everybody's teeth are floating
Speaker 1: at this point. You mean people, Uh, that's like euphemism
Speaker 1: for the bladders. Their back teeth are floating on the
Speaker 1: back teeth, teeth, the float. Um. Is there anything humongous
Speaker 1: things that are like major misses that we missed, not
Speaker 1: like little trifling things, but like really really like damn it,
Speaker 1: damn well, I got a major thing. I'm really a
Speaker 1: major thing. Yeah. I'm holding Mark accountable from intoring a
Speaker 1: new hunter this year. Um, he asked me to. And
Speaker 1: he's also going to be a part of our field
Speaker 1: a Ford program, but I think he's going to mentor
Speaker 1: another hunter outside of that. Yeah, And really, I mean
Speaker 1: that's what we want to try to get every hunter
Speaker 1: to do. So we have a staff challenge amongst D
Speaker 1: field staff members to hunt a mentor new hunter every year,
Speaker 1: two or three years now, dude, mean Yanni Crank come
Speaker 1: out like Henry ford Man. Two people, we are two
Speaker 1: people hunt in this spring, and weirdly one of them,
Speaker 1: h this is kind of weird. One of them has property.
Speaker 1: So now I'm like, you know, maybe we go hunt
Speaker 1: your place. She's like, that's great. Everybody thinks so just like,
Speaker 1: you know, totally outside of the fold. But yeah, we're
Speaker 1: meeting these people that fifty acres and we'll go walk
Speaker 1: in and show where to hang the air stands. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not just this total any other humongous mrs.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, people find you imagine you type into
Speaker 1: your computer q d M A. Yeah, you'll find us.
Speaker 1: Don't type in q d M. They'll probably find anyway
Speaker 1: they might they might. All right, I encourage people to
Speaker 1: go have a look. And if you gripe about q
Speaker 1: d M A, I'd be curious to have you go
Speaker 1: look and be like, Okay, what exactly don't you agree with?
Speaker 1: Like what exactly is the problem people writing and tell
Speaker 1: us about? Be interested? Like when you like, actually look
Speaker 1: like what the organization says and does? Where's the like
Speaker 1: show me the part you don't like, Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the big misconception that's there for years. It's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: other people doing certain things get the q d M
Speaker 1: a label applied to them, and it's like it's misappropriated,
Speaker 1: and then people think, oh, that's what Kitty May is
Speaker 1: and and it's not really like you said, when you
Speaker 1: actually go and see what these three folks here and
Speaker 1: their organization really are speaking about doing in the field,
Speaker 1: what they have on their website, those those missions, it's
Speaker 1: hard to argue with that. Yeah, and I think an
Speaker 1: important note from our CEO down you know, Kip, Matt Hank, myself, honestly,
Speaker 1: we're just passionate deer hunters. I mean we work in
Speaker 1: the industry, yes, but we all got there because we
Speaker 1: were deer hunters first. And so it's not like there's
Speaker 1: any hinting agendas that we're trying to do this. We're
Speaker 1: trying to do that at the I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: our CEO hunts hundred days a year probably you know,
Speaker 1: he's a deer hunter man. He's not Peter that. I
Speaker 1: mean Kip, I mean kIPS, you know, our head wildife
Speaker 1: Ball just Mac works for He is a passionate deer hunter.
Speaker 1: It's just all there is too. We're just hunters. Yeah, alright, guys,
Speaker 1: thanks coming down man, We appreciate it. Kay, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: As promised, we're not going to get into our our
Speaker 1: special report. And again this covers a collaborative partnership between
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and on X, who just released
Speaker 1: a new report. It's called Inaccessible State Lands in the West,
Speaker 1: the extent of the landlocked problem and the tools to
Speaker 1: fix it. And out of the kindness of their own hearts,
Speaker 1: these two organizations tr CP and on X pulled together
Speaker 1: to try to get an assessment, to try to put
Speaker 1: their arms around the extent of the landlocked public lands
Speaker 1: problem in the American West and to help maybe present
Speaker 1: some solutions to figure it out. Again. If you remember,
Speaker 1: we recently had t r c P and on X
Speaker 1: on UH about a year ago or so to discuss
Speaker 1: the report which looked at landlocked federal lands, and they
Speaker 1: had identified nine point five two million acres of land
Speaker 1: that you and I as American taxpayers own but can't
Speaker 1: get to because they're surrounded by private land and the
Speaker 1: only way to get in there is to have permission
Speaker 1: from private landowners. Well they filed that up with this
Speaker 1: new state report. So we're talking about inaccessible public lands.
Speaker 1: Are talking about plots of ground right that are theoretically
Speaker 1: open to the public and they're owned equally by all
Speaker 1: of us as Americans, but being that they're entirely enclosed
Speaker 1: by private land, the land is unreachable unless you have
Speaker 1: permission from a private landowner. So there they are, we
Speaker 1: own them, we just can't get on them. Well, TRCP
Speaker 1: and on X wanted to investigate exactly how great the
Speaker 1: Western States landlocked problem really is and how to identify
Speaker 1: some collaborative solutions that could help open up more land
Speaker 1: and for all of us to use for hunting, fishing,
Speaker 1: outdoor recreation. And discussing this, we're joined by Joel Webster,
Speaker 1: Director of Western Lands at TRCP, Randall Williams, t r
Speaker 1: CPS Western Communications and Engagement Manager, Lisa Nichols, who's the
Speaker 1: g I S supervisor on X, and Eric Siegfried, who's
Speaker 1: the founder of on X. Now, before we get into
Speaker 1: the main thing, I had sort of given a little
Speaker 1: homework to Joel Webster where I had a question that's
Speaker 1: related to land access but not related to the report,
Speaker 1: and I wanted include in. Here's I thought was interesting,
Speaker 1: is Uh. It had come up a lot recently and
Speaker 1: talking to friends of mine, Like, let's say you're sitting
Speaker 1: there looking at a piece of private or public land
Speaker 1: on a map and there's no way to get to it,
Speaker 1: but an interstate cuts through it. Uh, And we're talking
Speaker 1: about this, like whether or not you can pull over
Speaker 1: unlimited access highway. So say, like I ninety fifteen whatever,
Speaker 1: pull over unlimited access highway and jump out of your
Speaker 1: car and go access some little chunk of public land
Speaker 1: that you've identified on X. It's funny because I was
Speaker 1: talking with this, talking to Joel about this, and then
Speaker 1: a couple of days later I had a body mind
Speaker 1: visit from out of town. He went out, went out
Speaker 1: antelope hunting, and text me away point and asked, can
Speaker 1: I legally get into this? Because he was curious can
Speaker 1: I pull over on the side of a of an
Speaker 1: interstate and head off to hunt? So here's Joel on
Speaker 1: whether or not that's okay. Do you know how there's
Speaker 1: like certain things like if you're like law abiding hunter angler,
Speaker 1: like there's certain things that you do thinking they're perfectly legal,
Speaker 1: and then you realize later that wow, actually maybe that
Speaker 1: isn't allowed, and and then you like to change your behavior,
Speaker 1: and it kind of ruins it for you after that
Speaker 1: because you thought, you know, you're perfectly fine, and this
Speaker 1: is one of those issues for me. And so I
Speaker 1: did a little digging into this. I didn't look at
Speaker 1: a lot of states. Um so this is how I
Speaker 1: understand one Wyoming, and there's state law. This is a
Speaker 1: state law stuff. There's state law cifically prohibits. Let me ask,
Speaker 1: why is it not because there's no federal oversight of
Speaker 1: the highway system, Like there's no federal enforcement on a
Speaker 1: highway system, right is Yeah, state placed and I don't
Speaker 1: pull you over for speeding on an interest not usually
Speaker 1: now depends on what you did. Yeah, that is true.
Speaker 1: Uh So the state of Wyoming, there's state laws specifically
Speaker 1: prohibits stopping along a controlled access highway. I feel like
Speaker 1: a Montana there's actually no laws saying you can't stop.
Speaker 1: Um so, actually stopping there is perfectly legal as I
Speaker 1: read it. What's illegal as it says you cannot go
Speaker 1: outside of the lines and that you must enter and
Speaker 1: exit the interstate it designated spots. And so when you
Speaker 1: see somebody in talking about Honting, they're just talking about whatever.
Speaker 1: Just whatever. And so you know when you're driving along
Speaker 1: the road and you accidentally sort of swerve over and
Speaker 1: hit the rumble strip, like you are breaking the law
Speaker 1: the same way somebody is when they pull over in
Speaker 1: park to go hunting. As I read the law, um
Speaker 1: new can its special special permits for um on and off,
Speaker 1: like you've got to get permission to do that. But
Speaker 1: but here's the thing, is I actually if you look
Speaker 1: at the Montana Access Guide, you look at the Montana
Speaker 1: Fish Walife from Parks Regulations, it says nothing about this.
Speaker 1: There's nowhere stated anywhere that I can find because it
Speaker 1: would be redundant because it's already covered in just the
Speaker 1: general highway law. Now you've you've got to go in
Speaker 1: and read statute to find it. And it took me
Speaker 1: forty minutes to find it. And uh, I don't I
Speaker 1: mean from what I understand, like I think it's it's
Speaker 1: I think it's a traffic law first off, not a
Speaker 1: game violation. And so it's like getting a speeding ticket
Speaker 1: versus being a poacher. Right, Um, But as as I
Speaker 1: understand it, like, it's not really all that you know,
Speaker 1: unless it's like actual sort of no no parking signs
Speaker 1: along the interstate. It's really not advertised anywhere that you
Speaker 1: can't do this. And so I've always assumed this look
Speaker 1: because people do it all the time, and I've never
Speaker 1: heard of anybody getting cotton. In fact, I actually know
Speaker 1: of a block management area where a portion of it.
Speaker 1: The only way I know how to get to it
Speaker 1: is by parking along the interstate UM in Montana, So
Speaker 1: which is kind of bizarre now that I know this,
Speaker 1: but that's my understanding of controlled access highways. And I
Speaker 1: would assume that there are some requirements placed upon the
Speaker 1: state in order to get federal money that they have to,
Speaker 1: you know, have these types of rules, but they're different
Speaker 1: for each state. Okay, now we're gonna move on to
Speaker 1: the on x TRC report. And I asked the question
Speaker 1: why was it important to investigate the issue of landlocked
Speaker 1: state lands in the first place. Here's Eric. Our whole
Speaker 1: team is passionate about helping people get outside. So it's
Speaker 1: just like in our DNA. So we look at these
Speaker 1: landlocked lands and we want at least make the public
Speaker 1: aware of what's out there, and we do see them
Speaker 1: as opportunities to help the public get outdoors more so
Speaker 1: that's really in our DNA and that's why we're interested. Okay,
Speaker 1: from here, I think it's important to move on to
Speaker 1: to the next thing. Um, let's get clear on what
Speaker 1: is meant by landlocked land, Like, what does that look like,
Speaker 1: what does that mean? How does someone go and determine that, Yes,
Speaker 1: in fact, a piece of public land is inaccessible or
Speaker 1: as we keep saying, landlocked. Here's Lisa explaining that and
Speaker 1: also talking a little bit about how on X obtained
Speaker 1: and analyzed the necessary data. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways to define landlocked. But what we went with
Speaker 1: for this report was public land that cannot be accessed
Speaker 1: from a public road or uh cannot be access from
Speaker 1: an adjoining piece of public land. I mean, even if
Speaker 1: you are willing to walk in, you walk forever. So
Speaker 1: if there's a ten acre parcel and there's one road
Speaker 1: that cuts through just a little corner of it, we
Speaker 1: consider that entire ten tho acre parcel as being accessible. Um,
Speaker 1: even if you have to cross topography and rivers. Um.
Speaker 1: This was just talking about legal access as opposed to
Speaker 1: logistical within the g i S department. G i S
Speaker 1: is Geographic information Systems UM or Geographic information science, and
Speaker 1: basically it's a compilation of data sets that all have
Speaker 1: a location component to them, and they're all stored into
Speaker 1: a big database UH, so that you can make maps
Speaker 1: or you can run different analyzes and understand how maybe
Speaker 1: one feature on landscape interacts or impacts another type of
Speaker 1: feature on the landscape. So UM, not only do we
Speaker 1: take the government lands data sets and the private land
Speaker 1: data sets and reconcile them with each other, UM, we
Speaker 1: also are classifying all of the government lands data so
Speaker 1: that was really key in this analysis as well. So
Speaker 1: we were able to zero in on all of the
Speaker 1: lands that had you know, the the state land ownership
Speaker 1: type attached to them UM, and then basically we were
Speaker 1: able to compare those against our extensive road database UM
Speaker 1: and figure out which parcels of state land did not
Speaker 1: have road access, and each parcel that did not have
Speaker 1: road access got flagged in a big database and then
Speaker 1: UM we basically ran through and calculated all those acreages
Speaker 1: together to get the numbers. The big challenge here is
Speaker 1: that there is no public versus private road data set
Speaker 1: available in the United States, and so we did have
Speaker 1: to kind of come up with our own definition of
Speaker 1: what a public road is based upon the data that
Speaker 1: is available. So we said anything at the county level
Speaker 1: or higher plus certain classifications of four service roads and
Speaker 1: certain classifications of BLM roads. UM. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of areas where there's these two tracks that were like,
Speaker 1: we don't know, we can't tell if they're open or
Speaker 1: closed to the public, and so um. After we went
Speaker 1: through and had results from the federal analysis last year,
Speaker 1: some folks with t RCP actually went out to some
Speaker 1: areas where we're like, we don't know, Like we can't
Speaker 1: really tell in these specific places, like there's two tracks
Speaker 1: going out to these large areas, but we can't tell
Speaker 1: if there's a way to get to them. And I
Speaker 1: would say, what was it in like eighty or ninety
Speaker 1: percent of those those are the largest ones. So those
Speaker 1: are like edge cases. I was gonna say, we had,
Speaker 1: I mean that we were going out to some of
Speaker 1: the bigger parcels and even flying around on like Google Earth.
Speaker 1: If you go to street view, you can sort of
Speaker 1: look at what the road looks like and see if
Speaker 1: there's a private road sign UM so on X is
Speaker 1: doing some of that, but we we literally had people
Speaker 1: driving up to gates and seeing how it was marked.
Speaker 1: Most of them didn't have we're not public. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we also worked with the BLM and Forest Service at
Speaker 1: the lands and realty level. They actually looked up the
Speaker 1: records for us well to find pieces that were gating
Speaker 1: shouldn't have been looking up just to see if there
Speaker 1: were recorded Eastman's Across because that's one of the funny
Speaker 1: things is driving around um, especially in the eastern half
Speaker 1: of this state. In other areas in the west too,
Speaker 1: is like where you'll have public roads, but ranches will
Speaker 1: kind of grow up around them, so that when you
Speaker 1: start feeling like there's no way I can be on
Speaker 1: this road where you're sort of like five yards off
Speaker 1: a guy's front step, his barns on one side of
Speaker 1: the road, his dogs are running around in the road.
Speaker 1: You can almost look in and they're eating dinner. It's
Speaker 1: like you're on the two track, but on the map
Speaker 1: it's like that's a road. And the fact that no
Speaker 1: one comes out and shoots at you, you realize like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is like a road. This two track is a
Speaker 1: public Eastman. Well, part of the problem is that most
Speaker 1: Eastman files, most Eastman documents are still on paper file.
Speaker 1: They have been digitized yet that's actually something that we're
Speaker 1: working on, UM, is to try and get the federal
Speaker 1: agencies the resources they need to turn Eastman recorded Eastmans
Speaker 1: that are still in file cabinet at local ranger districts
Speaker 1: actually into a computer system and so you can just
Speaker 1: click on them and it says this is a public
Speaker 1: road or it's not. UM. It was obviously the county side,
Speaker 1: which is a whole another nuts crack. But UM, the
Speaker 1: Forest Service nationally estimates it has thirty seven thousand easements
Speaker 1: UM some of the road he has sum or not,
Speaker 1: and only five thousand of them have been digitized. So
Speaker 1: the rest of them are sitting in file cabinets and
Speaker 1: local offices and hoping that the office doesn't burn down UM,
Speaker 1: which would be terrible if something like that to occur.
Speaker 1: But that's a real challenge with this type of work UM,
Speaker 1: and so we've had to do a lot of the
Speaker 1: work ourselves by actually trying to run down whether or
Speaker 1: not some of these places are open or closed. And
Speaker 1: again here's eric We're unique in that fact that we
Speaker 1: brought the public land data together in the private land data,
Speaker 1: and we've made this more accurate mesh. You can imagine
Speaker 1: a fabric of these parcels in the US. Really only
Speaker 1: one who has that complete meshed network, which is key
Speaker 1: to doing that analysis when you're looking having an algorithm
Speaker 1: look the corners and everything we're cross over. So we've
Speaker 1: got done that for public lands, and we've done that
Speaker 1: for roads. So the fact that we've brought all the
Speaker 1: roads data together and the landownership data together uniquely positions
Speaker 1: us to be able to do this. And this is
Speaker 1: Randall Williams chiming in. I think there's some people who
Speaker 1: probably have exclusive access to these lands, a bunch of
Speaker 1: people because this, But there's also some people that are
Speaker 1: great and they allow the public in and so it
Speaker 1: all depends on the let me let me rephrase it.
Speaker 1: I would be if I lived on the edge of
Speaker 1: that place, I would be like, um, I'd be sweating it.
Speaker 1: I would kind of want I'd be like, man, I
Speaker 1: hope people don't get worked up about how I got
Speaker 1: all this land. It's not mine. Personally. I think you'd
Speaker 1: be arranging for when you died that your your land
Speaker 1: would go to the public absolutely once I'm dead, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't care. I wouldn't care anymore. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: the volume of landlocked state public lands is pretty shocking.
Speaker 1: Joel and Lee to describe the scope and distribution of
Speaker 1: that western land as in exactly where is it and
Speaker 1: how much is it? I actually am a bit shocked
Speaker 1: about the fact that there's only forty nine. We looked
Speaker 1: at the eleven western states this time. So just the
Speaker 1: public land states, um, and why are they called the
Speaker 1: public lands because they're the states in the West that
Speaker 1: have the most public land and so um, you know, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, Arizona, um Idaho, Nevada, California, organ in Washington
Speaker 1: and what state am I miss in like Utah, um
Speaker 1: and so those those lands generally have just sort of
Speaker 1: a higher proportion of federal public lands than anywhere else
Speaker 1: in the country outside of Alaska, which is its own beast.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. So even the Dakotas don't come anywhere close
Speaker 1: to the Dakotas have quite a bit of public land
Speaker 1: on that western edge where there touching the public land states,
Speaker 1: But the eastern side of the coatas are more are
Speaker 1: sort of that those Great Plains type states where it's
Speaker 1: you know, corn, soybeans. Most things are privatized, um, which
Speaker 1: a lot of it has to do with just how
Speaker 1: good a farm land it is. And so it went
Speaker 1: into private lands and stayed there, private hands and stayed there. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, so there's only forty nine million
Speaker 1: acres of state land and there's here's the number, six
Speaker 1: point three five million acres of landlocked state lands across
Speaker 1: these eleven Western states. Um, how many total lakers of
Speaker 1: state land are there in these eleven Western states? There's
Speaker 1: forty nine million, and so six point three five million
Speaker 1: of those. So it's wasn't it yet? Six point three
Speaker 1: nine million acres? We can't get to six point three
Speaker 1: five three five million acres? We can't get that's right?
Speaker 1: And we found four of those states have over a
Speaker 1: million acres. And those are Montana again, which has one
Speaker 1: and a half million, really one point five million acres
Speaker 1: of inaccessible state that's at least do you want to
Speaker 1: run through this? Sure? So Arizona has one point three,
Speaker 1: Montana has one point five, uh, New Mexico one point
Speaker 1: three again, and Wyoming one point one million acres. Those
Speaker 1: are all the plus million states. Yeah exactly. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we know where these landlocked state lands are and we
Speaker 1: know how much of it there is, but you might
Speaker 1: be asking these questions next, like how did this come
Speaker 1: to be? What are state lands? How did states get land,
Speaker 1: what do they have the land for, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: what the hell happened to all that land. It all
Speaker 1: started back in seve um with the General Land Ordinance,
Speaker 1: which was a law passed that established the grid system.
Speaker 1: And so township UM six by six square miles is
Speaker 1: right square miles, Yeah, but six six miles by six
Speaker 1: miles um individual sections thirty six seven within each township.
Speaker 1: So that basically the whole western side of the country
Speaker 1: three um was divided up into these this grid system
Speaker 1: UM and a lot of other states as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's I mean, so I started has a township
Speaker 1: like a township system that was the West back in
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah, they have a township system and they
Speaker 1: have and they have like school trust lands that sit
Speaker 1: on that township system. It's even like a specified number.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's the the old Northwest Territory. So it's
Speaker 1: you know, how do you bring order and pose order
Speaker 1: on a territory landscape that you really don't have any
Speaker 1: understanding of familiarity with. UM. So yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: rolls westward as the country does, and it's what makes
Speaker 1: corner crossing so fun to talk about. Yeah. UM. But
Speaker 1: so it started in eighteen o three, was the first state, Ohio,
Speaker 1: to get a land grant. And so what the federal
Speaker 1: government did is they passed these enabling acts UM where
Speaker 1: they actually gave individual states UM starting with just one
Speaker 1: section per township, so one out every thirty six acres
Speaker 1: in that state, UM would get a section, starting with
Speaker 1: Ohio in eighteen o three. And so the Feds say, like,
Speaker 1: you guys are gonna become a state. You're like a
Speaker 1: little state, You're Ohio. Now you're gonna become a state,
Speaker 1: and we're going to gift to you the state one
Speaker 1: out of every thirty six square miles that you own.
Speaker 1: That's right, That's how it started, and for the purpose
Speaker 1: of supporting public institutions, generally schools. And so they started
Speaker 1: with Ohio and there's I think twenty nine states got
Speaker 1: their lands this way, and early on there were very
Speaker 1: few restrictions on how that money would be used and
Speaker 1: so most of the states just sort of sold off
Speaker 1: the lands really states before in eighteen fifty, But was
Speaker 1: that the intent when they gave him the land? Was
Speaker 1: the intent like here go sell it? Well intent think
Speaker 1: the intent evolved. But there's some states like Mississippi that
Speaker 1: held on to their state lands. I guess sort of
Speaker 1: early on, like we're gonna hold onto these and we're
Speaker 1: going to generate revenue over the long term. And they
Speaker 1: actually had a commitment to that. They played the smart
Speaker 1: they played the smart thing, and like Ohio has, from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, nothing left um. At least there's
Speaker 1: not enough acres there that I can find any record
Speaker 1: of there being anything left UM. And a lot of
Speaker 1: states just went and sold it along the way, however,
Speaker 1: and as a result of that, they were sort of
Speaker 1: misusing the money. So here's an example Alabama, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: near Mississippi. Mississippi held onto their lands. Alabama sold off
Speaker 1: their lands and like they invested in stuff. Really like
Speaker 1: you find that there's sort of a theme and a
Speaker 1: state that's right, even like these neighboring states that two
Speaker 1: sort of different approaches. And we find that in the
Speaker 1: West today, and we'll get into that. Um, but so
Speaker 1: the state of Alabama like invest they sold off a
Speaker 1: bunch of their lands. They invested the money and stuff
Speaker 1: that failed, and so they had basically nothing to show
Speaker 1: for it. But also what they would do in Alabama
Speaker 1: is um, so if you lived within the town ship
Speaker 1: where that section was, you were the ones that decided
Speaker 1: whether or not to be sold. And so, which is
Speaker 1: totally corrupt, right you have like does my neighbor sell
Speaker 1: their property or not? Yes, so I can buy it, um.
Speaker 1: But then they also would give out that's like the
Speaker 1: that's like where local control kind of goes a little off, now,
Speaker 1: that's right. And they'd also give out personal loans. They
Speaker 1: had a school fund that they created, but it's kind
Speaker 1: of like an endowment with the idea that the interest
Speaker 1: would go towards um those schools. And they give out
Speaker 1: personal loans to people in Alabama with never actually make
Speaker 1: them pay them back. Um. And then they also did
Speaker 1: like nine year leases and so if you were had
Speaker 1: a grazing lease or whatever, you can do it for
Speaker 1: ninety nine years and probably I don't know if the
Speaker 1: terms were fixed, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.
Speaker 1: And so like in the eighteen forties, they were making
Speaker 1: year leases that didn't expire until the nineteen forties, which
Speaker 1: is a long time, right, And so that's sort of
Speaker 1: an example of how states sort of got rid of
Speaker 1: their lands UM. And then in the West, so where
Speaker 1: this report is the eleven Western states UM. Starting well,
Speaker 1: California is the first Western state to get become a state,
Speaker 1: and they actually got section sixteen again. But after that
Speaker 1: they started getting sections sixteen and thirty six, and so
Speaker 1: they got two square miles per township UM. And so
Speaker 1: like Oregon, Montana, Idaho UM, a number of states got
Speaker 1: two sections per township. And then at the very end
Speaker 1: they got even more generous and they gave Utah, Arizona,
Speaker 1: New Mexico four sections. So how does this system work
Speaker 1: out If there's already someone occupying the designated land that's
Speaker 1: supposed to go to the state, what does the state do?
Speaker 1: Then they had this thing called in lieu selections, And
Speaker 1: so if it was down in New Mexico, right, which
Speaker 1: is a very late state to become a part of
Speaker 1: the Union, if it was you know, let's see a
Speaker 1: Mexican land grant for example, or an Indian reservation, or
Speaker 1: it was already private um. They were not able to
Speaker 1: select those lands that then were able to select. They
Speaker 1: were not they were not giving those um In that
Speaker 1: case it was six sixteen, thirty two, and thirty six
Speaker 1: and those later ones they got four those four sections
Speaker 1: really like the deal kept getting better, it keep getting
Speaker 1: met it, but they were still like spaced apart, and
Speaker 1: so they're all separated, which is still creates the same
Speaker 1: arbitrary it scattered pick does. But then they were able
Speaker 1: to correct select these in lieu of areas. And that's
Speaker 1: where we get some of these big chunks of landlocked land.
Speaker 1: And so they'd be like, well, we can't have any
Speaker 1: of there's like this big you know, eight acre land
Speaker 1: grand or whatever. We can't have any of those lands
Speaker 1: inside of there. And so they go select some really
Speaker 1: big areas somewhere else. And then they might be like that,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take all four of my my sections, my
Speaker 1: square miles, I want them all together. That's right. So
Speaker 1: I got a sweet little chunk, were thirty sections together
Speaker 1: or whatever, And and so you get some really some
Speaker 1: significant holdings. Maybe not, And so that's that's going to
Speaker 1: how that worked, which has left as legacy of all
Speaker 1: these isolated parcels um and then states took to either
Speaker 1: hung on them or sold them off. That's right. Now
Speaker 1: we'll get into something you might have heard about, which
Speaker 1: is the political and social push to transfer federally managed
Speaker 1: lands over to the states. Why is that idea so
Speaker 1: distasteful to so many hunters, anglers and conservationists, Like what
Speaker 1: are they so afraid of? Basically, there's a whole idea
Speaker 1: that the federal government should transfer their lands to the states. Right,
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, there was a big push
Speaker 1: for it coming out of Utah. It comes up now
Speaker 1: and then yeah, and and and um and and a
Speaker 1: lot of us pointing to the history of state lands
Speaker 1: for why that's the terrible idea, because some states have
Speaker 1: been really bad about selling their lands and it was
Speaker 1: such a bad there was such a bad history with it.
Speaker 1: That's the federal government actually started to impose restrictions on
Speaker 1: land sales towards the end of westward expansion because the
Speaker 1: system was being so abused by the Western states as
Speaker 1: part of the terms of the land grant. That's right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see to be like if you left your
Speaker 1: like you have like a wayward kid and you leave him.
Speaker 1: That's why we have trust trust fund kids. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this is like they couldn't trust the kids to
Speaker 1: give them all the money. Well, this is like because
Speaker 1: you'll just blow it if you're give them a little
Speaker 1: to your kids graduating from high school, right and you
Speaker 1: you like give him a used car or something to
Speaker 1: get started. And that's sort of how I mean. The
Speaker 1: intention of it is to bring these other states up. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's your equal footing? Equal footing, bring them up on
Speaker 1: equal footing with the current existing states. So they had
Speaker 1: to treat like children, but some of those kids, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like here's you know, so it's so you're
Speaker 1: not it's sort of to break that dependency on the
Speaker 1: federal government for public services, and also not to put
Speaker 1: them at a disadvantage with the thirteen colonies, plus the
Speaker 1: three states that had already and become states, Like they
Speaker 1: already had institutions in place, and so you know New
Speaker 1: York or Massachusetts for example, they've been around a while,
Speaker 1: they had institutions, and so when they're creating these new states,
Speaker 1: they didn't want them to be at such a disadvantage
Speaker 1: that they created this thing called the equal footing doctrine,
Speaker 1: and this was part of it where they gave him
Speaker 1: these these these state lands, these trust lands. At the
Speaker 1: time they were just called school lands, um with the
Speaker 1: thinking that they could raise money off of those too,
Speaker 1: to establish these institutions that would put them on equal
Speaker 1: footing with the early States. When we were young, we
Speaker 1: would use we would go down I didn't have a
Speaker 1: Platt book, but you could go down to the township
Speaker 1: office in photo copy the Plat books at the township's
Speaker 1: office to find out who own what. Then you'd go
Speaker 1: talking to the column or whatever and ours would even
Speaker 1: our ours were labeled on these maps just school trust
Speaker 1: land in Michigan, and it had like a different color
Speaker 1: in Michigan has some It is interesting to see how
Speaker 1: states actually learned from other states over time their mistakes.
Speaker 1: And you can tell that Congress obviously learned and they
Speaker 1: started making these rules as it went on. So give
Speaker 1: it to you, but you can't just run out and
Speaker 1: sell it. It's like after the first three kids sell
Speaker 1: those used cars and just blow it on booze and
Speaker 1: whatever else. You know. They could sell it, but they
Speaker 1: put conditions around the sale and so that they had
Speaker 1: to have a permanent fund, and then only the interest
Speaker 1: from that permanent fund could be used to support the schools.
Speaker 1: And they also set minimum sale prices so much like
Speaker 1: trust fund killing. So they were these states were like
Speaker 1: selling these things to their buddies, you know, for nothing,
Speaker 1: and and so then they you know, they set minimum
Speaker 1: prices to make it so they wouldn't you know, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have the incentive to do that. Okay, So here's
Speaker 1: what's next. The crew at on X and t RCP,
Speaker 1: they're not really comfortable and it's not really their job
Speaker 1: to sort of like, uh, talk about who should be
Speaker 1: ashamed of themselves and who historically did a good job
Speaker 1: and who did a bad job through here to help.
Speaker 1: But you might ask who are the good apples? I mean,
Speaker 1: which states do a good job of retaining their lands
Speaker 1: in a way that serves the public, or to do
Speaker 1: a good job of managing access on their lands. State
Speaker 1: trust lands were given to these states to generate revenue
Speaker 1: for beneficiary, okay, And so they're not multiple use lands.
Speaker 1: They're not like national forest lands or BLM lands where
Speaker 1: wildlife and recreation are supposed to have equal consideration with development.
Speaker 1: And so you could actually say we're not going to
Speaker 1: develop a lot of these lands because of these other values.
Speaker 1: That's not how trust lands are managed. They do need
Speaker 1: to generate profit. However, some states have decided most states
Speaker 1: in the West, actually almost all states in the West
Speaker 1: have decided that recreation UM can be a part of
Speaker 1: that management approach for generating profit or it's compatle compatible
Speaker 1: with the idea that these lands that be managed to
Speaker 1: generate profit. Right, and so the idea that the public
Speaker 1: be a part of it, that they serve some sort
Speaker 1: of larger public good is compatible with the idea that
Speaker 1: these lands generate profit. There's another side to it, which
Speaker 1: is a much more sort of dollars and cents and
Speaker 1: you know, the state because it is considered more of
Speaker 1: something they have to deal with. And I think when
Speaker 1: you look at if a state um is doing a
Speaker 1: really good job from the perspective of hunters and anglers
Speaker 1: in terms of how they manage their state trust slans UM,
Speaker 1: the ones to do a really good job have more
Speaker 1: of a welcome at versus um a you can't welcome
Speaker 1: at versus you can't find anything about it, or it's
Speaker 1: a no trespassing sign. And a couple of states that
Speaker 1: have done a really good job. UM our Montana for example,
Speaker 1: where UM in the state, nearly all the lands are
Speaker 1: open and available for the public. UM. They have some
Speaker 1: basic rules about you can't shoot within a quarter mile
Speaker 1: of an occupied structure. UM. You know, you can only
Speaker 1: drive on routes that are open, and things like that. UM.
Speaker 1: And Montana Fishwife and Parks. UM. When you buy your
Speaker 1: conservation license to hunt for hunting and fishing, you spend
Speaker 1: two dollars in the state of Montana, and that money
Speaker 1: goes to support the schools in the state. They generate
Speaker 1: about a million dollars a year through that UM and
Speaker 1: and and as a result, it's actually benefit benefiting those
Speaker 1: schools UM in a way that also supports public recreation.
Speaker 1: And also the state of Montana has been great in
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm talking about landlocked lands. You know,
Speaker 1: they're being about a million and a half federal landlocked
Speaker 1: lands and a million and a half state landlocked lands
Speaker 1: in the state of Montana. UM. The state has actually
Speaker 1: created programs. UM. There's one called the mt Plan, which
Speaker 1: actually is a grants program where they can give out
Speaker 1: grants to create easements across private land that would open
Speaker 1: up these public lands. UM. Montana Fish Wife and Parks
Speaker 1: has a couple of programs. One again is a brand
Speaker 1: new one they just passed UM that again would enable
Speaker 1: the state to spend money on establishing easements. Another one
Speaker 1: who provide tax incentives for landowners who allow the public
Speaker 1: across their private land to access these state lands. And also, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really cool stuff and this is something that's bipartisan's
Speaker 1: coming out of the legislature. Montana's is just sort of
Speaker 1: a shining example. Um. You know, wash intends another state
Speaker 1: that's doing a really good job. Um. They you you
Speaker 1: buy an an access pass US thirty dollars a year,
Speaker 1: which supports part of that go to supporting that that
Speaker 1: state trust revenue. Um. But those lands are open and
Speaker 1: accessible and you know they've got good signage like that.
Speaker 1: You go to their website, it's very welcoming. Um. And
Speaker 1: so that's something that they've done. You know, New Mexico
Speaker 1: and Arizona are two other states that actually charge of
Speaker 1: fee um for the public to use these trust lands,
Speaker 1: which because they're multiple use lands, I think is just fine.
Speaker 1: That's the way to support the trust responsibilities that also
Speaker 1: support the public. And now we'll get into what al
Speaker 1: call the bad apples at least bad from my perspective,
Speaker 1: as you know, like a general outdoorsman who likes a
Speaker 1: roam around outside a whole bunch. The sort of flip
Speaker 1: side to that are states that um would would manage
Speaker 1: state trust lands for exclusive use, and so you'd lease
Speaker 1: them to an individual who basically would control access to
Speaker 1: those lands. And Colorado is the only state in the
Speaker 1: Mountain West. What are the eleven western states that we
Speaker 1: looked at that actually does not allow public access to
Speaker 1: the vast majority of its trust holdings. It's so Oncolorado,
Speaker 1: Like you know what John Denver Blissen, any it just
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't it feel on you you loose to live
Speaker 1: in Colorado? You know, he doesn't feel on Colorado. Like
Speaker 1: I agree. I wasn't really aware of it when I
Speaker 1: lived there, and it just never came across. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you remember, like the outdoor retailers, they got all mad
Speaker 1: at the state of Utah. They're like, my god, We're
Speaker 1: going down to Colorado because they do it right. Mm hmm. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to fall in line with the way
Speaker 1: they act normally. And so Colorado has almost two point
Speaker 1: eight million acres of state trust lands, how many landlocked?
Speaker 1: Four and thirty five thousand acres are landlocked, but one
Speaker 1: point seven eight million acres of accessible land are closed
Speaker 1: to the public by state policy. God, that just seems
Speaker 1: And also if you think, I said, you did a
Speaker 1: great job of land out how it came to be,
Speaker 1: and you pointed out the intent was not that people
Speaker 1: could go run around messing around, I understand it. It
Speaker 1: just feels as though, what a missed opportunity. Well, so
Speaker 1: I want to point out that Colorado, so they do
Speaker 1: have a program where the State Landboard in Colorado, Parks
Speaker 1: and Wildlife are partnering to make lands accessible. Um And
Speaker 1: up until this hunting season there were um they have
Speaker 1: a hunter program like a sportsman's program. Plus there's also
Speaker 1: there's some lands that they leave for state parks in
Speaker 1: wildlife management areas that are open to the public. It's
Speaker 1: about five hundred and fifty eight thousand acres total there
Speaker 1: and this year they're actually gonna open up another hundred
Speaker 1: thousand acres through that program, with the intent that they
Speaker 1: opened up another four thousand acres in the next two years,
Speaker 1: which would bring the state total to write around a
Speaker 1: million acres U of land accessible to sportsman, and so
Speaker 1: I think that you know, they deserve a pat on
Speaker 1: the back for that. You take a step back and
Speaker 1: you compare them to all the other states in the West.
Speaker 1: They're still the only state that will have less than
Speaker 1: half of their land accessible to the public. And one
Speaker 1: of the things too, even if it's sitting there not
Speaker 1: actively being used. Yeah, if even it doesn't have a
Speaker 1: lease on it for recreation, you can't use it unless
Speaker 1: there's it's unless it's at least two CPW Colorado Parks
Speaker 1: wild Life in that state real quick, and that state,
Speaker 1: let's say there's a Colorado, you find a you guys
Speaker 1: do your report, and you find a landlocked state section
Speaker 1: in Colorado surrounded by a cattle ranch. Okay, Um, is
Speaker 1: that operator of that cattle ranch prohibited? Like he doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have rights to go mess around there's like anybody
Speaker 1: else does. Right, It's theoretically he could have this chunk
Speaker 1: of land and his thing that he's not supposed to
Speaker 1: walk across. I think they would have to at least
Speaker 1: that for recreation if they wanted to. Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: not de fact or his land. He might if he was.
Speaker 1: If he's like super law abiding, there could feasibly be
Speaker 1: a situation in which he's like, I can't even go
Speaker 1: on it, and I own the periphery of it. And
Speaker 1: here's something that you know, we uncovered sort of done
Speaker 1: some research that makes this all a little bit more
Speaker 1: bothersome is that the people of Colorado change the Colorado
Speaker 1: Constitution to require that state trust lands, in addition to
Speaker 1: being managed for sort of sustainable profit, not maximum profit,
Speaker 1: that they also be managed for wildlife and aesthetic values
Speaker 1: for the long term and sort of for future generations
Speaker 1: of Colorado's And I'm sort of paraphrasing there, but that
Speaker 1: actually has stated in their constitution, and that was a
Speaker 1: change that was made by the people of Colorado. But
Speaker 1: yet it's and that's something that I'm not aware of
Speaker 1: any other state in the way to having. And so
Speaker 1: you could theoretically said their constitution is the most public
Speaker 1: access friendly of any state with state trust lands, but
Speaker 1: yet they're sort of management of recreation is the least friendly.
Speaker 1: And so I want to give him an a for
Speaker 1: this recent sort of project UM to help expand access UM,
Speaker 1: but they have to do it three more times to
Speaker 1: be sort of in parody with like Montana. It's like
Speaker 1: a super bad kid who all of a sudden, like
Speaker 1: isn't quite so bad. Well, it's good, they did it good,
Speaker 1: they did the right things. Great. Yeah, but if you'd
Speaker 1: like But if you if you compare it to other
Speaker 1: states based on what lands are open, what lands are not,
Speaker 1: it is the one outlier. And there's a couple other
Speaker 1: states outside of the sort of Mountain West that least
Speaker 1: their state trust lands, UM, just for sort of private use.
Speaker 1: And those are Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Those are the
Speaker 1: ones I'm aware of. But UM, state trust lanes in
Speaker 1: Alabama open. They don't have a lot left, like twenty
Speaker 1: eight thousand or something like that. UM, Minnesota, those lands
Speaker 1: are open. How about Texas? Texas didn't get land grants
Speaker 1: the same way, neither in Alaska because they came into
Speaker 1: well it's just a different state. I don't know the
Speaker 1: history of Texas. I do know that they did not
Speaker 1: get their grants the same way. UM, and they're probably
Speaker 1: I don't want to know handouts. I don't There was
Speaker 1: no federal land in Texas for the way, there was
Speaker 1: no federal lands, So that was one reason the feds
Speaker 1: were doing. That was like, instead of being taxed on
Speaker 1: this federal land, we're gonna give you these state lands
Speaker 1: to help you. But I think Texas did get some
Speaker 1: sort of land grants, but it was just a whole
Speaker 1: different deal. Um, Hawaii, Texas, Alaska, they all they're kind
Speaker 1: of unique. Then there's a different category of bad apples.
Speaker 1: States that sold off their public state lands and don't
Speaker 1: have it anymore. I think we need to talk about
Speaker 1: the oldest kids. Those are the ones that might be
Speaker 1: even worse than some of the ones we just talked about.
Speaker 1: They were granted over a million, maybe sometimes two million
Speaker 1: acres of state tress lands, and they don't really have
Speaker 1: any right now, So it could be all these are
Speaker 1: mainly in the Midwest. As you go east to west,
Speaker 1: you're basically going from oldest kids to the youngest. So
Speaker 1: I mean, those are probably the worst. It could be
Speaker 1: a completely different game in Iowa or Kansas doesn't have any.
Speaker 1: They sold them off if I mean they were granted
Speaker 1: Yeah in Kansas, man, like they had two point nine
Speaker 1: million acres. Could you imagine Kansas got good hunting like
Speaker 1: if they had retained those if they were open to
Speaker 1: the public, My question is now out of those states,
Speaker 1: these like they're the worst of the kids, because we
Speaker 1: feel like they sold off all the lands, but did
Speaker 1: any of them then sort of shine because they have
Speaker 1: something to show for it. Although they don't have these lands,
Speaker 1: they didn't sell them off to their bodies and and
Speaker 1: then squad of the money on wine and song as
Speaker 1: to you said, but they do have the best institutions
Speaker 1: across the country. Or people spend money on song, like
Speaker 1: in the same wine women in song like you gather
Speaker 1: You mean like they bought alcohol, like they took the
Speaker 1: engagement prostitution or took women out to eat. But what's
Speaker 1: the song part live like concert tickets? Yeah, it must
Speaker 1: have been the opera karaoke machine, you know, karaoke machine
Speaker 1: in karaoke eyes might have not looked into that, right.
Speaker 1: I do not know the size of every state's permanent fund,
Speaker 1: their endowment for their schools. I do know that states
Speaker 1: like Arizona, New Mexico have done quite well, and they've
Speaker 1: retained the vast majority of their states. They've monetized their
Speaker 1: lands without selling them. That's right, um, And well, one thing,
Speaker 1: Arizona has been very selective about what they sell and
Speaker 1: so like they have lands in like Merria County down
Speaker 1: where Phoenix is, and so they've been able to sell
Speaker 1: that money for it's an absolute toime that that land
Speaker 1: for an absolute ton of money, UM, but it's a
Speaker 1: general policy they've really refrained from selling lands and so
Speaker 1: they've been able to generate a lot of revenue New Mexico,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Premian basins down there, UM, oil and
Speaker 1: gas is a big issue, and so they've leased a
Speaker 1: lot of their lands for oil and gas and that's
Speaker 1: really um more of a factor of just having a
Speaker 1: resource that's very valuable, and so they've been able to
Speaker 1: I mean just sort of annual profits. I know New
Speaker 1: Mexico makes a lot of money um off of their
Speaker 1: state trust and so you might have certain states that
Speaker 1: squander right UM, and that's not the right way to
Speaker 1: go about it, where the money is not going to
Speaker 1: the institution. But then you have the other side where
Speaker 1: they're so focused on the business that um that they're
Speaker 1: not thinking about the resource or the public in other ways.
Speaker 1: So to what degree are people aware as in is
Speaker 1: it like common knowledge that there are landlocked public lands
Speaker 1: all around us in the American West? I found um
Speaker 1: like last year, when we're trying to verify some of
Speaker 1: the larger federal parcels, it was most useful to talk
Speaker 1: to like a game warden in the area because they
Speaker 1: knew exactly where they're busting people for being on inaccessible land.
Speaker 1: And so I feel like a lot of this knowledge
Speaker 1: is at the local level, and that's a lot of
Speaker 1: what this project is is trying to compile it all
Speaker 1: to actually wrap your head around the issue. Have you
Speaker 1: have you have you thought about taking the analysis and
Speaker 1: then looking at the pieces of land that are sort
Speaker 1: of I don't want I'll use the word offending, though
Speaker 1: I shouldn't, that's not the right word. Like where you
Speaker 1: look at these like big chunks land people can't get to,
Speaker 1: and then you look at the easiest way to solve
Speaker 1: that puzzle, and then you look into what is going
Speaker 1: on with that chunk of land? Does that chunk of
Speaker 1: land for sale with the person wish to sell it? Uh?
Speaker 1: Like what is the status of that thing? That's generally
Speaker 1: what land trusts do, where you have groups like the
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountainknock Foundation where they've got folks actually out there
Speaker 1: drinking coffee with landowners and talking about how to transfer
Speaker 1: or sell a piece of land to open it up,
Speaker 1: you know, for the public. And so there's actually groups
Speaker 1: out there, a lot of them that that is their
Speaker 1: purpose is to work cooperative landowners identify these opportunities, but
Speaker 1: they don't have always the best information about um where
Speaker 1: those inaccessible lands are. And that's really where this project
Speaker 1: comes in. It's always actually does two things that helps
Speaker 1: inform um where those inaccessible lands are. To help people
Speaker 1: sort of be like, hey, there's an opportunity here and
Speaker 1: then you start then and then those folks can look
Speaker 1: at around that landlocked parcel where there might be you know,
Speaker 1: five different private holdings and a couple of them are
Speaker 1: close to a road, and they can be like, you know,
Speaker 1: is build a good you know what's that person like?
Speaker 1: They you know, pretty public friendly and public access friendly
Speaker 1: and and sort of have a conversation and sometimes it
Speaker 1: takes you know, several years to sort of work something
Speaker 1: out with a landowner. But also, um the other side
Speaker 1: of this is state policies and and federal policies and
Speaker 1: actually having programs in place that help provide the money.
Speaker 1: And you know, at the federal level, they've got like
Speaker 1: the land and water conservation and in three of that
Speaker 1: fund is dedicated for access. Between fifteen and million dollars
Speaker 1: a year must be used for access. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: at the state level, they can actually use state side
Speaker 1: FUNDINGWCF dollars must go UM too. States and they have
Speaker 1: the ability if they wanted to to use UM some
Speaker 1: of those dollars for access, but they may not realize that,
Speaker 1: and this report helps them see that. Also, UM there's
Speaker 1: certain states that just really recreations isn't a thing for them,
Speaker 1: well UM, and they're not thinking about it. And so
Speaker 1: that's we're hopeful that this information will also be used
Speaker 1: that way where UM people be like, hey, look at
Speaker 1: what Montana is doing or New Mexico they've got this
Speaker 1: this new council where they've actually pulled together this group
Speaker 1: and they're trying to figure out like how to open
Speaker 1: some of these lands up and also what are some
Speaker 1: of the restrictions on these state lands that maybe we
Speaker 1: could change a little bit um to make it more
Speaker 1: sort of recreation friendly and uh. And so maybe we
Speaker 1: can help bring attention to that through the this work.
Speaker 1: And so states like Wyoming, who has a lot of
Speaker 1: landlocked lands, might be like, hey, you know, what we
Speaker 1: could create an access program that will help create easements
Speaker 1: to these state parcels. And you know what, it's not
Speaker 1: only going to increase recreation to these lands, but it's
Speaker 1: also gonna make it easier for us to manage them
Speaker 1: to generate revenue for a beneficiary because we'll have access
Speaker 1: for these other reasons too. So, now that the report
Speaker 1: is out, what's next We're gonna be looking at nationwide.
Speaker 1: We'd love to, like I said, our main goal would
Speaker 1: be to get to this landlocked data set that's nationwide.
Speaker 1: Keep working with local land Trust BLM, everybody to make
Speaker 1: sure we have a solid data set that has all
Speaker 1: those easements in there and we know for sure, yes
Speaker 1: this one's accessible, this one isn't. We'd love to get
Speaker 1: to that point in because there's there are some real
Speaker 1: contested easements out there. Those are prescriptive easeman steve, which
Speaker 1: are different than recorded easeman so and that's a state
Speaker 1: law issue. But if they're and so it's different from state.
Speaker 1: But you think it like the crazy amount. I mean,
Speaker 1: you just hear various ones like well, I mean I've
Speaker 1: heard of some down in Colorado to like tested easement.
Speaker 1: So if there's the tested rule. I shouldn't say easments
Speaker 1: contested access points, roads and things that were historically regarded
Speaker 1: as a county road. But someone wants to argue that
Speaker 1: they're not, in fact the county road, that's right. But
Speaker 1: with the easements, if it's written in paper that there's
Speaker 1: an eazement there, it's not contested. But there's some places,
Speaker 1: because of continuous use um that you can get a
Speaker 1: prescriptive easement by going in front of a judge. It's
Speaker 1: a very contentious way to go about it, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't make a lot of friends, um, but there are
Speaker 1: places where that's happening, and that's why we want to
Speaker 1: get in front of that and try and get cooperative
Speaker 1: work done that brings landowners and hunters and anglers and
Speaker 1: other folks together to actually open lands up in a
Speaker 1: way that works to everybody. And that's the preferred the
Speaker 1: way to go about this. Okay, guys, you heard all that.
Speaker 1: If you care about getting state public lands that we
Speaker 1: all own opened up for us, there is definitely something
Speaker 1: we as American citizens can do right now. You can
Speaker 1: go send a message to your lawmakers. There's a website
Speaker 1: that t RCP has helped facilitate that for you. Now,
Speaker 1: you can just go to ww dot TRCP dot org
Speaker 1: and scrounge all around and find it. Or you can
Speaker 1: go to this not entirely handy website address which I'm
Speaker 1: gonna lay out for you. Www dot t r CP
Speaker 1: dot org slash unlocking, dash public dash lands. That's right
Speaker 1: as and gentlemen, trcp dot org slash unlocking, and you
Speaker 1: do a little dash mark public, another little dash mark lands.
Speaker 1: The hell of the website. Scroll down to where it
Speaker 1: says the key to unlocking public lands. Read all about
Speaker 1: the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is a fund
Speaker 1: that helps unlock inaccessible lands, and send your message to
Speaker 1: your elected official right there. L w CF money is
Speaker 1: there to help on facilitating access to our public land.
Speaker 1: Make your voice heard, take action and help unlock public
Speaker 1: lands for us all. Thank you,