Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast. We're in Douglas, Arizona,
Speaker 1: gonna be crossing into Agua Prieta, Mexico tomorrow to hunt
Speaker 1: for cous dear or cows gear dear or what all
Speaker 1: pronunciations exist out there? Cows. I don't like cows, cows,
Speaker 1: cows and cows, So don't now go and tell waste
Speaker 1: your time telling me that it's not actually cus dear.
Speaker 1: Chris Denham, and I've said this before. Chris Denham said,
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's been. I think he's probably written
Speaker 1: more pages and published more pages of information about this
Speaker 1: animal than probably any man alive. And he said that
Speaker 1: he will call him CU's dear till the day he
Speaker 1: dies fighting words. I agree. I'm here with your honest
Speaker 1: to tell us, maker of the famous hunt eat t shirts,
Speaker 1: how's that going? Johnnie, Great, Steve, Thanks Um Janice was
Speaker 1: just telling us before we started about how all the
Speaker 1: money he's made out on hunt eat t shirts. Jay Scott,
Speaker 1: who's here with us, noticed that Yannest actually has money
Speaker 1: falling out of his pocket, a little small pile of
Speaker 1: it here on this If you ever are fixing to
Speaker 1: get a hunt Eat T shirt, do it now because
Speaker 1: he's almost made so much money he's gonna be getting
Speaker 1: out of the business. For our other two guests here,
Speaker 1: y honesties to make a shirt, says hunt to measure
Speaker 1: because Jay Scott, Dark Holburn here and these guys are
Speaker 1: the guys that find the biggest critters running around in
Speaker 1: the mountains. They just go and look real quiet and
Speaker 1: patient and find him. And um, we're crossing tomorrow to
Speaker 1: go hunt in Mexico. We're not actually hunting together. You
Speaker 1: guys have clients, multiple clients going down and we're kind
Speaker 1: of riding on the um Dark Holbur and Jay Scott
Speaker 1: coattails by getting some access on to a place to
Speaker 1: go hunt. But you guys got well, what's time? January
Speaker 1: is right? You spent all January down here hunting cruised here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: typically January during the rut. What's your annual schedule like
Speaker 1: with guiding, Ah starts in September usually for ELK H
Speaker 1: September ELK and then cheap we start scouting in November
Speaker 1: and hunt cheap in December and then pretty much januarysus
Speaker 1: deer down to Mexico. And you guys, you don't like Jay,
Speaker 1: You're the only one, you don't. You don't do turkey anymore,
Speaker 1: right thar I'm back in this year, so I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you followed turkeys at all. There's
Speaker 1: something kind of interesting where there's in North like in
Speaker 1: the New World. You get two kinds of turkeys. You
Speaker 1: got just the regular American wild turkey, and then you
Speaker 1: have a thing called the oscillated turkey, which lives in
Speaker 1: Central America, um extreme southern North America. But then you
Speaker 1: got like the regul old turkey we all know about.
Speaker 1: The regular old turkey we all know about is divided
Speaker 1: into five what we've traditionally called subspecies, though a lot
Speaker 1: of geneticists argue that that's a bunch of malarkey and
Speaker 1: that they're not legitimate subspecies. But you have the Eastern
Speaker 1: wild turkey, which is native to the eastern US. Then
Speaker 1: you have the uh osciola, which is in the southern
Speaker 1: half of the Florida Panhandle, and that one is the
Speaker 1: one that geneticists say is the least legitimate subspecies because
Speaker 1: there's sort of this arbitrary line which happens to exist
Speaker 1: like around Orlando, where everything north of that line is
Speaker 1: the Eastern wild Turkey. Everything south of that line is
Speaker 1: an osciola, and a Turkey could kind of walk back
Speaker 1: and forth from being an eastern to an osciola throughout
Speaker 1: the day. There's some morphological differences, like some coloration stuff,
Speaker 1: but basically it's kind of like you know what it
Speaker 1: is based on where you shot it. Then you got,
Speaker 1: uh what real grands Miriams which you're from the south
Speaker 1: southwestern US, some Texas and elsewhere. Um, then the five
Speaker 1: is the kind of coolest one in my opinion. The Goulds.
Speaker 1: It's hard to find the ghouls. There's some Gould's tags
Speaker 1: in here in Arizona. I put in form, never drawn him. Um,
Speaker 1: very limited. But most guys that want to get what
Speaker 1: are you looking at me for? I just wanted? Is
Speaker 1: that the only? Uh? Now, if you pay attention to
Speaker 1: such things, there's a there's a thing called the Grand Slam.
Speaker 1: I have a Turkey Grand Slam in that I have
Speaker 1: killed all all five kinds of turkeys, Royal Slam, and
Speaker 1: you have the world Slam. No, I don't have the
Speaker 1: world slams. I've never killed an oscillator. I have the
Speaker 1: what what kind of slam do I have? Royal Okay,
Speaker 1: a grand slam is a dude who kills four the ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the four main South pieces of turkeys are for
Speaker 1: most readily available wild turkeys. I realized this is a
Speaker 1: major turkey geek stuff. But the Royal Slams when you
Speaker 1: pick up the Goulds, people who are into turkeys usually
Speaker 1: I'm pulling this out of my ass. Of the guys
Speaker 1: that need one more turkey to get a Royal Slam
Speaker 1: need a Goulds. Of the guys that need one more
Speaker 1: turkey to get a Royal Slam need an Osceola. I'm
Speaker 1: pulling out of my ask. But it's somewhere around there.
Speaker 1: If you want to get a Gould's, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you you a long shot draw and it's like a
Speaker 1: desert turkey. You know, they live in like the sky
Speaker 1: island areas down into Mexico. If you want to get
Speaker 1: the googles, you do a long shot draw and draw
Speaker 1: a tag, or you call up Jay Scott in dark Holburn.
Speaker 1: That's the only two ways, right, Well, because these guys,
Speaker 1: these guys spend a lot of time in Mexico and
Speaker 1: they spend a lot of times scouting down there. Did
Speaker 1: you guys get into interested in Mexico because the cousier
Speaker 1: because of turkeys. And then you're like, holy sh it,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of turkeys running around here. I have
Speaker 1: a funny story just I know you go off on tangents,
Speaker 1: but just a quick tangent down here, Well, why does
Speaker 1: why does the fact that I do is that relevant? Show?
Speaker 1: I was going off on a tangent. I appreciate the warning.
Speaker 1: I was down here. You know, I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: get straws so we could drink beer through straws. And
Speaker 1: it didn't make a funny noise, and so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do that. No one will know, just because it to
Speaker 1: make any noise. Quick tangent. I was down here scouting
Speaker 1: ranches uh In in the late summer, early fall, and
Speaker 1: I was looking at the ranch and they were making charcoal,
Speaker 1: and we come up to the to the pit where
Speaker 1: they're making it, and out walks the freaking guy from
Speaker 1: the show we filmed down here three years ago, the
Speaker 1: guy that cooked with you on the charcoal charcoal guy,
Speaker 1: same guy just doing a contract of another ring, different ranch,
Speaker 1: I mean hundred miles from there, and I got a
Speaker 1: picture of it with him. I was gonna send it
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, but the same crazy process man, and
Speaker 1: some thankless work is smolder and giant pits of charcoal,
Speaker 1: he remembered dark. Yeah, put his arm around. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was funny. I was talking to these boys from National
Speaker 1: Wild Turkey Federation, and they were talking about when they
Speaker 1: were bringing they were getting Google's out of Google's turkeys
Speaker 1: out of Mexico in order to do try to get
Speaker 1: them re established on native range in the United States.
Speaker 1: And they went down and struck a deal with the
Speaker 1: Iron Mexico Um that they wanted twenty turkeys and he
Speaker 1: was supposed to establish his bait stations to catch turkeys.
Speaker 1: And they would go down and use cannon traps, you know,
Speaker 1: shoots like an explosive charge and shoots the net out
Speaker 1: to catch birds. Because when they had originally were trying
Speaker 1: to do turkey reintroductions, you know, like turkeys got their
Speaker 1: dicks knocked in the dirt, like there used to be turkeys,
Speaker 1: and you know, the time of European contactors turkeys and
Speaker 1: thirty nine states or something like that. By the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties they were mostly gone. You could you couldn't legally
Speaker 1: hunt them barely anywhere South Carolina had a few um
Speaker 1: they got wiped off the planet and they came back
Speaker 1: through just careful work, primarily by National Wild Turkey Federation
Speaker 1: and a bunch of state agencies. But anyhow, they would
Speaker 1: do hatch raised birds, but the hat raies birds they
Speaker 1: don't live that they just get decimated by predators and weather.
Speaker 1: So they started realizing no wady established her he's is
Speaker 1: to catch wild ones and move him. You can't raise
Speaker 1: him and depend and let him go. So he started
Speaker 1: coming down to Mexico to catch these birds and they paid.
Speaker 1: They struck a deal with this guy in Mexico to
Speaker 1: establish his base stations. And when he made the deal,
Speaker 1: he was excited to get the work, but he misunderstood
Speaker 1: the deal. He thought he was getting a set amount.
Speaker 1: It was real happy to do it, not knowing that
Speaker 1: he was getting that amount for each bird up to
Speaker 1: twenty So he's hauling fifty pounds stacks of corn all
Speaker 1: over in the mountains. They come down and catch all
Speaker 1: these birds and he thinks, I can't remember what it was,
Speaker 1: but he thinks he's getting like a hundred bucks. But
Speaker 1: this dude was telling me I turned around and handing
Speaker 1: him the money, and he was off by you know,
Speaker 1: a factor of twenty. So he turns around, hands the
Speaker 1: guy at two thousand dollars, he said. The guy wept.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. He thought he's doing all that, he said,
Speaker 1: this guy is just happily packing around all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So that's how the googles that came up here came
Speaker 1: up here. Um, what else about that? What I actually
Speaker 1: wanted to do is do some of our thing we
Speaker 1: do is that's it's popular with listeners as we do
Speaker 1: fan questions. That's good to have Jay and Dar here
Speaker 1: because they can weigh in on a bunch of these issues.
Speaker 1: These are good talking points. This gives you a chance
Speaker 1: to kind of hit on a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are going around in the what in the worlds of wildlife, hunting, fishing?
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you'll need might pick one out first. Yep.
Speaker 1: I like this one because you have a Now is
Speaker 1: the one that Ja and Dar is gonna be interested
Speaker 1: in or not? You know? Definitely? I think so. I
Speaker 1: think they can definitely weigh in on it because from
Speaker 1: talking to him of the last couple of days, they're
Speaker 1: kind of dealing with some of the stuff that I
Speaker 1: think we'll talk about from this question. The question is
Speaker 1: it's it's under the heading of basic beginner advice. What
Speaker 1: hunting norm exists and how would a new hunter go
Speaker 1: about learning them. I'd like to hear your advice for
Speaker 1: the absolute beginning hunter, not equipment or scouting tips, as
Speaker 1: much as the stuff most people learn while growing up hunting,
Speaker 1: like the unwritten rules of hunting public lands. For example,
Speaker 1: in my area central North Carolina, we have lots of
Speaker 1: small tracks of public land and squirrel season starts during
Speaker 1: deer season. Can I wander around looking for squirrels without
Speaker 1: ruining someone else's hunting? Do big game hunters take precedent?
Speaker 1: And I like that question because we just heard a
Speaker 1: story about that. We just heard a story up in Michigan.
Speaker 1: We were down we can talk. Yeah, yeah, we were
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. Heard a story about Michigan. We're down in
Speaker 1: Kentucky hunt with a small game. I honest said that, Uh,
Speaker 1: this guy we were with in Kentucky's name is Kevin Weaver.
Speaker 1: That he is to Kevin, sorry, Kevin Weavers a gunmaker.
Speaker 1: Kevin Murphy. Kevin Murphy is two squirrels what Neil de
Speaker 1: grass Tyson is to the cosmos. He's a squirrel man
Speaker 1: through and through raises squirrel dog his hunt squirrels. He
Speaker 1: was telling me that he left his home state of
Speaker 1: Kentucky and went up to hunt squirrels and Manestee National
Speaker 1: Forest in Michigan. He's out running his dogs and gets
Speaker 1: a bow hunter so pissed at him that the guys
Speaker 1: following him around yelling obscenities at him. I would have
Speaker 1: punched that guy in the face. That's my take on it.
Speaker 1: Public land, dude, why does the guy bow hunt deer
Speaker 1: have more say than someone else. I think there's things
Speaker 1: you can do. If you were to see a bow
Speaker 1: hunter in a treat Absolutely, you have an obligation not out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have an obligation, a moral obligation to work around him.
Speaker 1: But to say that you're not gonna squirrel hunt because
Speaker 1: it's bow season, I think it's ridiculous. I had a
Speaker 1: situation I was guiding an elk hunter and um here
Speaker 1: in central Arizona and there are bulls bugling all around,
Speaker 1: and we were kind of it was an afternoon hunt.
Speaker 1: We're kind of going after our first bull. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, here lying guys bear dogs. Well, you can
Speaker 1: hunt bear. It's a very liberal season, was right during
Speaker 1: the two weeks ARCHERYOK season. So what I would say is,
Speaker 1: if you have an animal that you cant all the time,
Speaker 1: or a very liberal season, maybe you ought to maybe
Speaker 1: not go when the guys only have stay a two
Speaker 1: weeks season. That's my take. I think it's a lot
Speaker 1: of people's takes. I just had this conversation with my
Speaker 1: friend Jared Fink in Wisconsin and we were kicking around
Speaker 1: the idea of doing having Kevin Murphy from Kentucky come
Speaker 1: up to Wisconsin on farmland, which he would think he
Speaker 1: died and gone to heaven because the squirrels are there
Speaker 1: to sit and bark at you. It was a Kentucky
Speaker 1: You're smart any I was saying, man, we ought to
Speaker 1: do it before uh gun season. He's like, he crazy
Speaker 1: has both season. People are gonna let you on their
Speaker 1: land hunting squirrels during both season. So it's a common Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think that. Me personally, well,
Speaker 1: I don't think you should do it. I don't think
Speaker 1: you should be able to hike or walk or ride
Speaker 1: a bike or anything like that. But ever I personally
Speaker 1: would say, you know, it's up to the Fish and
Speaker 1: Game departments to maybe structure the hunts. We're up on
Speaker 1: the strip this year. There's thirteen b in Arizona. It's
Speaker 1: a ten day season, fourteen day, no ten nine or
Speaker 1: ten ten day season. Um, it's the most coveted the world,
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the best, better than the and
Speaker 1: and there's seventy deer text in a huge area but
Speaker 1: low deer density. You know, it's a it's a yeah.
Speaker 1: You guys can go days about seeing a box, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: So there's a ten day window for this hunt. Well,
Speaker 1: it opens the same time as the Chucker season, which
Speaker 1: is like I want to say, it's almost three months
Speaker 1: and we saw chucker hunters out there, and I mean
Speaker 1: there's people that have waited twenty years for this tag.
Speaker 1: Why not push the Chucker season back ten days? And
Speaker 1: so there isn't even a conflict. I mean that seventy
Speaker 1: deer hunters, how many chucker hunters are there? How many
Speaker 1: field days? Maybe they're just trying to maximize people's opportunities
Speaker 1: to get out. I see where you're calling from. But
Speaker 1: what's ten days later gonna matter? When in ten days
Speaker 1: no one's gonna be hunting deer the place to be
Speaker 1: a ghost town and they can run to from you know,
Speaker 1: second week in in November to February like they do.
Speaker 1: You know the fishing writer John Gurrick, I think it's
Speaker 1: how he says the last name. He had a great
Speaker 1: line where he said, there's two kinds of fishermen. Does
Speaker 1: the guys in your party and then there's the assholes.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's just kind of it's kind of like that,
Speaker 1: and I think that you had the key that you said,
Speaker 1: though Darry said like it's up to the fishing game.
Speaker 1: I was like, when people have questions like this about
Speaker 1: what's the right thing to do, the wrong it's gonna do,
Speaker 1: I think of them can be answered by, well, what's
Speaker 1: in the what Let's take a look at what the
Speaker 1: hunting regulations say, because a lots of stuff isn't really
Speaker 1: shouldn't really be guesswork, you look like, am I allowed
Speaker 1: to be out hunting squirrels right now? I am? You're
Speaker 1: talking legal versus so what I'm saying like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that it's some guy's job who wants to do
Speaker 1: a little squirrel hunt and whatever. Let's say it's his
Speaker 1: kids got some time off school, he wants to do
Speaker 1: some squirrel hunt. I don't think it's his job to
Speaker 1: sit down and figure out what will my squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: negatively impact someone who supposedly is doing something more valuable
Speaker 1: by hunting deer. I think it's us. I think if
Speaker 1: you've got a problem with I think, like you said,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the state Fish and Game Agency might look
Speaker 1: and try to alleviate some of those conflicts. And I
Speaker 1: think in a lot of places they do do that,
Speaker 1: like for like Wisconsin used to have a lot of
Speaker 1: regulations about being out small game hunt in the day
Speaker 1: before deer season and all that kind of stuff. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bite on this one. Yeah, So you're saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna reply. You're saying, if you could
Speaker 1: kill what is a squirrel? Limit squirrels anywhere from four
Speaker 1: to no limit throughout the Great Country, so you can
Speaker 1: just roll out and start blasting, and a bow hunter
Speaker 1: or a guy in a deer stands got one dear
Speaker 1: tag to shoot one year. Now I'm talking about Arizona
Speaker 1: because Arizona that you know, it's a draw one year,
Speaker 1: it's you know, twenty years to get the tag. And
Speaker 1: so the chucker can go out and shoot fifteen chucker
Speaker 1: for the next ninety days. My thing would be put
Speaker 1: yourself in the position of whatever hunt that you might
Speaker 1: go and interfere, and if you feel like you would
Speaker 1: be interfering, then not do it. Wait till that season
Speaker 1: is over, and then go knock yourself off. So you
Speaker 1: think that should be the perfect you think that should
Speaker 1: be the responsibility. That's the responsibility of a guy who
Speaker 1: wants to do a little hunt with his kids. I
Speaker 1: think it's the department. I think hunter should like put
Speaker 1: themselves in the other person's situation and say I'm not
Speaker 1: going to screw up their hunt. We can we can,
Speaker 1: you know, squirrel hunt or chucker hunt anytime, or quail hunt.
Speaker 1: Let's not go out, then let's find something else to do.
Speaker 1: Or let's go in an area where there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of deer and let's stay away from him, and
Speaker 1: let's be courteous to the fellow hunter. How often do
Speaker 1: you cancel your planned activities on account of not wanting
Speaker 1: to inconvenience other people. Do you ever go to put
Speaker 1: your boat in a river and be like, you know,
Speaker 1: probably not a good day. A lot of shore fisherman today,
Speaker 1: I will tell you when I'm rolling down the river,
Speaker 1: and when when I see people on the side of
Speaker 1: the river, I go to the other side and go
Speaker 1: buy them and don't even go through their water, so
Speaker 1: I would say, And I see a lot of other
Speaker 1: guides do it too, So I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: common to be, you know, curteious, courteous to your fellow man.
Speaker 1: So that's a good point. Put yourself in the other
Speaker 1: person's shoes, and what would you do? You are like
Speaker 1: you two are like as tight as as my friend
Speaker 1: Doug says. You guys like nots on a dog. Whenever
Speaker 1: I see one of you, I see both of you.
Speaker 1: And the fact that one are you saying it's an
Speaker 1: ethical issue and one of you saying it's a legal issue,
Speaker 1: shows that there is a place j ends and dar
Speaker 1: begin or vice versa. All Right, I don't know if
Speaker 1: we settled that answer to your question specifically specifically for
Speaker 1: that person, though I think that certainly, uh, they can
Speaker 1: go squirrel hunting during deer season, especially in the place
Speaker 1: like North Carolina where most likely the deer hunter has
Speaker 1: ten deer tags. They can feel, you know, But they're
Speaker 1: asking the question should I do it? Is it okay?
Speaker 1: So they're actually thinking about it, where a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't even think about other people. They just go
Speaker 1: do what they want to do. I want to do
Speaker 1: two total quickies and no, not even I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't even want you guys even open your mouth. Then
Speaker 1: we'll get the one that you that you guys have
Speaker 1: good something good to say about. Uh. I thought we
Speaker 1: even did this one before. Environmental stance. What's you take
Speaker 1: on environmental issues? Me? I'm a single issue kind of guy.
Speaker 1: I look at yeah, clean air, clean water, what's good
Speaker 1: for wildlife? That's how I make up my mind about stuff.
Speaker 1: Opinion on b h A, I love b h A.
Speaker 1: He's referring to Bad Country Hunters and Anglers. UM, there's
Speaker 1: a handful of conservation groups that I belong to. This
Speaker 1: This is actually segues into another question I saw about.
Speaker 1: How do you decide which groups to join? I support
Speaker 1: a handful of conservation organizations. There are many great ones, UM.
Speaker 1: I tend to pick the ones I like because they
Speaker 1: speak to things that I like a lot. They speak
Speaker 1: to animals that I like a lot. They have proven
Speaker 1: track records. UM. One of the groups that I support
Speaker 1: and advocate on behalf of is a group called back
Speaker 1: Country Hunters and Anglers. Basically, I mean they work on
Speaker 1: a lot of things, but one of the things they
Speaker 1: work on is access issues. Um. They try to preserve
Speaker 1: the integrity of wilderness areas and back country areas, and
Speaker 1: they try to open up access. Two lands four hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers. And they fight for stream access laws so
Speaker 1: that people can't lock you out of streams, so people
Speaker 1: can't lock you out of public ground that's surrounded by buffers. Um.
Speaker 1: They're a great organization. That's my opinion. Now, before we
Speaker 1: started need to stop it, Let's say a quick break.
Speaker 1: Here's one that like that I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about and arguing with people about, and I
Speaker 1: don't really know, man, I'm kind of starting to. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you what it is. First, is hunter recruitment
Speaker 1: is scam. I think the discussion on hunter recruitment and
Speaker 1: why it's a scam should be touched on in more depth.
Speaker 1: I've seen a destroy fishing off my coast, and now
Speaker 1: it's working its way into hunting. I assume he means
Speaker 1: he's seen fishering recruitment destroy fishing, your brother, meaning my
Speaker 1: brother is spot on. Hunter recruitment is an essence hanging
Speaker 1: your own noose. Yeah, yeah, no, it's so complicated, dude,
Speaker 1: it would take forever to explain this. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I California. Let's start. Let's talk about California from it.
Speaker 1: California has less than one, less than one percent of
Speaker 1: Californian's hunt. The national average is five or six percent
Speaker 1: of Americans hunt. Some states that gets up pretty high,
Speaker 1: and a ten and more. Some stay it's much lower.
Speaker 1: California's less than one percent. I recently had a very
Speaker 1: high ranking person within California's fishing game department expressed me
Speaker 1: off the record, so I got I canna tell you
Speaker 1: who he is. He feels in twenty five years, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be all gone in California. It'll be done. What
Speaker 1: happens is people who are opposed to hunting whittle away
Speaker 1: around the edges of hunting. If you call up and
Speaker 1: ask Americans do you support legal hunting? An overwhelming majority
Speaker 1: say they support legal hunting. The minute you start asking
Speaker 1: them specifics, like what about hunting bears the dogs? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. What behunt bears it all? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know they're kind of cute, Okay. The way people
Speaker 1: who are opposed to hunting work is they take specific
Speaker 1: things and bring them to ballot initiatives and other things
Speaker 1: things and and then bring them to votes or bring
Speaker 1: them in front of assemblies and and and shoot you
Speaker 1: down bit by bit by bit incrementalism. It's never gonna
Speaker 1: be that someone says like, let's have a big referendum
Speaker 1: and vote yes or no on hunting. It will never
Speaker 1: happen like that. It just happens piecemeal because on a
Speaker 1: national average, only five percent of Americans hunt. Our futures
Speaker 1: are being decided by the voters going down there. Don't
Speaker 1: even hunt. They're just going down there and weighing in
Speaker 1: and what's their opinion about activity they don't participate in.
Speaker 1: That's why I think that putting forth a strong message
Speaker 1: about hunting and advocating on behalf of hunting and explaining
Speaker 1: hunting and being honest about hunting is productive because it's
Speaker 1: necessary for the general public to see the hunting is worthwhile,
Speaker 1: helpful activity. But that alone doesn't solve everything. You there
Speaker 1: has to be some hunters out there who are out
Speaker 1: there doing it, demonstrating it, making it viable. Another thing
Speaker 1: to think about is this your state phishing game agencies.
Speaker 1: Many of them are funded with no hard funding from
Speaker 1: the state. They're funded through licensed sales and permitting. The
Speaker 1: reason they get worried about hunter recruitment is they see
Speaker 1: their budgets for things like research, enforcement of existing laws,
Speaker 1: habitat improvement, shrinking when less licenses get sold. One of
Speaker 1: the main guys I argue about hunting recruitment about with Okay,
Speaker 1: who's adamally opposed to hunter recruitment. I realized that one
Speaker 1: of the main guys I argue with hunter recruitment about
Speaker 1: and he's adamantly opposed to hunter recruitment. And all he
Speaker 1: cares about, he says, is how many trucks you're at
Speaker 1: the trailhead. That's the only thing he cares about. I
Speaker 1: realized that last year he went on a trip that
Speaker 1: was a combo walleye. Dear, I'm sorry he went on
Speaker 1: a trip there was a combo walleye turkey trip. He's
Speaker 1: fishing wall in the river that doesn't have a historic
Speaker 1: population of wall and while they were brought in through
Speaker 1: a state fishery plan, state hatchery, and he's hunting turkeys
Speaker 1: that aren't native to that area, and we're brought in
Speaker 1: by the state Game Agency along with National Wild Turkey Federation.
Speaker 1: So two hunter based initiatives. Put the turkeys on the ground,
Speaker 1: the wall eyes in the river that he's fishing for,
Speaker 1: and then he draws a mountain goat tag and a
Speaker 1: mountain range that mountain goats weren't in until the state
Speaker 1: put him in that mountain range. So you have to
Speaker 1: think long and hard about what you really care about.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about miniscule amounts. But if you think
Speaker 1: it's gonna that you're gonna be the last guy hunting
Speaker 1: and it's gonna be a shangri law, no one in
Speaker 1: the trailhead and you're not just gonna get fucked by
Speaker 1: voters and lack of funding for conservation efforts and wildlife
Speaker 1: research and enforcement. To put game wardens on the ground
Speaker 1: to stop poaching requires money. That money comes from like
Speaker 1: Pittman Roberts and stuff. It comes from duck stamps, that
Speaker 1: comes from buying hunting licenses, it comes from buying guns
Speaker 1: and AMMO exercise taxes. Dudes out walking their dogs aren't
Speaker 1: paying for the land. So you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like cutting off your dick despite your balls, man,
Speaker 1: anybody else have any to add of that, I'll add
Speaker 1: something really quick. My my oldest son is eighth grade.
Speaker 1: And it's scary though when I because he hunts a lot,
Speaker 1: and I asked him in his and he knows most
Speaker 1: of the people in in his school sixth through eighth grade,
Speaker 1: and he could name and I think there's probably a
Speaker 1: hundred to two D per grade level. He could name
Speaker 1: two kids that had ever hunted before. Yeah, that's scary.
Speaker 1: If if I had a crystal ball and I could
Speaker 1: look into the crystal ball and I could see that
Speaker 1: access would stay the same, and I don't think that
Speaker 1: it would, but forget, I'm not gonna do any qualifiers.
Speaker 1: If I could look at my crystal ball and see
Speaker 1: that wildlife management would be as as viable and as
Speaker 1: productive in the future with no hunters, and that access
Speaker 1: would be as good, The enforcement of wildlife regulations would
Speaker 1: be as good with no hunters, and restocking depleted wildlife
Speaker 1: that happened but through market hunting and stuff in the
Speaker 1: late eighteen Hunters and early nineteen Hunters, which is an
Speaker 1: ongoing process, would still be as vibrant, and I could
Speaker 1: be the only guy that hunts. I'd be a little
Speaker 1: bit tempted, but that's not how it's gonna go. It's
Speaker 1: just not what happens when they put elk back into
Speaker 1: Michigan and Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Who do you think did that?
Speaker 1: When they put big horns and they're still working on
Speaker 1: putting big horns back everywhere they belong. Who you think
Speaker 1: is doing that, Peter? No. Well, one thing I might
Speaker 1: add to, and it's controversial, is you know the big
Speaker 1: auction tags and the big as you call them fat cats,
Speaker 1: you know spending Well, i've heard you say fat cats before,
Speaker 1: not specifically those because of his T shirt coming money
Speaker 1: falling out. Um, you know, that's a whole another controversial subject.
Speaker 1: But the reality we've talked about this though. Without that
Speaker 1: big money goes right into the wildlife. It goes and
Speaker 1: into the wildlife. Yeah, and it's actually set in a
Speaker 1: lot of states. It's set by law that I don't like,
Speaker 1: goes right into habitat improvement. We've talked about that before,
Speaker 1: J and I didn't and I might have said bat cast,
Speaker 1: but I use that term endearingly and it's it's very
Speaker 1: relative and in fact a lot of that money, um
Speaker 1: for like sheep, When those tags are sold, like a
Speaker 1: sheep take, it goes directly to sheep habitat specifically. That's
Speaker 1: how not just not just life, I mean specifically sheep.
Speaker 1: So that's it's a competter recruitment, a scam. I don't
Speaker 1: think so, absolutely not. Here's the thing I have had.
Speaker 1: I understand because I understand the frustration of competition, So
Speaker 1: I get that sentiment. But I have had, through my
Speaker 1: professional life, the occasion to sit down and speak with
Speaker 1: some of the most productive conservationists that are alive today,
Speaker 1: all of them and people that are well meaning and
Speaker 1: have devoted their lives to wildlife. All of them have
Speaker 1: warned me about the possible threats of low hunter numbers,
Speaker 1: and they've all expressed to me that hunters need to
Speaker 1: continue to be as generous with the next generation is
Speaker 1: the previous generation was with us. It's not about us,
Speaker 1: it's about the future generation. One of these same guys.
Speaker 1: And if we're saying hunting is a wildlife management tool,
Speaker 1: I mean if it's if it, if we go away
Speaker 1: and it's not, then I mean it's just it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. No, it's not. It's gonna be managed for
Speaker 1: it with a completely different set of criteria. Now, one
Speaker 1: of these guys said to me, uh, the writer I
Speaker 1: was kind of I was having I was speaking around
Speaker 1: the edges of this concert conversation with the Conservations Jim Posswitz,
Speaker 1: and he was relating to me he was at a
Speaker 1: meeting and I had to do with an access issue,
Speaker 1: opening roads into a road this area. And Jim Posswitz is,
Speaker 1: you know, he's an older guy. Now he's in his eighties,
Speaker 1: still very active, still hunts, but you know he, by
Speaker 1: his own admission, he's not the guy He's not the
Speaker 1: hunter he was forty years ago when it comes to
Speaker 1: knocking around on the mountains. Um. He was saying, he's
Speaker 1: at this thing and it was a comment period, and
Speaker 1: the guy got up and it was the older another
Speaker 1: older guy, and he's like, I've been hunting there in
Speaker 1: my whole life and now I can't get in there,
Speaker 1: and I have a right to get in There should
Speaker 1: be a road in there. And Jim Posswitz asked this, says,
Speaker 1: why would you want to deny the experience two upcoming
Speaker 1: generations that you're sitting here telling me meant so much
Speaker 1: to you it's like you had your fun. You know,
Speaker 1: you had your fun. It's time for new people to
Speaker 1: have some fun. I just don't I get it. I
Speaker 1: get where they're all coming from, and I just feel
Speaker 1: that it's in our best interest to stay a to
Speaker 1: remain politically viable, and to fund conservation groups and fund agencies.
Speaker 1: I recently had a conversation with um animal ethicist who
Speaker 1: he's a vegan. He's an animal activist and animal etheticist.
Speaker 1: He's a professor teaches animal ethics. When we were talking
Speaker 1: about this, and he was telling me how he thinks
Speaker 1: it's malarkey that hunters are conservationists, and I was telling
Speaker 1: them about I was just was used as a for
Speaker 1: instance like Ducks Unlimited. How much money Ducks Unlimited members
Speaker 1: and the organization put that just all they're doing is
Speaker 1: buying imperiled wetlands and transferring him into the public trust.
Speaker 1: Can't argue with it. Guys go to banquets, they have
Speaker 1: a couple of drinks, they start bidding on crazy stuff
Speaker 1: in auctions. It generates a bunch of money and in
Speaker 1: other ways outright donations. They love to hunt, They belong
Speaker 1: to du They spend tons of money buying wetlands that
Speaker 1: benefits ducks, aquatic invertebrates, fish, aquatic plants, the entire ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And he's like, he said, well, it's just too bad
Speaker 1: that their motivation has to be shooting ducks. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, It's just that's how it is, dude.
Speaker 1: I don't really care what their motivation is. It inspires them.
Speaker 1: Let's say this hunting ducks inspires them to take money
Speaker 1: out of their pockets and preserve wetlands. I'm sorry again,
Speaker 1: Peter isn't buying wetlands. They're they're worried about like horses
Speaker 1: in Central Park, that that that's bad. They like, it's
Speaker 1: really mean to horses. That's their understanding of wildlife politics.
Speaker 1: Anyone with half a brain knows it. Right now, when
Speaker 1: they're talking about wildlife politics, they should be talking about
Speaker 1: wetlands riparian areas. You know. It's just like, you gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta have people who are on the ground invested
Speaker 1: in wildlife, spending money, giving money, buying licenses, supporting stay
Speaker 1: game agencies. Let's move on. Well, and that that money
Speaker 1: from Pittman, Robertson and all the sports and money doesn't
Speaker 1: just help game animals. I mean, like you said, it
Speaker 1: benefits so many other animals. When foundation goals and put
Speaker 1: together and they go and preserve a piece of elk
Speaker 1: habitat the songbird. He he doesn't know and care that
Speaker 1: it was meant for elt. He's like sweet, you know,
Speaker 1: And they're and they're looking at stuff that is a
Speaker 1: limiting factor issue too, Like a lot of focus on
Speaker 1: winnering habits hat everything benefits. You pick one, Jannie, I
Speaker 1: like this one. How would you how would you cook
Speaker 1: goat testicles? I cook him in butter and put red
Speaker 1: hot on him. I called buck nuts. Now you pick one, Nie?
Speaker 1: Do you eat the heart from the bear you killed?
Speaker 1: And is it good? When I keep bear hearts, I
Speaker 1: grind them up and put them in with bear sausage.
Speaker 1: There's something about psychologically because I have a you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like a conflicted bear guy. Uh. I like to
Speaker 1: hunt bears, and I have hunted bears a lot. I'll
Speaker 1: continue to hunt bears, but I really find that often
Speaker 1: when I'm looking at a bear and I'm fixing to
Speaker 1: go after it, I have this thing where I'm kind
Speaker 1: of torn between watching the bear and going after it.
Speaker 1: That's why I found for me that I like to hunt.
Speaker 1: Instead of hunting bears, I like to go out with
Speaker 1: guys who've never hunted bears and be with them when
Speaker 1: they get their first bear, because there's nothing greater than
Speaker 1: your first bear. You know, a lot of animals just
Speaker 1: keeps getting better and better. I just had my best
Speaker 1: mule tor hunt ever. I've been hunting muledier a long time.
Speaker 1: I just had my best mule der hunt ever. Every
Speaker 1: time I hunt Mulder, it's better and better and better.
Speaker 1: I love it more with bears. My first bear will
Speaker 1: always be my most exciting bear. Um So yeah, like
Speaker 1: a bear heart. I don't know, man, I got like
Speaker 1: a little bit of a um yeah, I feel a
Speaker 1: little bit. This is hard to explain. It verges on
Speaker 1: a spiritual thing because I associate heart with you know,
Speaker 1: like the like the spirit of something. I know I'm
Speaker 1: getting into some mystical business here, but no, I grind
Speaker 1: it up. I don't think I've ever sliced there. A
Speaker 1: night I made Kevin Murphy's cathead biscuits and fried deer heart.
Speaker 1: The baby ate it, my wife ate it. We all
Speaker 1: loved it. But I've never just sliced up a bear's
Speaker 1: heart made it cat head. It's just bis because I
Speaker 1: don't why they call him cat head, biscus, why they
Speaker 1: call kheads because that's like the size of just the
Speaker 1: size of a cat. I didn't know that. I told
Speaker 1: my kids that those cads, but my kids lead any man.
Speaker 1: They don't care. They don't even know, Like, they don't
Speaker 1: even know about a lot of stuff people eat. Man,
Speaker 1: They just eat. Like I said, there a night there
Speaker 1: just eating deer. They don't even know about that. It's abnormal. Um,
Speaker 1: did you pick one? Yeah? I got another one here.
Speaker 1: This guy recently moved to Colorado has a cabin near
Speaker 1: brack and Ridge. It's an area of some good elk hunting.
Speaker 1: He's getting all geared up to go hunt elk in
Speaker 1: September with his bow during the rout, but he's spent
Speaker 1: as much time preparing for the butchering as he is
Speaker 1: for the hunt. And I think that's very small of him.
Speaker 1: And he's asking if we have any tips because you
Speaker 1: don't want to mess it up? Yeah, so he just
Speaker 1: wants to have like his You don't want to be
Speaker 1: like that dude? That uh in John Cracker's book, right.
Speaker 1: Chris McCandless shoots that moose and that's the whole thing, right,
Speaker 1: your what's your guys best? You know, I gonna put
Speaker 1: this one to Jane Dark you guys hunting the hot state? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what's your what's your just prep look like? At home?
Speaker 1: I mean he's probably done and set after years and
Speaker 1: years of doing it. Oh is he talking about at
Speaker 1: his house around the woods? Oh? Well, he's saying butcher
Speaker 1: in so I I think he means in the field.
Speaker 1: Oh that's what I think he means. Let's just let's
Speaker 1: take it both ways, say he means in the field.
Speaker 1: My biggest tip is don't underestimate how big that thing is.
Speaker 1: Be realistic about how far you're willing to go from
Speaker 1: your truck, because for one person to move a bull
Speaker 1: elk three miles is a major undertaking, and you need
Speaker 1: to have a solid plan put together about how many
Speaker 1: people you can get to help you. Are they on
Speaker 1: standby if they're not? What's the weather if it's warm?
Speaker 1: How quickly are you gonna move? Four or five hundred
Speaker 1: pounds of boneless meat in ahead? So four pounds all combined,
Speaker 1: because a hundred pounds at first you're like, oh, it's nothing.
Speaker 1: Three or four trips later, you are dying. So think
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, that's huge, man, that list of people
Speaker 1: to call. Also, get the guts out of it quick
Speaker 1: and open up the ball joints in the back legs
Speaker 1: because that's where stuffill sour fastest. But I think mainly
Speaker 1: like make a plan because when you walk up on it,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be prepared for what's laying there. You
Speaker 1: get a feeling. I get it when I walk up
Speaker 1: on the moos, you get a feeling like what have
Speaker 1: I done? Because you can't even roll it over? You know,
Speaker 1: I would say, first and foremost, you know, depending on
Speaker 1: this experience level, get the hide off of it. Get
Speaker 1: the hide off of it very first and foremost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the more I would think, the more you can break
Speaker 1: it down, the quicker it's gonna cool off. But that's
Speaker 1: the thing is like an Arizona because tags are so tight,
Speaker 1: you guys always have the lux you're having a lot
Speaker 1: of buddy to hot with you. Well, in our country too,
Speaker 1: isn't extremely rough like Colorado. Most of the stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: we can get too fairly quickly. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: roads in Arizona. So I mean, if you guys have
Speaker 1: a down game retrieval. Yeah, you can vall with a
Speaker 1: lot of places. You can drive a one trip deal.
Speaker 1: They say you can go in and get it and
Speaker 1: come out, but we don't. We're not hunting a lot
Speaker 1: of wilderness series too, you know, especially on the early
Speaker 1: hunts when it's so hot, so usually within a mile. Ye. Usually.
Speaker 1: I think that when I hear about guys having uh
Speaker 1: meat spoil, and I'll remind you it's illegal to let
Speaker 1: your meat spoil. Okay, you can't do something dumb and
Speaker 1: get five miles from your truck down in some hell
Speaker 1: hole and kill a bowl and then it gets up
Speaker 1: at seventy five degrees and you don't get out of
Speaker 1: there and it rots. That's against the law man. So
Speaker 1: it's not just about having like yummy steaks. It's like
Speaker 1: you have an obligation to get that animal out of
Speaker 1: the woods and edible form you can get find and
Speaker 1: have your hunting privileges revoked. You cannot waste meat, So
Speaker 1: it's good you're thinking about it. I think just the
Speaker 1: fact that the dude's thinking about it means he's not
Speaker 1: gonna have a problem. So I think it's the guys
Speaker 1: who can never give it any thought, and they go
Speaker 1: way too far. They don't have a plan, their legs
Speaker 1: whatever got problem. They haven't notified anybody about the situation.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that probably wind up. Somebody who sits
Speaker 1: around and thinks about for five minutes is probably in
Speaker 1: good shape. Suppressed firearms ethics of using suppressed firearms. I've
Speaker 1: started using a three b LK rifle with a suppressor
Speaker 1: for wild hog control. On my dear lease. Hogs are
Speaker 1: destroying habitat and the only cure is through buster numbers.
Speaker 1: As much as possible, they eat all the meat. What
Speaker 1: are your thoughts on suppressed firearms? You know, I hunted
Speaker 1: in Scotland, which I hated, but I hunted in Scotland
Speaker 1: one time, and in Scotland they couldn't believe that we
Speaker 1: hunt without suppressors because it is dangerous, Like I can't.
Speaker 1: They're like, I can't believe you're allowed to guide people
Speaker 1: without a suppressor and haven't blown your ear drums out.
Speaker 1: That was his take on it. But I was recently
Speaker 1: talking to game Worden and we're talking about technologies in general, drones,
Speaker 1: other technological issues. We got on the subject of suppressors.
Speaker 1: He said to me, he said, one of my most
Speaker 1: effective tools is the gunshot. He's a big bow hunter,
Speaker 1: and when a game warden, no matter what game wardens
Speaker 1: at work, generally, but he just tries to squeeze in
Speaker 1: a little uh bohun. He said. There's been several times
Speaker 1: he could recount, just recent years, when he's sitting in
Speaker 1: his stand and here's a gunshot. He's like, that don't
Speaker 1: sound right, and heads over there, and sure enough, he said,
Speaker 1: getting calls from people I heard a gunshot at night
Speaker 1: out in my field. He says it's a very effective tool.
Speaker 1: He also said the internet is a very effective tool
Speaker 1: as a game warden. But um, he said. He didn't
Speaker 1: want to get into the politics of it, but he said,
Speaker 1: from the perspective of doing my job, I feel that
Speaker 1: I would be seriously handicapped by suppressors. But I also
Speaker 1: understand that blowing you your drums out all time isn't great.
Speaker 1: And I understand too that if you're trying to like
Speaker 1: this guy is saying, control hogs, you can shoot a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot more hogs without them knowing what's happening.
Speaker 1: Do you think the suppressor gives you an unfair advantage
Speaker 1: on game, on shooting game, I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: don't think it because I mean, how many animals you shooting? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean you're you shoot at something with a
Speaker 1: bow and it usually you shoot once and it runs off. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think it means that you're just gonna be
Speaker 1: able to sit there and just set up camp and
Speaker 1: start like shooting bullets off at something. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: think that's really what's that issue? The only thing I
Speaker 1: see and and like I said, man, I'm very much
Speaker 1: My tendency is to think that. My My tendency is
Speaker 1: to think that suppressors are not a negative. My one
Speaker 1: reservation is the issue about law, is the issue belt
Speaker 1: poaching an enforcement that like this guy said, he said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into the politics of it.
Speaker 1: It's a valuable tool for me. I would almost think
Speaker 1: the other way on the safety issue too, that if
Speaker 1: you don't know someone shooting, that could be dangerous. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I really want here's my thing I
Speaker 1: want to I would love to have a UM, I
Speaker 1: really want to suppress twenty two just for small game
Speaker 1: pot hunting. While I'm big game hunting. I would be
Speaker 1: a a great dealer of small game. I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: because every time I'm out hunting big game, like god,
Speaker 1: it's killing me. Rabbit's everywhere, squirrels everywhere. I'd just be like, dude,
Speaker 1: there'd be no stop for me. Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: You're any lay one? Eus. Oh, here's another good one.
Speaker 1: What's your take on kyo killing contests. One of the
Speaker 1: first magazine stories I ever did was I was It
Speaker 1: was in two thousand, Yeah, I was in two thousand,
Speaker 1: members right. I remember it was the first time I
Speaker 1: ever went to the state of New York, and I
Speaker 1: remember getting uh car taking a car service stupidly because
Speaker 1: of how expensive it was. I took a car service
Speaker 1: like from JFK or Laguardi or something all way out
Speaker 1: to Montalk, which is just insane. But I was in
Speaker 1: a hurry, and I remember seeing the the Twin Towers.
Speaker 1: I remember very soon after seeing him, they felt um
Speaker 1: doing that out. I went out there to cover a
Speaker 1: shark tournament, um where guys got a ton of money.
Speaker 1: It was. I was doing a story in two thousand
Speaker 1: for Outside on a mako shark tournament called Mako Madness,
Speaker 1: and it was guys bet a bunch of money who
Speaker 1: can kill the biggest mako and makos are valuable fish.
Speaker 1: Their tastes good, there's a market for him, right, it's
Speaker 1: a coveted fish, good fish. But the thing had a
Speaker 1: thing where there's like the main money went the biggest
Speaker 1: shark and mako's are greatly depleted, depleted from due to
Speaker 1: not not rotten real fishing, not recreational fishing, but they're
Speaker 1: depleted from pelagic longlining um you know, mako shark reserves
Speaker 1: or maybe downe from the nineteen seventies, so a lot
Speaker 1: of years now, the biggest shark winner isn't from what
Speaker 1: we generally think of as big sharks. It's not from
Speaker 1: like a tiger, it's not from a muskie. But a
Speaker 1: lot of years ago, catch a big blue shark. Okay,
Speaker 1: blue sharks are much more abundant m an average, not
Speaker 1: as big, but as the big coveted sharks go down,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you might win the whole derby
Speaker 1: on a big blue. Blue sharks are not very popular
Speaker 1: table fair at all. I think they have about zero
Speaker 1: commercial value. And uh, every boat you know they do
Speaker 1: all want to bring in your allowed to bring in
Speaker 1: like two sharks for boat. Everyone would always want to
Speaker 1: bring in a blue shark because why not, because a
Speaker 1: blulue shark might win. And they filled a dumpster full
Speaker 1: of blue sharks. No one wanted him. I mean a
Speaker 1: dumpster full of blue sharks. As part of my story,
Speaker 1: I went and interviewed a writer who wrote a pretty
Speaker 1: profound book called Song for the Blue Ocean, a fisherman
Speaker 1: who wrote a pet a book about the depletion of
Speaker 1: the oceans. And he said something to me that he
Speaker 1: kind of articulated something that I had felt and thought
Speaker 1: about a lot out at this tournament. It's he was like,
Speaker 1: he's and this is a fisherman, you know. I actually
Speaker 1: went a shark fishing with him. Um. But he had
Speaker 1: a hard time with anything that puts a carnival atmosphere
Speaker 1: around the killing of animals. He had a difficult time
Speaker 1: with it. Just the idea of of of making a
Speaker 1: contest out of the death of animals or having that
Speaker 1: be the motive the motivation. The issue with kyotes is
Speaker 1: much different with sharks because they're kind of the opposite.
Speaker 1: As sharks are depleted from not being able to regulate
Speaker 1: international waters and unregulated plagic longlining, and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other stuff. Kyles are exploding everywhere. This was as different,
Speaker 1: but that's just something to think about. Anyway. You know
Speaker 1: on this ranch that you guys are gonna go hunt tomorrow,
Speaker 1: um tying it back into kyote contests. There was a
Speaker 1: buck on the last day that we were trying to
Speaker 1: get and I hiked up this ridge and Darr was
Speaker 1: over on another ridge and I found this buck and
Speaker 1: he was rotting. He was just kind of walking and
Speaker 1: he went and he came off this kind of shady
Speaker 1: basin and he peeled off down there, and then he
Speaker 1: was looking for a place to lay down. He laid down,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at him, thinking, you shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: You know, your yards from us. It's the last day.
Speaker 1: You're the buck we're looking for. And he's right there,
Speaker 1: and dar is already coming to me with the hunter.
Speaker 1: And I see a coyote coming perpendicular sniffs the trail
Speaker 1: where the deer had just walked. I'm watching this whole
Speaker 1: thing came across this flat. He turns turned the right way, sniffing,
Speaker 1: sniffs that big buck up sniffs him right up, comes
Speaker 1: kind of peeling over a rock and then oop, that's
Speaker 1: not the way to go. Snuck around, jump that buck up.
Speaker 1: And I watched that kyote chase that buck for over
Speaker 1: a mile as far as I could see out of
Speaker 1: my sight, and the buck was running full tilt legs
Speaker 1: straight out. I would have thought he'd kind of turned
Speaker 1: and fottom And well, it's funny. On that same ridge,
Speaker 1: two days before, we had seen a group of have
Speaker 1: Alina with a pack of coyotes lined up, and actually
Speaker 1: the havelina had babies too, and the coyotes were just
Speaker 1: gang tackling those Havelina, and Havelina would be you know,
Speaker 1: chompol and chasing the chasing the coyotes off. But here's
Speaker 1: this big buck. You'd think he'd turn and fight a kyote,
Speaker 1: and he takes off run. If if people don't think
Speaker 1: that kyotes have a huge impact on our deer, they're
Speaker 1: so invite you and I'm not. I'm not saying this
Speaker 1: because from a pro kyouse, I don't thinkyotes have any problems.
Speaker 1: I think you can go do all the kyote killing
Speaker 1: contests you want. You're still gonna have kyleotes around. I
Speaker 1: mean it's like you're not gonna hurt the population. But
Speaker 1: I would invite you to go talk to people who
Speaker 1: are doing research right now about the issue of d
Speaker 1: Coyotes actually killed a lot of deer. I think you'd
Speaker 1: be astounded how few they kill. And talk to Pat Durkin, well,
Speaker 1: the writer, the writer, Pat Durkin. People can write about
Speaker 1: this widely. They can write about all they want. I
Speaker 1: saw it and believe you saw it. But I think okay,
Speaker 1: and they were gonna eat those halvelina. But I but
Speaker 1: here's what I'm saying, and I'm not vested in this
Speaker 1: either way. I'm just saying there's a lot of emerging
Speaker 1: evidence the kyote predation on deer is not what we
Speaker 1: thought it was ten years ago. I'd like to see it. Well,
Speaker 1: there's horrible kill a hell of a lot more dear
Speaker 1: than was previously suspected. I'll tell you. In Arizona we
Speaker 1: have a horrible problem with the coyotes and antelope fonts.
Speaker 1: There was areas where there's no fund recruitment because of
Speaker 1: the kyotes. So a lot of the kyo contest I've
Speaker 1: seen in Arizona are up by like Seligmann A ten
Speaker 1: where there's big antelope and they're trying to really help
Speaker 1: the antelope come back. But you see the distinction I'm making.
Speaker 1: There's like, what I'm talking about with this shark situation,
Speaker 1: what the sharks situation was, and how is different? Said? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you said, like, have kyotes are turned up
Speaker 1: in places they've never been. They're rapidly adapting to urban
Speaker 1: landscapes and suburban landscapes. And it's funny because I watched
Speaker 1: his anti kyo hunting documentary one time, and the big
Speaker 1: thrust of the documentary was he was arguing, the more
Speaker 1: kyotes you shoot, the more kyotes there will be. So well,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, so if you love kyotes so much,
Speaker 1: I think you'd want anybody to be out shooting them
Speaker 1: because I'm just gonna be even more of them. So
Speaker 1: I think that you'd be making a pro Kyle hunting
Speaker 1: video so there's more kyotes. I don't I'm not losing
Speaker 1: any sleep over Kyle. But but would you say it's
Speaker 1: a management tool? I mean, could you say hunting contests
Speaker 1: could be used as a management tools? To man, I
Speaker 1: don't have any problem with them. I was just bringing
Speaker 1: up I just like the world is different than just
Speaker 1: a bunch of black and white issues. That was just
Speaker 1: bringing up a perspective which I attributed to a man
Speaker 1: that I admire, a good writer. That's just his take
Speaker 1: on it. My take on kyote contest. If you're operating
Speaker 1: within the limits of the law and following legal methods,
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's any risk right now anywhere
Speaker 1: that I know of of of having a dangerous depletion
Speaker 1: of coyotes. I think there's other large predators. That's the case.
Speaker 1: In this second you can see some excellent podcast hosting
Speaker 1: because there was another guy asking through this transition I'm
Speaker 1: about ready to do because another guy was asking, how
Speaker 1: come so many hunters are unwilling to accept that we
Speaker 1: have large other large predators on the landscape, which is
Speaker 1: baffling to me too, because I don't like to see
Speaker 1: any species driven to extinction or extirpation, which is like
Speaker 1: regional extinction. I think it is just it's morally wrong,
Speaker 1: it's ecologically wrong. We have no business driving species to
Speaker 1: extirpation or extinction. I support the management and where necessary
Speaker 1: there reintroduction of large predators on the landscape, and I
Speaker 1: think they should be managed on a state level and
Speaker 1: where there's traditional use patterns. I think they should be
Speaker 1: managed as game, meaning we have plenty of wolves in
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes, Upper Great Lakes, we have plenty of
Speaker 1: wolves and portions of the Rocky Mountains. If we can
Speaker 1: have stable populations of wolves and there's hunter interest, I
Speaker 1: feel that they should be hunted and managed the same
Speaker 1: way we manage out We don't want too many. We're
Speaker 1: not going to drive them to extinction. There's no risk
Speaker 1: of doing that with coyotes at all. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think we have the opposite risk, where we're really coyotes
Speaker 1: are coming in because a man made reasons, and at
Speaker 1: the same time they're coming in, they're really causing. And
Speaker 1: not to make it an academic issue about white tailed
Speaker 1: deer like how many bitsill do they actually kill? They
Speaker 1: have a profound impact on on a on a host
Speaker 1: of different species. It's just kind of a level that
Speaker 1: the argument I'm talking about with white tail is a
Speaker 1: lot of guys are now questioning, like in areas where
Speaker 1: he's seeing dear crash, is it really solely attributable to
Speaker 1: new populations of coles or other other factors of play? Um,
Speaker 1: we should have Pat Durk and not here to talk
Speaker 1: about it. Uh funny thing about wolves. I always say
Speaker 1: about wolves with guys who are adamly opposed to any
Speaker 1: wolves being around, Why do they go hunt Alaska? If
Speaker 1: you can't have big game in wolves, why in the
Speaker 1: hell is everybody wanting to go to Alaska? And why
Speaker 1: is everybody like reading books about Lewis and Clark and
Speaker 1: how awesome it was all the animals Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: ran into because one thing, they damned sure ran into
Speaker 1: a lot of his wolves. So don't tell me that
Speaker 1: the wolves and big game are mutually exclusive when everybody's
Speaker 1: lying enough to go hunt the most wolf infested state
Speaker 1: there ever was already all want to go to Canada,
Speaker 1: where wolves occupy I don't know, nineties percent of their
Speaker 1: native range, or Alaska or they operate probably ninety five
Speaker 1: or percent of their native range. If you can't have
Speaker 1: wolves in big game, it's just a lie. It's stupid.
Speaker 1: Pick one out, yohnnie, you guys want to pick you
Speaker 1: don't have a papacy, can't pick one out here? How
Speaker 1: pass this one off? I would ask you, are wolves
Speaker 1: have they been hunted in Alaska? I mean, have they've
Speaker 1: been there for a long time? But have they've always
Speaker 1: been in. They're hunted fur bears, and then they're they're
Speaker 1: managed by they're managed through cooling, aerial often aerial shooting.
Speaker 1: They manage wolves aggressively in Alaska, and how much they
Speaker 1: hammer them depends on how much you are. How much
Speaker 1: they hammer them depends on what kind of impact you're
Speaker 1: having on caribou and moose, because Cariboan moose practically have
Speaker 1: like voter registration cards. In Alaska, you can win and
Speaker 1: lose elections based well, I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 1: Western states you can win and lose elections based on
Speaker 1: big game honey. You know, yeah, they hammer them hard
Speaker 1: wearing you'd be. But again, they're on the landscape, and
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody up there is saying how they
Speaker 1: ought to add Like I'm sure there's some radicals, some
Speaker 1: anti wildlife people who are out there top of how
Speaker 1: they ought to categorically remove them from the landscape. But
Speaker 1: I honestly, of all the guys that hang out within
Speaker 1: hunt with the hunt with a lot, I don't actually
Speaker 1: hunt with any guys or socialize with any guys who
Speaker 1: are really saying that we should go and poison off
Speaker 1: all large predators so that there's none left. That's a radical,
Speaker 1: radical perspective that exists. I don't run into it very often.
Speaker 1: And the guys that I do run into it, and
Speaker 1: where I do hear from people, it's usually people who
Speaker 1: are just I mean just they are not that bright,
Speaker 1: Like they're not real smart at figuring out how stuff works.
Speaker 1: I got a good one. Trophy hunting, poaching, point creep.
Speaker 1: This is under hunting tactics. I don't even understand that question.
Speaker 1: Do they explain it? You feel the focus on trophy
Speaker 1: hunting slash inches within the hunting community of big game
Speaker 1: is leading to more poaching. Also, what ways could states
Speaker 1: like Utah, which manage heavily for trophy units do away
Speaker 1: with current dilemmas facing a point system like point creep?
Speaker 1: Let me. I want you to answer, but I want
Speaker 1: to do a little translation. Um, what what point creep
Speaker 1: means is when you have a resource that is not
Speaker 1: big enough to support the demand on it, and I'm
Speaker 1: talking about big resource of big game animals. It's not
Speaker 1: big enough to support unlimited hunting. You have to find
Speaker 1: some way to control access to the resource. So you
Speaker 1: have to look and you say we got let's say
Speaker 1: you got a thousand elk, you're comfortable removing ten percent
Speaker 1: of that population, let's say, because as they'll reproductional more
Speaker 1: than make up for that. Um you get how many
Speaker 1: elk that allows you to kill? You got, you know,
Speaker 1: five thousand dudes that all want to go elk hunting.
Speaker 1: You do a lottery system and dish out tags, pull hats, uh,
Speaker 1: pull names out of a hat, and give people tags.
Speaker 1: Because everybody can't go, so we gotta find a democratic
Speaker 1: way of selecting who can go. A guy keeps doing
Speaker 1: this for five years, he never draws a tag. He's like, man,
Speaker 1: I keep putting in, I never draw a tag. It's
Speaker 1: not fair because my buddy that he just put in
Speaker 1: for the first time and he drew a tag. So
Speaker 1: they come up with a system called bonus points where
Speaker 1: they it's basically like you're awarding people for their allegiance
Speaker 1: and every year they're spending some amount of money to
Speaker 1: draw a coveted tag, and you're giving them preference points
Speaker 1: or bonus points, basically awarding return customers. And the more
Speaker 1: years you put in, the higher your odds have drawn
Speaker 1: the tag go either every year you put in, your
Speaker 1: name goes in the tag one, the hat one more time,
Speaker 1: or a certain number of the tags go to the
Speaker 1: people who've been trying to get the tag longest. Very
Speaker 1: fair system in my mind. But point creep comes from
Speaker 1: the fact that it used to let's say it used
Speaker 1: to take on average five or six years to draw
Speaker 1: an ELK tag in some unit. It might now be
Speaker 1: that guaranteed allotment of tags is going to guys who
Speaker 1: have twenty five bonus points. I mean, they've been putting
Speaker 1: in for a tag twenty five years. So point creep
Speaker 1: is every year it seems to take more years to
Speaker 1: draw some of these coveted units trophy management. So if
Speaker 1: you're behind you you're always staying beyond. You'll never catch up.
Speaker 1: Like if you're fifty and you decided to start putting
Speaker 1: in for a unit that the max point holders are
Speaker 1: I have twenty five bonus points, you're kind of like
Speaker 1: a little bit late. But that that would be true
Speaker 1: on a preference point right here behind on a bonus
Speaker 1: point like Arizona, it's not necessarily true because it increases
Speaker 1: your odds, but you still could in theory like Montana
Speaker 1: does no allocation to max pointholders. What they do is
Speaker 1: they used to each point you had through your name
Speaker 1: in the hat that many times? So if I put
Speaker 1: in for three years and I filed a fourth year application,
Speaker 1: my names and the hat four times, than what they
Speaker 1: did is they now square that number, So now my
Speaker 1: name is in the hat sixteen times. UM, So different
Speaker 1: ways doing that. And in some states take fifty of
Speaker 1: the tags, be it moose, goat, sheep, whatever, fifty percent
Speaker 1: of the tags will go to those individuals who have
Speaker 1: been applying the longest. Fifty percent of the tags will
Speaker 1: be allocated in the general draw, so newbies have a chance,
Speaker 1: the old timers have an enhanced chance. And everyone does
Speaker 1: this a little bit different. And there's variations within states
Speaker 1: based on um, variations within states based on species and
Speaker 1: based on units. This guy's saying, and if Utah has
Speaker 1: started trying to maintain animal quality, like maintain that you
Speaker 1: have a good chance of killing a big bowl because
Speaker 1: they're not shooting all the bulls, and you could open
Speaker 1: the doors up and let more guys shoot bulls and
Speaker 1: drive big size down so you don't have as many
Speaker 1: animals reaching maturity, but you've got more guys having a
Speaker 1: chance to hunt. It just kind of depends on how
Speaker 1: productive the landscape is, and and a gross general and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop talking after this and let J and
Speaker 1: DR talk. A gross generalization would be this arid places
Speaker 1: that have low population densities um, and not a lot
Speaker 1: of agriculture which tends to drive up animal numbers, and
Speaker 1: they have a lot of aridity, which tend to drive
Speaker 1: down animal numbers. Those places tend to be much more
Speaker 1: conservative with ten allocation, and they tend to have places
Speaker 1: that are more conservative a tag allocation tend to have
Speaker 1: more intact age structures, meaning you have animals living long
Speaker 1: enough to die of old age. Um. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to be said for a system that allows animals to
Speaker 1: die of old age because you're replicating more of a
Speaker 1: natural ecosystem. But it does piss guys off because guys
Speaker 1: want to shoot stuff. Yeah, for sure. And I think
Speaker 1: you know throughout the West, there are certain states that
Speaker 1: guys that want to go hunt over the counter and
Speaker 1: more liberal tag systems can go and hunt Colorado, Montana,
Speaker 1: Idaho and then their states like New Mexico, Arizona, Utah,
Speaker 1: where you know you have older animals, more mature animals.
Speaker 1: You know you have point creep. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you heard about Arizona's new change, so and are you
Speaker 1: can weigh in on this if I get because sometimes
Speaker 1: I get sidetracked on this. But so ten percent of
Speaker 1: the tags can go to non residents. And before when
Speaker 1: you have for specific elk hunts, deer hunts, etcetera, the
Speaker 1: max point holders for that hunt like Dar's sons hunt, Okay,
Speaker 1: up to ten percent could go to non residents. Of
Speaker 1: those tags could go to or go to max point holders.
Speaker 1: Arizona switched it so that five of the non resident
Speaker 1: tags go in the max point pool and the other
Speaker 1: five percent go into the random draw. So that point
Speaker 1: pool four non residents. That's the thing I thought. I
Speaker 1: thought at first it would be another pool of okay,
Speaker 1: everybody else non residents. They're limiting their non residents. So
Speaker 1: what it's gonna do is actually make more point creep
Speaker 1: because say you had eighteen points for that hunt that
Speaker 1: his son just drew, and you're a nonresident, you have
Speaker 1: max points. Well, now they're taking half that amount of
Speaker 1: max point holders that are non residents. But for the
Speaker 1: first time in a long in a long time since
Speaker 1: the draw system, you have four points three points or
Speaker 1: you know, have no points as a nonresident. It's the
Speaker 1: first time that you actually have a chance, mathematical chance
Speaker 1: to draw that cat. You still are thrown into the
Speaker 1: general draw. Okay, that's outside of the max point holders,
Speaker 1: the random the random draws, and but you actually have
Speaker 1: a chance. But if you've got a lot of points,
Speaker 1: you're still in a stronger position in the still in
Speaker 1: a stronger position, but you're if you're a nonresident. Instead
Speaker 1: of taking ten, they only take five, So your point creep.
Speaker 1: You know, it may take you another doubled the amount
Speaker 1: of years that it would normally take because they're taking
Speaker 1: half half the tags, which creates what this guy's talking about.
Speaker 1: That's point creep for non residents. It's gonna creep for residents.
Speaker 1: It's actually probably gonna go down because now they're taking
Speaker 1: instead of ten out of that. But it gives you
Speaker 1: a shot to draw, where a lot of these hunts
Speaker 1: if you did not have max points you did there's
Speaker 1: no way you could draw. Yeah. I get emails from
Speaker 1: people all the time and they're like, I'd like to
Speaker 1: draw Unit nine archeryoc Tech, And I say how many
Speaker 1: points do you have? And they say three? I say
Speaker 1: how old are you? They say, you know, I said, mathematically,
Speaker 1: there's no way that you will catch up. Well, now
Speaker 1: I can tell them put in for unit nine because
Speaker 1: you could be one of the five percent that's just
Speaker 1: thrown out in the random draw that could actually draw.
Speaker 1: So I think Arizona is going to see application numbers
Speaker 1: go up definitely because now people that are behind actually
Speaker 1: have a chance. So I say, I kind of like
Speaker 1: states make a lot of money state game And I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about this state. State agencies make a lot
Speaker 1: of money for that stuff. We're talking about research, habitat
Speaker 1: improvement enforcement. They make a lot of money by having
Speaker 1: drawings because they make money off unsuccessful applicants who are
Speaker 1: obligated to buy a license or pay a draw fee.
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's necessarily bad from this whole
Speaker 1: this whole issue from perspective of a guy like me.
Speaker 1: I have the luxury if I get to travel freely,
Speaker 1: willy nilly all around the whole country hunting all the time.
Speaker 1: So when I look at it, I'm like, yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 1: You got like some states or high opportunity states, anywhere
Speaker 1: you want, you can go elk hunt bo or rifle
Speaker 1: in Montana. You can go l count Boa Rifle in
Speaker 1: Colorado and go lcome Boa rifle and idahole. So there's
Speaker 1: that do that all the time, and then there's these
Speaker 1: dream states where I can apply. But I realized that
Speaker 1: I'm not the typical guy like my situation. Not that
Speaker 1: I'm not the typical, but my my situation isn't typical
Speaker 1: my hunting situation. If you were living in a state
Speaker 1: like let's say you're living in a state like you
Speaker 1: talk and you're like, man, I want to shoot spike
Speaker 1: bowls and fill my freezer. I think that's more important
Speaker 1: than a guy fulfilling his dream to kill a giant bowl.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of validity to that perspective.
Speaker 1: I could see that it would be frustrating, but I
Speaker 1: think it's not just a matter of that. You would
Speaker 1: open up the valve and let everybody start shooting all
Speaker 1: kinds of out and expect that the picture is gonna
Speaker 1: stay the same way. You're gonna the integrity in these
Speaker 1: areas that have lower densities, kind of more complex elk
Speaker 1: management issues going on. It's not as simple as you're
Speaker 1: just gonna start killing more elk, and everybody's gonna be happier,
Speaker 1: and everybody's gonna kill more elk if you're gonna pay
Speaker 1: for it. Somewhere all the Leopold in Sand County Almanac
Speaker 1: talked about when wildlife managers improve the pump, but they
Speaker 1: don't improve the well meaning you know, the sister and
Speaker 1: holds a hunter gowns just because you put in a
Speaker 1: bigger pump doesn't mean he got more water and the
Speaker 1: sister it's a limited resource. Yeah, So it's like a
Speaker 1: lot of times this stuff is the result of trying
Speaker 1: to manage a limited resource rather than saying like, let's
Speaker 1: make a system where no one can hunt, but if
Speaker 1: you do get lucky to hunt, you'll get a giant.
Speaker 1: It's more complicated than that. I have an interesting Utah
Speaker 1: application uh to this. A friend of mine drew a
Speaker 1: few years ago a one of the best limited entry
Speaker 1: Utah archery oak permits in Utah, and I thought, cool,
Speaker 1: I'll go with you. I'll go see how Utah cunting is.
Speaker 1: So he's there's sixteen permits in the whole unit, and
Speaker 1: it's a huge unit. Sixteen permits. We're thinking, we got
Speaker 1: the whole place to ourselves. We show up there and
Speaker 1: there is literally a quad on every road, every ridge.
Speaker 1: There's people everywhere, were like, what the heck is going on?
Speaker 1: They have a spike and cow over the counter archery
Speaker 1: hunt at the same time in all those limited our
Speaker 1: triocun it So in Utah just answering this guy's question.
Speaker 1: In Utah specifically, you can go hunt cow or spike
Speaker 1: at the same time that the same guy that waited
Speaker 1: twenty five years to draw you just can't shoot a
Speaker 1: big bull. I remember my brother, My brother lived in
Speaker 1: Washington State. He had the same issue, Like he could
Speaker 1: go out hunt spikes and units that were like the
Speaker 1: most coveted big bull units anywhere. He says, all day long,
Speaker 1: you've seen giant bulls, can't find a spike. Didn't hear
Speaker 1: the same story from somebody else To further complicate the picture,
Speaker 1: Some states like Colorado, like Colorado is the default go
Speaker 1: to state for l conton and it's Colorado has twice
Speaker 1: as many of because the three times as many elk
Speaker 1: because the next largest elk holding states. So I'm screwing
Speaker 1: that up. They have tons out. It's no wonder they
Speaker 1: got a lot of tags, but they're tight asses with
Speaker 1: their mulet here, and I think it's a trophy muleteer
Speaker 1: state in an opportunity elk state well in Colorado in
Speaker 1: the past few years has gone until a lot more
Speaker 1: limited entry units and they've seen the quality rise as
Speaker 1: far as size of bulls and and you know, Yanni
Speaker 1: can attest to. You know, there's a handful of Colorado
Speaker 1: units that have some pretty darn good size quality elk hunting.
Speaker 1: And then of course it's known for the over the
Speaker 1: counter el coun I mean it's the key and the
Speaker 1: thing too. When people here, I find a lot of
Speaker 1: guys when you're thinking about management get tripped up by that.
Speaker 1: They think that if you're growing big box or big bulls,
Speaker 1: did it somehow only benefits like trophy guys, But what
Speaker 1: about having just healthy hurts. I got buddies at hunt
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin when they were growing up, like like Doug
Speaker 1: durn has been on The Meat Eater Show, and I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time with talking to about wildlife issues.
Speaker 1: He was growing up. If you if you saw a
Speaker 1: deer track, you ran home and told your dad, Okay,
Speaker 1: there was nothing around. Deer finally started coming back and
Speaker 1: as deer came back. There was a thing you never
Speaker 1: shot a dope because it was true de you were
Speaker 1: in recovery. You're like, you wouldn't shoot a doll because
Speaker 1: you shoot a buck, you're killing one animal. You shoot
Speaker 1: a doll, you're shooting her. You're killing her in every
Speaker 1: offspring she's ever gonna have. It's more complicated in that book.
Speaker 1: That's kind of true. Eventually they got were deer were
Speaker 1: just absolutely everywhere better deer herds that ever had amazing deer,
Speaker 1: and a lot of guys still couldn't get used to
Speaker 1: the fact of shooting does. I still run into old
Speaker 1: timers all time, particularly in the Midwest. They won't shoot
Speaker 1: a dope because those are the guys that grew up
Speaker 1: and they weren't dear. They love deer and deer hunting
Speaker 1: so much. You're like, man, you don't shoot does shoot bucks?
Speaker 1: And that's when you get in these situations that I
Speaker 1: grew up around, where you'd sit there and you'd count
Speaker 1: thirty forty dolls in a night and not see a
Speaker 1: single buck because everybody shot the first buck they saw,
Speaker 1: and if someone shot a two and a half year
Speaker 1: old buck, y'all thought you were seeing a giant Okay,
Speaker 1: so is that really the kind of deer herd we
Speaker 1: want where you have like deer or born one to one.
Speaker 1: Just like people, people are slightly more females than males,
Speaker 1: but deers are basically born like buck, bado buck do
Speaker 1: buck do? When you're sitting in the woods, that's not
Speaker 1: what you're seeing. I would argue that hunter recruitment very
Speaker 1: first question that if new hunters can go out and
Speaker 1: see a big rack, because there's just I don't care
Speaker 1: who you are, there's something about a big rack, whether
Speaker 1: it's an elk, a sheep, a deer, an if you
Speaker 1: could see a big rack, I think it would hook
Speaker 1: more people, more youngsters, more new hunters than if they
Speaker 1: went out and saw forty does that all quote unquote
Speaker 1: look the same, and they never saw a big mature buck.
Speaker 1: It's something magical, but you grew up dreaming about it.
Speaker 1: I just don't I think that. Like if you go somewhere,
Speaker 1: if you've got a place that is doing things well
Speaker 1: enough that you have animals dyeing of old age and
Speaker 1: you have breeding class animals, egg breeding like animals, like
Speaker 1: with with deer that are getting out to be four
Speaker 1: or five years of age and reproducing bull elk. I
Speaker 1: mean it's like twice that right to be like in
Speaker 1: a in a healthy herd has its whole age demographic.
Speaker 1: I mean, what's a what's the bull like a real
Speaker 1: herd bull? I mean eight eight doll sheet. It just
Speaker 1: takes a lot of to get stuff that old. It
Speaker 1: takes a lot of not pulling the trigger, and it's
Speaker 1: like it's just healthy herds man um. So I don't
Speaker 1: think that, you know, if you live in a state
Speaker 1: it's like a dry state or whatever, and it's like
Speaker 1: low densities. I don't think it's a sign that people
Speaker 1: are being tight with the purse strings because you got
Speaker 1: big animals running around, you know. I mean you should be.
Speaker 1: You should view it as a good thing. But I
Speaker 1: do acknowledge and I do think there is an issue
Speaker 1: of managing for opportunity. Now state my state, Washington, Uh,
Speaker 1: for no one understands why I think it. You know,
Speaker 1: there's theories that it stems from an anti hunting sentiment
Speaker 1: in parts of the Game and Fish Agency. I don't
Speaker 1: know that that's true at all. But they're real tight
Speaker 1: like with their their their biologists are tighter with mountain
Speaker 1: goat tag allocation than anybody else. They have a higher
Speaker 1: threshold of what the population needs to be in order
Speaker 1: to award a tag. They award a lower percentage of tags.
Speaker 1: You might wind up thinking, like, listen, man, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of the states successfully manage the mountain goats that
Speaker 1: are allocating a lot more mountain goat tags. What's going on?
Speaker 1: You know, are we utilizing the resource to full potential
Speaker 1: or is this something different happening here? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: you can ask some questions, but in general, um, I
Speaker 1: think that that some programs that are managing for quality animals,
Speaker 1: or let's say you're managing for healthy demographics and your herd,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's automatically negative, And I don't think
Speaker 1: that the default management system should be to kill as
Speaker 1: many critics as you can possibly get away with killing
Speaker 1: without driving the population into the dirt. Johnny, what about
Speaker 1: the first part of that question, the inches causing the
Speaker 1: trophy hunters gerd leading to more poaching. Now, I think
Speaker 1: that if you talk to wardens and stuff, I think
Speaker 1: there's more people poach for the pop I think a
Speaker 1: lot of guys poacher to breaking rights more so than
Speaker 1: was going on when I was a little kid. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's as much poaching big bucks or bulls
Speaker 1: as they're used to be. Well, yeah, I'm talking totally
Speaker 1: out of my ask. I have no idea. I don't
Speaker 1: think there is. But I think there's a lot more
Speaker 1: people out there watching. I think when you have a
Speaker 1: lot more hunters with quality optics, and you have more
Speaker 1: of our own police out there watching the fellow hunters
Speaker 1: and such, I just I don't hear about a lot
Speaker 1: of poaching well with trail cameras and people taking pictures
Speaker 1: in video. I mean a big bucket shot, there's I
Speaker 1: mean other people know about it. You know, did you
Speaker 1: hear about that dude? There's a dude that shot. Like
Speaker 1: Tennessee has much more liberal deer seasons in Kentucky. There's
Speaker 1: a guy to kill this giant and he says he
Speaker 1: killed Tennessee. He brings it down to some big buck
Speaker 1: contests or something like like, uh, you know, like the
Speaker 1: outdoor expo and a guy from Kentucky has to be
Speaker 1: at that outdoor expo sees that bucks like that buck
Speaker 1: didn't die, and that buck didn't die in Tennessee. I
Speaker 1: got trail camp pictures of that buck, and the buck
Speaker 1: was so unique in the trail camp pictures so conclusive
Speaker 1: that guy wanted to having his buck confiscated and got
Speaker 1: prosecuted off a dude's trail camp picture. He's like, that
Speaker 1: book never stepped foot near where you're saying you shot,
Speaker 1: Which is interesting. Man. It's like, you know, technology kind
Speaker 1: of like you always wanna there's always all these negatives
Speaker 1: to technology and hunting, but in some ways you find
Speaker 1: these little like helpful stories, hopeful stories. We got to
Speaker 1: chat with those warrants in uh Kentucky a little bit there,
Speaker 1: and they talked about very sophisticated trophy poaching rings, right.
Speaker 1: But what was interesting to me is that I felt
Speaker 1: like if someone's gonna go out of their way to
Speaker 1: go shoot a giant buck at night or however they
Speaker 1: do on someone else's property and you know all that stuff, like,
Speaker 1: there's got to be like a monetary drive. Because he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we broke up this giant poaching ring and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what are they doing it for? Are they are they
Speaker 1: selling them for? He said, no, they're just all basically
Speaker 1: a bunch of yah who's they just want to have
Speaker 1: the bragging, right, That's all it is. This dude also
Speaker 1: told me about the case they worked where a guy
Speaker 1: had put out a feeder, had a suppressor, had a
Speaker 1: red dot scope. It was just shooting deer and as
Speaker 1: best they could tell, he was just shooting him to
Speaker 1: shoot him, like, not for trophy, not for me, he said,
Speaker 1: It's just just a mentally ill, sick dude. What are
Speaker 1: your concluding thoughts? Jay? But not this subject. The whole
Speaker 1: damn deal. You gotta buy them. I got like two
Speaker 1: or three for free. Right now, I'm sporting my Laska one.
Speaker 1: It's got a doll sheep on it. Is there a
Speaker 1: hunt to eat Arizona? I might just have a hunty
Speaker 1: shirt for you boys and that over there as you
Speaker 1: have a million dudes all hunting on one. You do
Speaker 1: some glass and for one got in every point. I
Speaker 1: want to say, while I'm sitting here, that wasn't your
Speaker 1: I got one more I want to say while I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here, I get a lot of people that really
Speaker 1: admire your show and the job you do producing the show,
Speaker 1: and the benefit that people get from your show in
Speaker 1: that every show you can take something away, and to me,
Speaker 1: it's refreshing to hear people say that about your show,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to give kudos to you guys for
Speaker 1: you know, doing what you do and how you do it. Um,
Speaker 1: I think your show is spectacular. I think it stands
Speaker 1: out above all other shows. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: say that, thanks man. We'll give you a shirt for that. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you better give him a shirt. Now give him like
Speaker 1: shine it up before you give it to him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you're you're the same off camera as you are
Speaker 1: on camera, which is cool too. I mean you don't
Speaker 1: see that all the time, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: shows I would say, what are your concluding thoughts? I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. That That was I'm ready to go to Mexico.
Speaker 1: That's it. He stole my concluding thought. I'm ready to
Speaker 1: go do some hunt. My concluding thought is uh, And
Speaker 1: I'm not just doing this because they had such nice compliments.
Speaker 1: If you, um, if if you want to go hunt
Speaker 1: Gould's turkeys or if you want to uh going hunt
Speaker 1: Who's deer? You you might have to wait in line,
Speaker 1: but you will not have a more quality experience than
Speaker 1: if you go with the jandar Jay. The problem with
Speaker 1: these guys is there a little annoying about they don't
Speaker 1: like to leave anything. The chance you're gonna bring up
Speaker 1: the light story again, I'm not gonna tell Jay earlier
Speaker 1: was talking about something happening very early, and I remember
Speaker 1: thinking he must be talking about two am. A lot
Speaker 1: of guys say very early, and it's like five am
Speaker 1: or six am. Um, if you can handle the abuse
Speaker 1: of of being around the perfectionists, um, you will have.
Speaker 1: You might come home with complaints, but it won't be
Speaker 1: about your guys not hunting enough, and it won't be
Speaker 1: about not hunting off, and it won't be about not
Speaker 1: being in a good spot. It might be that I
Speaker 1: don't know, you were cold, or your feet got blisters,
Speaker 1: or you were bored or whatever kind of little problems
Speaker 1: you have. It won't be because you went to a
Speaker 1: bad spot and had a bad guy who didn't want
Speaker 1: to hunt. They like to watch animals, and um, they
Speaker 1: observe animals, their students of animals, and uh if you
Speaker 1: you can learn a lot from these guys, for sure,
Speaker 1: and um hunting Google's turkeys. It's like to see um
Speaker 1: birds out in the desert, like in these little washes
Speaker 1: and stream valleys where everything's just like desert and it
Speaker 1: looks like an episode of Wildly Coyote. And there's these
Speaker 1: little like oases, you know, from springs and streams, and
Speaker 1: just to watch Turkey's kind of doing her thing down
Speaker 1: on those little bottoms. I mean, it's just mesmerizing. Man,
Speaker 1: It's just a turkey has great colors and do you
Speaker 1: want to see what like that? And the most beautiful
Speaker 1: of settings. It's like in a desert environment. Um it's amazing.
Speaker 1: And KU's dear, is this your third trip down to
Speaker 1: Mexico for Kase here right? What brings you back? What
Speaker 1: brings you back? What? What about him? Do you like?
Speaker 1: I like look at through binoculars. I just like watching
Speaker 1: big expanses and looking through binoculars and just observing, saying
Speaker 1: you guys like I just like observing, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean I love walking around the woods too. You know.
Speaker 1: I just had a great time down Kentucky following a
Speaker 1: squirrel dog through the woods, which is the noisiest thing
Speaker 1: you've ever been involved in. But um no, just the quiet,
Speaker 1: quiet observation and just watching and watching and watching, and
Speaker 1: then the thrill of realizing that there's a deer right
Speaker 1: where you've been staring all day long. Um, I have
Speaker 1: like I have a decent gay lie. Yanni has a
Speaker 1: better game I than I have. And Yanni talks about
Speaker 1: how frustrating it is to watch for coo do you
Speaker 1: COU'SI with Jandar. I feel like I see one, Yannie
Speaker 1: sees two and he says, you, guys see your I
Speaker 1: definitely gets trained to pick it up. And it's a
Speaker 1: lot of its proportion. I would say, just what size
Speaker 1: to look for? Yeah, um, I learned I I never
Speaker 1: did the whole binoculars on a tripod thing, and tis
Speaker 1: the first time I ever did that was hunting Cou's
Speaker 1: dere And um, you realize that when you start seeing
Speaker 1: two hundred yards away a bird. If when you realize
Speaker 1: that you just saw like a bird wing two hundred
Speaker 1: yards away, you're like, dude, there's no way I would
Speaker 1: have ever seen freehand and I would never have caught
Speaker 1: that movement. And then you realize that the tip of
Speaker 1: that deer's eyear it's like about that size. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times you're like I just saw ear or hey,
Speaker 1: wait minute, that piece of grass isn't grass. It just turned.
Speaker 1: It's like a time, it's just its own thing. Man,
Speaker 1: if you like puzzles and like visual stuff, you should
Speaker 1: try Wu's your hunt. Um, But anyone's going to appreciate
Speaker 1: a Google's hunt. I think you need to hunt quite
Speaker 1: a bit before you're really gonna appreciate it. Accused your hunt,
Speaker 1: I think I think it's a kind of sewers thing.
Speaker 1: I think doll sheep is a cond of sewers game.
Speaker 1: I think Who's Dear is a kind of sewers thing.
Speaker 1: You have to love hunting and love all things about hunting,
Speaker 1: and love being in the woods, um, in order to
Speaker 1: love cous Dear. Maybe I'm wrong. I wouldn't suggest it
Speaker 1: as a first hunt. It's definitely not like as much
Speaker 1: action as you're getting advantaging. I would suggesting Google, like,
Speaker 1: if you've been hunting one time before, I'll be like, dude,
Speaker 1: go on a Google talk man, you have a blast. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, that was a long concluding thought. Thanks who
Speaker 1: in more next time.