Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 930: The Helicopter Elk Hunt Debacle

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Ep. 930: The Helicopter Elk Hunt Debacle · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show, everybody. This week, we've got
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: a market report on halibut prices and what those prices
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: mean for dudes who fish. Former smokejumper and public lands
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: advocate Sam Forstag is here to give us an update
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: on his U.S. House of Representatives race. Helicopter hunting in
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Wyoming goes all wrong for an outdoor life editor. Etsy
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: becomes the devil incarnate. That's hyperbolic. And more. Not really, though.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: But first, on to our news.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Our news.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll tell you about our news. Quick. Quickly. I
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: was trying to explain something to Seth before the show,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: but I didn't get time, so I'm going to tell
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: him now. Are you aware that there's this whole thing
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: right now of freeze-drying beef guts and making dog treats
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: out of them?
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: I'm not aware.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Are you aware?
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: I've seen it. Liver, I've seen. Dried liver.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Lung, liver, kidney.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've seen all sorts of dried stuff in
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: the pet store, but I don't think it's freeze-dried.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Freeze-dried.
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: Freeze-dried for cats, there's minnows and chicken hearts.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Well, great.
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: Big cat guy.
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: He and Seth, big cat guys.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: There's a thing I know about that I'm not even
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: going to talk about because I don't want to spoil it.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: But anyhow, I just seconds ago ordered us up a
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: freeze-dryer for the office here.
• 1:34
  Speaker 5: So we can make our dogs treats?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: You know how we make videos where we have people
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: try stuff? We're going to save all the weirdest junk
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: we can think of, freeze dry it, and then have
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: dogs eat it and see what the dogs say about it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: This is a good idea.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to picture that you have all this
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: junk you freeze dried, and you let a dog smell
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: it so he knows. You give him a whiff. Then
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: you bring the dog out of the room. And you
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: lay all, we set up cameras and you lay it
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: all around and we see what guts, what freeze dried
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: guts do dogs really want? Yeah. And then you like
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: ask the dog about it.
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: You can do like eyeballs and telling you what kinds
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: of things.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And not only that, you can, I'm going to start
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: making my own freeze dry backpacking food now and then. Yeah.
• 2:17
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: I'm surprised you didn't say that first and then do
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: the dog thing, but I see where your priorities are.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I know, but I had to find a way to
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: justify it.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: When, when, when our dogs die, when our dogs die,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: we can freeze dry them.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It's never-ending. Yeah, so this freeze dryer is gonna become
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: like a major YouTube fixture.
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah Right good investment.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: Do you have a dog in mind that I'm gonna freeze-dry? No,
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: there's gonna be your tester You're sitting in all this all.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: This place is his dog. Yeah, I'm bringing all those dogs.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: But there's some I would like put in tears as
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: like these I trust more than this other batch of
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: dogs Oh elaborate I did have to think about well
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: like your dog is dumb.
• 2:55
  Speaker 6: Very He was hell on grass on Monday, though.
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: There you go.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: It'll be two to three weeks before we take possession
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of this freeze dryer. This is the most exciting thing
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: I could think that ever happened to me. Getting a
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: freeze dryer.
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: I'm glad you're talking about it.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I got a thing. I'm going to freeze dry, dude.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not even telling nobody about it.
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: Is it an animal product?
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: It is.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: But I didn't know about doing minnows, man. Old bait.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: We've got a new... So stay tuned for that. Coming
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: up down the road. I was mainly just filling Seth
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in on this development.
• 3:31
  Speaker 7: I like it.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: This is going to be the world's greatest video.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I've several times in my life Googled freeze dryers and
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: just see how much they are.
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: And then that's about as far as I get.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised to see they got a massive
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: sale right now.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: Guess what Steve paid?
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: What'd you pay?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: I could tell you what I paid.
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: Well, I thought it was for the office. You can't just.
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: We talked about a punt gun that we bought. That
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: was a stupid price.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about it yet because it
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: was more than I figured. But it wasn't like that much.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: Was it more than the punt gun?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: No.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: How about the Warner Bratzler machine?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Where does it fall? Probably in that ballpark. That was
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a waste of money ultimately, but I think I'm more
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: optimistic about this.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: This time it'll be different.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: No. No. That was a dumb, ultimately like a dumb purchase.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: We've got a new segment today called the Market Report.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: It's premiering today called the Market Report where we're going
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to examine Weird price increases and decreases and other things
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: of interest regarding wildlife resources and commodities. So think of
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the 2025 explosion in skunk tail prices or the black
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: market boom for American eel elvers about a decade ago.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Looking at when you see wildlife resources have a moment
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: of weirdness. And we're going to talk about what drives
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: those moments of weirdness. Um, but today we're just going to,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: we're kicking off the segment. Brody's going to share something
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: with us. And this came from, we, we, we came
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: back from Alaska, big, you know, annual fishing trip. And
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: then I can't remember who it was.
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: I was in Costco. I was like, Holy shit.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Well, that was, you initiated it. All of a sudden
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: someone sends Brody sends a, a photo of Costco halibut.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: The price.
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I was like, good Lord. And I always like seeing
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff because it makes me feel like
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I'm being frugal when I go fishing.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: But this is one thing Kelsey says this all the time.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: She brings up the price of the fish that we
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: bring home to justify it as like, we spent a
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: bunch of money to go to Alaska and catch all
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: these fish.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: I'm going to get to that later. There's something to it.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: But I tell her, we wouldn't buy that fish anyway.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 5:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: But it's all just in your mind. Yeah. I don't,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to go down to Costco and buy
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: a halibut.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Like if I didn't go to Alaska ever again, I
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: still wouldn't go buy halibut.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Right. Get me a couple of big old jugs that
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: olive oil down there, but I'm not going to go
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: down there and buy, or you know, those things, those
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: peanut butter pretzels, everybody's like, I just bought those yesterday.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I could buy their damn fish. Anyways, let her rip.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: So, um, You got the beginning of the story of
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: me going to Costco after we got back from the shack.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: But this year, we caught so many fish. The fishing
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: was so good at Steve's Shack that we drove up
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: the price of Costco halibut to $ 29 a pound. The
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: thing that was surprising to me about this.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I thought it was more than that. Okunos was a
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: two-pound piece. Yeah.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: Normally at halibut, you'll see a square block of meat.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: from a big old worm-infested 150-pounder. They don't get the
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: good stuff at Costco. I think you might have something
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: to say about that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Can I tell that story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: want to name the guy because he's in the biz,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: but I got a friend who charters but also does
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: some commercial fishing. He one day sends me a picture
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: of just one of those giants, like a 300-pound halibut.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, that'll fill, I text, he texts
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: me the photo. I text him, well, that'll fill your freezer.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: He says, are you kidding me? That's the kind of
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: stuff they have down at Costco. Meaning the quality of
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: a halibut is in, the quality of a halibut's flesh
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: sits in an inverse relationship to its size. Size goes up,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: quality goes down. So he was just making a comment
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: that Costco buys big, cheap, bad halibut. Yeah. So you're
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: not even looking at premium halibut.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And that's what was surprising is that these were
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: packaged like two to three pound fillets. I'm guessing from
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: halibut that were like 12 to 15 pounds alive. Like
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: the ones we catch a lot. I was very surprised.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, so it wasn't like chunks that look like firewood. No, no.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: It was like. You know, the stuff that's going across
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: the fish table.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. I take it back about Costco. Cause I was
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: just sitting here thinking how they're going to send us
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: a cease and desist letter. Yeah. But we're already clear.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: Um, but it was still spendy, right? Like still spending for,
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: for halibut. Um, the, another surprising thing I saw there,
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: I didn't send you guys the picture, but same day
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: they had, uh, chunks of troll. It said right on
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: the label troll caught King salmon for 18 bucks a pound.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: I was like, Holy crap, that's cheap.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Um, so I don't know if that was like, that
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: seems very cheap.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know if that was like lower grade stuff
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: or it had been sitting in a freezer for a
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: long time and they just broke it out and they
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: were sitting, you know, it was, that's why.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: It was cheaper.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: Cause that's like very cheap for, for, uh, for King salmon. Um,
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: and we saw a bunch of those power trollers this summer,
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: Jason Kings, Jason Kings. Um, and. The thing about Costco
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: fish is like it's flash frozen. In some cases they have,
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: I think they have their own processing facilities in Alaska
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: where they package and freeze the stuff. And then they
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: thaw it out for display in the store.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Well, they do.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: I think I'm pretty sure that's.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: How it works. Well, that would make totals. Yeah.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: For like a place like this.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Cause in this display case, it's always sitting there thawing.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 9:24
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Um, so if you want like the really good stuff,
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: like we got good fresh caught stuff, um, You either
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: got to like catch it yourself like we did, live
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: close to where it lives or order it online. And
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: this past weekend I was in Seattle with my family
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: going to a baseball game and doing some other stuff.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: And we were down checking out the waterfront and there's
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: several fish markets, like touristy fish.
• 9:49
  Speaker 7: Markets down there.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Where they throw the fish back and forth.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: That's the one. There's a few other ones. Yeah. But
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: it's fun, like people watching and stuff. And so the
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: price is there. were kind of what you'd expect. Like
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: if you were going to order stuff online and have
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: it overnight at your house. Halibut, 42.50 a pound. And
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: this is what you were talking, Seth, because like I
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: brought back a couple of fish boxes worth of halibut,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: so close to 100 pounds. So like the math is,
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: pretty easy 42 times 100 so like people.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It's not easy for me well.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: It's like four grand it's like four grand um so
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: like people are always asking us like does wild game
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: meat like offset the price of hunting and it usually
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: doesn't but i don't know there's an argument to be
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: made here that maybe it does it.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Can't my boy was pointing this out to me the
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: other day where i had him pick up a what
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: used to be called in Montana, the single, single region
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: antlerless whitetail tag. It's got a different name now, but
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: it's the same thing.
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: And it's, it's a resident tag.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: It's like five bucks or something.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: It was $ 10 for a white, a resident tag for
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: a whitetail doe. Yeah. That like, if you just shot
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the doe. Out your window or something.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Or five of them.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you don't go far. Yeah. And he got
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: one very local. Right. It's like, then you can be like, man,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: look at all this money I'm saving.
• 11:22
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Because I just shot hundreds of dollars worth of venison
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: for the cost of an expandable broadhead and a $ 10 tag.
• 11:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: But.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: But when I drive nine hours to go kill a
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: mule deer bucket in another state.
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: That's how I justified my Colorado tag to my wife.
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: It came out without gear I'd already bought. It was
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: like two grand for the tag, the gas, everything.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: You're not going to get there, man.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 11:47
  Speaker 6: No, it came out. I got about 200 pounds. It
• 11:50
  Speaker 6: came out to about 10 bucks a pound. And I
• 11:52
  Speaker 6: told her, hey, listen, if you go down to Whole
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: Foods to buy organic whatever, it's going to be 10
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: bucks a pound.
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: And I got an experience.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: You should tell her, say, listen, man. I either go
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: on this hunt, or I'm going to go down and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: buy 200 pounds of halibut at the fish market in Seattle.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And then we'll see who's... But what I'm interested in...
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: And then we'll see who's right.
• 12:14
  Speaker 6: I've never been to Alaska. What's the cost of getting
• 12:17
  Speaker 6: up there? What are you in to get up there
• 12:19
  Speaker 6: and get a big old box?
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: We don't talk about money.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: A couple dollars.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Anyway, $ 42. 50 for halibut. King salmon, also $ 42.
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: 50.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Ling Cod, and I don't understand this commercial fishery for
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Ling Cod because you can't put gear out for them.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. There's a whole commercial Ling Cod fishery
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: in Oregon, Washington.
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: Just rod and reel.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's like specific gear they use.
• 12:44
  Speaker 7: Okay.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but there's Ling Cod.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: I was a little confused.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: And then there's Ling Cod from Bycatch that make it
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: in the market.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Speaking of Bycatch, there was Yellow Eye there, $ 30 a pound.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: Pacific Cod, $ 25 a pound, which seemed a little spendy
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: for Pacific Cod.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: These people got it all wrong, though. On the market.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Because Pacific cod. Should be the most. That's the son
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: of a bitch you want. Yep. But it's just got
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: a reputation as being like, like the fact that you
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: can get twice as much, almost that, that you can
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: get twice as much cod. Yeah. As halibut for your
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: dollar should leave you leaving the fish store laughing in
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: the fish store's face.
• 13:19
  Speaker 8: Yep.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: But meanwhile, they're like, meanwhile, those commercial crab fishermen are
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: using that stuff for bait.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Peacod, you know? Oh, what was the talbot? cheap heads
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: and collars.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Uh heads were a dollar a pound collars were five
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: dollars a pound and it was just like a random
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: selection of look at.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: That tub yeah brody's got a great photo of the
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: tub oh yeah it's like the gut tub.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Yep i don't know how much they sell that stuff
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: but i'd be buying some of it if i lived there.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Can i tell you a quick favorite story of mine
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: we were cleaning um I want to say Jaguar sharks,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: but that's from Life Aquatic. We were cleaning leopard sharks.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: We were cleaning leopard sharks one time in San Francisco Bay.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: And we're at a boat ramp cleaning leopard sharks. Yep.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And there's this guy. There's this guy. I feel, I
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: don't know, but from my conversation with him, which we
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: weren't really able to have, I feel like he was Chinese.
• 14:17
  Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: He is going through all the bins of guts. Everybody's
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: cleaning all their fish. And he's going through the bins
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: of guts getting out the fins from the leopard sharks.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And this was a long time ago, and I wasn't, like,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: hip to the whole fin market.
• 14:31
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: So I go to him, and I'm like, hey, man.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm trying to give him a big leopard shark filet,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: like the whole side off a leopard shark. To which he...
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: because we can't speak, to which he conveys like, nah,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I'm good.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: Zero interest, yeah.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought, I'm like, oh, geez, man, he's digging
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: through the trash, poor guy. And I'm like, here's a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: big old chunk of leverage. I was like, nah.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: He's getting what he wanted and he was getting it
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: for free.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: He was not interested in a blade. He knew what
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: he wanted. And maybe he'd be, and it was different
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: with shark fins, but when we clean fish, when we
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: clean fish in the Bahamas, the Bahamians will come down
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: and they just come down with their tools.
• 15:14
  Speaker 6: Yep.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: And they stand there and they shoot the breeze at everybody,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: but they got their tools and they just are cleaning
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: fish heads. Yeah. They wait for you to clean. As
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: you clean, they're standing there being like, may I? Yep.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Split them, de-gill them, quarter them, and just cleaning them
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: and bagging them up. Yeah.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, we do all right keeping some collars at
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: your shack, but.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Not the heads.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Not the heads.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: No.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: And finally, the last thing in this fish market that
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: I saw, it's for Steve, is the fish he likes...
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: the most but just can't seem to ever catch them
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: is black cod, which was 26.50 a pound. How did
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: they do that cheap? They had some big ones there, man.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: I was thinking of you.
• 15:53
  Speaker 5: That seems cheap.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Just the other day, I'm talking to Kimmy Werner's husband, Justin,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: and they have a family place just north of us.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, same water, same water. They are knocking the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: piss out of them. I'm like, show me on a
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: chart what you're fishing. He's fishing the same shit I'm fishing.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: You should explain black cod a little bit.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It's a sable fish.
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: Sushi, expensive.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: It's like a fish made out of butter.
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: Butter, fatty.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's good.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was that. That's our market report for
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: kind of like Alaska Northwest seafood.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: The next one I'd like to do, just to keep
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: this in your little noodle there, is let's do a
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: roundup on what bluegill fillets, perch fillets, walleye fillets, The
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: normal freshwater take, what does that market look like? Yeah.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: All that stuff has a commercial market. Yep.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Definitely.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: What is a dude paying for a pound of bluegill flays?
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: Or a pound of Canadian perch.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Yep. Or walley dogs.
• 16:51
  Speaker 6: Yep.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Are you making money when you fish walleyes?
• 16:54
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: That ain't.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: No, especially when you throw them back.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: He basically sets up, they're just throwing $ 20 bills. Throwing
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: $ 20 bills into the lake.
• 17:06
  Speaker 7: Yep.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, now over to your news. Terrible.
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: You know, I wasn't happy with that one either.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Shouldn't be. Shouldn't be. Some of Phil's worst work. A
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: man of normal genius, but just not. Great work. I'll
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: do better. Your news is brought to you by Banish Suppressors,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: which I'm holding right here in my hot little hand.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Let it rip.
• 17:39
  Speaker 6: We had a listener write in and he says, dear
• 17:42
  Speaker 6: Steven Rinella and the meat eater crew. My school has
• 17:45
  Speaker 6: a policy for the amount of school someone can miss
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: before they lose the credits for a class. That amount
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: is 10 days in the entire semester. Then you are
• 17:53
  Speaker 6: ineligible for the credit in the class. I was writing
• 17:56
  Speaker 6: to ask Mr. Rinella if he could write a doctor's
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: note so that I can skip school and go on
• 18:01
  Speaker 6: a pack trip to go elk hunting because I know
• 18:03
  Speaker 6: he's got some sort of decorate doctorate of some kind.
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: Please let me know before November 1st. This is when
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: my tag opens.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: I'd be more than happy to write him a note.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I will. We could do it one better. Because if
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: they catch that mine's honorary, they might throw him out
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of school. But Randall's is real. We'll get two doctors. Yeah.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Double up.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: He got a second opinion.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: You know how we use the notary public next door? Yeah.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I think she charges like 10 bucks. It's probably going
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: to be like a... Like a $ 10 fee to sign
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: doctor's notices? Yeah.
• 18:37
  Speaker 6: The point is, we will rubber stamp your doctor's notes
• 18:41
  Speaker 6: for to-go hunting.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Speaker 6: I'll create a form.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you write whatever you want, and I'll sign it. Yeah.
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: No, no, we'll have a form that people request. It
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: is pre-signed about emotional health, being in touch with nature,
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: et cetera, et cetera. And I'll just plug your name in,
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: and you can take that to your professor. It'll be
• 19:00
  Speaker 6: signed by Steve Rinella, doctor.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: You know what? Maybe what we do then, instead of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: charging them $ 10, they should just kick in on that
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: little kitty we got going to get that dude's bison
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: skull aged. Yeah, there you go.
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: When you max that out, it just goes to the LAI.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: There you go. No, I'd be happy to sign him.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: We'll have Randall sign it, too, so it's like a
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: double doctor.
• 19:20
  Speaker 5: They can't refuse that.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: And Madison's on top of it two months ahead of time.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: He's writing in to ask for this.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Or she. i ran up in this wall when i
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: was in in college i ran up against this problem
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: where if i missed another day it was november 15th
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: if i missed another day i would i could do
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: no better than a c and i went hunting anyway
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: yeah c's are great well i went listen to what
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: happened though like in hindsight there was probably no way.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: This is a long time ago. In hindsight, there's probably
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: no way it was legal light. But I'm sitting there
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: in the dark waiting for it to get light, and
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: a buck is coming. And I'm not kidding you, man.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: This is terrible. I got down on the ground and
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: put my cheek against the dirt trying to skylight his antlers. No.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: That's too dark.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Was able to find his throat patch in my scope.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: It was early to class. In hindsight. But we didn't
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: really know about that kind of stuff. It just wasn't
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: a thing that was on our radar. That there was
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: shooting light and all that. There was no way it
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: was legal shooting light. It just wasn't a thing that
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: my dad talked about. Like legal. It just was not
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: No one talked about legal life when I was growing up.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: It wasn't printed in the reg books.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. But it was also not a place I
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: spent any time doing casual reading in the reg books.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: I recently heard someone say the best get out of
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: class email that you can write to a professor is
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: say you got sprayed by a skunk.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: What are they going to do?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: What does he want you to do?
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: There's no proof. They're not going to ask you to
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: come in. That should work. There's going to be a
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: lot of people getting sprayed by skunks, I think, this year.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Unless I'm the professor. Then I'm going to say, no,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: that's cool. Come on down.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: I love that smell.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Come on down. In fact, come to my office early.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I'd like to visit you about this. You want to
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: be on the news show?
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:18
  Speaker 6: So write in, subject line, doctor's note, include the dates
• 21:22
  Speaker 6: in your name.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, happy to write those, and we'll double doctor them. Yep.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: We'll double doc them. Okay, over to Spencer Newhart now.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Helicopter hunt, lay it out.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: I've got this story broken up into like three parts.
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: And so I'm going to try to answer all your
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: questions before you get to them. But just like trust
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: that if something hasn't come up yet, hopefully it's going to.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to sit back and enjoy.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: About two weeks ago. This is why we're talking about
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: this now. On August 26, 2026, Outdoor Life publishes an
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: article from their hunting and conservation editor, Andrew McKean. Title,
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: I was convicted of trespassing after covering public land access
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: issues on our controversial Wyoming elk hunt. Subheader, we helicoptered
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: into otherwise inaccessible public land to hunt elk and highlight
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: landlocked issues in the West, but I made a terrible mistake.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: Those are all Andrew's words. The hunt Andrew is referring
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: to took place in Wyoming, November, 2025. Andrew is there
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: with three buddies, David, Ben, and Ryan, plus a film crew.
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: They are recording the whole thing and using this as
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: an example of how there are 16 million acres that
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: we the public own, but we the public can't get to.
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: 16 million is the number from Onyx that's been thrown around. David,
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: one of the hunting buddies, has been planning this hunt
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: for quite a while. It's a special piece of public
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: land that the public can't get to without crossing a
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: little bit of private land. Thus, it gives this rancher
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: control of a whole bunch of public lands that he
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: has paying hunters access via him.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Got it. So he's outfitting.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: He's outfitting his land, but you can also reach this
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: other public land.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not doing nothing wrong.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: Nope, nope. Everything is legal that he's doing. It's something
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: he's been doing for quite a while. So the only
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: way to get to this public, again, is by paying
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: for a guided hunt or do what David and Ryan
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: and Andrew did, and that's having a helicopter fly you in.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: David spent over 100 hours planning this hunt. One of
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: the biggest obstacles was just simply finding a pilot to
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: fly them in. At one point, he actually called a
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: hot air balloon company and started asking them logistical questions
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: about if they thought he could pull this off. And
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: at one point, the guy was like, David, you know
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: you can't steer these things, right? You're just going with
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: the wind. And it kind of brought the hot air
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: balloon fantasy to an end.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Well, how are those guys all still alive?
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: Hot air balloon folks? I don't know, I suppose they
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: just have a general idea about what the wind is
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: doing that day or where they're gonna come down at.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: Come on.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: They just land wherever?
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: I don't think it's that simple, but I think there's
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: some amount of mystery about where a hot... The point is,
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: to make this journey from a public road to the
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: public land, the guy talking to David is like, I
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: don't think a hot air balloon.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: He's not that precise. He can't be that precise.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: So finally, on the 27th pilot that David calls, he
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: found someone willing to take their business. And for about
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: $ 2, 000 per person, these guys could take a four-minute helicopter
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: ride into public land. That's how far it went. $ 2, 000
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: to get four minutes from a road to the public
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: land to be legal beagle. Now, to go through the
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: rancher to hunt there, as of 2024 pricing, I found
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: on his website, $ 6, 500. So you're saving $ 4, 500 doing the
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: helicopter route. That's what they decided on.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: But he's not just charging an access fee. It's got
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: to be that it's a guided hunt.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: His website is vague indeed. You contact him, but he
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: doesn't even really mention the public land on his website.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: He talks about all the acres of private he has
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: access to and how, you know, we kill this many
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: trophy bulls and these are your sleeping accommodations, but $ 6, 500
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: versus 2000, just if you wanna get to this public land.
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: So I'm gonna tell this story in three parts. This
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: is not how it happened in real time, but this
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: is how this information was released to the public. So
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: this is how I consume this story as it was
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: happening over the last nine months. And if you're someone
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: who isn't familiar with any part of the story at all,
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: then you're going to consume it the same way that
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: me and the rest of the public who was following
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: this did.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: Part one.
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: This hunt got a lot of national attention right after
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: it happened, but for a different reason than Andrew McKean's trespassing.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: This was the elk hunt where a rancher went onto
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: public land to the kill site of a bull, and
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: that rancher tried hiding the elk's skull that he found there.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: To be clear, this was not Andrew's elk that we're
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: going to talk about in a little bit. This was
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: a different elk that was legally killed by another member
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: of the hunting party. We covered this on our website.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: We had a meat eater radio live interview with David
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Fabian about this exact story. He works for Guns and
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: Ammo magazine, and he was one of the hunters there
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: when this happened. He was holding the cell phone that
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: sort of captured this encounter. Here's a quick recap of
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: that encounter. That was day two of this helicopter elk hunt. David,
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: who we see here, and Ryan both killed really good
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: bulls on day two. On day three, they're still working
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: on getting all the meat back to their camp. And
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: while David and Ben are at David's kill site, they
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: happen to spot someone at Ryan's kill site, which is
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: a couple hundred yards away, and it's not anyone from
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: their hunting party. They watch this person through their binos,
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: as this person carries the elk skull into a ravine.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: Ben and David, they rush over there and they confront
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: this man as he emerges from the timber. This leads
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: to what David Fabian called, quote, the strangest hunting encounter
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: of my life. It turns out that this guy is
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: the rancher who controls the access to this landlocked land.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: He was a 70-year-old rancher. It's not clear to me
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: if that's his exact age or just estimated, but he's
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: an old-time rancher. And he is busted in the act
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: of stealing their elk skull.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: On public land?
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: On public land, firmly in public land.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: David gets out his phone. He starts filming the interaction
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: between them. The rancher starts off by just like straight
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: up lying and being deceitful. And he says something like,
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: I don't know what bull you guys are talking about.
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: And eventually he does fess up to it. And Ben
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: says something like, why'd this happen? And the rancher answers, quote,
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: because I don't want you guys hunting this outfit. So
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: this is like the viral moment of this whole experience,
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: sort of until now, that we'll get to in a
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: little bit. David said in our interview on Radio Live
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: that the elk skull was hidden in a way that
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: you basically had to be on top of it to
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: see it. And the rancher watches them crawl into this
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: ditch where he hid the skull. They get their antlers
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: back and everyone kind of goes their separate ways. And
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: after these guys.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I see these guys don't skin their... Skulls, that always
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: kind of bothers me.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: They did at camp because if Phil goes back, a
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: couple of photos, I think we see them skinned out.
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: But at that point in the hunt, they were butchering
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: two elk that day.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Minor detail.
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: It seemed like they just hadn't gotten around to it yet.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: So they go back to camp. They get their meat
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: and their skull back. They get service at that point.
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: They call the game warden. Game warden is very interested
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: in their story.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I got a question here. Whose creepy hand is in
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: the top left corner of that?
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: I think it's either David or Ben handing down to
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: get the skull from the guy from where he hid
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: it at. So this is like showing us the place
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: where he placed this skull.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: This is him giving it back.
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, this is the rancher handing it back.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: I understand.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: So they contact the game warden. Game warden says, I'll
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: meet you guys, you know, like tomorrow and we can
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: talk about it then. So this interaction with the rancher
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: went viral, like mega viral. Between the videos, the national
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: media coverage, podcast coverage, this story gets told to millions
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: of people. We're looking at the original Facebook post here,
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: which has been ripped off a million times, but just
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: this first one, 10,000 likes, 700 comments, 300 shares. And if,
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: like I said, this was like the defining moment of
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: this whole thing. It was one of the defining moments
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: of 2025. If the outdoors are something you're interested in,
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: this probably came across your table at some point. If
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: you want to hear more about this specific interaction, again,
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: that was episode 813 of Media to Radio Live. We
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: interviewed David for about 20 minutes.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: That's part one.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Again, this happens on days two and three. Part two,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: we're going to back up to day one. Before the
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: helicopter even picks these guys up, Andrew McKean delivers this
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: message to a cameraman. He says, quote, the thing that's
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: really interesting about it and kind of catches in my
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: throat a little bit is this feels like it's so aggressive,
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: like a little bit kind of a thumb in the
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: eye to the landowners who control the access and probably
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: have for years. But this is kind of but this
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: is kind of like a measure of what's happened across
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: the West, really. between the corner crossing issue, between people
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: exploiting the resource one way or the other, either because
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: they've got the access or want the access, there's kind
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: of a land grab going on right now. So this
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: is our testing of, I think, a way to like
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: create access or provide access or get access. I don't
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: even know what the verb really is. We're grabbing access
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: is the way it feels from people who have always
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: had it for a long time. So that is what
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: Andrew says before the chopper even arrives to pick them up.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: So some real foreshadowing going on there. It's the first
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: day of the hunt, and they could legally hunt on
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: day one in Wyoming as long as they flew in
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: and weren't doing any scouting. Again, the heli ride was
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: four minutes, so no scouting done. They take off, land,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: set up camp, and they start hunting. That afternoon, they
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: spot some bulls, and they get into position to kill one.
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: Here's a screen grab from the video of the bull
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: that Andrew eventually kills. And as they're waiting for the
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: right moment, Andrew delivers another very foreboding message to camera.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: Here's the quote. So we're watching two bulls feed out
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: of the timber. I'm pretty sure these are the two
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: bulls we saw in the little clearing when we first
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: got up above camp and glass them. One's kind of
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: junior varsity, but one is a stud. They're at 408
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: yards right now. We got some mule deer between us
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: and them that kind of had got us pegged. So
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: we're just being super chill to see what they do.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: but the wind's good. I don't know. Everything is going
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: right until it doesn't. We kind of got a tippy-toe
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: because there's some private, like a quarter section up here.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: So we just have to keep watching to see where
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: we are. Make sure that everything is good. But that
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: just kind of adds one more little detail to it.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: We're on public, they're on public, but if they go
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: a whole lot more south, they're going to be on
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: private and there's no marker.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: Andrew's quote, it's like the last thing he says, basically,
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: before he pulls the trigger, something. Andrew gets slightly repositioned.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: He shoots the big bull three times. It looks like
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: all three shots land. We can't tell because of a
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: camera cut, but it appears as though the bull runs
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: about 50 yards between where shot one takes place and
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: where the bull dies. And it's a whopper of an elk.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: This is a really big bull. So that's the end
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: of day one. Day one, Andrew kills the giant elk.
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: Day two, David and Ben kill good bulls. Day three,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: They have the encounter with the rancher who tries hiding
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: the elk skull. And day four, they fly back.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: To their pickups.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: I gotta stop you.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: What do you got?
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: They walk up to this bull that's dead. There's no like,
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: oh shit moment or no like.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's in part three.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: There are some disagreements or discrepancies between Andrew's account and...
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: and the rancher who later gets interviewed by Cowboy Daily
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: State News. I believe from like where the elk dies
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: at and where you see some of the footage of
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: them doing like the gripping grins and just like high-fiving
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: and talking over the elk, the elk has now moved
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: about 25 yards, I believe. Andrew says the elk died
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: on a steep slope and they just naturally wanted to
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: get down to the flat spot and it was easy
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: to do. The rancher says that they moved it so
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: fast that it's suspicious to him. that he thinks they
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: moved that bull pretty quick and they knew.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: Something was up.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Was he watching?
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: No, but you watch the video and you see the
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: elk die and they're still like, it appears as though
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: you're still looking at legal shooting lights while they're standing
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: over the elk and it's slightly been moved. Again, Andrew
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: says they were just sliding it down the hill to
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: a more natural spot to gut. The rancher says they
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: moved it so quickly that it seemed as though they
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: knew there was a problem. Okay, so outdoor life, outdoor life,
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: who Andrew works for, publishes a 25 minute video of
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: the hunt on YouTube in March, 2026. So about four
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: months after the hunt takes place.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Is that video like widely viewed?
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: 230,000 people, I think. So yeah, it's a popular video.
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: And again, this video was like being talked about before
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: it ever came out because the helicopter thing was unique
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: because of the interaction they had with the rancher who
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: tried stealing the skull. So this was like, you know,
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: set up to be viewed by people at that point.
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: The rancher, the very same rancher who these guys interacted
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: with on day three, watches the video and he recognizes
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: that Andrew's bull is standing on his private land when
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: he shoots it. And not only that, but the bull
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: runs even farther into private land before dying. The rancher
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: contacts the game warden. The warden comes out, compares the
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: video with landmarks in person. Mm-hmm.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Him having this realization when he watches the video.
• 35:10
  Speaker 6: Yep.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: By this point, has he already been kind of like
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: showcased and talked about? Yes.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: So the video comes out in March of the 25-minute hunt.
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: The viral video of the rancher getting caught stealing the
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: elk skull, that drops on like December 1.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: So it's been building for four months.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So at this point, he for months has been
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: called out.
• 35:35
  Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Ridiculed um about a thing that like by all means
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the guy should not have hid people's stuff but he's
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: been dealing with this.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: We'll address this in act three okay so the the
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: rancher contacts award warren comes out he compares the video
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: with landmarks in person uh i read that he found
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: like the uh the land the public land survey marker
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: in the ground uh just to be certain And the
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: game warden determines that in fact, Andrew McKean's bull was
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: standing about 35 yards inside of private land when he
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: shot it.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: How would he not have known this?
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: How would McKean not know this?
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Nothing was marked.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: There's no fences on there.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: He's definitely running a GPS mapping plan.
• 36:23
  Speaker 7: Understood.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Understood.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: And he's talking about where the private land is.
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: They said they felt confident in the boundaries that they
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: could identify in person. So McKean is now written a
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: ticket for trespassing. He pled no contest on August 24th
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: to one count of Title 23 trespass and one count
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: of the use of a silencer to take a big
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: game animal while trespassing. He was fined $ 1, 270 and surrendered
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: his skull to the state.
• 36:52
  Speaker 6: Ooh.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: So McKean Pleads No Contest, August 24th. It's then on
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: August 26th, two days later, when Outdoor Life publishes the
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: article that I referenced earlier. It's titled, I Was Convicted
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: of Trespassing After Covering Public Land Access Issues on Our
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Controversial Wyoming Elk Hunt.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think that was mandated by the prosecutor, or
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: do you think that was just trying to get out
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: ahead of it?
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: I'm guessing he had that in the can for weeks
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: or months. This all didn't unfold for Andrew, you know.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: in the course of a week. If that rancher recognized
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: it in March and the game wardens alerted immediately, I'm
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: sure this was on Andrew's plate for months at this point.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: That's a lot of stress to live with, man.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: So in the article, McKean takes responsibility for trespassing. He
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: says it was an honest mistake. He says they studied
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: the digital maps in the field and they thought the
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: bull was standing 30 yards inside of public rather than
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: 35 yards inside of private. In the article, McKean says he's, quote,
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: deeply sorry. It was, quote, a profound mistake. Another spot,
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: he says, quote, the most painful penalty is that, in
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: this case, I became part of the problem. Later in
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: the article, he talks about following the rules and being
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: an ethical hunter and how landowners deserve rights. And he says, quote,
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: to now publicly admit that I failed to uphold those
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: values hurts beyond description. And as part of his conclusion,
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: he says, quote, I will resign from my 25-year tenure
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: as a Montana hunter education instructor, because I can't, in
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: good conscience, teach prospective hunters about the importance of obtaining
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: landowner permission with this incident on my record. I will
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: accept judgment from friends, hunting buddies, and a legion of
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: online commentators who have.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Never met me. Man.
• 38:37
  Speaker 7: All right, so that's part two.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: Again, the McKean article. Here's part three. One week after
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: McKean's article is published.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I bought it in, though. That was a noble acknowledgement.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I know we're only into part two, but that was
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: a full-throated.
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I assume you read the thing, Steve, but it's... Okay, yeah,
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: he owns it up front.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: He's not trying to wiggle out of it.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: No, he owns it in the middle, and he owns
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: it at the end. The whole way through, he's like, man,
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: I made a stupid mistake.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Because he could have been like, someone should have done
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: a better job, you know what I mean?
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: Okay, part three. One week after McKean's article is published
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: on September 2nd, Cowboy State Daily posts an article about
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: the whole situation. In the article, they provide an update
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: on the rancher's own legal case and are able to
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: interview him. So here's what we learned. Back in April,
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: the rancher pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge for
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: hiding the elk head. He was fined $ 220, so about
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: $ 1, 000 less than McKean's fine for his two trespassing violations.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: Regarding the elk thievery, the rancher told Cowboy State Daily, quote,
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: I saw where they had killed a bull elk the
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: day before on the BLM land within one half to
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: three quarters mile from our buildings. I got upset and
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: let my emotions get the best of me and took
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: the elk head and packed it downhill and put it
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: in a deep draw. I was in the wrong doing it.
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: I eventually apologized. We shook hands and they got their
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: horns back. So that was one of the ranchers quote
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: in this article. The rancher said the fallout from the
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: event led to harassment and death threats. He said he
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: just stopped answering his phone this year if it was
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: a phone number he didn't recognize. Another detail, McKean says
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: in the article that he attempted to reach out to
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: the landowner in an attempt to meet and mend fences,
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: but the landowner did not respond. In the Cowboy State
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: Daily article, the rancher confirms that he got the letter
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: and a voicemail from McKean and decided not to respond.
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: Here is the rancher's quote. He put me through so
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: much misery last fall and last winter. I don't have
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: any desire to get together with him. And the last
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: thing of note here is that the rancher says he's
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: already aware of one group of hunters who have booked
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: a helicopter to fly them in this fall. And he
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: suspects there will be more. I wanna give my takeaway
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: and then you guys have at it. I feel bad
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: for everybody involved. Like, I don't think anybody came away
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: from this feeling good or feeling like the winner, like
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: both parties. made pretty bad mistakes. Both parties apologized and
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: both parties had like really severe consequences. It just ends
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: up being a black eye for like the public land
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: hunters and a black eye for this kind of landowner
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: who uniquely controls public land access. This is just like
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: a rare lose-lose.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Go ahead, Brody.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's real easy to judge Andrew from afar.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Like things happen in the heat of the moment. But God,
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: it's just a good lesson to not mess with animals
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: that are flirting the private property line. Like that's such
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: a small margin of error. Like walk away and find
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: one that's half a mile from the line. You know,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: that like, that's my takeaway. Like I'd love to get
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: in a helicopter and go hunt there. You know, if
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: that's the only way you're going to do it, great.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: but it's just too easy to screw up.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: And they say in the video that Andrew's like, we
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: gotta be careful because there's a quarter section, 160 acres.
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: I went to Onyx and I feel like I've sussed
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: out where this whole thing played out. And I'm sure
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: like the frustrating part for Andrew and the others in
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: his party is they are in kind of like a
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: sea of public land. And this 160 acres is, when
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: you look at it, you're like, oh, it's kind of meaningless.
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: Like they could just, you know, find that bull again tomorrow.
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: And I bet he's on the public or maybe they
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: could wait 10 minutes. In this case, he was 35
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: yards inside the private. Yeah, but like Brody said, this
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: is just like a familiar story. If you hunt in
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: the West, you're used to being around unmarked boundaries. You're
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: used to being around convenient fencing where the property line
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: actually cuts across like a steep bank, but they move
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: the fence 50 yards one direction or the other. And
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: then that becomes like an unofficial property line, it's just
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: something that like you're always dealing with these legal boundaries
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: and it's a frustrating and like scary part of hunting
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: within the margins.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: I'm constantly doubting where I'm standing versus what Onyx is
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: telling me. And it like Onyx is probably dead nuts, right?
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: But 30 yards, man, that's just like.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: You're right. The whole thing's painful. I applaud is not
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: the right word because applause is not the right word.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I understand, um, and would have no hesitation to do
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: a hunt where you were accessing landlocked public land with
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: a helicopter. Um, part of my comfort with it, right.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: is that I do a lot of hunting in Alaska
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: where you use fixed wing aircraft to access stuff. And
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: when you're flying along in fixed wing aircraft, you're often
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: flying over land you're not allowed to hunt, right? Flying
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: over native corporation land, whatever, and you land somewhere and
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: you hunt and you don't even think about it. I
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: think it seems surprising down here because it's just a
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: thing that people hadn't thought of before. It's this new
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: idea that you do something so sort of extravagant and
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: expensive as hire, in this case, rotary wing aircraft, which
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: I'll point out would be illegal to do in Alaska
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: because you have to use fixed wing aircraft for hunting
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: in Alaska.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: I didn't know that detail.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: In Alaska, you can't do nothing around hunting with a helicopter.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: You can't supply a hunting camp with a helicopter in Alaska.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: only fixed wing.
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: Is that something you ever hear about them talking to change,
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: or is that just part of the culture?
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: No, because think about what it would mean for doll sheep.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Think about what it would mean for everything. You can
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: just land on anything.
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: I assume they just loved airplanes up there. No, no, no.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Picture what it would mean.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: I get it.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: You find a bull. You find a bull moose. You're
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: just going to land on it. You find a doll sheep.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: You're going to land on it. There's no more hiking
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: from the valley floor up to the top. You land
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: at the top. it'd be, I don't want to be
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: hyperbolic again and say that it would be the death
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: of big game hunting in Alaska, but it would have enormous,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: enormous implications.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Even with fixed wings, they bake that day delay in
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: because you can still land in the path of a
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: caribou migration, right? So at least you give them a
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: day buffer.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: But yeah, wildlife resources in Alaska are often protected by
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: the fact that you can't get a boat near it
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: and there's not an airstrip near it. There's not a
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: road near it. The minute you can just hop out
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: of a helicopter on some marshland and chase a bull, it's,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say it's done, but it's done.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: People are always debating about like this and that thing
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: killed Alaska.
• 46:08
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: You'd have a whole new, better argument about the helicopters
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: killed Alaska. So, and that way, because I have like
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: many decades of experience hunting in Alaska under those circumstances,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the helicopter thing, I look at it, there's like an
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: instinctive ickiness. to helicopters because I have the Alaska parallel
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: in my head. However, I don't view it as wrong
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: at all to use a helicopter to go hunt some
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: land like public land. At all.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: Wrong.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: There's no question about it. The point I would bring
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: up is if you are in a situation where you
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: are showcasing the You're making a point about public-private boundaries.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: You're making a point about access. You're making a point
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: about landowner-hunter relationships. You're selling your editors not on, hey,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: I want to go get a big bull real easy.
• 47:20
  Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Me and my buddies want an easy two, three day
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: hunt where we all get bulls. You're going to your
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: editor and you're saying, oh, we're going to do this
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: whole showcase project and talk about land borders. It just seems,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: and this is so obvious, but it just seems you
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: would be behaving in a way where you were bulletproof.
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: You wouldn't give yourself a 35 yard potential stake.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: My kid has found Not found. My daughter has the
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: lawn mower around it. There's a giant buck in my neighborhood.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: It scared the shit out of me the other day.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: There's a giant buck. Not giant, but a big buck.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Like drop tines. Oh, he's a giant. He's a giant buck.
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: Does he actually have a drop tine?
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: One and a half of them, dude. Oh. A big
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: drop tine whitetail that you got to mow around.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: You know what they say? He's going to die old age.
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: He's either going to die old age or get hit
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: by a car.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: I know where he's going to die. Yeah. I can
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: tell you within 200 yards of where I'll find him
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: someday headless on the road. Because he just, he's doomed.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: But my kid has baked up these various plans, you know,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: not even seriously, but he's just, he's mused about these
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: various plans. And I have explained to him, should that
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: buck leave and go, like if on its route, it
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: winds up out of city limits, you know, which is uncertain.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: And if you look at that area, I'm like, you'd
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: have to get permission from a lot of people. Because
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: where you put the arrow into it isn't where it ends.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: As evidenced by a fact that a deer he got
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: just recently with his bow was 130 yards from where
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: the arrow hit it when we found it. And I'm
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: trying to invite him to go like, let's go look
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: at what 130 yards looks like. yeah oh that's not
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the neighbor in some cases that's not the neighbor's neighbor
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: yeah all right so if your whole thing is that
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you're doing a thing about land borders and all that
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: why are you messing around within 30 yards of an
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: animal that if you've hunted it a bunch, can really,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: really take a hit.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: And it's 160 acres, right? So 400 by 400 yards, right?
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: Quarter mile. The thing's not going to be in there forever, right?
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: And you know they can take a hit. Yep.
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: And the thing you're talking about of making this content
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: around the idea of this is how difficult it can
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: be to access 16 million of our acres. It involved
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: outdoor life. It involved outdoor lives like social media, their
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: publishing team, their video team. It involved David Fabian, who
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: works for a totally different outdoor company, Guns and Ammo.
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: So there's just like a lot of parties involved in
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: making this thing just to show folks how big it was.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and to be clear, I've got friends that have
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: had this problem happen. The fact that I haven't had
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: this happen to me is just that I've just been
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: lucky at times. I've played the fence game. You know
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: what I mean? Oh, just jump the fence over on
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: the place we're allowed to hunt. Get it! I'm just
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: lucky that I haven't had this happen. So it's not
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: passing judgment that it happened. If I had a buddy
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: that had that happen to him, I would give it
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: as much thought as it takes to go like, that's
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: really too bad. You should be more careful next time.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: And they'd be like, yeah, no kidding. But just The
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: point of what you're doing is that it just seems
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: like you would have been so careful. So careful.
• 51:21
  Speaker 6: Wasn't there already a question about the legality of the
• 51:24
  Speaker 6: helicopter involvement? Like if he was packing them in and
• 51:27
  Speaker 6: he needed a guiding license?
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing. Spencer might be able to speak
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: to this better, but that is a.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Thing that people are poking at legally now and i
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: think guides and outfitters association in wyoming perhaps is looking
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: at this is when what is a helicopter operator becoming
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: a outfitter i would also but then i would ask
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: this question if i take an uber out to my
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: hunting spots is the uber guy in trouble right of
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: course not if i said no i ubered out to
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: my buddy's farm and hunted No one would ever say,
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: let's check with that Uber operator, make sure he's a
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: licensed outfitter. It's like, come on.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: David, who did most of the hunt planning here, he
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: put the screws to like the planning portion of this.
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: And that was something that he cleared with Wyoming officials
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: ahead of time. Like we're good to do this right.
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: And this guy's going to be okay. And so they
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: were confident going in that like everything involving the helicopter
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: itself was totally kosher.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you one thing that could have happened also.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: And again, like I don't want these guys to think
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: I'm passing judgment, but there could have been a situation
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: where they notified, like obviously the landowner is going to
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: see that helicopter, but months before the hunt, they could
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: have been like, look, we're doing this just so you know,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: we're going in there. And perhaps some of that tension
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: would have been mitigated as it happened.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think there, yeah. That would have been, in hindsight,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: maybe a nice move. And I don't think there's any
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: way on earth There's no way on earth that McKean
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, I know it's on private, but I'm
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: just going to try my luck and drag it down.
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: There's no way he made a mistake.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: He made a mistake. There's no way I think that
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: he thought I'll just be clever and drag it out
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: of the way.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: It was a mistake. It was a mistake. And his
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: apology is, like I said, it is a full apology. Yeah.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: There is no, well, you know, damn it. they should
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: have moved the, you know, or someone should have put
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: that marker more clear. You know what I mean? He
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: didn't in any way try to put it off on somebody.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I wonder if it's a little bit of the,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: who says it, the Durkin that big bucks make people stupid.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: Maybe that bull made them stupid for a minute, you know?
• 53:52
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: And like, like a lot of haunts in those final moments,
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: it happens fast. Like McKean delivers the message to camera
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: about like, we kind of got a tippy toe because of,
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: some of the boundaries and then all of a sudden
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: the bowl is moving and McKean is moving and like
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: the shot happens and the whole thing, I don't know
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: the real time of it, but you would figure just
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: a couple of minutes to like make all of those calls.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: And I'm sure they were obviously aware when it happened
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: and like, oh, this could be close.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The sad part too is that the point they were,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: not sad part, a reality, Happy or sad, I'm not
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: going to weigh in on that. The reality is the
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: point they were trying to make in the end, they
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: obviously only resulted in them creating more of a question
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: around ethics and conflict, right? It didn't clarify anything. It's
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: like you went to access some inaccessible public land and
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: stirred some serious shit up.
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: And cause people to have opinions about it that probably
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: didn't have opinions about it before. Yeah.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: And a state where the whole corner crossing thing kind
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: of just got settled. And now there's this issue to
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: deal with.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: You know, what's funny about stuff like that is the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: other day, I mentioned this before, but the other day
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: we had a bear in our garage messing all around.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to get him out of there. And I'm
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: thinking in my head, I told my neighbors. I was like,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: if I wasn't me, I would have shot it. But like,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: I can't do that.
• 55:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: The stakes are different.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Because someone's going to be like, well, he had this
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: and that and he attracted some of his compost pile
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: and he had a, they were cleaning grouse and da, da, da.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? So I'm like, I can't
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: shoot it, but I would have shot it.
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah. This isn't a lesson. It's just like an observation,
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: the whole thing. But imagine if all of this would
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: have went down with no cameras. like the rancher, he
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: wouldn't have been charged with anything because that would have
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: been a totally different story being told by the hunters
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: about like what happened. And it's, you know, there's just
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: no proof. And obviously McKean would have been seen shooting
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: 35 yards inside of the boundary. It's just like, if
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: that wasn't part of this whole thing, we wouldn't know
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: any of this story at all. Nobody would have a charge.
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: I don't, there's no lesson there. It's just like 2025.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I wonder what, the pilot if the pilot is interested
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: in taking another call from another potential client or if
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: the pilot is like man.
• 56:31
  Speaker 8: Y'all y'all got too much heat well the fact that
• 56:35
  Speaker 8: i like it took them 27 tries so i think
• 56:39
  Speaker 8: there must be a lot of helicopter pilots in wyoming
• 56:42
  Speaker 8: that are like you know i live in this town
• 56:45
  Speaker 8: yeah I don't want to deal with that.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, yeah, I'm going to stick to the
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: flight scene and all that kind of stuff.
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: But then Pilot 27 is like, I don't know, a
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: four-minute ride.
• 56:53
  Speaker 5: For $ 2, 000 a person? $ 2, 000 a person for four minutes?
• 56:57
  Speaker 5: That's a lot of money.
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: It feels like this is wrapped up now. I think
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: this is the conclusion of it all, which obviously none
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: of them wanted. But it's been playing out for nine months,
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: and it feels like it's come to an end.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: I respect that... I respect stepping away as a hunting instructor.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: But I also think that there'd be room to... There'd
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: be room to just be a hunting instructor who's a
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: real guy that made a mistake.
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and be like, let me tell you about this, kids.
• 57:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he could teach kids about that mistake.
• 57:40
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm always talking about all the
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: rules we broke as kids, man. Like, I don't know.
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: No cameras.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm telling about, I mean, I've written about them. Like,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: we broke rules that we didn't even, we didn't feel
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: like breaking them because we didn't know that they were,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of times, didn't know they were rules. I
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: Huh.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: What do you got, Seth? That's he. Yeah, what, yeah,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: this burns, this, this, this burns my ass.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: Um, so the Etsy, the Etsy, uh, fly. So it's not,
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: it's not a fly ban. It's a fur ban. People
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: are using fur to tie flies.
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: Um, so Etsy has started deactivating listings that contain animal products.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: As of August 11th, 2026, Etsy updated its animal products
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: policy to no longer allow items made with real animal
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: fur and clear, including common fly tying material, such as mink, fox, rabbit, badger.
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: Coyote, raccoon.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: So I looked at the Etsy animal products policy and
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: it says, note, this policy was updated on August 11th, 2026,
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: right at the top. And then, so the first thing
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: you see is like endangered, threatened and at risk wildlife products, which.
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: Is like, a no brainer.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's table stakes. It's like, no, no kidding. Yeah.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: Um, and it goes on to say like, you know,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: an important part of creating a sustainable future, protecting wildlife
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: from extinction, uh, yada, yada, basically saying you can't sell
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: anything that has anything to do with like CITES animals
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: and stuff like Endangered Species Act animals.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: As it should. As it should.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: And it lists, there's a big list of animals, bats, bears, chinchillas, corals, crocodilians, elephants,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: you know, all the things. Pangolas or pangolins.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: And then I.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Don't know the old, I couldn't find the old, like, policy,
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: but there's a part at the end that says animal
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: fur products. It says, in addition to prohibiting products made
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: from endangered and threatened species, Etsy prohibits products made from
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: containing natural animal fur, regardless of age or origin. This
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: includes products like raw pelts, finished garments, accessories, and personal
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: care items made with real fur from animals such as mink, fox, rabbit, badger, coyote,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: and raccoon dog. This does not include taxidermy byproduct materials
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: such as leather, sheepskin, shearling, cowhide, wool, or mohair, or
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: fur products from sellers registered with the Indian Arts and
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: Crafts Board.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's an interesting distinction. Yeah.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: So I got to doing some digging around, and there's
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: an organization called CAFT, the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: They conducted a 58-day protest campaign across 17 cities that
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: targeted Etsy headquarters.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 5: Board members, and affiliates.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: And the chicken shits caved. Yeah.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: This ban was announced after CAFT confronted the Etsy CEO
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: at a Morgan Stanley investor conference saying that they continue
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: or that they are continuing to profit off the bloody
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: fur trade in front of.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: Investors, investors.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: So I went on Etsy to just look to see
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: what's still there. And there are like, what, like, Clouser
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: minnows that have, like, deer hair and stuff still on there.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's, like, you know, stuff that
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: they haven't... I was looking at descriptions, too, and it
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: doesn't say, like, you know, deer hair or anything like that.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: But there's still products on there that are made from,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: you know, animal products, but it's probably just stuff that
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: hasn't been flagged.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: But we had a guy write in.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: But a guy wrote in that ties flies and sells
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: them on there and said that a lot of his listings.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: have been removed.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: What were some examples of flies that he's had removed? Um,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: It just said there was a screenshot of, you know,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: Etsy emailing him just saying like, your listing has been removed.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: Um, it didn't say, he.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 6: Mentioned that it's just, if you're, if you mentioned the
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 6: animal fur in it, so elk hair cats, like, or muskrat, whatever.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: And so him and a lot of his, his peers
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 6: are just changing the descriptions that hopefully the AI overlords
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 6: don't catch it.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: I did find, I did find on there, um, pheasant tails,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: like the fly pheasant tail. Um, and that was in
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: the description and that was still up. So I don't,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's feather, not fur.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: Feather. But, but still, I don't, yeah. I don't know
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 5: where they draw the line.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I can't believe they would cave to something
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Now, here's the other catch. Are they allowing people to sell?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Can you still buy beaver wool felt cowboy hats?
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: As far as I know, I don't think.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, dude.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 8: Really?
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 6: I got a whole ton of listings for them.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: I guess so. But you can't buy a beaver fur hat,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: but you can buy a beaver felt hat. it's okay
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: if you take the fur and turn it to felt.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there's all, I'm sure you could find, you'd
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: go on there and just start looking around and find
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: all sorts of examples like that.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: They also don't have a problem with like domestic animal products.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: Like they sell leather shoes and they sell jerky.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: And like, it's like, why?
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: I think it's just something that they, they got a
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: lot of heat and pressure from this, this organization. They
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: got called out in front of board members and investors
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: and whatnot. And they're just trying to do something to
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: shut them up.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: And they capitulated. I bet you can buy Michael Jackson
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: memorabilia on there.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: Probably.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Why is that okay?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: That's the thing I wonder about all the time. Why
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: is it okay to sell Michael Jackson memorabilia but not
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: a beaver fur hat?
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Someone needs to make... I'll never do this, so I'm
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: going to throw out a great idea for listeners. Someone
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: needs to make a fake movie trailer. Okay? And it's like,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: from the producers of Michael comes Jeffrey. And it tells
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: the story of Epstein. Rags to riches, but it just
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: ends with him kicking it on an island.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like he's made it.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like he's made it. And it's like, I had
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: my struggles, but by God, now I'm a billionaire.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: And they leave out all the bad stuff.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: And then it just ends.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: It'd be really funny. If I had time and expertise,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: I would make this fake trailer. But it'd be... I
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: would just mimic the Michael trailer, but make it the Epstein... No, Jeffrey.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: The movie Jeffrey. And it would just end with him
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: being like, I've arrived.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: Sell it on Etsy.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I could sell my movie on Etsy.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 6: Man, we covered this when they originally just banned fur
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: like pelts.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: And.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 6: It's just, hey, all the fly fishermen, man. That's why
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: you should have cared then.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's a squeaky wheel thing. When they were
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: trying to plot, when they were plotting that fur sale
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: ban for Colorado just recently, they knew. They're like the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: pushback from cowboy hat people. So like the pushback from tourists,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: the people that sell to tourists, and the pushback from
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: fly fishermen, they like that pushback is gonna sink this initiative.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they carved out exceptions.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: So they said, oh, if you wanna tie flies with
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: beaver fur, cool. If you wanna sell cowboy hats made
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: from beaver fur, cool. But the rest of all y'all
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: are out. And they anticipated the pushback. Cause like there's
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: a specialness about a fly guy, right? They're like, we
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: don't wanna mess with the fly fishermen. Because that's kind
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: of like a certain class of individual that we don't
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: want to tangle with. But these lower class ultra rednecks
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: who would run around in a fur hat, screw those guys.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: But here, Etsy, they didn't take that approach. They didn't say,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: tourist shops selling cowboy hats, you're cool. Fly fishermen, you're cool.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: And now maybe they'll get the ire of the fly fishermen.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: And it will cause them to revisit. I don't know.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: In writing the intro for the show, Steve declared that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: they were the devil. And then he immediately backed off
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: and said, well, maybe that was hyperbolic. So where do
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: you land now? Are they still the devil? Are they
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: not the devil?
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's terrible that you would cave to something
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: like that. And it's especially terrible that you would equate
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: that you would even equate the contemporary market for fur
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: products with some kind of like biodiversity campaign or some
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: kind of sustainability campaign. When we are talking about an
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: industry that is tightly regulated, it's, we're talking about animals
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: that are IUCN species of least concern. The, the wild
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: west days of, of the fur trade, imperiling wildlife species are,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Which was absolutely the reality a long time ago. In fact,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: I've spent many, many, many days and hours making products,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: our Meat Eaters American History series, chronicling the destruction of
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: the fur trade. I'm not whitewashing it. But those days
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: aren't just done, they've been done. Those days are done.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: It is a tightly, tightly regulated industry that has... basically
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: zero ecological impact and there is no questions of sustainability
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: around regulated fur bears in this country there just isn't
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: it's like you're making an issue where there isn't one
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: and you're catering to people that are just making like
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: an emotional plea and it opens you up to all
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: the hypocrisy about the things that you therefore think are
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: okay to.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: Sell so verdict is that they are a demon etsy
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: they're not going to sponsor this show anytime soon if
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: they come.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I don't anticipate i don't anticipate i think we'll pass
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: on that i don't anticipate them sponsoring the show i
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: don't run around calling things like the devil and stuff
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: like that so it's a little it's a little unusual
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: for me i would i would say that that what
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: they're doing is short-sighted and terrible and really opens them
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: up to some amazing like like incredible hypocrisies that if
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: they are morally if they are deciding that they're morally
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: policing all of the things sold on etsy it makes
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: me very curious what kinds of things are sold on
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: etsy and then i must assume that the owners and
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: investors and managers at etsy are morally okay with those products.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah here's a valentine's beef jerky flower bouquet for him.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: For him all right man sam forest eggs here what's
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: going on.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 7: Not too much i'll tell you i was Stopping by
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 7: UM not too long ago, and I think there's lots
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 7: of students showing up after getting sprayed by a skunk.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: You were getting that vibe down there? Some that got
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: sprayed by patchouli and some got sprayed by skunks.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 7: Well, I said that as a proud grist. Steve, thanks
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 7: for having me again, man.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: I was so excited to see you. Before you came on,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: you came on before and it was the primary season.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: So tell everybody about what happened there.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 7: Well, I mean, I'm running for Congress in the first district,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 7: the western third of the state, and we had a
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 7: crowded primary.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Four people running.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 7: One fellow was the former Democratic nominee for governor, and
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 7: we ended up pulling it out by just shy of
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 7: five points. So, pretty good margin.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, we were talking about this yesterday. In politics today,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: that's a margin. Yeah.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 7: And I'll tell you, the last poll before that had
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 7: me at 13%, and one of these fellows at 35%.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: You're kidding.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 7: So, it was an exercise in what's possible when you
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 7: get people excited, and Frankly, people are excited to just
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 7: have a normal working person running for Congress because you
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 7: don't see that very often nowadays.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: When you look at those polls, and I'm sure you, well,
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: let me ask you, do you obsess over them or
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: you just kind of run your campaign?
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 7: No, I don't. I mean, I got deep, deep frustrations
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 7: with the way polling works in this country. And I mean,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 7: you look at the way some politicians talk and it's
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 7: probably a string of 20 words that all poll tested
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 7: really well. And when you put them together, it sounds
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 7: like mush. And they end up saying things like public
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 7: lands and public hands. And what does that actually mean? Well,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 7: it doesn't mean much the way they're legislating right now.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Got it. So when you say you're skeptical of polls,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: because a lot of polls people cite, they're generating their
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: own polls. And I noticed a thing lately that seems
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: like people in the political sphere are doing, maybe you
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: can comment on this, is they're running polls and then
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: campaigning off polls that they make.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: It's weirdly deceptive.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 7: It is, it is. I mean, I'll tell you, as
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 7: far as polls go, The polling in this race right
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 7: now has a set of dead heat for what it's worth.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 7: We're at 44-44 right now with the other fellow in
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 7: this race. But more than that, it's, I mean, what
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 7: I'm seeing on the ground, you know, last three days
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 7: we had about eight campaign events. Labor Day is big.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 7: I mean, I was vice president. My union's local. And
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 7: we got crowds as big as 200 showing up in
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: places like Whitefish. And really the thing I'm most excited
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 7: about in this campaign, I don't know if you've seen it,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 7: we just had a former Republican governor endorse the campaign
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 7: in five Republican legislators, and we're doing these civil discourse
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 7: town halls across the district too, where I co-host it
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 7: with one of the Republican legislators. And we talk about
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 7: the fact that kind of what we mentioned last time,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 7: you know, me and Brian Putnam and Columbia Falls, we
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 7: don't agree on everything, but we agree on the basics.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 7: We agree you should be able to work one good
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 7: job and get by in that. And there's nothing conservative
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 7: about going into $ 40 trillion of debt, for example. And
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 7: those are actually the most exciting part of a campaign
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 7: to me. Like civil discourse ain't sexy, but it seems
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 7: just as important as any particular policy we're fighting for.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: That's what I find. Some of the old definitions maybe
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: that I was raised on, the old definitions about what
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: conservatism meant, what liberalism meant, it's muddy.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: It's become very muddy.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 7: Conservatism was supposed to be, as I understand it, about
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 7: standing up for our basic constitutional freedoms.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 7: About the fact that government should have no business dictating
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 7: your private personal decisions.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 7: I don't see a lot of that right now in
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 7: the way the show is being run. And as far
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 7: as I'm concerned, government's got no business telling you whether
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 7: you can own guns or telling you how to make
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 7: a decision with your doctor. And government's got big jobs
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 7: it should be doing, which I would offer is making
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 7: sure you can meet your basic material needs when the
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 7: market's not meeting them and it's failing at those ones.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 7: So let's just get back to the basics here and
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 7: talk about the fact that, you know, Debbie at King
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 7: Arthur Mobile Home Park, just outside of town here, well,
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 7: Debbie's place was bought up by another private equity firm.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 7: And she's watched her lot rent double in the last
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 7: five years and she's got nowhere to go. That's the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 7: role of government I'd offer is making sure that we
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 7: don't have elderly folks getting forced out onto the streets
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 7: in a place like Bozeman. Um, not as, you know,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 7: wasting its time trying to insert itself into private decisions where, well,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 7: they got no role in where I don't want a
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 7: politician having any say in how I, how I live
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 7: my life.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: How do you feel that the, the, the time you
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: spent talking about public lands issues and when we, Well,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: let me back up a little because when you came
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: on before, we talked a lot about what went on
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: with land management agencies and what's going on with land
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: management agencies in terms of funding, in terms of staffing
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: public land management issues, in terms of the doge, what
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: turned into sort of a doge debacle around public lands management.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: When you talk about these issues, how is it? how
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: do you feel it's generally received by people? Because a
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: lot of it's kind of, you know, the term wonky, like,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: like a lot of it's very policy specific. Does, does
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: your message about public lands and public lands management, does
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: it resonate with people or are people, or do people
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: have that way low in their priority list around the state?
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Do you follow me? I do.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 7: I think in Montana, this is pretty high on people's priorities. Oh,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 7: And the thing I get the most is surprise. I mean, I,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 7: you know, I worked as a smokejumper till eight months ago.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 7: People are pretty surprised to learn that a smokejumper makes
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 7: 15 bucks an hour. Your rookie year.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: Is that what it is? Yeah.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 7: People are surprised that, you know, when they fired 360
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 7: Montanans in the forest service, 85% of them were making
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 7: 1970 an hour or less. Um, this is not the
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 7: way that any of these cuts or that our public
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 7: lands agencies are really being talked about is, you know,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 7: the fact that, well, our public lands are more than
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 7: a bunch of lines on a map. It's a lot
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 7: of people busting tail. To actually maintain them and make
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 7: sure you can make it up a road to a
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 7: trailhead or up a trail to actually access that forest. Um,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 7: and the, those people, often the lowest paid ones are
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 7: the ones who've been taking the brunt of these cuts,
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 7: these reorganizations. You know, I could go on all day
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 7: about the fact that there are big inefficiencies in the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 7: federal government. Like the fact that, you know, job postings
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 7: just closed three weeks ago for a firefighter position or
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 7: a forestry tech that's going to be starting this coming May.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 7: That is inefficient. The inefficiencies are not, the GS2s we
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 7: saw get fired last year making 11 bucks an hour.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 7: That's actually I would offer maybe inhumanely efficient if you're
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 7: living in a place like Missoula.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What's it been like on the, what's it like
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: doing what you're doing? I mean, you're 35 years old, right? 32,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: but my knees are in their 40s. So if I
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: calculate your actual age and your knee age, I'm about right.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: 32 years old.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 7: That's the mean.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, you had, you had no
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: idea this was going to happen.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 7: No idea you're going to be in this situation. I
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 7: thought I jumped till 57, till mandatory retirement.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, so here you are, lay out like what life, um,
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: what is life like on the campaign trail now?
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 5: It makes fire season look easy.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 7: I mean, fire season was when I started two weeks on,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 7: two days off, um, day off every two or three weeks.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 7: But it's also getting to hear people's, I mean, most
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 7: inspiring and vulnerable and terrible stories because a lot of
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 7: people just want to be heard. And I mean, we're
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 7: in a state right now where our congressperson, this seat
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 7: has not had a town hall in more than three years.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 7: So people quite literally are not being heard and people
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 7: have big problems. I mean, it's, it's heartbreaking. You know,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 7: I was sitting down with Debbie, the end of that conversation,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 7: she said, Sam, when I was your age, if old
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 7: people had to live like this, I would be so angry.
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 7: And we should be so angry. Um, and we shouldn't
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 7: just leave it at being angry because it feels like
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 7: everybody's angry on social media and screaming into their cell
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 7: phone screen about everything that's wrong and complaining never solved
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 7: a damn thing. Like we actually, it's our turn to
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 7: step up and do something about it and stand up
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 7: for our neighbors.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: That's one of the things I've liked about watching you
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: do what you've been doing is that you just like
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: talk like a, you talk like a person. Do you
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: know what I'm saying?
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 7: It's not kind of dumb, that's what you're saying.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. You just talk like a person who
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: is sharing their thoughts, right? And just, and not so
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: worried about being so damn safe. Yeah. Which really starts
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: to drive me crazy.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 7: Well, I mean, if I had to define what like
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 7: modern politics feels like, it feels like, can I curse
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 7: on it? It feels like everybody's BSing us.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 7: Like if, especially the highest levels of office, like whatever
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 7: side you look at, they're just walking the line of
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 7: whatever's poll tested.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 7: And then, and then it's no surprise when people get
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 7: elected and nothing changes.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 7: And if it does, it often is not changing for
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 7: the better, right? Like we're in a country where half of, America,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 7: half of Americans are making less than their parents were
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 7: making at our age. Those are the kinds of changes
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 7: we're actually seeing or on public lands, right? Since we
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 7: spoke last, it's not just the cuts. It's not just
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 7: the people being fired. Well, we've seen 3 million acres
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 7: of protections rolled back down at Bears Ears and Grand Escalante.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 7: In Alaska, you saw 5 million acres rolled back where
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 7: they're selling off for oil leasing now. And it's not
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 7: just the fact that they're rolling these back in a
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 7: place like Alaska or Minnesota. They're selling it off at
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 7: a discount. I mean, they slashed leasing fees, royalty rates,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 7: by half. Back in, back, what, two Februaries ago, they're
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 7: running our public lands agencies like a private equity firm.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 7: It's just like those mobile home parks, 4,000 of which
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 7: are now owned by private equity in Montana. And that
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 7: is why you're seeing the rents double. I mean, the
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 7: bunkhouse that I spent my seasons two through four working
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 7: wild and fire on, It's up in the Swan Valley
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 7: in Condon, Montana. They are selling off those bunkhouses. And
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 7: what I would offer is the most beautiful piece of
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 7: property in the Swan. I mean, you got a view
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 7: of Condon Peak and the Swan Mountains to the east.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 7: There's an airstrip across the way. They're selling that off.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 7: And the people on that hand crew, well, they're probably
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 7: living in the back of their trucks. And if there
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 7: are bunkhouses, they're leasing them up in Big Fork. We're
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 7: selling off properties across board at our public lands agencies
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 7: and then leasing those properties because it's cheaper in the
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 7: short term but then we all end up paying so
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 7: much more yeah for so much less in the long term.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: The i've been i've been outspoken about this people within
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: the uh our organization have been outspoken about the roadless
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: rule rollback yeah um and the thing that's frustrating me
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: about it is i find this is going to be
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: kind of in your in particularly in your wheelhouse is
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: i find that people that are advocating on stripping the role,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: this rule away and opening up a lot of these
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: areas to industrial development of various sorts tend to be
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: a little less than honest about what the primary motivation is.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: And they cite motivations that are sort of what I
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: would regard them to be side benefits, fringe benefits, but
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: they cite it as the main issue. So people, they're like,
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: we need to roll. We need to roll back the role,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: this rule. And open these lands up because of wildfires.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: And I'm just like, dude, please stop acting like that
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: is the main thing you're interested in is wildfire. You
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: have a career in wildfire. When they're saying that, how
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: real is that? When they're citing that that is the motivation,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: is fire prevention.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 7: Oh, it's an absolute red herring. I mean, 90% of
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 7: fires that we see started are within, well, pretty damn
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 7: close to a road. So we punch roads back 20
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 7: miles further in. Well, that's just more fires. Most wildfires
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 7: are human caused in the west nowadays. Um, and I mean, yeah,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 7: the real reason is development, but I would offer, there
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 7: are places where reopening roads makes sense. Um, uh, going
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 7: with a broad brush and rolling back the roadless rule
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 7: does not make sense. And when I go talk to
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 7: loggers too, or when I go to the mill and
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 7: deer lodge a few weeks ago and take a tour.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 7: I mean, there are big problems we need to solve
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 7: so that we aren't left with zero milling capacity in
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 7: the state of Montana. The problem is not the roadless rule.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 7: And they have enough time staying in the black, trying
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 7: to get a timber contract in the front country, let
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 7: alone trying to go 10 or 15 miles back. Like
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 7: this is not going to be helpful for our sawmills,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 7: six of which are left in a state that used
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 7: to have 50.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 7: Um, what this is, is people who are running the
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 7: show and do not actually understand how this works on
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 7: the ground.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: We have, we have thousands and thousands of square miles
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: of roaded country that is not being properly timberly, that
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: does not have proper timber management on it anyway. Oh yeah.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 7: We got a six to $ 8 billion backlog of road
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 7: maintenance in the forest service. And I mean, if we
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 7: got six to $ 8 billion to drop that I didn't
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 7: know about, well, I, I would love to see it.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: And that's maintenance for roads that are there. Yeah.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 7: The ones that are currently open.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 7: And I, I mean, again, like we, We are way
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 7: behind on our forest management, right? We have a backlog
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 7: because of excessive fire suppression in part of fuel that
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 7: needs burned. I mean, you know this, right? There's certain
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 7: timber models that should be burning every 15 to 20
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 7: years and haven't burned in 50 plus. Lodgepole pine can't
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 7: reproduce without exposure to fire. The answer is not rolling
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 7: back the roadless rule. The answer is not these categorical
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 7: exclusions where you completely sweep away environmental protections. It's making
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 7: sure that you can get a timber contract and a
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 7: year if it's challenged in court, not in six years.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 7: It's actually fully investing in the public servants to do
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 7: that work. Because what we saw last year is you
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 7: fire all the NEPA planners, you fire the soil scientists,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 7: you fire the people who do the science when you're
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 7: trying to get an environmental impact statement. And then the
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 7: plans you produce actually do not pass muster. And so
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 7: it takes longer and longer in court. And when I
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 7: sit down with a logger, they tell me these cuts
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 7: in the last year and a half have been terrible
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 7: for the timber industry because they're having a harder time
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 7: actually getting a contract through in public and federal public lands. Um, and,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 7: and I'd say that too. I mean, like wildfire always
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 7: gets used as this excuse for these rollbacks.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, always. It drives me a little bit bananas, man.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 7: And the reason we need logging in this state responsible
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 7: timber harvest is not wildfire. Like logging is not the
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 7: answer to the wildfire crisis. The reason we need it
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 7: is because we build homes with wood. Let's be honest
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 7: about that. And wildfire, if we want to get ahead
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 7: of a wildfire crisis, well, maybe there's a, there's a
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 7: 10 to 20% role with responsible timber harvest in the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 7: front country. The real answer is investing in fire mitigation
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 7: and fuels reduction work and putting healthy fire on the landscape.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 7: And that's the sort of thing that you're not going
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 7: to have a profit margin on. It's the sort of
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 7: thing that you need to hire fuels crews and the
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 7: sort of people they fired last year. And the example
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 7: I give people is we had a fire last year
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 7: outside of Helmville. They called it the Windy Rock Fire.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 7: It was 2,000 acres, and Helmville is not the most
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 7: populous corner of Montana. That 2,000-acre fire cost the state
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 7: of Montana $ 56 million.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 7: 56 million bucks by my napkin math, you could pay
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 7: 2000 people, 20 bucks an hour, 365 days a year
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 7: to stomp around the woods with a chainsaw and actually
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 7: actively manage our forests. And we don't pay our fuels
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 7: for 20 bucks an hour. Like that is the investment
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 7: you can make to actually save a whole bunch of
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 7: money on the backend and to start getting ahead of
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 7: this thing. And that would save us money or leave
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 7: more money in the state of Montana and create good jobs.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 7: Cause we got these computers that can write their own
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 7: code or legal briefs. They cannot stomp around the woods
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 7: with a saw. And, you know, it wouldn't benefit someone
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 7: who maybe owns a wildland fire contracting company. You know,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 7: someone like Senator Tim Sheehy, who just saw his first
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 7: profit margin in the history of his company last year.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 7: But it would benefit us as taxpayers and it would
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 7: save us money and it would help us to actually
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 7: start managing our forests wisely and effectively.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: You know, when you, when you look back on, and
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: you've been vocal about this, when you look back on,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: some people saw it immediately. It took me a minute
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: to see, it took me a minute to realize what
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: some people saw instantly was how ham-handed the Doge process was.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: It was like, I don't know, man. I just kind
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: of weirdly for a minute tried to, I paused to
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: try to understand it, right? Because of course, like you said,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: inefficiency is bad. I paused and then kind of very
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: quickly like, oh no, no, this is totally ham-handed. especially
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: when I was talking, especially when I started, we kind
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: of interviewed a guy leaving the White River National Forest
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: about what he had to do according to Doge cuts
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: and just how much it set his agenda back, how
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: inefficient it was. It became clear it was just a debacle.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: And not only that, I think the greatest testament to
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: what a debacle it was, was that the people that
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: were doing it all fled DC.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They ran away. You know, is, do you see
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: in the, do you see, if you look forward, Do
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: you see that we'll gradually correct all that? Or did
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: things happen, even though it was sort of almost as
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: clearly as possible, it was declared a debacle? I mean,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: the formal understanding of what happened has become that it
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: was crazy. And there aren't that many people who would
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: argue otherwise.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah, they shut it down.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: And there aren't people going, there aren't people in the
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: political sphere today citing it as an accomplishment. It's, it's
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: either brushed under the, it's either brushed under the rug,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: nothing to see here, or people that are vocal point
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: out how stupid it was or how poor the execution
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: of the idea was. Do we gradually climb back out
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: of that? In particular, I'm not talking about, I'm talking
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: about the aspects of Doge that affected land management agencies
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: and public land management agencies. Do we climb out of
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: that or do you feel that there was a damage
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: done that'll never be corrected?
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 7: I think it's not a foregone conclusion, but I think
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 7: we can climb out of it. And I think we,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 7: and people who actually do this work on the ground
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 7: know where the investments would be to rebuild it in
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 7: a way that works. Cause I want to be clear.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 7: This shit was not working perfectly before Doge.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 7: I mean, I ended the 2024 fire season on a
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 7: fire in the middle of the three sisters wilderness where
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 7: we got a satellite call saying the forest service is
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 7: 20 million in the red. And so half of the
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 7: people on that fire are going to be out of
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 7: pay status the second you leave that fire. You're not
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 7: even going to have enough time to get paid to
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 7: go clean out your locker at the smoke jumper base. Um,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 7: we need to rebuild this thing in a way that
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 7: actually makes sense and does find efficiencies. And that means, well,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 7: it's largely the, the lower paid people in our lands,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 7: land management agencies. I think we should talk really openly
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 7: about the fact that we should have a big reinvestment,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 7: expansive investment in fuels mitigation.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 7: And walking around the front country, making sure you have
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 7: the people it takes to do a responsible prescribed fire
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 7: in the fall and the spring when it's safe to
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 7: do so. and actually clear out underbrush, that's gonna take
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 7: a lot of manpower and it's gonna cost a lot
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 7: of money, but it will save us so many hundreds
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 7: of millions of dollars on the backend. So we do
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 7: not have these mega fires like the ones I've been
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 7: on in the last eight years where I've been on
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 7: five fires that have all been the biggest fire in
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 7: that state's history just in the last five years. And
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 7: we all end up paying so much for it. I mean,
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 7: it's like it says in scripture, I promise you'll pay
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 7: every penny before you leave this place. We're paying every
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 7: penny right now. We're just paying it in a crisis
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 7: response mode of governance. And that's the least efficient way
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 7: to govern.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: I've talked to so many people, friends of mine that
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: work in different agencies that kind of impact the world that.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 7: We explore through this.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: Show and others. And so many of them are like, man,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: I would love to have a conversation about efficiency.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: And through my career, I've seen a lot of opportunities
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: to help with efficiency. But boy, did they get it wrong.
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: Again and again and again. It was having someone taking
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: a quick glimpse into a world that I understand really
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: well and declaring, oh, that should go and that should
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: go and that should go. And them sitting back saying, man,
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: did you miss the bullseye? You missed the target. When
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: they did that stuff, I.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 7: Think we need a real effort at government efficiency after
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 7: this a good faith effort Yeah, if you want to
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 7: tell people that this is still a country where we
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 7: can make big investments and solve big problems You need
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 7: to actually show folks that you're gonna be a good
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 7: steward of taxpayer dollars They don't use them efficiently and
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 7: we did this in the 90s last time we had
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 7: a balanced budget as a country and the Clinton administration
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 7: had a well a government efficiency effort and it worked
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 7: pretty darn well and Um, we should do that again. If,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 7: if we are able to gain power and win seats
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 7: like this, talk about how do we make sure that
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 7: the federal hiring process doesn't take nine months for a
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 7: GS four who makes 16 bucks an hour, because that's
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 7: so many man hours. That is so much lost talent.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 7: We return direct hire authority. That's one great example. How
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 7: do you make sure that a workman's comp claim for
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 7: a smoke jumper who breaks their back on a practice jump?
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 7: Like my good buddy did out of Grangeville does not
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 7: take 18 months to chase down. Because again, we are
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 7: all paying for the hundreds of man hours it takes
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 7: to chase that down for an obvious claim for somebody
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 7: who broke their back in the line of duty. Beyond that,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 7: I mean, I'll tell you, I was filling out, I
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 7: was looking at the federal job application three weeks ago,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 7: right before it closed. And we are adding questions like
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 7: this four question loyalty test. If you're filling out an
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 7: application for a GS4 Forester, someone who's just, there's going
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 7: to be timber crews and you got to answer a
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 7: question about what is, what are your favorite two executive orders?
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 7: And how will you in this job further the advancement
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 7: of that executive order? It's insanity.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 7: And I'll tell you what, I was a GS4 once.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 7: I would have had no business filling out an essay
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 7: question about my favorite executive order. Like I was drinking
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 7: monsters and wearing an American flag bandana. You want to
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 7: talk about losing good talent? Like we're doing reverse civil
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 7: service reform when we should actually be reforming how our
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 7: civil service works and having less of political appropriation. less
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 7: political appointees instead of expanding them. These are big efficiencies
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 7: that we could find. The same goes for forest management,
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 7: for making sure you can get a timber contract in
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 7: the front country. Yes, let's talk about that. And I
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 7: think the best ideas come from the people on the
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 7: ground doing the work.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: Here's a tough question for you. Let's say you get
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: sent to D, let's say the voters of Montana, the
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: voters of Western Montana send you to D.C. And how
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: do you, how do you save Like, how do you
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: salvage your purity?
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 7: Yeah, no, that's a real question.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: And how do you keep, how do you stay like, no,
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: I'm here to talk about the things we're talking about
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: right now. And there's going to be so much pressure
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: for you to take orders from someone who has a
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: high position in the party and they have the people
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: they're beholden to. And all of a sudden you want
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: to talk about You know, you're here to talk about fire,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: land management, affordability, working class people. And all of a
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: sudden you're just talking about something dumb that no one
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: in Montana asked you to go talk about. How do
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: you like, what are you going to do then? And
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: they want you to spend your time on dumb stuff.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 7: I'll tell you what helps is I've been to DC
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 7: twice and I think I'm going to hate it in
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 7: that town.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 7: And so I'm not going there for a good time
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 7: or a long time.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 7: Like I would love nothing better than to go win
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 7: this seat hold the people accountable who fired hundreds of
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 7: my coworkers and union members and turn people's lives upside down,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 7: working in Montana's lives upside down. Um, and make sure
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 7: that we still have a functioning forest service that I
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 7: can go back to in four years.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 7: I mean, I live right outside the smoke jumper base
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 7: in Missoula and I got to watch the jump plane
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 7: flying overhead and it kills me. I would love to
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 7: be there. I'd love to be in their boots right now. Um,
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 7: but yeah, after a year and a half of, of
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 7: what people went through, like, I mean, I had a
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 7: member Cara in the bitter national forest. She was 15
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 7: years into her service as a soil scientist. She got
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 7: the news on Valentine's Day two years ago that she
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 7: was losing her job.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: No notice.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 7: Not for performance because she took a lateral transfer that
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 7: year so that she could do more remote work while
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 7: she underwent chemotherapy. I got a guy in Ennis who
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 7: was a member. He got a text in line at
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 7: the airport to go to his grandmother's funeral saying that
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 7: he'd lost his job and he's already locked out of
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 7: his government devices. And he was only a GS-5 in
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 7: the first place. He's probably making 16 bucks an hour.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 7: And he was the guy he's the guy who's making
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 7: sure that your campgrounds are maintained. These people like we
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 7: deserve not just efficiency in our government, we actually deserve good,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 7: wise investment in our public lands. And frankly, the people
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 7: who bent the knee and voted for all this, when
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 7: we could have been the most powerful state in the country,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 7: there's a narrow majority in the House. And a person
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 7: who's a good representative in this seat should be standing
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 7: up to either party. when they're full of shit, which
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 7: comes from both parties. We didn't get that. And like, well,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 7: if they're going to come after my member's jobs, I'm
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 7: going to come and take his. And they need to
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 7: know there's a cost for this and that our democracy
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 7: still works. And frankly, they need to know that working
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 7: people can still actually attain these offices because that is
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 7: the most frustrating thing I see is you look at the, well,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 7: United States House of Representatives, the average member of Congress
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 7: is worth 4 million bucks depending on the day and
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 7: how good the stock market's doing.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: What are you worth right now? Me? I'm, well.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 7: I'm uninsured right now because I can't.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: Afford the damn health insurance. I've seen your place, man.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 7: I mean, I'm barely getting by like most people.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: I brought this up before, but this dude's got bookshelves
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: in his kitchen.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 7: Well, you never know when you need a good book.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: That's an endorsement.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: No, Joey, I don't mean to ask you what you're worth.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: That's part of what's drawn me. Part of what's drawn me.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: Personality matters to me. The way people talk matters to me.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: And also, man, this dude's a legit guy. that like
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: has just been around and seen stuff and got motivated
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: by what he's seen and motivated, just like motivated by
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: things that didn't work. And I don't know, man, like
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: want to like help. I like that stuff, man. Oh yeah.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Steve. It wasn't like a business. It's not
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: a business move. No, no. Yeah.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 7: I was just getting the first shred of financial security
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 7: that I'd ever had, frankly. Um, and my fourth year
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 7: of jumping, I mean, your first year of jumping, you're
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 7: a rookie. So, you know, it's not that fun because you're,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 7: you're taking all the shit and you're waking up early
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 7: for coffee and you're making extra food and all the rest.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 7: And your second year, you're snooking. It's not much better.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 7: And you know, your third, fourth year, it starts to
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 7: be more fun. You start to be more comfortable under
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 7: the parachute. And, um, frankly, I didn't have health insurance
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 7: or a retirement plan until my sixth year of fire.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 7: Like I was finally on that path. But if people
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 7: like us don't actually step up and run for office,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 7: then it's just these folks who are so disconnected that
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 7: are making all the decisions.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 7: And that's how we end up in this hole that
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 7: they're digging on both sides. And that's how they end
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 7: up talking about shit that, Nobody's actually talking about on
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 7: the ground here when you're just trying to meet your
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 7: basic needs.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: You see a lot of people enter politics that do it.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: It's like a thing they want to do kind of
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: before they retire.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: It's like a project they need to get taken care of.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 7: I made my millions.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: Sort of like to really fill out the old CV,
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: you know, and your legacy move. And so to see
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: someone come at it from the other end of the
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: career thing, And from such an unusual position.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 7: Well, yeah, I hope we can, I hope we can
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 7: save it. And I hope we can actually make the
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 7: kind of reforms that we're talking about and make sure
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 7: we don't, I mean, really lose what's left of the
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 7: forest service in this state. I mean, this is a state,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 7: we got the first smokejumper base in history, right?
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: In Missoula.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 7: Modern wildland firefighting largely began in Montana. Um, and we
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 7: got national forests at the beginning of last year that
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 7: were reduced to one trail crew member for the entire Bitterroot,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 7: for example. Um, And they're selling it all off at
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 7: a discount. So I, yeah, I feel hopeful right now
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 7: that we can make the sort of change we need
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 7: when I'm having those town halls with, with the Republican
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 7: legislator and people are showing up and saying that they
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 7: have either never been to a political event or that
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 7: they voted the other way last year. It makes me
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 7: feel hopeful. And, um, yeah, I, it sounds cliche, but like, truly,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 7: I don't feel like the problem is in one party
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 7: or the other part. The problem is, is in both parties.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 7: I mean, there are corporate. bought off politicians in both
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 7: parties at the highest levels right now, because that is
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 7: the way that our system has been designed. And the
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 7: only way we fix it is by actually stepping up
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 7: and making sure that working people who know what it's
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 7: like to be on the wrong end of this stuff
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 7: are in positions of authority to make decisions so we
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 7: can fight for ourselves.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: Well, keep being a person. Then maybe make a sign,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: Sam Forest Egg, a person. Well, I'm a person.
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 7: I'd be derelict in my duty to... I mean, if
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 7: anyone wants to look up any of the details too,
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 7: I mean, the website, samformontana.com, the most inspiring. thing is
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 7: we got many thousands of volunteers who got us through
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 7: that primary and who are helping us right now. Um,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 7: and I mean, we have something like 27,000 people who've
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 7: pitched into the campaign and it's, you know, it's people
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 7: pitching in 25 bucks cause that's what they can afford
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 7: or 50 bucks. So that's what most of my friends
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 7: can afford. And, um, That's the only way any of
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 7: this stuff works.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: All right. Well, thanks for coming on again. Thanks for
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: checking in.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 7: Thank you for having me.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: You got to make one promise though. If you win,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: you got to come back and do the final check-in. Oh,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: hell yeah. We talked to you pre, we talked to
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: you before the primary. We've talked to you after the primary.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: We got to do a final check-in.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 7: And we can do one more two years later when
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 7: I'm sick and tired of all this stuff.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: There'll be Sam Forstake signs off. That's right.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 7: Well, no, thank you for having me, Steve. Yeah, I'll
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 7: be back. I'll tell everybody ballots drop in, Montana, October 10th,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 7: absentee ballots. Voting is November 3rd. You can register to
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 7: vote until 30 days before the election in this state.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what's funny? All this garbage, not garbage,
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: but all this consternation about mail-in ballots. Dude, I haven't
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: been down. That's all I ever do. Does anybody here
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: not mail? Do you guys all do the mail-in? Do
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: you just show up and wait in line?
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 4: I hunt that week every single day.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I do it in person. Always hunt.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: You go in person?
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 8: Yep.
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 7: You get the sticker.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: Is it fun?
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 6: I have a very complicated relationship with voting.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: Hold on, do you not, you don't do the mail-in
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: because you don't trust it or you just like to
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: go down?
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 5: Well, it's so complicated.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, we don't need to get into it. We don't
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: need to get into it.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 5: Let's not get into it.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Seth, do you do mail-in?
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 5: I've done both, but mostly mail-in because I'm hunting.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: Brody? Same.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 3: I kind of like walking in there occasionally.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: You walk in there.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: I've done it, yeah.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 5: I think I've walked in like three or four times
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 5: since I moved to Montana.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 3: It feels like more of a civil duty, but obviously
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: it's not as convenient.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: When I think of walking in there, all I can
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: think about is all the times I had to go
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: with my mom when I was a little kid and
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: wait in line while she voted. And then also my
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: mom used to work the thing. Right.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 5: My mom took up working.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: The thing lately.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 5: The last election, yeah, she volunteered.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: When I do the mailing, though, I'm always worried, like,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: what if something terrible comes out about one of these guys?
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: And I already sent my thing in. If you walk in,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: you're operating on, like, it's done. You can make the
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: final assessment, but picture how embarrassing it'd be. You vote
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: for some guy, and then, like, you send it off,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: and then meanwhile, like, it comes out, you know, oh,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: my God, they found all these bodies in his yard.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: And you're like, dah!
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 5: Oh no, they found Sam.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: Was that like a sneaky way of giving Sam some
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: kind of like.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 7: You got bodies in your yard?
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: Tell me now.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 4: We'll go take.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: Them out together.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 7: By the time this is all done.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I do have one last question for you. This
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: is going to be hard to answer this. But you
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: know what people do? People find crazy stuff. If I
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: ever ran for office, and I promise you I never will,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: I would start I would announce my campaign with a
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: list of every bad thing I ever said or did.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 6: Huh?
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 7: Just front load it.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'd be like, listen, it was more than you'd guess.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 7: I have had social media since I was 12 years old.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 7: So it is all out there in the open and
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 7: it is embarrassing as hell.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Is it nerve wracking? It is. Yeah.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 7: I mean, the guy I'm up against welcome of the
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 7: millennial generation is going to have a lot of public embarrassment.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 7: Um, but no, the guy I'm up against, he had, uh,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 7: an AI super pack dropped 600 K just in the
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 7: month of May to get the fellow I'm running against
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 7: through his primary. That really is a terrifying prospect. I mean,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 7: millions of dollars a raid to make you look like
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 7: the biggest monster that they possibly can. But I think
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 7: what you just said is the only way you get
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 7: through it is just keep being a human and actually
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 7: showing up and talking to people. And like, I think
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 7: that all that noise is not going to work this
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 7: time around because people are, they're pissed and we are
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 7: angry and we're sick and tired. And, um, I don't think, uh,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 7: $ 10 million worth of mailers is going to stop that.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 7: All right, man.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 7: Thank you, brother. I appreciate it.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: Good luck, Sam. Thank you, man. Thanks, Sam. Thank you all.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 6: Thanks.