Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1000: The Future of Hunting in America with Randy Newberg

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Ep. 1000: The Future of Hunting in America with Randy Newberg · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. On this special
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: one thousandth episode of the show, I'm joined by Randy
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Neuberg to discuss the future of hunting, wildlife and wild
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: places and how all of this might impact our way
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: of life in the months and years to come. All right,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast and this
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: very special episode brought to you by First Light. This
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: is our one thousandth episode, which is which is a
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: pretty wild thing to say. And today we've got I
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: think a particularly appropriate topic and guest for this conversation,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: and I do have an announcement that I want to
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: share with you as well about my future. So first
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: a brief introduction to today's episode and the main point
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: of this conversation. That guest is Randy Newberg. I think
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: most of you know who he is, but he is
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: the host of Fresh Tracks, the YouTube show, the television show,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: as well as the Hunt Talk radio podcast, The Hunt
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: Talk Forum, and more largely, he's just simply one of
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: our nation's greatest advocates and voices in support of public
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: lands and wildlife and hunting and fishing. And he's someone
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: that over the last decade or more, has really been
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: someone for me that I've leaned on. I've met up
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: with him for many a coffee or a phone call
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: to discuss what's happening with public lands or conservation and
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: really helping me understand how to look at these things,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: how to do something about it, how to interpret all
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: that's happening. He's really been a great mentor for me.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So today, in this moment of reflection, as we look forward,
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: and as I look back on one thousand episodes of
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: this podcast, and then where this is going, and where
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: hunting and fishing is going in our way of life
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: and all these different things, it seemed like Randy would
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: be the perfect person to discuss this with. So today
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: we're going to tackle his predictions for the future, you know,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: where things for hunting might be in ten years or
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: even further down the line, and then more narrowly, what
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: the next twelve months might look like, and some of
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: the key things that he's watching, key things he's concerned about,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: and you know, ways that we as the hunting and
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: fishing public can be involved in making sure that that
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: future is a brighter one. We discuss, you know, changing
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: demographics of hunters. We talk about how hunter numbers are changing,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: how both of those two things might impact hunting opportunities.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Hunter writes, you know, hunting access over crowdvoing all of
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: those questions and controversies that are coming up more and
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: more now. Today we discuss habitat loss and wildlife population
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: declines and conservation related issues on all of those fronts.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: It is one that I think will be both educational
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  Speaker 2: and inspirational to anyone listening if you hunt or fish,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: if you love deer or elk or trout or bass
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: or whatever it is. I think this is a conversation
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  Speaker 2: that will arm you with the information to be a
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: part of a better future, to make sure that we
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: can keep hunting ten years from now or twenty years
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  Speaker 2: from now, to make sure they're still fish in the
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: stream or you know, turkeys on the roost here in
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: a decade or two, which I know is what all
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: of us want. And so that's our conversation today, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: that is also very relevant to the piece of news
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: about my own career that I want to share with
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: all of you. And I'll try to keep this brief,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: but you know, as many of you longtime listeners know,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: you know this podcast and the writing I do, and
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: the kind of the work that I do on Mediator
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: and on social media, and then this podcast even you
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: know that has evolved over time, that has changed and
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: grown and kind of wound its way through through many
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: different paths over all these years. I started Wired to
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Hunt back in two thousand and eight with a very
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: simple mission. I simply wanted to scratch my deer hunting
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: itch I was, you know, between my junior and senior
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: year of college. I couldn't hunt because I was on
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: this internship in the city, and I just want a
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: way to do something deer hunting related. So I started
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: this blog back then, and in the years since, you know,
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  Speaker 2: it has grown from just a daily website post about
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: deer hunting news, stories and strategies for the next generation
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: into eventually you know, social media channels and videos, and
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  Speaker 2: then this podcast, which launched in twenty fourteen. And you know,
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  Speaker 2: then I started hosting shows for Mediator and doing increasingly
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: different things, but also the topic and the focus of
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: my work has changed as well. You know, it's shifted
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  Speaker 2: and has grown from just how do you hunt stuff?
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  Speaker 2: How do you kill more deer? How do you become
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  Speaker 2: a more effective hunter? Two? Over time? How do we
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  Speaker 2: make sure that there are deer out there to hunt?
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  Speaker 2: How do we make sure that there are wild places
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  Speaker 2: out there to explore and opportunities to hunt or fish
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: or backpack or climb or whatever it is you like
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  Speaker 2: to do outside. As I have had my life change
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: by hunting and fishing in the outdoors, I've wanted to
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: find more and more ways I can make sure that
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  Speaker 2: keeps happening to the future for other people. And so
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: you've likely seen that evolution here in the podcast. You've
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: heard more episodes with that type of content, including today's episode.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: You've seen this show up in my shows that I
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: film for Meat Eater. Increasingly, you've likely seen that in
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: some of the different things I've done, whether it be
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: the volunteer efforts we spearheaded with the Working for Wildlife
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Tour or my work you know now on the National
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Board of Directors for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, or the
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  Speaker 2: National Deer Association Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters, different things
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  Speaker 2: like that, and now I'm excited to share that I'm
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: taking another step in that direction as I am starting
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  Speaker 2: this week taking over as director of Conservation for Meat Eater,
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  Speaker 2: And this is something I am beyond excited about. This
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  Speaker 2: is something that's so in line with, you know, where
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  Speaker 2: I want my career to go and where I think
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  Speaker 2: I can make the greatest difference. Where my heart is.
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  Speaker 2: You know, as a father of two young boys, my
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: kind of view that I look out the scale has
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  Speaker 2: grown so much because I'm not just worried about however
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: many decades I have left on this planet, but now
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: also those two young boys. And I think anyone out
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: there who's a mom or dad can probably relate to that.
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  Speaker 2: So in this new role as director of Conservation for Mediator,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to be able to build off of the
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: foundation that my good friend and mentor, Brian Callahan laid
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: and Steve Ranella of course laid this conservation ethos that
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: we have at Mediator and that drew me to Meetator,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: you know, almost ten years ago. I'm excited to build
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: off of that. I've always felt that we were doing
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: great work, but we could do even more, and so
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  Speaker 2: my goal and my task is to find ways to
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  Speaker 2: do that. How do we become even more strategic and
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  Speaker 2: focused on how we use meet Eater's platform and voice
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  Speaker 2: and content and resources of all kinds to fight for
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  Speaker 2: the future of wildlife and wild places. That's my job
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  Speaker 2: is to figure that out. Is to activate our team
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  Speaker 2: and our shows and our resources and dollars and energy
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  Speaker 2: to make that happen. To make sure that we have
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: deer in the woods, fish in the stream and in
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  Speaker 2: the ponds, make sure we have access to these wild places,
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  Speaker 2: make sure we have public lands available, make sure we
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  Speaker 2: have healthy habitat on private lands. Making sure the hunters
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  Speaker 2: and anglers' voices are heard and our actions are seen.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: When it comes to the really important work we're doing
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  Speaker 2: to fight for wildlife and wild places. All of that
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  Speaker 2: is on my agenda and on my to do list
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  Speaker 2: in the months and weeks to come. I'm very excited
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  Speaker 2: about it. I don't want to belabor the point here anymore,
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  Speaker 2: but expect a lot of exciting new programs, ideas, content
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and projects coming from Mediator. I'll continue to do whitetail
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: stuff here on Wired Hunt of course that is my
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: first true love. But there will be more voices and
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  Speaker 2: different voices on here on Wired tount as well. I'll
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  Speaker 2: be having some new content projects in which I'll be
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  Speaker 2: exploring these larger topics of conservation and other wildlife and
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  Speaker 2: wild place related topics. So keep an eye out for that.
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  Speaker 2: Lots of new stuff to come in the months and
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  Speaker 2: years to come. But I appreciate you guys being with
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: me all of these years here at Wired to Hunt.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you for your support and your attention, your comments
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  Speaker 2: and ideas, and maybe more than anything, thanks for your passion.
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  Speaker 2: The passion that I know you guys have for deer
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  Speaker 2: hunting and for the outdoors. And so many of you
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: too share the same interest and love I have for
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  Speaker 2: keeping these places and these critters around in the long term.
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  Speaker 2: So I hope that you will come with me on
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  Speaker 2: this next phase of my journey. Thank you for being here,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: and now this very appropriate conversation with mister Randy Newberg
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  Speaker 2: about the future of hunting in America. All right, with
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  Speaker 2: me back on the line again today is Randy Newburgh.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome back, Randy.
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  Speaker 3: Mark, So nice to be here talking to you. Thanks
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: for inviting me.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: It is always a pleasure. We've talked a good bit
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: over the years offline. I feel like at least once
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: a year, if not more, we're checking in on each
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: other and seeing how things are going. And as I've
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: just mentioned to you offline, you've long been a person
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: that I've been able to turn to with questions and
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: and help me kind of think about things the right
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: way or center myself on these these issues that you
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: and I both care so much about. But I went
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: and looked back at podcasts we've done, and we actually
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: haven't done a podcast, at least on this show in
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: five years, which shocked me. It's been that long.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: So yeah, I had to get to Yeah, we get
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: to brainstorm every so often. I just in my head,
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking you're recording all this so.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Saying I know, I know, right, So I'm glad we're
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: making that happen here today, and it's it's it's on
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: a fitting episode, the thousandth episode, an important kind of
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: milestone for Wired to Hunt and for me. So I
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: appreciate you joining me for this one.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and well, I'm honored that you'd ask me.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to ask you to do something a
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  Speaker 2: little bit challenging here, So forgive me for throwing you
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  Speaker 2: under the bus right off the gate, but I'm going
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: to ask you to I'm going to ask you to
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: zoom out. Let's zoom out and put on our predicting
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  Speaker 2: goggles and look with me to the year twenty thirty six,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: ten years from now. Paint me a picture when it
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: comes to hunting and wildlife. Paint me a picture of
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  Speaker 2: what you predict we might, as hunters or anglers or
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: outdoors people be living through or experiencing in twenty thirty six.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Where do you see things going?
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  Speaker 3: Wow, I'm going to put my goggles on back to
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  Speaker 3: twenty sixteen and try to compare what I would have
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: thought when I was fifty one in twenty sixteen and
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: see how much different it is today. There's a lot
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: of things that are going on today that I think
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: if you had asked me this question ten years ago,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: I would have predicted it or felt very likely it
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: was going to happen, as it relates to the continued
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: attack on public lands. But some of the things that
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: I would not have predicted are the changes in not
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: just the hunting world but our world in general of
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: how bombarded we are with messaging and content and the
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: instantaneous sharing of information, you could see it coming, but
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: ten years ago I could not have predicted it would
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: be to the volume that it is, or that it
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: would create certain levels within American populace where you just
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: don't know what to trust, right, Yeah, Can I trust
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: what this source says or what that start says? And
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: so it creates a bit of a paralysis. One of
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: the human conditions that it probably prays on is just
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: our level of skepticism, and that that takes a lot
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: of energy to always be trying to sort out can
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: I trust this? Can I not trust that? And it
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: also causes people to be a little bit hesitant about
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: being an advocate and speaking up and saying what they
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: feel or what's important to them, because they're asking themselves,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: is this really? This is really something I trust? Can
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: I trust this person who's telling me this? So I
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: would not have seen that. So as I go forward
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: to twenty thirty six, to your question, I think we're
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: still going to see the continued attacks on public land.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: That's without a given or without a question, that's just
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: a given. The other things I think in terms of
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: why life, I think we're going to go through a
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: period where hunters are going to realize that we're going
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: to get back to the cornerstones of what got us here.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Right now, I think we're we're kind of looking for that.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: We maybe enjoyed a period of the good old days
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: and maybe took for granted some of the things that
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: got us here. But I think hunting, at least where
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: I live out in the West, is going to have
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: some hard times where herds are going to continue to
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: drop and drop and drop, and they have for the
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: last twenty years. But we're going to reach a point
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: where people are going to say, you know what, enough
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: of that. We're going to go back to what hunters
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: have always done, and that is we're going to fund habitat,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: We're going to focus on habitat, We're going to speak up,
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: going to stand up, going to do the right things.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: And I'm not saying we're not doing that today, but
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: we aren't doing it as consistently as our predecessors did.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: So I think there's always this boomerang effect, right that
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: they say, history repeats itself, you want whatever term you
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: want to put to that. I think we're going to
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: see some of that by twenty thirty.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Six that resonates in me. Now, I'm want to ask
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: you to zoom in a little further. I want to
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: dive into what you just said, But I also want
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: to shrink the scale just a little bit and ask
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: you now to predict what will happen over the next
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: twelve months. How do you see the next twelve months
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: kind of coming to manifest in relation to those things?
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And then once you tell me that, then I think
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: we can unpack a couple of those things.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the next twelve months are probably the most worrisome
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: twelve months I've had in my life of being an
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: advocate for public clans and conservation. What is being cooked
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: up right now and the things that are happening, and
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: the pace at which are happening, and just the fatigue
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: we're all feeling from having to push back on this stuff.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Is I hope it's the apex of my life of
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: the volume of this and the potential damage of some
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: of it. So in the next twelve months, I would
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: tell people, if you think last summer was difficult, brace yourself,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: it's going to get more difficult. They learned a lot
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: from last summer when Mike Lee floated the big beautiful
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: bill amendment to try sell public lands. Well, that was
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: a little bit of a test balloon. Let's see how
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: much pressure there is. And I found out there's a
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: lot of pressure. Okay, how do we become more discreet
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: than this, How do we become a little more clandestine,
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: and how we accomplish this, how do we not do
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: it in a way that raises as much angst but
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: still lets us get what we want out of it.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: And that's that's concerning to me. I mean, I could
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: writele off a list of things right now that I
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: know are cooking in DC and that some of the
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: groups are some of the people, some of the folks
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: who really aren't in our camp when it comes to
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: conservation on public lands, what they want out of this,
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: and depending on how the midterm elections turn out, you know,
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: And this is just this isn't just this administration. It's
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: anytime there's an administration that sees a mid term change,
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: or a Congress sees a midterm change, they get in
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: a big hurry before that next Congress gets seated. And
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: you know that pattern oll repeat if there's a change
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: in power in the midterms in November when that new
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Congress gets seated in January, there will be a big
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: hurry to do a bunch of stuff. And I can
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: say this because I'm older and grayer than you, But
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: there's an old saying of beware of an old man
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: in a hurry, and that that's cautioned me of what
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: I think the next twelve months hold in store.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: So in the short term you're very concerned. In the
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: long term, you noted a low point. We're gonna go
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: downhill in some fashion. We're gonna experience some kind of nadir,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: some some bad stuff's gonna happen, but we're gonna bounce
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: back out of that.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: Yep. Hunters have, Americans always have.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Can you give me some of the specific things that
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: you think will be the examples of what's going to
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: be so concerning this next twelve months and leading into
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: the next three, four or five six years before we
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: have that bounce back. What are the two three things
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: that are keeping you up the most at night right
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: now that will really impact hunting and hunters and outdoors people.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the things that really concerned me will be diversion
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: of money that is meant for access, because we all
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: know that private access is shrinking. That makes public access,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: our access to our federal lands, even more important, and
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: they're diverting that right there. They're not submitted the LWCF projects,
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: which Land and Water Conservation Fund is the biggest funding
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: mechanism for improving and solving complex access problems on federal
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: lands or within the federal landscape of public private So
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: they're diverting that money or they're just not putting the
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: projects forward. So we are going to lose a lot
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: of projects that private landowners have been in the works
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: for the last anywhere from three to five years, working
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: with federal agencies. They're these kind of landowners we want
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: to work with because they are conservation minded, they want
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: the public to have access, and we've been promising them
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: for years. Stay with us, stay with us. Congress is
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: going to approve this all of a sudden, Department of
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: Interior says, we're just not going to submit a list.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: So now these landowners who've trusted us are left holding
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: the bag. So they're going to go sell the private parties,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: which is exactly what some of these groups want. So
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: in the twelve month next twelve months, we're going to
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: see the impacts of that we're going to see the
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: impacts of Department of Interiors are saying we're going to
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: divert this money from access. We're going to divert it
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: over to maintenance. Whatever maintenance is, right building a new
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, or whatever that might be,
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: it's not going to be for public access. The other
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: one that we're going to see is where I live
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: in the West. When we talk about habitat, a lot
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: of that's on federal land, publicly owned federal land. And
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: right now it's a race to see how much resource
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: extraction can happen on federal lands with the least amount
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: of accommodation for wildlife, which is not how we've done
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: it in the past. Right, we need these resources. Anyone
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: who wants to just say no, no, no, no, you're
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: heading down a dead end street because we need resources.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: One of the things Americans have always done a good
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: job of is saying, yeah, we can get these resources,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: and we can do it to accommodate wildlife. But I'm
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: just looking at what's happening in Western Wyoming. Western Wyoming
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: is the longest migration corridor on the continent, or at
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: least in the lower forty eight. I should say it
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: has our keystone meal deer herd, the western Wyoming meal
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: deer herd. It has the largest prong horn population on
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: the continent. And right now we are letting the oil
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: and gas industry nominate which partials they want to put
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: up for Lisa this summer with no accommodation for the
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: meal deer and the prong horn. So we're looking at
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: a meal deer herd that with the Jonah project in
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: the late nineteen nineties, the Pinedale project in the early
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: two thousands, that meal deer herd is down fifty percent.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: How many hits can that meal deer herd sustain to
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: its migration corridor and to its winter grounds. And so
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: if you live in Wyoming, that's a concern to you
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: because that's where a lot of Wyoming guys hunt, are
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: guys and gals. And if you're a non resident, that
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: should be a concern to you be because if that
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: starts going down further and further and further, the first
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: place that gets cut is a non resident opportunity. So
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: residents and non residents are in this game together. And
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: right now, I don't see a lot of people willing
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: to stand up and push back on this. So in
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: the next twelve months, if these projects go up for lease,
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: get approved, and eventually get developed. We're talking about some
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: of these being right in the core of a very
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: narrow migration corridor that's hundreds of miles long or one
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: hundred miles long. But these herds have used for thousands
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: and thousands of years, and they've already shown us that
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: they can't continue to sustain this type of development without
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: accommodation for them. So the flip side of that is
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: we could do things that accommodate them, and we should.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: And that's where we as hunters play a role, is
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: to say, yeah, we need energy. We don't. No one's
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: saying we don't. Let's develop energy, but let's do it
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: in a way that wildlife has a chance. And all
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: that's coming. I mean, those are just two quick things
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: coming in the next twelve months plus more.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: And even those two examples you just gave, there are
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: dozens of examples of how that very same thing is
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: happening in other corners of the United States or in
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: other corners of our public land and wildlife policy. I mean,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: the specifics of like migration quarters. Let's look get up
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: in Alaska our actual longest single migration on the continent,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: which is caribou, and the signed to develop a two
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: hundred plus mile industrial corridor bisecting one of those longest migrations,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: or or drilling and developing the calving grounds of our
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: largest remaining herd of caribou in the continent, and again
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: oil fields there. So there's many, many, many other examples
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: like that. And the funding thing is you just mentioned,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: that's massive. That is tied directly to the biggest reason
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: that people stop hunting, which is limited access, not being
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: able to find somewhere to go. And the biggest complaint
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: probably that people have today is, hey, there's too many
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: folks out there. It seems like we're over crowded. All
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: these non residents are showing up, or all these city
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: slickers or all these whatever everyone's complaining about that. Well,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: if we don't have funding for new public land and
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: funding to keep our current public lands well managed and usable,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: well then that's a bigger and bigger problem. But Randy,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: all of this feels like it's being shoved down our
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: throats without anything that we can say about the matter.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: It is. It is being shoved down our throats because
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: we have a Congress that has just stepped aside and said,
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: you know, we're just here for mostly the formative part
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: of our job, where we get in front of it
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: news camera and make a big stink about some abstract issue.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: That's it is being shot down our throat because of that.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Because we are the United States, citizen always had its
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: opportunity to weigh in through public meetings, which we've gotten
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: rid of most of those public meetings. We're taking resource
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: management plans that took ten years to put together where
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: the public did have their input there and they're being
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: removed and being thrown out. So that whole public process
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: that we've worked on, that's we were told your voice counts.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: The new model is, let's just get rid of that.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: So the last remaining if you want to call them,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: steps on the ladder or levers that we have is
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: to put pressure on our congressional delegations to say it
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: is up to you to do your job, and your
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: job is to weigh in on this stuff, to push
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: back on it. And one of the things that just
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: in the last week is kind of optimistic is the
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: administration put forth a bare bones budget for the Park Service,
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: for the BLM, and for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: When that came to Congress, Congress said, no way, we're
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: not We're not cutting it like that. So they restored
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: most of that. So that's where Congress needs a you
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: know about on the back of Hey, thanks for standing
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: up and doing that. And that is the example of
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: what Congress could do in every one of these instances.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: They could give voice to this, they could give perspective
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: to it, and they are there to represent us the people,
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: and that we got to hold them accountable. I know,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: people just get so tired of the ninth grade Civics thing. Right,
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: you got to call your congress person. You got to
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: call your congress person. That's what we got to do.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: I wish I could say we could, you know, if
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: we all got on Facebook and complained enough that change it.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: That's what that's what they're hoping. That's what we'll do
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: because it doesn't make a difference. So those are those
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: are the things I see.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: What's your read or what's your takeaway from last summer?
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I think some people saw last summer and saw, well,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of celebration about the fact we stopped
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: the public land sell off, but a whole bunch of
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: other bad stuff got through that we couldn't do anything
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: about because we were focused on the self, while other
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: folks would focus on the good, which was well, Hey,
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: at least we had one example where everyone came together,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: stood up for something, and it did seem to make
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: a difference. And there's you know, there there is some optimism.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of people that are saying, man, if
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: we could just bottle up what happened last June, July
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: whatever and apply that in the future, we could really
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: change things. And there do seem to be some folks
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: on the Republican side who are saying, ah, this Mike
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Lee set of ideas and his people, this isn't settling
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: well with my constituents. I'm getting a lot of as
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: the emails and phone calls, maybe we're getting a little
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: bit of momentum there. What's your take on that when
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: you analyze what happened and think about what that means
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: for the future.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was a very powerful event and
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: I felt that personally since we watched it all unfold, right,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: A lot of people didn't know that at the time
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: when that amendment was on the Senate floor. There were
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: eighteen Republicans who were going to vote against a chairman
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: of one of their committees. That's how bad of an
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: idea this was. And it wasn't just US Hunters, it
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: was people from everywhere. Yeah, US Hunters had a big
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: role because we have access to some of the more
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: rural senators who were very important in that, so we
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: maybe had an outsize role in it. But it was
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: everybody who's a public land to use her public land advocate.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: So I in my head, I'm like, I wonder if
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: this has taught them a lesson, And you never know
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: other than I was meeting with a lobbyist who mostly
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: lobbies on more resource issues and probably i'd say friendlier
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: to the right side of the aisle, and he sought
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: me out. He's like, hey, I got to ask you
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: some questions because I could really use your help, and
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: I'm willing to talk to anybody if I think it's progress.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: And one of the things he said really caught me.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: He said, you know, don't worry about the public land
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: sale thing. There's not a Republican who wants to touch it.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: He said, I can tell you there's a chairman of
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: the committee who told me we are not touching another
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: public land sale for ten years after last summer. Mike's good, Okay.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: So then I said, what about all these other kind
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: of behind the scenes stuff, stuff that doesn't require congressional action,
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: all the things that can be done by executive order,
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: secretarial order, Like I wish I could help you on that.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: He did. He wasn't very optimiz stick on that part
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: of it, which again confirmed my thoughts of where this
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: is going in the tactics that are going to be used.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a specific clarifying question I want to
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: run by you. You talked about the dollars that have
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: been appropriate for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: that was a big win for us back in twenty
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: twenty when that was permanently authorized and supposedly fully funded.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: As you mentioned, that is what we use to pay
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: for future public land access and increases, and in twenty
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: twenty five. Correct me if I'm wrong on these details,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: but as I understand that the twenty twenty five dollars
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: had been held up from being sent out, and no
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: list of the projects for twenty twenty six have been
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: sent But then I did see in the House budget
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: they approved full funding for LWCF just recently. So where
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: do we stand with twenty twenty five payments, twenty twenty
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: six nomination, and where LWCF is going in the future.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: What's the specific moment we're in there.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, most of this is happening in the Apartment of
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Interior or not Department of bag which the four service
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: is under the Department of AG. So most of what
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: we're talking about of these concerns are with Department of Interior,
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: which covers the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service,
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. So the twenty
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: twenty five projects for that fiscal year probably are we're
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: not going to get them done because if there's a
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: secretarial order or word that just says don't complete these,
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: it's not like your BLM state office can go do
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: something if it's against what the National Office says. So
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: the other part of that is Congress can appropriate the money,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: but if Interior doesn't submit a project list, there are
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: no projects to be funded with the appropriation. So the
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: folks with the levers of power, who are the anti
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: public land folks right now, who have way more levers
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: of power than they ever have. They know how the
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: system works, and they know where the little tricks are
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: of how can we muck it up? And those levers
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: are being pulled right now. So I'm optimistic when Congress
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: says we're going to do this. But if you have
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: agencies that are led by people or influenced by people,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: or omb steps in and says we're not going to
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: do this, it doesn't get done. And these are private
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: landowners who are going to sell us an eastment or
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: they're going to sell us an in holding to solve
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: complex issues, and they can't wait forever, and the other
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: side knows that. So the more they run out the clock,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: the more these that fall apart.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: And to clarify for folks, these funds are dollars that
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: are not coming from taxpayers. These dollars are coming from
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: royalties from offshore drilling, so that's where these dollars come from.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: And then these dollars are used to purchase land from
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: willing sellers to increase the public land estate or access sites, parks,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff that then we get to use
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: benefit from sites. Yeah, and this isn't like yep, this
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: isn't like small scale stuff like that. There's tens of
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: thousands of acres that were you know, up for nomination
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: in recent years, right, or hundreds of thousands of acres
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: I've heard even from Okay. This is serious access that
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: could be acquired but may not be known.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Right. So the clutching is that we're going to let
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: that happen. And if you're in the Montana delegation, you're
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: getting interful about it. Now. I get if I was
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: maybe in a very urban state, if I lived in
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: New Jersey, I don't know that I'd be that worked
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: up about it because I don't have a lot of
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: public land there. But no matter where you live, if
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: you want places to hunt or access on public land,
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: these easements that get bought with LWCF, these little in
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: holdings that can block access to twenty thousand and fifty
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: thousand acres. Acquiring those solves these problems. So all of us,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: no matter where you live, benefit from it. And you know,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: the program LWCF is the same age I am was
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: past the nineteen sixty four and the idea, the premise
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: behind it was we're depleting one publicly owned asset, our
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: oil and gas reserves offshore let's use some of that money,
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: a very small portion of it to conserve and replace
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: some other public asset, the terrestrial, the land that we
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: have here on shore. And so that's been the premise.
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: It's never been this political football until about ten fifteen
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: years ago. It was always such a well received program.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: And even today the citizens, if you read every survey
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: about that Republican Democrat, over ninety percent of all people Republican, Democrat, independent,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: want to see this program continue and they want to
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: see it used invested to solve access. But you wouldn't
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: know that if you listen to Congress or you watch
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: them on the you know, on the news or whatever
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: camera they're in front of. You know, they got to
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: make a big spiel about something.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: So the the kind of adjacent issue to this, And
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: I kind of mention this at the top, but I'm
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: curious more of your take on this. One of the
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: most hotly debated, discussed, trolled about issues in the hunting
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: world right now that everyone's complaining about is overcrowding, not
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: being able to find places to hunt, or having your
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: hunting spot below up or tuny people at the trailhead,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: or I've lost all my permission spots to hunt in
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Michigan because everyone's leasing up everything and there's nowhere to
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: go now, and so there's all sorts of concern around this,
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: and there's all sorts of finger pointing around this. Some
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: of those fingers have been pointed at people like me
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: and you and other folks that talk about hunting and
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: fishing and outdoor recreation and all that. What's your take
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: on that, in what the future looks like in that
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: regard both the causes for it and remedies for it,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: and how you think about it.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how I think about it is that we are
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: losing There's no argument to be made that I can
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: think of that would counter the understanding that we are
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: losing access. We lose access to public or private lands
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: because of development, because of leasing, because of sometimes it's
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: hunter behavior. There's all kinds of reasons why we lose
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: access to private lane. Well, then if that the ownership
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: in my state of Montana, ownership change is a big thing.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: You get people who come and buy a ranch and
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: or a billionaire and it's one hundred thousand acres and
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: it used to be the school bus driver got to
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: bring his or her family out there. The mechanic brought
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: his family out there, the you know, the waitress brought
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: her family. That there were thirty people who had access
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: to hunt that ranch. It changes hands, it gets locked up,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: nobody hunts it. Now those thirty people aren't going to
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: quit hunting. They get displaced. So there's there's things like
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: that that contribute to it. So everybody should be on
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: board with more access. So then we get to the
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: question of that's one of the causes. Then there's the
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: question of is it because there are more hunters that's
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: the number that's one of the other premises to the
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: discover ussion, right, or one of the other statements made
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: that's creating crowding. Well, there are not more hunters. The
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: IUS Fish and Wildlife Service reports related to this talk
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: about hunting licenses sold. It doesn't break out total hunters.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: And I've been studying those reports for thirty years, and
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: i've so in the last three months because no one's
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: been willing to dig into this really to try to
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: get to what are true hunter numbers. I worked for
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: someone who is an AI specialists, and we spent aged
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: a lot of time going to every state from twenty
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: fifteen to twenty twenty three and examining the trends, then yeah,
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: some states change. Okay, in twenty eighteen, we said that
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: now youth and adults or senior citizens they got to
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: buy a license, but it's free. So all of a
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: sudden there's a spike. It looks like they sold more license.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of things you got to balance out
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: in this. Well, if you use twenty fifteen as the
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: baseline year and give that a score of one hundred,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: with very few exceptions, every state in the country has
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: seen a licensed sale to residents that is way below that.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: Every state with a very few exceptions. Because I'll use
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: an example like Colorado in their year of that ends
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: the March of twenty twenty, which also we add the
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: COVID spike. Right, they said, if you're going to accumulate points,
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: you got to buy a small game license. All of
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: a sudden you got a whole bunch more people who
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: had to buy a license that year. So even if
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: you adjust for that, there's there's not an increase in hunters.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: And I'm sitting on all this data and I've got
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: volumes of it. I mean, if you if you want
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: to find the power of AI sit down and do
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: a couple month project or someone who knows how to
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: use it. So I've shared this data with some people
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: who are kind of involved in this stuff from the
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: standpoint of agencies, and I'm like, why don't we have
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: license sales resident license sales for every state, because here's
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: what the trend says. If you relied on the US
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: Fish and Wildlife Service reports, you'd think that we're static
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: or maybe even increasing.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: And when I showed them their reports are like, oh
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: my god, yeah, we need that data because some of
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: the critics who you know, who want to say that
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: we're the problem for everything. I'm like, well, why don't
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: you go build the data then, And they're like, well,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: that's the best I got, that's the best that's out there.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I'm like, well, if you really want to have a
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: factual discussion, go do the work to build that data
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: and don't use the flawed US Fish and Wildlife Service data.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: And people are like, well, how's that flawed? Well, I
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: buy ten hunting license to apply in all these states,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: so I get counted ten times, and we know the
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: trend in the last twenty years is that more people
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: travel to hunt. So if you look at the report
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: from twenty years ago, there weren't as many people getting
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: double counted, triple counted, ten times counted as there are today.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: So true boots on the ground of hunters, whether we're
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: talking small game, big game, is not. That is not
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: what's creating the problem. The numbers are going down. Yes,
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: every one of these states that we analyze has a
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: little blip in twenty twenty. Very few of them have
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: hunter numbers back to where they were in twenty nineteen.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: And if you adjust it for population growth, the slope
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: of that curve is way steeper decline if you adjust
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: it for population growth.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: So fewer absolute hunters. But those hunters that are still
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: here might just be concentrated in smaller and smaller areas.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: And maybe many of these hunters are spending more days
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: per person than some did in the past, possibly because
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: of the effort level that many hunters have now is higher.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: But here's the thing, Randy, there are some in our
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: community that would say to this, good good, I'm glad
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: there are fewer hunters because that means there would be
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: less competition for me to kill my big buck or
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: my big elk, And good riddance and let's keep people
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: out of here because they're ruining it. Well, how do
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: you respond to that? Why is this a problem in you?
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: If you want to yeah, if you want to embrace,
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: embrace that scarcity mindset, tell me where that leads us
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: in the long run. Tell me where that leads ten, twenty, thirty,
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: forty years from now. It's one hundred and eighty degree
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: reversal from the abundant mindset that got hunting to where
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: it is today. So are we going to fight over
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: the last little scraps of the last few mial deer
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: in Wyoming? Are we going to fight over the last
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: little scraps of big horn sheep in Montana? Are we
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: going to put more sheep on the mountain or are
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: we going to do what those mill deer need? Because
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: if let's use Wyoming right, mil deer and pronghorn numbers
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: in Wyoming are about half of what they were at
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: the turn of the millennium. What does that mean? That
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: means there's half as many tags. So if you want
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: to double your odds of drawing a tag as a
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: resident or non resident, let's get back to what the
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: numbers were in twenty twenty or in two thousand. That's
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: abundance thinking. That's saying we can do better, we can
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: do more. That's what all of our predecessors said. I
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: completely reject and decline to even entertain the idea is
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: of that scarcity mindset that we just got to fight harder,
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: We got to figure out how to exclude somebody else.
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: Now there are other things that have created crowding in
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: my state. We always said we're going to have seventeen
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: thousand non resident hunters, dear and now come big game hunners. Well,
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: the legislature got involved in about twenty years ago and
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: they said, well, my children just moved out of Montana,
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: I'd like to have this program called to come Home
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: to Hunt where they don't have to be part of
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: the draw. And then the next legislative session they had
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: this Montana Native program, and then they said, well, let's
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: let college students who have more than I think twelve
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: credits they can buy nonre So now Montana goes from
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: seventeen thousand non residents to over fifty thousand. So if
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: you live in a state like Montana where your legislature
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: tinkers with that, absolutely you feel crowding. But that's not
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: due to more hunters. That is due to your state
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: legislature and use, especially some of these critics sitting on
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: your ass when these issues were being debated in the legislature. So, yeah,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: you can have difference. It's not a monolith of everything
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: is going on the same trend in every state. It's identical.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: My state of Montana, we have had way more non
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: resident crowding. Our resident license sales have stayed flat for
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: the last twenty years, but our non resident sales have
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: more than tripled because we said, oh, non residents, you
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: no longer have to draw a cow out tag or
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: an antler list meal deer tag. I mean, just buy one.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: Well be they'd get ten percent of those. And whether
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: it's someone at the trailhead or boots on the ground
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: because I have a cow elk tag or a bowl
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: olt tag, doesn't matter. It's still crowded, it's still more people.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: So you got to get into it and look at
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: it a little. What would I say, with maybe the
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: intent of trying to understand it rather than to rationalize
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: what you've claimed is the problem all your life. And
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: my response very often is if you think crowding and
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: getting rid of people is the problem. Why don't you
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: raise your hand and you'd be the first person who
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: gets the hell out of here. Then under start solving
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: this problem, and they never raise their hand.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: No, what's this all going to mean for the future
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: of wildlife game management at the state level? I mean,
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: there's there's already been changes with some states going to
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: different kinds of draws, some states raising prices, some states
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: lowering bag limits, some states. You know, there's all the
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: resident complaints, like people in Montana upset about non residents
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: coming in. But then there's also complaints from non residents saying, hey,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: these are federal public lands. I shouldn't have to pay
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: two thousand dollars and wait ten years to go hunt there.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: Once there's all of this finger pointing and complaining from
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: all sides.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: Where's this headed, Randy, Oh, it's not headed in a
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: good place, because we are and this is where I
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: when you ask me what our ten year curve is,
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: I think in the next five years we're going to
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: bottom out with this scar shitty mindset of fighting with
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: each other and fighting over it. If you're an If
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: I'm a non resident in Wyoming and I love hunting
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: pronghorn in Wyoming. As much as I love doing anything,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: the best thing I could do is be there supporting
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: Wyoming residents to do what it takes on the landscape,
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: within their state legislature, within their elected officials, to do
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: things for habitat that increase prong horn numbers. I refuse
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: to see this resident non resident thing as we're in
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: two different camps and we should hate each other. We
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: are joined at the hip because if we have habitat,
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: we're going to have herds. If we have herds, we're
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: going to have tags. And we got to reverse that trend.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: If we're going to just adopt this mindset that I'm
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: just going to fight for my little scrap and I'm
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: going to try exclude residents, or I'm going to try
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: exclude non residents, or I want to have some sophisticated
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: drocess tom. I love seeing prices increase because supposedly that
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: keeps other people out of the game. That I reject
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: that those are just little tricks that ignore the bigger
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: symptom or the cause of all these symptoms, that is
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: the herd numbers are shrinking. Other than out there's not
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: a Western big game species that is at a higher
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: population level today than when I was born. There's not
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: one of them that's at a higher population level today
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: than they were in two thousand. So yeah, you and
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: I we produce content, just like George Burd Grarnell used
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: to produce content when he had Forest and Stream magazine
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: in the late eighteen hundreds. And did people learn from that, yep,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: just like people learn from us. Does that create more
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: demand for tags? It probably does. But I'm here to
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: create people who want to advocate for hunting. I want
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: them to have that experience. I want them to be
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: connected these public lands through a tangible experience that they've had.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: I want them to see the benefit fits of habitat
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: and conservation and how it increases the herds. And I
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: can't expect them to sit on a couch in Florida
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: and somehow wish that and somehow they're going to become
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: an advocate for that. And there's not a single person
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: who will listen to this, who will watch this, who
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: was born instinctively with that knowledge. They got it from somewhere.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: They may be redded in a magazine. They maybe belonged
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: to a rodden gun club, or someone took them as
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: a mentor and taught them all this stuff, whether it's
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: hunting not a state, whether it's how to hunt. No
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: one was born with that instinctively. So to somehow say
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: we're now going to be gatekeepers and keep all We're
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: going to pick and choose who gets the chance to
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: do that. No, we're going to use hunters, just like
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: the population in general has always used whatever tools of
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: communication are there to share information. And yeah, it gets
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: shared really fast in today's world, and it's readily available
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: and it's easy to get. And does that increase the
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: number of people who are interested in this? That? Possibly does?
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: Then probably does. But is that the problem. Is that
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: the problem with why we have fewer tags? No, not
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: at all. If we had double the number of tags,
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: do you think there'd be as much angst about Oh gee,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: I didn't draw this year, but I'll probably draw next year.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: Oh now, it's like I didn't draw this year and
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: I'm probably ain't gonna draw next year. Her numbers are
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: on the decline. Okay, what are you doing about it?
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: Are you volunteering for something, are you contributing to something?
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: Are you calling your congress people? Are you doing the
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: things that improve habitat? Because We can fight and argue
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: about this stuff all day long. Something that our predecessors
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: do is it all comes down to the land and
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: the habitat. You want more ducks in the sky, you
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: better have some wetlands.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know this is not something that is
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: just just happening with hunted species either. We're seeing declines
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: across so many different species, many that are hunted, you know,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: with the exception you mentioned, elk are doing pretty good
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: in many places. White tailed deer are doing great. They're
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: the you know, they're the rats of the big game world.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: They're able to survive anywhere. But I mean turkeys, upland birds,
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: all the western big game species you mentioned. Caribou are plummeting,
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: Moose populations in many places plummeting. So much of our
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: wildlife heritage is not slowly disappearing. And to your point,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: nobody will do real action, will truly engage unless they
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: have that connection. Nobody watches a nature documentary Netflix and
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: then changes their life because of it. Nobody watches something
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: on YouTube and just that one thing is enough to
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: flip them into an active advocate, engaged with their lawmakers
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: or getting out there on the ground doing something about
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: it that is very uniquely, something that is tied to
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: people that have a close, radical engagement with this thing.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: So I'm with you, Randy. I think that the only
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: way we're going to win any of these things is
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: by putting out a hand to folks and saying, come
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: on out, see this stuff. It's amazing. It's yours to enjoy,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: experience it, take care of it.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: Yep. And if that means I don't draw my Colorado
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: Elk tag or deer tag, next year, some new person
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: who's interested in that ends up with it. But they
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: become a voice and they start doing the things necessary
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: to improve habitat, to improve access, to get this cycle
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: back to more meal there or more elk or whatever.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: You know what, Fine by me.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: And people are like, oh, you're full of crap. You
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: don't really mean that. I absolutely mean that. I just
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: we've been handed this is probably and this comes with age.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: Mark.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry if I sound like an old grandpa crimudgin here,
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: But with age, I have realized every year more and
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: more what I was handed. What I was born as
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: an American. I didn't understand it when I was born.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: I didn't understand it when I was twelve when I've
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: passed on our education. I didn't understand it. When I
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: got out of college at age twenty two, I started
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: learning it a little bit more, a little bit more,
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: a little bit more. Now I realize that everything I
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: have enjoyed in my life in the outdoors is because
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: people who came before me didn't really give two craps
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: if they upset somebody. They took seriously President Roosevelt's statement
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: that the wildlife and the habitat cannot speak for itself.
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: We must and we will. They live that. They established
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: the Duckstamp pro They established the National Wildlife Refuge Program
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: that now is being reviewed, and who knows what's going
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: to come of that. They put infrastructure in place for
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: the for Service so that we'd have public lands. All
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: of this came, We had the Pittman Robertson ac quick.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: The list goes on and on and on of things
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: that our predecessors made hard decisions where it cost them
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: a little bit more money, or it cost them some opportunity.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: But it was about that next generation, as Roosevelt would
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: call them, those still in the womb of time. And
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: the older I get, the more I understand how much
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: was handed to me, and this whole idea that we
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: don't have an obligation to that next generation, that somehow
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: it's all about me and my chance of getting a tag.
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: And I got to you know, there's oh, there's four
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: people at the trail that had today instead of three.
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: I just that's that is not appreciative of what got
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: us here. It just is. I mean that we want
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: to talk about America's greatness and all the wonderful things
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: in this country, and I agree with that statement, but
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: within the hunting space and within the things that we
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: get to do on public lands, every bit of that
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: came because someone wasn't afraid to stand up. And I've
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: been lucky that in my life I've had some of
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: those people as mentors. You know, anyone who has ever
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: driven to Yellowstone Park from yellow from Livingstone, Montana to Gardner, Montana.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: Friend of mine, Jim Poswitz, who's passed away recently. He
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: led a team of biologists who kept the Yellowstone River
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: from being damned what was called the Allensburg pinch point
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: just south of Livingstone. It would have flooded the entire
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Partaradise Valley. And this was in the late seventies, right,
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: oil and bargoes, the energy crisis, all this. The idea was,
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: we'll flood that valley, we'll have a water supply, and
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: we are going to put electrical generating stations all the
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: way from Livingston to Billings and by the time the
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: Yellowstone River got to Billings, it would have been dewatered.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: He got his team of scientists and biologists got that stopped,
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: and everybody was pissed at them. His department got dismantled.
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: Within Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. He's called an idiot,
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: an obstructionist, you know, a crazy guy. Is there a
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: person today, forty five years later who thinks it would
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: be a good idea to damn the Yellowstone River at Livingston,
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: Montana and flood it all the way up to Yankee
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: Jim Canyon and dewater the Yellowstone River by the time
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: it got to Billings. No. But my point is they
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: stood up and did the right thing for the wildlife,
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: for the wild places in the wild things, and they said,
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: you know what, maybe we're going to take a hit
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: here and there, but they had the support of the
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: people also, and that's what we got to do. And
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: I don't take that as just like, oh, well, that's great,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: thank for doing that, Jim, I'm going fishing today, or
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: I'm going on today, hell with everyone else. To me
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: that if you are a hunter in America or an angler,
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: these are the type of legacy things that have been
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: handed to you. And I get it that. When I
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: was younger, I didn't grasp it. Yeah, I volunteered for
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: all these things because I grew up in a town
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: and in a family. We're volunteering with this part of
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: what you did. But I didn't. I didn't see it
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: from the bigger picture of Wow, no wonder, we have
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: such an abundance, No wonder, we have such an amazing
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: thing because generation after generation took the baton and they
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: worked towards the same thing, in the same thing, in
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: the same thing. And the question is for us in
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: our generation, are today are we going to do that?
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: Are we going to piss it down our leg and say, well,
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: appreciate you giving that to us, But now there's too
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: much work, It is too uncomfortable, too inconvenient to keep
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: that ball rolling. I don't I'm confident that that's not
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: how hunters are. Yeah, there's the vocal minority. There's the critics,
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: there's the whoever, But the core hunter American who wants
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: something better for their next generation are the people who
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: are going to show up. And that's why I'm so
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: optimistic when you asked me ten years from now, where
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: are we going to be, We're going to be coming
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: back this way because that's how hunters have done it,
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: that's how Americans have done it. And we might have
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: to go through some more bumps along the way, but
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: we're going to get back to habitat, going to get
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: back to building these herds, and that next generation who
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: comes after me, they're going to be the beneficiaries. And
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: I couldn't be happier.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's amazing how we can feel in
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: this moment, you know, overwhelmed by the trajectory of so
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: many things, and wildlife populations and declined, and public lands
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: and even private land protections being slashed, clean water protections
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: being slashed, everything. But to your point, if you look
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: back in history, it's very easy to forget how relatively
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: short a period of time ago it was that we
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: were in a way worse situation than we are right now. Right,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, things were amazing, Yeah, you know, several hundred
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: years ago, and then in the eighteenth century, things rapidly
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: declined and we just kind of clear cut the nation's
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: wildlife metaphorically speaking. And then we got to that late
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds when there was this growing
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: awareness as you mentioned with George Bird, Grennell and Roosevelt
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: and Hornaday and so many others, and we said, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: tap the brakes. We got to do something different, and
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: then we we righted the ship. And now we've been
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: on this slow but steady not always slow, but significant
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: increase and improvement. We've brought back white tail deer were
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: nearly gone. Rady white tail deer were down. Yeah, you know,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: so so low of numbers, unbelievably, and we're up to
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: thirty five million. There were maybe you know, tens of
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: thousands or hundreds of thousands left across the entire nation.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Now thirty five million elk populations have been restored. I mean,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: so many different things that are amazing success stories that
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: we did within the last one hundred years. But now
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: all that's you know, back trending down for so many species,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: and we can look back there and say, hey, you know,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: there is a model for what to do and how
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: to do it, and I think the model that I see,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: and you've alluded to this, but the model that I
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: see and that I think the hunting and angling community
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: epitomizes better than anyone. You know, there's many other folks
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: in the environmental and conservation community over the last fifty
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: hundred years that have done something, but the hundred and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: angling point portion of that, I think epitomize what kind
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: of my growing theory is. And this is something I've
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: been writing a ton about right now as I'm wrapping
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: up my latest book, is that there's a difference between
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: saying something and kind of like a like a passive
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: environmentalism or conservation was like, oh, I care about this
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: thing I'm posted on social media, And then there's this
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: other thing that I think the hunting and fishing world
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: has demonstrated, whether it be in the fifties and sixties
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: with actual reintroduction efforts of turkeys or flying in sheep,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: or getting out and planting native grasslands or planting trees.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: It's it's so many different examples of it in the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: fishing world too, where people are out there rebuilding stream banks,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: or building beaver analogs or whatever. It's actually doing something
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: active in concrete. Sometimes that's literally dirt in the hands,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: in the dirt on the ground, or sometimes it's showing
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: up at the capitol or writing a handwritten letter and
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: walking it to someone and talking to someone. But it's
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: it's active, it is concrete. It is you know, no
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: longer performative. And I think hunters and anglers, as you said,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: have done this and now is this time that it's
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: it's it's our time we have to do it again.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And you look at the American population we are
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: We've always been across section of the American population. We've
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: had you know, within our community, we have some differences,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: like you just pointed out there. But think about nine
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: I think it was nineteen sixty nine. You live in
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: the Great Lakes Country. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio started
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: on fire. Yeah, because it was the dumping grounds for
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: paint factories and oild refineries. And you tell that to
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: people today, they're like a river started on fire, not
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: that long ago. Yes, No, So I don't know if
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: you've ever been to the Boundary Waters or Rainy Lake
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: or the Rainy River or Lake of the Woods where
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: I grew up. I was born in Badet, Minnesota, where
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: the Rainy River dumps into Lake of the Woods. Grew
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: up south of there in Big Falls. As a kid,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: we would go and fish the Rainy River when the
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: walleyes would migrate up the Rainy River from Lake of
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: the Woods to spawn. Well, there were upstream from that
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 3: in International Falls, and for Francis, Ontario, there were multiple
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: paper mills. There were all kinds of things. Cities were
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: dumping their raw sewage in there. When in my lifetime
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: I was a kid. You would go there and fish
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: and you would see signs right at eye level. As
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm seven years old. I finally learned to
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: read by then, and you'd see these signs, do not
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: eat these fish. Do not eat these fish. Warning, do
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: not eat these fish. You would not cast your line
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: out there unless you had a bob or because if
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: your line and sinker hit the bottom, you'd reel in
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: a string of pollution and snot and flam that you
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: didn't even want to touch. That's in my lifetime past
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: the Clean Water Act, and it got vetoed by President
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: Nixon because well, this was gonna cost America so much money.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: Congressover wrote his veto, and the goal of the Clean
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: Water Act, if you want to summarize it, and was
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: kind of the sales pitch at the time, was every
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: water needs to be fishable and swimmable, because there's not
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: an American alive today who is not within a half
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: hour drive probably have a water back before the Clean
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: Water Act that was not fishable and not swimmable. Lake
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: Erie was not hardly fishable. There were warnings everywhere in
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: the Great like do not eat these fish, do not
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: eat these fish. But guess what Americans did. They told
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: the President, we don't care that this is going to
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: cost us a lot of money. We're going to retrofit
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: every industry in this country that creates some sort of
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: byproduct that's a pollutant, and yeah, we're going to see inflation,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: and yeah we're going to have to more. I guess
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: what Americans did. They wanted their kids and grandkids to
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: have fishable and swimmable waters. And that's what we have today.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: And so that's why I have all this faith in Americans.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: That we might have to go through a Cuyahoga River
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: starting on fire. But there are events that are going
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: to trigger us to say we aren't doing that, we
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: aren't putting up with this anymore. And so I could
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: give example after example. And I know I sound like
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: some old guy, but I've lived it. My lifetime is
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: not this big long arc of history. You know. I'm
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: not Moses who lived over many hundreds of years. And
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: so I want people to understand that, no matter what
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: the challenge is, Americans, hunters and anglers have rows up
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: and said we can fix this. We want better. It's
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: always been about better and more for that next generation.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: And I think that Clean Water Act is just that's
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: a perfect example because so often we hear, oh, that's
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: going to be expensive. Oh that's going to raise the
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: price of whatever. Oh you know how much we're going
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: to have to pay more at the pump for our gas.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: If we got to accommodate meal there Well a lot
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: of times that's not even true, but if it was,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: Americans have always said, Okay, I guess we got to
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: pay an extra penny every time we gas up our vehicle.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: If that means that the meal deer and pronghorn are
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: going to prosper in Wyoming, I'm good with that. Is
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: what Americans have always said, we saw when we passed
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, Americans said, yeah,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: let's suck it up, let's get it done. And I'm
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: just confident by you know, maybe this ten year window
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: that you asked me, maybe that's not the exact period,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: but by then we're going to be back to this
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: new trend of saying, boy, we almost squandered an unbelievable
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: gift that we had. Let's not do that.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: So I want to pivot a little bit to sort
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: of an adjacent set of issues, but related. When we
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: consider the future of hunting in America, what we've talked
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: about so far is the future of the resources that
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: we need as hunters. We need wildlife, we need wild places,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: we need clean air and clean water and access to
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: those things. Then there's also this side of the question,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: which is we need the opportunities and the rights to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: do that. And this is very much related to the
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: debate over should we have more hunters, should we introduce
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: people to the field, should we be recruiting and retaining
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: because all of that, of course influences our rights and
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: opportunities politically. But I'm curious if you can talk about
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: that when you look over the coming year to ten
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: years and you consider the change in demographics that we've discussed,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: what is all that going to mean for the future
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: of hunting? Where you see that headed.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well, I live in a state where we
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: passed a right to hunt as part of our country
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 3: situtional amendment in I think it's two thousand and six,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: So we have a constitutional right in Montana. But let's
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: not kid ourselves. We really have a social license by
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: society in general within your state or within your country
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: of what's going to be allowed. We can pretend otherwise,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: but that that's really what it gets down to. So
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: going back to all this AI data grinding that I
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: did and that I got help with, when I population
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: adjust those trends, it's really frightening. Most of those when
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: you population adjust for them, that if we use one
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: hundred as the baseline in twenty fifteen, by twenty twenty three,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: the last year we could find the complete data set,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: most of them are in the high eighties or low nineties.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: That's nine years we've slid from. If you want to
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 3: use those relative scales of one hundred people to eighty
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: seven people or ninety two people so if and some
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: people say, well, if we want to stay level with that,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: you know how many more hunters we're going to have
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: to have in the field. I'm not here to say
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: we've got to have more hunters that's going to keep
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: up with population. What I am saying is that the
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: percentage of hunters who are going to be advocates and
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: speak up needs to stay high, needs to be more.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: We always need more people who will speak up and advocate.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: But there is a reality that if people are not
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: exposed to hunting, maybe they only do it once, or
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: maybe they go along with somebody and a person shoots
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: a brace of pheasants and they get to enjoy a
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: pheasant meal and they're like, Wow, I can see why
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: you like hunting. That's that's amazing food. That's a great experience.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: We're if we think that we're going to protect ourselves
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: and make a case for our social license to do
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: this from an ever shrinking number of people, we're kidding ourselves.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: We are kidding ourselves. If you want to look at
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 3: this even further, you know this hunter number thing. I'm
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: seven weeks If I had have been born seven weeks later,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: I would not be a baby boomer. I'm like the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: tail tail end of the baby boomers. But Seane Mahoney
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: told me one time he used an analogy. He said,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: you know, the hunting population in North America is kind
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: of like a python. Let's use those pythons down in
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: Florida right now. They found out that they eat a
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: white tailed deer. And about fifty years ago, this python
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: ate a white tailed deer that's slowly working its way
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: through this python, and in the interim he's been eaten
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: field nice. The baby boomers represent that big deer. Pretty soon,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: that python's is going to crap out that big deer.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: My generation is aging out way faster, way, way faster
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: from hunting than what the new people are coming in.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: And the Council of Shooting and Hunting to advance shooting
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: and hunting sports about seventeen eighteen years ago, came up
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: with this idea called R three Recruit, Retain, Reactivate. Some
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: of the state agencies took that up. Between the agencies
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: and some of these other councils, they've worked on that,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: they haven't they haven't been kept up. I don't want
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: to discount the people who worked on that and the
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: effort they put into it, but it really hasn't worked
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: if you want to measure it by how many news
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: hunters have been recruited to replace those who are dying
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: and just aging out with health. So some people are
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: probably listening to this and well, so you're telling me Newberg,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: in ten years, when you age out, all you baby
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: boomers are going to be out of the way. Man,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: I'll be able to draw my tag Again. I'm not
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: putting in that context. My point is when you have
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: a group of people that represents this very large number
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: that still buy hunting licenses. Right, my uncle Larry's seventy eight,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: he's fighting all kinds of health issues. He buys a license,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: but he doesn't hunt. So you have a lot of
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: baby boomers who are buying a license who are not
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: the boots out there in the ground that you're competing against.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: Pretty Soon, they're going to be gone. Their financial contribution
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: to nonprofit groups, their contributions to buying licenses are going
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: to be gone, their equipment and excise taxes are going
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: to be gone, and more importantly, their political clout is
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: going to be gone. So you tell me how well
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: that python that I used in my metaphor analogy, there
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: is going to live eating field mice when it really
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: needs to eat rabbits and white tailed deer. That is
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: the reality of the recruitment slash, whatever you want to
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: call it, the replacement of hunters in America. Right now,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: we're feeling the pressures from this big bubble that's not
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: quite out of the snake, but it's going to be
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: out of there in ten years. I mean, I'd love
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: to think that I'm going to be hunting elk and
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: cheap toll. I'm ninety, but I can tell you right now,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: mark the last ten years, it felt like I dragged
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: an anchor around the hill. So I'm an age out
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: and so all this stuff that we hear to me,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: it's very very short sighted. Don't discount the fact that
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: people feel pressure, feel competition for tags. That we all do, right,
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: every one of us do. But there's reasons for why
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: it's happening, and there are much larger trends that endanger
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: the future of hunting and conservation that I just tune
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: that stuff out. I can't again. I go back to
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: it be in this scarcity mindset and I just can't
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 3: get there.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: So related to that, one of the you know, one
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: of the big worries about these changing demographics is that
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: as there's a smaller percentage of hunters as part of
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: the greater American population, there's gonna be less political support
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: for it. And we've seen over the last five years,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: ten years, these you know, increasing attempts to limit hunting opportunities,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: to shut down a bear season or shut down houndsman
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: or shut down mountain lion hunting or bobcat hunting or
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: whatever might be. And the concern is always like, well,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: even if you don't hunt mountain lions, this is a chip,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: This is a chip in the wall that could grow
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: and grow and grow, especially as demographics change. And that
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: seems to be a very real risk if we don't
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: change the demographics, if we don't do what you're saying.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: But I'm curious if all of the things we talked
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: about might be tied together, and that if we were
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: to have an abundance mindset and do what you're describing
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: and welcoming new people and growing ranks of advocates at least,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: and if we were to step up and really showcase
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: the way that the hunting and angling community are true
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: conservationists are improving the resource are trying to lead to
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: a world of abundance. Is there a future in which,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: even if we can't keep up with population growth, as
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: you said, might we be able to change that opportunity
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: for our social license so that we can change how
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: the rest of that growing population sees us, if they
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: see us not as these you know, bloodthirsty bamby killers,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: but instead as hey, wow, you know, I continue to
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: see this hunting fishing crowd, and man, they keep on
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: stepping up and saying, Hey, we want to protect wildlife. Hey,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: we want to protect public lands. Hey we're doing great
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: stuff on our private lands that are good for butterflies
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: and bugs and bunnies and all this other stuff too.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: In ten years, maybe could we change it so that
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: we're still trying to introduce new people, but at the
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: same time folks like, hey, that hunting and fishing crowd,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: they're not so bad. Let's let them continue doing their
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: thing because it's actually good.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, we can do that. We just got to
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: be good storytellers about it. And I don't mean by
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: that we make up the story. We have the most
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: unbelievable story there is to tell, and when you get
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: a chance to tell these kind of stories to people
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: who aren't aware of them because they haven't been exposed
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: to hunting and fishing, They're like, WHOA, I didn't know that.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: Like I look at all the stuff that happened last summer, right,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: rock climbers and mountain bikers and dog walkers are getting
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: a hold of me, Like, man, thanks for you guys
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: are just you're you're taking no prisoners on the public
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: land thing. Thank you, thank you. I'm like, well, you know,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: that's kind of where I grew up, that's what I
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: lived for. That's where I go get my food. And
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: they're like, huh, I get it. I get it. So
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: we have every one of these that we view as
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: a threat, I've view as an opportunity. Everything that someone
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: sees as a risk, I see as a possibility. So
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: your question of can we change that, Oh, I'm one
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: hundred percent convinced. You know, we got to be smart,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: we got to be strategic. We got to kind of
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: discipline ourselves so that other people don't discipline us. And
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: we just have too much to offer, and we have
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: way too much to contribute, and we have such a
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: track record that shows what we've been able to do.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: We just got to tell that story.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier that we might have an opportunity with
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: the twenty twenty six midterm elections and Congress. You mentioned
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: earlier that Congress is really what could put a stop
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: to some of these bigger picture things, trends that are
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: impacting you know, the slashes to budgets and management and
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: protections for public lands and private lands. I think really
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: key thing to remember is that the stuff that's happening
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: right now is not just impacting public lands. There are
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: tons of things that are impacting dollars going to private
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: land projects, dollars and protections that protect your water on
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: your private land, the wetland on your private land, all
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: of this. So that's public and private. So that said,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: there's an election here in twenty six coming up. Do
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: you see how do you see us? If so, let
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: me take the one step back. How can hunters and
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 2: anglers make conservation an actual issue in the twenty twenty
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: six midterm elections in such a way that folks are
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: arguing over solutions on both sides to these challenges? Is
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: that a realistic desire and what's the roadmap to making
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 2: that happen over the next you know, ten months, ten
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: eleven months.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's realistic, but it's difficult, right because we have
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: nationalized our elections. Right does anyone in your part of
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: the world subscribe to the local newspaper anymore?
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: No, why because they get all their all their stuff
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: comes nationally. So we as hunters can fall into that
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: trap of well, let's talk about taxes, let's talk about
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: you know, whatever the national issues are, and so we
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: end up voting for people who who we haven't even
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: asked them what their issue is about in our backyard.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: So I don't care who someone votes for, it makes it.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: I want you to vote, and I want you to
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: vote your values. But your values usually aren't reflected in
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: this whole debate, and all this money spent of framing
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: everything as this side or that side on national issues.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: Vote the issues that matter to you, and vote the
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: issues that are important in your backyard, and you will
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: get somebody who's going to listen to you. Don't let
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: the two big party machines pick your candidate for you.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: And where a lot of that happens is in the primaries.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: So everyone is looking at November. A lot of these
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: primaries are happening in February, March, April, May, June. That's
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: where you can pick a candidate who's listening to you.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: Don't discount that, don't overlook that. And regardless of what
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: the outcome of this election is, the real issue is
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: not who you voted well. The issue is voted for
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: whoever represented the values that you have across whatever however
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: you prioritize us. That is not the end of being
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: an American. You don't become an American involved in your
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: government once every two years or once every four years.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: Whoever that person is. You have to stay in contact
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: with them and their staff. You have to hold them accountable.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: And that's what we did last summer, held them accountable.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: So I don't know if the the midterm elections are
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: going to change anything. Now you read this poll, it's like,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: oh boy, history does say then no matter who's been
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: the president, they've really struggled. Their party struggles with the
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: midterms because Americans kind of like divided government, whether whether
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: we want to admit it or not. We like the
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: difficulty and the slowness that comes with divided government. It
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 3: makes us do one of those great American things called
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: compromise when they have divided government. So if you look
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 3: at history the midterms, say it's going to be difficult
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 3: for the current administration to maintain their power in a
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: midterm election. Maybe it will, maybe it will, maybe it won't.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: I don't know, but whatever it is, Participate in your primaries,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: make sure you vote, vote your priorities, and once that's done,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: don't think that that's the end of your duty as
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 3: a citizen. Stay in touch with these people, let them
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: know when they do good things for wildlife and conservation
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: and access. And sometimes that'll be someone you didn't vote
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: for who voted well and did a good thing. Don't
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: be afraid to give them a thank you. Just because
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: you didn't vote for him, doesn't mean that they're the
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 3: you know, the anti Christ somebody you know, media might
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: want to make us think that way. And if you
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: voted for somebody, don't think that that person has all
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: the good ideas. Because sometimes the people I vote for
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: have some really dumb ideas. I'm like, what the hell
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: are you thinking? I call them up, I'm like, hey,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: this is not good. Yeah, So I well, I also
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: think it just if it's if it's if it's on
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: your priority list, hunting and fishing, conservation, clean air, clean water,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: you know, access, Make it your priority all the time. No,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: not just every once in a while. Yeah.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: And I think just as important as placing that ultimate vote,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: regardless of who you vote for, I think it's just
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: as important to almost call up each party, each each
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: candidate's office and tell them, hey, if you want my vote,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: you better be good on this than this and this,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: and then after whoever wins, whether you voted them or not, hey,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: if you want my support the next time around, in
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: my folks, my people, my community, you better be good
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: on X, Y and Z. And if all of us
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: were doing that and giving those phone calls to both sides,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: both candidates or in the primary when they're trying to
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: choose who the general election candidate will be, if we
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: continually emphasize, hey, this stuff matters to our community, this stuff.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: If you want my vote, here's what you gotta do.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: If we did that enough, if we did that consistently enough,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: you would find more folks on both sides of the
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: isle eventually realizing well, I better be good on this
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: because I want to get elected.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right. Montana has the highest hunting participation of
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: every state in the country in Montana in our public elections,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: I don't care what side of the isle you're on.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: You just about dislocate your shoulder trying to raise your
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 3: hand to say I'm going to be the public land person.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: And I'm not saying every state's like Montana, but the
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: point is there's some correlation to how much hunting and
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: fishing there is in Montana. Have a priority public lands
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: and access are to our elected leaders. Right. You look
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: at last summer who set up the back wall of
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: dead on arrival was a Montana delegation who are all Republicans.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: They told Mike Lee in their own party end a
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: story why because hunters and anglers in Montana have a
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: lot of say, and you could have a lot of
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 3: say in your state. Also, it's getting organized, it's being persistent,
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: being professional, and being informed and just showing up and
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: you will have that same impact. I'm not saying that
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: as Montana's got it all figured out, but there's a
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: correlation there between the amount of outdoor activity that Montana
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: citizens partake in and how that moves these issues up
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: our priority list, Which kind of gets back to your
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: earlier point of the more people that advocate for this,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: the better. If that means okay, more people are out
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 3: doing it, who am I to tell them not to
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: do it? You know, first time I ever showed up
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: at a fishing access side, or I ever showed up
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: at a trailhead, I just I crowded somebody. I did. Now,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: And all the critics who complain about too much crowding
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: and all the reasons for it, guess what. The first
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: time they showed up somewhere, they crowded somebody. So all
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: this is tied together. We need even if hunter and
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: angler numbers stay the same or decline slightly, the real
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: issue is we got to do what our predecessors did.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: We got to say this is our responsibility, this is
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: our job. This comes with this. This isn't just buying
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: a hunting license. If you say you're a hunter, you
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 3: are raising your hand and saying I'm going to do
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: a lot more than just buy a license. That that's
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: purely something that's required by law. Yeah, your excise taxes
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: are required by law. Our predecessor did way more than
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: what was just statutorily required. And that's why we have
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: what we have today. And that's why going back to
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: your now your request at twenty thirty six, that's why
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: in twenty thirty six we're gonna have more than we
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: have today.
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: So Randy, one last question. Can you share with us
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: one specific action we can take in this next week
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: and one larger action we can undertake over the next
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: twelve months that will help us each do our part
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: in reaching that better future for hunting in twenty thirty six,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: this week and this year. What would do your two
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: action atters?
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, this week, find some activity that's going on
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: in your backyard. By backyard, I mean within your area
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: that you hunter, fish, or travel, and weigh in on it,
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: whether it's a state action, whether it's a federal action whatever.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: If you want to get a hold of the BLM
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: and tell them about the thing I talked about, the
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: Wyoming militia or court, migration court or and winter range.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: But I mean, these are things that you can do
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: faster than the amount of time it takes you to
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: read a thread of posts on a Facebook feed. Yeah right,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: So do that and in the next twelve months, make
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: it a point to be in contact with your elected officials.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: I don't care if it's your county commissioner. I don't
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 3: care if it's your state legislator, your governor, or your
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: people in DC. Those people all that kind of works
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: its way up right, your county commissioner. If they hear
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: a whole bunch of things about a problem that's going
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: on in their area and they call their congress person, Hey,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: out in your district here, we got this issue. That
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 3: congress person's going to put a staffer on that issue.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 3: But it's all about communication. They don't look you up
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 3: in the phone book and randomly survey every voter and say, hey,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: what's on your mind today? Right, we gotta take that step.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 3: So in the next twelve months, take that step, whether
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: it's a candidate or whether it's someone who actually holds
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 3: off of be polite, be professional, be informed, and let
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: them know that this is one of your priority issues
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: and you want them to represent your your position on it.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: There we go.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: Ready, make it a point to do that once a month.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: Do that once a month in America will be We'll
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: have this problem lecked.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna follow your advice. I'm
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: gonna do the very best I can. Randy, I'll be
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: right there with you. Along with a whole bunch of
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: other folks listening to this. I'm sure. I as always,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate your leadership on this, and you're doing
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: so much with your platforms to teach and to inspire
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: folks on similar you know, on these same topics and
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: similar can you can you just remind our listeners here
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: where they can find everything else that you're putting out
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: there into the world.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I have social media platforms, but I don't
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: know how to use them, so you can find me
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: on social media Instagram and Facebook. I think it's Randy
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: Nebergh Hunter. I have people who do that because I
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: don't know how to do it. I have a YouTube channel,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: frush Tracks, really large YouTube channel, and then I do
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: two podcasts. Thank you for inviting me, Mark, But I
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: have the hunt Talk radio podcast and the help Talk podcast,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: and those are probably the places to find me if
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: you really want to see me interacting with audiences. I
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: have a big forum called the hunt Talk dot com
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: hunting forum. It's about conservation and public land issues. It's
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: a different subset out of the hunting community. But we
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: go out there and we argue with each other and
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: then we all are friends because hey, we got to
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 3: solve this problem. And so a bunch of us who
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: we might argue about, you know, who's doing this or
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: who's doing that, But when a tax come to you
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: know the things we love where we all kiss and
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: makeup and we're pretty effective for uce there. But those
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: are the places that people can reach me. And I
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: just want to say, Mark, you and I have known
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 3: each other for quite a while now, we've spent some
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: time on the hill together, the hill in Washington, d C.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: But also the hill hunt bears and stuff. You're doing
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: great stuff. I just I am so thankful that there
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 3: are people like you and others who have that interest
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: in this and thanks for doing it. Keep at it.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: Someday you'll be old like me and some young guy
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: will be asking you these same questions and'll be like, well,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: I think Newburgh said this back in twenty twenties. Now
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: you're right, you're making a big difference, and keep at it.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you well, thank you, ry all the same right
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: back at you, and let's make a point to have
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: another conversation like this discussing and celebrating the wins much
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: sooner than five years from now. Let's make it sooner. Absolutely,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 2: thank you, and that's going to do it for us today.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you joining me for this special one thousandth
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast. It's been a
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: heck of a ride and I'm just so appreciative for
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: this opportunity, for this platform, for all of you who
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: have listened over the years, and I thank you for
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: that time and attention. So hope this episode was one
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: that filled you with inspiration and the desire to get
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: to work, just as it did for me, and I
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: hope you will join me in this next phase of
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 2: my career as the Director of Conservation. As we get
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: to work making good things happen for deer, deer hunters
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: and hunters of all types, anglers, fish, wild places, waters,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: and everything in between. It's gonna be a lot of fun,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 2: it's going to be important work, and I thank you
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: for being a part of it. So until next time,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 2: stay Wired to Hunt.