Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / People Still Matter: Conservation Policy, Advocacy & the Power of Relationships (Ep 772)

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People Still Matter: Conservation Policy, Advocacy & the Power of Relationships (Ep 772) · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:04
  Bill Cooksey: One thing that has been hopeful, more southern congressmen and senators have gotten a little more engaged with refuges, and why isn't this one being managed well? Well, do you know the US Fish and Wildlife Service butt bird budget
• 0:17
  Mike Brasher: Jeez, man.
• 0:17
  Bill Cooksey: Hasn't been increased is it 2012?
• 0:20
  Mike Brasher: Something like that. It's something like that.
• 0:23
  Bill Cooksey: And they're down, like, 600 employees?
• 0:25
  VO: Can we do a mic check, please? Everybody, welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. I'm your host, doctor Mike Brasher. I'm your host, Katie Burke. I'm your host, doctor Jerad Henson. And I'm your host, Matt Harrison. Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast, the only podcast about all things waterfowl. From hunting insights to science based discussions about ducks, geese, and issues affecting waterfowl and wetlands conservation in North America. The DU Podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan, the official performance dog food of Ducks Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan, always advancing. Also proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cock Tails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly.
• 1:31
  Mike Brasher: Everybody, welcome back. I'm your host on this episode, Doctor. Mike Brasher, and I'm very excited to have in studio with me Bill Cooksey, the partnership program leader for Tennessee Wildlife Federation, a guy that I've known for quite some time. We haven't had a whole lot of opportunities to interact personally, but certainly known your name, been wherever your name and what you do for probably twenty years. So, Bill, it's great to be sitting down with you and have you on the podcast.
• 1:59
  Bill Cooksey: Man, I'm glad to be here. I'm excited about it.
• 2:01
  Mike Brasher: You are are you a native Tennessean?
• 2:03
  Bill Cooksey: I am. Born in Jackson.
• 2:05
  Mike Brasher: Born in Jackson, not too far from here. You live out that way now?
• 2:08
  Bill Cooksey: I live near Parsons on the Tennessee River now. So a little farther east.
• 2:12
  Mike Brasher: Have you moved around and lived in different areas throughout your career?
• 2:16
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah. Most of the time I was working at Avery, I lived in Bartlett.
• 2:19
  Mike Brasher: Okay.
• 2:19
  Bill Cooksey: I I was in Jackson at first, then we moved to Bartlett.
• 2:22
  Mike Brasher: But you never lived in Louisiana or anything like that. You were associated with Vanishing Paradise. Yes. Right? And which is a sort of a Louisiana century.
• 2:29
  It's kind
• 2:30
  Bill Cooksey: of a a sportsman outreach wing of the National Wildlife Federation. I spent a lot of time in Louisiana.
• 2:36
  Mike Brasher: Did you feel like you were living there sometimes?
• 2:38
  Bill Cooksey: Sometimes. I I usually didn't stay for too long, but I was down there two or three times a Now my wife loved it because a lot of times she would go with me and stay in the quarter, and she could do fun things all day while I work. But Yeah.
• 2:50
  Mike Brasher: That's where I first remember seeing your name most prominently associated with Vanishing Paradise. I think we were probably in some meetings down there whenever I was I was still down there along the Gulf Coast and saw all the great work that you and National Wildlife Federation did, and I think that's where we want to start is to talk about those organizations a little bit. The Tennessee Wildlife Federation is who you work for now. Was a recent move, but prior to that, you worked for the National Wildlife Federation. Then we're probably going to talk about some of the other things that you've done throughout your career, sort of a wide ranging conversation from the perspective of someone who's made a career out of this in different ways, intersecting all the people and groups that are passionate about conservation and the resources that we work to conserve.
• 3:36
  So your perspective is is pretty unique, and so I wanna take advantage of that here in this conversation. So National Wildlife Federation, that's who you worked for prior to.
• 3:45
  Bill Cooksey: Correct.
• 3:45
  Mike Brasher: So tell us about that. Talk about the good work that group does.
• 3:49
  Bill Cooksey: So I was there for eight years. Started in 2016, and I went through a couple of different job titles, but basically, I worked with sportsmen around the country. We had people locally in Louisiana. I had no one in Florida at the time. My portfolio was Everglades, the Gulf Coast, and then Coastal Louisiana.
• 4:11
  And then we started a Mississippi River program. And so I had all of that under my my portfolio. And what I generally did, I worked some strictly within Louisiana with the legislature there and supporting different legislation and policy to drive coastal restoration in Louisiana. But with most of those programs, I did a lot more work with they would tell me who they what senators and congressmen in DC they needed to touch. So I could find people in California to Tennessee to Florida to Maine.
• 4:45
  My Rolodex was very valuable when I went to work for National Wildlife Federation because
• 4:51
  Mike Brasher: Do we need to explain what a Rolodex is to people?
• 4:53
  Bill Cooksey: Probably so. They used to have me come down
• 4:55
  Mike Brasher: every paper Rolodex like I and
• 4:57
  Bill Cooksey: I have one. Still, I have a big travel Rolodex, and I still use it now and again. I'll say, you know, that guy would be perfect, and I haven't talked to him in twenty years.
• 5:04
  Mike Brasher: And you fill out the loan and pulled it out and and find the business card or it's basically this this, I don't know, there are different styles, rotary or sort of a expanding sort of accordion style where you put business cards or otherwise write names and address, contact information down on a piece of paper.
• 5:21
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah.
• 5:21
  Mike Brasher: Old school.
• 5:22
  Bill Cooksey: And and now my deceased part is getting bigger Oh, no. Which is kind of interesting. Yeah. Every time I hear about someone, I'll go through the Rolodex and move it to the the front. And I used to give a presentation to the other outreach people in New Orleans and mostly young people who work for different organizations.
• 5:43
  We had a lot of organizations in that office and they're like, Bill, would you do your presentation on building relationships? And it was always titled pick up the damn phone. But I would have a graphic that would show a bunch of Rolodexes, and I would bring my eyes. This is where I started, and now it's all in your phone, and that's great. But, you know, I talk to them about talking to people.
• 6:06
  Don't just send out an email hoping you'll get a response. Yes. We'll sign that letter.
• 6:10
  Mike Brasher: Why? Why? Why is that so important? I agree with you. Yeah.
• 6:14
  And I've had that conversation with folks sometimes too when they're like, I have this issue. We've been emailing about it. What would you do what what advice do you have? And one of the first questions I ask is, have you talked to them? Mhmm.
• 6:28
  So what's your perspective
• 6:29
  Bill Cooksey: on amazing how quick you can get to the point of making a decision in a phone call or building helping build a relationship with a phone call. Texts are great. I use take you and I usually text. When I have a question, I reach out to you. They're great if you can do it in three sentences or less.
• 6:46
  Yeah. Email is great when you need details in writing. But when you need to reach someone and help them make a decision, hopefully in your favor, which I had to do a lot of, it's just like sales. You're rarely gonna sell someone by sending them emails. You and I both get emails every day from people, hey, Ducks Unlimited could raise their AI profile.
• 7:07
  Yeah. Delete. Yep. But you send out an email, like, we'd have people send out 500 emails and they get for a sign on letter, they get three replies.
• 7:17
  Mike Brasher: Yeah.
• 7:17
  Bill Cooksey: If you don't already have a relationship, you aren't getting a decision via email. But if you pick up the phone and call them, you explain the situation, you explain what their name on it means or or whatever the case may be, people have to respond to that. They have to deal with that, and usually, it's a positive outcome.
• 7:36
  Mike Brasher: And people are the ones still making the decisions. I am I am fearful and nervous that we may be getting into this, I don't know, maybe even dystopian world where humans aren't the ones making all the decisions Scary, isn't in the future, but at least for right now, humans are still making those decisions. They're informing those decisions with a lot of different pieces of information, some of which includes science, some of which includes input from constituents, stakeholders, etcetera, but the people, key people, decision makers Yes. Are still the ones that are making that those decisions, and and those are the ones you need a relationship to.
• 8:12
  Bill Cooksey: Most of life is about sales, and and that's what this is. And some people
• 8:17
  Mike Brasher: People aren't there, not gonna like to hear
• 8:19
  Bill Cooksey: that, but
• 8:19
  Mike Brasher: you're right. But You're selling something.
• 8:21
  Bill Cooksey: And it's not used car salesman, and I don't mean to disparage used car salesman. There's some great ones, but that's a classic, you know, thing people say. That's not what you're doing, but you're still selling them. You have to convince someone Preswaying that what you're convincing. Doing Yeah.
• 8:35
  Is the right thing and that they wanna be part of it. Mhmm. And that it it's pretty simple concept, but it can be more difficult in reality.
• 8:46
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. So National Wildlife Federation, y'all do a lot of policy work. Mhmm. What type of habitat program, habitat work do y'all do? Because I'm not familiar.
• 8:59
  Is there much of that going on?
• 9:01
  Bill Cooksey: So National Wildlife Federation typically doesn't do a lot of boots on the ground Okay. Restoration. We do have did have people who do that sort of thing, but in general, it's more of an advocacy thing Okay. Where we work to bring people together to push good policy decisions, to push for spending money in the right places, you know, money that's already there. You know, in Louisiana, it was all about the coastal master plan and advocating for that.
• 9:26
  Yeah. And and one of the last things I did was when the new governor came in, even my first week at TWF, I was helping them secure signers for a letter Yeah. To continue following the coastal master plan. Didn't happen,
• 9:41
  Mike Brasher: but I'm sure you have some stories and thoughts on all those types of things.
• 9:44
  Bill Cooksey: I I do, but they they can get probably more political than we want to right now.
• 9:48
  Mike Brasher: Tennessee Wildlife Federation is where you moved to just a couple years ago, a year and a half ago. A year and a half. What's the what's the relationship between the the state wildlife federations, the National Wildlife Federation? Right. What are some of the key differences?
• 10:04
  What do you do now?
• 10:05
  Bill Cooksey: So NWF has 52 affiliates around the country and then the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, And they're a very diverse group. There are some who hunting and fishing is not any anything they talk about. Others like TWF, it's all about sportsmen and conservation. And we do actual work on the ground. So that's one of the differences.
• 10:31
  I still work in the policy department, so my work is more similar to what I used to do at NWF, which is talking to people and getting them to support good policy decisions. Working with policy guys at DU like Ed Penny, and and they're a great help, a great help in our work, and hopefully, we reciprocate reciprocate.
• 10:51
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. You probably know your way around the the the state capitals. Certainly around certainly Tennessee. I'm sure several other states here nearby.
• 11:01
  Bill Cooksey: Not so I've only been to Cordell Hall a couple of times because we actually do have a couple of people who just work on policy. Okay. And they're the ones in there every we have someone in the legislature every day of session. But I've I've it's an easy building to find your way around in. It's not like going into the hard office building in DC.
• 11:20
  Yeah. It's quite different. I spent a good deal of time in Baton Rouge in the legislature there, but we also had people in Louisiana, so they did most of that, and I came in for special things. I spent more time in DC as far as directly working with politicians.
• 11:38
  Mike Brasher: Staffers and members of congress.
• 11:41
  Bill Cooksey: Yes.
• 11:41
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. You've been doing that for what is it now? About ten years. Ten years. So my math was off a little bit, I guess, whenever I was thinking you were associated with Vanishing Paradise back in the early, late two thousands, so you didn't really get that.
• 11:58
  I
• 11:58
  Bill Cooksey: I wasn't.
• 11:59
  Mike Brasher: You were with another entity, another another organization or another business that and we're gonna get to that in a moment.
• 12:05
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Mike Brasher: You you obviously enjoy this, the job that you've been able to do in terms of working with partners, trying to influence favorable decisions. Why? Did you does it surprise you that you've enjoyed it so much? Or
• 12:26
  Bill Cooksey: It does. I mean, had a rough start in
• 12:29
  Mike Brasher: You didn't start in policy. I mean, or at least your I don't know where you started, but your job prior to this was not related to policy. No. Right? So yeah.
• 12:39
  Has it surprised you?
• 12:40
  Bill Cooksey: It has, except I've never been a policy geek, you know. Other people are and it blows me away, but it's kinda like scientists. I mean, how deep y'all go into the weeds on things and the same with policy.
• 12:53
  Mike Brasher: Sometimes unnecessarily so, but that's okay. Sometimes, but it's
• 12:56
  Bill Cooksey: part of the deal. Yeah. So that part of it, I really had to learn and work at. But I think most of us, can watch the news and understand the repercussions of bad policy.
• 13:07
  Mike Brasher: For sure.
• 13:07
  Bill Cooksey: A lot of people try to ignore it. Sometimes I try to ignore it. But in wildlife policy and conservation policy, it's usually pretty cut and dry. Yeah. What needs to happen is getting enough people to push that button so the enough politicians listen and vote the right way on policies.
• 13:25
  Yeah. And, you know, it's one this year in Tennessee that was around duck hunters in Sweetwater, Tennessee. In the state of Tennessee, it's always been understood that only the commission and the agency can regulate hunting, which means you can hunt in the city limits. It doesn't mean you can go into a city park and shoot deer. It means if you are on a legal property where if it were in the county, you could hunt it.
• 13:51
  You have permission. You own it. As long as you aren't recklessly endangering people, which is illegal anywhere Yep. Only the commission and agency can enforce any of those laws. And in Sweetwater, these guys bought a swamp in the city to duck hunt.
• 14:08
  And the first day they went in there to hunt it, the police showed up, wrote them citations Really? And shut it down. And all of us really thought it'd go to court because it's happened before, and, you know, politicians and the commission and agency would all explain, no. Here's the law, and it'd go away. It didn't.
• 14:29
  In this court, the judge ruled against the duck hunters.
• 14:32
  Mike Brasher: Really?
• 14:33
  Bill Cooksey: They're appealing that decision now.
• 14:34
  Mike Brasher: So because of some presumed alleged violation of a municipal
• 14:40
  Bill Cooksey: Yes. You can't discharge a firearm in the city.
• 14:43
  Mike Brasher: Okay.
• 14:45
  Bill Cooksey: And that's fine. A city can have that ordinance
• 14:47
  Mike Brasher: Yeah.
• 14:47
  Bill Cooksey: But it can't include hunting.
• 14:49
  Mike Brasher: Really?
• 14:49
  Bill Cooksey: Now it can include target shooting for sure. But it can't if it is a legal hunting season, you're properly licensed and you're on land where you're legally allowed to hunt.
• 15:00
  Mike Brasher: I guarantee a lot of people don't realize that.
• 15:02
  Bill Cooksey: No. They don't. I've seen enough articles coming out. They had no idea. There's so much hunting within Shelby County and within the city limits of Memphis Yeah.
• 15:12
  And people don't know what's going on. No one I mean, it's always been fine and no one even noticed. This would've you could imagine the repercussions, especially some of these smaller towns, like when you drive east on 64 Sure. They spread those city limits out so far Yeah. That there's farms.
• 15:29
  Farms I've hunted many times in Fayette County, especially. But the general assembly wrote a bill to codify what had always been their intent and had been the opinion of three different district or three different AGs over the years from both parties, and so they've codified that now. It passed this year, and that was a big win for us in Nashville.
• 15:50
  Mike Brasher: To clarify that that that what?
• 15:53
  Bill Cooksey: What what is specific to cannot regulate hunting.
• 15:57
  Mike Brasher: Okay.
• 15:58
  Bill Cooksey: So you can hunt within that municipality, there's nothing they can do about it unless you are recklessly endangering people.
• 16:04
  Mike Brasher: Yep. But a property owner can can specify whether someone can or cannot hunt. Correct. Obviously, that's a private property right issue.
• 16:11
  Bill Cooksey: Correct. It there's no difference between being out in the middle of nowhere and being within the city limits.
• 16:16
  Mike Brasher: Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So that's one of the important roles that groups like yours play. Correct.
• 16:22
  Right. What I'll ask you the same question about the the habitat work. Does TWF, Tennessee Wildlife Federation, get involved in any type of projects on
• 16:31
  Bill Cooksey: the ground? We we have a so we have about 40 employees, and several of of them work on the ground doing mitigation projects, stream restoration projects, marsh restoration, woodlands restoration, thousands and thousands of acres and hundreds of miles of streams. Blue Oval City East of here, We've done several mitigation projects on their behalf.
• 16:55
  Mike Brasher: I had no idea. Yeah. Do you have biologists? Do you have ecologists on staff? Correct.
• 16:59
  You have engineers?
• 17:00
  Bill Cooksey: We don't have an engineer
• 17:02
  Mike Brasher: on staff. Ducks Unlimited's engineers? We have an army
• 17:04
  Bill Cooksey: of engineers. We have. It's my understanding. I don't take part in that work Yeah. But but I know they have, especially on some mitigation projects where wetlands were concerned.
• 17:14
  Mike Brasher: Interesting. And and so are are you a nonprofit organization?
• 17:19
  Bill Cooksey: We are. Okay.
• 17:20
  Mike Brasher: And you
• 17:20
  Bill Cooksey: Five zero one c three.
• 17:21
  Mike Brasher: And you have members at the
• 17:23
  Bill Cooksey: We we do not have members. This is this is one of the things I had to get used to at MWF and at TWF. You know, I grew up around Ducks Unlimited.
• 17:32
  Mike Brasher: Mhmm.
• 17:32
  Bill Cooksey: Now that was an organization I knew. My dad was a trustee emeritus. My earliest memory was of the DU rally in Jackson, Tennessee when I was three.
• 17:40
  Mike Brasher: I'm sure a lot of us have memories that we could talk about.
• 17:42
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah. So I knew the membership based organizations. I understood how that worked. Yeah. And at NWF, they don't have members.
• 17:51
  Now some of the affiliates have members.
• 17:53
  Mike Brasher: Okay.
• 17:54
  Bill Cooksey: And obviously, we have people who send money every year. Yep. But it's not really a membership. TWF is the same way. At one time, a lot of the state affiliates would have their own affiliate groups.
• 18:06
  And so TWF, their main affiliate groups were sportsmans clubs around the state. Those have changed a lot in the last twenty years. Some many of them have gone away. There there was one I tried to contact when I started. I'm going through these old lists.
• 18:21
  I think I went through seven people before I found one who's still alive. Okay. And the organization's gone. But they used to be affiliates, and that was stopped around 2006.
• 18:31
  Mike Brasher: So if if you don't mind me asking, like, what's the primary source of the revenue that allows your organization to function? Is it through grant proposals and and things of that nature?
• 18:39
  Bill Cooksey: Especially on that habitat side, obviously, lot of grants there, but we have great development people.
• 18:45
  Mike Brasher: Okay. They do philanthropy. Yes. Yeah.
• 18:47
  Bill Cooksey: Most of our money comes from private donors and foundations.
• 18:51
  Mike Brasher: Outstanding. I told you that I was gonna learn some things as we got into this conversation. It's really cool. So I'll give you an opportunity to plug the websites for for NWF and and TWF.
• 19:01
  Bill Cooksey: And both are dot orgs. So it's nwf.org and tnwf.org.
• 19:06
  Mike Brasher: Tnwf.tennesseewildlifefederation. So go check those out, folks, if you wanna learn a little bit more about the work that they do or or search for your state affiliate, wildlife federation.
• 19:18
  Bill Cooksey: Where wherever you are, look them up because some of them do great work. Again, if you're in California, that's not what they focus on. But if you're in Alabama or Georgia or Mississippi or Louisiana, it's sportsman's issues that they
• 19:31
  Mike Brasher: set front and center. So those state affiliates have have pretty wide latitude focused on the issues that they They are
• 19:38
  Bill Cooksey: totally autonomous. Okay. They they actually steer the national organization through resolutions every year. Oh. So in June, I'll be attending the NWF annual meeting and the affiliates will introduce resolutions, and we will work back and forth to see if we can pass them or fail them.
• 19:57
  And those go on the books, and NWF is required to address those resolutions.
• 20:02
  Mike Brasher: Are you are you do you work closely or often with I think it's the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation
• 20:10
  Bill Cooksey: All the time. Folks. Okay. Yes. I was at NASC here in Memphis back, you know, last fall.
• 20:15
  I've attended just about every NASC convention since or NASC summit since I went to work at NWF.
• 20:23
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. We had an episode with with Kaylee Lager. I suspect you you've run into Kaylee as well as Swanee Evans. Those two were on an episode where we talked about the Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, National Association of Sportsman Caucuses. Sporting Caucuses.
• 20:41
  That was a fantastic and very educational episode. I encourage folks to go back and listen to that. It will tell you about the great work that that group does at it's organized sort of at a national level, but they get involved in all sorts of advocacy issues and policy issues at state levels, probably at federal levels as well, and they work with with you and and your people. The work that y'all do, I am pretty confident, is vastly underappreciated relative to the value that it provides to to sportsmen, sportswomen, anglers, hunters, shooters.
• 21:17
  Bill Cooksey: That that's probably pretty common across the board for all of us, isn't it?
• 21:20
  Mike Brasher: Some sometimes. Probably so. But we all work together as a community, and it it takes all of us pulling together, hopefully sharing the same message, trying to achieve good outcomes for people that care about these resources. In terms of caring about the resources and some of the things that we do and some of the things that we buy to help us with those pursuits, you worked at one of those places that a lot of folks will will have heard about. You were there prior to coming to NWF.
• 21:56
  Right?
• 21:56
  Bill Cooksey: Correct. There there was a little break in there where I was a magazine
• 21:59
  Mike Brasher: editor between Well, you've done every part of it pretty much.
• 22:03
  Bill Cooksey: I've I've I've done it all. Yeah.
• 22:05
  Mike Brasher: So that group that that business that I'm talking about is Avery. Yes. And I want you to talk about your time there. How did you get into that, and how long were you there? What were the good times?
• 22:16
  What were the what were the bad times, if there were bad times, stressful times? Yeah. Just So share some of that with us.
• 22:25
  Bill Cooksey: It it was a great experience, an incredible learning experience, and obviously built my Rolodex a great deal. I I couldn't do what I did Totally
• 22:33
  Mike Brasher: different from what you're doing now. I'm full profit company, but
• 22:36
  Bill Cooksey: Totally different from all the Yeah. And I still talk to all the same people. You know, Alan Hughes was one of the owners of and Alan and I are still close. He's on our outdoor business roundtable. But I started at Avery.
• 22:50
  I had a job that was wasn't gonna go anywhere, and it was working at an outdoor magazine. But I called Tom Matthews one day and said I was thinking about leaving, and Tom was the majority owner. And I'd known him for years. You know, you'd see him around. I saw the first time he exhibited a boat blind at over in Stuttgart at the Wings Over the Prairie Festival, and I watched Tom, what is that?
• 23:12
  You know, he's showing me his new duck blind he invented in '94.
• 23:15
  Mike Brasher: And Avery was a was a pretty big innovator around that time. Right? Absolutely. They they rose to notoriety pretty quick because they were doing a lot of bringing a lot of innovative products to the market. That there
• 23:28
  Bill Cooksey: really wasn't a waterfowl category Yeah. Before Avery. They they really I mean, there were duck calls. There were decoys, but you'd see two pages in Cabela's Mhmm. In the master catalog.
• 23:40
  And within about six years of Avery starting, now they had full catalogs. And we did a lot of those catalog layouts. I started as a customer service manager. Tom said, we need a customer service manager. You think you can do that?
• 23:52
  So I did that. Six weeks later, I was the sales manager.
• 23:56
  Mike Brasher: Okay.
• 23:57
  Bill Cooksey: And about eight weeks after that, he said, yeah, we have to start a pro staffer. We have to start a pro staff, and so I got that too.
• 24:06
  Mike Brasher: So you got people skills. That's the common denominator through all these things. You got people skills.
• 24:10
  Bill Cooksey: I love people, and I I've been so blessed to get to know so many great folks and a broad range of people. You know, I can text you or doctor Cohen about duck stuff and and get answers so I can deal with an issue. I can call a business and say, how's this gonna impact you? I called Final Flight and several others about a a possible straight wall cartridge season. You know, how is that gonna impact y'all?
• 24:33
  And so being able to reach out to people has just always been something I've enjoyed, and it there's nothing like adding a new name and number.
• 24:41
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. So you were the leader of director or whatever the title would have been of the of the pro staff. What where did you go from there?
• 24:48
  Bill Cooksey: So that was an interesting time period because, you know, there were pro staffs around, but they were typically small and not very organized, some great folks, and and we pulled from some of those. When I finally gave it up and said, we have to hire someone to do this full time, we had a 120 pro staffers around the country. And I think that last year I did it, we were at about two thousand hours or twenty five hundred hours of those guys working in stores, and it shows promoting not just our brand. If they were in a store, y'all stock shelves. You do whatever that store needs.
• 25:21
  And it got up, I believe Rob got it to about six thousand hours as a full time guy. Now a lot of people didn't like it because not all of our pro staffers were famous hunters. You know? Some of them were. Some of them were guys who love to hunt, but they could go in and talk about a finisher blind or talk about dog stuff, that sort of thing, and help those businesses who didn't have someone who really knew the product.
• 25:46
  They could help a consumer understand how it worked, what it did, why this one's good.
• 25:51
  Mike Brasher: That was before the days of YouTube and where you can find
• 25:54
  Bill Cooksey: That's right.
• 25:54
  Mike Brasher: Everything that you wanna do just, you know, through searching in on one of those online platforms. Yes. So that in person transfer of knowledge was much more valuable back then.
• 26:05
  Bill Cooksey: More valuable to both the consumer and the the dealers. I mean, I I would travel around to dealers to show them how to install a quick set boat blind so they understood how it worked and why we wanted to talk to the consumer before they bought one Yeah. Or show them how to use finisher blinds, how to set them up. And so those things were valuable too, but having a guy in the store to talk to consumers at almost special, like, waterfowl weekends, that sort of thing. And some of the bigger stores, we had guys who were just connected to that store who went in there every week to make sure everything looked good, help set it up nicely, and rearrange things.
• 26:41
  So it was a neat time. Some people didn't like it because they weren't all famous guys. It should be Tim Grounds or Jim Rohnquist or whoever. And those guys are great. You know, they're they're in my Rolodex too.
• 26:54
  Mike Brasher: Oh, for sure.
• 26:54
  Bill Cooksey: You know, Tim was a great friend. Jimbo, we talked yesterday. So having we had some famous people and they were important, but having guys who were willing to go in a store and help people was critical to our success growing that business. They came up with product ideas. They came down and participated in our photoshoots, which at one time we were DUs, number one
• 27:19
  Mike Brasher: Oh, yeah.
• 27:20
  Bill Cooksey: Photo Yeah. Supplier.
• 27:22
  Mike Brasher: Yep. I remember I had I had lots of Avery. Lots of Avery here. I probably still have some. I'm sure there's a lot that we could talk about in terms of the evolution of the outdoor gear industry.
• 27:38
  I'm not the most qualified to talk about that. There are other people here that have a much longer history with that and have more insight and can ask you more intriguing questions. I think that would be a fascinating conversation to have with with various folks.
• 27:53
  Bill Cooksey: It would because, frankly, the overseas the ability to to easily have things made overseas has also changed the industry a lot. It's much easier to get into if you have some money. Yeah. It's also an easy way to lose your money. Yeah.
• 28:07
  Mike Brasher: I'm sure.
• 28:08
  Bill Cooksey: Because the early days of China, we we were kinda forced to go there. We didn't want to. We enjoyed making our products in The US, but we had factories going bankrupt while they were making our stuff. So we really felt we had no choice at the time. And I know now everyone would love to pull everything back to The US, but it's not that easy.
• 28:25
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. It comes down to economics on lot of this stuff, doesn't it?
• 28:28
  Bill Cooksey: Or just a place to make them because most of these companies don't make their products in house.
• 28:33
  Mike Brasher: Yeah.
• 28:34
  Bill Cooksey: You know, their the category is too broad. You're trying to do too many different things. They may make one product here, but six others in China and Vietnam and and different countries.
• 28:44
  Mike Brasher: Well, let's let's kinda put a put a stake in this conversation here because I think that would be something that I don't know that we've discussed that on a prior episode, like the evolution of Mhmm. Of outdoor the outdoor gear industry, where it has been, where it is now, where we think it may be going, and hearing from folks like yourself as Justin Carpenter with Drake Waterfowl, Jimbo and and and others and a host of other people. I think that'd be pretty intriguing. So we'll make some we'll have some conversations, see if there's an interest
• 29:14
  Bill Cooksey: in doing something like be cool. Duck calls are another thing that
• 29:18
  Mike Brasher: Oh, yeah.
• 29:19
  Bill Cooksey: Manufacturing has just totally changed that part of the industry.
• 29:24
  Mike Brasher: For sure. We're gonna take a break right now. We're gonna come back, and I want or I wanna ask you to think about your career, how things have changed in conservation, you know, kind of not necessarily in outdoor gear space, but obviously, how we communicate the different platforms we have now will feature prominently in that in that discussion, but but also just some of the, you know, your personal impressions of of where we've come from, what the opportunities are going forward, whether you're optimistic or pessimistic about what lies ahead of us, and how everybody can do their own part to help us get to a better place into the future.
• 30:08
  Bill Cooksey: That'll be a good one.
• 30:08
  Mike Brasher: Okay. Alright. Stay with us, folks. We'll be right back.
• 30:17
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 30:33
  Mike Brasher: Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I am sitting here with mister Bill Cooksey with Tennessee Wildlife Federation. Almost said Tennessee Waterfowl Federation. No.
• 30:44
  Tennessee Wildlife Federation. And let's look back over your career. We've talked about, you know, TWF now, NWF prior to that, then Avery. Well, actually, was a stint where you're working for a magazine or a magazine editor. Where were you before Avery?
• 31:00
  Bill Cooksey: Before Avery, I was at a magazine, and I was writing and selling advertising. And then before that? And before that, I actually was the sales manager for Roy Rhodes Championship Calls. And before that? Before that, I was selling electrical supplies.
• 31:13
  Mike Brasher: Okay. So is that so the the calls, is that where your career in the outdoor space, the conservation space started?
• 31:21
  Bill Cooksey: Yes. I when I was in school, I wanted to be an outdoor writer.
• 31:26
  Mike Brasher: Okay.
• 31:26
  Bill Cooksey: Then I realized I wasn't that good at it, especially at that time, and there was no way I would come up with enough story ideas to make a living. So I had normal jobs right up until I went to work for Roy Rhodes.
• 31:37
  Mike Brasher: Okay. I don't know Roy Rhodes. Am I dating myself? Are they still around?
• 31:43
  Bill Cooksey: No. They're not. Okay. I was there in the mid nineties and
• 31:48
  Mike Brasher: Located in in Tennessee?
• 31:49
  Bill Cooksey: They were in Memphis. Okay. And Roy made duck and turkey calls at the time, and I think it's still the case. He's the only person to win the world duck and the national turkey calling championship. Great talented caller, made great calls, but never quite got over the hump, sold it to another company, and it just ended up going away.
• 32:09
  The last time I heard someone maybe doing something, and this will date it, was Buck Gardner years ago, was talking about buying Roy's old molds and asking my thoughts on them.
• 32:19
  Mike Brasher: When you look across your career, and I don't know, man, this is given given where you've worked and the the perspectives or the lenses through which you viewed the conservation and hunting community, I don't know how in the world you can answer this. What are some of the more notable changes that you've observed when you kind of reflect back on your career? It's like, what has surprised you most? I mean, obviously, you'll probably think about technology and things of that nature, but what stands out as some of the most notable changes?
• 32:55
  Bill Cooksey: You know, I I think the biggest change in my opinion is the way we all get our news, number one. I mean, there there was a time I thought all of these old rumors would go away if people could just get the right information quickly and had easy access to it. Well, we have that now, but we also have easier access to a lot of misinformation.
• 33:16
  Mike Brasher: Oh, yeah.
• 33:17
  Bill Cooksey: And with social media, everyone has their ability to share views whether they have any, you know, foundation in reality or not. And those get out there just as much as people who are trying to tell you, hey, here's what this policy is, or no, here's how we restore wetlands and here's what an easement is. Here's Yeah. And that doesn't get out there seemingly as fast as the bad stuff that just waste time.
• 33:47
  Mike Brasher: Only if only we had a more effective way to get information to people. Right? That was the thing. That then will solve all our problems. We there was probably a bit of a miscalculation on the idea that, well, we don't control what information gets out there.
• 34:00
  Yeah. And and so there was miscalculation on how much people would use those mechanisms for information transfer to advance some conversations and and pieces of of, I I say, information that maybe aren't so true, you know, or aren't as productive from the things that that that that we value.
• 34:20
  Bill Cooksey: Right? And that's probably the best way to put it. It's not productive. You can't help but engage sometimes, and I'm guilty of it as bad as anyone. When I see it, I just have to say something.
• 34:32
  That's be smart to just leave it alone.
• 34:34
  Mike Brasher: I've seen you online. You've probably seen me online as well. Yeah. Try to resist the urge sometimes, but then but there is a line.
• 34:41
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah. And it's like, god, you're just wrong. I mean, that it's black and white. This isn't guesswork, but, you know, that has changed things a lot from the days when if you wanted to know about conservation news, you opened DU Magazine, Turkey's NWTF. Those were where you went for information.
• 35:04
  With the Internet, we got more and more information. Some of it good, some of it not. And then with social media, even more so. And and frankly, another thing that I think changed in 2020 via COVID is a distrust of science. I think we all understand it to a point.
• 35:23
  At NWF in Louisiana, every year, we would do or every three years, we did had an independent group do a survey about people's attitudes on coastal restoration. Yeah. Prior, every three years, science was their number one go to to know the facts about coastal loss and restoration. And if I remember right, in I think it was 2022, we did it again, and it slipped to number four. Wow.
• 35:53
  Fishermen were number one, so that was good news to me. But that distrust of science, I think, is feeding some of this we see now, some of the conversations.
• 36:04
  Mike Brasher: How do we get it back?
• 36:05
  Bill Cooksey: Time and good work. I mean, eventually, when you see results of good work, you have to say, they were right about that.
• 36:12
  Mike Brasher: To what extent do you think, like, authentic relationships between the science community and the people we're trying to reach plays a role?
• 36:21
  Bill Cooksey: Those are always critical, obviously, just like we were talking about in the first segment about relationships. The more positive interactions you have and the more people learn to trust you, whether it, you know, whether it's your organization or you as a person. So I do think it's vital for those in in science to engage when they can. But the interesting thing is most scientists don't claim to know it all. They don't claim that everything they say is definite fact.
• 36:50
  It's just the data at this point. I appreciate that about science. You know, some folks want a definitive answer to everything, and there's it's not always there. And so I I can imagine there's a difficulty there for people in your field.
• 37:03
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. As as a person that does a lot of communicating on some of these issues, I don't know if any it's difficult to know if if a person's approach, I'm thinking about this myself, is effective because I don't get a lot of feedback. You know, I don't do surveys with the people that I talk to to figure out if if what I said or the way I said it resonated with them, if it changed their view of anything. So that's kinda difficult to know if Sure. If if what you're doing is right.
• 37:34
  But the one thing that I I mean, and part of this is just because it's personally the way I think it is and the way I feel about it, and people have heard me say this a lot on our podcast, science is a process. It's a process by which we learn, and if you think about a process, it is something that is constantly in motion, meaning that rarely are there phenomena, especially when you're dealing with phenomena of nature, in which case things are always changing, but rarely do we get to a point where we know something with 100% certainty forever. Like, we may know something with 100% certainty at a given point in time Mhmm. For a given place, but given more time, but if we if we go forward in time and if we go to a different place, chances are there's some aspect of that natural
• 38:35
  Bill Cooksey: Right.
• 38:35
  Mike Brasher: Of that natural, you know, environment that's gonna be able to
• 38:39
  Bill Cooksey: transmitters with dust. Sure. That has just set some things on its ear, proven some other things they were right all along.
• 38:46
  Mike Brasher: So I try to I try to communicate the parts of it that we don't know as well, and say, hey, we're still trying to learn some of this. And I don't know. My thinking is that if you have a conversation with someone and and admit to them that I don't have all the answers, maybe they're more likely to to listen and and believe. Don't know. Maybe I'm I'm not well, I know I'm naive in some respects, but you do what you can.
• 39:11
  Right?
• 39:11
  Bill Cooksey: I I was talking to a guy in Louisiana and we talked about some issues and he's a homebuilder. And he was talking about sinus and, you know, they're they don't know how to interpret data. And I said, man, look, if I were in Louisiana, I need to build a home. You're a smart guy, and I would come to you. Yeah.
• 39:33
  When I wanna know some a biological question about ducks or water or whatever, I'm going to a sinus. Yeah. That's just the way it is.
• 39:40
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. It's a tough time and tough place for some of those things because, yeah, there's lots of information that people can get, and people have belief systems based on the things that they've observed, and that's the other thing. I try not to enter into a discussion by assuming or by claiming that the observations that the other person is will be describing to me aren't true. You know, I I don't I want to believe what they're telling me because they probably observed the things that they're gonna describe to me. Absolutely.
• 40:15
  But how representative are those observations across the larger landscape? That's the key question. When we're trying to make decisions at a much larger scale than what they're than than that at which they're experiencing the landscape Right. That system.
• 40:30
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah. I you know, what I've noticed over the years, and I try to keep an open mind no matter what I'm dealing with, can't always do it, but I try. We don't tend to see the changes on the landscape where we are. I mean, sure, you see a house being built in a field or a subdivision in on your old deer lease, but you don't notice say, your duck club that's been there since the sixties, it's still done exactly the same way. Why isn't it as productive as it was?
• 41:02
  Well, this duck club over here started doing their stuff differently or now they've opened up hunting nearby, and that's killing what had been a roost. And now there are people hunting there, and that's what used to feed your ducks. Our a buddy and I turkey hunting a few years ago, a farmer used to hunt all the time. He still did, and I finally went back there with him, and there were no turkeys. Excuse me.
• 41:28
  And he said, I don't understand it. Nothing's changed. Well, I hadn't been there in ten years, and I started pointing things out. Here's what's changed. But if I had hunted there every year, I might not have noticed them either.
• 41:39
  And I hear that a lot. Nothing's changed on my farm or where I hunt.
• 41:42
  Mike Brasher: You must have talked to the same guy I did. Actually, I know you did this. Right.
• 41:46
  Bill Cooksey: It's just human nature. I and I do the same thing. It's like noticing your kid growing.
• 41:51
  Mike Brasher: I had a guy call me. He was from a Midwestern state, and we were talking about this exact thing and saying we just don't see the ducks that we used to, and nothing has changed on my property, and nothing has changed around here. And and so we had a conversation for quite a while, I wouldn't listen to his perspective on it, and and you get to that point, and and it was a cordial conversation, but we each had some pretty strong thoughts that we wanted to share, and and it got to the point where I'm like, okay, I hear you, and you telling me that nothing has changed on your property. I'm in no position to tell you that that isn't true. I will believe that 100%, but I guarantee you that what you're saying about nothing else changing north of you or or east of you or west of you at large scales, I know that's not true.
• 42:43
  I can point to changes in in crop data, changes in agricultural acreage. I can point to changes in wetland conditions in the prairies. I cited what we get from our our our breeding population survey and multiple other surveys that that show over the past seven or eight years, duck populations in the area due north of you have declined by 30 to 45% depending on which species you're talking about. So when you say things aren't changing, haven't changed, I'm sorry, you're wrong. That was about as forceful as I've ever gotten with a person, but it's like, that's just that was just not true that things hadn't changed to help explain part of what he was seeing.
• 43:27
  That's where I tried to end, is that I'm not gonna tell you that those things that I'm describing are responsible for everything that has changed on your property in terms of the number of ducks that you're seeing. Work with me here and try to understand that there are a lot of factors that control the number of ducks, affect the number of ducks that you see on your property, and there are some of those that have changed. There are probably some others that have changed that we don't necessarily understand.
• 43:53
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah.
• 43:54
  Mike Brasher: And I'll I'll grant you that. And so yeah. It's Look, one of
• 43:59
  Bill Cooksey: the simple answers right now is duck numbers are down.
• 44:02
  Mike Brasher: Yeah.
• 44:02
  Bill Cooksey: Numbers of baby ducks are way down. Yeah. Baby ducks are what typically indicate a good season in the South.
• 44:09
  Mike Brasher: Yeah.
• 44:10
  Bill Cooksey: And I assume a good season elsewhere as well. Obviously, Southern Mississippi flyaway is home, so that's where I think. If ducks are down 40% in the Mississippi Flyway, why would you expect to see as many ducks as you saw in 2016? If there are no baby ducks, which take a little while to get conditioned and and scared of everything, That's probably one of the reasons that doctor Cohen's transmitter studies our birds don't move off the refuge. And the places I know which have great seasons every year, they have a lot of refuge on their property and immediately around their property.
• 44:46
  Mike Brasher: Those birds that you're hunting that that Brad is is documenting, I'm sure he's got some young birds there, but the adult birds, they've kind of they figured it out pretty quick. Yeah. You know?
• 44:54
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah. You don't get a week of new ducks.
• 44:56
  Mike Brasher: No. No. To to kinda go back to that conversation, we ended on good terms. It was a nice conversation, but like I said, it was just like, man, I hear you, but you gotta believe me. These things have have changed, and they contribute to what what you're seeing, and and we ended on a good converse on a good note.
• 45:11
  I thanked him for his for his interest. I thanked him for calling because that told me that he cares. Always tell people that. When we get to a point where people stop sending emails, when people stop calling, when people stop criticizing us on, and and and suggesting we do different things on social media in the comment space, and that tells me people don't care, and when we lose those people that care, then we're really in trouble. So I'm okay.
• 45:41
  I'm okay with some of that, but I I want us to have a good conversation about it. Right. So we've been talking about change. What about your observations of how the landscape has changed and the threats to the landscapes that these critters, ducks, geese, swans rely on. You've seen a lot of change.
• 46:01
  You've witnessed a lot of that.
• 46:03
  Bill Cooksey: I have. And, you know, anyone that I've been duck hunting fifty four years now, you know, and and obviously, in that amount of time, you see a lot of change no matter what, good and bad. Obviously, now, the Prairies, it's a scary thing. I've heard they've gotten a little bit more moisture recently Yep. And hopefully, that'll help.
• 46:22
  But the fact that we've lost so much CRP on our side of the border, I I've seen people post online, we got big numbers back in the nineties because of the three and thirty seasons. No. We got big numbers back in the nineties for two reasons. One was the CRP program. And number two, God saw fit to bring the snow and rain.
• 46:42
  And combining those two things, especially on our side of the the PPR, duck numbers exploded. It was a wonderful time. So that's the biggie to me on ducks and geese, especially ducks. The other thing, habitat in the valley has changed. Now most of the bad change really was in the twentieth century, especially the first half or so through the sixties.
• 47:10
  And when bean subsidies and everything else got to the point in at this latitude anyway, we cleared the bottoms, we channeled, we levied, we drained, we ditched, tried to make every place where you could grow soybeans. So that took away a lot of habitat. So I would this is merely a thought, and you may be able to speak more to it, but I would say our migrations through much of the twentieth century were probably the most unnatural. And if there was ever a time you could starve ducks to make them move, that was it.
• 47:43
  Mike Brasher: Maybe. Probably so. Certainly, some time periods. I've never really thought about it thought about it through that lens, but but, yeah, that was definitely a time of rapid change from their perspective.
• 47:56
  Bill Cooksey: Yeah.
• 47:57
  Mike Brasher: Especially as they are learning to adapt to those new agricultural lands. So, yeah, that's probably I never thought of that.
• 48:07
  Bill Cooksey: I mean, it's just one of the one of those things I'm like, man, I know how different it was. Yeah.
• 48:12
  Mike Brasher: And that was before a lot of the restoration, WRP and and so forth. So, yeah, you're you're right.
• 48:18
  Bill Cooksey: And so now, thankfully, between the feds, the states, d u, and others, there has been some good restoration. I think we're still down, what, about 80% from the historic wetlands of MMBD?
• 48:31
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. I yeah. We're still well down. Still well down in terms of the overall acreage, but one of the things that we ask or or, yeah, we think about now, as you will well know, is what has our ability to, to manage areas more consistently and better, made up for some of
• 48:54
  Bill Cooksey: the large scale losses
• 48:55
  Mike Brasher: and the the annually unpredictable nature of that. And the answer to that is almost certainly yes. We have been able to make up for a lot of that, the food resources, the habitat resources that ducks need through intensive management, and that's one of the that's the primary reason why there was so much research invested in management techniques is because people realized in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties, we are losing a ton of natural habitat. We're gonna have to maximize the productivity on those habitats that remain, and that's that's how moist soil management came about as a technique and was promoted. That's how we learned about the caloric value of croplands, agricultural grains and so forth.
• 49:43
  Those were motivated, those studies were motivated by a recognition that, yeah, we gotta we gotta make up for a lot of these lost resources. And as you said, we've got a
• 49:52
  Bill Cooksey: good chance. More and more people are really managing their property to try to make them valuable to waterfowl. Yeah. And obviously, yes, most of us do it because we love hunting ducks. Yeah.
• 50:03
  But the ducks are getting a lot out of it too. They sure are.
• 50:07
  Mike Brasher: And, yeah, there's depending on where you go across this country, the the reasons for changes in in habitats is is obviously variable. We're working on a project right now or a report across our three organizations and trying to identify some of the primary threats, and we're talking about things like renewable energy, things that weren't around twenty years ago, at least not at the scale that we're starting to see those with solar farms in the MAD. That's a load of one. It sure is, and there's a lot of stuff that we still don't know. And I had a conversation yesterday with with Johan Walker about the things that we do know, and that is the fact that, wetland drainage and grassland conversion in the Prairies is a bad thing, and we need to continue to do everything we can to protect those that that we still have and find ways to restore those that have been lost.
• 51:02
  And all of this is happening against the backdrop of of sort of a a changing climate, different environment in which in which we're all living
• 51:10
  Bill Cooksey: and birds are responding to. Say our weather patterns have been changed. And and that maybe takes some of the politics out of that discussion. For sure. If you don't look around and say, yeah, our weather patterns, especially winter, aren't what they were twenty five, thirty years ago.
• 51:26
  Mike Brasher: That's right. What about so we've kinda already talked about how people get their get their information. Do you think that has caused our our hunting community to become more engaged? You know, I I I talk about if if you set aside the fact that let's we don't always agree with what they're saying when they engage, but do you think these platforms has led to to more engagement?
• 51:53
  Bill Cooksey: Absolutely. Before, you just engaged with your friends. Yeah. You told them the rumors you heard or what you read in a magazine, and and that was the limit of the engagement for the most part because even even back in the day, most people weren't gonna sit down and write a letter
• 52:08
  Mike Brasher: Yeah.
• 52:08
  Bill Cooksey: Or make a phone call to d u to try to speak with someone. It just it was a different world. And I I did learn at Avery, and I'll still say it, the haters can be the most valuable asset on social media because that gets people to look. Yeah. Often on depending on the topic.
• 52:26
  Mike Brasher: That amazing
• 52:26
  Bill Cooksey: It's typically the same guys
• 52:28
  Mike Brasher: We love a train wreck.
• 52:28
  Bill Cooksey: Over and over. Love a train wreck.
• 52:30
  Mike Brasher: Mean, it's It's human nature.
• 52:31
  Bill Cooksey: You pass a wreck, you're looking. But those guys get looks. My theory early on, and it hasn't really changed because I dealt with early Internet forums at Avery. Mhmm. Bless your heart.
• 52:42
  It could be I had plenty of threats all online. But I didn't I wasn't trying to engage them, but they gave me an opportunity to provide reasonable responses with real information.
• 52:56
  Mike Brasher: Knowing that other people are reading that.
• 52:58
  Bill Cooksey: And and now I I have close friends who they may have they have Facebook, but they never post on Facebook unless it's just, you know, work or family. But they're sending me links to things saying, hey, look at this. Look at that. They're reading And now they may buy into the hater or something, and then I have an opportunity to talk to them and we're already friends, so at least that conversation is polite.
• 53:22
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. I'm a lot like that, and I when I think about whether I engage it depends on what the topic is being discussed. I realize there's some discussions that are futile and a waste of time and just it's not productive. Mhmm. But there are others where I see something mentioned, and I'm like, there are other people reading this.
• 53:46
  I want there to an alternative thing for them to consider. Yeah. And so that's again, it's not for the people that are doing the, you know, the primary opposition, but it's to add something else to that to that conversation.
• 54:04
  Bill Cooksey: Well, not everyone's made up their mind.
• 54:06
  Mike Brasher: That's right.
• 54:06
  Bill Cooksey: So if you offer an alternative that sounds more reasonable and realistic, often that person now is, you know, more in your court. But it's frustrating. It is frustrating.
• 54:19
  Mike Brasher: Bill, we're getting close to an hour here, I think. I told you this time was gonna go by fast. We're try to close this out, and I want you to talk about your thoughts for the future of let's just narrow it and say waterfowl hunting. Been around a long time. You've seen and worked in different parts of it.
• 54:40
  Are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic and would say that, boy, we have a ton of work to do to pull things out of the gutter? Or do you think we're at sort of a healthy level of debate and that, we just need a little bit of a nudge? I I don't know. Not not it's not a great question, but from the standpoint of the hunters and what we're trying to do and their role in the future of conservation, because we can talk about Ducks Unlimited and our NGOs, and we're we're we're hitting on all cylinders Mhmm.
• 55:16
  And we are delivering and working with landowners and expanding programs and innovating and all that type of stuff. I feel good about that.
• 55:22
  Bill Cooksey: Yes.
• 55:22
  Mike Brasher: I'm thinking about the role that our grassroots, our hunters, the ones that brought Ducks Unlimited and all these other NGOs to being in the first place, and what they're going to be and mean for us and conservation into the future.
• 55:38
  Bill Cooksey: Well, so I'm an optimistic person, so I'm holding on to optimism. Obviously, right now, it's a little difficult with the prairie situation. It's a little difficult with US Fish and Wildlife Service and how underfunded they are Mhmm. And the fact that CRP just continues to drop off. So that and those are some big landscape scale things.
• 55:59
  One thing that has me hopeful, more southern congressmen and senators have gotten a little more engaged with refuges, and why isn't this one being managed well? Well, do you know the US Fish and Wildlife Service butt bird budget
• 56:13
  Mike Brasher: Jeez, man.
• 56:13
  Bill Cooksey: Hasn't been increased is it 2012?
• 56:16
  Mike Brasher: I something like that. Something like that.
• 56:18
  Bill Cooksey: And they're down, like, 600 employees?
• 56:21
  Mike Brasher: Well, that wouldn't be the migratory bird program.
• 56:22
  Bill Cooksey: That might be overall.
• 56:24
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. Overall. I I don't know what the numbers are. I know they're down. I know every part of the Fish and Wildlife Service is down.
• 56:29
  Mhmm. Refuge staff have the National Wildlife Refuge System has been losing staff for years, probably well over a decade. They have been consolidating refuges into complexes. They have lost biologists. They have lost the capacity to to do maintenance and operation, which is just a disgrace.
• 56:48
  Yes. That we can't find support at a congressional level to to return those to return those places to the grandeur that they deserve and that they that they should be
• 57:03
  Bill Cooksey: should be. I I have some hope that by those folks starting to write letters and and talk about it, they don't understand yet why it's that way Yeah. But they need to. And and even senator senator Kennedy's letter, While I disagreed with the premise of it, I understood why he wrote it.
• 57:20
  Mike Brasher: He engaged.
• 57:21
  Bill Cooksey: But he engaged, and that brings attention to the fact that we're losing all this fast, and congress is is the place that has to be turned around
• 57:29
  Mike Brasher: Yeah.
• 57:30
  Bill Cooksey: And with the budget. And and I get it. I'm conservative politically. Yeah. And it's hard sometimes to make that jump and say, no.
• 57:39
  This is a conservative value, and I believe it is. And I understand trying to get funding from the government, trying to get them to change the funding is very difficult, and it takes time. But if people would actually get more interested and more engaged, pay a little bit more attention, and and obviously social media helps. But when you post on social media, you haven't moved the needle Yeah. In in the real work.
• 58:04
  But you've shown an interest, so now get involved. You know, there are plenty of organizations out there, whether it's to give money or to actually say, hey. What who do I call? How do I get more how do I make an impact? And there are ways people can do that.
• 58:19
  We did it in the thirties. Sportsmen did it in the thirties and forties. I mean, that's DU. TWF was started in '46 by a small group of hunters, you know, and more and more engaged back then. Right now, most aren't, and and I get it.
• 58:36
  I mean, you you have work, you have family, you have ball games.
• 58:39
  Mike Brasher: And all sorts of other messages coming at you through those same social media platforms and on whatever other platform that may be. Right.
• 58:46
  Bill Cooksey: So the the biggest key is that grassroots engagement, and and that's one of the things I'm trying to build out at TWF. I mean, with our NGO group, we call them conservation partners. Y'all are part of that. So are most of the others who work anywhere around Tennessee. We have an outdoor business roundtable, and that brings some a lot of grassroots plus those businesses' thoughts to the table, and, you know, they'll go testify, that sort of thing.
• 59:10
  It's been great. But trying to get normal folks who will come talk to you, who will maybe go to a meeting or make a phone call, write an email, whatever it is, that's what we have to have more of. Because, look, when you walk into your representative or senator's office, they're gonna listen to you a lot more than they're going to listen to me. I may not be able to get a member level visit. Odds are you can as a voter from their district.
• 59:39
  It matters.
• 59:40
  Mike Brasher: What's the advice that you would give someone for how to go about that? Because it can be intimidating if you've never done it. It can be intimidating to pick up a phone pick up the phone and and call your representative's or senator's office. Absolutely.
• 59:55
  Bill Cooksey: I mean, it it's very intimidating. And the first time I did it in DC, I was leading a group, and I was supposed to be the guy in charge who knew everything, and it I was pretty on edge. Turns out, most of them are just normal people, and they're happy to talk to you, especially at the state level. Yeah. I mean, if you want to move the needle in the state, you can walk into that state house.
• 1:00:18
  Unless those guys are in committee, he's gonna meet with you. Even if you haven't made an appointment, I'd recommend making an appointment. But their numbers number one, if you can go through a group, that makes it easier. Obviously, that takes a little of that edge off because they can help you understand the situation fully and give you whether you need talking points or you need okay. Who do I talk to and how do I talk to them?
• 1:00:43
  There are a lot of people who will do that. We will I know y'all will, you know, through the policy department. Most most NGOs will are happy to help with that. But you can go on your state's website, and you can pull your guy's phone number and contact information, write them an email. You don't have to write some kind of novel.
• 1:01:05
  Just make your points and say, I'm a voter. I own a business in your district. I'm you know, whatever. Voters matter to them. That's their lifeblood.
• 1:01:13
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. And to your point, it doesn't have to be a sophisticated message. It it's great to have to get started, I think, is what I'm talking about for because for most people, that initial communication, whether it's email, whether it's especially if it's phone where you're talking to somebody, that's the most or in person, that's when it's most intimidating. But it doesn't have to be sophisticated to get started to have a conversation with
• 1:01:37
  Bill Cooksey: It's better if it's not.
• 1:01:38
  Mike Brasher: Yeah. That's right. I am as you said, I'm a voter. I live in this area. I'm not sure where you are on this particular issue.
• 1:01:45
  I'd love for you to tell me where you are, but this is these are my thoughts. This is what matters to me. Where where are you where do you stand on this type of thing?
• 1:01:53
  Bill Cooksey: And that's it. It it the less complex, the better because odds are they're not an expert on that issue either, and you probably know more than them about that issue already. So if you keep it simple I mean, I might give someone talking points, and I always don't read these. Look at them. Find what you're comfortable with, and do things in your words.
• 1:02:14
  You know, make it you, not me. Don't I'm not gonna type you an email for you to send to your congressman. You can do that, but that'll be a lot less effective than a simple email from you or a simple phone call or a simple office visit if you can get to your state capital. And other they'll also meet with you in district. When they're out of session, that's a great time to meet your local congressman and establish that relationship.
• 1:02:40
  Mike Brasher: Get involved. Doesn't have to be complicated. Nope. Just start the conversation and make a positive impact on conservation and decision makers that are that are involved in in all of those discussions. Bill, you've provided some tremendous advice, life lessons.
• 1:02:56
  I think if anybody, if folks take nothing else away from this, I hope it's that they realize that connecting with people on a one on one level is probably the most impactful thing that we have available to us right now. We spend way too much time on social media. We spend way too much time on text and email relative to the amount of time that we spend on personal one on one conversations. Develop that skill, apply it regularly to all the things that matter to you, especially conservation.
• 1:03:31
  Bill Cooksey: Absolutely. You'll be blessed if you do. I know I have been.
• 1:03:34
  Mike Brasher: Bill, you've had an amazing career in a lot of different places. That's the one thing that you've carried through all of it, is communicating effectively personal relationships. I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate you being here and sharing some of your experiences and some of your insight on a productive career, we will most certainly have you back at some point in the future.
• 1:03:58
  Bill Cooksey: I appreciate it. I've enjoyed it. I really have.
• 1:04:00
  Mike Brasher: A very special thanks to our guest on today's show, Bill Cooksey, the Partnerships Program Leader for Tennessee Wildlife Federation. Appreciate all the great work that he has done throughout his career and that he continues to do through the TWF. We thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the great work he does with these episodes, and we thank you, the listener, for your support of our of our podcast. We also thank you for your passion and commitment to wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
• 1:04:28
  VO: Thank you for listening to the DU podcast, sponsored by Purina Pro Plan, the official performance dog food of Ducks Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan, always advancing. Also proudly sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. Whether you're winding down with your best friend or celebrating with your favorite crew, Bird Dog brings award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinions expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited. Until next time, stay tuned to the Ducks.