Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep: 529: BONUS DROP - Steve and Clay Talk Alaska Wolf Trapping

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Ep: 529: BONUS DROP - Steve and Clay Talk Alaska Wolf Trapping · The MeatEater Podcast

0:08
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Speaker 1: I T E dot com. Probably ladies and gentlemen. We're
0:41
Speaker 1: joined by our our, our friend and colleague and uh,
0:43
Speaker 1: I don't know, beloved, uh ark and Arkinson? What is?
0:47
Speaker 1: How do you say that?
0:50
Speaker 2: Ar Kanson?
0:51
Speaker 1: Ar Kanson Clay Newcomb, who's recently back from a trip
0:54
Speaker 1: where he accompanied a wolf trapper in Alaska and made
0:59
Speaker 1: a uh made a video about hanging out with this
1:02
Speaker 1: Alaska wolf trapper and video has gotten quite a lot
1:08
Speaker 1: of views and generated a lot of conversation. And I
1:10
Speaker 1: wanted to check in with Clay about it. And first
1:13
Speaker 1: thing I want to know Clay is tell me what
1:15
Speaker 1: you wanted to name it and what they ended up
1:17
Speaker 1: naming it and why.
1:20
Speaker 2: Well I wanted to I wanted to just come out
1:22
Speaker 2: and say what the film was about in the title,
1:25
Speaker 2: and I wanted to call it trapping wolves in Alaska
1:29
Speaker 2: or Alaskan or Alaskan wolf trapping, and we were we
1:34
Speaker 2: were advised not to do that because of the potential
1:39
Speaker 2: for YouTube to flag something that had the word trapping
1:42
Speaker 2: in the title, and so we ended up calling it
1:46
Speaker 2: Alaskan wolf management with Clay Nukem, and that that kind
1:51
Speaker 2: of opens up a can of worms from the very beginning.
1:53
Speaker 1: Really sets you know, Yeah, I think it sets uh uh.
2:00
Speaker 1: It just sets an expectation and delivers a certain dialogue.
2:04
Speaker 1: Meaning if you made a squirrel hunting video, which you
2:07
Speaker 1: like to do and which I like to do, and
2:09
Speaker 1: then you had to call it squirrel management in Michigan,
2:13
Speaker 1: it feel kind of weird, right, Raccoon managed.
2:19
Speaker 2: It feels a whole lot more like it's this mission
2:23
Speaker 2: driven experience, as if I felt like, by me going
2:28
Speaker 2: up there and trapping a couple of wolves, four wolves,
2:32
Speaker 2: actually that it was gonna, you know, change something, And
2:37
Speaker 2: no doubt that it's a statement in today's world if
2:40
Speaker 2: you go wolf trapping, But really I wanted to. I
2:44
Speaker 2: wanted to experience it. I've known David Bennett's for about
2:47
Speaker 2: ten years.
2:48
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to get into because well, I
2:50
Speaker 1: don't understand. I was a little hurt because I don't
2:53
Speaker 1: know why it didn't come. It's why the article wasn't
2:56
Speaker 1: beaver trapping with Steve.
3:00
Speaker 2: Beaver Management with Steve Vanilla.
3:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what what? What headed the whole thing off?
3:06
Speaker 1: Or what started?
3:07
Speaker 2: So I met David Bennett's about ten years ago through
3:10
Speaker 2: Bear Hunting magazine. David's an outfitter. David's a professional crabber.
3:15
Speaker 2: That's his main livelihood is crabbing for three months during
3:20
Speaker 2: the summer.
3:20
Speaker 1: For Dungeon Crab. Yeah.
3:23
Speaker 2: Oh man, his stories and and and and his learning
3:29
Speaker 2: about that was incredible. But he's just like the classic
3:32
Speaker 2: Alaskan man.
3:33
Speaker 1: He's he's whenever those guys come through our area, crab
3:37
Speaker 1: and gets bad on. Yeah. Yeah.
3:42
Speaker 2: David is also an outfitter, so he guides for you know,
3:47
Speaker 2: Alaskan big game. I would say his primary thing is
3:51
Speaker 2: is black bear and goats. But then lastly in the
3:54
Speaker 2: wintertime he traps and he's traped since he was ten
3:58
Speaker 2: years old.
3:58
Speaker 1: You know.
3:59
Speaker 2: David's fifty seven or so. Just an incredible guy, you know,
4:05
Speaker 2: and he at times he's made a lot of money
4:08
Speaker 2: trapping back in the day and this, but to this
4:12
Speaker 2: day he still traps just as hard as he's ever trapped,
4:15
Speaker 2: just out of principle.
4:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, if he's sixty seven and he started trapping when
4:19
Speaker 1: he was ten, he was cranking through the big fur boom.
4:24
Speaker 1: I mean he was young, but he was selling fur
4:26
Speaker 1: during like the the big fur boom with a capital FB.
4:33
Speaker 1: I think it's hard for the l late seventies, early eighties.
4:36
Speaker 1: You know, my friend Stu Miller said to me, every
4:38
Speaker 1: generation has its own fur boom, and uh his game early.
4:46
Speaker 2: Man, I think those old guys have a hard time
4:48
Speaker 2: letting go of that. I mean, so much of what
4:50
Speaker 2: we do, I think is is fueled by more than
4:54
Speaker 2: just economics and the buzz that somebody would have gotten
4:59
Speaker 2: back in the day to have made a legitimate amount
5:03
Speaker 2: of money trapping furs. That association with sustenance for your family,
5:09
Speaker 2: you know, going out and taking first off the landscape
5:11
Speaker 2: would just almost be hard to erase. It feels to
5:14
Speaker 2: me like, you know, you keep doing it even when
5:16
Speaker 2: the prices are cheap. But man, the beaver, the beaver
5:19
Speaker 2: markets back though, because of these dang felt hats.
5:22
Speaker 1: Oh I know, Uh, it is cranky. I'm obsessed with
5:25
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about fur prices, but I
5:27
Speaker 1: don't sell fur. I'm obsessed with the fur market. I
5:29
Speaker 1: follow the fur market more closely than I follow like
5:31
Speaker 1: the stock market.
5:33
Speaker 2: Do you have one of those? Do you have like
5:35
Speaker 2: a graph on your phone that you just can of
5:38
Speaker 2: It doesn't work the clip on and see like that,
5:41
Speaker 2: ups and down, it's like a stock exchange.
5:43
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't work that way. So you reached out
5:47
Speaker 1: to him, and I bet there's no way that he
5:49
Speaker 1: wasn't at first thinking to himself, Man, I don't want
5:55
Speaker 1: you and some camera dudes coming into this thing, which
6:00
Speaker 1: is just going to cause me hassle. Guys are going
6:03
Speaker 1: to know where I trap, Guys are going to know
6:06
Speaker 1: how I trap. I'm gonna have animal rights people coming
6:09
Speaker 1: after me. How did you ever get him to say, yeah,
6:14
Speaker 1: come on out trapping with a camera.
6:17
Speaker 2: You know, I was very conscious of that when I
6:22
Speaker 2: reached out to him, And I honestly feel like David
6:29
Speaker 2: believes that the the authenticity and legitimacy of what he's
6:35
Speaker 2: doing is able to withstand any criticism that he's taken.
6:40
Speaker 2: And he also just isn't concerned about giving away secrets.
6:46
Speaker 2: I mean sometimes guys are like that. David is willing
6:50
Speaker 2: to help anybody can that's wanting to do it, but
6:52
Speaker 2: it's so difficult. I mean what the film didn't portray
6:56
Speaker 2: and we tried to portray. And you know this because
6:59
Speaker 2: you do so like this all the time, Steve is that.
7:04
Speaker 1: It.
7:05
Speaker 2: You gotta have something driving you that's almost clinically insane
7:10
Speaker 2: to do what he does. I mean being out on
7:12
Speaker 2: the water, the distance of these the distance he's traveling,
7:17
Speaker 2: the amount of money that he spends on even just
7:20
Speaker 2: his trap sets. It's a very very few people are
7:25
Speaker 2: going to see that video and move to Alaska and
7:27
Speaker 2: be a wolf trapper. Yeah, and he knows that.
7:29
Speaker 1: And uh.
7:32
Speaker 2: And I told him that we were gonna handle it
7:35
Speaker 2: in a responsible way, and I think he just he
7:40
Speaker 2: just took us for our at our word for that.
7:42
Speaker 1: You know. So, how did you guys pick the season
7:45
Speaker 1: you were going to go? Was he trying to line
7:49
Speaker 1: it up with with peak conditions, with when he doesn't
7:53
Speaker 1: have anything else going on with when he felt that
7:55
Speaker 1: it was the biggest chance of getting like real prime
7:59
Speaker 1: wolf else that weren't rubbed out right, what was he
8:04
Speaker 1: shooting for when you guys went so.
8:06
Speaker 2: His his year is very regimented down to the week.
8:09
Speaker 2: You know, he can tell you what he's going to
8:11
Speaker 2: be doing any given week of the year. And that
8:14
Speaker 2: first week of December he was going to be trapping wolves,
8:16
Speaker 2: whether I was with him or not. That's what he
8:18
Speaker 2: told me. And yeah, it's it's peak for it's but
8:24
Speaker 2: it's also you know, tough travel conditions that time of year.
8:28
Speaker 1: No daylight, you can oh, that was.
8:31
Speaker 2: The biggest challenge of the whole trip, Steve, And you
8:33
Speaker 2: would know it as much as anybody is. It gets
8:37
Speaker 2: daylight at about seven thirty AM, maybe even closer to eight,
8:44
Speaker 2: and it's dark by four thirty. I mean it's like
8:48
Speaker 2: dark dark And so what was wild so dirt myth
8:53
Speaker 2: was my cameraman on this deal, you know, Garrett Smith
8:57
Speaker 2: and he we would get back to the boat four
9:02
Speaker 2: thirty and not be needing to be in the boat
9:06
Speaker 2: till eight o'clock the next day. Setting in that little
9:10
Speaker 2: cabin on the on the Sandpiper, which we became very
9:14
Speaker 2: familiar with. We'd set around for six hours and I
9:18
Speaker 2: don't know what we did read, eat.
9:22
Speaker 1: Pack a big old pack a big dip.
9:24
Speaker 2: Probably right, dirt was running through some dip, buddy, you
9:28
Speaker 2: better believe it. I was like, man, what if we
9:31
Speaker 2: run out? And he was like, Clay, I got so
9:32
Speaker 2: much dip in my bag. He's like, I got enough
9:35
Speaker 2: for all of us. And I'm like, I don't dip.
9:37
Speaker 2: I'm out, but appreciate it.
9:40
Speaker 1: So what are the days goal? Like? He runs a
9:43
Speaker 1: big like he's running a big well. First, I think,
9:47
Speaker 1: guess before we say what the day's goal like, you
9:48
Speaker 1: should explain this is a marine based deal. He's not
9:52
Speaker 1: running off snowmobiles, trucks. It's it's marine based.
9:56
Speaker 2: It's boats completely two boats, water based, completely water based.
10:02
Speaker 2: Trap line.
10:02
Speaker 1: Yeah.
10:02
Speaker 2: So if you saw the film, you saw that he
10:04
Speaker 2: has a forty eight foot crabbing boat with a cab,
10:08
Speaker 2: a kitchen, you know, fully equipped. We we put that
10:13
Speaker 2: in a small narrow inlet to get it out of
10:17
Speaker 2: big water in waves, and then we took a skiff
10:19
Speaker 2: out to check the traps. And what is amazing to
10:21
Speaker 2: me what I would have thought if you would have
10:23
Speaker 2: just said, Clay, you're gonna have to go trap wolves
10:26
Speaker 2: in a in Alaska, how are you going to do it?
10:28
Speaker 2: Coastal Alaska. I would have thought you couldn't trap these
10:33
Speaker 2: wolves on the beach just because they wouldn't have any
10:35
Speaker 2: reason to be there. But he's literally catching wolves on
10:39
Speaker 2: the beach in the sand a lot of times.
10:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you only salmon. They like, it's a
10:47
Speaker 1: peculiar kind of wolf that like salmon dead. I've watched
10:50
Speaker 1: them eating rotten salmon off the beach. Yeah, well yeah there,
10:56
Speaker 1: so there.
10:57
Speaker 2: He feels like they're actually attracted to these points, these
11:02
Speaker 2: sandy points. He feels like they just kind of loaf there,
11:05
Speaker 2: you know, like a Mallard duck and the timber in
11:08
Speaker 2: the midday, you know, just like loafing.
11:10
Speaker 1: Huh okay.
11:11
Speaker 2: But but what's what it was interesting to me is
11:17
Speaker 2: he said he learned how to catch wolves by watching
11:19
Speaker 2: his Labrador retriever. He would pull up on a pull
11:24
Speaker 2: up on the bank and let his dog jump out
11:26
Speaker 2: of the boat, and he would watch what his dog
11:29
Speaker 2: would is a male dog, and he said that dog
11:32
Speaker 2: would pick the most prominent visual thing that it could see,
11:36
Speaker 2: whether it was a stump, whether it was a clump
11:40
Speaker 2: of grass that set out from the rest of the grass,
11:44
Speaker 2: whether it was a big rock, and he'd go over
11:46
Speaker 2: and he'd mark it, you know, lift his leg and
11:48
Speaker 2: pee on it. And he just started watching that dog
11:51
Speaker 2: and he started setting traps where he saw his dog
11:55
Speaker 2: mark and started catching wolves and he so he started
12:02
Speaker 2: doing That's exactly that's what he called him. And we
12:06
Speaker 2: didn't have time, you know, the video wasn't like how
12:09
Speaker 2: to trap wolves, so we didn't really get into the
12:11
Speaker 2: technical side.
12:12
Speaker 1: But what he.
12:13
Speaker 2: Uses is wolf here in a big, big bottle of
12:17
Speaker 2: wolf here, and he'll make an artificial scent post. So
12:21
Speaker 2: he'll go to a beat to a point that he
12:24
Speaker 2: wants to trap on, and he'll go gather up a
12:26
Speaker 2: couple of logs.
12:28
Speaker 1: He's doing this above above the high tide marker, right
12:32
Speaker 1: in where it's getting submerged at high tide.
12:35
Speaker 2: Now, most of it's above the high tide mark, even
12:39
Speaker 2: though that is a strategy, you know, to set it
12:42
Speaker 2: below the tide mark and it's it's like a drown set,
12:46
Speaker 2: you know. But most of these he's just catching above the.
12:51
Speaker 1: The grass or be grass. Yeah, Okay, so he drags
12:56
Speaker 1: out whatever, drags out some object to make some visual appeal,
13:01
Speaker 1: I assume.
13:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he and then he puts sin all
13:05
Speaker 2: over it. You know, he puts his he he had
13:07
Speaker 2: multiple commercial wolf lures, but also this this wolf you'reine
13:14
Speaker 2: and uh, the biggest thing that I think is different
13:20
Speaker 2: for those guys in Southeast Alaska that are trapping is
13:23
Speaker 2: they don't have to worry about human scent. We were
13:27
Speaker 2: not worried about human scent at all.
13:31
Speaker 1: Because everything gets wet, just everything gets washed out.
13:34
Speaker 2: It rains. When you're setting a wolf trap, you're, yeah,
13:40
Speaker 2: you're it's gonna rain and it's gonna wash away the scent.
13:43
Speaker 2: And so when the guys in the lower forty eighth
13:46
Speaker 2: that do some trapping, that's a big concern is how
13:50
Speaker 2: do you pretty much keep the set scent free. So
13:55
Speaker 2: you know, they're wearing gloves, they're really concerned about what
13:58
Speaker 2: you're touching, and and up there he's not at all,
14:02
Speaker 2: which is makes it makes it convenient.
14:05
Speaker 1: But his traps, his footholdser dyed and waxed. Correct. Yeah, okay,
14:11
Speaker 1: so go through making this like scent post set. So
14:14
Speaker 1: he drags out an object for some visual appeal and
14:18
Speaker 1: places it out on a point that's.
14:21
Speaker 2: Right, how big of another? And so we showed it.
14:25
Speaker 2: We showed a set in the film. There was probably
14:30
Speaker 2: a stump that was eighteen inches long, or just a
14:33
Speaker 2: piece of log that was eighteen inches long, kind of
14:35
Speaker 2: had a big oblong rootball on one side that set
14:38
Speaker 2: up eighteen inches tall, and we set it out right
14:42
Speaker 2: out out from the grass in the sand where everything
14:45
Speaker 2: would see it, and maybe even put another little smaller
14:48
Speaker 2: four or five inch log on it. And then you know,
14:52
Speaker 2: you put that scent post in an area where you
14:54
Speaker 2: can dig easily. That's not rocky, that's sandy. Yeah, And
14:58
Speaker 2: then we dig down and set just a standard trap set.
15:02
Speaker 2: I'm not an expert trapper. I've spent a little bit
15:06
Speaker 2: of time trap and I know how to make dirt
15:08
Speaker 2: hole sets and catch foxes and coyotes and all this,
15:12
Speaker 2: and I mean, you know, setting these big traps is
15:15
Speaker 2: just identical to that. You know, you're you're trying to well,
15:19
Speaker 2: he uses a drag for his equipment. He's he's using a.
15:23
Speaker 1: Drag instead of trying trying.
15:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you have to dig a deep, a
15:29
Speaker 2: pretty deep hole to bury that big drag. And it
15:32
Speaker 2: is a big drag. And then you know you're setting
15:35
Speaker 2: that trap down into a bed where it doesn't wiggle
15:38
Speaker 2: around and the top of the trap has to be
15:40
Speaker 2: even almost even with the surface of the ground.
15:43
Speaker 1: How many inches off the explain how it goes, like
15:46
Speaker 1: how many inches off the post, because you gotta you're
15:50
Speaker 1: trying to cut. One of the ways to describe it
15:52
Speaker 1: is you got the whole world. You know, the animal
15:55
Speaker 1: has the whole world, the whole am island whatever to
15:58
Speaker 1: walk around on, and you're trying to get it to
16:00
Speaker 1: put its foot on a well. In this case, you're
16:03
Speaker 1: trying to get it put its foot on a two
16:05
Speaker 1: inch circle. Right, So if something walks up, if you
16:10
Speaker 1: picture that, Let's take something that people are more familiar with,
16:13
Speaker 1: like a coyote. Okay, a kyote's walking down a dirt lane,
16:19
Speaker 1: walking down a farm trail, whatever, and there's an object
16:22
Speaker 1: that it wants to piss on. Its feet are gonna
16:24
Speaker 1: fall in a specific spot. They're not gonna be two
16:27
Speaker 1: inches off the thing. They're not gonna be thirty inches
16:30
Speaker 1: off the thing. He's not gonna dance there, he's gonna
16:34
Speaker 1: come through, raise his leg and leave. What are the
16:36
Speaker 1: odds that you've put that trappan where it's gonna put
16:39
Speaker 1: its foot. Yeah, so you're David, You're You're like, you're
16:45
Speaker 1: you're thinking about foot placement and anatomy when you place it,
16:50
Speaker 1: because if not you place it wrong, you could have
16:52
Speaker 1: eight wolves run by. None's gonna put their foot there.
16:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was kind of surprised at how
17:00
Speaker 2: non technical David's explanation to me of you know, where
17:04
Speaker 2: to put the trap.
17:05
Speaker 1: So he's thinking, he's thinking it, but he's not saying it.
17:08
Speaker 2: Probably well, I think he's just done it so many
17:12
Speaker 2: times it's just instinctive. But I was expecting them to
17:16
Speaker 2: have a tape measure and be like the average big
17:19
Speaker 2: Southeast Alaskan wolf has a stride that's, you know, fourteen
17:24
Speaker 2: inches long. So if he's sitting here and he's peeing
17:26
Speaker 2: on that log, he's going to be sixteen inches out
17:29
Speaker 2: and slightly back because you know he's peeing from the third,
17:34
Speaker 2: you know, the back third. Yeah, what you know, this
17:36
Speaker 2: technical nothing. I mean, he's just but probably he was
17:40
Speaker 2: eighteen inches off of the trap, And I don't think
17:44
Speaker 2: he was targeting a specific foot. I think he's catching
17:48
Speaker 2: a lot of them in the front feet when they
17:50
Speaker 2: come up to sniff the post before they market. You know,
17:54
Speaker 2: just just an animal just walking up and putting his
17:56
Speaker 2: nose on that on that little scent log that we
18:01
Speaker 2: I don't think he's trying to catch it with a
18:04
Speaker 2: back leg, you know. So he is not as technical
18:08
Speaker 2: as I thought it would be. And what you guys,
18:11
Speaker 2: before he came out, he went out and made a
18:12
Speaker 2: bunch of sets. Yeah, correct, So he has some sets
18:16
Speaker 2: out working and then you guys punched in some sets
18:19
Speaker 2: and did some remakes and stuff like that.
18:20
Speaker 1: But how many during your time there? And explain the
18:24
Speaker 1: number of days you spent there? And uh, tell folks
18:30
Speaker 1: how many traps you checked? Okay? Over what? Over what distance?
18:38
Speaker 2: We were there for six full days, and in that time,
18:44
Speaker 2: David was concerned that we might not catch a wolf.
18:49
Speaker 2: You know, that's how this trapping goes. You might be
18:54
Speaker 2: there for six days and not catch a wolf. So
18:56
Speaker 2: by him setting the traps, you know, the day before
19:01
Speaker 2: we got there, you know, we kind of got an
19:03
Speaker 2: extra day. And he has fifty five sets over a
19:11
Speaker 2: two hundred We mapped it out on on x a
19:15
Speaker 2: two hundred mile trap line boat by water. But each
19:21
Speaker 2: of those sets might have multiple traps. So he had
19:24
Speaker 2: two kind of sets. He had p post sets and
19:27
Speaker 2: what he called bait sets which were set in tide pools,
19:32
Speaker 2: and basically he would have a chunk of beaver that
19:36
Speaker 2: was elevated above the low tideline covered in rocks, and
19:42
Speaker 2: then he would have four traps set under the water,
19:45
Speaker 2: just set on the ground, not buried even at under
19:48
Speaker 2: that low tide, there underwater, at low tide, there underwater,
19:54
Speaker 2: but at low tide or mid tide whatever, the meats
19:56
Speaker 2: out of the water, but the traps just buried in
19:58
Speaker 2: a tide pool or submerged. Correct, that's correct. And so
20:05
Speaker 2: we had fifty five sets, but each of those sets,
20:08
Speaker 2: most sets had uh, well, if there were baits that
20:11
Speaker 2: they had four traps. So it would be easy to
20:15
Speaker 2: say he had one hundred traps out. Yep, I would
20:18
Speaker 2: say he had one hundred traps out.
20:21
Speaker 1: How many had how many out ahead of your arrival?
20:26
Speaker 2: He had all of them out. He had all of
20:29
Speaker 2: them out before we got there. And we actually caught
20:35
Speaker 2: four wolves on the trip. And you know, it's just
20:39
Speaker 2: showbiz stuff like we just couldn't we couldn't fit in
20:45
Speaker 2: the other two. But we caught We caught one jet
20:51
Speaker 2: black wolf, which was cool, and and caught another kind
20:56
Speaker 2: of juvenile gray wolf. So we caught four wolves in
20:59
Speaker 2: a week, which I think that's about what he expected.
21:03
Speaker 2: But you can go you can go a week and
21:05
Speaker 2: not even catch a single animal.
21:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. Now, A lot of states have checklaws
21:13
Speaker 1: twenty four hour check laws, forty eight hour checklaws. Some
21:17
Speaker 1: states have checklaws. I should clarify when I'm talking about
21:23
Speaker 1: a check law meanings like a maximum amount of time
21:26
Speaker 1: that you can go without visually inspecting a set, And
21:31
Speaker 1: some states just have a flat out check law twenty
21:34
Speaker 1: four hours, forty eight hours. Some states have no mention
21:37
Speaker 1: of a check law, and some states have slightly more
21:41
Speaker 1: nuanced check laws where certain sets don't have a check law,
21:46
Speaker 1: meaning you might be able to set under the ice
21:48
Speaker 1: or underwater with kill sets and not have a check law.
21:54
Speaker 1: But if you're making sets with footholds dry ground sets
21:57
Speaker 1: with footholds, then there is a check law, meaning that one,
22:03
Speaker 1: if something goes wrong at your set and you catch
22:06
Speaker 1: something that you're not supposed to catch, you're not leaving
22:08
Speaker 1: it there too long and you're able to release it.
22:12
Speaker 1: Two being that when you do make a target catch
22:15
Speaker 1: that you're not leaving it in the trap so long
22:18
Speaker 1: that it might be regarded by some as being inhumane
22:23
Speaker 1: to leave something caught in a trap for an extended
22:25
Speaker 1: period of time. So to minimize stress, minimize suffering, you
22:32
Speaker 1: enforce this check limit. They don't have a check law,
22:39
Speaker 1: and he's making somecessities leaving for quite some time. What
22:43
Speaker 1: was his perspective on this, that he would leave a
22:46
Speaker 1: foothold set for a week and could potentially have a
22:51
Speaker 1: catch for a week, because there's two things. One there's
22:54
Speaker 1: a consideration of the animals well being, and two there's
22:59
Speaker 1: a consideration of you might not hold it forever. It's
23:03
Speaker 1: gonna get out, right, the longer it has more, it's
23:05
Speaker 1: gonna get out. What was his thinking about this? Is
23:07
Speaker 1: it just is it a matter of logistically it's just
23:10
Speaker 1: impossible to do it any other way? How did he
23:14
Speaker 1: think about that?
23:16
Speaker 2: That's a good question, and that was one of the
23:18
Speaker 2: first things we talked about. And he when he's trapping,
23:23
Speaker 2: that's all he does. Like when he starts trapping, he
23:28
Speaker 2: is a twenty four hour a day, seven day a
23:32
Speaker 2: week trapper, and in his mind, he had he believes
23:37
Speaker 2: he has an ethical responsibility to check those traps. Is
23:41
Speaker 2: absolutely as much as he can. But if you were
23:45
Speaker 2: there and saw what we were up against with weather,
23:48
Speaker 2: like there are days when you can't get on the water.
23:52
Speaker 2: So that's primarily the reason in Alaska that they don't
23:55
Speaker 2: have the check laws is because you're setting you're setting
23:58
Speaker 2: traps in places that some times you just can't physically
24:01
Speaker 2: get to. And so and and he also, I think
24:06
Speaker 2: just believes his job is to to catch wolves and
24:10
Speaker 2: uh and and he's tracked. He's he's checking him as
24:14
Speaker 2: absolutely as much as he can, you know, avoid and
24:16
Speaker 2: we I mean, if he thinks he's not going to
24:18
Speaker 2: be able to get to traps, he won't reset him.
24:21
Speaker 2: I Mean, it's kind of one of these deals where
24:24
Speaker 2: you know your own conscience is your god, you know,
24:27
Speaker 2: and it works good for it works good for him.
24:30
Speaker 2: I don't think he sees any kind of pushback from that,
24:35
Speaker 2: you know. And that's just the way it is in Alaska.
24:37
Speaker 2: That I heard something. I don't know any trappers who
24:41
Speaker 2: love the checklaws.
24:42
Speaker 1: I can tell you that.
24:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well man, it's uh, that's definitely something that
24:51
Speaker 2: some people didn't understand that that watched the film. And
24:56
Speaker 2: if you're up there and you're in that boat and
24:59
Speaker 2: you met David, you you'd get it.
25:01
Speaker 1: You know, what was your feeling when when when all
25:14
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like there's a wolf. You know, when
25:16
Speaker 1: I asked us, I'm asking from the perspective of there's
25:22
Speaker 1: certain creatures that occupy a lot of mind space, you know,
25:25
Speaker 1: like you think about them a lot, but you don't
25:27
Speaker 1: get to look at them as much as you think
25:28
Speaker 1: about them. And I remember, after always catching glimpses of
25:32
Speaker 1: mountain lions, you know, out out in the wild, I
25:34
Speaker 1: remember the first time I came up on a treed
25:38
Speaker 1: mountain lion. Where there it is you could actually like
25:40
Speaker 1: really look at it as long as you wanted, you know,
25:45
Speaker 1: those stunning to be just to have it be like
25:48
Speaker 1: right there, dogs blow it. It's in the tree. And
25:52
Speaker 1: this thing that you just you only get glimpses of
25:54
Speaker 1: also is just there in its larger than life kind
25:58
Speaker 1: of way. When you come around the bend or whatever
26:04
Speaker 1: and there's one standing there, what are your you know,
26:07
Speaker 1: what were your thoughts about it? Were you like, man,
26:09
Speaker 1: I hope he gets away, or that guy we got one,
26:13
Speaker 1: or you know, what are the different things you're feeling?
26:17
Speaker 2: You know, I haven't I haven't interacted with wolves a
26:21
Speaker 2: whole lot being from Arkansas. You know, when you and
26:25
Speaker 2: I were in Alaska two years ago, we saw a
26:28
Speaker 2: pack of I think fourteen wolves that we watched a
26:31
Speaker 2: couple of evenings. Once in Idaho, I saw one across
26:34
Speaker 2: the road. I haven't I haven't spent a ton or
26:38
Speaker 2: time around wolves. This was definitely the closest I've ever
26:42
Speaker 2: been to one, and it was I. If I didn't
26:45
Speaker 2: say it was slightly conflicted, I'd probably be lying.
26:48
Speaker 1: I think.
26:51
Speaker 2: It was just a magnificent beast. I mean, yeah, to
26:54
Speaker 2: be able to walk up to it look at it.
26:57
Speaker 2: But what I said in the film I'm is that
27:00
Speaker 2: my confliction was completely fabricated by the confusing messaging of
27:08
Speaker 2: planet Earth and humans about wolves. I mean I was
27:11
Speaker 2: aware of that, like if I was, you know, I
27:15
Speaker 2: said that, you know, to sacrelize something really is a
27:19
Speaker 2: man made feature. It's not in the natural realm. I
27:22
Speaker 2: mean that that wolf. I've killed a lot of deer,
27:24
Speaker 2: a lot of white tailed deer, and on the ethical
27:28
Speaker 2: spectrum of human existence, me shooting a white tailed deer
27:33
Speaker 2: is no less different than us dispatching that wolf on
27:36
Speaker 2: the end of a trap. I believe that. But at
27:39
Speaker 2: the same time, this is a very unique animal in
27:44
Speaker 2: a unique place, a unique predator. You know, they're less
27:48
Speaker 2: predators than there are prey animals. I mean, so, I
27:52
Speaker 2: mean I was just fascinated by it. I'm always fascinated
27:54
Speaker 2: by predators, probably in just a generic sense like anybody
27:58
Speaker 2: else would have been just kind of like a little kid.
28:00
Speaker 2: I mean when after we dispatched it, shot it with
28:04
Speaker 2: a twenty two mag I mean, I just walked up
28:07
Speaker 2: to it. The dang thing smelled like a dirty, wet
28:10
Speaker 2: German shepherd, and I looked at his claws and just
28:15
Speaker 2: inspected every part of him. Man, And you know you can't.
28:19
Speaker 2: You got to have respect for him, I mean, just
28:22
Speaker 2: absolute respect for them and their job what they do
28:25
Speaker 2: making a living out on that landscape. But at the
28:30
Speaker 2: same time, and I said this in the film, honestly,
28:35
Speaker 2: there was little ecological consequence to us taking those two
28:39
Speaker 2: wolves out of that bay. I mean. The one thing
28:43
Speaker 2: that David says he and he has, you know, thirty
28:48
Speaker 2: five years a wolf traffing experience to say to know
28:52
Speaker 2: it is that you can trap. You can trap half
28:55
Speaker 2: the pack, you can trap three quarters of a pack
28:59
Speaker 2: out of a bay, and within two years that pack
29:03
Speaker 2: will be back up to the same numbers, Like you
29:06
Speaker 2: just can't stomp them down that hard, especially on this
29:11
Speaker 2: coastal trapping. And what he said to me made a
29:13
Speaker 2: lot of sense. And the reason I'm saying all this
29:16
Speaker 2: is it didn't really help the deer that much and
29:20
Speaker 2: it didn't really hurt the wolves that much. It was
29:23
Speaker 2: just a unique experience where we could extract resource from
29:27
Speaker 2: the land and kind of nobody loses and everybody wins.
29:31
Speaker 2: That's the way I look at it. Yeah, and it
29:35
Speaker 2: undoubtedly did it save a couple of deer moose calves
29:39
Speaker 2: in that cove this year, yep. Because those two wolves,
29:43
Speaker 2: they were probably ninety pound males. They're going to eat something,
29:47
Speaker 2: and they would have been eating five to seven pounds
29:50
Speaker 2: of meat since that day that we took them out.
29:54
Speaker 2: And because you know, going back to our original conversation
29:58
Speaker 2: about what we titled this wolf management, as if I'm
30:01
Speaker 2: trying to make some ecological statement, man, my biggest statement
30:05
Speaker 2: is just let us manage them as a as a
30:09
Speaker 2: natural renewable resource. And you know, like David said, man,
30:15
Speaker 2: you can't overtrap these wolves on the coast because a lot.
30:19
Speaker 1: Of that because you're touching the edge.
30:24
Speaker 2: Oh man, you're not laying a finger on on the
30:28
Speaker 2: on the wolf population now, but it but it makes
30:32
Speaker 2: some sense. There's some pragmatism in it for these guys
30:35
Speaker 2: that are sick of black tail deer hunting and moose
30:37
Speaker 2: hunting because they're only hunting the coasts, Like when they
30:40
Speaker 2: go in there to deer hunt, they're just hunting the edges.
30:44
Speaker 2: And so if they can thin wolf populations out along
30:47
Speaker 2: the edges, it helps on a very micro scale. They
30:51
Speaker 2: truly believe that.
30:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, the conversation around wolf hunting, wolf trapping, any kind
30:58
Speaker 1: of predator stuff, it gets it gets really confused because
31:03
Speaker 1: a lot of people start throwing away their own realities
31:06
Speaker 1: and then putting in these things they half know or
31:09
Speaker 1: suspect to be true, or things they've picked up from
31:13
Speaker 1: social media or media in general. For a while, everybody
31:16
Speaker 1: fell in love with this idea that one up not
31:20
Speaker 1: being true. But this the trophic cascade, right, this this
31:25
Speaker 1: ted talk level idea that by you know, wolves being
31:31
Speaker 1: on the landscape, they caused the Riparian areas to bloom
31:37
Speaker 1: and paradise returned to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the
31:43
Speaker 1: landscape of fear, which drove the elk, you know, which
31:46
Speaker 1: were inflated numbers of elk, and it pushed them into
31:48
Speaker 1: the mountains. And so the willows came back and Eden returned,
31:53
Speaker 1: and that idea was proven to not be true in
31:58
Speaker 1: the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. But the refuting that idea didn't
32:04
Speaker 1: get nearly the press as advancing that idea did. Another
32:09
Speaker 1: thing that you know that everyone on the planet feels
32:13
Speaker 1: like or like, you know, everyone in Montana seems to
32:16
Speaker 1: be a born grizzly expert. You know, half of Alaska
32:20
Speaker 1: seems to be born a wolf expert. And they all
32:24
Speaker 1: know this idea of disrupting herd dynamic or disrupting pack dynamics.
32:28
Speaker 1: They don't know it from living, they just know it
32:30
Speaker 1: from having heard about it, and so it becomes this
32:33
Speaker 1: idea they put forth. On the other side of it,
32:37
Speaker 1: people that like to hunt lions or people that trap
32:41
Speaker 1: wolves or hunt wolves will lay in a lot of
32:44
Speaker 1: things like, oh, if I don't do this, they'll be
32:47
Speaker 1: coming to get your pets. Or if I don't do this,
32:51
Speaker 1: there will be no big game left, which begs the
32:53
Speaker 1: obvious question, if there's no big game, left, How would
32:56
Speaker 1: there be predators anyways, because they rely on big game
32:59
Speaker 1: being so I don't believe that they would be able
33:04
Speaker 1: to completely eliminate their food source because that would lead
33:08
Speaker 1: to their own destruction. Then you'll have people in the
33:14
Speaker 1: Rockies who are just so upset about wolves being on
33:18
Speaker 1: the landscape because of course that means there's no game.
33:21
Speaker 1: But then they like to go hunt in Alaska, where
33:24
Speaker 1: wolves occupy about one hundred percent of their historic range.
33:29
Speaker 1: And so if you hate wolves so much and wolves
33:32
Speaker 1: mean there's no game, why would you go to Alaska?
33:36
Speaker 1: They must not have any game because they have wolves.
33:41
Speaker 1: So everyone winds up being on all sides of it.
33:44
Speaker 1: You hear so many people being just intellectually dishonest because
33:49
Speaker 1: they're like I someone's saying, I hate to see a
33:53
Speaker 1: predator get killed because I view them as being special.
34:01
Speaker 1: But I don't want to say that, so I'm gonna
34:03
Speaker 1: try to throw you some bogus ecological stuff that I
34:06
Speaker 1: don't really understand. Conversely, someone would say I believe that
34:13
Speaker 1: if there's a renewable resource, a renewable sustainable resource on
34:17
Speaker 1: the landscape, and that we can extract some harvestable surplus
34:21
Speaker 1: off that renewable resource without damaging the resource. I believe
34:25
Speaker 1: that we should have the right to do that. But
34:27
Speaker 1: instead I'm gonna frame it around ideas of the safety
34:30
Speaker 1: of my neighbor's pets, or I'm gonna frame it around
34:34
Speaker 1: ideas of saving big game from extirpation. It invites all
34:42
Speaker 1: this intellectual dishonesty. Yeah, I'm ardently, ardently, unapologetically pro trapping
34:55
Speaker 1: and pro hunting of sustainable resources because they're on the landscape.
35:01
Speaker 1: If we protect the habitat, we'll have surpluses of animals,
35:04
Speaker 1: and we can harvest animals responsibly and not have a
35:09
Speaker 1: long term negative impact. Yeah, that's a long way of
35:15
Speaker 1: setting up The question is why do you feel people
35:17
Speaker 1: always need to dress this up, to dress this dialogue
35:21
Speaker 1: up and things where they wind up us, they wind
35:24
Speaker 1: up role playing, Yeah, with what their actual motivations are. Yeah, man,
35:33
Speaker 1: you say that so well.
35:34
Speaker 2: You probably say that better than anybody I've ever heard
35:37
Speaker 2: say it, you know, with kind of an intellectual dishonesty.
35:41
Speaker 2: And I tried to. I hope this film portrayed that.
35:48
Speaker 2: I don't know if I was fully effective at that
35:50
Speaker 2: or not, because I didn't go interview a biologist. Like
35:54
Speaker 2: some people criticized the film and said, well, it was
35:57
Speaker 2: just this backyard biology by David Bennett's, you know, just
36:02
Speaker 2: saying well, there's more deer when we trap out wolves.
36:04
Speaker 2: And so you know, I did not go interview biologist.
36:10
Speaker 2: We didn't get into the deep technical, technical research of
36:15
Speaker 2: wolves in that area. And I did that on purpose.
36:18
Speaker 2: I wanted to present it like what like what what
36:23
Speaker 2: you said? That we ought to just be able to
36:26
Speaker 2: go and extract a resource and not be hurt by it.
36:29
Speaker 2: And honestly, golly, if anybody knows wolves up there, it's
36:35
Speaker 2: David and he can tell you they're not hurting the
36:37
Speaker 2: wolf population. What was your original question, Steve, I gotta
36:43
Speaker 2: I got the I got sidetracked on my thought there.
36:45
Speaker 1: Oh, wasn't so much a question as an observation about
36:50
Speaker 1: people's need to on both sides of this issue, people's
36:55
Speaker 1: need to be a little bit or be a little
37:02
Speaker 1: bit like assume rhetoric that they don't maybe feel. And
37:07
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm pointing to both sides. It's like I've
37:09
Speaker 1: I've laid I've laid back, like I've really laid out
37:12
Speaker 1: my personal perspective on it, which I said is unwavering, right.
37:17
Speaker 1: But when I hear someone, if someone gets a mountain
37:20
Speaker 1: lion and an ay and then they get called out
37:22
Speaker 1: on it, and they want to put position that they
37:25
Speaker 1: were doing it out of the best interest of unknown
37:29
Speaker 1: strangers pets. I don't know. I don't think that they
37:36
Speaker 1: were out there because of their neighbor's pets. Yeah. Yeah. Likewise,
37:40
Speaker 1: the thing I've observed in the past, people like to
37:44
Speaker 1: hunt prairie dogs or ground squirrels, and they'll be like, well,
37:48
Speaker 1: I do it for the rancher. And I'll be like,
37:50
Speaker 1: if you wanted to help that rancher, if you went
37:52
Speaker 1: to that rancher's house and you said, man, I'm here
37:55
Speaker 1: to help. What is the number one most effective thing
37:59
Speaker 1: I can do to help you as a rancher. I
38:02
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna be prairie dogs. I think it's
38:05
Speaker 1: gonna be fixing fence.
38:10
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
38:13
Speaker 1: Look at what he does when he wakes up in
38:14
Speaker 1: the morning.
38:16
Speaker 2: He didn't go grab his two twenty three.
38:18
Speaker 1: He's like, by god, I gotta get up early tomorrow
38:21
Speaker 1: for prairie dogs. No, it's like I gotta get up,
38:23
Speaker 1: I gotta feed Coyle's check Kyle's fixed fence, do chores,
38:27
Speaker 1: and that's like the thing most top of mind. So yeah,
38:32
Speaker 1: I just I get a little I just end up
38:35
Speaker 1: getting a little tired of I end up getting a
38:38
Speaker 1: little tired of the bs. But but on management though,
38:42
Speaker 1: it's the eight seven pounds of me to day. Right,
38:49
Speaker 1: something's dying if they're living, sure, And it's been proven
38:53
Speaker 1: time again that that predator management, if done in a
38:56
Speaker 1: way that's precise spatially and precise temporarily, it's effective. As
39:03
Speaker 1: you're pointing out, you were involved in a kind of
39:07
Speaker 1: non event, right, No doubt during the following weeks, some
39:12
Speaker 1: fewer number of deer and moose died because they're going
39:16
Speaker 1: to make a kill it, you know, a killer two
39:18
Speaker 1: a week, whatever it is up there, No doubt some
39:21
Speaker 1: fewer prey animals died. No doubt those wolves will be
39:26
Speaker 1: replaced by the wolves who fill in the vacancy and
39:28
Speaker 1: the habitat. And you participated in you participated in an
39:34
Speaker 1: ecological non event, right, yeah, you know, I think, go ahead,
39:42
Speaker 1: go ahead, No, no, that's all.
39:44
Speaker 2: I said something that probably confused some people at the end,
39:49
Speaker 2: because I think, really, what on one side of the story,
39:54
Speaker 2: we're talking about making something sacred. And our society since
40:01
Speaker 2: the reintroduction into Yellowstone, and you know, we have sacralized
40:06
Speaker 2: wolves as this animal that is above other animals. And
40:12
Speaker 2: in some ways that's a positive thing. That's a celebration
40:15
Speaker 2: of this great beast, which humans love to do. That
40:18
Speaker 2: every culture that's ever lived has sacralized some animal. And
40:23
Speaker 2: I said in my closing statements on this film, I said,
40:27
Speaker 2: I said, I think as a society we can sacralize
40:30
Speaker 2: the wolf, but we also need to responsibly be able
40:35
Speaker 2: to trap them and hunt them. I think we can
40:37
Speaker 2: have our cake and eat it too, And I think
40:39
Speaker 2: that's what hunters can do that. It's hard for someone
40:43
Speaker 2: to understand. It's like, well, shoot, if you think a
40:44
Speaker 2: wolf's sacred, you don't need to be abut trapping them.
40:47
Speaker 2: And man, I think we can do it all. I mean,
40:49
Speaker 2: I like to see a wolf and have a sense
40:53
Speaker 2: of awe and have a sense of wow, this is
40:55
Speaker 2: a special moment, this is a special beast. Like I
40:59
Speaker 2: think that, Like I don't walk up to it and
41:01
Speaker 2: think this is a non just a another day of
41:05
Speaker 2: my life, just gonna dispatch this wolf.
41:08
Speaker 1: I don't know.
41:09
Speaker 2: I think we can kind of have our cake and
41:10
Speaker 2: eat it too. I really do.
41:12
Speaker 1: Oh, well, that's at this point, that's proven. It's empirically true. Idaho, Wyoming, Montana,
41:26
Speaker 1: Alaska have wolves on the ground, and they have hunting
41:33
Speaker 1: and trapping seasons for wolves, and they're going to continue
41:37
Speaker 1: to have wolves on the ground. I do some I
41:43
Speaker 1: do some kyote hunting. I do some kyote trapping. In fact,
41:45
Speaker 1: I'm sitting by a little stringer of kyote pelts hanging
41:48
Speaker 1: on the wall of our studio. I get excited and
41:51
Speaker 1: happy when I see a kyot track. I like running
41:57
Speaker 1: into them. I set out trail cameras specific defeckly to
42:00
Speaker 1: catch images of coyotes. I also like to get some
42:07
Speaker 1: Those two things are not incompatible. Yeah, and having recovered
42:12
Speaker 1: populations of wolves on the ground and having some extraction
42:16
Speaker 1: of the resource, these are not incompatible ideas. We do
42:18
Speaker 1: it all of the time.
42:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. Let me can I ask you a question, how
42:27
Speaker 2: do you do you think us talking about and showing
42:32
Speaker 2: this is beneficial for our cause?
42:43
Speaker 1: Man, I would say I would say yes, and I'll
42:50
Speaker 1: position it. I'll explain the two perspectives on this stuff.
42:55
Speaker 1: One perspective is that hunters and trappers ought to try
43:04
Speaker 1: to hide in plain sight, the idea being that if
43:09
Speaker 1: you carry on your activities and you just hide and
43:13
Speaker 1: keep it secret, the broader world will not realize you're
43:18
Speaker 1: there and they will never mess with you. Also, this
43:28
Speaker 1: kind of notion that if you don't, if you're off
43:32
Speaker 1: of So if hunters and trappers stay off social media,
43:36
Speaker 1: the broader world won't know you're there and they won't
43:39
Speaker 1: come mess with you. But I invite that perspective, but
43:42
Speaker 1: I would invite them to look at a timeline and
43:46
Speaker 1: look at the timeline of the loss of hunting and
43:49
Speaker 1: trapping rights and pace that over a timeline of the
43:54
Speaker 1: introduction of social media. There's no correlation Colorado lost trap Like,
44:05
Speaker 1: look at places losing spring, bear hunts, places losing lion hunting,
44:11
Speaker 1: places losing trapping. That's pre social media. It's pre Internet
44:18
Speaker 1: for the most part. Colorado lost trapping back in the
44:22
Speaker 1: late eighties, early nineties. Yeah, pre Internet. There's no like.
44:32
Speaker 1: You can't look and say that the ability to discuss
44:36
Speaker 1: hunting and trapping has somehow is somehow correlated to a
44:40
Speaker 1: loss of rights. But that's this idea that you should
44:43
Speaker 1: go hide and if you go hide, no one will
44:46
Speaker 1: ever notice you're there. But you know what, you'll get noticed.
44:50
Speaker 1: You'll get noticed because you have animal rights people that
44:53
Speaker 1: are going to find out about it. You know how
44:55
Speaker 1: I know that because they find out about it, and
44:57
Speaker 1: they found out about it way before the Internet, and
45:00
Speaker 1: they're gonna come after you.
45:03
Speaker 2: Hey, before you say your second thing to me, we
45:10
Speaker 2: have to be the people that tell our story. Yes,
45:14
Speaker 2: that's my body. That's the bottom line. If somebody's gonna
45:17
Speaker 2: talk and talk about trapping wolves in Alaska, I want
45:21
Speaker 2: it to be one of us that's doing it. You know,
45:24
Speaker 2: not necessarily me, but I want it to be. I
45:27
Speaker 2: want the narrative to be not a spun narrative, but
45:31
Speaker 2: the narrative the way we see it. When I first
45:33
Speaker 2: got into the national bear scene about ten years ago,
45:37
Speaker 2: I was confronted by some of the baarhound guys that
45:40
Speaker 2: were like, hey, we should You're making a mistake by
45:44
Speaker 2: talking about this, and basically I was like, I think
45:47
Speaker 2: you're wrong. I think we have to be the ones
45:49
Speaker 2: that tell the story. And I think in a world
45:53
Speaker 2: of social media, it's all the more impetus for us
45:57
Speaker 2: to be the storytellers because if we just went silent, radio, silent,
46:01
Speaker 2: media silent, like some people are saying we should do
46:04
Speaker 2: these days.
46:06
Speaker 1: Then not.
46:07
Speaker 2: We don't have this governing body that can tell all
46:09
Speaker 2: hunters to never post something on the internet, you know,
46:12
Speaker 2: or or somebody's going to do it, and so the
46:15
Speaker 2: worst of us are going to be the storytellers of
46:18
Speaker 2: why something's going to happen. So in a world that
46:21
Speaker 2: now communicates through social media, I mean, I feel like
46:25
Speaker 2: it's all the more important for us to stand up
46:29
Speaker 2: and tell our story in a reasonable way.
46:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's kind of an absurd request. I mean,
46:34
Speaker 1: I'm a writer and a creator, and I'm going to
46:38
Speaker 1: talk about the things I care about. The oldest representational
46:41
Speaker 1: art in the world is people drawing pictures of their hunts.
46:51
Speaker 1: That's not good. I've never heard that said before.
46:53
Speaker 2: That's good.
46:55
Speaker 1: The the idea that that somehow these act that somehow
47:04
Speaker 1: hunting and trapping should be removed from any sort of
47:09
Speaker 1: artistic expression or any sort of expository expression to to
47:16
Speaker 1: to to tell people how you view things, what you
47:20
Speaker 1: think about them, because it somehow sits outside of what's
47:24
Speaker 1: polite to discuss. It's absurd. Yeah, Like I'm going to
47:30
Speaker 1: talk about the things that I love. I'm gonna advance
47:36
Speaker 1: my perspective on things. I'm gonna defend the things that
47:42
Speaker 1: matter to me. How and like, how do I imagine
47:45
Speaker 1: defending the things that matter to me? Do I do
47:47
Speaker 1: it by obfuscating them or do I do it by
47:52
Speaker 1: elucidating them by bringing them to lie. I'm like, there's
47:57
Speaker 1: nothing I'm gonna take that I'm gonna love and I'm
47:59
Speaker 1: gonna like, ob fuse, skate it out of my love
48:01
Speaker 1: for it, right, I'm going to illuminate it out of
48:05
Speaker 1: my love for it.
48:08
Speaker 2: And you know, by us not talking about this stuff,
48:11
Speaker 2: it might work for a generation, but the very nature
48:16
Speaker 2: of it, I mean, today the world communicates with social media, bicyclist, guitarist,
48:23
Speaker 2: sports athletes, like this is the medium of the world
48:27
Speaker 2: to communicate with our generation. And so if we were
48:31
Speaker 2: exempt from that, it would work for one generation, but
48:35
Speaker 2: the second generation it would it would fail. Like it's
48:38
Speaker 2: not a long term strategy, Like we have to be relevant.
48:41
Speaker 2: The way for hunters to be less relevant to planet
48:44
Speaker 2: Earth would be for us to be less relevant in
48:47
Speaker 2: the communication of the times.
48:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well, like I said, you've already seen
48:52
Speaker 1: it happen. I mean, there was a dramatic erosion of
49:00
Speaker 1: the rights of outdoorsmen in the eighties and nineties. This
49:06
Speaker 1: is not a it's not an Internet phenomena. Yeah. Yeah, well, Clay,
49:14
Speaker 1: I'm glad you joined us for a talk about wolf
49:16
Speaker 1: trapping in Alaska Wolf.
49:17
Speaker 2: Management, Wolf management, Alaska wolf Management.
49:23
Speaker 1: What's next? Beaver's no doubt, it's beaver trapping with Steve
49:29
Speaker 1: Beaver trap man. Okay, here's what we do, and we
49:32
Speaker 1: do Mark Beaver Martin longlining in the mountains.
49:35
Speaker 2: Man, Well, we could do that on mules or we
49:40
Speaker 2: beaver trap and follow followed the fur all the way
49:44
Speaker 2: to making a sweet cowboy hat for both of us,
49:48
Speaker 2: a Paris sweet cowboy hats.
49:50
Speaker 1: No, I'm not going I'm going to floppy brim Daniel
49:53
Speaker 1: Boone hat man. Yeah, well he.
49:56
Speaker 2: Wore beaver felt. Sure, that's what I'm saying. I mean,
49:59
Speaker 2: I just mean like a beaver felt.
50:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well thanks for coming me go.
50:02
Speaker 2: Ahead, Yeah, man, thanks to appreciate it.
50:05
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on. Quai. Thanks a lot, man,