Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 901: Whitetails in Alaska? And Other Alaskan Deer Questions Answered with Bjorn Dihle and Colin Arisman

Transcript

Ep. 901: Whitetails in Alaska? And Other Alaskan Deer Questions Answered with Bjorn Dihle and Colin Arisman · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by First Light, creating proven versatile
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week, in
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, we are discussing the surprising arrival of white
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: tails and mule deer to Alaska for the first time
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: in record history. We're also going to be talking about
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: my new film featured on the meter to YouTube channel,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: all about this question and my Sickle blacktail hunter last year.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: And finally, we'll be exploring other questions surrounding the changing
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: landscape in Alaska. And joining me is Bjorn Dela and
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Colin Arisman, the two guys that joined me for that hunt,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and two Alaska residents, expert blacktail deer hunters and damn
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: good folks. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: brought to you by First Life and their cameo for
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Conservation Initiative. And today we are discussing my brand new
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: film that just launched on the Mediator YouTube channel last week,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: and a whole lot of very interesting questions that led
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: to me going on this hunt and doing this project. Now,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: as I just mentioned there at the top, the number
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: one question, the thing that inspired this entire adventure was
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: this rumor that started to pop up a few years
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: ago about white tails possibly showing up in Alaska for
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the first time ever. When I read about that, I
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: immediately was fascinated. Could this be true? Where were they
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: showing up? Why were they showing up? You know, how
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: was this happening? And what did it mean? What did
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: it mean for the native blacktail deer, What did it
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: mean for other critters around there? What did it mean
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: for me as a you know, whitetail nut myself? All
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: these things we're running through my head at that moment.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: In the months after I first heard about that, I
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: pitched a big podcast series about this. I wanted to
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: go up to Alaska and search for whitetails and interview
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: people about what was going on and why this was
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: happening and all those questions that I just mentioned to you,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: And that podcast did not end up happening. But I've
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: been thinking about this idea ever since, and finally last
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: year we were able to put together a plan to
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: do some of those things. The plan was going to
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: be to head up to Alaska to do two things.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Number one, talk to some folks there, Alaskan residents about
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: what the reality is in the ground. I was going
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: to speak to someone from Alaska's Fishing Game Department, and
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: then I also wanted to chat with some people who
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: had actually seen some of these deer themselves. And then finally,
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I also wanted to go and understand, you know, exactly
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: what were white tails showing up into. What was the
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: habitat like in southeast Alaska? How was this different than
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: typical whitetail country, And you know what about the native
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: deer there. I wanted to learn more about blacktails, Sika blacktails,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: the deer that have been calling this place home for
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: thousands of years. What did that deer look like, act like?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: You know, how was that going to be possibly impacted
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: by the arrival of white tails or mule deer. This
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: was what I wanted to figure out. I wanted to
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: kind of ground myself in the landscape with these deer
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: to better understand, you know, what all this meant. And
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: so that's what I did. We planned this trip. I
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: talked about it last fall on this podcast. I kind
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: of gave you the play by play of that hunt,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: and now today what I want to do is take
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: a little bit bigger picture of view at that. I
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: want to discuss those questions in some more detail and
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: some of the answers I found, and I want to
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: talk a little bit more about, you know, what that
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: experience taught me and the folks that joined me on
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: that hunt, and what all of that might point two
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: for the future of Alaska and SIKA, blacktails and wildlife
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: have all sorts. So that is the plan for today.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Joining me are the two guys that joined me on
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: that trip. Bjorn Dila is one of those guys. He
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: is an author, He is a diehard blacktail deer hunter.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: He has done work with TRCP and written many articles
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: for many publications and is a lifelong Alaska resident. And
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: he has seen some of the changes that we mentioned
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: in the film. He's seen them firsthand. He has actually
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: been one of the people that have seen mule deer
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: moving up into these new places, so getting that first
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: hand insight has been very interesting. And then also with
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: me today is Colin Eyersman. He was the camera operator
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: and filmmaker on this.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Trip with us.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: He also is a blacktail deer hunter and someone who's
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: spent a lot of time working on projects related to
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: wildlife and the conservation of wild places, so he's got
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: this really interesting perspective too. So with that said, I
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: think we should get into this conversation about this what
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: I find to be just fascinating topic about how Alaska's
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: changing and wildlife distributions are changing, and white tails are
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: continuously showing up in new places.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: So if you haven't.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Watched this film yet, I would highly encourage you to
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: do that maybe before you listen to this chat. It's
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: over on the media to YouTube channel. The title is
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: kind of a long one, but I think it starts
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: with the question you know white tails in Alaska? And
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: then I think the subtitle is hunting for Answers and
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: black tails in Alaska. So head on over to the
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: media or YouTube channel give that one a watch. I
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: really appreciate it, and I hope you enjoyed this chat.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Is we dive deeper into this topic and this adventure.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: All right with me?
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Now on the show, I'm joined by Bjorn Dila and
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Colin Arisman. I almost I almost called you the thing
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: that the arms was calling you. Colin but I didn't,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: so I caught myself. Welcome, Welcome to the show, guest.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: Thanks, thanks man.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: I'm glad we get to have a little reunion here.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: This is a great excuse to hang out with you
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: guys again after such a good trip last year. So yeah,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: the plan for.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: Today is to talk a little bit about that trip. Now.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: After our black tail hunt last year, I came back
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: and recorded a podcast solo. Uh, you guys maybe saw
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: me post about that or talk about that, but basically
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: it was just me really quick off the cuff, first
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: thoughts on the trip. But during that podcast, I didn't
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: talk at all about, you know, the larger issue that
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: originally brought me there, and that kind of set the
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: theme for our for our time together. So that's kind
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: of where I want to start with this chat, is
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: to is to kind of look at that theme, those
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: first questions I had, and kind of get your as
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: perspective and thoughts on that. Because, as you guys know,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: what originally started this whole thing for me was four
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: years ago or five years ago something like that. I
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: saw this article that came from Alaska Ficient Game that
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: basically said, hey, white tails might be and mule deer
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: are for sure in the state for the first time,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and then there was a whole bunch of kind of
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: announcements they had and related to that, and so ever
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: since then, I've thought, man, I want to learn more
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: about that. I want to get up there and see
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: this area for myself, see what this new possible white
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: tail country could be. And long story short, that led
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: us to spend that time together. We ended up talking
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: to a biologist there in Alaska, Roy Church. Well, you
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: and mc collin, we spent some time together with him
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: and he basically confirmed it for us right that, yes,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: mule deer are in the state now for the first time.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: White tails are knocking on the doorstep and possibly probably
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: are in the state. We just don't have one hundred
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: percent confirmation of it yet, but they're they're right there
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: around the very very edge at least. So that is
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: a long winded wind up to me asking you two,
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: what if you guys heard or seen when it comes
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: to these near new deer arriving in Alaska before I
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: gave you guys a call, is that something that was
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: on your radar at all? And I'll let you lead Bjorn,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: because I think I reached out to you first on
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: this issue. What did you know about this whole thing
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: when I reached out to you first, you know last year?
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean I had seen mule deer in the
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: Yukon in twenty seventeen on the Yukon River, which you know,
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: Yukon's right east of Alaska. And then I'd heard of
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: white tails, a white tail, like a straight white tail
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: up and then tier even so, yeah, I was definitely
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: on my radar. I knew they were around Skagway for
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: mule deer, and you know, just to confirm that, right
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: after our trip, my boys and I went up to
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: Anchorage and bought a truck and drove it back to
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: southeast Alaska. And the only animal we saw on the
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: whole drive through interior Alaska and Interier Yukon was a
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: mule deer. So they weren't, you know, they weren't. I
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: can remember maybe twenty sixteen some people in the Yukon
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: being like, hey man, we got cougars. Now they followed
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: them if they followed the deer up, And I was
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: like what, I didn't even know what species of deer
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: there was, just like, yeah, they followed the deer up.
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: There's cougars here watch out. I was like, Wow, that's new.
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: So yeah, what about you, Kellen?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: What was that something you've been hearing rumors of yet?
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: Uh, there's a rumor that a white tail or mule deer,
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: something that's a non resident got shot up the valley
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: from where I live in Haines, But it's it's pretty
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: loose rumor. What people talk about a lot more where
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: I live is we're right at the edge of blacktail
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: habitat and we will occasionally have citing it's a blacktail
• 9:52
  Speaker 5: on the Chilcat Peninsula just south of Haines, and it
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: just it really shows how these deer on that low
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: elevation snowpack. So we'll have two or three low snow years,
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: the deer population will build up a little bit, and
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: then there'll be a big snow year.
• 10:08
  Speaker 6: They're all going to die off.
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: And you know, whether they're blacktail, white till meal deer,
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: when the years are mild, they're going to explore new
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: places and they're constantly pushing out. And then you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: it's just really interesting how that snowpack and winter is
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: the limiting factor for any of these species.
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: A bit, you're going to have an uptick this year,
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: and yeah, black tail settings as I got them around
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: my house, and you know, normally, after this winter, I
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: mean most winners, you don't see much. And this year
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: is like, you know, I'm seeing more deer.
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: But then Skagway, like Beorn mentioned next town over from us,
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: and I didn't know about it until we were talking
• 10:46
  Speaker 5: with the biologist Mark, but it was fascinating to hear
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: how many mulis have been down around Skagway and we're
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: you know, thirty minutes from there by air, so they're
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: going to be, uh, what's happening in Skagway is going.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: To happen where I live, probably right.
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: So so what Roy was telling us and what you know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: further research and study of my part has confirmed as
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: I started looking into other sources on this, was that,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: you know, as that snow and as these winters are
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: becoming more and more mild, these deer are moving you know,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: up from Canada farther and farther north into Canada. So
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: there's a number of studies coming out of Canada where
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: they're really seeing this, where they are seeing you know,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: whitetail deer especially becoming you know, more and more of
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: a northern boreal species when historically they weren't, and they've
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: been going up through river bottoms, and there's been some
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: debate around if some of this has been due to
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: land use change, because there's also been you know, further
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: development occurring farther and farther north or pushing northwest across
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Alberta and British Columbia heading towards Alaska. And so one
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: of the theories was that well, as there's been more development,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: logging or roadbuilding or something like that, you know, that's
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: creating new edge habitat and suitable habitat for white tails
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: and other deer two. So that possibly could be part
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: of what's going on as well. But a couple of
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: studies looked at this specifically, looking at all the different
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: changes and what lines up the best with where white
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: tails are showing up now and and climate change changing
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: climate weather systems and the corresponding you know, ability for
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: white tails to survive there has been the biggest thing.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: And you guys had both, you know, while we were
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: up there talking shared with me a number of different
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: changes you guys have seen. Jorn being a lifelong Alaska resident,
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: you had a lot that you could point to as
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: far as the changes you've seen just over the course
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: of your lifetime, can you speak to some of that?
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: Uh, you know, I guess yeah. I mean the big
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: one that hit me was I spent a lot of
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: time on glaciers when I was younger and more spry,
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: and what would always shock me is I'd have the
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: USGS maps from seventies most of those, and then I'd
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: have my GPS and you'd be on the exact same
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: point on the glacier, but you'd be three hundred or
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: four hundred feet lower and You're just like, that can't
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: be right. So that that was my initial thoughts before,
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: like all this, it's like these maps are off or
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: this GPS is broken before you know, climate change back
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: then was only kind of just starting to get talked about.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: And then since then, I mean, the extent of how
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: fast our glaciers are melting is insane. I live right
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: next to glacier. The deepest piece of ice in North
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: America is twenty five miles as the crow flies from me,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: and so just having that front view of how fast
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: these glaciers are melting, you know, going through an ice
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: field with a map, and then I'll be like I'm
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: on the wrong glacier because there's a mountain ride in
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: front of me. And then you get the cord and
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: its's like, you know, I'm then exact same spot this
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: mountain wasn't map because it wasn't there thirty years ago.
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: The ice has melted whatever or was eight hundred feet
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: to reveal this eight hundred foot tall, mile long un
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: attack wo so that that the glacier rice is huge,
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: just seeing how fast that's melting. And you know, every
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: paper that I read is always like, well, actually we
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: were too conservative, and how fast these glaciers are melting.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: They're actually going to be gone faster than the last
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: paper said. And another thing, just from commercial fishing for
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: ten years around northern southeast Alaska, just seeing the changes
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: in the ocean with the salmon that that's been you know,
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: I kind of got that the last heyday of King salmon.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: Even then it was like, you know that the guy
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: fished with for most of that time, you know, he'd
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: been fishing since the seventies, and he was like, well,
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: you know, there's not necessarily we said, there is less kings,
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: but they're just much smaller too. And then during the
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: next ten years of fishing, was like, man, there's just
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: less kings every year. And then you know our two
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: biggest rivers in Alaska, the Yukon and cusco Quinn. People
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: can't fish salmon there and they've been fishing salmon for
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: ever because there's just not salmon there anymore. So those
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: two are like and I could go on and on
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: and on and on, but those are the two ones
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: that just like, can't you can't ignore those living here,
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: I mean, because salmon and glaciers are such a part
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: of everyday life here.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, what have you seen, Colin.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: You're a little bit newer to Alaska, but have you
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: been seeing or hearing from other folks anything related to this?
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: I get to travel around the state quite a bit
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: working on phone projects, and I think the most striking
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: stuff recently for me is just talking to people who
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: live in communities in the Arctic. And my my friend
• 15:47
  Speaker 5: works on a research related to studying trees moving north
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: into the tundra. And you can't have a more striking
• 15:55
  Speaker 5: example than that, Like, you know, in the last five
• 15:58
  Speaker 5: years seeing trees growing, forests are beginning to grow in
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: places that haven't had them. I mean, it's wild and
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: the permafrost is melting fast enough. The rocks that are
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: in underneath the soil that have been locked up in
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: the ice for thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, they're
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: coming in contact with water for the first time, and
• 16:22
  Speaker 5: they're literally releasing acid rock drainage, which looks like rust.
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: So crystal clear rivers that have had salmon runs have
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: had great grayling fishing are now having these events where
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: just like this, toxic water flushes through them. And so
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: these aren't just you know, the seasons changing a bit.
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: These are like the entire ecosystem is changing in these
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: wild ways, and there's no doubt that's related to climate change.
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: Where I live, I haven't been there super long, but
• 16:57
  Speaker 5: we have a house and Haines and I really like
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: to back country ski and talking to folks. Fifteen years ago,
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: you could reliably ski from sea level. We had a
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: solid snowpack all winter long down at sea level. You
• 17:11
  Speaker 5: could ski up to the tops of the mountains. And
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: this spring there's basically, you know, zero snowpack most of
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: the winter down at sea level, and that's just it's
• 17:21
  Speaker 5: a crazy change in fifteen years. I feel like a
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: lot of the folks I talk to, you know, around
• 17:26
  Speaker 5: the state. It's twenty ten. It is very different than
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: twenty twenty five in terms of what you can do
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: and what's happening with the ecosystems.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: So much of this h this climate related stuff gets
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: muddied up with politics and people get weird about it
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: because of that. But when you simply look at your
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: lifetime of outdoor experiences and what you've seen, and how
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: things have changed these days, even for someone down in
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: the lower forty eight, it's getting harder and harder to
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: deny what we're seeing. And now, you know, here in
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Michigan where I am right now, things aren't quite as dramatic.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: I feel like when you head west, you start seeing
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: things even more starkly with the increased fire season and
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: the loss of snowpack and the warming rivers and all
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: of that that's becoming really hard to ignore. But then
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: when you go up north to where you guys are,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: where you know, the rate and the severity of change
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: is dramatically increased compared to the you know, other parts
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: of the country because those those changes are more severe
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: near the poles. You know, when you hear from folks
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: like you guys who are just seeing this massive level
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: of change that's not just like something you see, but
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: changes ways of life, you know, whether it be commercial
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: fishermen or native peoples up there who depend on these
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: salmon runs, or you know, hunters and anglers who are
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: seeing the critters that they hunt either disappearing or moving
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: farther north, or interacting with the new species. That that's
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: pretty compelling to me when I hear that kind of thing,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Because you know, talking head on the news, that's one
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: thing that's that's easy to say, I forget it. But
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: when you hear from someone who's just a hunter wrangler
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: like I am, who is in a brand new situation
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: then they were twenty thirty years ago, I can't ignore that.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: At least you were telling me, Bjorn, that that moose had.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: Been moving into new areas.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: I've heard about beaver's moving farther and farther north as
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: those forests head north, right, and that's changing ecosystems. What's
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: another one? You said that fishers have been showing up
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: there by you.
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: Bjorn, we got influx of fishers. We didn't have those,
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: you know, fifteen twenty years ago, I think maybe twenty
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: years ago I saw my first track of a fisher.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean there's all sorts of stuff, and
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: the you know, some of them are really bad, like
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: what's happening with unglitz. A lot of the ungulate species
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: up north with these rain events that were getting in
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: these freezing rain events in the winter, and you know
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: that's hurting a lot of caribou populations. The sheep, all
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: sheep are like those big snow, warm events, rain events
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: all times.
• 20:12
  Speaker 5: That whole herd in western Alaska of sheep got wiped out.
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: Well east, Yeah, I mean I can remember first trip
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: in the Brooks Rangers, just like, man, there's sheep on
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: every mountain. This is awesome. And then I you know,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: I remember going I think there was a big brain
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: snow event a couple of years later, and I came
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: back and I was like, oh, well, they're significantly less sheep,
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: same area. And then five years after that, more of
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: that stuff, and I don't see any sheep and fifty
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: miles you know, or maybe I saw one little herd
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: where before it was like every mountain has I heard
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: a sheep on it? So it's it is just you know,
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: politics aside. It's you can't be here and not you
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: know if you if you've been here and you're paying attention.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: It's just like it's it's more than knocking on your door.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: It's in your living room. Literally where I live, not
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: we're getting these glacial outburst floods. It was from climate change.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: And I mean, I don't know how many houses got
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: flooded near where I live last year, and we don't
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: know what's gonna happen next year. It's gonna happen every year.
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: Keep so a glacial damn outburst. It's usually there back
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: up in the ice field, and I live right on
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: the edge of the Juno ice field. You'll get like
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: a kind of like a glacial lake. All the snow
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: melt and rain will fill up in the lake. And
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: then every year this didn't happen before, but just due
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: to the glacier rapidly receding, it formed this kind of
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: lake reservoir thing. Then every year that that ice dam breaks.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: In the last couple well probably five years, but it's
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: getting significantly larger. So last year, I mean, I don't
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: know how many calling you might remember you're nearby, it
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: was something like a hundred houses got flooded, you know,
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: people lost, and yeah, it was huge, you know, and
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: it's just like we Yeah, you have that sort of
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: scenario that anyone who questions climate change, you know, you
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: literally have that happening. It comes in. Yeah, so it's it's.
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: Very real, you know.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: When we're up there on the Mountain Jorn. One of
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: the things you mentioned was, you.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Know, how how nature has never been static, rights, It's
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: always been changing. There has been periods of climate change
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: over the course of the Earth's history numerous times. Right,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: But something's you know, really different right now, and people
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: like to bring that up. People say, well, the earth
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: climate has always been changing, therefore we should not be
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: worried about what's happening right now, or there should be
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: no impetus put on us to do anything about it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: That's one of the arguments that you'll hear from people
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: who want to deny it or diminish it. But a
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: really important thing to note is that these previous periods
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: of climate change occurred over tens of thousands, if not
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: millions of years, right, They were very slow. When you
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: look at the timeline of the Earth. The change we're
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: seeing is similar actual amounts of change, but we're seeing
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: it in one hundred years versus one million years, and
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: so what that means is that these wildlife species that
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: historically some were able to adapt and evolve to deal
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: with that change, Now when you're getting a rate of
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: change like that in one hundred years, you know, these
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: critters can't keep up. And then on top of that,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: you also have the incremental impacts of everything else that
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: we humans are doing to wildlife, so whether that be
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: habitat change or other forms of pollution, or you know,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: our own incremental take and harvest, or you know, fragmentation
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: of it.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: To add all of these.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Many many, many different human caused impacts stacked on top
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: of this much much faster rate of climate change than
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: while ever used to, you know, that's why you see
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: so many critters really struggling now, more so than they
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: ever had before. And that's why you know, the climate
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: impacts at this point are are so much more concerning
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: than you know, the historical periods that.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Some of these species have seen.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Now that's not to say that some of these historical
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: climate change events still did knock out a lot of
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: species even without humans, So you can't you can't. You
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: can't just kind of wish this thing away and say, well,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: it's natural, no worries.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Well, I think even if you know, even if you
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: believe it's natural, and like we we have had glaciation
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: periods and then warming periods. I can't remember how many
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: we've had in the last two million years, but it's
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: been you know, more than just a couple. Are this,
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: whether you know, you believe we are contributing to it,
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: we still got it. Like, as a society, we need
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: to start getting ready for what we may be facing.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: And I think that's where it's really like, you know,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: we really need to be listening to scientists. We really
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: need to be thinking about a future plan because it
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: you know, it doesn't matter whether or not you believe
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: it or not it's or if we're contributing to it. Ultimately,
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: we still need to be prepared for what's going to happen.
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: And like, you know, a lot of the native folks
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: here and you know, one of the big stories is
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: this great flood that happened in southeast Alaska, and you
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: know it a lot of people died. And whether that
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: was some giant glacial damn outburst somewhere during a colder period.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: I don't know, but like that is a story you
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: hear a lot a good buddy of mine who's a storyteller, Like,
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: that's a story. He keeps coming back to how many
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: people died, People ran up the mountains, all the bears supposedly,
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: you know, surviving bears, and people kind of competed for
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: whatever little resources they could find. So, you know, regardless
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: it's happening, as a society, we need to start thinking
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: preparation for how we're going to deal with this.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: What's your guys' sense of what that preparation or willingness
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: to adapt is. At least there in Alaska, are are
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: folks around you, your friend's family, other people in the community.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Are are people recognizing what we're talking about and and
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: coming to terms with that?
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: Bjorn?
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Or is this something that even there by you people
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: are trying to debate or nor?
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, you will meet some people that want to debate,
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: but it's, you know, ultimately kind of just a waste
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: of time. And I think a lot of us, myself included,
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: are guilty of just feeling like, oh, I'm so small,
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: I can't do anything. This is such you know, Nature's
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: so big, and I mean, what do you do to
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: you know, how do you how do you counter this?
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: But I think, you know, anyone living in the Arctic,
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: like Colin was saying, is like you can't be like climate.
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: You know, anyone up there is like as obvious and.
• 27:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there's no ideology is not gonna ideology doesn't how
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: you see it. It's just it's interesting. Like the farther
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: you go north, the more it's just a ubiquitous like
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: answer that hey, this is this is what's happening.
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: So I guess my my one thing is like I
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: don't know about you, Colin, but I don't Yeah, I
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: don't know. Like it's like people I don't hear a
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: lot of people in Alaska being like we can do
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: this to stop it. I Don'm not trying to be doomsday.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is how nature works. It's dynamic. Like
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: we talked. I'm not saying we should just go pollute
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: everything and drive you know, F three fifties everywhere and
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: leave them modeling. But it's not that's not really a
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: conversation I've had with other Alaskans or you know that
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: you know, like down south, I feel like there's a
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: lot of people who are like, we can stop this
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: or we're all going to die. In Alaska, it's like
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: it's just it's just happening, and people are trying to
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: do their best to adapt.
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: So, yeah, the tribal government in the community I live
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: in is undertaking a year long process called a Climate
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: Adaptation Plan, So they're basically going to look at the
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: climate impacts to harvest, dying and safety and way of
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: life for the community and then develop mitigation strategies within
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: the community. I mean, that's it's I think, really forward thinking,
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: and we're going to be supporting some of that with storytelling.
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: So I think that I'll learn a lot through that,
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: and I think they're going to be doing a lot
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: of work in our region that hasn't been done before.
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: And I think in terms of, you know, how I
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: try and make a difference in my life, I think
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: we've been kind of hoodwinked with this idea that our
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: personal choices, you know, turning off the lights is the
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: way we're going to deal with climate change. And I
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: think a lot of those strategies actually came out of
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: the oil lobby and to kind of pressure people that
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: make change little changes in their personal life rather than
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: push for big systems changes, which is really where things
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: are gonna get reshape from. And so I try, and
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: you know, I think it's obviously important to do those
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: small things, but I think we've been kind of conditioned
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: to thinking that like changes, you know, not driving your
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: car when it's the you know, question is a lot
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: bigger around how does the grid work? And what is
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: our infrastructure options? And so I think just being being
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: engaged and curious and learning about that stuff and how
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: you can contribute to policy changes in your community or
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: in your state is really important.
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: And then as a person in Alaska, I.
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: Think a way we can make it different is to
• 30:00
  Speaker 5: try and protect places that are going to be vulnerable
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: to the changes. And a friend of mine, Roman Dial,
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: who's a climate researcher who's walked seven thousand miles across
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: the Brooks Range in this lifetime studying this stuff, he
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: talks about how the you know, the Arctic is in
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: Alaska is so large that it's going to be able
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: to absorb these changes in a way that other places
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: can't because it's not fragmented, it's not heavily degraded by development.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: And I think That's a really cool wave of thinking
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: about it. If you give an ecosystem space, it will
• 30:35
  Speaker 5: be able to adapt, it'll be able to heal itself.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: But the ability of a place or cover is really
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: impacted when you start putting roads through it and start
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: heavily developing it with human impact. So I think keeping
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: these big chunks of the state, like the Tongus or
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: like parts of the Arctic intact where they the natural
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: eCos some processes can continue. That's something I put a
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: lot of energy into train to be part of those movements.
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. Another biologist said to me just the other day,
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: how there's never a good time to fragment caribou range,
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: but now we're talking about the ambler rode specifically up
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: in the Arctic. But now now is the worst time
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: to be fragmenting, you know, wildlife habitat. With all these
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: rapid changes, they've already got enough stressors going on.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, So so to that point, you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: there're another study that I've read a good bit about
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: has taken a look at all of the documented population
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: shifts across the world, and there are this there's a
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: rapid not rapid, there is a mass shift of wildlife
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: population distribution north, it really is towards the pole. So
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: for in the southern hemisphere, some of these pieces are
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: moving south, but here in the northern hemispone, they're moving
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: north to cooler, more you know, better suited habitats for species,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: and then up in elevation as well. So when possible,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: you know, critters are going to adapt to whatever changes
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: are happening. Problem is that, like you guys just said,
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: especially in the lower forty eight where there's more and
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: more development, oftentimes your habitat is fragmented or blocked, or
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: you've got these islands of habitat created by development and roads, businesses,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: industrial corridors. All these different things are keeping species from
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: being able to adapt in the ways that they might otherwise,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: as they can in many parts of Alaska. So yeah,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: there's all of these different ripple effects of this stuff,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: and then you've got everything else compounding. So it's like, oh, yeah,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: there's this climate thing, but then there's also this habitat fragmentation.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: There's also development, there's also energy extraction, there's also invasive species,
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: there's also pollution. There's all of these different things that
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: are impacting the wildlife that we like to watch or hunt,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: or that feed our families or whatever it is. Your
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: connection is to to to wild animals.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: But let's talk about one of those animals. That's blacktails.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Of course, you know, the idea of white tails showing
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: up in black tail country is what got me interested
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: in black tails. But you guys have been diehards for
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: much longer than me. You've been flying the black tail flag.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: What makes blacktails special to you?
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: Bjorn?
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Why do you care so much about this species?
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: I mean, sick of black tails for me is always
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: like home. You know, that's like that's the animal. It's
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: always reminds me of home. You know. I can remember
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: my dad when I was really little, you know, coming
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: home with sick of black tail, and that was always
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: what we ate and always you know, listening to stories
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: about hunting, just you know, so badly wanting to hunt,
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: go hunt. And you know, for me, other people it's
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: like probably you Mark, He's like, man, you just dreamt
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: about hunting white tails growing up. I dreamt of hunting
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: sick of blacktails. Yeah, and then yeah, and then just
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: you know it's like here, we're so lucky where I live.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: We have like a good healthy, stable population of sick
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: of blacktails, and we're allowed to take quite a few
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: animals enough to feed the family for all all years.
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: So it's so for yeah, for me, it's and it's
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: just what bonds honestly, me and my brothers together. You know,
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: that's that's kind of that hunting connection is what's kept
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: us close all these years. And you know, everything from
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: going through the brush as you saw when we went
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: to get into the top of the mountain, the butchery
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: and the animal to sharing it with family, that's always been,
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: you know, such a special and important part of my life.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: So I gotta I gotta commend you when in the film,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: when we were editing the film, we ran across this
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: little rift that you had where you talked about, how
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: you know, going through the jungles of the tongus were
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: kind of a metaphor for for like the darkness of
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: your mind and then when you break out of it
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: into the alpine. How you know, that's that's kind of
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: like heaven for you. Ah, did you spend days and
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: weeks planning that ahead of time to get that line
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: just right or did that actually come to you in
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: the moment, because that was so damn good.
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: Oh thanks, I thought it was a little cheesy. Uh,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: It's something I've always thought because you know, the other
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: the other side of the coin in growing up in
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: Southeast Alaska's it's dark, it's rainy, it's isolated. So a
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: lot of a lot of people here feel kind of like, man,
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: I'm kids, especially, like I want to get out of here.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: But the truth is like, once you get in the woods,
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: it's a whole different story. And some like a lot
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: of people are scared of the woods because they're so
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: dark and tangled. And but you know, for me, I
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: can remember early on as a kid like teenager, you know,
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: hating everything about life. But then going into the woods,
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: going hunting and going through the woods, and all of
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: a sudden you're getting up to the alpline. It was
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: just like this epiphany for me, it was like, holy moly,
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: this is this is what it's about. Like I've been
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: stuck down in the fog, and I'm above the fog
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: and I can see and I see how amazing life is,
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: how amazing all this stuff is. And then gradually, over
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: time I just learned to love the deep, dark, tangled
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: woods as well. But you know, for me like getting up,
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: So that's like kind of that was kind of my
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: origin story as far as like being whoa, this is
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: life is actually really cool when you get out of
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: the darkness and the fog.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I can. I can attest it proved
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: true on my visit there for sure. What about you, Kellen,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: You you were singing blacktails praises a lot while we
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: were spend some time together. I believe you said there
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: by far or at least you know, you said that
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: this specific kind of hunt was your favorite in the world,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: or the blacktails specifically, regardless of where they were, it
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: was your favorite. But something like that's true.
• 36:59
  Speaker 6: Right, Yeah? Absolutely.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 37:01
  Speaker 5: I grew up in Vermont, and I didn't grow up
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: in a hunting family, but I knew I wanted to
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: hunt since I was like seven, So I just, you know,
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: school hard knocks, wandering around in the woods trying to
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: still hunt white tails in Vermont. Needless to say, I
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: never got a buck, and it wasn't until my early
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: twenties when I moved out to Washington State I got
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: into still hunting blacktails with bow and got my first
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: couple deer and just going from white tails to blacktail,
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: like seeing that bubble increase a little bit, like blacktails
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: are an animal you can still hunt on the ground
• 37:41
  Speaker 5: in a way that it's just really hard with whitetail,
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: And I think that really helped me fall in love
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: with them was just I found this little patch of
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: old growth outside Seattle, and I'd like walk between the
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: clear cuts and the old growth, just you know, I'd
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: spend all day covering two thousand yards just creeping through
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: these big old trees and it was an awesome experience. And
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: eventually I just realized that I wanted to see what
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: Washington State looked like before it was heavily logged, and
• 38:13
  Speaker 5: that's kind of what brought me to Southeast Alaska and
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: then had some really cool early hunting experiences with blacktail
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: during rut and just the way you can call blacktail
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: in bringing bucks in with the call, and it's super exciting.
• 38:29
  Speaker 5: So I think, you know, the experience of hunting blacktails
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: and the rut is super different than the alpine experience,
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: and I love both of those ways of hunting them.
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: They're totally different, though, But yeah, learning to blow the
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: call and seeing deer charge in is a pretty incredible experience.
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: In November and the alpine thing. It always feels harder
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: to fit alpine hunts in in the summer for me,
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: but we usually make it up high a couple times
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: a year in August, and it's a I think you
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: said this in the in the film, but it's uh,
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: it's very different than a rut hunt, where there's a
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: little bit more strategy, a little bit more skill involved.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: Like if you can make it up physically into the alpine,
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: you have a pretty good shot at getting a buck
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: if you're if you're up there.
• 39:16
  Speaker 6: In prime time.
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: So it's just an incredible experience to get up to
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: three thousand feet and you're in a big meadow with
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: the rainforest below you. You can usually see all the
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: little islands and water stretching out below you. And on
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: a good day you can get up there at sunset
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: or sunrise and look out and see you know, handful
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: of bucks feeding together. I mean, I think they're living
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: the best days of their life when they're up there.
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: I think you can feel that that the animals are
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: just happy, and you can and feel safe, like if
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: you're a wild animal that gets chased around by wolves
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: and you're up there and you've got all the food
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: you want. Like they're living there, they're living their best
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: life up there, and it's cool to just be around it.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when we were on top of that peak looking
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: down into that last kind of amphitheater where all those
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: deer were there before we took a shot that was
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: pretty like Edenic just seeing so many Deerly the film,
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: the cut doesn't even really show just how many deer
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: were in that that kind of bowl. There were so
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: many deer spread all throughout. Some you know, there was
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: the two sparrings, some were bedded, some were feeding, some
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: were just milling around. I mean it was really like
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: a It was quite the miniature serengetti there laid out
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: in front of us.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: That stood out to me.
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I also should for listeners. I mean,
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: we were in a remote spot and you know where
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: I usually hunt, it's it's not like that. You know,
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: it's like the bucks are creeping at the oil plane
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: and whatnot. So we had, you know, we had a
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: fantastic zone where those those deer hadn't been touched and
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: they're that way like on the opener, and then after
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: that they they definitely get pretty pretty creepy. So yeah.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: So so other than that, Bjorn, what what stood out
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: to you about our trip? You know, you saw the film,
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: you lived the thing yourself. When you look back on
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: that hunt, what what what were your thoughts in the experience.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: Was it pretty standard?
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Did anything seem special or particularly interesting to you? Or
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: is this just another just another day as a black tailer?
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: Well, I think I told you Mark. There was this
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: this bear hunt guy named carl Lane, and there was
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: a picture of him on top of the mountain we
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: went on that Grandfather Trail, that's where the bears walk
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: on the same spot, so over you know, decades, hundreds
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: or in some cases honestly thousands of years, and there
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: was that picture. As a kid, I saw of Carline
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: on top of the mountain next to that Grandfather Trail,
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: and I've just always been you know, that was such
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: like as a little kid, You're like, oh man, that's
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: what I want. I want to be there, so for me.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: And then Carlaine was huge in keeping the island we
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: were hunting from being completely eroded and clear cut. He
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: brought a case against this to the Supreme Court and
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: you know, fought like ten years before that Island was
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: turned you know, designated wilderness monument. So for me it
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: was always like I never knew Carl. I knew other
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: guides who hunted, you know, the other guides who hunted
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: underneath him. The young guides are now old men, So
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: I never knew Carl, but I knew a couple of
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: different guides who hunted underneathneath him. So it's for me
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: it was just a really special experience to be like, yeah,
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: it wasn't. Because we had a bit more budget than
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: you know, I have on like my personal life. We
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: were able to go to that mountain, and for me
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: it was really special just to be up there on
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: that trail, and I thought it was really cool to
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: even thinking of the context of you Mark being like,
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: you know, you shot that deer like three four yards
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: from that Grandfather trail where carline the picture of Amazon.
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: I was like, Wow, that's that's some pretty powerful stuff
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: when I think about this, you know, guy who fought
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: so hard in the seventies for bear deer and hunters
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: and anglers of the future. Then you hear you are
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: shooting you're deer right off that trail, I thought, Man's
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: that's a really special moment.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, that's pretty incredible. What about you, Kellen?
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: What what were your thoughts.
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: I mean, anytime you can get up there, I think
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: you're going to look back at the end of your
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: life and count all the days, all the trips you
• 43:41
  Speaker 5: got got to go up in the alpine like that
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: and super special.
• 43:47
  Speaker 6: I think the first alpine I had where we got
• 43:50
  Speaker 6: up and blew my mind.
• 43:52
  Speaker 5: I didn't know what I was in for, and it
• 43:55
  Speaker 5: definitely changed how I was thinking about my life and
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: getting older. And you know, I'm in my mid thirties now,
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: but I it's like, I gotta gotta start taking care
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: of myself, like I, this is uh. I don't have
• 44:07
  Speaker 5: kids yet, so I'm sure when you have kids you
• 44:09
  Speaker 5: start thinking about it that way. But it was like, no,
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: I need to do this every year until you know,
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: I'm seventy or something. It's that important to me. So
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: to have the opportunity to go up there for work
• 44:19
  Speaker 5: is incredible.
• 44:20
  Speaker 6: It's awesome, man, And.
• 44:22
  Speaker 5: You guys are the right people to do it with too.
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: Like I, it's actually special enough to me. I don't
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: want to go up there and do those hunts with people.
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: I don't that don't have the same philosophy on it,
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: like it's a special thing.
• 44:33
  Speaker 6: I don't want someone to take it too lightly. So
• 44:37
  Speaker 6: that meant a lot. I think you brought you brought
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: the eight Spirit to him.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: Mark.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I uh, I would say right back at
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: you guys.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: You were the perfect companions to introduce me to a
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: place like that. I appreciate so much the sense and
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: the knowledge of the history that you guys had, and
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: it was so great for me to get to be
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: with youeople who understood not just the history of it,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: not just the qure we we're after, but also kind
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: of like the the story of the landscape and the ecosystem,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: and you know, current and past threats to these deer
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: in that place. And I found all of that really interesting.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I love you know, I'm not the idea of just
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: going somewhere and just shooting an animal is not terribly
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: appealing to me. What's what's appealing to me is going
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: somewhere and immersing myself in that landscape as as best
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: as you possibly can, and learning all about and understanding
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: the context. I think you know, to to hunt and
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: kill an animal, it's not just a trigger pull. It's
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: not just that meat in the freezer. It's it's kind
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: of the full experience becomes what you bring home with you,
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: those stories, the history, the understanding of that place and
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: and what it means, and all that I brought home
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: with me. And a lot of that is because because
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: you guys were great teachers. So I I consider myself
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: very lucky that I got to have not just an
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: incredible opportunity to be in Alaska to hunt and harvest
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: a blacktail deer, but to do it with two people
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: who had a lot to share along the way.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: That, uh, that was pretty special.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: That that said, though, uh, sick of blacktails, Let's let's
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: talk about them a little bit more specifically as far
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: as how they're doing. How are blacktails doing in southeast
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Alaska right now? And what's what's the future look like?
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: Jorn? Uh, Well, we were hunting the ABC Islands and
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: right now, I think you know everyone, those islands are
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: more intact, there's you know, there definitely are some white
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: swa swaths of clearcuts, and unlike in the lower forty eight, uh,
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: clearcuts clear cut logging prevents present some problems for our
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: sick of blacks up here and One of the big
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: problems is we do have these big snow events. So
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: when we have a big snow event, and especially in
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: areas that have had a lot of clear cut logging,
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: they don't have that those big trees winter habitat trees
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: to protect them from the heavy snowfalls, and so we'll
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: have these huge die offs, and I've seen them. I
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: mean it's tremendous. It goes from you know, after a
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: year of a big die off. You know, we'd see
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: like we saw like what thirty deer, forty deer in
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: a day. We'd see like a dough for lucky, same
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: same mountain. You know, you know where you hunt hard
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: all season. I've had, you know one season where I
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: hunted hard all season and I did not get a buck,
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: which you know, I usually have my freezer totally full
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: of deer meat. So you know, in the ABC Islands
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: we're doing pretty good. Unit two and you at three
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: has some more problems. Unit two is Prince of Wales
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: and Unit three is are Central Islands, and there are
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: you know, every zone's different and every zone has different
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: dynamics and every year is different. But kind of the
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: bigger thing that we've seen is when we have these
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: big clearcuts. One. You know, they actually do offer feed,
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: like more feed for deer for the first thirty years,
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: but if you have a big snow event, you have
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: a massive die off. Another thing. After thirty years or so,
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: the forest centers stema exclusion. That's where basically all these
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: spruce trees grow up so close they block out light
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: so you have no understory. And and here because we're
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: colder then like somewhere like Washington, the forest can be
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: like an a stemic exclusion for like well over a
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: century before it becomes decent wildlife habits had again. So
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: people like the Mule Deer Foundation and the New Blacktail
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: Foundation are really pushing for you know, in the past
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: we've for logged areas where we've just done commercial thinning,
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: and they're pushing for wildlife thinning, which is like, you know,
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: you still can go back and log the second girls
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: at some point, but it just takes a little more
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: time and you can create more habitat that's more appropriate
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: for sick of blacktails. So you know, here some people
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: in Prince of Wales, you know, and that's where most
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: of the hunting pressure is. Most people go to Prince
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: of Wales because there's so many roads from the logging
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: operations there. The people, you know, also recognize that they're
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: just one bad snow year away from losing their deer.
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: And that's what happened in the Central Islands where there
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: should just be deer everywhere. But the Central Islands had
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: a massive amount of clear cut logging in the fifties
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: and sixties up in the seventies, and then that was
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: followed by this mass couple of year winter dumps of snow,
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: so that and you know, you can't you also do
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: have to factor in just that heavy snow. When you
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: get the heavy snows, that's when the wolves like just
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: go to town, like they can't hunt that well when
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: they don't have good snow. But when they have good snow,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: you know, that combination of not having feed wolves, predation,
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: weaker unglits. You know, then the neonates get hammered by
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: the black bears. So this combination of logged big winners
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: predators created this dynamic. My best understanding because I fall
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: I've you know, looked in at quite a bit in
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: the Central Islands basically where there should be deer everywhere,
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: Like people weren't really able to hunt for decades or
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: they were allowed like one buck a year and I'm
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: allowed six where I'm at, And it's starting it seems
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: like it's starting to get a little bit better in
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: some of the areas in the Central Islands, but still
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: there's just no there just should be deer everywhere. And
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: just because you know, the massive clear cut logging, big
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: Winner and predators just kind of all contributed to a
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: massive die off. So, you know, going into the future,
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: it's just like, I think we just got to think
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: how we're going to do these logging you know, logging all,
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: you know, have a more holistic approach to logging. That's
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: something that you know, I think a lot of us
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: calling me feel passionate about. We definitely want, you know,
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: there to be a logging industry, sports small mills, but
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: we just want it done in a way that is
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: conducive to wildlife. And it can be done. That's the thing,
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: can one hundred percent be done. So we're hopeful that
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: that is what we the direction we can go.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: So, so to oversimplify, is the desired method moving forward
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: to not do these wholesale clear cuts like they've done
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: in the past, and then secondly to do this wildlife
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: thing for second growth versus something else. Would that be
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: the oversimplified.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: Well, these whole thought, these huge you know, clearcuts are
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: still the best way for foreign corporations to make money.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: You know, it's one and done sort of deal. And
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: that was like, you know, we had like they're like
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: Asian corporations in the fifties and sixties that were doing
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: most of the logging. The pulp mills were owned by
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: like Japan and I don't know where else. So on
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: a local level, like I'm calling in my in most
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: Southeast Alaska's perspective, there's just like we would like it
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: to just be done in a way that benefits locals.
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Like if you want to build something here, the
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: lumber is getting shipped up on a barge from Seattle,
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: super expensive, and it's cheaper to buy locally milt lumber.
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: But we don't have local programs in place that incentivize
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: and support logging production for our communities. So you know,
• 52:58
  Speaker 5: the log it's crazy like locally and the wood comes
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: up from Seattle and then the wood that's clearcut here
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: is sent down south, and we just want to be.
• 53:07
  Speaker 6: The community for the community.
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: And you know, our friend, my friend Gordon Chew is
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: one of the only people logging on this small scale.
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: He cuts previously clearcut areas thirty forty years after the
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: clearcut he's going back into bring down second growth, thin
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: out the stands. So he takes you know, two out
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: of three trees, one out of three trees creates space.
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: He's making the forest healthier, but he's also dropping some
• 53:33
  Speaker 5: really nice straight wood that's come up and he's selling
• 53:38
  Speaker 5: that for a good price in the community. But it's
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: super hard for them. It's not something that the force.
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: So even though he's doing a service for the community,
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: for the ecosystem, he's doing the model we all want
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: to see, there's so many roadblocks in place for him.
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: So I think we need to see programs that facilitate
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: that sort of second growth thinning logging operation and make
• 54:00
  Speaker 5: it easier for people and subsidize that work.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: So then, what's your guys' take on some of the
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: proposals and executive orders and things we've seen here in
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: the last couple of months related to logging. I've heard
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: word of the roadless rule being rescinded in the Tongus
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: National Forest again subsidizing dramatic increases in logging across parts
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: of our national forests. Does that concern you or does
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: that sound okay, we need more logging. What's the read there?
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: And you did a great film all about the Tonguus
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: and these issues, Colin. I know you've got a lot
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: of background on this.
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, just as a starting point, I think it's really important.
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: It's very different than the lower forty eight. So I
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: think just making it clear to folks, like when we
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: talk about large scale logging operations in the Tongus in
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: southeast Alaska, we're talking about cutting high quality old growth
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: and there's not that much of it left. So this
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: is not we're not talking about tree farming. We're not
• 55:08
  Speaker 5: talking about, you know, a productive cycle where every thirty
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: forty years we recut these stands. Like I'm a I'm
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: for tree farming. That's great. We don't have that economy
• 55:20
  Speaker 5: anywhere in Alaska. So the only stuff that pencils out
• 55:24
  Speaker 5: for a large scale timber sale is these last high
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: quality stands old growth, which are just as important as
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: the black tail deer. So we're basically just fighting over
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: scraps at this point, you know, most of that, most
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: of this high quality old growth that has a lot
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: of value has been cut already, and the stands that
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: are left are either really important to communities or they're
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: in really remote places, and it's just it increases the
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: ecological importance of these last stands. So when we see
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: you know, these administration changes where stuff comes back on
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: the chopping block, it's all hands on deck, you know,
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: try and try and delay, try and pause, try and
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: block it, because this stuff isn't when they clear cut
• 56:13
  Speaker 5: these these old you know, eight hundred year old stands
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: that are our critical winner blacktail habitat. That stuff doesn't grow,
• 56:21
  Speaker 5: it will grow back, it'll come back in thirty years,
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: though it's just not it doesn't provide those opportunities to
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: the community or to wildlife, and it's not going to
• 56:33
  Speaker 5: provide those for several hundred years. So it's just like
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: when we get in these conversations with folks who maybe
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: don't see eye to eye with us, I think it
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: often comes down to people are.
• 56:42
  Speaker 6: Like trees regrow.
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: This is a sustainable resource, and it's just it might
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: be a tree that regrows, but it doesn't provide the
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: same services it's not the same force for hundreds of years.
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: And the realm this rule is what would for deck
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: is remaining stands of old growth for us. And you know,
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: Colin's completely right. I can't remember what the percent of
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: what we have left of old growth even in southeast Alaska,
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: those really productive old growth stands that are whatever the
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: tree trunks, you know, wider diameters, and so the road
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: this rule will protect those old little scraps of of
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: what we have left. And we still have like five
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: thousand plus miles of logging roads in the Taugas, you know,
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: and it's like we're all for the Gordon Chew operation,
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: you know, like that's what we want, and we don't
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: want those big corporations subsidized. We want the We want
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: the small logging operations that utilize existing roads that.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: Are going anyways infrastructure.
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: The road this rule doesn't hinder development except for the
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: development of billion new roads to access those remaining bits
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: of super ecologically productive old growth. For so it's it's
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: like there's there's no reason to get rid of that
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: road in this rule besides benefiting bigger corporations. And sure,
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: I'm sure the road this rule, like you know, maybe
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: we'll slow down some of the smaller guys in certain ways,
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: but we need to work around that, like we just need,
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: you know, to work to the Yeah, we just need
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: to work so that the smaller guys can can work
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: and you can use five thousand miles of existing road
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: and all these second growth stands that need to be thinned.
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: We need to build our economy around that.
• 58:40
  Speaker 5: The road pieces is super interesting, Like going back comparing
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: the lower forty eight to here, this is we're talking
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: about putting roads on islands or in bays, places that
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: have never had roads before, they've never had access to machinery,
• 58:57
  Speaker 5: and it's it just changes a place in a really
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: fundamental way. And so that's pretty fascinating. You can't really
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: go back from adding roads.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: To a place.
• 59:08
  Speaker 6: It's just a different place.
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: And the way we paid for these roads has been
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: large federal subsidies, which is super interesting as well. And
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: you know, it's I'm all for cutting federal waste and bloat,
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: and I think a good way to start with that
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: is to not subsidize logging operations. If these logging operations
• 59:33
  Speaker 5: are profitable and makes sense, I think, you know, the
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: the old economics need to line up. We shouldn't be
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: spending federal money to open these places up and not
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: retaining any of that profit in the region. I think
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: the last piece with roads that's really interesting is the
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: way they open up travel corridors to predators, and I
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: don't think that's talked about enough. And you know, blacktail
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: deer very acceptible to predation from bears and wolves, and
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 5: part of that's because we've created pathways for these animals
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 5: to cover a lot of ground quickly. Particularly wolves like
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 5: deer have their advantage over wolves in thick tangled country
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: like you saw that there, they slip through things that
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: are very hard to move through, and that's not terrain
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: that's is conducive for a wolf. But when you give
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: them a gravel pathway that they can get in their
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 5: super efficient trot and just cover ten grounds following a
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: cent trail, it's a huge advantage and I think that
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: really changes the predator prey balance.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's funny.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: You know, over the last couple of years, I've been
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: working on this book that's coming out next year and
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: been studying issues impacting fish and wildlife across America for
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: the last two hundred plus years, and what's funny is
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: that we see the same things happening over and over
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: and over again. A lot of these things happen in Europe,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: and they happen on the East coast of America, and
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: then they started pushing the Royal West, and then we
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: saw them happening in the Rocky Mountain interior, and then
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: we saw them happening on the West coast. And we
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: continue to make the same mistakes.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: Over and over and over again.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: And all of those same mistakes have you know, scratched
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: the surface here and there in Alaska. But in many
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: ways we've maintained a pretty good stronghold there in your guys'
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: home state, but it's not immune to any of these
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: same risks and challenges and economic pressures and developmental pressures
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: and all that.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: Seems like.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: We still haven't figured it out.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: I still feel like the same things that we've seen
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: happen time and time and time and time and time
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: again are still being discussed as things that should happen
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: there in Alaska. And you would think, and you would
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: hope that in this last place we could maybe try
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: a different way. And it's it's shocking and disappointing how
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: few people seem to agree on that front, but uh,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: we still have a hell of a thing. They're worth
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: worth caring for and stewarding. And I'm thankful that there's
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: people like you guys there now. They're just living there
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: and enjoying it, but also standing up for it too.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: So uh, yeah, Alaska, I'm glad it's there. I hope
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: my kids will get to see it in just as
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: incredible shape as it is right now, because it's awfully
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: special for sure. What would what would you guys leave
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: folks with if you were to have a call to
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: action of any kind for people listening today, whether it's
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: you know, related to blacktails or any of the other
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: things we talked about today, what's uh, what's something you
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: want folks to do coming out of this conversation?
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: Jorn? I mean, you know this is all you know,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: public land, public wildlife, this is all. Call it our resources,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: call it our heritage. You know, this is this is
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: all yours and ours unless yeah, man, pay attention. We
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: all got to make a living, but we don't have
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: to make a living in a way that you know,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: kills what we love. So yeah, i'd say, you know,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: if you haven't inn too Alaska. You come up here,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: take a look, whatever you do, will you know, it's
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: be a great trip. But yeah, truly special place and yeah, man.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: Any thoughts in your front.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: Uh, not to get political, but I just encourage people
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: going into the midterms do your research on different you know,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: don't you don't have to vote down party lines like
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: with just take the time. There's going to be resources
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: for hunters and anglers. You know, in your state, there's
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 5: going to be specific issues that different politicians are going
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: to have different stances on. And nationwide, I think we're
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: just looking at large the potential for large scale transfers
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: of land from the federal government to the state level,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: and depending on the state, like if we have big
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 5: you know, there's potential two million acres of the Tongus
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: could get transferred to the state and the state will
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 5: manage that land very differently than the for Service has
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: And what that would look like would be aggressive clear
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: cutting without any of the kind of safeguards we see
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 5: with for Service clearcuts. So we've gone out to these
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 5: places and they cut right down to the beach, they
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 5: cut right down to the river.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: I mean it's like a bomb.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 5: Went off and we're just we're super nervous about that.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: So I think just if people feel it's hard to
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 5: feel like anything matters politically right now, it just things
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 5: are blown up and it does matter though, And there's
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 5: we're we're going into time. We need to really really
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: decide what we want the future of our public lands
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: to be.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 6: And I think, you know, get informed before the midterms.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And and let anyone who is seeking election
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: or reelection let them know that this stuff really matters
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: and that if they want your vote, they better get
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: right on this stuff. And and like you said, callen
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: transfer or sale of public lands. It's not gonna fly
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: with hunters and anglers, uh, you know, extraction without any
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: care for doing it in a balanced way that protects
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: wildlife habitats still in clean water and clean air. It's
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: not gonna fly with hunters and anglers doing There's there's
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: so many, so many examples. We gotta we got to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: stand up for these things.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 5: A positive example is Montan hunters are outspoken and they're
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: amazing conservationists, and they've made it clear those political suicide
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: to give away public lands in Montana and the Montana
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: Danes and representatives senators there, they're some of the only
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: Republicans coming out against this stuff right now, and it
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: really really shows if you stand up, make it clear
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: this is just a lion in the sand. Well, we
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: still support you, but this is off the table like that,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: this stuff makes a difference. It's really heartening to see
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 5: that across party lines, that stuff's not going to fly
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: in Montana.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: Yep. Yeah, that's a really good point. Just to add
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: a little bit to that. You know, I've talked to
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: so many people over my lifetime that were like, a
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: trip to Alaska is the dream of their life. You know,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: it's that's the dream trip, whether it's to hunt caribou,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: whether it's to see a brown bear, whether or whatever.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: And just you know, so you know, have your make
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: your voice known for Alaska's future too, because it is
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: it's the trip of a lifetime. You can't you can't
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: undermine how important this is for our here outdoor heritage,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: for hunters and anglers. So it's you know, this is
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: the dream. Let's keep it that way.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: So here here, Well on that front, gentlemen, I will
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: thank you again for your time here today, for the
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: time we spent last fall. It was It was a
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: hell of experience and I can't wait for the next one,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: which which I think is gonna be happening here soon.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 3: So more on that to come.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 6: Thanks guys, looking forward to it.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: Thanks guys, all right, that is going to do it
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: for us today. Thanks for being with me this week.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you checking out this film, tuning into this conversation,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: and being a part of this community. So until next time,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: stay wired to Hunt.