Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 411: Boned from the Right, Boned from the Left

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Ep. 411: Boned from the Right, Boned from the Left · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting
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• 0:29
  Speaker 1: first Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer. Okay, we're recording in Sonora, Mexico,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: but I need to start. I need to start the
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: show with with distressing news from the United States of America,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: which is only fourteen miles away. Yeah, so it's comforting
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in some way covering American news from Mexico. Here's the
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: headline from the New York Times. Biden moves to end
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: donnut lures and other bear hunting tactics in Alaska. This
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: is the story that never goes away. One might see
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: that and think, uh, well that sounds horrible. Don't ut lures,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I don't like that, um, and then be happy about
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: what's going on. This this story we have reported on.
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  Speaker 1: This is one of those seesaw stories that comes up
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  Speaker 1: as as administrations change. Um. It's also one of the
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  Speaker 1: stories I always feel like that I should I should
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: get to be the one that writes the article because
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I would write it different than everybody else. Let me
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: back up to explain what's going on up until no
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of how far back to go.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go pretty far back. When Alaska became a state. A.
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  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get into great deal detail on this,
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  Speaker 1: but people can go look into this. When Alaska be
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  Speaker 1: am a state, an issue a negotiating point was wildlife
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  Speaker 1: management in Alaska okay um, meaning Alaska want to hang
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  Speaker 1: onto its wildlife management and Alaska has some management issues
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  Speaker 1: in the state where they have a thing called subsistence hunting. Okay.
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  Speaker 1: When Alaska looks at the finite resource, which would be
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  Speaker 1: fishing game, Alaska always will favor subsistence practices. Okay. If
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you are a person like me who lives in the
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: lower forty eight and goes into Alaska to hunt, you
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  Speaker 1: are the lowest priority in in Alaska wildlife management. The
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  Speaker 1: highest priority in Alaska wildlife management is subsistence users. Next
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: to that, sitting below subsistence users are certain commercial practices. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: So like commercial fishing, um, the guiding industry. Okay, they're
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: gonna get it. So let's say you have a finite
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: resource like salmon is a finite resource. Top of the
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  Speaker 1: stack are going to be the needs of subsistence users
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  Speaker 1: who rely on phish and game for the for to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: eat for sustenance. There they get first DIBs. Second DIBs
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: would be the commercial industry. Third DIBs would be recreationalists. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: most states that that that don't have that subsistence thing
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: will look at it'll be it'll be commercial, recreational and
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: those are the competing interests. But Alaska, you have a
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  Speaker 1: third competing interest, which is subsistence. So keep that in
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the back of your head as you hear we're talking about.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Alaska uses predator management, as do many states in lower
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: forty eight. Alaska uses predator management on the apologetically two
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: increase and hold stable populations of big game. And they
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  Speaker 1: don't do this like it's a naughty little secret. It's like,
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  Speaker 1: in my view, in Alaska's view, there is absolutely nothing
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  Speaker 1: wrong with saying we would like to have we would
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  Speaker 1: like to increase big game numbers at the expense of
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  Speaker 1: some predators in order to be able to provide big
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  Speaker 1: game resources to subsistence users too, guides and outfitters to recreationalists.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: They look, and it's like there's a lever that you
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: can move, you can reduce predators, big game populations. It's
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: it's a thing that they do in order to reduce
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: predator numbers. They have a number, they have things at
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: their disposal. It could be it could hiring people to
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: go into airplanes an airplane gun for wolves. I remember
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: that because when when when Palin? How do you feel
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: about Palin? When Palin really became in the spotlight as
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: John McCain's running mate under her governorship in Alaska, they
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: had done aerial wolf shooting as a predator management tool,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and I feel like a lot of Americans got the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: idea that that Sarah Palin herself was the wolf gunner.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: It was sort of like really laid on her doorstep.
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  Speaker 1: But this is a historic practice that that long predated Palin. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: this is the thing that since since aircraft came into being,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: they have been using aircraft to control wolf numbers. Another
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: thing they'll do to control predator numbers is rather than
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  Speaker 1: have it be a state sponsored activity paid for by
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  Speaker 1: the state, you can control old predator numbers through the
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  Speaker 1: lever of subsistence hunter practices, recreational hunter practices guiding outfitter practices,
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  Speaker 1: meaning you can make predator hunting easier and more productive
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  Speaker 1: by having certain management strategies in place. Now, some of
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: these management strategies people find distasteful when they hear about
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  Speaker 1: them out of context and in isolation. For instance, if
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  Speaker 1: I told you Um about going that someone was gonna
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  Speaker 1: go in den dig for black bears, you would be, oh,
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  Speaker 1: how heartless and horrible. Well on the Koyukon people Um,
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  Speaker 1: who are from the vicinity of the Koyakok River which
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  Speaker 1: flows into the Yukon, they felt uh when the anthropologists
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Richard K. Nelson spent time with them. They had explained
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: to Richard K. Nelson that they felt that it was
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  Speaker 1: unethical to kill a bear otherwise than to dig it
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  Speaker 1: out of its den. That the shooting up and out
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  Speaker 1: of the ground was not acceptable. If you wanted to
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  Speaker 1: hunt bears, you went to You knew through ancestral knowledge
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  Speaker 1: and through your own discoveries. You knew where bears denned,
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  Speaker 1: You knew den sits, and when you went out for bears,
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  Speaker 1: you went in the winter and you crawled into bear
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: dens to check if they're being occupied. And that is
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: how a real hunter hundred bears. And a thing that
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: we all know now and like it has broader and
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: broader buy in is that you do not go in
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: in uh. You know, there's there's this sort of de
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: facto reverence for hunter gatherer practices, like it was how
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: it was done. Okay, So in Alaska there are places
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: historically where it has been legal two den dig for bears.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: It was legal ton dig for bears. It was a
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  Speaker 1: customary practice to den dig for bears before there was law,
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  Speaker 1: before there was state law or federal law. People were
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: den digging bears. That's how they were doing it. There's
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: another management practice in Alaska that gets a lot of criticism,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: and this is the practice of shooting swimming animals. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: in a lot of states, you simply cannot shoot a
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  Speaker 1: swimming animal. However, there are areas in Alaska that are
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  Speaker 1: extraordinarily remote and you can only get to them by
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  Speaker 1: air or by boat, and subsistence hunters have historically hundred
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: in some of these areas by going into these areas
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  Speaker 1: and penetrating these areas the only way one can, which
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: is by boat. And the caribou hunting practice would be
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: that you would go to these known crossings during caribou migrations,
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  Speaker 1: and you would take boat there and set up a
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: camp at a cariboo crossing, and you would hunt caribou
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: as they were crossing the river out of boats. It
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: had been done prior with at laddles and spears. As
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  Speaker 1: firearms came into being, it made it became the practice.
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  Speaker 1: You can't get them any other place than to catch
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  Speaker 1: them crossing the river in a vast wilderness. So, prior
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  Speaker 1: to law, prior to state law, prior to federal law,
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  Speaker 1: it was a practice in certain places to hunt caribou
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: that were swimming because you're killing them at fords. And
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  Speaker 1: it's how indigenous hunters had done it, and other people
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: that followed in their path had done it, and they
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: that practice had become codified into law because it was
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: historic use. What's another one we covered den dig and Oh,
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  Speaker 1: another one would be um that when you're trying to
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  Speaker 1: lower wolf numbers in order to increase cariboan moose numbers,
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  Speaker 1: that you might allow the killing of wolf pops. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: because from the manager's perspective, you're trying to raise prey numbers,
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  Speaker 1: you're trying to raise meat for humans and in order
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: to raise meat for humans. As the level you can
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  Speaker 1: pull is killing wolves. I guess looking at it, the
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  Speaker 1: wolf that's getting killed in predator control um doesn't feel
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  Speaker 1: better or worse about his death, knowing what his ages meaning.
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  Speaker 1: A five year old wolf isn't like, oh, I understand,
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  Speaker 1: shoot me, I'm five, but a one year old wolf
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  Speaker 1: would be like, oh, the horror and sin. It's like,
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  Speaker 1: it's you're you're reducing wolf numbers and you're just gonna
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  Speaker 1: do it the most productive way you can think of,
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  Speaker 1: which should be reduced wolf numbers. So these practices are historic.
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  Speaker 1: Practices have always been in place in Alaska. I'm getting
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  Speaker 1: to the part that burns my U. We haven't got
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  Speaker 1: there yet. Well, no, because this is the thing Like
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: like everyone that writes about this, every I haven't even
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: gotten to the to the whip saw. I haven't even
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: gotten to the whipsaw. Party joined a Day by Jason Phelps,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Clay Nwcomb, Clay Newcomb, Nwcomb, Bridget Newton in first, like
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Matt Cook, who's been on the show before, it has
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: yet to speak, but he has a question. I have
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a question, and for the first time, Jason Bergsman, the
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  Speaker 1: last of the old Kusman. You have a question just
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: on what it covered. Do you have a question. I
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: haven't got to the part, but go ahead. I have
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: a question. We're laying the ground. How does a rancher
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  Speaker 1: who you know, has predation problems and poisons like a wolf,
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  Speaker 1: how does that fit in two that that's a that's
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  Speaker 1: a non thing. Okay, yeah, that's a non thing. Um. Now,
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  Speaker 1: if you were to go and read, if you were
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  Speaker 1: going to read um Alaska's Wolfman, about one of the
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  Speaker 1: first wolf guys that went up into Alaska. I think
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  Speaker 1: he became active in the twenties. UM. And at the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: they were they were there's this there's this book, Alaska's
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  Speaker 1: wolf Man. It's it's a fascinating read. And he goes
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  Speaker 1: up and he goes out to work for the state
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  Speaker 1: of Alaska on wolf control, typically in areas where caribou
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  Speaker 1: herds have been greatly depleted, and later in areas where
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: they were doing economic development and they were going to UM.
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  Speaker 1: He spends a bunch of time up by cots of
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  Speaker 1: you whereas an economic development plan they were trying to
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: get Native Alaskans set up in the reindeer herding business. Okay, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: they were trying to stabilize food resources and get them
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: set up to be reindeer herders. But they would bring
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: in these reindeer herds and they would just get decimated
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: by wolves. Then in Alaska's Wolfman, he goes from being
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: just a gun hunter, like doing wolf control with guns,
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  Speaker 1: and then he gets do poisons. And I think he's
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: he's getting into poisons even in the nineteen fifties, and
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  Speaker 1: just how amazingly effective that's yeah, Like he talks about
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  Speaker 1: just how astonishingly effective the poisons are. Like he'll go
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  Speaker 1: he he talks about going into an area this is
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  Speaker 1: near costs Abue. He goes into an area with poison
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  Speaker 1: pellets and he would just go out and shoot something
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  Speaker 1: and lace it. And he gets to where he feels
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  Speaker 1: he's killed every wolf. There's no wolves left. A guy
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  Speaker 1: reports to him they saw like seven gray wolves and
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: two black wolves come across the ice, come across some
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: bay and get into the area he's in. And he's like,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: sure enough. A couple days later, he goes to one
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of his bait stations. There's seven gray wolves and two
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: black wolves laying dead at his bait station. Like astonishingly effective.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: When we talk about wolfers in the lower forty eight
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  Speaker 1: they were poisoning wolves, not as predator control, I mean
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: they did eventually, but the first guy's poisoning wolves, and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: even starting in the eighteen sixties, they were poisoning wolves
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: for the wolf hide trade. And they would use strict nine.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: You would shoot an animal, gash it, cut gashes in it,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: and mix of just like an infintestinal amount of strict nine.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: I think they would mix it with water and scatter
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: it on the carcass, and then you'd wait a while
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and go and pick it up. In Life, and there's
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: a book, Life and Death of the Mouth of the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Muscle Shell, which is a guy's journal, and he'll talk
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: about going and checking his bait stations and coming back
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: with with forty wolves. He also talks about I can't
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: remember which tribe, but the tribe a tribal representative coming
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: into his establishment at the Mouth of the Muscle Shell
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: where the muscle shell flows into the Missouri's underwater now
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: because the Fort Peck Reservoir. A guy comes in and
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: it has a gripe about the wolf baiting practices because
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: they were traveling through the area and lost twenty four
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of their dogs to these guys strict nine baits. So
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: they were wolfers, and they wolfers because at that time
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: there was a fad that when you had a wagon,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: there was a it was fashionable to have a wolf
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: pelt blanket, got it for your guests in your wagon.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: So on a cold day, you get into your wagon,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: you'd want to be able to have your guests cover
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: up with a wolf pelt blanket. And that drove the
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: wolf for poison trade, and then in time it became
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: um they were poisoning for for predator control. And then
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: eventually the practice of poisoning wolves was eliminated. But they'll
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: still in place, they'll still use this little gun was
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: that you know the name of that thing. Basically, a
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: coyote takes a bait and it have you heard that
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the capsule delivers it. But it has to be like
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: you're not just lacing baits. Alaska's wolfman, he'll talk about
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: going into his laced baits and he's got birds, he's
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: got wolverines, he's got is everything scattered around dead? Uh,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: But that's not that's not a thing they're doing right now.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: And I would also argue if if if they were
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: using poisons right now in Alaska for predator control, you
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: would lose the ability to talk. What I was just
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: trying to do is laying out that these are historic
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: use practices that if if we're gonna go look, if
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: you're gonna go look in wild game management and you're
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: gonna go look at like what's ethical, what's not ethical? Um,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: it's all it's so arbitrary and so personal. I think
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: that that Alaska's I think Alaska is great about acknowledging
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: and protecting traditional use practices, even if even if preserving
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: traditional use practices might come at the expense of allowing
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: new technologies. They were one of the first states. I
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: think they might have been the first state I heard
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: of that with drones. They were done with drones before
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: other people started to address the question. Someone could correct
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, But I think that they might
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: have been the first state and then and then like
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: a bunch of Western states followed. They might have been
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: the first state to be like no on drones. So
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: it's not that like Alaska doesn't have a come one,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: come all, kill them all by any means necessary policy.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: They follow traditional use practices. It's not you know, and
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the new stuff they might go and get rid of.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So they were like early on guys, you could you
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: could use you can picture how clay, you could picture this,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: how effective drones would be for hunting moose. You're in
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: willow flats, everything's twelve feet high. You have this big
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: black animal. You know what's right. It's got to be
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: right around you in a willow flats, the paddles. It's
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: not like you're not it's not gonna hide from a drone.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: And they right away were like, no on drones. But
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: but in places you can take a bear out of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: its hole. But this get this gives me the second
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: part of what burns masks about this whole thing that
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: was the first. No, just that's just background because I'm
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: trying to establish. Keep in mind these management practices that
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Alaska has. Okay, now let's look at the restraint with
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: which they will exercise them. Okay, go to Region two
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: of Alaska. In Region two of Alaska, which is Prince
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: of Wales Island. Get Unit two or whatever the region
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I think they call the units unit to Prince Wales
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: on Alaska. Black bears a predator. Okay, you can't hunt
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: it from not only like, you can't hunt it from
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: a boat. You cannot legally that the ruthless state of
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Alaska that just wants to kill all the predators. If
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you're in Prince Wales Island, you have to have your
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: feet on the ground. You cannot shoot a black or
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: from a boat. You cannot shoot a saw. You can't
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: shoot cubs. You can't shoot a saw with cubs. You
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: have salvage requirements always the skull meet in the spring, meeting,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: hide in the spring, hide in the fall. You have
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: a permit draw where if you're a nonresident, you have
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: about a chance of getting an opportunity to hunt one
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of these predators at all. No den digging. Okay. Because
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: they have a management practice in their toolbox does not
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: mean they universally exercise it. Okay, It's just a thing
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: they have the ability to do. But generally, all of
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: these practices that I'm naming out, generally you can't. Generally
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: they don't in places they do. During the Obama administration,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the Feds came to say to Alaska, they came and
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: made this this this this this like like very arbitrary
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: seeming designation where the national like through the National Parks
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: or if they come and said, we're gonna eliminate Alaska's
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: ability to exercise certain practices that they may or may
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: not currently be exercising on refuge land, on federal refuge land.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So here you have a state that has game management
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: authority in their state. The Feds manage a ton of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: land in Alaska. But that's that's always like, that's the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: system of checks and balances that exists all over the US.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: You have tons of federal land on which the wildlife
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: on that land is managed by the state. It's it's
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: a phenomenal system. I never credit like like I love
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: federally managed managed land. I'm suspicious of federal wildlife management
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: when it supersedes a state's management decision, especially in the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: case like Alaska's where they still have grizzly bears across
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: like of their historic range. We in the Lower forty
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: eight can't say the same thing we have. We we
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: wiped them out in Lower forty eight. They didn't wipe
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: theirs out. They have wolves across the entirety of their
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: historic range. Do we know they didn't wipe theirs out?
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: They have their entire suite of megafauna still intact. We don't.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: They haven't wiped theirs out. So when you go and
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: look and be like, oh, Alaska needs have changed their ways,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: by what evidence, they haven't. They haven't committed any sins
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: against God in terms of eliminating animals from the landscape.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: So to go and and and and and to go
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: to them and say to them, oh, your management practices,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: what you may or may not be doing right now,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: can no longer be applied on refuge lands. And under
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Obama they made it be the on percent of the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: state is what it winds up being. In our efforts
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to save the world, We're going to tell Alaska, cent
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: of their state, they no longer have authority to do
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: management practices that they may or may not be exercising
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: him Obama brought that in. So Obama interrupted over a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: hundred years of practices that just that worked. That that
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: we have the evidence that they were sorry, not not
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: what the hell they become a state? Okay? So now
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I was wrong, not a hundred years what Okay? So
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the state had been an entity in and of itself.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: It had been a state and with a game and
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: they had a game agency prior to statehood. But like
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: whatever you had statehood, Alaska Department of Fishing Game comes
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: into being. They have predator management, but they still have
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: intact predator the completely intact menagerie of predators still occupying
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: the entirety of their historic landscape. But the Feds say,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: you can't do these things that you may or may
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: not be doing on little chunks of land where we
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: oversee the land designation. Obama does that. Now Trump undoes it.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: So Obama upset a long history of status quo and
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the way this was treated in the press when Trump
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: undid it. All Trump did is Trump undid a very
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: short thing. But how was it treated in the press.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It was like it was in the press. They treated
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: like Trump decided one day he woke up and said,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I think I think that in Alaska they should start
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: digging wolves out of their dens in and digging bears
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: out of their dens. I think that that's what it
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: should be. And so he simply undid a a a
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: prohibition that was still in its infancy, or turned it
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: to what it was four years ago exactly. But it
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: was treated like Trump administration decides to allow bears to
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: be dug from their den The horror is that not
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: just like a classic virtue signaling. Not to use a
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: political hot button word, but I mean, like the former
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: administration shutting that down just because they didn't like the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: idea we're looking for something to grab onto that just
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: would get a rise out of people. I mean, it's
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: just like virtue signaling. I I'm like, maybe one of
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the only few people on the planet. Um, No, there's
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a couple more they can be like, uh, the con
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: sort out, you know, because like a lot of things, like,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: no matter what Trump did, a lot of people they're
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: just gonna hate it mm hmm. And there's a lot
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: of people that are just gonna love it right, they're
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: they're pre wired, and you're one of the few people
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: on the planet that can sort that out navigating. I
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: feel like I'm I feel like I have an extraordinary
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: ability to look at record issue by issue and divorce
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: the policy from the noise. Yeah, and all the guy
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: did was he said the guy before me overreached. It
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: was contentious. It was an insult to Alaska ficient game,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: it was an insult to the state of Alaska. They
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: should not have done that and put it back to
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the way it was. But now Lo and Behold, here's
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the final thing that was the backstory to this. Here
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: we are Biden moves to end donut lures, like like
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the Times suddenly interested in like a specific strategy. Like
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: they're like, like, they're gonna end donut lures. Okay, they're
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: gonna end the placing of donuts for bait, which leave
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: like a guy who let's say that there's a guy
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: using dog food coded in molasses? Is he at home going?
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm safe. No, they're ending donut lures. It's
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: like the Times all of sudden becomes interested in like
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the specificity of the date of the bait. Why because
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: this sounds particularly egregious. They're not ending the use of donuts.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: It's baiting. Yeah, I was gonna say that, Like where
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: does the interest in debit item come from? And why
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: did they not say Why did they not say moves
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: to end, burnt honeycomb moves to end. So that's not
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: a joke, salmon carcasses, doughnut lures. The Times is focused
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: on the use of donuts. Biden moves to end donut lures.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Have you ever heard that term before? Never know what
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: just placing of donuts. If they had said, Biden moves
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: to end the baiting of bears. But it's like they're like,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: how could that doesn't sound bad? It doesn't sound as
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: bad as I would like. But there's something that sounds
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: especially naughty about, don't I think? I think they're trying
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: to like portray like just a big overweight barry, just
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: like non on donuts, like you want to paint that picture.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: And then in the grasping and people's grasping of like
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: why should this be bad? I understand why is it bad?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: They point out that where's my little Ben Franklin glasses here?
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: They point out that, um, all the so they begin
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: so dateline Washington or you know, place line. The National
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Park Services moving to prohibit hunters on some public lands
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: in Alaska from baiting black bears with donuts, just donuts,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and using spotlights to shoot hybridating bears and cubs in
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: their dens, techniques allowed by the Trump administration but considered
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: inhumane by conservationists. Um, and I don't, I don't And
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: and still pinning it back somehow on Trump. Do we
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: know for sure what the definition of doughnut is? I mean,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: does it have to be pastry with a whole. That's
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: like John's our long John's in could you bait could
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: with a donut hole? Yeah? Yeah, donut hole is the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: opposite of a donut. A doughnut hole is what makes
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: a donut. It's absence makes a donut. Or think about
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a Danish. Sure, my minors stay like Basically, it's like,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: it's like I would love to see the legislation because
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I beat in the legislation, there's no mention whatsoever of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: a donut. But to somehow do you think they're actually
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: trying talking about specifically not baiting bears using food lures,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: But but they this journalist, this writer, I think, seems
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to think that like it just sounds especially naughty. That
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: would be some good clickbait for his sounds unnatural and
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: naughty if it's a doughnut. So when you're reading this stuff,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: when you're reading this stuff, this is just a couple
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: of things I would like to keep you to keep
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: in mind that that the mentions of Trump allowing it,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: it had already been allowed. A Uh, let me find
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: this quote from someone, Um, here's your No, I don't
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: eve need his quote cause I'll just paraphrase the quote. Uh,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: all these articles come out about this thing. Now it's
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: been three times. It was when Obama did it, he
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: was him saving the world by banning it. When Trump
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: ruined the world by putting it back the way, it
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: was Biden saving the world by banning it. And all
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: these readings, you'll find that they're gonna represe. And it
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: is though someone in Alaska feels like just adamant that
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: they're like it's presented like Alaskans just want the right
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: to do the most atrocious stuff imaginable to wildlife. That
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: they're actually just defending the use of donuts in and
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: of itself, that they care so much about being able
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: to place donuts and be mean to bears, that that's
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: what they're defending. And you do not And I read
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: all these articles. I'm a sucker for articles about the subject.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: No one ever takes point to clarify the contentious issue
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: is it's not the They're not focused on the practice.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: They're focused on how are you justifying usurping our rights
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: to manage wildlife as we see fit. They're not in
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: love with defending donuts. They're in love was saying you
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: don't have a place, you don't have a justification and
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: in some people's argument, you don't have the legal pathway
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: to come in and interrupt our game management practice. And
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I think they can say that from a legal standpoint,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: as I made clear that it's like it's it's a
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: federal overreach and it's a it's a usurpation. Is that
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: a word, Jason, usurpations? You know, we recently covered a
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: word that um you know, like um uh flatulence familiar.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Do you know there's a word for the actual like
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: substance flatal? I did learn something today like the miasma
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: is like flatal Uh? What was I talking about? Usurpation?
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: It's a usurpation of their things and they would be
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: just as mad if it was anything else, they would
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: be Alaska might be just as mad if the FEDS
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: came in and said we have decided that he let me.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Let me put this forward because this is a good
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: this is a great way to explained this. I think
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: let's say the FEDS came Let's say the Feds are
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: completely different people and they came forward and said on
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: refuge land, you can hunt moose of the drone because
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: we hate moose. I think Alaskaa be pissed, right, they'd
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: be pissed. Mm hmm. Why is there a hesitation not
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: to regard that their practices are working? I mean what why?
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Because is that not talked more about the abundance of
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: game there and how the lower forty eight could be
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: learned a thing or two? Yes, why why is that not?
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know? Because they're using words like inhumane. They're
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: using like even like I even object to their word
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: of conservationists. Conservationists find it inhumane. Those aren't the those
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: are pulled. Those two terms are pulled from completely different dictionaries.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Conservationists find it inhumane. Conservationists if you like, if you
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: look at what a concert, how a conservation is defines
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: there concern list. They're not concerned like I don't know
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: conservations that are concerned with what's humane. They might be
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: concerned with how do we preserve intact ecosystems? That would
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: be a thing that I would agree with, But I
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: don't think Eldo Leopold woke up in the morning wondering
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: what's humane? He woke up in the morning wondering how
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: can I save wilderness? Well, I mean wolves, like I
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: don't know. You if you want to go on YouTube
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: and watch them harrowing ship. You should go watch grizzly
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: bears dig black bear cubs out of their dens and
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: eat them. Thought about it, they'll curl your hair. Uh
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: that's I don't know, is it like, is the prep
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: does the bear cub who's getting dug out of his den?
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Is he like, oh, I was nervous because I thought
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: it was a person, But it's just a bear eating me.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: I feel better about it now. Or does he think, like,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: my gosh, this is inhumane. I'm just a cute little
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: bear cub. It's it's there. They're they're they're combining words
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that don't belong together. If they said regarded by animal
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: welfare activists as being inhumane, I like, that's that's good reporting.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: That's great animal well for activists think it's inhumane, Okay,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: at least paint it that way. It's so manipulative. I
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: was talking with Jason their day about every time you
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: read an article about something you let me rephrase this.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Remember this conversation with hand. When you're reading articles about
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: stuff you have no idea about, you're thankful for the article.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, that's cool. I didn't understand any of that. Now,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I understand it pretty good, thank you. But every time
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: you read an article about something that you know well,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: you're pissed about how it was presented, which then makes
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: you wonder what you just got wrong? But you didn't
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: know enough to know all the ways it was whacked out,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: to which Jason said, I've observed that before and wanted
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: to say, so, who who were the forces? Who are
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the interests that we're lobbying for this band in this legislation.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: My guess is it is animal welfare activists pressuring the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: administration and they have it's a be in their bonnet,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: and it's been to be in their bonnet since the
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Obama administration, and they are saying whatever through through however,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: uh whatever, perfectly acceptable practices happen in American politics where
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: you back a campaign, you're back it financially, you back
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: it with your followers, and then a while later you
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: go and say, hey, remember how you know there's we
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: got a real problem. Uh. We saw it happen with
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: with Murphy, the governor of New Jersey. He ran under
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: like he would actually talk about it. He ran a
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: campaign and one of the planks in his platform was
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: ending the bear hunt in New Jersey? Was that coming
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: from his mind? I can't accept that it was. It
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: was someone, And I'm not saying that these deals are bad,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: because these deals happen in our favor all the time.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Like I'm on a board, I'm on a I'm a
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: board member of TRCP. We don't like, you don't know
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: when uses the term like they're proud of it. But
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: TRCP lobbies at a federal level for conservation, So I
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: get it. You know, you send your emissaries to politicians
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and you're like, here's the thing that burns my ass,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and then you hope that they serve your bidding. But
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I don't think when when Biden, um, you know it
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: is out checking on his camaro and his classified documents
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: in his garage, I don't think. I don't think that
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: he's like, man, you know what burns my ass is
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the bear digging in the laud someone like planted it.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Put it, planted it in there mind. And the only
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: place they can possibly pull it off is on refuge land.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: So the the bigger intent may have been too band
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: bear hunting altogether, but they can't do that. But this
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: policy was a scrap to throw. Sure as sure, let
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: me say something about baiting bears. Just this is off
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: the real topic you're talking to. Baiting bears allowed. Well,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: first of all, anywhere that you can bait bears, it
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: is a management tool by the agency to take out
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: the number of bears they need to in that region.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Like heavily forested regions, you can't spot in stock bears
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and effectively kill them. So it's a management tool. Number one.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Number two, it allows for selective harvest, like we can target,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: and generally people do this. Generally bear hunters would be
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: they would put up a bear bait, they would have
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: they would know what bears were coming in, and they
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: would select for older mature males to take out. The
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: least selective hunting that Clay Newcomb does for bears is
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: spotting stock hunting, which would be going to some state
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: glassing up a bear on the hillside. You've been hunting
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: for three days and you've seen two bears, and you
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: go shoot that bear and and then you got a
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: ground check them. That's right, and so baiting is actually
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: a very high quality management tool for bear managers. For instance,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: in the state of Arkansas twenty two years ago, they
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: decided we're going to manage our bears by using bow
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: hunters over bait on private land, like very thought out,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: very strategic, and they have a quota, and so man
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: baiting bears. Don't let anybody Jason Phelps tell you that
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: it ain't cool, because it's cool. It's a great way
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: to manage bears. And but it's so like this is
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: the way I describe it is that in one sentence
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: you can can you could relay a story of Hey,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: these crazy rednecks want to put out donuts and kill bears,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: and you if you have no context, no historic context,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: you don't live in bear country, that equates too bad.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: It's about a three or four step conversation for you
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: to understand why it's actually really good. Like we have
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: expanding black bears are doing better than almost any other
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: big game on the continent every yea, every population of
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: bears on this black bears are expanding, and we're not
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: getting any more wilderness. We're not increasing the amount of habitat,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: we're decreasing it by you know, encroachment of civilization, habitat, fragmentation,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. And so if there was ever a
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: time in North America for there a need for really
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: strategic bear management. It's now and then these folks come
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: in thinking that they're doing something good and are actually
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: getting it completely wrong, and so it's it's yeah, it's
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: just one of these things that's just backwards. But it
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: takes it would take somebody listening to you for more
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: than one sentence to be like, oh, I get it. Here.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Here's a full page ad that was just taken out
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: in the Seattle Times. A friend of mine sent it
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: to me. Full page ad. It's from an organization called
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Washington Washington Wildlife First dot org. Full page ad. It's
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: a picture of a wolf. The main text is Washington
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: wildlife management is much scary year than the big bad wolf.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Ask Governor j Insley to make Washington safer for wildlife.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: And they go on to say fish and wildlife policy
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: has been set by two people who hunt. Now the
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: governor is making three appointments to the Fish and Wildlife
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Commission that could transform Washington wildlife management. Please join us
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: and asking for commissioners who will prioritize conservation over consumption
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: and be a voice for the values and interests of
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: all Washingtonians. So what you're having here is they want
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: to have wildlife commission's inners that are like a zookeeper,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: a wild they've commissioner that's an animal rights activist in management.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: At the top of the page there's text, there's like
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: the the atrocities beavers are trapped and drowned for their
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: for one, let me tell you one thing. Beavers are
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: not viewers are not hunted. So it's they're they're regulated
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: as a fur bear with like very tight restrictions and
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: very tight gear restrictions. Okay, but you don't hunt for him.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: That's the only way they're done. Uh. Cougars are hounded
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: and shot out of trees. Wolves are slaughtered for the
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: livestock industry. It's it's just a it's a it's a
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: wildly different worldview. And when you get into wildlife management,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: like you have to become a believer in the slippery
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: slope because the conversations that are happening out of your view.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: The conversations is we would like to see an end, absolutely,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: we would like to see an end of consumptive use
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: of wildlife across the board. How do you do that?
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Death by a thousand cuts, because you can still go,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: you can still go to Americans and pull Americans and
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: say do you believe in regulated hunting? Do you support
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: regulated hunting and fishing? Overwhelmingly higher now than it wasn't
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: the eighties. We'll say yes. The minute you put particulars
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: to it, the number goes down. The minute you put
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: particulars to it. You could go and do a pole.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen this one necessarily, but you could go
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: do a pole and say, um, do you do support
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: regulated hunting and regulated hunting fishing? Yep? Do you support
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: the practice of having a dog chase a birden flush
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: it so that amand can slaughter with a shotgun? Well? No,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: not that. Would you support someone sitting on the edge
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: of a field so that when a deer comes out
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: to get its first little bite of food in the evening,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: a man you know, like, oh no, that sounds So
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: what does that tell you though? Does that tell you that?
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: So if if people who have no understanding of hunting
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: arts and support of it, then that that means that Okay,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: if you're in support of it, then let then let
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the people who actually know what's going on, know what
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: it takes to manage wildlife, know what it takes to
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: manage to land have control of of making rules and regulations.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, what's the point of what? What's your
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: takeaway from what you're saying about. There's overwhelming support of
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: it until you get to the granular stuff that when
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: you go after it, it's easy to go out when
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: you when you go after it, you go after the
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: lowest hanging fruit and the thing that sounds more atrocious
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: because you're not going to be able to go after
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: the thing in and of itself. Washington eventually, will California
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: eventually will California is based there. I had a very
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: high years ago, I had a very high level person
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: at California Fishing Game predicted me that they would lose
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: the whole thing in twenty five years. He thought it
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: was gonna be archery, next the whole thing, eventually the
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: whole he said from where he was sitting that day, said,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: I think we'll lose the whole thing into only five years.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Archer will be the next thing we lose. Then it
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: will be a thing about, you know, the maiming of
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: or humanity of it. There's there there's a justifiable there's
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: there's a position when it comes to these debates that
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: that I think that very intelligent, well meaning people put
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: this idea forth that hunters need to aggressively police their
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: own actions to make it that there is no low
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: hanging fruit, that we would self eliminate all the low
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: hanging fruit. That you'd say, Okay, I'm gonna quit hound
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: hunting because that gives us all a black eye. Okay, um,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna quit. You should quit baiting because that gives
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: us all a black eye. And they think that you
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: would clean it up so much that an animal rights
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: person would look and say to themselves, well, now the
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: they've made themselves as peers, the driven snow, and I
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: have no more desire to mess with them, because I
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: really was just interested in trapping. Um. There are people
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: that think that that's that that that's the approach that
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: you should be. That you should never um display talk
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: about anything. If you take a picture of a you
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: and a deer you killed, you should look really sad.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: That you should never have bloody hands, You should never
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: drive with a with a deer in the back of
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: your truck that someone might see. You should never do
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: any practice that might irritate animal rights activists, and that
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: then we'll live in perpetuity for the rest of our lives.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: That's like I I regard it as a like, uh,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: it's not it's not a nonsensical position. I just think
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: that I've come to think more and more that that's
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: wrong and stupid. Yeah, there after the low hanging fruit
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: because it's but as soon as that's gone, the next
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: level they're never going to go away. You know. It
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: feels like it's really it's an issue of identity, like
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: in a real big macro scale. It's like who are
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: we as really even as Americans? And it's like, this
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: is who we are, and this is our track record
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: with wildlife. We have the most abundant big game wildlife
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: conservation practices in the history of the planet. Our our
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: success has been so good here and this is who
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: we are. This we're hunters, we eat meat, We deeply
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: value culturally these animals. And it's like they're trying to
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: take that away from us because they don't understand it.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: There's a there's a viewpoint I have that that I
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: almost shouldn't make. Is gonna just in the in the
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: in being um just in the spirit of honesty on
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: my good there's an argument like in the abortion debate.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: There's in the in the abortion debate, there's an argument
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: like like hands off, like hands off my body, right,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Like don't tell me what to do with myself. Okay,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: it's one of the leading arguments to be like it's
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: it's like when it comes to contraception, when it comes
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: to abortion, there's there's an an argument that people make
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: that that's me and that's my business. And it's sort
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: of like it's like ending the argument. You're trying to
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: end the argument was saying like it's me, don't tell
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: me what to do because like I live in America,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: and I have uh self agency to make certain decisions,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: and these are my innatible rights and and that's the
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: end of it. I'm not here to like hash this
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: out with you for a long time. Right, it's a
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: way of handling it. I sometimes I feel that that
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: a little bit, like I feel that there is a legacy,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: there's a legacy of hunting and fishing and interaction with
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: while life in America that has made it in some
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: respects the philosophical um the spiritual property of a discipline
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: in the lifestyle. I mean, there's a discipline in the
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: lifestyle that has a established a sense of ownership over
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: a renewable resource, and and in all fairness, to have
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: someone who doesn't interact with the wildlife, who doesn't understand
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: it well, who views it only as a thing that
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: they watch on television or that they see out of
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: their window when they drive through Yellowstone once in their life. Like,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: I feel like their imposition on this whole thing that
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: that they're an intruder into a world that they don't understand.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: And it would be like these two different things. If
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: you're gonna like there, there's two different viewpoints take take it.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: In voting, some people think that just your mere presence
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: in America gives you the right to vote here legally
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: or not. Your mere presence in America should allow you
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to cast a ballot. There's other people that think that
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: will know. I think that you should be a citizen.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I think that you should not be a felon. I
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: think that you should have a address by which I
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: can identify that you are who you say you are,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and that under those conditions you should be able to
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: pick the leaders of the country. Two different worldviews, Like
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: when when it comes to fish and wildlife, I'm more like,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: instinctively I'm more like the person who would want you
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: to have to jump through more hurdles and understand what
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: you're talking about and know the history before you weigh
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: in on ship. M hm. But it doesn't really work
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that way. Well, going back to the Washington Commissioners thing,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Jason was telling us about how there's this idea that
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the commissioners, the people that are making wildlife based decisions,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: would be outside of the historic genre of people that
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: we pick, like like, you know, let's put an animal
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: rights activist on the game commission just so that we
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: have this diverse spread of people. You could do that,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: but that's not the way we've done it. And what
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: we've done has been highly successful. So I think that's
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: the statement that you're making is like, yeah, we could
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: like totally change the way that we're doing this, but
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: if you want to do something that's predictable and stable
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: that has worked in general, and and and and some
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: people have bones to pick with their wildlife agency, which
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: is kind of I mean, yeah, whatever, but in general,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: macro squad macro scale wildlife management and this continent has
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: been phenomenal, Like since the Garden of Eden, it hadn't
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: been this good and so I think what we're saying
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: is that, yeah, you could do it that way, that's
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: way different and what we've done has worked extremely well.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: And you know, typically guys that are on commissions that
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: are making decisions, or people that are historically culturally vested
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: in wildlife from a hunter manager, you know position. I
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: think that Jason was talking about this the dr and night,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: and you should make your own point about it. But
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: there's this idea. You live in Washington, there's an idea
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: that you're gonna throw out a desire to throw out
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: a very effective system as measured by how successful it's been,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: um and replace it with not quite sure. Yeah, I
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: mean being from Washington and kind of seeing what's happening. Um.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: You know, most of North American's big game is managed
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: by the North American model of wildlife. And one of
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: our commissioners might not be quoted perfectly, but to this sense,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: it no longer works because it does. It no longer
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: has an emotional or social um emphasis there. There's no
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: way to now categorize and balance that with the the
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: idea of how do we manage the wild life? We
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: need to look at now the the social impact that
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: these seasons these you know, quotas, whatever they may be,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: and then we also need to look at the social um.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: So it's emotional and social components are not included in
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: that model. Therefore we just need to undo everything. But
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: they don't have a model to replace it with. So
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: now it's like they've now used this no model to
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: go to that that just remove spring bear season. So
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: it's just it's just low hanging fruit instantly being taken off.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: And these I don't this might be a point that's
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: a little bit outside, but these people are so uneducated
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: on our hunting seasons. You know, we we just went
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: through this whole um spring bear ondoing that we've had forever.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: One of the new commissioners, I don't know which one
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: it was, I thought at the same time, we should
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: take out spring wild turkey seasons because if a spring
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: bearer comes out of his den lethargic and is more
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: vulnerable than by all means of spring turkey had to
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: be And that's that's what we're dealing with. Like we're
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: to the point where these people have no understanding on
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: why seasons are set when they're set, and why we
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: pursume at certain times. And you're just to the point
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: of just in that article alludes to it like they're
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: gonna replace three commissioners because some of our UM commissioners
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that did have fishing and hunting backgrounds were so frustrated
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: with some of the recent stuff. They've all resigned and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, now we're going to go from you know,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: what was kind of a mixed board to just a
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: lopsided Um. Yeah, you guys, E want to like Pamela
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Anderson on your commission. It's not gonna be good. Uh,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: but I'll take the task. Even what he said about
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: the he probably doesn't know anything about the North American
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: model of while the conservation because him saying that there's
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: no social and cultural component. It's made up of seven tenants.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: One of the tenants is democratic allocation. That feels pretty
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: cultural and social to me, Democratic allocation of resources, a
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: waste component. There's a tenant about waste non frivolous use.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: There's a tenant about international cooperation that all feels very
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: cultural and social to me. It's it's it's it's like
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: he he's a technic thing he doesn't understand. Yeah, hey,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the response for for hunters? To this, Steve, Like,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: so what we're talking about, We're we're talking about these
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: big things that are going on not totally outside of
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: our control. But what's the message to the hunting community?
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: You know, my mind remains unchanged. Um, the two party system,
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: it's kind of miserable for hunters. Uh. There needs we need,
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: like a new one that's pro hunting and pro habitat.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: You're talking you gotta strategically shop. You get culture, you
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: get hunting defense and cultural defense from the right, and
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of times you get pretty good environmental habitat
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: stuff from the left, and there's nowhere to turn. It's
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: just like it's like who do you feel like? You know,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: it's it's who at any given moment is less likely
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: to screw you mm hmm, And to be honest with you,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: like right now, like with cultural stuff going on, like
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: the right right now is a lot of elements of
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the right right now are less likely to screw you.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm. It's like becoming such a clown car mm hmm.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I would with some of the stuff, like like you know,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: I remember Insley got in and he was one of
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the first, Like I said, he's like one of the
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: first guys to bail on the deal. But in my
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: head I already knew, like with already knew with like
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: certain wildlife issues. I was like, man, not the guy
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, extreme, but probably has a great habitat record,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: I guarantee it. He Yeah, like the amount of tax
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: just to save some you know, the orcas, and it's
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: it's nuts. Like I mean, it's it's a good it's
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: a good idea, but it's just like the at the
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: expense of of you know, Washington citizens. He's I would
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: consider extreme. Like you know, I think, what is it
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: a National Wild Turkey Federation. Isn't it defend the habitat,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: defend the hunt. Isn't that they're like part of their
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: slogan taglines, do that, I'll send n WTF a bunch
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: of money. It's like here, here's what I was is
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: gonna say at a at a more granular? Can I
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: answer one more time? Because I just thought have a
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: better one, not better, not better than defend the habitat,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: defend the hunt. Think about what's built into t RCPs
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: thing guaranteeing Americans quality places to what hunt fish, hunting fish.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: So I shouldn't say like I'm the one that's gotta
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: figured out a lot of people gotta figured out. Defend
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: the habitat, defend the hunt guarantee Americans quality places, not
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: shipped up places, quality places to hunt fish. So the
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: the public sector is all over this. Aspects of the
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: public are sorry. Aspects of the NGO, you know, the
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: NGO private sector is all over this. But in the
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: in the political atmosphere, it's like you're always someone's always
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: screwing you and in some respects always helping you out.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: Some people are always helping you out on somethingunn you
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: happen to help a finger. Let me let me say
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: this because this is I wanted to hear what you
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: had to say about that, and that was like a
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: like a I would say a big macro like call
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: to action for people and give them some understanding. If
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: we were to have a family meeting as hunters, if
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: we were all like, okay, boys, come inside, everybody's sent
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: the couch. We gotta have a little talk, I would
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: say what we need to do is we've got to
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is overdone, but I think there's things that
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: I can do that would in my own life that
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: would help me be better. But we really have to unify.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: And that's an overly stated word, but what that means
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: is when you tell your kid how dumb crossbow hunters are,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: you are? No, I pointed Steve when I said, Bridget,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: when you tell your something, no, when you there's things
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: that we do all the time that infuse division inside
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: of people that are really on our team, Like and
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: I've experienced that massively inside of when I ran Bear
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Hunting magazine. I mean it was like just baiting bears
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: and all this controversial stuff. All I'm saying is, if
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: there's somebody that does something different than you, because I
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: gave ron t you you do stuff different in Montana
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: than I do in Arkansas. And the way I view
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: hunting is different than the guys out west. You're treading
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: into dangerous territory right now, we're going do you think, so,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, you are? Well, I I just I'm just saying,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: don't we're so divided amongst ourselves. Like I'm okay with
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: the way that Jason hunts, and if it's inside the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: laws and the and the boundaries of legality where I live,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and I can run run bears with hounds, and I
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: can trap, and I can you know, shoot squirrels to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: the end of February and then like just be okay
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: with that, Just be like, good job, Clay. You go,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: here's where, Here's where you're you're here's where you're you're
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: you're playing checkers when you should be playing chess. Game managers,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: even if there was no radical animal rights agenda whatsoever
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: in this country, game managers would still need to wrestle
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: with emerging technologies you have. You would agree that wildlife
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: is a finite resource, okay, right, wilde a finite resource.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: You want to maximize people's you want to maximize your
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: populations opportunity to try to get a share a portion
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: of this finite resource. In order to maximize participation and opportunity,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: you need to do things that control efficacy rights. Just
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: I know where you're going with this. Well, let's say
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: people don't. Let's say you have five years from now.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: Let's say you have a population of you have a
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: mountain range, and and you're you're very well intentioned game
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: mant pro hunting game managers are like, we can pull
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: a hundred elk off that mountain, no problem, hunterd elk
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: off that mountain. There's a let's say I'm I'm using
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: not real numbers, but there's a thousand elk on that mountain. Okay,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: that mountain has historically had about a thousand elk on.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: It can hold about a thousand elk. Um, we can
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: kill a hundred in the fall, and you know what,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain again
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: next year. That's just how it goes. You could kill
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: none and you're gonna have a thousand elk on that mountain.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: You could kill a hundred and you're gonna have a
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: thousand elk on that mountain. Because that mountain is gonna
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: hold about a thousand elk, it gets much more. They
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: tend to they tend to starve off, it gets much more.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Predation shoots through the roof whatever. It's always got about
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: a thousand. We're gonna kill a hundred. Now we could say, okay,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: we're gonna let we're gonna kill a hundred. You can
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: use a helicopter, you can use thermal, you can use
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: night vision explosives. Okay, how many tags are you going
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: to give out? Hundred tags? Probably because everybody's going to
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: get the elk. Or you say, here's what we're gonna
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: do instead, you can use a bow, you can't hunt
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: at night. How many tags are we going to give
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: out a thousand to kill a hundred? No, you know
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna give out is you're gonna have success rates,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: so you can give out five hundred tags. That is why, like,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: you know, deeper into the weeds than what you're proposing
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: that you're proposing of. You're you're tiptoeing around, proposing a
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: philosophy in which everything is great and cool. And just
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: because I hunt out of a helicopter with night vision,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: I think I think he's taken the extreme of what
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I was even you tiptoed into dangerous territory. This is
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: all I was saying, was like, don't hate a guy
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: because he uses hounds. It's just like historic use practice.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Just be okay with it. You don't have to kill
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: a mountain lion over hounds, but that's the way we
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: do it. If you're not defending your point's well taken up.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: But you can even shoot holes in my point. Here's unification, Steve,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: We're on the same side, bro the cross bowl thing
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: kind of because here's the deal. When you get an
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: individual I'll argue policy a crossbows. Well, I'm not saying
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: that in Montana. Yeah, right now, archery season in Montana,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: the state where I love archery season Montana, you can't
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: ult with a cross bowl. However, crossbow hunters be like,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: why are you discriminated against us? We count No, you
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: can hunt with a cross bowl. You can hunt with
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: a cross bowl more than you can't. You can hunt
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: with a crossbow all through spring bear season, no problem,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: six weeks of general firearm you can hunt with a crossbow.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Don't say you can't hunt with a crossbow. You can't
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: hunt with a crossbow during archery season, just as I
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: can't hunt with a gun during archery season. I would
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: never come and say there's no chance to hunt with
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: a gun. They would be like, well, no, sir, there's
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: a lot of chances to hunt with a gun. You
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: hunt with a gun all through spring bear season, you know,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: with a gonna all through general firearm season. You can
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: hunt with a gun all through the extended seasons. But
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: you can't hunt with a gun during archery season. A
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: crossbow you can have had it, you know, hut your
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: ass off with a crossbow. You just want to do it.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: The one time you can't who doesn't If you want
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: to ask any individual, be like, would do you do
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: you think it should be cool? Like should we let
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: you hunt with your gun during archery? I'd be like,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: you mean, just me sure, I think that's a I
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: think that'd be a phenomenal idea. Yeah, great point. But
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: here's where my point falls apart. Just in all fairness,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: I think that management agencies need to protect traditional use practices.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Someone might say why would Someone might point and be like,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: one of the oldest strategies that we know was occurring
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: on this continent. Two old strategies were the buffalo jump
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: and fire. You would light ship on fire and kill
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: the stuff that ran out. So if you want to
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: defend traditional use practices, are you saying that hunters should
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: have uh carte block to go and burn thickets to
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: flush out game. So it all gets a little complicated.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: In traditional use, you have to like draw line in
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: the sand, like on this day in nine seven is
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like you couldn't you can, I mean
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: go back as far as you can, and then with
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: the you know, with things improving, it's like traditional use,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: where do you draw the line a cree beaver hunting
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: strategy was that you just remove the damn, drain the
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: whole pond out, and then go around to all the
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: dens and stuff and dig them out and club the beavers.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: In most dates now, especially states that have a deep
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: tradition of contemporary fur trapping, you can't destroy the damn
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: because you're chopping down the apple tree. You want people,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: if you want people to be able to pick the apples,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: don't cut the damn tree down. So all this stuff
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: is a little tricky. Speaking, which the second thing I
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: wanted to cover. It was a great intro. That's a
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: great intro to the podcast. Welcome to the met Eater podcast.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: I was on I was hacking on Michigan because our
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: our our friend and Zuck I wasn't hacking on Michigan.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Our friend of Michigan. Guys are Matt's personal MAT's personal friend.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: That's how I know guys are Matt Cook's friend. Was
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: sent me a note. Uh he was very concerned about
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: the fall turkey hunt in Michigan and I had spent
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: some time. I didn't criticize the state. I said I
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: would love to hear the justification for why they're there
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: having it be that that one guy can in in
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: in a certain area in Michigan, that you could that
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: you could buy tag after tag after tag in the
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: fall and kill turkeys and now that but shoot hands. Okay,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: basically got areas where you can just keep buying them
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: till they're you know, and some guy he knows guy
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: killed five gobblers off public way and fall turkey hunt.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: And I was saying, I will say not that it
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: was wrong. I was saying, I think that people need
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: to be cautious with turkeys. And I think that if
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: you're gonna look and be like like and and let
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: me back up once, like a guy wrote in all
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: bent out of shape, like, how can you support the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: shooting at does and fawns but you don't support the
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: shooting at hands. That's not my gripe. My gripe, isn't that?
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: My statement was simply that that as we're as we
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: know from Missouri, as we know from Kentucky, as we
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: know from South Carolina, you can't take turkeys for granted,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: talk about what's going on when you're at Yeah, in Arkansas,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: we've lost in the last ten to fifteen years, we've
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: lost sixty of our population. So when I was in
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: high school, you know, twenty years old, you know, twenty
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: years ago, we had a pretty great turkey hunting and
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: today it is Arkansas turkey hunting is very, very difficult,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's death by a thousand cuts in
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: terms of why turkey populations are declining. But it's happening
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: all over the South, the Southeast, and there's guys that are,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: you know, dedicating their careers to try and understand why.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: But they're just a you know, a ground nesting bird man.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: You can't can't put your faith in him because they're
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: extremely vulnerable. Yeah, ground clad said one has never falling
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: love with the ground nesting learning that from my grandpa,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: who was a who was a quail hunter. For really
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: it's kind of a joke, but my grandfather was a
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: big time bird dog trainer, Bob White quail man. In
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: the last twenty years of his life that I spent
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: with him, he bemoaned the passing of the Bob White
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: quail I mean we went quail hunting literally knowing we
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: weren't gonna find quail, but he just wanted to work
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: as dogs and we wanted to go through the motions,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: and so I quail hunted my whole youth, like basically
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: knowing we were after something that for the most part
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: didn't exist. And his stories of man Clay at one
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: time found nine covees on that single hill right there,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: and today there's none. And so you know that kind
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: of stuf. Then you go and say, well, why is that?
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: And the answer is where do I begin? Right? Fire
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: ants changing at your cultural practices, um changing the fire
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: management practices, cheat, grass invade. You know, it's like all
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: that ship even if you removed one and probably still
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: be happening. But with turkeys, you have like there's this
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: thing with there's this phenomenon like the founder effect. I
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: shouldn't call a phennen because it might be a sort
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: of like a somewhat of a scientific principle. The founder effect.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: When you bring it, when you introduce a new species
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: on a landscape, it kicks ass for a couple of reasons.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: They're exploiting. They're exploiting a resource base that hasn't been touched,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: so they're gonna like fill a niche, and the niche
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: hasn't been manipulated, had have been Uh, it hasn't been occupied,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: but it hasn't been exploited at all. Okay, So let's
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: say you were to go to some landscape that had
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: never had you, some prey rich landscape that had never
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: had a coyote on it, and you're like, it just mages.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Some magical island full of rabbits and ground nesting birds,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: never had a kyote on it. You dumped some kyote
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: flues on it. What do you imagine is gonna happen?
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: Booming popular shiploads of food. The rabbits have never seen
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: it before, and they're like, hey, what's that? And it
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: gets eaten. UM ship that eats coyotes hasn't figured out
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: how to exploit, just as the rabbits haven't figured out
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: how to um prevent themselves from They haven't learned to like,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: not lay out in the open at night, because they've
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: never needed to worry about laying out in the open
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: at night. But now they've got to realize, Man, you
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: can't lay out in the open at night anymore, that's
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: for sure. And something that might be like a kyot
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: would be good to eat. He hasn't figured out how
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: to deal with them yet. Maybe it's kind of hard
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: to kill. But if we put our heads to get
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: will figure out how to kill Kyles and we'll eat him.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: But they haven't figured that out yet. So here the
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: coyotes are eating tons of rabbits, tons of ground nesting birds,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: having tons of babies. Nothing's killing their babies, and you'd
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: be like, man, this is the Kyle hunting paradise. Fast
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: forward twenty years. They've clipped, they've pulled off the cream
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: of the crop of the rabbits. Rabbits have gotten very paranoid.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: They conduct their daily existence very differently. Some other big
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: bad thing has been like you know, uh, I figured
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: out that I can go out to that place and
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: killed shipload of kyotes and I like to eat coyotes,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: right and over time, it's not that way turkeys were reintroduced,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: but it's like they were so eliminated from the landscape.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: The turkeys when they were reintroduced, they had a new
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: founder effect and everybody, like every state that went through
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: it had the same thing, like my dad, Like they
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: happened in Michigan right when I moved out of Michigan.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: I left Michigan and I finished school and left Michigan,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: and my dad started just slain in turkeys he didn't
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: even need to do anything mhm right, And it was
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: just this came in and they were they were clueless,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: exploding in numbers, and everybody got to be like, this
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: is just how it is now. We have shiploads of
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: turkeys all the time, kill them all. And my my
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: only thing with that stuff is like I would be cautious.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: M I would be cautious. And when they when Michigan,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: the representative from Michigan Fishing Game responded, and they're viewing
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: it like they're viewing these high take areas, they're viewing
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: it as population control. And then you'd be like, well,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: who the hell is saying there's too many agricultural interests?
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: Not me. I've never had a turkey hunter bitch to
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: me about too many turkeys. Ever, So when someone says
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: turkeys are overpopulated, I'm like, by whose measure? Not mine? Yeah,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: so just be careful. That's mostly take on him, and
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: it's it's like, it's not immoral, it's just like be careful.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting because when you have these big booms
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: of of well, particularly with turkeys the seventies, eighties, and nineties,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: there's a thirty year period which is a pretty long
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: period and a human lifespan, enough time to really build
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: a norm and build culture. That's when all the call
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: companies rose up, Like there were no big major like
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: turkey call companies and turkey call accessories, and in the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: nineties those things really peaked and kind of and that's
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: when turkey hunting media started. And so it was kind
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: of like there was a flag stuck in the ground
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: in the nineties in America about turkey hunting culture, and
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: then that became the norm. And then today we're like,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: dad gum, why can't it be like the nineties. And
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: that's also when there was some great turkey poachers that arose,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: like Charlie and Louis del Edwards. Clay gets into this
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: in a series of bear Greese podcasts and you should
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: you should expand them this a little bit and in
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: a series of bear Grease podcasts about turkey poachers, a
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: bunch of different turkey poachers and that these guys are
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: they call it preseason honey, Yeah, guys that are killing
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: twenty five turkeys, fifty turkeys, seventy five turkeys because turkeys
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: are everywhere. Yeah, they you know, if you're season bag
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: limits too, and you have you're in a place with
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: a ton of turkeys. I mean for people with with
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: without the the the backing to want to obey the law.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, killing two turkeys just wasn't enough. And these
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: guys hunted from the time they started goblin til the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: time they stopped. You know, get it when it's getting good.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: Another piece of feedback that came from the Michigan Michigan's
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: you know, the State of Michigan's Fishing Game Department, is
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: this trend that I first heard about from Robert Abernathy,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: who's a turkey researcher in South Carolina, and it's that
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: and looking at how are we going to continue to
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: hunt turkeys and continue to have a lot of turkeys.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: You may in your state see a shift away from
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: killing turkeys early. We sometimes they're killing turkeys in the
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: snow in spring season. It's because hunters want to hunt
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: them when they're goblin. They want to hunt turkeys when
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: when you make a call, they're coming. And there's a
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: lot of emerging should say a lot, there's some emerging
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: research and emerging suspicion that when you're killing gobblers pre nesting,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: you're you're damaging a you're you're damaging the social hierarchy,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: and and and and interfering with breeding. And then it's
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: like kill all the gobblers you want, and may don't
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: kill them so bad in April you're busting them up
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: at the wrong time. And and then there's also a
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: fear that when you're hunting these winnering flocks and stuff
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: like pre nesting, that you're you're having a lot of uh,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: you're having a lot of collateral damage by running shotgun,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: by running shot come patterns into in the groups of
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: turkeys rather than working individual birds later on in the
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: later on in the cycle. Mhm. Groundness and birds are
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: just extremely complex. I think that's what we're learning. Yeah,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: I know, when I interviewed Mike Chamberlain, it's like the
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: list of uh, you know, what's affecting you know, a
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: lot of it. You talked early which a lot of
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: states have their youth season and they talk about easy
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: now I know, I know, but like I think there
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: was a study a study down in Missouri were like, uh,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not a huge percentage of the overall birds,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: but they equate like that of the birds that get
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: killed has like just as much of effect as the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: other you know of the birds that get killed and so,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: but it's not he was quick, you know, Mike was
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: quick to say, it's not just youth seasons, it's habitat,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: it's this, it's this. It's just a very and and
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: on a on an animal that has, you know, on
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: a max of four year life cycling and then get
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: older than that. But if we just say four years
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: is kind of then the road for a turkey, you know,
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: living through three with something with that quick at turnaround.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a slippery slope of Michigan. It's just
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: very the populations like clay it's at, can shift very
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: very quickly. When you're only dealing with a three or
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: four years. You know, you get one or two bad
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: springs and you're down to thirty three percent of your birds.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: If we're going on and it's just a very very
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: complex issue. I don't think we have figured out yet.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: There's another aspect of turkey season. And I was like,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: I enjoy youth turkey season. Um, and it gets into
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: that kind of like not in my backyard, like don't
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: mess with me right, Like I'm I'm talking out of
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: both sides of my mouth on one hand saying there's
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of respected turkey researchers are like, we got
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: caught stock killing birds so early. And then I'm like,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm already playing. I'm already playing in the Wisconsin.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: You know. We we go to Wisconsin for youth turkey.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: It's my favorite time of year. Last year we killed
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: zero turkeys. Um, but that was not our intent, right,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: Our intent was to get a couple. So I love it.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: I love it. And yeah, maybe you know there will
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: be a time when you have to, you know, question
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: that and make that sacrifice. But generally, what you're looking
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: for is you're not looking for You're looking for not
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: individuals uh making like self proclamations. You're you're looking for
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: agencies to codify regulations right and and basically have that
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: be you know, people be like, how do you be
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: how do you become an ethical hunter? But here's of it.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: Follow the law. We'll get you pretty much all the
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: way there. Follow the law. Um in the law right
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: now is you know the youth turkey thing. And and
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't have I'm not hacking on any
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: guy that goes out in Michigan and the fall and
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: you know, the only the only have they got way
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: less than half as many tagholders in the fall, in
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: a way lower success rate in the fall. They they
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: view it as like it's like a negligible harvest. But
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Man, the good days of turkey you know,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: I hate say it, but in some respects the good
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: days of turkey hunting could be winding down. Would you
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: be as cautious about going to two birds? You know,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: tag for two birds limit versus one before you would
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: you know, open up the fall like in Michigan even
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: one bird limit? Would you would you rather see them
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: going to two birds and not do the full If
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: I was the TSAR, if I was America's wildlifs Are,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: that'd be a good position for that would be You're
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: the only one in this country that can sort through
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: bipartisan politics America's wildlifs are, And I could just do
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: what I needed to do and I would even have
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: to hear any complaints. Right, there's no way to even
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: get a hold of me. And I'm the wildlifs Are
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: and no one even knows that I'm the wild LIFs Are.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: You're the man behind the curtain. I'm the man behind
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: the curtain and I can do stuff and I don't
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: need to hear about it from my friends. No one
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: would know I did it, but it would be done.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: In that scenario, I would be like, I would go
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: to my Turkey guys and I'd be like, Okay, what
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: are we looking at? All the states, all the game
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: management units, like very detailed level, what are we looking at?
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: Give me the harvest numbers that we can withstand. I
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: would say, great, let's shoot for that in the spring.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of other stuff to do in the fall.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: Let's make let's make a big robust spring season. If
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: we need to cut out April a bit, if we
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: need to eat into April, let's give it back twice
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: folding may Well, that's what that would probably be my
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: my edict. As turkeys are, that's what they're doing a
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: lot in a set like in Arkansas, that's what they're doing.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: They've bumped our season dates back to the late teens
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: of April usually, and man, by then it's it's pretty tough.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: And I used to it opened like the first Saturday
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: in April, you know, when I as a kid. So yeah,
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: they're doing that. Let me tell you who let me
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: tell you a Turkey guy that you need to have
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: on this podcast. And I'm gonna be so bold as
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: to do this on the air. Number. Here's the thing,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: you might be doing yourself a disservice because if you
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: do that and then he winds up on all kinds
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: of other podcasts, then it won't be as fun for
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: me to have him on this podcast. Got you well,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you there's a Okay, I'll tell you everything,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: but the guy's name. There's a guy in Tennessee that
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: you really should have on the Medeor podcast. Great guy,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: he's he's he's got a little different angle than some
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: of the some of the other the turkey apologists that
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: we've had floating around. I view myself when it comes
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: to Turkey stuff like I'm not making this stuff up.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: I view myself as basically like I view myself basically
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: as a UM A person who listens to Mike Chamberlain.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, Mike Chairman told me something like crazy, I
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: probably wouldn't. I mean, like generally, it's like I don't
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: you know we talked about earlier, like what's the motivation?
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: Guy loves turkey hunting, dedicated his life's turkeys, loves turkey hunting.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: He doesn't want to see turkey hunting go away. I'm like,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: I agree. Like that guy, Robert Abernathy, dude lives the
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: hunt turkeys. He's a turkey researcher. I know that his
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: heart is pure. And I'm like, if that guy likes
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: the hunt turkeys as much or more as I do
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: like the hunt turkeys. Guy lives on hunt turkeys. And
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: when he's talking, he's talking about how we're gonna keep
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: hunting turkeys. That's the guy I want to listen to,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: no doubt. Uh, I'll tell you, I don't know if
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to say that this happened to helfle Finger,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: but super funny. Huffle Finger used to be a dear
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: guide and um, he's guiding on a place in Texas.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: So it's a ranch owned by a ranch owner and
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: they did guided hunts on it. And half a Finger
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: has a client who's a guy in ecologist and he
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: rattles in the big bart for the guy, and the
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: guy that owns the property comes and suggests that affle Finger,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: because this client suggests a Hefflefinger, that perhaps helfle Finger's
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: wife should start seeing this gentleman. He's got like, I
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: gonna leave that up to her. M hm, that's the
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: funniest story. He's like, yeah, yeah, the pass on that suggestion.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: Oh how did that story come up? I'm he emailed
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: about a broader suite of things, but then just threw
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: that in there as a little tibit. The greatest emails.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: He'll know, he'll tell you something and then but there's
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: like four other things that like he was because we
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: were he was we were talking about exotics and Texas,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: and he was introducing me to a word I hadn't heard,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: which is texotics, the exotics industry of Texas. So he
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: had some comments about texotics um, which leaves me Another
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about is in New Mexico,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: cops responded to a shooting and while they're like responding
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: to a shooting, another shooting, like an adjacent trailer happens,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: like another shot is fired. They find a blood trail
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: from a person, track the blood trail into another building.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: And what's in that building a Bengal tiger a pet.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: So did the Bengal tiger have anything to do with
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: the crime. No, he's just an innocent bystander. Okay, okay,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: but they hauled it away. Oh they weren't supposed to
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: have it in there. No, they had a Bengal tiger
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: in a dog box. Wow. Wow. I think about that.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of the story you told about the
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: guy in Vietnam. Oh yeah, I feel like it's sad
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: a story I tell. It's just interesting about dog ownership. Um,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: all right, so Jason, do you might know you know
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: how to talk at all? Jason's like the interesting man
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: in the room from Matt, I mean, aside from Matt
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: and everybody else. Well, Jason got his second big game animal.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: Do you mind just giving giving listeners sort of a
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: high level you know? Uh? Um, we're hunting Cou's deer
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: like a high level newcomers you know. Uh, yelp review
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: if you will of Cou's your hunting. I learned a
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: lot over the course of the last six seven days
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: down here in Mexico. Um. Really grateful to you, Steve, Clay, Jason,
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: Bridget the whole Meet Eater team for having me join
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: you guys, at the risk of disgracing the entire pursuit
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: of hunting. I hope that I did not do that. No, no,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: it was great. But with you know, with a mentorship
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: of Steve and Clay, I gain a lot, certainly in
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: appreciation of the the patients, the athleticism, the endurance of
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: a cou'se deer hunt, the strategy that's required to to
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: get it right, to get success. Uh. I learned what
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: to do and what not to do at a Mexican
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: border crossing. Very valuable, life less great cross greater length here. Um.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: I learned that there's a healthy debate around the origin
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: of the term refried beans. So some would contend that
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: refried beans is very literal in that the beans are
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: being fried again and again and again and again, whereas
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: others would say that there's just one Uh, there's one
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: one fry, one pot to which beans are just continuously added,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: like an infinite bottle of refried beans. I don't know
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: where I sort out on that yet. Um that to
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: the Google that I feel is knowable. Were we to
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: have Internet access, but yeah, yeah, no internet access. I
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: learned that I like not having internet access. It makes
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: mysteries linger a little longer. Yeah. Uh. I learned that
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: after seven consecutive days wearing the same pair of first
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: Light long underwear, they do not smell. And then overall,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: my suite of first light gear uh is is durable
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: and comfortable and highly recommendable. Oh that's great, thank you. Uh,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: but it's been uh it's been a great time, been
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: a great experience. You learned how to take a very
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: quick showery very quick. Yeah, yeah, twenty seconds is really
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: all that. It takes it out. Yeah, get freshened up.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: What was your impression of, um, the amount of that
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: that the primary thing you do is looking through binoculars.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Well that gets to the patients. Yeah, um yeah, it's uh,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: it's it's real acquired skill. I mean, these these these coups,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: they're they're hard to find. But you got I felt
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: you got good at it. Over a couple of days,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: I got better at it. I got better at it. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: That that's fun to watch, is and I know it
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: will happen. Is. I know the people on the first
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: day be useless and that, let me say, a couple
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: of days later, a couple of days later, they're all
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: sudden spotting stuff. It's fun. It's like a very quick
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: you learned the basics pretty quickly. Steve's favorite day of
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: the coup's hunt is the first night after he takes
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: new people, because he's like, man, I was out there
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: and it was like I didn't even have any help
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: at all. Man, I was spotting all of there, and
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what Clay and Jason did. Steve
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden became southern. And then and then
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: the next day it's like, how did y'all do? It's like, oh,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: we probably spot as many as Steve, and he's like, oh,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: I knew they'd come around. Well, it's after that first
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: day when you are able to discern the certing, the
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: difference between a cow and a deer, that things really
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: take off, you know. So that came a long way. Anybody, Oh,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: you know, one more thing I want to touch on,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: and then I want to I also want to thank
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: I want to thank Jay Scott, Jay Scott Outdoors, Um
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: Colburn and Scott Outfitters and Jay Scott. Uh put so
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: much work into has put decades of work into having
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: built a UM not only a guided but to do
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: it yourself. COO's to your hunt in Mexico. You can
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: work with him too, to do and we've done it
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: many many times now. UM, if you really want to
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: learn it. Go with Jay, you'll learn. I still look
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: forward to that day. I haven't done it yet, but
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: look forward today of like actually hunting with with Jay
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: and and learning everything he knows. If you really want
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: to learn that, you can go with j But also
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: j Um helps facilitate do it yourself stuff where he
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: he gets you hooked up with the information you need
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: and everything, and and you kind of get cut loose
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: on him, you know, cut loose on your own chunk
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: or ground hunt and it's it's a it's a blast,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: and always thankful for him for putting that together. Um undertaking. Yeah,
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: he does such a good job with very well organized
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: but uh, one thing I want to cover off on
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: is is the saga of Jason's buck, which died not
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: by his hand, so we're already calling it Jason's bud.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: Let's just be clear, this is just why do you
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: so you want to tell about finding the buck? Where
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: did you find him? How big a story do we
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: need here just that found it and how he turned
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: up on a different mountain. So I'll kick it off
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: and you can finish it. So it's kind of the
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: way it happy first morning we go out and find
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: a good buck and bridgets able to get it killed,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: and we we go out and start glass and it
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: gets too warm. We take it back to camp. Hey,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: that was a really good valt. We're gonna go back. Um.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: We're sitting down there glass and and it was like
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: that magical last forty five minutes. Deer start popping out everywhere,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: and we're trying to keep track of them all. And
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a dough, there's a spike chasing a dough,
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: and you're kind of going back and forth all your
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: different groups of the dear well the spike that it
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: chased it dough over. I turned around. I'm like, whoa,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: that's a lot bigger buck. And uh in the same
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: view of my spotter, he had a real wide um
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: short time three points. So we're like back and forth.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: I said that bottom buck is a as a stud,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: but I said, I think his right side is broken,
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: like something doesn't look right, not adding up, and he's
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: kind of you know, he's broadside to us, and at
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: first he goes to take off, you know, goes to
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: run that dough, and I'm like, holy, holy smokes, he's
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: got like a big long time. I thought he had
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: a drop time. Something just looked weird. Um, and then
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: he finally slowed down. We were able to like, man,
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: he's got like two fourteen inch points that comes straight up.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: You've got a big oldye guard. Looks like something going
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: on funk at the base. And he was a real
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: solid eight on the left. And um, we come home
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: like me and Matt run up there, try to get
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: we close the distance of three hundred and um, nothing's
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: left there beside the spike. Every he kind of rund
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: the dough off and we're excited, like, oh, we gotta
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: play for tomorrow. Um, we're gonna kill that buck. And
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: so we we go there in the morning, end up
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: getting at his buck. And uh so I said, all right,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: we're gonna I'm gonna climb up there. So I'm in
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: that three unit yard spot. I'm gonna kill this buck tonight,
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: you know, because um, hey, and what did I tell
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: you that night when you came home talking about this
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: really unique you know, wild racked you know, basically a
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: buck with one normal side and then on the double
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: main beams and an eye guard just really you know,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: just one of those once in the lifetime bucks I
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: would love to have killed and I said, man, you
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: need to spend all weeks. Yeah, so I think Clay
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: secretly knew that wasn't his home range and was trying
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: to throw me up. So that night I climb up
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: in there, um glass and you know, just gonna pound
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: that and then uh, I get you know, Steve and
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: Clay and Jason are on a different mountain, and I
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: real faint radio reception. I think we found well, I
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: don't remember how it came across. I told you, Hey,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: the buck that you're trying to get, we found him
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: on a totally different mountain in this room, and you
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: try to defend your You try to be like, well
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: you know where where I'm at, Like I'm no, Like
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: I mean a totally different different mountain. Well, it was
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: so we you had described this buck, and we were
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: so far away from you that the Steve actually said,
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: we've got a chance to see in that deer, but
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: on the other mountain, like out of play, Like we
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: had a chance of glass in the deer, like maybe
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: a mile away, So we weren't hunting that deer, and
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: we had we had made a big loop. We decided
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: we had gone five or six miles since daylight we'd
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: been out all day and had made a made a
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: big loop and had had a pretty rough day of
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: of hunting, hadn't seen many deer. It's a long story.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: We did see one buck that we didn't get, but
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: late in the evening we were on a high knob
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: and we had all been glassing for a pretty long
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: time and it was just one of those deals where
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: this buck was. He was in a very thick area,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: very steep area, but he was within four hundred and
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: forty yards of us when I arranged him. But on
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: a on a micro level, he was in the wide open. Yeah,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: he was out of the wind, in the brushy he was.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: He was in a brush choked hellhole out of the wind.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: But he was sitting in a spot about as big
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: as this living room. That was. I mean, he was
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: just laying there, bedded. And the second I saw him,
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's Jason's buck. And I sneak over
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: the hill and give the you know, the cou's deer
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: eyes and hand motions to Steve like big buck over here.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: And so they come over and we glass the deer.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: It's a deer we want to shoot, and we slip
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: into three thirty yards and uh, and you know, we
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: were hunting in in a in a team, me Steve
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: and Jason berg bergsman, and um, it's complicated how who
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: gets to take the shot? Because when Jason was gonna shoot,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: if if it was inside a three yards, I mean,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: that's kind of where we were at. And it was.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: It was it was very windy, and I knew it
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: wasn't gonna be close. Yeah, and so Jason was the shooter,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: but when it was going to be a further shot,
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: it all of a sudden, I was a shooting. You
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: were the Feds, Yeah, and Jason was Alaska. Yeah, like
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: that's like that. Yeah. And so we slip into three
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: thirties shooting across the canyon pretty pretty still. I would
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: say a ten mile pro across wind. That's what I believe.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: It was pretty stiff cross wind. And uh, but I
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: argued that it wasn't all the way. I didn't quite
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: understand that, but I'm with it wasn't where he was
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: because he was out of It's something to get super
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: tricky about wind and ballistics. Man, you're on some peaky
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: and you're in ten mile our cross wind, but you're
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: shooting across the canyon and around the side of a hill.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: He's in he's in potentially a zero mile an hour
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: cross wind, or he's in the winds wrapping around the
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: hill and in the winds blow in the opposite direction,
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: or it's blowing down or up. Like everyone wants to
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: take like what's going on with them in mountainous train
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: and then act like that's a constant. Right in certain situations,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: you could be like, I assume that between me and
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: my target, that wind is the same all the way across.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: But in this kind of stuff, it's not. It's hard
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: to like, it's hard to hold for it. So when
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: then when you get into like extreme long range stuff
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: and people are I calculated for the dude, you're when
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: your bullet passed through five different wind circumstances over the year,
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: eight yard shot like the it was, it's been subject
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: to all kinds of stuff you can't even begin to
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: understand between here and there. So we get a really
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: good rest. I used Steven's tripod, and I've got to say,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: had I know what it feels like to be nervous
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: for a shot, which I would be, my heart rate
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: would increase, breathing would increase, I'd be nervous shooting it
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: a big deer that I think it's like a once
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: in a lifetime in couse buck. But I also had
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: the chemical jitters because of a Monster Energy drink that
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: I had drank like an hour and a half before,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: which I don't drink a lot of Monster Energy drinks ever,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: but I drank one because we were on the Death
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: March with Steve and and so I'm serious. When I
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: pulled the gun, like walking down there, I was like,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: my heart is doing stuff that usually doesn't do, and
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: so I wasn't you know, I had a good rest,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: YadA YadA, using my patented shooting platform. Yeah, it was good.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: It was good. And I shoot the first time and
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: missed the buck. We think the buck stands up runs
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: maybe thirty ft. And I had a very difficult time
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: finding him again in the scope because now he's in
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: the brush and I shoot the second time. Problem Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: Steve was like he's standing there, he standing, did you
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: not see him shake like he shook, well, he jumped
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: up and he and he shook like a dog like
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: trying to get water off his hide, you know. And anyway,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: when we went up there I realized that I had
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: shot the non typical horn off of the deer. The
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: first shot had missed high, high and left and had
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: shot off Jason's beautiful fourteen age spike. And uh, I
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: think the deer had felt a like an unusual jar
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: to its head, went out there and kind of gave
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: a little shake and uh, and then the second shot
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: I hit him and does it. It's been struggling for
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: the right word because I was saying, it's not irony,
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it's like the thing he's known for, the
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: thing I wanted the most, get the shot off. Yeah,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: I can't think of that. There's the gap in the
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: English language. Yeah, we need for what happened? Good point. Yeah, Yeah,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But in the end, I'm very very
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: thankful you because where you killed him was his home
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: range I would still be to this day. They were
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: sitting in that one little drainage waiting for him to
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: repay it. So you know, Jason ended up killing an
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: even bigger dear two days later, just in the like,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: almost within sight of where I killed this deer. And uh,
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: Jason and I, being old cous deer man like we are,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: we decided that if you're gonna kill a big cous dear,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: you need to be close to a red and white
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: radio tower. Because every big cousier we've ever killed, it's
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: been right by a big red and white radio tower.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: So that's our tip of the week. Yeah, So I
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: think if you if you're gonna market you know, a
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: cous deer hunt was Stephen Ronella and the Metiator team.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: It's not a big market. This is an exclusive event,
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: which I'm very appreciative for, but I think I would also,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: you know, describe it as you know, it is a
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: team effort. I had no idea that you would break
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: into groups. I envisioned myself alone on a mountain making
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: poor decisions. We're having to having to make judgment calls
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: that I'm you know, we're would be questionable. So with
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: Bridget and Jason Phelps and I, I mean, it was
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: truly a team can all in team effort, and we
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: each spotted each other's deer, which I think is a
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: cool dynamic. Um, it's as much strategy as it is
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: you know, making plays and and uh, there's so much
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: risk in every decision you make and so many opportunities
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: for things to go sideways. Um, we even had. You know,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: Bridget could tell a story. Bridget had a mountain lion
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: siding that came down and ran right across our field.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: One bride, badass. Let me hand. We were Matt and
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: I had already tagged out. So we were on a
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: mission for Phelps to find him a big buck that day,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: and we did. Jason found a giant buck that day.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: Beautiful time point, I think. And at the time I
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: pulled up my range finder because I wanted to see
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: how far it was. I'm looking at all this through
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: my range finder and I panover to find the buck
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: and there's a mountain lion in the same view and
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: no one else has said anything. And I was like,
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: I told these guys had zero chill. It's like, turns
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: a mountain lion, what are you looking at? And he
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: was stalking the book that Phelps was after. And so
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: I actually watched this what I believe to be a
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: huge tom stalk and chase off his book. Change tactics
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: followed dough and do like a double arm swipe at
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: this dough. She just tucked her button got away. How
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: much did he miss? By? And this was he was
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: size bigger than the deer noticeably bigger than the deer.
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: And this this was on in the spand longer and
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: thicker than broad from tip to tail. And because these
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: deer these does especially under a hundred pounds. Yeah, they're
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: small deer, but the entire hillside lit up. It was
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: like they were like thirty deer. We didn't know that
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: suggestions and the cat stuck around for a little while too,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: so these guys finally spotted it. And we're watching all
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: this from about four yards and then he continued to
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: make plays continue like I'm sure he was like Jason
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: on the mountain. When I told him I killed his buck,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: cat just like stood around. We went back to cat
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: Hill and that's where ultimately Phelps killed his buck. It's nothing,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: you guess. It was interesting is there were some cattle
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: that never even lift their heads so unfaced. The cat
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: ran right past him. They just kept feeding, scrambling a
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: everywhere and nuts. Because Bridget when she was range finding,
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: had lost a buck until we like I got her
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: back on. He's up by the dead yucka and in
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: that view was my buck or that buck a cow
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: and then the cougar and that that cow did not
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: care that buck. He was out of there. He just
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: it ran by him two yards away. The cowboys here, uh,
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: we were asking about the you know and very very
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: broken Spanish. Um. We hacked our way through figuring out
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: that there are a problem only on the caves on
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: the calves, not a problem on the grown ups. I
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: had a very good moment with with the with the
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: cowboy out here though, telling them about your story of
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: the mountain line. Oh, he understood it completely. I was like,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: Poma vanana, big hand motions, banana. And then I said,
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: but he didn't get it, you know, And I was
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: like like, oh, it's very cool. It was one of
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: the coolest things I've seen in the woods, you know what.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: We everybody good, Yeah, thank you in the awesome trip. Thanks,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: it's been good alright, everybody, thanks for joining