Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 012

Transcript

Ep. 012 · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater podcast. We're recording in in
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: uh Seattle, Washington, not far from my house, in a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: in a in a rental house that the T shirt magnate, uh,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Janice Telis rented for a shoot. Um you got do
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: you guys? Have? Have you ever bought one of the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Honest's T shirts? I have not. That's Randall our guests,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Randall Williams Williams Williams admitting to having not bought one
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: of Janice's Hunt Eat shirts. Andy, I'm interested in the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: T shirts for sale. I just made a sale for you, honest.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: That's that's my very old Andy. How long we've been friends? Uh,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: probably goes back to mid nineties. Maybe we've been friends
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: almost half the time that I've been alive. Just about
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: dead nuts half the time I've been alive. Um, Andy,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: was like you were because you were still becoming one,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: but you were the first chef I ever actually met
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: besides like a dude who cooks fried food in the bar. Yeah.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Actually when we when training to be a chef. When
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: our path across, Yeah, I was just starting culinary school. Yeah,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that's probably nineties six right there? Where was that faris
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: day in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So just down the road
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: from Ferres. Yeah, I was at g V. I moved,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I went to like I graduated from the third college
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: that I enrolled in. But you were at the culinary
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: arts program. Yeah. I was at Grand Valley for a
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: little bit and then switched gears and ended up at
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the culinary program right there in downtown Grand Rapids. And
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: that was a fun time. We did the first meal
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: thing we ever did, besides cooking steel head or something,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: was when we cooked we had a pig with a
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: road killed deer. We did, and we sold the I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: believe we sold the road killed deer inside of a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: pig and had a party, big old party, wild, big pig,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: small deer. What. No. We were coming back Me and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: my brother Matt were coming back from fishing into PM,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: remember the PM from Michigan. We're coming back from fishing salmon.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Must have been late summer, coming back from fishing salm
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: On the PM. Guy in front of us hit a
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: deer with his car. He didn't want it. We called
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: the cops. Cops gave us no. We never even got
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I could. I'm sure the statute limitations is worn out
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: by now. Did not get a permit for the deer,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: drove the deer from Baldwin down to your Grand Rapids
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and hung it in a garage at a house we
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: were renting. And this was a full on flophouse. I mean,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: none of the dudes that lived in that house were
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: on that lease. Probably. Well. A funny side note about
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: that is being Mark Schmidt. We're up in that same
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: neck of the woods the same time you guys were,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and we were coming home the day the morning after
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: that and saw that gut pile on the side of
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: the road and made mention of it, and then got
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: all the way back to our house, opened the garage
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: door and there was that darranging. We pieced it together. Um,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: that's a great recipe to put a deer cut up
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: in a pig. And I think we sold it with
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: bangling wire. It was twenty years ago though. Anyhow, that's
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: not where you're top about. So Joannice, who tells uh
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of of of plug your T shirts? Yanny Janna is
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: on the conversation, Yanayana, get so little, so little out
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: of this. Let it let's talk. He's dumb bunch t shirts. No,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: this has really helped our T shirt business. And by
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: the time you guys listen to this, we're gonna have
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of Texas T shirts and Montana T shirts. So Yanni
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: makes the shirts hunt to Eat and um, he had
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: an original one that wasn't state specific, then in Colorado
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: because that's his roots are in Colorado. Then now you're
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: doing Texas. It's got a big fence on it. It's
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: got an a fence in a corn feeder. No, I'm joking,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: it's made to look like the Texas flag, Texas license plate.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: He's coming out with Montana doing Alaska. We've been trying
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: talking into do in Jersey. She hasn't gotten around to yet.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Hunty dot com go by one of Yanni's teachers.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: The reason we're here to talk though, Randall Williams. Now,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: when I was in I went after regular college, I
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: went to graduate school. When I was in graduate school,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I took a class with a with an environmental historian
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: by the name of Dan Flores. And um, if everyone
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: read great history stuff, go check out Dan's books. But
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Dan writes a lot of I mean some of his
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: most influence correct me if I'm wrong, but thinks one
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: of the most cited, like when an academic does a paper.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: One way to gauge like writes an article, they'll call
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: it the paper right now'll publish it. A way to
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: gauge a paper success is how many times it's cited, right, right,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And his thing Bison ecology, Bison diplomacy. Yeah, this cited
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and anthologized, and it's just like that has been like
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: a hugely successful paper, right Yeah. Now that's from the
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Journal of American History, which is a really prestigious journal,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: and I think that was from maybe and it's been
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: reproduced in countless anthologies. Yeah, And in it, Dan Floores
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: argues quite beautifully that the planes Indians never had never
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: reached equilibrium with the bison herds, and that had correct
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, I'm sure you know it, say
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: better Id Randall, And and he argues, had you just
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: introduced the firearm and the horse, you'd have had eventually
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: had the same outcome. Yeah. I mean, the larger argument
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: is um essentially that there are so many variables that
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: go into determining what the what the bison population of
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the planes would be that you can't simply blame this
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: mass extinction on market hunters. At the end of the
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, because that's always been what most historians have
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: have done, is to blame white market hunters, the industrial
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: hide hunt for the extinction of or the near extinction
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: of the bison. And so Dan is arguing that they're
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: larger um climactic patterns, periods of drought on the planes
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that uh, you know affect with bison populations. Native hunters
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: they had, you know, they're their long standing traditions and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: practices changed wholesale with the introduction of the horse and
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the firearm and so probably yeah, the opening of markets, um.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: And Indians participated in in the market hunting as well. Um.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And So essentially what his article does is it takes
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: this story that had really been rendered into something of
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: morality play, um and and makes it much more complex
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: and I think ultimately much more interesting. UM. So yeah,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: that's that's sort of the gist of the bison piece. Yeah.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I don't want to dwell on that. I'm just getting
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: to dance. But the reason, like I wrote about that
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: animal from not from an academic standpoint, but more from
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: a popular standpoint. Um. But I became very like I
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: tried to become versed in these various arguments. I think
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: that a thing about like why the hide hunter thing
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: was so dramatic as it was so complete and final
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: that even though those guys were coming in and whittling
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: away at was just a fraction of the animals. The
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: fashionable number for for bison in the US, the fashionable
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: number buffalo bison. It's the same damn thing. The fashionable
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: number used to be like sixty million. And that came
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: from some really strange calculations by a guy named earned A. Seaton. Right,
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  Speaker 1: he like, read about a big herd that Colonel Dodge
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: who's who Dodges gave the name dot to Dodge City.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Colonel Dodgers, like, I saw a big gass, heard of buffalo.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: It took this may day in the past. It was
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: this many miles wide. So Seaton went and said, Wow,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: there must have been x number and that herd. He's like,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: there must have been I don't know what whatever million
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: animals and that heard and they lived here, and so
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: there's probably like six or seven or eight other areas
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  Speaker 1: that are that big, and so each of those areas
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: has that many, and that became how you always heard
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: that there was sixty million these animals at the time
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  Speaker 1: of European colonization. Now the fashionable figure is you see
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: often maybe it's changed because it's been a few years
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  Speaker 1: since I've been in the game, the fashionable figure million,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: you know. But the thing that's weird about it as
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: you get where by the time the hide hunters, like
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: by the time euro American hide hunters came on the
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  Speaker 1: scene and we're shooting them to put on rail cars,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: to send the hides on rail cars to the East
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: to have them tanned, there were way fewer. You know,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: it was already a vulnerable population because by the end
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: of the Civil War that number again this is debatable,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: but but a reasonable gas or a reasonable theory would
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: be by the end of the Civil War you had
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: maybe fifteen million, maybe ten millions. So they've already been
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: whacked down by a half two thirds, and you wind
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: up having these pretty big, substantial herds left a couple
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you have these eight herds of like a
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: couple million, a million, and so to our eyes today,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: it would seem like unfathomable amounts of animals in the
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: herd and the high owners of rolling and they would
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  Speaker 1: kill thousands, you know. So it would be like right now,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: we don't have nearly as many. Uh, take your pick,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I don't name something naming equivalent. We don't have nearly
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: as many what as we did at the time of
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: European contact. Big horn sheet? Okay, you so if a
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: bunch of guys went out right now and made did
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: their best to shoot every big horn sheet and they
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  Speaker 1: shot them pretty much all, would you later say, you
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: know what happened to the big horn sheep? These one
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  Speaker 1: assholes in two thousand fifteen shot them all, and then
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: someone else would be like, oh no, because they were
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: way down from all these other factors have been planning
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: out for the last two hundred years, So it wasn't
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: really that much of a sin because there they were
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: already missing from nine of their range from the from
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: nd when these dudes in two thousand fifteen went and
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: shot the rest, does that make sin less or more so?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: The Highlanders shot a lot of ship. Maybe they didn't
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: shoot thirty two million, but they mopped up what was
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: left of like some big herds at shirt were a
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: fraction of the original, but it's still kind of like catastrophic. Yeah,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: and and Dan's article basically um highlights a whole host
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: of factors that sort of set the stage for hide
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: hunters to come in and just deliver the death blow. Right,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: And so that's I think it was a pretty pretty
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: significant intervention, and um sort of a controversial one too,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: because it it disrupts um. You know, a lot of
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: people like to make the past into simple morality place.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And the bison was always this example of uh, just
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: expl naked exploitation, breed Native Americans used every part of
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the animal right, never wasted anything, right, complete sanctimonious, you know.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: And then evil guys came into Star of the Indians. Yeah,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and and to and ands just it's just I'm sorry,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: it's just not true, right, And but and to acknowledge
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: all these other factors that led to this catastrophe isn't
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to absolve hide hunters of any blame, right, it's not
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: uneducated guys were uneducated, guys were years old. Yeah. And
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: even though I would have been a hide hunter, like,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: there's no way the same way Like when I was
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in my early twenties, I moved out to Mountainics, I
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: wanted to hunting fish, remove any aspect of of any
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: any idea about history and the idea about education, and
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: always grew up on a farm in Michigan with no phone,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: no internet, no nothing. Turned twenty years old. You can
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: make money hunting buffalo. You go out on buffalo. You
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: have no idea what you're engaged in, right, you might
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: get it on some like. It wasn't like an evil thing.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: This is the last thing I say about it. But
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: later Horn today, who collected specimens for the Smithsonian. Later
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: he went to Miles City trying to find he wanted
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: to shoot a cup buffalo for the Smiths, and they
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: knew they were going to be gone the Museum Natural History,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Sorry was I can remember which one was? Anyways, someone
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: they wanted some collections, They wanted some pristine mounts before
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the animals were completely gone. He went out to Miles City.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It was in the e in late eight eighties, I think,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And he commented that in Miles City, the ranchers around
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: there mostly came to that area because they were high
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: and hunters, and they stuck around because they were convinced,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: after they had shot them all that there must be
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: more somewhere, and they're just gonna hang tight until they
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: show up. And then a few years went by and
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: they all got into cattle ranching. They didn't even know
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: what they had done. There was rumors about a bunch
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: of Canada millions would come from Canada. They weren't like,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: we got them all, good job boys. I mean, it's
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: just the scale of that, that destruction is sort of
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: unimaginable to us today. But and so how could we
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: even expect any of these guys running around UH to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: have any idea what they're going? I bet you. Illiteracy?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Ill literacy and then another thing like it's a slam.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Illiteracy was probably rampant among the high honors, and there
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: was probably very little education among the high honors. Oh
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I'm sure yeah they were. If you factory and where
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: those guys are mostly from and where they wound up,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and you do some kind of calculation you had about
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: communication and stuff, it would be like if you sent
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: kids from here from current day rural America to Kazakhstan
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and told him that shoot that thing and we will
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: pay you to shoot it, yeah, I mean, and then
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: to them be like, dude, you didn't realize that the
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: populations in Kazakhstan. It's like it would mean nothing to him. Yeah, yeah,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: I mean the h and so it was a lucrative business.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: You know, you could make a lot of money just
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: running around rolling over bison, skinning them out higher skinners
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: three or four five bucks apiece, throw them, throw them
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: on a train. And that's and then and then even still,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: it's not as if they're just doing this um in
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a vacuum. Right. The leather from these hides are going
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: onto factory belts in Chicago and New York. It's fueling
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the industrial revolution um to some degree. So uh yeah,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I mean it's they're they're part of their their cogs
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: in a much larger process. And and to place you know,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: some sort of burden of guilt on them is uh,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's not a very intellectually serious exercise.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So they were filthy. They were filthy. They were filthy. No,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: but I only bring up Dan the historian Dan Flores,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: because Dan Floors uh contacted me and said that I
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: should speak to you about your dissertation, which I'm gonna
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: have you explained. But first, what is explain for the listeners?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Like what is the dissertation? Do you just finished your PhD?
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I did, Yeah, it just has one of those he says.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: He says he says he has two and one of
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: them stands for pretty huge. Uh huh um. Filling the blank,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: but okay, explain what the dissertation is, like, how how
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: that how that whole thing plays out. Yeah, so the
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: dissertation is the final step on the road two a
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: doctoral degree. Um. And so you did your you did
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: your doctoral work under Dan Flores. Yeah, so Dan was
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: my Dan was my doctoral advisor, UM. And I studied
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: history at the University of Montana environmental history. Um. And
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: explain that real quick. Environmental history. Yeah, it's like in
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: a nutshell. Yeah. Environmental historians are interested in questions, uh,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: pertaining to how humans in the past have interacted with
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the environment and how human behavior has shaped the environment
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and also in turn, how the environment has shaped human
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: behave of heer. Um. And so it's a pretty it's
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: a relatively recent, uh sub field, and it really came
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: about in the seventies. Dan was one of the I mean,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: there have always been intellectuals concerned with these questions, but
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: in terms of sort of a professional sub field within history, UM,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: environmental history came about, uh really in the seventies, as
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: environmental concern became a large part of American Life. And yeah,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Cronan is a he's got a couple of classic works. Um,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: who's the guy that did the thing about the death
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: of the frontier? Um? Like, who wrote the thing declaring
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the frontier was dead? In whatever your turn turn Yeah.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: But Turner wasn't an environmental historian. No, No, Turner. Turner
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: is a Western historian. Frederick Jackson Turnderi Jackson Turner. Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Turner had this idea that he would look at the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: census data, right, right, and one day found out that
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: on the census report things were in the US were
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: so lowly or so unpopulated that they would be called
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the frontier. And then one day a census came in
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and they realized there is no frontier anymore, right, And
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: he had this and then was it Cronin that then
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: kind of interpreted that later? Well, yeah, I mean almost
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: all of Western history that said is is sort of
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: produced in conversation with Turner. Um. And yeah, I mean
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the history of the American West. And and there's this
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: long standing debate about whether the West is a process
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: or a place, um. And so Turner is really arguing
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: that the Western, the West is a process, right, It's
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: a process of frontier settlement. It's a process of sort
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: of rendering wilderness into civilization. And that's that's sort of
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Turner's thesis. And he's he's writing at the turn of
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the twentieth century, UM, and he's he's looking at this
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: census date and saying, well, once we as Americans run
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: out of uh trees to cut down or or sort
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: of bison to shoot, right, um, native people's to fight, Um,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: what's what effect is that going to have on uh,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the American people? Because he is really attributing a lot
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: of the distinctive characteristics of American civilization to this process
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of of western or of of sort of frontier settlement. Um.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And so he's tracing um, you know, the the democrat
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the origins of America and of America's democratic political culture
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to all of this availa quote unquote available land right um.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And so Western historians of the American West, or Western
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: historians sort of interchangeable there um throughout the twentieth century
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: have been trying to write because Turner was so influential, UM,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Western historians have been wrestling with this question of um,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: is the West a process? Is it a place? I
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: think environmental historians would argue that the West is a
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: place and that it's defined by um aridity. Uh, there
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: are certain you know, certain key characteristics, environmental characteristics, and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: also characteristics related to its political organization of the federal
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: government is really uh inescapable in the West, whereas in
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the East, a lot of issues of governance are resolved
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: at the municipal or a state level. Whereas you know,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: you look at uh landownership rates and you can live
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: in a federally owned land. Yeah. So so this is
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: you know, not to get into the the minutia of
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the historiography in Western history, but basically there's this long
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: standing debate place process. How do we define the West?
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: If you say that you're interested in the American West
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: and that's what you study, how do you define that, um,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: is Alaska part of the West? Is Hawaii part of
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the West? Yes? No, m all right, Well it's it's
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: you know, this is this is what academics do. Is
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: you just come up with inventive questions to all these yes. No,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: well yeah, um, I just got back from Hawaii. I
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: don't want to get into that, but I'd love to
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: hear someone tell me what would tell me you like
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the pros and cons of calling at the West. So
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: now you did your dissertation, which is like your final,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the final, Like it's it's the final I want to take.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I want to go way back for people who have
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: who haven't dabbled around in college that much like when
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: you go to college, you go to regular college four
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: years that you probably had some kind of graduate degree
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: which took you two or three years. Well, I went
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: straight from so I did my undergraduate degree, uh in Chicago,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: and then I came out to the University of Montana.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I was I was admitted directly into the doctoral program.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: And now the years that take five years, And how
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: many years have you just been working on what would
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: become your dissertation the whole time, the whole time. Yeah,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I sort of began. I mean it's evolved over time,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: but it began in that first semester of graduate school.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: So like it turned into a five year project. Yeah, essentially,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: So I did two years of course work, UM seminars,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: this and that, and then UM the next step is
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: your comprehensive exam. So you come up with a list
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: of the essential books and in a number of fields.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So I did four fields Um, and you each of
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: those lists about a hundred books, so you you read,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I read about four hundred books and sit
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: down and have a conversation with your advisors and they
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: you know, or you'll hear the more or less. Yeah,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: skim to quite a few of them. But read strategically.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: So kids, I don't, man, that ship goes down the kids, man,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: but I have to read, Like I don't want to
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: start talking about that. I love them, I love them. Yeah,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: but the first thing that goal is the ability to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: read books. Yeah, I mean, that's that's. Uh. There's not
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of glamour to graduate school or you know,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: graduate studies and the humanities. But the the the undeniable
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: luxury of it all is that, you know, people expect
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: you to read a lot, and uh if that's something
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: that that you like doing, which is what drawing, what
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: drew me to it. Um, you're expected to read a
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: lot and you have that time available. So when I
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: went to grad, all we did was read many Yeah.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: So yeah, the amount of work you had to do
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: for that, especially I was in fine arts like writing.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It's like basically basically like you could have summed up
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: by saying discore, read for two years and and then
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: if you can, if you got time, write something. Yeah.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: So that's what yeah, I mean, we I did reading.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: You know, the first two years are reading seminars and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: writing seminars. So in reading seminar you might read ten
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: books a term, and then in writing seminar you're expected
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: to produce an article length paper um. And then after
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: two years of that you sort of sent off to
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: prepare for your exams and essentially master these fields um.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: And then once you pass your exams, then you move
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: on to the dissertation phase where you're actually um right.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: And what a dissertation is is it's a book length
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: piece of writing that is expected or or must make
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: an original contribution to uh, the literature. So you have
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: to either engage with a new body of sources, or
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: engage with new questions or or um applied you know,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: a new line of thinking to an old question, something
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: along those lines. So you have to do something original, um.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: And basically it's sort of can you can you do
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: you have the talent? Do you have the requisite knowledge
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: to be a practicing historian? And so it's a it's
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: a process of professionalization essentially, now, because there's probably some
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: dude sitting out there feeling like they tuned into the
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: wrong thing because they're trying to UNI podcast reveal for me.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: What's the name of your dissertation. So the name of
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: my dissertation is green Voters, gun voters, Hunting in politics
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: in Modern America. Oh man, that's rich. Um, that's why
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about before you get into that. Uh,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: give me a quick if you had to do. What's
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: your hunting in fishing background? My hunting and fishing background.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I grew up in outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, grew up fishing,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and group of friends and I in high school decided
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: we want to get into hunting. And uh, none of ours,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: none of our dads hunted, well, one of one of
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: our friends. They just didn't grow up in a hunting family.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: So we sort of were like a self talk guy essentially.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, we we read a lot of magazines, we
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: watched a lot of shows. One of my buddies, my
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: best friend, his dad did hunt, but he, you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: his dad didn't take us all out hunting, right, So
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: we sort of figured it out on our own. And
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a different ballgame in outside of
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Cincinnati because you're sort of setting up a tree. We
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: we got into white tail hunting, so it's find a game, trail,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: set up a tree. Stand sit wait, sit wait. He
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: hasn't throw it on a sack carrots or anything. No
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: we do. We couldn't in Ohio, but yeah, I know.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So so we got into it in high school and
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: we you know, growing up, we we lived by the
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Little Miami River and would run around set and try
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: lines and fishing all summer and that was our I mean,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: that was our big thing. And so we're thinking, yeah,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: you know, we should become hunters, and so we uh
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: so that's I mean, that sort of led me to
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the project in some respects. Is these what my source
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: space for this project is pretty much just field and stream,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: outdoor life, local hunting, of fishing columns, um and and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: so that's that's sort of how I was introduced to
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: the sport primarily, UM and we did a lot of
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: figuring out on our own, but um, these magazines have
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: always been sort of a source of fascination for me,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and also coming from a non hunting family. UM, you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: in some respects, you feel like an observer, right um
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: And so so anyway, that's that's sort of my background.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And now I'm out in Montana and uh, i've the past.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I just finished the doctorate, but uh past six years.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I was out. I was in Alaska prior
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to going to Montana, and so I was split my
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: time between guiding fishing in Alaska in the summer and
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: then run back to Montana for the academic calendar. So
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: it's been it's been a pretty good uh, pretty good
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: life so far. Yeah. Uh, south central Alaska about ninety
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: hundred miles northwest of Anchorage, Mary called Lake Creek for
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: what uh salmon and trout u And it's just people
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: come out to fly out trips for the week or
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: for the out of lodge. So we're just running jet
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: sleds around and good times. Yeah. Alright, so break break down,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: break down your research, Like how would you look at
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: So I look primarily at um like I said, field
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: and stream, outdoor life, nationally circulated hunting magazines, fishing game
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't do. Yeah, I know, I first be for
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: a fishing game. At some point you have to put
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the blinders on and just say I think I've got
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: what I need here, and you can always bring in
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: the big venerables like field stream out or sports, ports
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: the field, the big three, and I didn't I didn't
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: do so much for sports the field. UM. But I
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: also I what I'm what I'm looking at in the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: dissertation is huntings changing, huntings transforming or evolving or changing
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: public culture from the end of World War Two up
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: until about the nineteen nineties. And so I looked for
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: any place where hunters are sort of publicly celebrating or articulating, rationalizing, uh,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: explaining what they do, what it means to them, how
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: they see themselves as hunters, how they identify and understand
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: themselves and what they're doing. Um. And also where they
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: sort of butt up against the non hunting public and
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: how they define themselves in relation to uh, non hunters,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: anti hunters, etcetera. UM, and so so so focusing on
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: the friction, not internal friction, but the friction between the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: friction or lubrication or whatever between people who are hunting
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: people who don't like the broader culture. Yeah. And I
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: like conflict within the hunting world about where do we
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: feel what how do we feel about? No? And I
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: do look at I do look at that as well. Um,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I look at you know how you know you see it.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: You know you see it in today's you know, letters
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: to the editor, this and that. You know, somebody says
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: we as sportsmen should do this, we as sportsman should
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: be on this page. Um and and there is conflict
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: within these ranks. So what I'm looking at is how
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: hunters have um identified over the course about fifty years,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: how they've identified in relation to one another and in
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: relation to the non hunting public um and And it's
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: sort of a mutually constitutive process. And that you know,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: they're not they're not in a vacuum. Uh. They're they're
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: defining themselves in relation to a changing world around them.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Um and they're but but they're not just sort of
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: um blank slates either, right, if that makes sense. So
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: some of the some of the changing public culture comes
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: from within, and some of it is in um in
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: response to outside forces as well. So tell me, like
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: you guys hate generalizations and stuff like that, I know,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: tell me something like tell me something that was tell
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: me something that would surprise me. You found out, like
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: what what in the end one of being like what's
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the what? Right? Well, so they're there there are five
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: chapters to the thing. There's five chapters in an epilogue,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: and they're all, um, they all sort of track a
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: different story throughout about a fifty year span, so it's
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: not written chronologically. Um. And what might interest you the
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: most one of the chapters is right now, will interests
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: me the most is one of the five chapters, So
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: the first one. So the first chapter looks at um
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: hunters and environmental politics from about nineteen to the mid
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. And what I do in that is there's
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: there's sort of this old paradigm of you know, we
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: have conservationists from turn of the century, and we have
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: and this is what a sort of an academic historian
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: would tell you. There are conservationists and they're properly modern environmentalists,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: and there's this moment of rupture whereas you know, at
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: the turn of the century of guys like Difford pin Show,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt, um, all these, you know, just the horrid
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: heroes of conservation um. And and they are really dominating
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: environmental policy making of this period. And then in the
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: post war period, a new set of actors steps in
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: with a new set of values and they are the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: driving force behind some of the landmark legislation in the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. Yeah. Yeah, And so what I try
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: to do in that first chapter is basically say that
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: there's much more continuity than that, and that it it
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: makes for an easy story to tell if you say,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: you know, hunters did had did this at the turn
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of the century, and then non hunters had their their
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: moment in the sixties and seventies, and I'm saying, no, Look,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: if you look through the nineties, forties, fifties, sixties and
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: seve of these uh hunters remain a powerful, engaged, UH
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: political block that are really driving policy making at a
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: local and UH federal level throughout this period. So I'm
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: looking at the ways in which these magazines are So
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like the counterculture spawned this sudden group of environmentalists.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: You went out and like rewrote the books. Yeah, And
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I think I mean, if I were to sort of
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: oversimplify what most is no, no, but but but I
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: think that's a that's a good way of sort of
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: summing up or simplifying what a lot of historians who
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: haven't looked at this stuff would tell you is that
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: there's sort of a counterculture, a new set of values
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies that's really responsible for the
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: environmental legislation and policies that have given us the world
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: that we live in today, essentially UM and that their
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: values and their issues and UM issues of concern supplanted
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: these older uh issues of concern that guys like Roosevelt
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: are concerned that viewpoint in the among historians. Why do
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: people think that that happened? Well, I think that, I mean,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I think that in part it it comes from you know,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of environment a lot of historians, a lot
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: of academics in general, UM study things that they're interested in,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: concerned concerned with, are concerned about UM, and so a
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: lot of the initial scholarship on this subject was written
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: by people who came of age in the sixties and seventies. Yeah. Um, so,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I mean that's sort of how Dan got into environmental
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: The criticism of that generation is how ego centric that
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: generation was. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's so so this
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: but this is how history has written, is that you know, uh,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: there's there's there's sort of a thesis. One group puts
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: out a thesis, they put out an argument, and then
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: other people come revisit that and say, you know, things
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: might have been oversimplified here, they might have been overlooked
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and sort of the initial group that makes sense of
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: things and periodizes things and say is this is you know,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: environment modern quote unquote modern environmentalists are this their X,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Y and Z. They believe A, B and c um.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: That's how they make sense of the past and of
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: of a really messy reality. And and so they come
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: in and do that initial work. And then what I'm
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: trying to do in my project to say, you've you've
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: overlooked UM a much more uh, you know, complex reality.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: If you've overlooked UM stories that might make it a
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: little more difficult to to uh makes sense of what
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: happened in the sixth season seven where where we get
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the Clean Water Act, of Clean Air Act,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: things like that, UM, the National Environmental Protection Act, Endangered
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Species Act, UM. So, so that's sort of what my
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: projects is. So that's the that's the first chapter is
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: is trying to write sort of a counter narrative of
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the twentieth century environmental movement through the eyes of field
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: and stream readers outsoor life readers UM. Was Chapter two.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Chapter two, Chapter two looks at the emergence of anti
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: hunting sentiment UH in the nineteen seventies and the ways
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: in which anti hunting advocates try to harness their own
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: agenda to some of these powerful new environmental laws, and
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: how this dynamic reshapes the way that a lot of
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: hunters perceived these laws. But let me let me back
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: up from it. What what what when did the word
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: well their anti owners? I mean, of course they were,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: but what were they Bambi's in ninety two, right, So, um,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: but Bambi isn't Yeah, I mean Bambi's nineteen forty two.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I that I do with
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: this is and and opposition to hunting goes back further
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: than that. Um yeah, I mean you ever read the
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Old Testament? Yeah? Jacobs? Right? Yeah? And and so this
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: is I mean there there's a huge literature out here.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: But one of the there's an interesting book, I don't
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: know if you've read it, Daniel Justin Herman's Hunting in
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: the American Imagination. And one of his arguments is that, um,
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: sort of the early Puritans actually, if they knew that,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: you know, what would become who would become Americans were
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: people that prided themselves on their hunting culture. Um, the
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Puritans would have been really dismayed by that, because they
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: hunting is something that you do when you're not working,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: and you should always be working, and it's something and
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: so yeah, and so one of his arguments is that
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: sort of early that hunting occupied a different place in
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the American imagination in colonial times, and what his book
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: does is sort of traced that through. Uh, once once
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: the United States is created, then you need some American
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: heroes and heroes that differentiate your culture from that of Europe.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: And so Americans embraced sort of the Daniel Boone types, right,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And so that's a really interesting book. I'm you'd really
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: enjoy that one. But but anyway, Um, there's always been
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: sort of you know, hunting has has occupied different places
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: in the American imagination over time, and what my project
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: does sort of track that through the twentieth century. So
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: to get back to the question of anti hunting sentiment, Um,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: there's opposition to hunting that arises in the nineteenth century. Um,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: the s p c A and some of these anti
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: animal cruelty groups. Yeah, but and they're they're primary, their
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: primary consideration in the nineteenth century was really sort of
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: cruelty to horses because they're they're urban based reformers who
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: are looking at these horses out in New York City,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: getting in London, getting whipped, getting knocked around in the street,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: underfed horses just being put to work. Right. And so
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that's really where this idea of animal cruelty um comes
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: comes into uh more widespread, I guess uh, um it
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: carries it carries more cloud among the wider public. Um.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: And so really in the in the late sixties and
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: early seventies is when this stuff comes to a head.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: When you when you when there became like an anti
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: hunting movement seventies, Yeah, a movement, yeah, Um. There there
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: are a number of groups founded in the mid sixties, um.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: And and one of the reasons for this, and this
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: is what I look at in in this chapter is that, um,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: some of these laws that are created in the sixties
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and seventies to uh for purposes unrelated to the anti
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: hunting agenda are very quickly uh embraced by anting anti
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: hunting advocates in order to uh secure their own uh
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: desired outcomes. Right. And so give me an example, um, yes, yes,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: a protection. Yeah, that's that's a good one. I mean,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: the one that I really focus on in this uh,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: in this chapter is the National Environmental Protection Act of
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine UM, which is signed into law in
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy And people know ANIPA as it's known because
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: it requires environmental impact statements, right, and so if if
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the federal government is going to do some thing or
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: funds something, it requires that that experts come in and
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: assess what impact this action is going to have on
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the environment, right. And this is something that if you
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: look back at the pages of Field and Stream and
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: out their Life, one of the more interesting things that
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I found was that in nineteen forty four or forty five,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the editor of I believe it was Arthur Graham, who
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: is the editor of Outdoor Life at the time, is
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: calling for this almost this exact law because but he's
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: worried about um channelization and the construction of huge dams
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: in the post war era, and so he's writing in
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and this is like in nineteen forty four. Yeah, and
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: so the I mean, this is this is what really
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: fascinates me is you can go back into these magazines
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and this is an issue that's still selling war bonds, right,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: and he's he's calling for a law and he I mean,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: he uses the words, you know, we need a coordinating
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: law with sharp teeth that will hold government officials accountable
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: for what they do to the natural a world. Did
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: he lose his job? It was like people were on
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: board with this stuff. And what I think is and
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: you know, what I think is interesting is if you
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: look at these magazines through the through the forties, fifties,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: sixties into the seventies, a lot of the a lot
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: of the things that they're calling for you would associate
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: with sort of cutting edge, avant garde environmentalism, you know,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: if you consider them in context. Sure, man, the fact
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that someone we've been talking about that then yeah, and
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: and he's he's writing in forty forty five, this law
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: isn't isn't signed. It's signed by President Nixon in the
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and and it's still you know, at the
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: time of it's of its uh signing, it's it's still
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: held as you know, the largest achievement of the crowning
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: achievement of the environmental movement. Right, if you think about
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: what what environmental impact statements require, it's sort of incorporating
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: a new system, a new set of values into the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: policy making process. It's a big deal. And he's calling
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: fort and forty four forty five. And when it came
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: around the anti hunters and the hunters, yeah, so gain
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: or had the hunters lost interest in about the seven No,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: they were. They were still using it um and and
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: using targeted litigation to pursue their own ends right to
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: to pursue UM. They used it a lot. UH. Different
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: sportsman's groups used environment Olympac statements to challenge UM resource extraction, UH,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: channelization of waterways, things like that, um and and it's
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: it's very much celebrated in the page of these magazines
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: when this law is is enacted. UM. But very quickly,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: what you see that anti hunting groups are using lawsuits
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: and making claims under underneath they're saying the environment Olympac
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: statement for this hunting season didn't consider this alternative. And
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: essentially what environmental impact statement does is it asked that
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: somebody sit down and say, if we do a you know,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: one to three will happen if we do be four, five,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: six were happening. So it's sort of the systematic accounting
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of what might happen through these various policies, an environmental
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: impact statement on a proposed hunting season. That's well, that's
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: what they that's what the anti hunting activists demanded that
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: they do in the nineteen sixties or in the nineteen seventies. Um,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and they start challenging just try to make it owners,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Try to make difficult, right, you slow things down and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and sort of the the real fear. And you see
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: this in the magazine some of these some of these
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: writers are saying, well, if they challenge Pittman Robertson with
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the Pittman Robertson Act of seven, which is the act
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: that places an exercise tax on firearms and sporting equipment, etcetera, etcetera,
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: that funds much of the wildlife management in this country. Um,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: the fear of research, habitat and all that stuff, right,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's responsible for the sort of miraculous
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: recovery of all the wild game species in this country
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: between nineteen thirty and nine seventy. When we're talking about
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, uh, in nineteen thirty, there's like half a
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: million deer in nineteen seventies, of fourteen million in nineteen
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: thirty there's uh, just a handful of and turkey and
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: turkeys are a great example. Antelope populations increased like something
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: like fourteen times in in this period of forty years. So, UM,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: it's really a Pittman Robertson and and these funding structors
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: that are built around this model of consumptive use in hunting. UM.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: That's sort of the backbone of of wildlife management in
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: this country. UM. And hunters, you know, hunters today, we'll
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: we'll tell you that with great pride right now. You
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: see that all the time. UM. And and actually the
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: fear among a lot of these writers in the seventies
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: is that Pittman Robertson will be challenged under uh NIPA.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: And and it actually is. Their lawsuits filed and there's
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: a lot of sort of behind the scenes wrangling, UM.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: But but their wildlife wildlife officials, um, you know, government
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: administrators that they're saying, you should do an environmental impact
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: statement on Pittman Robertson. And what they're asking for, um
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: is that there have to be an accounting for every
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: single thing that Pittman Robertson dollars do, which is just uh,
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: totally unmanageable. So you want to put in like a
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: water tank somewhere and right exactly, you have to r exactly.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: And so this is the this is really a moment
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: of crisis. Um. And you'll see, you know, if you
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: go back and read through these magazines, you can see
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: this all unfolding. Um. And so so in this chapter,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: I look at the way you know, when anti hunters
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: harness environmental laws to their own agenda, it changes the
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: ways in which hunters perceive environmental loss. And so this
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: is one of you know, one of the questions that
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: why so many hunters now seem like burdened or annoyed
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: by the Endangered Species Act. Yeah, and and they're I mean,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: they're all. Endangered Species Act is used um a lot
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: by anti hunters as sort of a marketing tool essentially,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: I mean has great cultural cache in the nineteen seventies. Um.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: You know, people have lunch boxes and stuff with charismatic megafauna,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and politicians are going out waving you know, when the
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: environmental when the Endangered Species Act has passed, it's wildly popular.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: It's a wildly popular piece of legislation at a moment which, uh,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: faith in government is declining. Precipitously right in the in
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: the early mid nineteen seventies. And so this is one
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: that lawmakers really hang their ad on. We're doing what
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: the people want, um, but very quickly endanger very quickly,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: anti hunting advocates use claims revolving you know, using this language.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: They're deploying this language of endangered species to target hunters
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: and blame hunters for environmental degradation. And so again in
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: the concept of endangered species is sort of weaponized. Um
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: and and and in a large part where this chapter
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: does is explores the polarization that we see between people
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: who identify as environmentalists and people who identifies as hunters.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: And I know this is a gross, you know, oversimplification
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: of of who hunters are today, right, but I think
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: if you, if you talk to a lot of people,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the words environmentalists and hunters, they're not often used. That's
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: That's why that's why I say I'm a conservation exactly
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: term it too obvious, say conservations. But now and then
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: I just also say yeah, I'll just say like, well, no,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: I'm an environmentalist, you know. Yeah, up until some point
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: the seventies, Horner's said I'm an environmentalist. But they were
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: using one of the people say, m we're using a
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: lot of them were using, um, the terms interchangeably, right.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Cons It's not as if concert the term conservationists all
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: of a sudden supplanted the term environmentalists these magazines in
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. But um, one of the interesting things
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that you'll see is in the sixties and seventies, you know,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: as the article is saying, you know, covering, uh, the
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the development of outdoor education programs at colleges and taking
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: sort of these long haired hippie types into the woods
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: and teaching them about you know, camping and hiking and
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: this and that, and the readers of these magazines are saying,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: this is great, we need these people on our side.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that rings a bell. Just republished all those
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: articles now yeah. No, And so this is I mean
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: it's sort of echoes to you know, contemporary development, sort
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: of echo what I see in these sources from from
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: forty years ago. That's amazing. Three chapter three chapters. Cool,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: leave chapter two for a minute. Yeah, absolutely, unless you're
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: least you feel like we missed the point. No, No,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I mean that's that's sort of what I'm doing. That's
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: sort of what I what I look at is is um,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: this this polarization and the changing politics of the word
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: sort of environmentalism in the hunting community. Um. Now, if
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: you really want to act like you're piste off at someone,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: like you'd be like a tree hugger, right, you know,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: But dude, I'm prone to hugger tree. No, no, man um,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: especially when I'm trying to climb it. But you know,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: I wanna tell you something real quick. The the one
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: note I had ahead of talking used to tell you
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the story when I was in high school. I Gradurom
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: High schoo Okay, I grew up in western Michigan. In
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: one or two I can't remember. Me and the guys
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: I hung out with, largely as a joke but kind
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: of not. We started a group called hate Hunters against
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: teenage Environmentalists, and we had T shirts and wild game
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: dinners and we did like a fundraise, a can goods
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: drive as a fundraiser. Because we had never even heard
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: the word environment mentalists. Then all of a sudden it
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: was there, and we thought that like we were on
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: the impression that an environmentalist that that meant anti hunter. Yeah,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: And because there was a school group. These kids in
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: school who were into charismatic megaphon and dolphins and stuff,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: but a very strong anti hunting bent. Started like an
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: environmental group, but all they talked about was anti hunting
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: because in their mind that's what the debate was, right.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Their mind was like pitted a bit like, oh, yeah,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: you're an environmentalist. Oh I hate hunting to write was
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: their tone many years ago. So we started hate. We
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: had T shirts and said, hey and off it was
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: hunters against teenage environmentalists. I said a joke, we'd have
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Wildgate dinners and like. It was only years later that
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I realized that that's not what that meant. Yeah, I
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: mean this is. I think this is. That's a pretty
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: common misconception. I think a lot of people associate the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: term environmentalists with the politics of anti hunting. One of
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: my buddies from Hate just got hold of me and
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: sent me I'd lost my T shirt. He sent me
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: his old T shirt nice, which I hung in my
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: close in a safe place. My wife's like, best not
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: to share that one on social media. Yeah, but explain
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: you had for three to me? Chapter three looks don't
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: get less interesting, do they? Um, No, it's a writer's mistake,
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: man to put all the good stuff in the front,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, No, it's uh, I sort of I
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: wrote it backwards, so I wrote the first chapter last,
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: and uh it was a sprint to the finish, so
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: I was just kind of hammering it out. But um, yeah.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Chapter three looks at uh gun control and the politics
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: of gun control on the pages of these magazines, and
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: how that conversation changes over time. When did the conversations start,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: um in a way that we'd recognize it today. The Yeah,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I think the origins of the modern second Amendment debate
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: are in the nineties sixties. Um and And is the
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Gun Control Act of ninety is sort of the the
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: foundational piece of the modern regulatory uh framework, right and
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: um and that's when the debate that we would recognize now, Well,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the debate changes in the seventies. Um and And this
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: is what that chapter looks at and it it really
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: looks at it. Um. I don't do it a really
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: detailed analysis of you know, this proposed bill, did this,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: this proposed bill did that? I look at more popular
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: perception of this debate and and and the pages of
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: these magazines. When hunters say we as hunters have a
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: stake in this question where do we fall? UM on
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: what side are we? Um that the answer to that
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: is is in this sort of constant uh negotiation through
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: the seventies and um, you know the and and and
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: this conversation is also unfolding in relation to questions about
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: environmental protection. UM. Yeah, and well, I mean by the eighties,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you see guys writing into these magazines saying and and
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: this is this will sound familiar to a lot of
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: your listeners today. You know, we we vote Democratic and
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: we lose our guns to hunt with, or we vote
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Republican and we lose our lands to hunt on. Dude,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I always say the same. This is something, this is
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: something that that you you know, I mean, there's a
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: there's a letter to the editor, um that that says
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: that exact uh that has that exact phrase in it
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: from UH. I think it's nineteen eight or nine four.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: I think it's probably the the in in in the
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: lead up to the eight four election. U. After the
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: initial stage brush rebellion has fizzled out. Um. But but
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: this is one of sort of my my The central
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: assumptions of this project is that it's very hard for
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: people to to think about one question at a time,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: right as we as as sort of political animals. You know,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: all of these things are constantly uh influx in relation
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: to one another, and so political behavior isn't just you're
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: not presented with sort of an ideal ticket, um. And
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: these tickets change over time, and as a result, you know,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: people have to ask themselves questions, what do I believe
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: in at this moment, where do my loyalties lie, etcetera, etcetera.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: And so that chapter three looks at the emergence of
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the modern Second Amendment debate, how it changes in the seventies,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: and and ultimately how sportsmen react to this um new
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: point of fracture in American political life, and how did
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: they react, um, I think, without with without getting to
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: uh detailed here, in the late nineteen sixties and early
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, it was far more common to see sportsmen say, uh,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: we occupy sort of a position of influence in this
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: debate because we have a legitimate purpose um. And these
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: are the words that they're using. They're not mine, but
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: we have a legitimate purpose for these firearms, and so
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: we should use our position of influence um, in order
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: to come up with reasonable solutions UM and it's in
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies you see
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: sort of the larger UH and and there's obviously exceptions
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: to this. It's it's very much in debate, but there's
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: there's a large element calling for a position of moderation
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: on these issues. The debate becomes much more polarized in
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: the mid seventies UM nineteen seventy, nineteen seventy five in particular,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: UM and there are some all you know, there are
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: there are a number of other developments, but increasingly the
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: position of sort of UM uncompromising hardline opposition to new
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: firearm regulation becomes a more popular opinion, as expressed in
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: these magazines, Well there had to be new firearms, Like
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: when I look at fire are issues now, it's so
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: much has to do with you don't hear the word
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: very often, but a lot of it has to do
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: with technology. Roy's grappling with when I say, oh, the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: American public, whatever side of this issue around or always
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: grappling with, well, what are we gonna do about what
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: you might consider to be emerging technologies? Right? You know? Right? UM?
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Availability on the marketplace of things that weren't available on
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: the marketplace before. So is what you're talking about? Was
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: that driven by availability of new weapons classes or was
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: it just like well, the in the in the mid
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: nineties seventies, the concern, uh is pistols that are called
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: quote unquote Saturday Night specials. Right, and it's in the
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: debates and stuff you don't even think about now. The
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: debate sort of echoes what you hear about quote unquote
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: assault rifles today. Right. People are arguing this as an
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: arbitrary categorization that you know, one a gun of another
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: type could do, could be equally as harmful or injurious
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: whatever like just like but it's but it's a big
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, and and you know what you think about it, Uh,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: it's actually a pretty um, it's a pretty mainstream debate.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: I Mean, there's a there's a cover of Field and
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: stream h called Saturday Night that the title of the
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: feature pieces Saturday Night Special the real issue. And it's
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: got this big smoking handgun on the cover. It's this
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: illustration and and the the author of the peace Bob
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Bob Brister I believe is the author of the piece.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: He essentially writes, Um, we have no use for these
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: and as gun owners, we shouldn't be lumped in with um,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: you know, street thugs and this and that and these
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: criminals and what that was. That was the editorial stance.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: There was a big blowback to that. And and and
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: this is part of what I look at is the
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: politics of you know, there's this larger suspicion at the
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: time to um CBS owns Field and Stream, and CBS
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: puts out at the time at the time, Yeah, and
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: they put out um some really sort of nasty anti
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: hunting hit pieces as documentaries on TV. The Guns of
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Autumn is one UM and and so readers there there
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: are a lot of letters to the editor. And I
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: also looked at the personal papers of writers and editors
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: for these magazines, and you'll see that they're getting mail saying,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: are you guys in control of your magazine or is
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: it the the guys up at CBS. UM and so
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: there's the and so so Field and Stream has to
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: sort of, uh steal its resolve essentially and really come
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: out as you know, we are on the sportsman side
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: in this one. And they adopt a more hardline position editorially.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And and I mean there's this is this
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: is at the time when suspicion of the media um
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: becomes more popular. Uh in American life. The story of
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Jim Zumbo. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah no, And it's very very,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: very exactly, it's very similar to that. It's very similar
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: to that. And so this is well, I'm not familiar,
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: you're not so Oh my god. I mean it's such
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: a you know the name of Jim Zumble, venerable, long
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: time hunt done a lot for hunting, a long time
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: gone right, a long time hunting writer. He right when
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: blogging kind of started. He had done a blog entry
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: where he had come from. He was blogging, I believe
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: from Wyoming. I've been on hunting Kyles and mentions in
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: his blog. Let me back up and say, this guy
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: had been I think he'd been a staffer at out
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: their Life for twenty five years. Was sponsored by all
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the big players. Okay, had his own like Jerkys, his
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: own everything, right, I mean, he was like the name
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: he's like the Bill Dance of hunting and shared with
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: his blog readers his opinion that or he relates the
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: story how he was hunting Kyle to some guys who
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: were telling him how guys have started hunting coyotes with
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: a RS and he says, hunters have no business using
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: these terrorist guns. I say, Bannon from the woods right now,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: now immediately, I mean his show, all his sponsorships, his
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: position at the man like everything was immediately stripped through
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: public outrage. And he later attempted or redact, like how
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: do he say that word? Redact? He would later try
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: to redact and he said that he had been out
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: in the wind all day and had it has been
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: a long day. It was very tired man when he said,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: and that didn't work. Um. And later he went through
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: a he went through a very public sort of he
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: like enlisted himself sort of in a re education camp,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: you know, um, in a very public way, and went
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: hunting with the guns that he had said he was
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: opposed to, and did a did a lot of steps
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: to try to you know, recuperate. And it was like
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: everything about it was sad. I don't know about what's sad, um, clearly,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: you know it was kind of in one way, it
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: was kind of the beginning of uh of just like that,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: like here's a guy who's always gone through like an
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: editorial process, right, and it always you know, you write
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: something you write another draft, right, and that kind of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: stuff like gives you time to sort of like filter
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: out like what you're thinking and what you're sing, you know,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: like what do you really believe? Like I'll get like
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: everyone has written a really nasty email at eleven at night,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: right two, and then if you have the wherewithal to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: not hit sand at eight in the morning, you'd be like, wow,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not gonna quite put it that way.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna put a different way. But he didn't. He did.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: He just put this out there like bann them, you know,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: and people took him very literally, like so it's never
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: really clear like what he and it was clear like
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: he said what he said, right, but you don't know
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: like had he gone through his normal thinking on it,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: you know, and talked to his buddies, right, and the
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: buds he said, well, you don't think about this way, Jimmy,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: not look at this way or whatever, and you think
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: about the ramifications what you're saying. And but it was
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: just like it was it was it was just painful.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, this guy had really in many ways devoted
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: his life to um the promotion of hunting, you know,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: and it was just I mean, just eviscerated and just
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: like people who never heard of Jim Zumble on whatever
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: morning that was on Tuesday, we're feigning just the biggest disappointment,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It was like it was
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: quick he became famous in a crowd that he who
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: had never been famous with you know. Um, it was
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: just it was that was sad. It was sad watching
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: him have to sort of like do I always thought
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: of when the communists like rolled into Saigon and put
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: millions of people in re education camps. It was like
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: it was like him having to go to re education
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: camp because he's just like a like an old guy.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: And then out of that came the term like a fud, right,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: a fud and you're a fund as a dude again,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: I've been accused of being a fund. A fund is
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: a guy who looks at firearm issues through the lens
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: of a hunter, because like Elmer Fund, I guess he's
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: got a shitty gun. I don't know, so I'll be like,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: you're like a fud if you view because in all honesty,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: the Second Amendment has no mention hunting. Like I'll always
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: have people say like, oh yeah, well you should be
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: able to have guns because you hunt. I'm like, wow,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: you know, you know, in some respect, maybe I'm glad
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: you feel that way because at least you allowed that
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: there is a reason to have guns, like in your mind,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: like it's not like a dead end deal. But the
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: frameworers of the Constitution, the Second Amendment, we're not thinking
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: about the guys right to go out and shoot squirrels
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: right there, Like it wasn't what they were trying to protect.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: If it was, they would have said something like that
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: it was not on their mind. So that's not like
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: a plausible argument. But the whole thing was sad. The
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: whole thing was sad. Read up on. I wrote a
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: thing in Salon about Jim zombo Um when it was
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: just like I just wish he had sad on what
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: he said and thought about it for a couple of
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: days because I feel, having never met the guy, um,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: I feel that he would have like whatever, a couple
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: of days later he'd be like, well, you know, I
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: don't like it, Like there's what, like, let's think about
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: the message we're sending. He would have like he wouldn't
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: have went out and said like let's ban him. Now.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I think it was just I don't think it's what
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: he would have I don't think it's what he meant. Well,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: I don't do it's what he would have said had
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: he thought about it longer. And I think that he
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: got so just like it was just watching like a
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: nice old man just get beat to death on the curb.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: But a lot of people look at like a great victory,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: great victory, and it kind of sent a message like
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: don't method us, you know, And I think that that,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: you know, the message resonated. But anyhow, it's just funny,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: like when you talk about that story, it's like you
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: that story plays out now and then Yeah, I mean
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of what I see in these magazines thirty
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: forty fifty years ago, um, they they echo events and
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: developments that I remember from my own time in my
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: lifetime reading these mag as a reader, right and as
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: a researcher. So that was really interesting to see. I mean,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: the blowback from that wasn't you know, it wasn't this swift,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: And I think technology tightens that. People just falling in love.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: People were falling in love with the web man. But
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: you absolutely get uh, you know, you absolutely would see
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: letters to the editor from from the mid nineties seventies,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: saying who's in control of of the editorial position of
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: this magazine? Is it you, guys um or can we
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: trust you? Or as CBS dictating the content here? Did
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: another editor recently publish a anti gun letter to the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: editor and lost his job? I'm not sure. I can't
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: remember where I think he published. Just telling you listeners,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: I could be messing this up. I don't think I am.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: If i'm if I'm messing it up, I'm not messing
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: up the main just I'm messing up a detail. A
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: an editor I believe published a anti gun like a
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: gun editor at a gun magazine published an anti gun
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: letter to the editor was in losses lost the position,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: which is like which which is weirder than the zumble
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: thing weirder because it's sort of like, uh, you know,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: it was almost like he was sort of using the
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: magazine as sort of like a place for debate in
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: a place that where debate wasn't welcome in it is
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, that's a tricky thing I would
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: never do. Like an episode on my show, well, I remember,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: like this week a meat eater, We're not going hunting,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: We're going to an anti hunting convention, right, you know,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: I mean it would be like, uh, it'd be weird.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Well that's I mean, what's funny though, And this is
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: one of the larger takeaways from the project that I
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: see over in terms of measuring sort of the larger
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: change over time is that hunting's public culture. I feel
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties before you have
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: these these uh, larger public challenges to hunting, it's a
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a public culture that's much more open
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: to debate. I mean in in Outdoor Life publishes and
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: and uh, oh fifty four maybe um or maybe this
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: is forty eight, they published an article called why I
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: gave Up Hunting and they say, this guy makes it.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: You know, we're not we're not saying we're on board
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: with this, but he he makes a compelling case, and
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: we thought that this voice should be heard. Have you
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: seen something he didn't want to see? Um? I mean
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: he he basically just described this as a he he
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: sort of woke up one day that the author of
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: the piece. I'm not sure i'ming to remember is the
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: author's name, but basically says I woke up one day
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: and sort of realized that um, what I was doing,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: uh was sort of indulging a more primitive uh side
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: of me that that right, yeah, yeah, And and they
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: publish it, right, and you can't imagine that story. You
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: could get it published, but it wouldn't be published in
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: field stream outdoor life, right, right exactly. And so the
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: question I mean, and and you can sort of be,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: uh be skeptical and say they're just you know, publishing
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: that piece, They're fanning the flames and sort of you know,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: drawing lines and sam, but I really do you know,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: you look at there there's debate about the morality of
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: hunting in the forties and fifties and early sixties before
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: the anti hunting movement really gains attraction, But the debate
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: is much more um Ah, I don't know what the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: right word to use. I mean there there's a spirit
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: of sort of honest consideration of other viewpoints that that
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: you don't see as much in contemporary culture. Well, I
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: would argue that honestly, we know what I mean, like
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: the hunting like the hunting community. Who who feels the
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: compulsion to engage in the debate about hunting? Right? Lovely?
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: This hunt right right, Like my brothers when you talk
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: about they don't like they don't you know, it's just
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: not what they're doing, right, They're not like sitting talking
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: to someone about it right now all day in time,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: but they're talking about something else, right. So Anyways, those
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: of us who you're right grapple with this stuff verbally
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: with other people. Um, we're not like talking right now.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: The broader hunting community isn't talking right now about like
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: so much like to hunt or not to hunt. But
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: we are having a very spirited, very divisive debates about
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: high fence, right, yeah, about long range shooting, long range technologies. Um,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: the drone thing. I thought it was gonna become big,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: but so many states are getting out ahead of it
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: so quickly that it might not become an issue. Laser
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: range finders right, souped up compound bows. It's like we're
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: always sort of Um, there is still that debate because
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: I can't think of a hunting writer or or a
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: shooting magazine editor who has a weighed in on what's
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: too far a shot. But I think too that there's
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: another side to these conversations. There's there's a very vocal
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: element of the hunting public today that says hunters shouldn't
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: be criticized and other hunters right, and that I think
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: that's a product of this, this this cultural shift that
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: that I tracked in the in the in the dissertation
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: of the seven sixties, seventies, primarily the seventies is sort
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: of my big pivotal decade. But I think this, you know,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: us hunters have our backs to the wall. We don't
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: need to be debating the ethics of what the guy
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: next to you is doing. And and I think that
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: is an unhealthy I think that's that's that guy's pulling
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: that guy's pulling the plug on the boat. Yeah, like
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: when we're on this boat together. But just cut ahold
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: at the bottom up and there's there's all chapter four.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: But if you got any concluding thoughts about three later,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: I want to make sure to cover your whole deal
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: for chapter four. Chapter four was the one I was
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: going to begin with because chapter four tracks the changing
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: culture of wild game consumption from to and that's pretty
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: interesting in the way in which the changing and sort
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: of sort of how the changing ways in which hunters
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: used to meet that they that they kill, that they harvest, whatever, um.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: That how that changes how they imagine what they're doing.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: So if you can't fill the freezer for the winner
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to feed your family all year because you don't own
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: a freezer, because it's what are you doing? Right? And yeah,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: and and I mean refrigerators. Refrigerators are far more widespread
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: in the immediate post war period, but freezer ownership is
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really take off until the mid sixties. I've
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: never thought about that. I mean, that's similar to that. Yeah,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: Daniel Boone, Okay, on up, Jim Bridger, jet Smith. They
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: did all that ship without flashlights. Man, when it got
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: dark it was dark. Yeah. Yeah, you can do some
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: shop with a candle or a fire, but they did
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: without flashlights. You go out and spend a couple of
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: weeks in the was of no flashlight. And I'm not
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: talking about Alaska in July, but like I spent a
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: couple weeks and realize how much stuff you get done
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: under artificial illumination and how much like really important stuff
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: happens on artificial illumination. Imagine, like it's like one day
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: I was a currenty Like wow, man, when it got
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: dark it was dark. Yeah, but no refridge, Like what
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: were they? What did they what did they say when
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: they had no fridge? Well, it's hard to I mean,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: it's it's hard to generalize, right, But one of the
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: things that you so, so what what struck? And this
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: wasn't initially a chapter in the project, but as I'm
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: reading through these magazines I and and especially local newspaper columns,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: you kept I kept running into these anecdotes about, uh,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: you know, people only eat things they shoot because they
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: want an excuse to shoot another something like that. Whereas
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: I think that the people still say that, well, yeah,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: but I think that and obviously they're options, but I
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: think that for the most part, Um, what what I
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: saw over this several decade long period is a changing, uh,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: a much more widespread adoption of the ethics of consuming
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: what you kill. Right. Um. And obviously people have consumed
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: what they killed since the dawn of time, right, but
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: there's certain it's why people into hunting. Yeah, it is right.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: But but if you look at like the late nineteen
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: forties and early nineteen fifties, Um, I mean one of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: the things that I one of the things that I
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: never really thought about before I got into the project
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: is um hunting became much more popular in the immediate
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: post war decade. We we often think about hunting is
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: sort of this declension. You know, at one point in
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: history all people hunted to to live, and that number
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: has just been steadily declining. But hunting um sort of
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: like religiosity. There are moments of revival, right yeah, huge,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Basically this whole generation like that my dad started. My
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: dad started getting serious about big game hunting immediately after
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: World War Two. I mean, like, there's a lot of
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: guys round who used to traveling around, used to hang.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: All those guys having a good time. They were stir crazy, right,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: like they didn't want to get into the thing. The
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Hell's Angels came out at the same time, my dad
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: like cruised around with buddies of his and they hunted
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: because they were out of their mind. I mean, it's
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: a it's a phenomenon, yeah, I mean it's it's a
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: it's a post war phenomenon. So in nineteen forty there's
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: like seven millions something hunting license is sold, and by
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty it's like fourteen million. It's it nearly doubles.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: And think how ald those guys were too. It's like
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: now the average hunter is what like in his late
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: forties or fifties or something like that. I mean, this
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: guys years old and so and and it's funny, I
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: mean the way that you phrase that there's an editorial
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: and outdoor life before the end of the war, and
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: and the I'm the author's escaping me at the moment,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: But he writes, you can't introduce millions of young men
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: to the joys of firearms and living in the woods
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: and not expect and expect them to just give it up,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: you know, at the drop of that hat. Right. Remember
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: a neighbor down the road of ours who was a pilot,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: like flew a plane in World War Two, And he
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: later talked about getting home from World War two and
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: and asked some kind of like the things he did
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: for a while, and he said, I enrolled like he
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: had the g I bill enrolled in school, sat there
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: for a couple of days and just realized, after what
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I just did for two years, you've got to be
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: kidding me. Sitting chair, you know, Yeah, there's just no way.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: And and so this is I mean, it's it's a
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: new passion for a lot of a lot of young
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: men in this period. And if you think about the
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: numbers of wildlife that existed in the nineteen thirties or
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: you know, prior to Pittman Robertson, prior to this through
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: rebounding of all these wild game populations. You think about
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: how that changed, um, sort of the culture of hunting, right,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: if there's if there aren't any deer in your backyard
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: to shoot, sort of what it means to to drive
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: to the north Woods, get your deer and come back home.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: You're not taking you know, your little kid out on
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: the weekend and going hunting with them, right, It's it's
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: your your war buddies. You're taking your red and black
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: checkered outright. But but what you know, with the novelty
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: of this behavior for a lot of these guys, Um,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: there are some complications. Rates of accidental shooting skyrocket in
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties and early nineteen shot Oh yeah, yeah,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: I mean this is this is a huge sports illustrated
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: I think in like the nineteen fifty two predicted that
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: more hunters would get shot that year than like moose,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: big horn, wild goat, and they list you know, basically
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: everything other than deer. They said more, you know, more
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: American men are going to get shot in this hunting
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: season and all of these species of big game combined.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: My old man loved the irony of the fact that
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: he had was on the Anzio Beach, had invasion. Okay,
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: fought all through the Italian Peninsula, marks all way to France,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: and was injured, but never by a bullet, never scratched
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: to buy a bullet, and came home and they were
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: hunting rabbits and the guy shot him in the foot
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: of the twelve gate shotgun point blank range. You know, yeah,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: it's just like he's like, how could that be? I mean,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: it was a common experience, relatively speaking, but get but
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: get me into the like, okay, how would they deal
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: what what? Before? When these guys all start hunting deer,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: they don't have freezers. They're not like seasoned woodsman who
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: know how to smoke hands and know how to do
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: like primitive old school meat preservation techniques. Would you just
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: good deering, party with it and eat it in a week?
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: Well that's that's why I mean, I found a lot
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: of references to guys running around town trying to hand
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: meat off to neighbors and and this and that, right,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: trying to get rid of the thing. Before it's spoiled. Um.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: And there you know, you could rent freezer space. Um.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: And sportsmen were earlier adopters of this technology, freezers and
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: and other Americans and and freezer companies. Actually you'll see
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: these advertisements in in the late early nineteen fifties when
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: these freezer manufacturers starting to really push this technology. They're saying, hey,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: imagine eating year round what you killed this fall. Yeah,
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: And they're actually laws on the books in the late
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: nineteen forties. Um. You know. One of the ways in
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: which some of the early wildlife regulations prohibitor intended to
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: curtail poaching was by um criminalizing possession of wild game
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: within X number of days after the end of the season.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: And in some states, I think it was like five
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: or six states when the season ended, you can't have
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: any any wild game in your house, yeah, and so
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: and so there, because social was if you have it,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: you probably shot it last Yeah. Um, you know, why
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: would you why would you have a tenderloin from Why
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: tell you shot you know, six months ago? Something like that,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: as so many people do today. But so so in
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: these magazines. If you look at these magazines in in
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties, some of these editors are saying,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: we need to we need to reinvent these laws because
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: there's more and more sportsmen by freezers and have the
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: means to preserve while gaming around. These laws are actually
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: going to penalize law abiding sportsmen, or they're gonna penalize
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: sportsman who want to conserve this this meat music to
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: feed their family. Um. And so I mean another side
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: story or another sort of thing that you'll see in
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: these magazines again again and also in in newspapers. Um,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: these accounts people sort of openly acknowledging that most and
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: you'll you'll see these words. And so it's not my
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: sort of me poking at people in the past, but
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: you'll see these words again again. Most of the wild
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: game in this country is wasted. You'll see that. I mean,
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: you'll see it in anywhere from Ladies home journal to
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: UH to field and streamed outdoor life. It's sort of
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: this open, ugly secret. Well it's not, yeah, I mean,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: And but I think back then the difference is back
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: then the there wasn't a sort of the the ethical
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: consideration of wasting what you kill wasn't nearly as prominent
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: on the page of these magazines UM and that really
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: is it because they didn't have an awareness of finiteness
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: or or or is it something different. It's a point
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: of concern I think for a lot of wildlife officials
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: and administrators who are tasked with conserving this resource, and
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: those are sort of the terms that they view it in.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: And so in the nineteen sixties you see state fish
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: and Game UH departments putting out cookbooks and putting out
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: guides on how to prey and and this is something
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: that agricultural extension services throughout the country had been doing,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: you know, piecemeal, but it really takes off in the sixties,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: especially as freezer has become more available. And then especially
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: once hunting comes under um pressure from anti hunting activists
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: who are saying, you're doing this, you know, just to
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: serve some kind of blood lust or this or that,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a wasteful, destructive practice. Increasingly UM hunters
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: are defending their pastime by um highlighting that they're using
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: this as a means to feed their family. UM. And
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: and there's a huge social scientific literature from the nineties
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: seventies where there are public opinion polls of of the
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: general public, not just hunters and anti hunters, but of
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: the non hunting sort of disinterested public right, and the
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: approval figures of hunting are much much higher as they
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: are today when you emphasize, uh, the the eating, the
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: consumptive aspect of it, right, eating what you kill, UM,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: And so that in the seventies this really takes off
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: in it also, I also tie it in or dovetail
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: it with um the economic misfortune of a lot of
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: uh the country during this period, Like if you think
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: about again d industrialization, economic stagnation. UH. You see in
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: the sources, you'll see in magazine articles that you know, verbatim,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: Deer hunting in the North Woods this year took on
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: a new uh, a new level of significance as out
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: of work, Yeah, as as laid off auto workers are
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out a way to provide for their families.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: You know, we had that a few years ago. It
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: was announced too much fanfare that there had been a
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: slight uptick in license sales. You know, people were very
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: excited about it, and UM, many people interpreted those numbers,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: and one interpretation you kept seeing again and again was
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: it was contemporaneous with economic crash. And then you had
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of dudes who had a lot of time
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: on their hands and did a lot of hunt in
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: those couple of years. Yeah, I mean, and the people
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: that are that really uh, some of some of the
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: people that were hit the hardest by the the economics
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: stagnation in the nineties seventies. Um, we're blue collar, middle
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: class breadwinners in you know, the upper rust belt Michigan.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: You think about strong deer hunting culture, right, and so
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: in that context, this behavior, this practice takes on a
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: new significance. This is how and this is you'll see
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: this again and again if you look at local newspapers
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: and like Youngstown, Ohio, places like that, there's a story,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: you know, a local interest story come Christmas time about
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: an out of work, uh, out of work guy who
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: went out and fed his family for the winner, you know,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: with a deer too. And it becomes yeah, and it
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: becomes sort of this trope um that you just don't
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: really see. And and it's not to say that people
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: didn't consume what they killed in the forties and fifties,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: but it just takes it resonates in new ways in
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: the imagination in these other contexts. Chatter five, Chapter five
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: after five time. Yeah, how long we've been talking? Probably overboard.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: We're getting there, but no, I think we can. We
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: can finish up Chapter five. Chapter five some final thoughts
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: or yeah. Chapter five. Chapter five looks at UM, the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: ways in which the hunting in American life is increasingly
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: debated with rights based claims UM in the nineteen seventies
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: and nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. You know, people claiming
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: I have a right to hunt and and and conversely,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: I also look at the politics of of tribal hunting
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: and fishing rights because the two unfold simultaneously. UM and
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: and I really sort of tell the story of UM. Obviously,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: people have claimed that their rights to hunt, dating back
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: UM much longer, right, further back than than this period
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: that I'm considering. But Daniel Boone had no right to
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: be doing what he was doing. Much one he was
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: doing was land claimed by the British clown crown, and
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: he was like trespassing not only on a Native American land,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: he was trespassing on the land claimed by another country. Yeah. So,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: so one of the interesting things that I discovered in
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: my research was this article from like a law review
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. And this guy's making mention of
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: the fact that Pennsylvania at the time of the Constitutional
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: Convention had a pretty radical democratic, small d democratic political culture.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: Um and in Pennsylvania, I'm I'm certain that it's Pennsylvania.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: I'm also certain that nobody else is gonna call me
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: out on this one, but I think Pennsylvania suggested incorporating
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: into the Bill of Rights a right to hunt on
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: all unoccupied lands within the new nation. Man. And it
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: was Jettison, really yeah, yeah, yeah, so that was that
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: was But yeah, so this this guy like in the
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, apparently a dug up some transcript of of
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: the Philadelphia delegation or something like that when they're meeting
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: to debate the ratification of the Constitution. Anyway, Um so
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: I look at I look at the ways in which
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: and and part of it stems from the rise of
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: new anti hunting strategies like um, um, you know, folks
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: showing up in the woods trying to disrupt hunts and
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: hunters making claims I have a right to be here.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: This is a little it's like a lot of states
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: ratified rassment. Yeah, this is the sort of the origins
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: of the modern debate over hunter harassment loss which is
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: what I look at, I have a right to hunt.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: I'm doing something lawful, authorized by the state, um and
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: and my rights are being infringed upon. But yeah, it's
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: kind of you probably know better, but it's like an
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: implied right. Be like like because you know, people are
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: talk about the right deprivacy the constitution, right, there is
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: no it's an interpretation, right, there's no one because there's
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: a you know, the right privacy, which is like a
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: thing where like we accept that that's an that that's implied.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: That's what idea, that right privacy. So people talk about
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: you have a right to hunt, it kind of winds up.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: It's like, um, you have like an implied right. There's
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: like a cult. There's like an hereditary cultural thing enabling
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: you to hunt. And then it's interesting to see like
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: the hunter harassment stuff was almost kind of a step
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: in the direction of saying like, well, at least have
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: the right to hunt without you messing with me. Yeah,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: And and the debate over these hunter harassment laws centers
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: around competing rights claims because the anti hunting activists advocates
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them, um argue that these
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: laws are infringing my right to test or to free
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: speech or whatever you want to call it right and
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: so so ultimately, um, sort of the the stakes of
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: this hunting and anti hunting debate are amplified by the
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: arena in which it's taking place, or the the language
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: in which it's taking place of rights claims, right space claims,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: which are pretty powerful claims in American political culture, especially
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: in the second half of the twentieth century, following all
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: of the big so you know, social movements, the civil
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: rights movement of the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties whatever. So. Um, So,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: the fact that this is a language that's being adopted
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: and appropriated in order to you know, engage in this
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: contest over the the the ethics of hunting, the morality
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: of hunting, heightens heightens the sort of emotional stakes that
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: people have in it. Um. And so that's that's that chapter, UM.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: And then that blog. That blog looks at and it's
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: just really briefly, UM, looks at this debate over public
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: lands that you know, it's around the late nineteenth century,
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: early twentieth century, rears its head again in the eighties
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: and seems to be rearing its head again. Yeah, just
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: like and so yeah, so that's that chapter sort of
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: sketches out the role that the hunting public has played
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: in this eight and uh it's a pretty powerful role, dude. Man,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: I hope that in twenty years you can write another
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: dissertation about how this whole anti public land thing got
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: just squashed by hunters in the two thousand and sixteen
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: two era. Well, if I'm writing another dissertation in twenty years,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: I have made a series of terrible mistakes. Oh, which
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: leaves me the last thing I want to ask you.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: This is my concluding thought. What do you gotta do now?
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: Get the thing published in like a major Uh yeah,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: so I mean you gotta do. I'm sort of catching
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: my breath and uh, it was, like I said, it
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: was kind of a sprint to the finish there, to
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: get to get wrapped up, and uh, I'm sort of
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: thinking about publication options and and thinking about publishers and
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: and uh like academic type publishers. Well, yeah, I think
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: there's an I think there's a popular audience for it.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: So at the moment I submitted, but I know I'm
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: not saying that needs to be academic. I mean to
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: make it be a dissertation. Once let's say Scruber publishes it,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: does that still count? Okay? I don't know if he
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: had to be like it had to go through the
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: academics publishes it. Yeah, but it doesn't have to go
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't have to go through like the peer
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: review process. No that So, so what happens is after
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: you write the dissertation, you submit it to a committee
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: of examiners and they read it, and they're ultimately the
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: arbiters of whether or not this constitute say an original,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: valuable uh contribution to the literature. And so Dan it
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: was as my advisor was the head of that committee.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: And then I had five other professors of history and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: a professor of environmental studies who read the thing, and
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: we sat down and you defend. It's a defense. So
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: they sit down and ask you, why did you do
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: it this way? You know, what are you missing here?
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: It's as I readgious, I would have done this this way.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: And you you answer and address their concerns as best
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: you can, and then you're asked to leave the room,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: and they ultimately come back and say he either passed
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: it or you didn't, so well, I passed. That's why
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting here. So now now that you've done that,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: can take any publication venue you want. Yeah, it's mine.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: Um it. You submit it to an online database, but
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: you can put a hold on it for several years
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: as you're working out how exactly you want to publish it.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: Um and and ideally you publish it with the oppress
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: that will give you the widest audience possible. So you
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: don't want to send it to something I don't even
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: want you to kind of think I was suggesting that
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: it wasn't Yeah for that. I just thought that because
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: you're involved in this process, that you have to stay
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: within that world. No, no, once you once people will
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: publish a dissertation as a popular book. Typically typically not
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: because most dissertations are written in a like heavily footnote
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: of they're not written in a in a literary style
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: that people are gonna they're not accessible because they're written
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: for an academic audience to sort of show your chops,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: test your you know, show show your metal to an
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: academic audience. But you have to go in and douce
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: it up right and take out all like de footnote
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: it and and um citations and present all that in
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: a different way. Yeah. I mean it's it's up to
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: the publisher. It's up to the press how they how
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: they want to do it. I mean I I wrote
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: it in such a way that I mean a lot
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: of people they write thousand page dissertations and they have
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: to chop it down to like a twoe book. And
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: so I approached it. I tried to save myself some
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: work on the back end by by keeping it as
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: tight as I could as I wrote it. So so
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: my concluding thought is, yeah, I don't want to ask
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: you like there's a lot there's a lot of unknowns.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: My conclude thought is I I hope that this that
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: this work sees the that this work becomes available for
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: you to look at. Yeah. And then don't mean like
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: them going in you know, like I hope it's like published. Yeah, Now,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: that's that's what they're not going on to j store
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: or trying to buy, like trying to buy your disstation
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: for twenty bucks. Yeah. No, that's that's the that's the hope,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: that's the goal. Um. And yeah, I finished. I just
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: finished about a month or so ago, and I got
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of balls in the air right now? And
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: are you gonna go work at a university? UM. At
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: the moment, I'm teaching online and and UH for university
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: and UM sort of figure out the next step. I mean,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in teaching. I love teaching. UM, I'm not
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: sure if I want to necessarily go through the academic
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: ten your track job market. UM, I'm interested in also
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: finding employment and conservation and sort of working towards bringing
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: groups together resolving some of the issues that I've tracked
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: as they emerged in the nineteen seventy nine, nineteen seventies.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: So literally, this man up and give him a job.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: How much? How much money do you make? No joke? Yeah,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: I just came off a salary is a teaching assistant.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: So anything anything, Listen, you're gonna get this guy cheap.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: Anything sounds good to this guy. Yeah. Any concluding thoughts
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: too many really for the time I have. UM, congratulations
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: first off for getting that done. Thank you. It's quite
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: the project. That's gonna feel good. Yeah, it's quite the
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: dragon to sligh as you like to say. Um. Yeah, man,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: I hope that your work opens opens up some discussion.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: It's important to know for everybody, it's important to know
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: your history and where you come from, and not only
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: your family history, but now us as hunters. And it's
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: some interesting stuff that you've you know, looked at and shared.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, open. Hopefully it opened the discussion everybody out there.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: You can label me as a tree hugger, environmentalist that
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: likes to shoot stuff. That's my concluding thought, like shoot trees.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: And you didn't say, well a lot. Yeah, this is
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: your first This is the first time you ever said
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: I I wanted this conversation. Yeah, yeah, and I thanks
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: thanks for the opportunity to let me sit in. It's
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: interesting stuff. I learned quite a bit. Do you any
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: concluding thoughts? Well, you're probably thinking about that big link
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: had you gotta flay and he's got a cooler too,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: Lane cot on ice that won't fit in the fridge.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: Well like like like Randall, I came from a non
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: hunting family, So this is all good dodged, you know,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: it's it's stuff that I didn't thinking about. So it's
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: this is this is good to hear. Yeah, congratulations on
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: getting through it. And thinks it sounds like a pretty
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: pretty interesting piece. I can't tell if you're allowed to
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: have concluding thoughts or not. What do you think thoughts? Yea,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: what you hear me? Don't know what thought. It's just
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: it's just a little tradition of having concluding thoughts. I'm
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: just just happy and honored to be here. Good time, dude,
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: don't start, don't give me the old and then uh
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: then you know, visit your local bookseller in about two years.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: Once we get this thing on the on the shelf
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: and pick it up, and you know, we'll get put
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: up on We'll get it put up. When your book
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: comes out, we'll get up put up on our our
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: website and you're honest, maybe we'll get a deal where
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: you buy a hundred T shirts to get a copy
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: for free, about a hundred bucks and get a T
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: shirt for free package. All right, um man, I'm just
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: you know, now I feel guilty to the view to
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: the listeners that we've been discussing and like, because usually
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: you know, a book will get published, then you go
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: and do you talk about it. You know, yeah, because
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: now I'm like, stay tuned because something to read this
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: book available. It's hard way, yeah, it's hard to say.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: Once you start setting out queer, he's depresses, it's you
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: never know when what the timeline is, so we'll see,
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: but well, we got the basic idea. It was fascinating. Man,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad you're I'm glad you're
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: able to come and talk with us. I mean, definitely
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: stuff I never thought about, and some stuff I had
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: thought about, but I thought about it wrong. Yeah, I
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: mean it was a different Uh. You know, when I
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: set out to write the thing, I thought I was
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: gonna tell once story, and I realized that there so
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: many more stories out there. And I guess, you know,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: if you're interested in this, if the listeners are interested
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: in this stuff. Outdoor Life just recently digitized their whole
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: uh back catalog to like eighteen eighty seven eight something
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: like that. You can buy a monthly. Yeah, And so
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: this saved me because prior to that, I was carrying
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: home these huge bound volumes that weighed like twenty pounds apiece,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: and it was like ten issues of of Outdoor Life,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: and I was just hauling them back from the library
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: in my backpack. And then you know, in January, I'm
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: I'm cranking through this thing. And you can go online
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: now and get a subscription. It's like it's like five
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: bucks a month or something, and they have full page
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: scan so you can go you can look at the
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: advertisements all that stuff, and then field and stream too
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: is available on Google Books digitally from like nineteen sixty
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: to the early two thousands. So if you know, if
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: if you want to go, and I'd be curious to
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: have someone go do a dissertation on the changing nag
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: you of chewing tobacco ads in field streamed outdoor lives. Yeah,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: there's there's a rich history there. All right, thanks for listening. Um,
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: we'll keep making them keep listening. Take care,