Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 767: Trophies, Conservation, and Hunting Culture with Justin Spring and Dr. Jon McRoberts

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Ep. 767: Trophies, Conservation, and Hunting Culture with Justin Spring and Dr. Jon McRoberts · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
0:04
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
0:08
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light,
0:13
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
0:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
0:23
Speaker 2: the show, we are discussing trophy hunting, our big game
0:27
Speaker 2: record keeping system and its conservation underpinnings, and how all
0:32
Speaker 2: of this impacts our hunting culture. All right, folks, welcome
0:44
Speaker 2: back to another episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast,
0:48
Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light and it's Camel for
0:50
Speaker 2: Conservation Initiative, And today we are wrapping up our series
0:55
Speaker 2: this month on the culture of our hunting community, and
1:00
Speaker 2: we've got a great one. We've got a couple guests
1:03
Speaker 2: here today that are going to help us explore one
1:06
Speaker 2: of the overarching issues that has hovered over much of
1:10
Speaker 2: this month's conversation, and that's trophy hunting and scoring deer
1:16
Speaker 2: and big bucks and all of that. And these are
1:20
Speaker 2: two folks who come to this issue from the perspective
1:24
Speaker 2: of the record keeping organizations, that being the Boone and
1:28
Speaker 2: Crocket Club and the Pope and Young Club. My guests
1:32
Speaker 2: today are Justin Spring, the executive director at the Pope
1:37
Speaker 2: and Young Club. He also sits on the Records and
1:41
Speaker 2: Ethics committee for the Boone and Crocket Club. And then
1:44
Speaker 2: I'm also joined by doctor John McRoberts. He is a
1:48
Speaker 2: research scientist and wildlife biologist professor at the University of
1:52
Speaker 2: Montana and the program administrator for the Boone and Crockett
1:56
Speaker 2: Wildlife Conservation Program at the University of mind On, Tana.
2:01
Speaker 2: And this whole conversation came together in an interesting roundabout
2:07
Speaker 2: way that I'll describe in more detail once the two
2:10
Speaker 2: of them joined me. But I wrote an article discussing
2:14
Speaker 2: how I have questions about the role that our record
2:20
Speaker 2: keeping systems and organizations play today and if it's time
2:24
Speaker 2: to rethink that a little bit. And this all came from,
2:29
Speaker 2: you know, kind of looking at these very issues that
2:31
Speaker 2: we talked about with Tony and Dan and Andrew about
2:35
Speaker 2: our community is obsession with antlers, obsession with score, all
2:39
Speaker 2: this one upsmanship, and this kind of just obsession over
2:44
Speaker 2: who's the better hunter, Who's killed more big deer, Who's
2:46
Speaker 2: deer is better than this deer? Is this one better?
2:48
Speaker 2: Is this guy better? YadA YadA YadA, and all of
2:50
Speaker 2: this social media chaos that stems from all of that,
2:54
Speaker 2: and it got me to thinking, you know, why are
2:56
Speaker 2: we doing this? How is this helping us? Where did
2:59
Speaker 2: this all come from? Which then sent me down a
3:02
Speaker 2: rabin hole of trying to understand why were these record
3:04
Speaker 2: keeping systems invented in the first place, and what was
3:06
Speaker 2: the original reason for that, what's the historical impetus for this?
3:11
Speaker 2: And is all of this is the record keeping system
3:15
Speaker 2: in this idea of scoring deer and all of these
3:17
Speaker 2: things that have led us to glorifying trophy hunting. Is
3:21
Speaker 2: this achieving what those founders originally wanted for this system?
3:26
Speaker 2: Is this what we were supposed to be doing? Those
3:29
Speaker 2: are the questions that I had, and these questions led
3:32
Speaker 2: me to writing this article, and this article led me
3:34
Speaker 2: to get in touch with Justin Spring, who is the
3:37
Speaker 2: executive director as I mentioned, of the Pope and Young Club.
3:40
Speaker 2: We bumped into each other's show. We start having a
3:42
Speaker 2: great discussion on these very topics which has all led
3:45
Speaker 2: us to where we are today. And the conversation that
3:48
Speaker 2: I'm going to have here with Justin and John in
3:51
Speaker 2: which we explore the history of our record keeping system.
3:54
Speaker 2: How we got to this point. We discuss the conservation impetus,
4:00
Speaker 2: the ways in which our records and scoring deer and
4:03
Speaker 2: other critters was supposed to help with the conservation of wildlife.
4:07
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask these guys some questions about how
4:10
Speaker 2: that might still be going on today. Is it actually
4:12
Speaker 2: going on? Is that a thing? And is it concerning
4:15
Speaker 2: at all that I don't know the answer to that
4:17
Speaker 2: and that you probably don't know the answer to that.
4:20
Speaker 2: If that's why these record keeping systems were created, shouldn't
4:24
Speaker 2: it be important that we're aware of that if it's
4:28
Speaker 2: still going on now. If so, how can we make
4:31
Speaker 2: sure that's more so the case? How can we make
4:33
Speaker 2: this whole thing more useful for conservation? Is there any
4:37
Speaker 2: way to take this whole scoring deer thing, which I
4:41
Speaker 2: think a lot of us believe has gotten out of control?
4:44
Speaker 2: What if we could kind of shift it around to
4:47
Speaker 2: not being a thing that's ranking hunters and who's the
4:49
Speaker 2: best hunter and who can post a picture on Instagram
4:52
Speaker 2: and get more likes? What if this could all lead
4:54
Speaker 2: to better conservation outcomes for deer and elk another wildlife
4:59
Speaker 2: That would be interesting, wouldn't it And how do we
5:03
Speaker 2: think about the implications of what this all means for
5:07
Speaker 2: our hunting culture. That is the set of questions and
5:10
Speaker 2: ideas that I discussed today with Justin and John, and
5:14
Speaker 2: I think it's a really interesting place for us to
5:16
Speaker 2: wrap up this series and leaves me with some hope
5:21
Speaker 2: and intrigue for what the future might look like for
5:24
Speaker 2: these systems and for how we as hunters consider our
5:28
Speaker 2: trophies and how we partake in what might be a
5:35
Speaker 2: grand citizen science experiment if we let it be, and
5:39
Speaker 2: if we participate in that sphere. So that's the plan
5:43
Speaker 2: for today. I really enjoyed this one. I think you're
5:46
Speaker 2: going to learn some new things here and come to
5:50
Speaker 2: think about scoring deer, submitting your deer to record books,
5:56
Speaker 2: all of that I think we'll be thinking about differently,
5:59
Speaker 2: as well as the whole set of ideas around trophy
6:03
Speaker 2: hunting and much more there. So I'm gonna stop rambling
6:07
Speaker 2: and trying to describe this thing and rather just let
6:09
Speaker 2: the conversation happen so you can see what it is
6:11
Speaker 2: for yourself. I enjoy this one. I hope you do too.
6:15
Speaker 2: Here we go, all right, joining me now on the
6:24
Speaker 2: other side of the Internet. I've got Justin Spring and
6:28
Speaker 2: John mc roberts. Thank you, gentlemen for joining me today.
6:32
Speaker 3: Thank you appreciate you having us on.
6:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited about this one because I put you
6:39
Speaker 2: guys in the closing well part of the lineup. We've
6:43
Speaker 2: had a full month now discussing various aspects of our
6:49
Speaker 2: hunting culture, and that's a fairly ambiguous thing to consider.
6:56
Speaker 2: There's a lot that goes into that, but I feel
6:59
Speaker 2: like you're roles with the Bonnicrocket Club and Pope and
7:02
Speaker 2: Young put you in touch with a lot of these
7:06
Speaker 2: topics we've been chatting about here, everything from trophy hunting
7:11
Speaker 2: and antler scoring and fair chase ethics, technology, gear use,
7:20
Speaker 2: science and conservation and the intersection of those things with
7:23
Speaker 2: the management of wild game and hunting regulations and all
7:27
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. This is very much the world
7:30
Speaker 2: we've been exploring in, very much the world I know
7:32
Speaker 2: that both of you exist in. So first and foremost,
7:37
Speaker 2: thanks for making the time to join me on this
7:39
Speaker 2: and to kind of dive into this set of topics
7:42
Speaker 2: that's not always easy to get into. But the original
7:50
Speaker 2: kind of connecting impetus for this, as you both know.
7:55
Speaker 2: Came from an article I wrote, and this article was
7:58
Speaker 2: titled It's time to rethink big game excuse me, big
8:02
Speaker 2: game record keeping, and this whole thing I don't think
8:06
Speaker 2: i've shared with you guys this, but this whole thing
8:08
Speaker 2: came about because I was asked to write about a
8:14
Speaker 2: particular buck story that had come out a few months earlier,
8:20
Speaker 2: and a guy had shot a world class whitetail, and
8:24
Speaker 2: then he had gone and had it scored by this
8:26
Speaker 2: organization and that organization. In this organization, he thought it
8:29
Speaker 2: was going to be the number two typical buck shot
8:34
Speaker 2: with a bow or I can't even remember the specifics now,
8:37
Speaker 2: but he thought it was gonna be a number two
8:39
Speaker 2: buck in certain rankings. And then each different organization had
8:43
Speaker 2: some different reason there nitpicking it apart, and I found
8:47
Speaker 2: myself talking to him and going through all the details,
8:49
Speaker 2: and I got bored with it. I got to think, like,
8:53
Speaker 2: why am I spending all this time? And why is
8:55
Speaker 2: anybody spending all this time nitpicking over of this buck?
8:59
Speaker 2: Certain time is an abnormal time or is it a
9:02
Speaker 2: shared base? Or is it this thing or that thing?
9:05
Speaker 2: Like why is the story about this deer? About whether
9:08
Speaker 2: it's this score or that score. Why isn't the story
9:11
Speaker 2: about just this person's incredible experience, or about the landscape
9:15
Speaker 2: to produce this deer, or about the time he shared
9:18
Speaker 2: with his family afterwards. I personally have just become so
9:22
Speaker 2: sick of this inches above all kind of thing that
9:29
Speaker 2: sometimes we fall into, and I collectively I consider myself
9:34
Speaker 2: a part of that. Sometimes I've been guilty of that too,
9:37
Speaker 2: And so that's what kind of sent me down this
9:39
Speaker 2: weird rabbit hole that the article became. The article became
9:42
Speaker 2: kind of nothing about that guy's specific buck. It became
9:45
Speaker 2: all about you know, what else is there when it
9:48
Speaker 2: comes to this whole scoring thing. What was it originally
9:50
Speaker 2: here for? Why did we develop a scoring system? What
9:53
Speaker 2: was that all about? And are we living up to
9:56
Speaker 2: that original impetus and the the very very cliff notes
10:01
Speaker 2: version of which I'm going to ask for the both
10:03
Speaker 2: of you to chime in with a little bit more detail.
10:05
Speaker 2: But the original kind of starting point for all this
10:10
Speaker 2: came from with the founders of the Boone and Crockett
10:12
Speaker 2: Club looking at this as a conservation project, in that
10:16
Speaker 2: we were trying to recover these species, many many different
10:20
Speaker 2: species across the nation that had come to the cliff's
10:23
Speaker 2: edge of extinction. In many cases, we are now realizing that, hey,
10:27
Speaker 2: we need to recover these species, and how do we
10:29
Speaker 2: keep track of whether or not that's happening, How do
10:31
Speaker 2: we keep track of if we are seeing success, what
10:34
Speaker 2: kinds of how do we track and measure indicators of
10:38
Speaker 2: the fact that maybe we're doing this in some kind
10:40
Speaker 2: of way. So they started these record keeping systems in
10:43
Speaker 2: those early years, and there was this idea of using
10:48
Speaker 2: this data set to support future conservation efforts. Good data
10:52
Speaker 2: leads to good science, leads to good work on the ground,
10:55
Speaker 2: and better population management. I think was where that started.
10:59
Speaker 2: And so I then spent you know, another five hundred
11:03
Speaker 2: eight hundred words asking questions about is that still happening today,
11:08
Speaker 2: is that how we're using this now, or has it
11:10
Speaker 2: just become, you know, a way for hunters to argue
11:14
Speaker 2: it amongst themselves about who's the better deer hunter, who's
11:17
Speaker 2: killed more two hundred inch deer, who's et cetera, et cetera,
11:20
Speaker 2: et cetera. And I feel like that's like a letdown
11:25
Speaker 2: or a a under utilization of the opportunity we have.
11:30
Speaker 2: So I posted that article, went out there into the world,
11:33
Speaker 2: and Justin, at some point you saw it or somebody
11:37
Speaker 2: sent it to you. And then a few weeks later
11:39
Speaker 2: you and I bumped into each other at the Western
11:42
Speaker 2: Hunt ECKSPO and had a great conversation about these things.
11:47
Speaker 2: This is all a very long, rambling setup to why
11:52
Speaker 2: we are all here today, because i'd like to get
11:56
Speaker 2: your perspective that both of you on some of those
12:00
Speaker 2: questions that I had coming out of that little bit
12:02
Speaker 2: of soul searching that I had when I was working
12:04
Speaker 2: on that piece. So the first thing I'm curious about,
12:07
Speaker 2: and maybe Justin, if you want to kick us off here,
12:10
Speaker 2: the first thing I'd love to hear straight from you
12:13
Speaker 2: is a little bit more about the genesis of this
12:17
Speaker 2: whole thing. Yeah, right, How did we get here with
12:20
Speaker 2: this record keeping system, the set of systems that we
12:23
Speaker 2: have here today, and what were those original goals for them?
12:26
Speaker 4: So to start with, you know, the system was redevised
12:30
Speaker 4: in nineteen fifty, but we'll get to that. I'll start
12:33
Speaker 4: from the very beginning. You know, we go back to
12:35
Speaker 4: eighteen ninety three, I believe, was the first Sportsman's Exposition
12:38
Speaker 4: in New York. The Theodore Roosevelt was a judge on
12:41
Speaker 4: you know, looking at at the time, what was the
12:45
Speaker 4: best trophy? Right, Hunting wasn't as common, and so from
12:49
Speaker 4: the very beginning of the organization they were interested in
12:52
Speaker 4: the top specimens. You know, they figured out, like the
12:56
Speaker 4: scoring was very basic, man, that one has a real
12:59
Speaker 4: nice g two five points.
13:00
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't like the color of.
13:02
Speaker 4: This negative too, So they could see right away, like, man,
13:05
Speaker 4: this whole judging of an animal off of somebody's criteria
13:08
Speaker 4: doesn't work. At the same time, they completely felt that
13:12
Speaker 4: all wildlife was going extinct, and they weren't wrong.
13:15
Speaker 3: At the time.
13:18
Speaker 4: Nineteen oh six the club started making or started compiling
13:23
Speaker 4: the National Collection of Heads and Horns, And so even
13:26
Speaker 4: in your article you mentioned the nineteen oh six book
13:28
Speaker 4: that was a field journal that the club kind of
13:30
Speaker 4: put together to for hunter. It wasn't a scoring per se.
13:35
Speaker 4: It was more of a journal of hey, I took
13:37
Speaker 4: this animal. Here's some useful measurements that may be able
13:39
Speaker 4: to be used. So in the beginning they were trying
13:42
Speaker 4: to find the best of every specimen to save for
13:45
Speaker 4: our generation, thinking that no big game was going to
13:48
Speaker 4: be available. So that that's the very beginning of Boone
13:51
Speaker 4: and Krakat. That ties to your trophy hunting to where
13:54
Speaker 4: populations couldn't sustain harvest on young and females. So looking
13:58
Speaker 4: for only the oldest, most mature animal was the way
14:01
Speaker 4: that hunting could continue. You know, if you read articles
14:05
Speaker 4: from back then, people are apologizing to the public if
14:08
Speaker 4: they took a second moose in their lifetime. You know,
14:11
Speaker 4: we'll get into this later, but I think that there's
14:13
Speaker 4: a lot to say that the fact that we can
14:15
Speaker 4: go shoot three or four deer every year is so
14:17
Speaker 4: much different than what these guys were facing.
14:20
Speaker 3: So anyway, that was the beginning.
14:21
Speaker 4: From nineteen oh six to twenty six, I believe we
14:24
Speaker 4: compiled this national collection of heads and horns. They were
14:27
Speaker 4: looking for the best specimen for the future. Well, we
14:30
Speaker 4: get into the twenties and thirties, you start having wildlife
14:32
Speaker 4: conservation take off. Pittman Robertson all the efforts of the
14:35
Speaker 4: organization early on towards conservation, and this collection was in
14:41
Speaker 4: the Bronx Zoo. Well. As wildlife populations recover, people don't
14:46
Speaker 4: want to go see heads hanging in a museum anymore.
14:49
Speaker 4: They can go to Yellowstone. Now they can go to
14:51
Speaker 4: these parks and see these animals. So it kind of
14:53
Speaker 4: fell out of fell out of circulation, and they closed
14:56
Speaker 4: down the exhibit. While the club saw these conservation successes
15:02
Speaker 4: and they're like, man, how can we track that?
15:04
Speaker 3: Like, how do we how do we ensure that you.
15:07
Speaker 4: Know, what we're doing rights recognized and what we're doing
15:09
Speaker 4: not doing correctly is recognized. So this is when this
15:13
Speaker 4: group of guys set down to develop the scoring system
15:16
Speaker 4: that we have today that's now criticized on what is it?
15:19
Speaker 3: Perfect?
15:19
Speaker 4: Is it? This is it that they took every species
15:23
Speaker 4: and they said, what is the typical form? What is
15:26
Speaker 4: the common form of this animal? You know, they took
15:31
Speaker 4: the best science at the time and said, you know,
15:34
Speaker 4: bilateral symmetry, massiveness, those are the traits of the healthiest specimens.
15:39
Speaker 4: What is a typical for example, white tailed deer look like, well,
15:42
Speaker 4: it's got you know, a main beam with with times
15:45
Speaker 4: that come off equally spaced roughly matched off the outside
15:48
Speaker 4: of the beam all the way out. So they they
15:51
Speaker 4: decided what the commoner typical form of each animal was
15:55
Speaker 4: or specimen was, and that's what that score was based
15:58
Speaker 4: around to, you know, go to where we are today.
16:02
Speaker 4: And so even even in the beginning, it kind of changed.
16:05
Speaker 4: I mean to your point of how do we go forward?
16:08
Speaker 4: You know, there's things that we can improve on, for sure,
16:10
Speaker 4: but that's that's how we got this system. Now, that's
16:13
Speaker 4: that's so heavily criticized on deductions and this and that,
16:17
Speaker 4: And there's my long rambling answer to your question.
16:22
Speaker 2: No, that's that's great. So so the I think there's
16:26
Speaker 2: there's something that folks are always curious about you and
16:30
Speaker 2: you mentioned there a little bit, the fact that there's
16:33
Speaker 2: there's a lot of criticism around you know, nets are
16:36
Speaker 2: for fish, right, Folks don't like deductions, Folks don't like
16:39
Speaker 2: the fact that we don't give the dear credit for
16:41
Speaker 2: abnormal points, for non typical points, for all that kind
16:44
Speaker 2: of stuff. So I just want to reiterate something you
16:48
Speaker 2: said and then ask maybe if you can add on
16:50
Speaker 2: if there's anything else I'm missing here That a key
16:52
Speaker 2: point is like the scoring system that was put in
16:55
Speaker 2: place was put in place because it should be documenting
17:01
Speaker 2: and points to the healthiest deer. So the idea of
17:04
Speaker 2: being we're looking for indicators of health, and historically abnormal
17:10
Speaker 2: points or asymmetry was indicative of poor health.
17:14
Speaker 3: Correct some form.
17:16
Speaker 4: Of stressor generally, and John can touch on this a
17:18
Speaker 4: little more. He's looked at the research, but most of
17:22
Speaker 4: what you know would be considered a deduction is caused
17:24
Speaker 4: by some stressor be it you know, pedical damage, bug bites,
17:28
Speaker 4: you know, and who knows what it can be, but
17:31
Speaker 4: you know, at the time that was why they were
17:34
Speaker 4: looking for those symmetrical massiveness trophies and Jaw, you want
17:38
Speaker 4: to touch on that from what you've seen in today's research.
17:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, I will, Justin And so Justin mentioned bilateral symmetry.
17:46
Speaker 5: When we get into atypical handlers, the term that folks
17:52
Speaker 5: might want to look into a bit more is fluctuating asymmetry.
17:56
Speaker 5: And that's what a lot of the research is based around.
17:59
Speaker 5: And that not only in antlers, that's in humans, that's
18:02
Speaker 5: in biomedical research. And so the idea is that's a
18:06
Speaker 5: proxy for environmental or genetic stressors of some kind.
18:09
Speaker 3: Now, those could be.
18:11
Speaker 5: Parasites, injury, disease, density dependent issues, and so I've heard
18:17
Speaker 5: the criticisms too, but when this scoring system was developed,
18:21
Speaker 5: it was separate the typical, the bilateral symmetry from the
18:28
Speaker 5: asymmetric and so that's where those classifications came from. And
18:34
Speaker 5: there's more to the story that we've seen this research
18:40
Speaker 5: done on fluctuating asymmetry. Taking it a step farther, it's
18:44
Speaker 5: what about female choice. Are females really selecting for either
18:49
Speaker 5: bilateral symmetry or selecting against asymmetry? And so there's more
18:56
Speaker 5: to the story. But the important thing is with treating
18:59
Speaker 5: this as a scientific at a set which we should
19:01
Speaker 5: explore more consistency and methods and how you score and
19:06
Speaker 5: how you classify makes this data set a lot more powerful,
19:10
Speaker 5: and so there is some value into keeping the scoring
19:14
Speaker 5: system as it's been.
19:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, So that perfectly segues to the next kind of
19:22
Speaker 2: side of this. I'm curious to learn a little bit
19:24
Speaker 2: more about, as we kind of talked about earlier. I
19:37
Speaker 2: can't remember for this before we started recording or after
19:39
Speaker 2: we started recording, but it seems like within the realm
19:44
Speaker 2: of the general public, when I think about the Boon
19:47
Speaker 2: and Crocket record books, or I think about the Pope
19:49
Speaker 2: and Young record books, I only ever hear those things
19:52
Speaker 2: referenced and brought up. I only ever hear score brought
19:55
Speaker 2: up when it comes to oh, my buck was this big,
19:59
Speaker 2: but your buck was only that or this is a
20:01
Speaker 2: top ten buck, or this is a new state record buck,
20:03
Speaker 2: or this is going to be the new world record buck.
20:06
Speaker 2: Or you know, this guy's killed five two hundred inches,
20:09
Speaker 2: he's better than you, or whatever it is. That's the
20:12
Speaker 2: only time I'm ever hearing scoring and record keeping brought
20:15
Speaker 2: up in general conversation with your average deer hunting body
20:19
Speaker 2: of mine. No, you're but it sounds like, sorry, just one,
20:24
Speaker 2: just one more thing. But from what you were saying,
20:29
Speaker 2: justin it doesn't seem like that was ever brought up
20:31
Speaker 2: by mister Theodore Roosevelt or George bird Grenell or Hornaday
20:36
Speaker 2: or anybody back in the early nineteen hundreds when they were,
20:39
Speaker 2: you know, co founding the Booning Kroker Club and this
20:42
Speaker 2: record keeping system. It was. It was not to confirm
20:46
Speaker 2: who the best hunters were, or who has the most
20:48
Speaker 2: two hundred inch yeer whatever. It was to create a
20:51
Speaker 2: scientific data set to help with conservation efforts. Right, can
20:55
Speaker 2: you can you speak a little bit more to the
20:59
Speaker 2: ways in which the data set has been used or
21:04
Speaker 2: was hoped to be used, because I think that's an
21:07
Speaker 2: important thing for us to understand, is is are these
21:10
Speaker 2: records are is this whole idea of measuring antlers? Is
21:13
Speaker 2: this to tell who's the best dang hunter? Or is
21:15
Speaker 2: this to do something better for the future of wildlife?
21:18
Speaker 4: No? I mean it's interesting you bring it up that
21:20
Speaker 4: the only time you hear about it is the next
21:22
Speaker 4: world record or the biggest this or biggest that. I
21:26
Speaker 4: can honestly say, I didn't go into this line of
21:29
Speaker 4: work and conservation and scoring or anything because it was
21:32
Speaker 4: about ranking hunters. It was about the conservation, you know.
21:35
Speaker 4: And I'd always try to tell we had a marketing
21:37
Speaker 4: team at Boone and Crockett, how do we get folks
21:39
Speaker 4: to check out our page? How do we get them
21:41
Speaker 4: to join? You know what always fell flat the thing
21:44
Speaker 4: that excited me the most, Like this county just put
21:46
Speaker 4: in a deer that just made the book. We've never
21:49
Speaker 4: seen this county put out a one to sixty before
21:52
Speaker 4: it got nothing.
21:53
Speaker 3: You put out.
21:54
Speaker 4: There, Hey, potentially the largest typical killed in Ohio by
21:57
Speaker 4: a female. Millions of likes, right, and so you're not wrong.
22:02
Speaker 4: What you see is what people want to see. I
22:04
Speaker 4: guess as lack of the for lack of a better term,
22:07
Speaker 4: we tried to push it out. We try to tell
22:09
Speaker 4: the conservation story. This is why I love getting on
22:12
Speaker 4: a podcast like this with you know, your listeners and whatnot.
22:15
Speaker 4: Has explained this was not what it was ever, it
22:17
Speaker 4: was never supposed to rank the hunter. You know, one
22:20
Speaker 4: thing I always tell folks, and they owe nets are
22:22
Speaker 4: for fish all that. Man, if we were looking to
22:24
Speaker 4: recognize hunters, what do you use gross score? We're looking
22:27
Speaker 4: to recognize conservations. So that's why that net score, that symmetry,
22:31
Speaker 4: all that comes into play. And so you know, the
22:37
Speaker 4: group that started this, we never wanted somebody having a
22:40
Speaker 4: hunt made or break, you know, made or broken by
22:43
Speaker 4: a number that was attached to an animal. That was
22:45
Speaker 4: never what we wanted. I mean, there's areas in the
22:48
Speaker 4: country that Okay, you're not going to get as big
22:51
Speaker 4: of an elk in this area. That number tells you
22:53
Speaker 4: that it's not that you're less of a hunter, that
22:55
Speaker 4: it's not as good of a trophy. It's you know, biologically,
22:59
Speaker 4: why did the elk in this state not grow as
23:01
Speaker 4: big a G four as the elk in that state?
23:03
Speaker 4: You know.
23:04
Speaker 3: And yeah, we're.
23:06
Speaker 4: As frustrated with it as you are. And we don't
23:08
Speaker 4: disagree with the problem. You know, the problems of folks
23:11
Speaker 4: making everything about that final number and not about everything
23:15
Speaker 4: else that goes into it.
23:18
Speaker 2: Yes, so what's what's the alternative of the record keeping
23:23
Speaker 2: system that being? Like? Can you give me some examples
23:25
Speaker 2: of how this data set that we have right now
23:28
Speaker 2: is being used for conservation, because I think the average
23:30
Speaker 2: person maybe is thinking like, I don't see how a
23:32
Speaker 2: bunch of Antler scores helps conservation? Could get could you
23:35
Speaker 2: guys share something?
23:36
Speaker 4: So?
23:36
Speaker 3: I know that the state Idaho was looking at a part.
23:39
Speaker 4: One of their biologists was looking at an area and
23:41
Speaker 4: felt that the deer were getting smaller. They took our
23:43
Speaker 4: data and compared it with some stuff they were doing
23:45
Speaker 4: to see if it matched. Oh, Arkansas, I believe put
23:50
Speaker 4: in an Antler point restriction and they saw some trends
23:54
Speaker 4: in their harvest data that they then got b in
23:56
Speaker 4: C data to see if it matched what they were
23:58
Speaker 4: seeing if we were seeing it at our level as well.
24:01
Speaker 4: There was a Wildlife Monographs monteeth at Al that was
24:06
Speaker 4: done by a group of professors that are associated with
24:09
Speaker 4: the club that looked at over time was Hunter's selection
24:14
Speaker 4: potentially causing big game animals to get smaller. You don't
24:19
Speaker 4: hear about a lot of this in the you know,
24:23
Speaker 4: social media or that world, because it's pretty in depth research, John,
24:28
Speaker 4: do you have other good examples? Those are the ones
24:30
Speaker 4: that come to mind for me.
24:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's other peer reviewed literature. And in a university setting,
24:37
Speaker 5: that's that's everyone's currency is doing this research that goes
24:41
Speaker 5: out for review by your peers is flaws or looked
24:46
Speaker 5: for so that that paper won't be published. That's how
24:48
Speaker 5: the system worked. And there's a number of papers in
24:51
Speaker 5: premiere wildlife journals like the Journal of Wildlife Management, the
24:54
Speaker 5: Wildlife Society bulletin the Journal of Mammalogy that have used
24:59
Speaker 5: this data set as a variable to comment on what
25:03
Speaker 5: goes into antler productivity, from soil minerals to land use type,
25:09
Speaker 5: to edges to habitat connectivity. And so there's a number
25:13
Speaker 5: of studies that takes the information that was recorded on
25:17
Speaker 5: that scoreesheet, aggregates it across the US and can produce
25:22
Speaker 5: the highest quality research. The other way that the scoring
25:25
Speaker 5: system is commonly used is if antler measurements or horn
25:30
Speaker 5: measurements are used as a covariate of some point in
25:36
Speaker 5: someone's analysis. And so this isn't technical and it's just
25:42
Speaker 5: instead of taking a measurement, say hind foot length, they
25:48
Speaker 5: can use the BNC score to help generate conclusions. And
25:55
Speaker 5: so those are some of the top tier i'd call
25:58
Speaker 5: them research outputs from this from this data set. About
26:02
Speaker 5: this time last year, Justin and I had an email
26:04
Speaker 5: from a college senior at the University of Wisconsin who
26:08
Speaker 5: wanted to do his senior thesis project on whitetail antler
26:15
Speaker 5: scores and relate that to climate to land use type
26:19
Speaker 5: land cover. And so this is a study that never
26:22
Speaker 5: gets published, but it helps helps this young man graduate.
26:25
Speaker 5: Presumably he's a hunter, and so it kind of comes
26:30
Speaker 5: full circles of citizens science hunters helping generate management and
26:37
Speaker 5: conservation output. And so in the beginning mark you ask
26:41
Speaker 5: if the science is still happening, It most definitely is.
26:43
Speaker 5: I mean, this is still a nationwide long term data set.
26:49
Speaker 5: We just probably need to do a better job advertising that.
26:52
Speaker 5: That's how it can be used.
26:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like it's type for opportunity, Like it's
27:03
Speaker 2: almost an underutilized resource, or let me rephrase this an
27:08
Speaker 2: analog or an alternative community that I've seen do something
27:12
Speaker 2: really really neat with a citizens science initiative, Like this
27:16
Speaker 2: would be the birding community. Right, there's the birding community,
27:19
Speaker 2: and they have the e Bird app in which they
27:23
Speaker 2: have burders from all across the world documenting every bird
27:28
Speaker 2: they see and where they saw it. And this has
27:31
Speaker 2: become something that is an exciting opportunity to participate for
27:35
Speaker 2: the burder. And then it also helps lead to a
27:38
Speaker 2: data set which is of unbelievable conservation value to researchers
27:43
Speaker 2: and managers trying to understand how bird populations are doing
27:47
Speaker 2: across the nation, the impacts on the environment, environmental impacts
27:50
Speaker 2: on bird populations, et cetera. We have a similar set
27:55
Speaker 2: of invested users in hunters who are out there doing
28:00
Speaker 2: doing something. And in our case, we're not necessarily documenting
28:03
Speaker 2: a sighting. We are able to document a harvest or kill,
28:07
Speaker 2: and we have a data point every single time we
28:11
Speaker 2: kill an animal. And so I see the Boon and
28:15
Speaker 2: Crockett record books, the Pope and Young record books. This
28:18
Speaker 2: is like it's it's collecting a micro slice of the
28:22
Speaker 2: data out there. And I'm just curious if there is
28:26
Speaker 2: an opportunity for more, Like, is there an opportunity for
28:31
Speaker 2: there to be greater participation from the hunting public in
28:33
Speaker 2: this if it were to be framed as a citizen
28:37
Speaker 2: science opportunity and not a hey get yourself in the
28:41
Speaker 2: record books so you can, you know, be a big
28:45
Speaker 2: bad hunter that killed the Boone and Crocket buck. Is
28:50
Speaker 2: there any opportunity for for looking at record keeping in
28:55
Speaker 2: the hunting world in that kind of way? Is there
28:57
Speaker 2: an argument to be made, a pitch to be made
29:00
Speaker 2: to the average hunter out there that's like, hey, man,
29:02
Speaker 2: you should submit your buck to Boone and Krockett or
29:05
Speaker 2: to Pope and Young, even if you don't care if
29:07
Speaker 2: you're in the top fifty for the state or not,
29:09
Speaker 2: just because like, hey, this is good for conservation, this
29:11
Speaker 2: is good for science. And if that is the case,
29:15
Speaker 2: are there any changes we can make to how we
29:17
Speaker 2: do this so that that data is even more variable
29:19
Speaker 2: or more thorough, John, do you have thoughts on that
29:22
Speaker 2: or justin.
29:23
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's spot on. I mean, if we
29:26
Speaker 5: could expand the scope of this data collection, it'd be
29:30
Speaker 5: all the more powerful. Interestingly, you mentioned eBird. I mean
29:34
Speaker 5: that's tied with the Internet, but prior to that, it
29:37
Speaker 5: was the North American Breeding Bird Survey, which came online
29:41
Speaker 5: or came it about in the mid sixties, and so
29:44
Speaker 5: interestingly this data set has fifteen years on one of
29:49
Speaker 5: the oldest beyond there. I think that it would be
29:53
Speaker 5: fantastic to message that exact need to the hunting community.
29:59
Speaker 5: I mean, the more data from that we can collect
30:03
Speaker 5: with this data set, the more powerful the conclusions will be.
30:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you what are your thoughts about? Justin
30:10
Speaker 2: we spend a good time amount of time talking about
30:12
Speaker 2: this in Utah.
30:13
Speaker 3: No, I think that the more data we can collect
30:15
Speaker 3: the better.
30:16
Speaker 4: When I was when I was at Boone and Crockett,
30:18
Speaker 4: we've got many states have a state level organization that's
30:22
Speaker 4: collecting data with a lower minimum score. If if we
30:25
Speaker 4: can tie that together with you know, Boon and Crockets data,
30:29
Speaker 4: that increases our data data set size. The one issue
30:34
Speaker 4: that we have, you know, with being too much shittizen
30:39
Speaker 4: science is the way that Boone and Crockets set this
30:41
Speaker 4: up is that each person that does the scoring is trained.
30:45
Speaker 4: It's a five day workshop and so there is a
30:47
Speaker 4: standardization of the data that we we can look at
30:53
Speaker 4: that data. It's all been reviewed, they've all been trained
30:55
Speaker 4: the same way, so we have specific people. That's where
30:59
Speaker 4: it gets a little little bit problematic to really blow
31:01
Speaker 4: this up to where everything gets scored and taken care of.
31:04
Speaker 4: Is having those official measures that that have been taught
31:07
Speaker 4: how to do this, the correct methodology and what not
31:10
Speaker 4: to get it.
31:12
Speaker 3: But we are.
31:12
Speaker 4: Always looking for you know, the example I give and
31:15
Speaker 4: I hear heard this a lot and still do is that, Well,
31:18
Speaker 4: I have one in the book, but it's bigger, So
31:20
Speaker 4: I don't want to put this one in when we're
31:22
Speaker 4: looking at trends. Man, one smaller than the one that
31:25
Speaker 4: you killed before is just as valuable as one bigger.
31:28
Speaker 4: You know, we don't only I mean, we're defensive as hunters,
31:31
Speaker 4: but man, we don't only want to just show the positive.
31:35
Speaker 3: We want everything.
31:35
Speaker 4: I mean, how many people have said, oh, there used
31:37
Speaker 4: to be you know, dear ten percent bigger in this
31:40
Speaker 4: county up until this happened. Well you know these these
31:44
Speaker 4: record books, Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett, we're
31:46
Speaker 4: the only ones that have the data that can really
31:48
Speaker 4: check that and say, is that you know the case
31:50
Speaker 4: or did they move? Did they change you know, did
31:53
Speaker 4: they change selectivity of where where they're living? Are we
31:56
Speaker 4: seeing them now more on edge? Where they used to
31:58
Speaker 4: be timber. And so every single data point, if it
32:01
Speaker 4: makes any book, be it State or Pope and Young
32:04
Speaker 4: or Boon and Crockett or all the above, I think
32:07
Speaker 4: it's very important to put them all in and if
32:09
Speaker 4: you're fortunate enough to, you know, find yourself in a
32:12
Speaker 4: situation to harvest one that meets those minimums. I mean,
32:15
Speaker 4: forty bucks, thirty five bucks, whatever the State fee is
32:18
Speaker 4: versus poping Young or Boone and Crockett. That's a that's
32:21
Speaker 4: an investment in conservation, you know. And I always try
32:24
Speaker 4: to tell folks like, don't don't worry if it doesn't
32:27
Speaker 4: make all time, don't worry. It's a data point that
32:30
Speaker 4: we need to see for us to do our mission,
32:32
Speaker 4: you know, and we'd love to have you participate. So
32:35
Speaker 4: I think there's a huge call for it, you know.
32:38
Speaker 4: It's just we have we can't. We can't throw the
32:40
Speaker 4: data out that we've built. We just how do we
32:42
Speaker 4: expand on what we've had to make it a more
32:45
Speaker 4: robust data set without losing quality?
32:49
Speaker 2: So then why not remove the minimum score? Why can't
32:54
Speaker 2: I kill a hundred? Why isn't my one hundred and
32:56
Speaker 2: ten inch five and a half year old buck that
32:58
Speaker 2: I killed off of a fresh cli cut in southern
33:00
Speaker 2: Michigan a useful data point for future conservation efforts.
33:04
Speaker 4: One hundred percent is it's just the feasibility of maintaining
33:08
Speaker 4: all that.
33:08
Speaker 3: That's why you know.
33:09
Speaker 4: Boone and Crockett said, we can't keep track of every
33:13
Speaker 4: animal taken, so how do we extrapolate? Okay, let's let's
33:17
Speaker 4: take the very top tier. Right, we know if they've
33:20
Speaker 4: reached this minimum score, which is why we don't look
33:22
Speaker 4: for the biggest every year, we're just saying, hey, but
33:24
Speaker 4: it hits this level. Everything had to be in place
33:27
Speaker 4: for it to get there. So in that case, we
33:31
Speaker 4: can't say, oh, the problem is this, or the problem
33:33
Speaker 4: is that. What we can say is historically we were
33:38
Speaker 4: seeing this many meet this threshold. Now we're seeing lesser.
33:41
Speaker 4: Now we're seeing more from a single organization. We had
33:45
Speaker 4: to limit what we could look at just to maintain
33:47
Speaker 4: our integrity and make sure we were doing it correctly.
33:50
Speaker 4: So we did not have the ability to take everything
33:53
Speaker 4: that was one hundred and five inches or better. But yes,
33:55
Speaker 4: it'd be great dat if we could get folks to
33:58
Speaker 4: support us to the point where we could drop minimum
34:00
Speaker 4: scores and record more. That's that's the ideal world for
34:03
Speaker 4: data collection.
34:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could if if if, if money wasn't an
34:11
Speaker 2: object and he had all the support, staff and funds
34:14
Speaker 2: to do it. Man, it does. I wish that was
34:18
Speaker 2: the case. I wish that we could reframe this as like, hey, like,
34:21
Speaker 2: let's all participate in getting the best possible data. That
34:25
Speaker 2: is because because because data provides the foundation for all
34:29
Speaker 2: management decisions, right, and and if we can as hunters
34:33
Speaker 2: can move right right, we hope it does. And and
34:38
Speaker 2: what a great opportunity for us as hunters to be
34:41
Speaker 2: a part of that. Like I would I would love
34:46
Speaker 2: to be a part of that. Would like I have
34:47
Speaker 2: zero desire to be on a list that shows how
34:50
Speaker 2: I rank with other hunters, but I have tremendous desire
34:54
Speaker 2: to contribute to a more positive future for whitetail deer
34:59
Speaker 2: or elk or whatever might be. And I think there's
35:00
Speaker 2: a lot of hunters out there today that feel that way.
35:04
Speaker 2: I kind of feel like the market of hunters who
35:07
Speaker 2: want to be in a list and ranked that's saturated.
35:10
Speaker 2: Like those folks who are going to participate in that
35:13
Speaker 2: that they've kind like they've done it. They're there they
35:17
Speaker 2: know how to get their name in there, and they've
35:18
Speaker 2: been in their bunch. There's this whole other blue ocean
35:21
Speaker 2: of hunters who don't care about that, or who are
35:24
Speaker 2: sick of hearing about that, who would love to participate
35:28
Speaker 2: though in this side of things. How what what opportunity
35:32
Speaker 2: is there for that kind of person to get involved
35:36
Speaker 2: given the limitations that you're talking about justin you know, I.
35:40
Speaker 4: Mean, the one thing is we heard we hear a
35:43
Speaker 4: lot of this or heard a lot of it at
35:45
Speaker 4: B and C. We actually change rules where if you
35:48
Speaker 4: submit all your information to Boone and Crocket, you still
35:50
Speaker 4: don't have to have your name listed in the book.
35:52
Speaker 4: You can put your trophy in anonymously. We never had
35:56
Speaker 4: anybody do it, and so maybe it wasn't out there enough.
36:00
Speaker 4: But man, yeah, people worry a lot about Oh, I
36:05
Speaker 4: don't want to give up my hunting spot.
36:07
Speaker 3: I don't want to do this. I don't want to
36:08
Speaker 3: do that.
36:09
Speaker 4: You know, it's really hard for me trying to talk
36:14
Speaker 4: to somebody. Oh, I'm a conservationist. You know, put that in.
36:17
Speaker 4: You've got fifteen deer that are on the wall that
36:19
Speaker 4: over time, you know, you could show a trend you
36:22
Speaker 4: could show something, you know, get those scores, get those
36:25
Speaker 4: in it. If you want to be more involved in
36:27
Speaker 4: the citizen science. Both Pope and Young and Boone and
36:29
Speaker 4: Crockett are always looking for official measures. You know, sign
36:33
Speaker 4: up to come to a course and learn about the system,
36:37
Speaker 4: learn about you know, what we're doing, and then be
36:39
Speaker 4: one of the representatives for these organizations out there, you know,
36:43
Speaker 4: getting those deer, digging those deer out of garages, talking
36:46
Speaker 4: to people, getting the stories. You know, that's how we
36:49
Speaker 4: build this out. And you're right, I mean the Boone
36:52
Speaker 4: and Crockett went with the classic bait and switch. Hey,
36:55
Speaker 4: be part of our cool club. Enter your deer and
36:57
Speaker 4: you can be in this book. Well, we were getting
36:59
Speaker 4: the data. It was a classic bait and switch. We're
37:01
Speaker 4: very good at getting those guys that want to be
37:03
Speaker 4: on the list.
37:04
Speaker 3: And it's cool.
37:04
Speaker 4: I mean, hey, I've got a number six mountain goat
37:07
Speaker 4: in Oregon. You know, whatever it may be, that's a
37:09
Speaker 4: cool thing. But man, the guys you're talking about that
37:13
Speaker 4: don't really care about the list and just care about
37:15
Speaker 4: the future. They're just as important and so that you know,
37:17
Speaker 4: that's why John and I are here is to talk
37:20
Speaker 4: to you and you know kind of plead this case
37:22
Speaker 4: of you know, this is why everybody should participate and
37:25
Speaker 4: it's not about you know, ranking in this and that
37:29
Speaker 4: it's never.
37:30
Speaker 2: Been Yeah, I think it's it's a it's it's a
37:35
Speaker 2: great reminder because I think most of your average hunters,
37:38
Speaker 2: and speaking from like my own world I'm in and
37:41
Speaker 2: the people I talk to, I don't think any of
37:43
Speaker 2: my friends would ever think about submitting their deer to
37:45
Speaker 2: the record books because of what we're talking about. But
37:49
Speaker 2: when they hear this and they realize like, oh, hey,
37:51
Speaker 2: you know what, actually there there's something more to it
37:54
Speaker 2: than just like this ego thing, then I bet you
37:57
Speaker 2: there will be a bunch of my friends who would
37:59
Speaker 2: be much more or interest in doing it, recognizing like, oh,
38:02
Speaker 2: this is something that actually might help I. It's not
38:06
Speaker 2: that it doesn't take that much time. I can do that.
38:09
Speaker 2: That all said, though, when making this case that the
38:13
Speaker 2: record books and having our deer scored contributes positively to
38:19
Speaker 2: future conservation efforts, it seems to me that if we're
38:23
Speaker 2: trying to accumulate this wealth of data that can be
38:27
Speaker 2: used to make better decisions in the future, it seems
38:30
Speaker 2: like the data is so thin, like there's so much
38:34
Speaker 2: more I wish we could get. And you mentioned this
38:37
Speaker 2: consistency of data, John, I had questions in that piece,
38:41
Speaker 2: like why why can't we pull a tooth and make
38:45
Speaker 2: sure that every submission has a tooth so we can
38:47
Speaker 2: get an accurate age on that deer. Why can't we
38:49
Speaker 2: have some level of more location fidelity so we can
38:56
Speaker 2: tie these these data points back to better location sets
39:00
Speaker 2: so that we can have more granular location related correlations
39:05
Speaker 2: and trends. Why can't we have something like weight of
39:08
Speaker 2: the animal or any other biometric data to make sure
39:13
Speaker 2: this is more than just an Antler score thing. It
39:15
Speaker 2: gives us a better picture of animal health, which should
39:18
Speaker 2: give us a better picture of environmental health, which should
39:21
Speaker 2: give us a better data set for conservation decisions. Can
39:36
Speaker 2: we not add new data categories to these record books?
39:42
Speaker 5: First of all, you hit on the top two that
39:44
Speaker 5: I'd love to see, and that's location and age and
39:49
Speaker 5: B and C now voluntarily asks for an incisor that
39:53
Speaker 5: can be aged. But it seems like that's a tall
39:57
Speaker 5: order from some hunters to submit that, and so requiring
40:02
Speaker 5: it where it was all or nothing, I think we'd
40:06
Speaker 5: end up losing data points that still have great value
40:09
Speaker 5: and justin hit on the location thing. So folks just
40:13
Speaker 5: don't want to give out their location and I kind
40:17
Speaker 5: of get that. I mean, we're coming on to spring
40:19
Speaker 5: and I don't think I'd give away my best morale
40:21
Speaker 5: location for science.
40:23
Speaker 3: And so that's just.
40:25
Speaker 5: The reality of what we're in. That said, if more
40:29
Speaker 5: people could voluntarily give a lot long and could pull
40:32
Speaker 5: a tooth, the power of the conclusions that we could
40:35
Speaker 5: draw from this data set would skyrocket, and so it
40:39
Speaker 5: would be great. It would be great to have that.
40:42
Speaker 5: The only reason why I think it's prohibitive is just
40:46
Speaker 5: the likelihood of hunters submitting it right now is not
40:50
Speaker 5: entirely high.
40:52
Speaker 4: You know, and from both organizations, you know, we've done
40:54
Speaker 4: everything we could trying to get an age be and
40:57
Speaker 4: C pays for it. I mean, it takes a while.
40:59
Speaker 4: We have to get one hundred two I think was
41:00
Speaker 4: the old deal for them to get the break. But
41:03
Speaker 4: if somebody wanted to submit a tooth, we'd say, hey,
41:05
Speaker 4: once we got to one hundred, we'll submit these. We'll
41:07
Speaker 4: add that there is certain categories of the data that
41:13
Speaker 4: do have tremendous AGE data associated sheep comes to mind
41:16
Speaker 4: because they're all checked in and so there's that standardized
41:19
Speaker 4: aging of rams that is all held in the data set.
41:22
Speaker 4: Now we don't publish that, but that is there. Location data.
41:27
Speaker 4: We would always take as much as they would give,
41:29
Speaker 4: but we just never published more than county. It varies
41:33
Speaker 4: from hunter to hunters. Some guys would send in a
41:35
Speaker 4: GPS coordinate, like literally down to the spot it was taken.
41:39
Speaker 4: We recorded that. That's in the data set. So if
41:41
Speaker 4: somebody requests the data and they want to look at
41:43
Speaker 4: location that was there for him.
41:45
Speaker 3: We just never made.
41:46
Speaker 4: That publicly available, you know, to where the general public
41:49
Speaker 4: could see, hey, this guy killed this deer or this
41:52
Speaker 4: gal killed this deer at this particular spot. In terms
41:58
Speaker 4: of the weight, it would be very useful. But that
42:01
Speaker 4: goes back to the in the fifties and the sixties
42:04
Speaker 4: when this was developed, and that was the sixty day
42:07
Speaker 4: drying period. It was the standardization. You know, some people
42:09
Speaker 4: were a month in the mountains and they had to
42:12
Speaker 4: you know, it's not fair that somebody could shoot this
42:14
Speaker 4: animal and get it scored that day and the other
42:15
Speaker 4: guy had to wait a month until he got out.
42:18
Speaker 4: So they put in this sixty day drying period to
42:20
Speaker 4: kind of standardize it. That would be the issue with
42:23
Speaker 4: the weights, as we don't not that there couldn't be
42:26
Speaker 4: a system developed, but right now we don't have a
42:28
Speaker 4: standardized Here's how Boone and Crockett collects the weights of animals.
42:34
Speaker 4: They did dor research at one point on moose racks
42:37
Speaker 4: to see if the mass of a moose rack varied
42:40
Speaker 4: in different areas. And so for a while there was
42:43
Speaker 4: actually a diagram on the score chart that said, Okay,
42:46
Speaker 4: was it the whole skull, was it cut narrowly, was
42:49
Speaker 4: it cut in the middle, And so it kind of
42:52
Speaker 4: shows you some of that variation you'd get and trying
42:55
Speaker 4: to add a data data point, well how much skull
42:58
Speaker 4: is cut in the middle AND's opinion versus mine. And
43:02
Speaker 4: so that's why some of those factors that would be
43:04
Speaker 4: super awesome just over time, we never had the ability
43:07
Speaker 4: to implement, you know, due to variation that kind of
43:11
Speaker 4: shot holes in the validity of the measurement.
43:16
Speaker 5: And with the way thing when we're let's say we're
43:18
Speaker 5: out collaring deer or elk or handle over or whatever,
43:22
Speaker 5: weight is it a common variable that won't collect. I mean,
43:25
Speaker 5: it has some use but having h class data that
43:28
Speaker 5: can take you a lot farther with with management applications.
43:34
Speaker 2: So John, from you know, being so involved in the
43:37
Speaker 2: science side of things, if you had an unlimited budget,
43:42
Speaker 2: if if we guarantee the B and C or P
43:44
Speaker 2: and Y had an unlimited budget and all the staffing
43:47
Speaker 2: they could ever ask for, and you were tasked with
43:51
Speaker 2: renovating the record keeping system so that this could be
43:55
Speaker 2: the absolute best tool for future conservation needs in a
44:00
Speaker 2: time when we are probably going to have greater conservation
44:03
Speaker 2: needs than ever, as the human footprint on the world
44:06
Speaker 2: continues to expand, as so many different factors change environmentally
44:10
Speaker 2: over the next fifty tow one hundred years. I think
44:12
Speaker 2: it is not an exaggeration at all to say that
44:16
Speaker 2: we are going to be faced with all sorts of
44:18
Speaker 2: difficult choices and unforeseen circumstances in coming decades, right for wildlife.
44:24
Speaker 2: So we need the best tools we possibly can have
44:28
Speaker 2: heading into that future. So if you were tasked with
44:32
Speaker 2: creating this two point zero system, that would be that
44:36
Speaker 2: tool for the future. Again, budget staffing, none of it's
44:41
Speaker 2: of a concernant. Please tell me what that perfect two
44:44
Speaker 2: point zero system would look like.
44:45
Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't do much to change the measuring of
44:48
Speaker 5: antlers and horns because I think that's pretty well covered.
44:53
Speaker 5: I would have an ultrasound and collect rump fat dead animal.
44:58
Speaker 5: I'd collect bone, marrow condition and quantity, and the upper
45:01
Speaker 5: femur be good to pull a lymph node to get
45:05
Speaker 5: a clearer idea of CWD distribution. Of course, get the tooth,
45:09
Speaker 5: get the location, and those are the first couple that
45:14
Speaker 5: come to mind. And with that information on every potential
45:19
Speaker 5: animal that's harvest you'd have a out of those world
45:23
Speaker 5: data set. But that take an unlimited budget.
45:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you would, you would you would ask
45:30
Speaker 2: for the every animal harvested, no minimum score. Is that correct?
45:35
Speaker 5: If you could get it, every animal that was harvested,
45:38
Speaker 5: that was roadkilled, that was anything, anything that someone could
45:41
Speaker 5: get their hand on, and yeah, that'd be that'd be
45:44
Speaker 5: the dream data set.
45:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. Now let's say that your boss came in
45:51
Speaker 2: and established a budget and the real world is back
45:57
Speaker 2: in play. You have you have the the real set
46:01
Speaker 2: of limitations we have in this real world. What is
46:06
Speaker 2: what are two changes that you would make if you
46:09
Speaker 2: had the ability to make two changes to our system
46:15
Speaker 2: or or the data we're trying to collect. What would
46:19
Speaker 2: those two changes or asks be within the set of
46:23
Speaker 2: limitations that we know.
46:24
Speaker 3: Well, something that would be.
46:27
Speaker 5: That would be very feasible, and it require looping in
46:33
Speaker 5: some statistician and some population modelers. But the amount of effort,
46:39
Speaker 5: number of days, number of hours that somebody was hunting
46:42
Speaker 5: for a particular animal. And this it's easy to think
46:47
Speaker 5: of this on a micro scale where you know where
46:50
Speaker 5: this big white tail is on the back wood lot,
46:53
Speaker 5: but how much effort went into that because knowing those
46:56
Speaker 5: hunter effort metrics, the results and harvest can really help
47:03
Speaker 5: with population forecasting. And then again, I know I'm sounding
47:06
Speaker 5: like a broken record here, but age goes a long
47:09
Speaker 5: long way. Knowing what the age class is for that
47:12
Speaker 5: population would be valuable. Most of the animals that would
47:17
Speaker 5: make the B and C book that would come back
47:20
Speaker 5: to us our older animals.
47:22
Speaker 3: And so.
47:24
Speaker 5: Having there's ways where you can get proxies for a
47:27
Speaker 5: year and a half versus two and a half, that's
47:30
Speaker 5: really not applicable here. And so pulling that tooth would
47:34
Speaker 5: be the most reliable way and if you had that,
47:37
Speaker 5: you'd be a very good shape.
47:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, So justin being in the leadership role that you
47:44
Speaker 2: are there with P and Y and understanding your own
47:47
Speaker 2: limitations and having your previous experience with B and C.
47:52
Speaker 2: If you could snap your fingers now and either take
47:56
Speaker 2: one of these suggestions that John had or make a
47:59
Speaker 2: change of your own desire. What would you like to
48:01
Speaker 2: see change or be updated or renovated in some kind
48:06
Speaker 2: of way to improve this citizen science opportunity.
48:11
Speaker 4: You know, just just participation, I mean, that is a
48:15
Speaker 4: leadership role. I mean anything's probably if all of a
48:18
Speaker 4: sudden we started getting one hundred percent of the animals
48:21
Speaker 4: that were taken that made Boone and Crockett and Pope
48:23
Speaker 4: and young, if everybody was participating at that level, we'd
48:27
Speaker 4: have the funding to go bigger, you know if if
48:30
Speaker 4: age again. Age has been a reoccurring theme. I spent
48:33
Speaker 4: fifteen years at B and C trying to figure out
48:36
Speaker 4: how to up that age data. I mean I got
48:39
Speaker 4: to play with the data. It was a lot of
48:40
Speaker 4: fun because we'd have teeth that had replacement and wear ages.
48:44
Speaker 3: We had bile tagged animals so known age, and then
48:49
Speaker 3: we also had.
48:52
Speaker 4: The section tooth data and I could compare them, you know,
48:55
Speaker 4: and I can tell you a lot of a lot
48:57
Speaker 4: of whitetail hunters want to call their boon and crocket
48:59
Speaker 4: dear four and a half, and most of them aren't.
49:03
Speaker 3: You know that that.
49:04
Speaker 4: Kind of shows some of the some of the hiccups
49:07
Speaker 4: of going too much shittis in science. So you know,
49:10
Speaker 4: like I said, I to John's point, Yeah, I'd love
49:13
Speaker 4: to add a couple of traits. Honestly, there's probably a
49:15
Speaker 4: couple of small changes I'd make on the scoring, just
49:19
Speaker 4: just because having done it for so long, being like, man,
49:21
Speaker 4: I don't understand why they made that rule the way
49:24
Speaker 4: they did.
49:24
Speaker 3: But again, they've been doing it for, you know, eighty years.
49:28
Speaker 4: You can't really throw out eighty years of data just
49:30
Speaker 4: because there's a better way to take a gu one
49:32
Speaker 4: on a bull.
49:32
Speaker 2: Help. Yeah, okay, so I think a reasonable ask for
49:40
Speaker 2: the audience. Then it sounds like would be participate a
49:45
Speaker 2: little bit more on this if you previously thought this
49:47
Speaker 2: was not for you because you don't care about how
49:49
Speaker 2: you're ranked within the list of other hunters who killed
49:51
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy inchbuck or whatever it is. There's
49:54
Speaker 2: a science, there's a conservation reason to do this. There's
49:57
Speaker 2: value in submitting the thing and submitting it as thorough
50:01
Speaker 2: of a submission as you possibly can with all the
50:05
Speaker 2: data you're willing, because more data the better. And let's
50:10
Speaker 2: all do the age. Let's throw in the voluntary age opportunity.
50:14
Speaker 2: Let's check that box because it sounds like that's going
50:16
Speaker 2: to be very valuable data. And then if we all
50:19
Speaker 2: do this, if we all do a really good job
50:22
Speaker 2: of participating more, then Justin's going to have the funds
50:25
Speaker 2: to be able to take more of these submissions. And
50:29
Speaker 2: maybe ten years from now we'll have a case to
50:31
Speaker 2: be made to lower the minimum scoring threshold so we
50:36
Speaker 2: can have more folks participate or add on one of
50:40
Speaker 2: these other asks that John made. So this is a
50:44
Speaker 2: step in the right direction, maybe right.
50:46
Speaker 3: That's right.
50:47
Speaker 5: And the other thing, I mean, participation is key. I've
50:50
Speaker 5: deer hunted most of my life. I grew up in
50:52
Speaker 5: Missouri around big deer. I've never killed a deer that
50:56
Speaker 5: approached one sixty. I know people who do every seas
51:00
Speaker 5: and I hound by friends and encourage strangers to submit
51:06
Speaker 5: because there is value in this. And so even if
51:09
Speaker 5: you're not the one that made the harvest, communicate to
51:14
Speaker 5: people who do how much this can benefit conservation.
51:18
Speaker 3: By hunters.
51:19
Speaker 5: I mean, it's kind of that positive feedback like we'd
51:21
Speaker 5: see in PR dollars and buy in dusting. This is
51:24
Speaker 5: a way for hunters to step up and benefit conservation.
51:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I also want to pick both of your
51:34
Speaker 2: brains about the flip side of this conversation, which kind
51:39
Speaker 2: of ties back to the original thing that my article
51:42
Speaker 2: started with, which was the obsession with antlers and antler
51:47
Speaker 2: score that many have within their community and that I
51:50
Speaker 2: have been guilty of at times too. And there's nothing
51:53
Speaker 2: wrong with being excited about big deer. I love big deer,
51:56
Speaker 2: I love big elk. They're fascinating, amazing critters, and I
51:59
Speaker 2: get a charge out chasing them. But there are definitely
52:05
Speaker 2: some downsides to what this has done to our community
52:08
Speaker 2: and culture as well, not to mention the fact that
52:11
Speaker 2: survey after survey after survey shows that the non hunting public,
52:16
Speaker 2: those that are the majority that have the voting power
52:19
Speaker 2: to determine our fate, are very strongly telling us for
52:24
Speaker 2: decades now that they are not supportive of trophy hunting.
52:28
Speaker 2: So there seem to be some risks that come alongside
52:32
Speaker 2: of the continued promotion of antler score antler size, that
52:37
Speaker 2: kind of thing justin with your role at a company
52:41
Speaker 2: or at an organization. You know that has been a
52:44
Speaker 2: part of this record keeping for decades. Now, how do
52:48
Speaker 2: how do you personally think about this? Do you have
52:53
Speaker 2: any worries about are infatuation with antlers?
52:57
Speaker 4: Do not?
52:58
Speaker 2: Do you see negatives or concerns or it? Are you
53:00
Speaker 2: not worried about it from a cultural perspective, from the
53:04
Speaker 2: impact of what this says about us as hunters or
53:06
Speaker 2: where hunting's going. Where are you personally at with all that?
53:10
Speaker 4: You know, Obviously, the majority of my job the promotion
53:16
Speaker 4: of a lifestyle, a promotion of archery, a promotion of
53:19
Speaker 4: records keeping, of the conservation model that's been around forever.
53:23
Speaker 3: You know, the success of my job is.
53:25
Speaker 4: Dictated by having the buy in of that seventy two
53:27
Speaker 4: percent of the country that doesn't hunt themselves but approves
53:30
Speaker 4: of it. And so if we're doing something that that
53:34
Speaker 4: seventy two percent finds offensive, there's two.
53:37
Speaker 3: Ways to deal with that. Either we come together as
53:39
Speaker 3: a group and.
53:39
Speaker 4: Say, hey, we just got to knock it off because
53:41
Speaker 4: they don't like it, or we have to say, hey,
53:44
Speaker 4: we've got to fix our act here a little bit
53:46
Speaker 4: and explain to them why pursuing that oldest, biggest, most
53:49
Speaker 4: mature animal in some situations is what you should do.
53:53
Speaker 4: In other situations when we're trying to lower the density
53:58
Speaker 4: of deer, maybe maybe we should be shooting those bucks
54:01
Speaker 4: and putting it all that effort. Maybe we should be
54:02
Speaker 4: killing five or six dos. And so I do think
54:07
Speaker 4: that this over this infatuation, this do anything for the
54:11
Speaker 4: big deer is problematic. And we have examples how many
54:15
Speaker 4: how many you know, creators, TV show personalities, different things
54:18
Speaker 4: along those lines have pushed it so far to be
54:23
Speaker 4: that guy and to be the hero. Well, we as
54:25
Speaker 4: hunters are still watching them too, And so you know
54:29
Speaker 4: how we separate this out in terms of I honestly
54:33
Speaker 4: see absolutely nothing wrong with antler scoring. I see absolutely
54:36
Speaker 4: nothing wrong with the pursuit of a mature deer extending
54:39
Speaker 4: out your season, you know, but you need to frame
54:42
Speaker 4: it like that, you don't, don't. I only shoot you
54:46
Speaker 4: know one seventy plus is that that's we're doing that
54:50
Speaker 4: to ourselves, and that's not the scoring system. That's our emphasis.
54:54
Speaker 4: And so you know, anytime I get to have a
54:56
Speaker 4: conversation with anyone, I mean that's why I came up
54:59
Speaker 4: to you. I saw your article on the antler scoring.
55:02
Speaker 4: I'm like, man, he's got some good points, but there's
55:04
Speaker 4: also some counterpoints here. Let's have this discussion, you know,
55:07
Speaker 4: let's make ourselves better as a community.
55:09
Speaker 3: And that's my number one concern.
55:11
Speaker 4: I personally, I think if Boone and Crockett and Pope
55:14
Speaker 4: and Young ceased keeping records tomorrow, both organizations would continue.
55:19
Speaker 4: I don't think it would do a darn thing, though,
55:21
Speaker 4: because there's a system and people are still going to
55:23
Speaker 4: measure antlers, and then there's just one less referee in there,
55:27
Speaker 4: so abandoning in it. I don't think does this any
55:29
Speaker 4: good either. It's already been it's already been done. We've
55:32
Speaker 4: put our emphasis on a number and not the experience.
55:36
Speaker 4: You know, that's my concern. That's what I lay awake
55:39
Speaker 4: staring at the ceiling at night, thinking about how do
55:41
Speaker 4: I address this, you know, to maintain our conservation successes
55:44
Speaker 4: that we work so hard to get into the future.
55:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you think about that? John?
55:53
Speaker 5: I I don't think it should be about the score.
55:56
Speaker 5: I don't think it should be about the competition. I
55:59
Speaker 5: think the hunters out there that use it as a
56:04
Speaker 5: measuring tool just to want to our just that's their priority.
56:12
Speaker 5: This is an emotional issue for them, and value based
56:16
Speaker 5: judgment on how they want to recognize that animal. It
56:21
Speaker 5: worries me. I think it's divisive. I am very pro
56:25
Speaker 5: scoring for the reasons that I have mentioned in the
56:28
Speaker 5: last hour. I think we've got to be careful. I
56:32
Speaker 5: read your article and I wondered if this was a
56:34
Speaker 5: discussion we would have had ten years ago or fifteen
56:37
Speaker 5: years ago, before everyone was so connected and so the
56:44
Speaker 5: ability to comment on everything was a bit more restrictive
56:48
Speaker 5: if you were writing a letter to the editor of
56:50
Speaker 5: Field and Stream or Outdoor Life or something about that
56:53
Speaker 5: when a score was mentioned. I mean, now it's all
56:55
Speaker 5: in real time, and so it worries me. Emphasizing this
57:00
Speaker 5: score and nothing else. I think it's going to take
57:03
Speaker 5: away from what this was put in place to do
57:06
Speaker 5: and take away from the potential that it has, and
57:10
Speaker 5: so that will fall on deaf ears to some hunters.
57:15
Speaker 5: I recognize that fully, and that's just my personal perspective.
57:22
Speaker 2: So this is a question that I have discussed with
57:25
Speaker 2: all of our past guests within this mini series. I
57:30
Speaker 2: think a lot of us have similar worries and concerns
57:34
Speaker 2: similar to what both of you just described. But the
57:38
Speaker 2: question is always, but what do we do about it?
57:42
Speaker 2: Because I think you mentioned this earlier justin right, the
57:46
Speaker 2: content that people click on, the content that people want
57:49
Speaker 2: to watch on YouTube or see on Instagram or read
57:52
Speaker 2: from the Boone and Crocker Club. You know, it's maybe
57:55
Speaker 2: five percent of the people will read the article about
57:58
Speaker 2: the conservation story related to this data, but a million
58:02
Speaker 2: people will read the article about the new world record.
58:07
Speaker 2: Everybody will click the YouTube thumbnail with a two hundred
58:11
Speaker 2: and seventy inch double drop time mega giant. Right, So
58:26
Speaker 2: the question is, like, how do we change this thing
58:31
Speaker 2: that just is I guess as human nature related to
58:34
Speaker 2: some degree also cultural inertia. If we all know that
58:42
Speaker 2: there's something I don't know if toxic's the right word,
58:45
Speaker 2: but something that seems unhealthy within it. If we know
58:50
Speaker 2: there's something there, what kinds of things can we tangibly
58:54
Speaker 2: do as individuals or as leaders within this community, or
58:58
Speaker 2: communicators or whatever role anyone listening plays within this hunting community.
59:04
Speaker 2: What kinds of things would the two of you suggest
59:08
Speaker 2: an individual do to be a part of changing this
59:12
Speaker 2: trend in a little bit more positive a direction.
59:16
Speaker 5: I think individuals need to be prepared to speak up.
59:19
Speaker 5: I mean, hopefully we could generate some momentum through our
59:23
Speaker 5: discussion today and if people understand this is not a
59:28
Speaker 5: tool to figure out how much you can brag about
59:31
Speaker 5: or how much attention or clicks or whatever you can get,
59:34
Speaker 5: but the real meaning of why we're taking these measurements.
59:39
Speaker 5: And if somebody sees that there's a new whatever record
59:45
Speaker 5: it might be for whatever species, emphasize that that's just
59:49
Speaker 5: one data point and that's interesting and we can appreciate
59:52
Speaker 5: that animal. And I'll see any number of articles in
59:56
Speaker 5: the local paper where angler catches a record fish of
59:59
Speaker 5: whatever kind, and yeah, you click on it. It's interesting
1:00:02
Speaker 5: to know. But communicating why we're taking these messages, I
1:00:07
Speaker 5: mean measure measurements, and how to message it to them
1:00:11
Speaker 5: why the community, I think is is a great first step.
1:00:15
Speaker 4: What you're doing today, What do you think justin you know,
1:00:21
Speaker 4: I've spent my time in the nonprofit world.
1:00:24
Speaker 3: You know, do do the words.
1:00:25
Speaker 4: Of Roosevelt, Do what what you can with what you
1:00:27
Speaker 4: have where you're at, you know, get on that advisory
1:00:31
Speaker 4: committee in your local area. You know, get involved with
1:00:34
Speaker 4: a local conservation group, depending on what it may be,
1:00:37
Speaker 4: get involved at a national level. You know, somebody has
1:00:41
Speaker 4: a desire to learn about hunting, or maybe they don't
1:00:43
Speaker 4: like wild game man, invite them over, tell the tell
1:00:47
Speaker 4: that conservation story.
1:00:49
Speaker 3: And I think if.
1:00:54
Speaker 4: If you, if you put it out there enough and
1:00:56
Speaker 4: you have enough people that you kind of bring bring
1:00:58
Speaker 4: along with you and say, hey, you know, if you're
1:01:00
Speaker 4: gonna be a hunter, I think this is part of
1:01:02
Speaker 4: it too, not just going out and filling the freezer,
1:01:05
Speaker 4: hanging the buck on the wall, you know, do a
1:01:07
Speaker 4: game feed, Invite some friends over that maybe don't understand it,
1:01:10
Speaker 4: and show them this type of thing, you know, I again,
1:01:14
Speaker 4: ground up type thing. I mean, that's the that's what
1:01:18
Speaker 4: the conservation movement always was. That's what P and Y was,
1:01:21
Speaker 4: that's what B and C was. You know, spread your
1:01:25
Speaker 4: influence as far as you can. And that's how I
1:01:28
Speaker 4: think we combat this, you know. I mean, somebody's all
1:01:30
Speaker 4: excited about, you know, that giant deer that they killed,
1:01:34
Speaker 4: and then they mentioned, well I didn't get to cutting
1:01:35
Speaker 4: it up because I was too busy driving it around town.
1:01:38
Speaker 4: I mean, don't lose a friendship over it, but maybe
1:01:41
Speaker 4: chastise them a bit of like, hey man, you're you're
1:01:43
Speaker 4: kind of minimizing it to one thing, you know, we're
1:01:46
Speaker 4: I mean, I always joke, Yeah, man, I love I
1:01:48
Speaker 4: love hunting meat, but I also like something to hang
1:01:50
Speaker 4: my hats on, you know, everything, Every part of that
1:01:53
Speaker 4: freaking animal should be utilized and respected, you know. And
1:01:57
Speaker 4: I don't care if you're minimizing it to just the
1:02:00
Speaker 4: meat or just the antlers, or just any one thing
1:02:03
Speaker 4: that's bad. And and as hunters, we need we need
1:02:07
Speaker 4: to take we need to take pride in every single
1:02:09
Speaker 4: thing that has to do without the exercising, the preparing,
1:02:13
Speaker 4: the shooting of the bow year round, you know, all
1:02:17
Speaker 4: that stuff.
1:02:17
Speaker 3: That's how we fight this.
1:02:19
Speaker 4: We show that we were brought here by conservation minded people,
1:02:23
Speaker 4: and we're going to do our part to ensure that
1:02:25
Speaker 4: that conservation mindset continues and we don't get wrapped up
1:02:28
Speaker 4: in the commercial are commercialization of killing the biggest at
1:02:31
Speaker 4: the furthest distance as quick as possible.
1:02:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I I find myself at a fork in
1:02:41
Speaker 2: the road because something you just said there justin uh,
1:02:46
Speaker 2: brings to mind another kind of half of this whole
1:02:49
Speaker 2: cultural discussion that I've been having over the last few weeks.
1:02:52
Speaker 2: You said something on the lines of, you know, whether
1:02:55
Speaker 2: you can kill a deer from as far away or
1:02:57
Speaker 2: as fast as possible? Right And when I hear that,
1:03:00
Speaker 2: I'm thinking all of these changes in technology and how
1:03:04
Speaker 2: that's impacting how we hunt, whether that be the long
1:03:09
Speaker 2: distance shooting craze, whether that be thermal optics, live streaming,
1:03:14
Speaker 2: cell cameras, drones being used, all of these electronic optics
1:03:19
Speaker 2: that allow you to range, find and have all your
1:03:22
Speaker 2: adjustments made automatically for you. There's so many things changing
1:03:26
Speaker 2: right now that are impacting really what hunting is. And
1:03:33
Speaker 2: I have so many questions, so many concerns about that,
1:03:36
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of hunters do. But at
1:03:39
Speaker 2: the same time, there's this whole pushback on that from
1:03:45
Speaker 2: within the hunting community, which is anytime somebody says, well,
1:03:49
Speaker 2: I don't know about this technology or I don't know
1:03:50
Speaker 2: about this thing or that thing, the automatic response is
1:03:55
Speaker 2: you're tearing down others in the hunting community. You're dividing
1:03:58
Speaker 2: the hunting community. You shouldn't do that at all. Everything
1:04:01
Speaker 2: should be okay as long as it's legal. What is
1:04:06
Speaker 2: your thought on the trends as we see them now
1:04:10
Speaker 2: with technology and gear justin I'm sure this is something
1:04:13
Speaker 2: that you know, you're discussing at Boon and Crockett on
1:04:16
Speaker 2: the Ethics Committee a lot, and I'm sure at P
1:04:18
Speaker 2: and Y you're thinking about it a lot. How are
1:04:21
Speaker 2: you individually and how is P and Y as an
1:04:23
Speaker 2: organization thinking about the what seems like a rampant speed
1:04:29
Speaker 2: up of the advance of technology and how it's impacting.
1:04:32
Speaker 4: Hunting, you know, and it is and it's realistically you know,
1:04:36
Speaker 4: put this into context. It feels like, yeah, we're getting
1:04:39
Speaker 4: a ton of stuff thrown.
1:04:40
Speaker 3: At us right now.
1:04:42
Speaker 4: But this this idea of technology and giving the animal
1:04:45
Speaker 4: an opportunity to to win, for lack of a better term,
1:04:49
Speaker 4: I mean that is the root of fair chase. The
1:04:51
Speaker 4: animal has the has a fair chance to come out
1:04:55
Speaker 4: victorious in in the in the competition between hunter and hunt.
1:05:00
Speaker 3: Right. You know, this goes back.
1:05:02
Speaker 4: The very first time this came up was when Boone
1:05:05
Speaker 4: and Crockett required fair chase. Was the sixties with the
1:05:09
Speaker 4: prevalence of airplane usage in Alaska for scouting, and that
1:05:13
Speaker 4: was the first time that the organization was like, Noah,
1:05:15
Speaker 4: that could get real bad if people just flew around,
1:05:18
Speaker 4: spotted them from the air, landed and shot them like
1:05:20
Speaker 4: that's that's no good like that, that's not giving the
1:05:23
Speaker 4: animal a chance to escape or evade hunters. And obviously
1:05:28
Speaker 4: we've come further and further along and technology is not
1:05:32
Speaker 4: inherently the devil. I mean, there's there's things that we
1:05:36
Speaker 4: have now that that I would argue have have made
1:05:39
Speaker 4: us more ethical hunters, more legal hunters. You know, now
1:05:41
Speaker 4: I know exactly where I'm standing. I can you know,
1:05:45
Speaker 4: I can figure stuff out that before like, okay, well,
1:05:48
Speaker 4: best guess I'm pretty sure that fence line separates this
1:05:51
Speaker 4: and this.
1:05:51
Speaker 3: So that type of thing I think is good.
1:05:53
Speaker 4: But what we need to do, and this is the
1:05:56
Speaker 4: discussions that are had with with both Pope and Young
1:05:59
Speaker 4: and Boone and Crockett. Obviously a little bit different in
1:06:01
Speaker 4: terms of Pope and Young's mission is promotion of archery,
1:06:05
Speaker 4: and they have defined archery as a vertical bow. You know,
1:06:10
Speaker 4: it's a valid method of harvest. That's why we were
1:06:14
Speaker 4: started was to prove it was. And so they have
1:06:18
Speaker 4: a little bit tighter focus on looking at some of
1:06:22
Speaker 4: the technologies. Is this technology going to be detrimental to
1:06:25
Speaker 4: the wildlife or does this make a bow no longer
1:06:29
Speaker 4: a bow? Right, So there is some differences there between
1:06:31
Speaker 4: the two groups, but I mean, at the end of
1:06:34
Speaker 4: the day, like you're not supposed to always be successful.
1:06:38
Speaker 4: Hunting is not supposed to have a predetermined outcome like
1:06:44
Speaker 4: you know, I mean those of us that have been
1:06:46
Speaker 4: doing it forever, Like what relives in your head again
1:06:50
Speaker 4: and again the time you made a mistake, the time
1:06:52
Speaker 4: that big buck winded you, the time you moved when
1:06:54
Speaker 4: you should know if you tried to draw and he
1:06:56
Speaker 4: busted you. You know, those failures are the ones that
1:06:59
Speaker 4: are burned in to your head and make you a
1:07:01
Speaker 4: better hunter. And when we start pushing technology to well,
1:07:08
Speaker 4: he can't smell me now because I don't have to
1:07:09
Speaker 4: go into that betting area for six months because I
1:07:12
Speaker 4: have a cellular trailer camera. Yes, it's made it easier. Yes,
1:07:16
Speaker 4: the deer's not as disturbed. I understand those arguments. But
1:07:20
Speaker 4: as a hunter, isn't that part of the game of
1:07:23
Speaker 4: sneaking in there, finding that betting area and doing all
1:07:25
Speaker 4: that without relying on technology. And it's a very it's
1:07:30
Speaker 4: a very volatile debate. I mean what's inappropriate to me
1:07:38
Speaker 4: to the next game. The next guy might just be fine.
1:07:41
Speaker 4: And so both organizations find ourselves in this situation where
1:07:45
Speaker 4: we're trying to play referee, but trying to get it
1:07:47
Speaker 4: to a higher level. What we found is addressing each
1:07:51
Speaker 4: technology one by one. In essence, we're picking winners and
1:07:54
Speaker 4: losers of companies, which is never what this was supposed
1:07:58
Speaker 4: to be doing. Not like, oh, they invested this much,
1:08:01
Speaker 4: but we don't think this is fair chase. That's not
1:08:03
Speaker 4: at all what any of these groups are ever trying
1:08:05
Speaker 4: to say. So we're trying to say from a higher level,
1:08:08
Speaker 4: what is the line that crossed the technology crosses that
1:08:12
Speaker 4: makes it unfair? One that comes up with B and
1:08:17
Speaker 4: C a lot.
1:08:18
Speaker 3: Is it giving me.
1:08:19
Speaker 4: The location of game electronically that I wouldn't have got otherwise.
1:08:25
Speaker 3: Think drones.
1:08:26
Speaker 4: Think some states now through freedom of information, you have
1:08:30
Speaker 4: to release GPS coordinates, real time GPS coordinates of where
1:08:34
Speaker 4: a herd elk is in collar data. They have to
1:08:37
Speaker 4: release that. You're now getting that actual location of the animal.
1:08:42
Speaker 4: And so how do we make these high level rules
1:08:46
Speaker 4: that folks can look at and say, you know, is
1:08:50
Speaker 4: this crossing the line and the answer is there's not
1:08:52
Speaker 4: a definitive line. That's why Boone and Crockett and Pope
1:08:55
Speaker 4: Young takes so much heat is we're trying to find
1:08:58
Speaker 4: that great line and listen everybody's perspective, and we're the
1:09:02
Speaker 4: ones that finally sometimes have to say no, man, that's.
1:09:04
Speaker 3: Just too far, and we have to say.
1:09:05
Speaker 2: It, yeah, John, What do you feel on this topic?
1:09:12
Speaker 3: Person?
1:09:12
Speaker 5: It worries me. I mean, I agree with Justin and
1:09:15
Speaker 5: innovation is coming, and this is so tied to personal
1:09:20
Speaker 5: ethics and values and priorities that.
1:09:23
Speaker 3: It's it's.
1:09:27
Speaker 5: An individual's decision what they think crosses an ethical line
1:09:31
Speaker 5: when it comes down to it, and so for some
1:09:33
Speaker 5: people it's no big deal. For me, I think that
1:09:39
Speaker 5: some of this new technology is just making it too
1:09:44
Speaker 5: efficient to harvest gain from a population level among hunters.
1:09:50
Speaker 5: I mean, one thing that worries me is I hunt
1:09:52
Speaker 5: throughout the West. You look at species like mule deer
1:09:56
Speaker 5: and elk where units will have, however many tags allocated
1:10:02
Speaker 5: the game agencies are buffering where that allocation is not
1:10:08
Speaker 5: assuming one hundred percent success among hunters. If these new
1:10:13
Speaker 5: technologies come in and boost success that high, then tag
1:10:19
Speaker 5: allocation for all the rest of us who are not
1:10:21
Speaker 5: using those technologies may be reduced and so it may
1:10:24
Speaker 5: end up biting us in the butt and making that
1:10:27
Speaker 5: tag more difficult to draw. I've heard that animals will evolve,
1:10:32
Speaker 5: and you know, just like mallards now get a spinning
1:10:36
Speaker 5: when decoy a bit more than they did twenty years ago,
1:10:40
Speaker 5: stuff like thermal units drones. That's that's a pretty tricky
1:10:46
Speaker 5: thing to evolve to respond to elk And so I
1:10:51
Speaker 5: don't see that happening.
1:10:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, So so one idea that I've had, and it
1:11:00
Speaker 2: might be Pie in the Sky and Pollyanna. So I
1:11:03
Speaker 2: guess what I'm looking for here is is like a
1:11:06
Speaker 2: BS check from the two of you if you think
1:11:08
Speaker 2: anybody would go for this. But but when it comes
1:11:12
Speaker 2: to this whole technology thing, right, as we've we've all
1:11:15
Speaker 2: kind of admitted it's it's very personal. It's very subjective.
1:11:17
Speaker 2: Everyone's going to draw align the sand in a different place,
1:11:21
Speaker 2: and that is that's by the nature of what ethics are, right.
1:11:25
Speaker 2: We all have a different comfort level with different things.
1:11:29
Speaker 2: But it seems like there are some general lines where
1:11:35
Speaker 2: you start getting closer and closer to and and most
1:11:38
Speaker 2: folks start feeling like, ah, there's something going on here.
1:11:42
Speaker 2: So there's there's two hypothetical ways you could deal with
1:11:45
Speaker 2: something like this. There's the there's the way of you know,
1:11:49
Speaker 2: using the stick and saying we're going to ban this thing,
1:11:52
Speaker 2: or we're going to regulate this thing, or we are
1:11:54
Speaker 2: going to outlaw this thing, or say this thing you
1:11:57
Speaker 2: know can't be allowed in the record books, et cetera.
1:12:01
Speaker 2: On the flip side, there's this alternative way, which could
1:12:05
Speaker 2: be promoting the alternative or popularizing the antithesis. So one
1:12:13
Speaker 2: thought I had is so for me, one of my
1:12:16
Speaker 2: lines in the sand is with cell cameras. I've always
1:12:20
Speaker 2: thought that, like real time data is a line too
1:12:23
Speaker 2: far from me. So I personally set a twenty four
1:12:27
Speaker 2: hour delay on all cell cameras so that I'm a
1:12:31
Speaker 2: full twenty four hours removed from any knowledge that I
1:12:34
Speaker 2: gained through that technology. And maybe even that's too much,
1:12:37
Speaker 2: but right now that's where I personally have drawn my line,
1:12:41
Speaker 2: and I've thought, what if you could establish some kind
1:12:46
Speaker 2: of light line like that, where it's like a twenty
1:12:49
Speaker 2: four hour delay on a trial camera, for example, would
1:12:54
Speaker 2: get that trail camera a fair chase certification from the
1:12:57
Speaker 2: Boon and Crocket Club or from Pope and Young and
1:13:00
Speaker 2: that could be like a stamp, like a badge of
1:13:02
Speaker 2: honor that a company could use to help market their product.
1:13:06
Speaker 2: Or what if we had a I don't know what
1:13:09
Speaker 2: another example would be, but another one of these possible
1:13:13
Speaker 2: game changers. I don't know, I've, for lack of a
1:13:17
Speaker 2: better more thought on this, We'll stick with a trail
1:13:19
Speaker 2: camera example. What if there's something that where we could
1:13:22
Speaker 2: vote with our dollars. Hunters could say like, hey, we
1:13:26
Speaker 2: do want to promote this idea of keeping things, you know,
1:13:30
Speaker 2: not always getting easier, but I actually we want to
1:13:32
Speaker 2: tap the brakes on this thing, and we want to
1:13:34
Speaker 2: show all that desire we have by voting with our
1:13:37
Speaker 2: dollars for the things that actually make it harder. Is
1:13:41
Speaker 2: that the kind of thing that would ever work? Is
1:13:43
Speaker 2: that an idea like God, I would buy all fair
1:13:45
Speaker 2: Chase certified cell cameras. Then I could be like, hey, yeah,
1:13:48
Speaker 2: I still get to enjoy some benefits of this technology,
1:13:51
Speaker 2: but I am you know, I am by by by
1:13:56
Speaker 2: the boon of the technology itself limited to not giving
1:13:58
Speaker 2: into the temptation of using everything. Is that kind of
1:14:03
Speaker 2: thing A model maybe that could work in the future
1:14:06
Speaker 2: with other technologies as we go forward, am I onto something?
1:14:10
Speaker 3: I completely agreed with you.
1:14:11
Speaker 4: And back before the the cellular camera got the following
1:14:17
Speaker 4: that it had, and you know, eighty percent of them
1:14:19
Speaker 4: went that way. You know, I presented that to some
1:14:22
Speaker 4: companies and I said, hey, man, what if we put
1:14:26
Speaker 4: a fair chase certified mark on that? And there wasn't
1:14:31
Speaker 4: from the industry. The companies I talked to at the
1:14:33
Speaker 4: time didn't really gravitate towards that. It didn't it didn't
1:14:39
Speaker 4: have the appeal that they wanted it to. Now that
1:14:41
Speaker 4: goes back to what we talked about in scoring and
1:14:43
Speaker 4: the adoption of you know, everybody taking part in this
1:14:47
Speaker 4: record book. You know, a component of that is an
1:14:50
Speaker 4: ethical piece. All these animals have to be taken in
1:14:53
Speaker 4: fair chase. They do you do have to say I
1:14:56
Speaker 4: took them within these rules, which is the rules we're making.
1:14:59
Speaker 4: And so again it's just buying. I mean I would
1:15:02
Speaker 4: I'd love to go to a company and say, hey,
1:15:04
Speaker 4: let's let's cross promote something. I've reached out to some
1:15:08
Speaker 4: trail cam companies and some other technologies. My thought has been, hey,
1:15:12
Speaker 4: what if we come out with the company saying yes,
1:15:15
Speaker 4: this technology is available, Yes it can be used correctly,
1:15:19
Speaker 4: but also it could be used incorrectly.
1:15:21
Speaker 3: And if that's said jointly by the producer.
1:15:23
Speaker 4: And the folks using it, does that not lend some
1:15:27
Speaker 4: credibility to like, hey, man, let's let's back it down
1:15:31
Speaker 4: a little bit on this thermal usage, you know, looking
1:15:33
Speaker 4: over an entire canyon, Like, yeah, you can use it
1:15:37
Speaker 4: at night. It's good for predator control. It's you know,
1:15:39
Speaker 4: you could use it here appropriately, but you could also
1:15:43
Speaker 4: abuse this that way. You're not telling people like you
1:15:45
Speaker 4: can't do this, but you are saying, like, hey, for
1:15:48
Speaker 4: the good of hunting, for the survival of species, like
1:15:52
Speaker 4: there is a way we need to conduct ourselves to
1:15:54
Speaker 4: give the animals a chance to win. And then we
1:15:57
Speaker 4: also need to you know, and I'm guilty of it too.
1:16:00
Speaker 4: You don't post on you know, Facebook, Oh I failed
1:16:02
Speaker 4: tag soup this year. Man, we gotta be okay with
1:16:06
Speaker 4: that failure because you tried to make it too hard
1:16:08
Speaker 4: is just as admirable as success.
1:16:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I really liked that idea of you know,
1:16:17
Speaker 2: I think I think there's a business opportunity for companies
1:16:20
Speaker 2: out there to lean into this and there's a there's
1:16:24
Speaker 2: a there's a story that will sell that will sell products.
1:16:27
Speaker 2: I really do believe it. Not everybody in the hunting
1:16:29
Speaker 2: world wants uh the next big technology thing. And even
1:16:35
Speaker 2: though I know the dollars tell it otherwise, I really
1:16:37
Speaker 2: do believe there's something here that someone could take advantage of.
1:16:41
Speaker 2: But it's uh Now, it's above my pay grade, I guess,
1:16:44
Speaker 2: is what I'm getting at. Do you have any comments
1:16:47
Speaker 2: on that, John.
1:16:48
Speaker 5: I'd love to see it work. I mean, I think
1:16:52
Speaker 5: you're right that it would apply to some people. Make things.
1:16:56
Speaker 5: Amit improvement. Even if a handful of people switched to
1:17:01
Speaker 5: that more fair chase approach, that's good for hunting, that's
1:17:06
Speaker 5: good for all of us. But there's there's going to
1:17:08
Speaker 5: be hunters out there who are hunting for Instagram and
1:17:13
Speaker 5: by any means necessary, and I think that that that
1:17:16
Speaker 5: will be the tough market to reach.
1:17:20
Speaker 3: I like the idea so reluctant.
1:17:24
Speaker 2: Well, I'm cross my fingers and hope that somebody at
1:17:27
Speaker 2: some company is listening and willing to take a risk.
1:17:30
Speaker 2: To take a chance, guys, take a chance. All right, Well,
1:17:37
Speaker 2: I think we could continue for two more hours down
1:17:41
Speaker 2: the road of all of these questions and worries, which
1:17:44
Speaker 2: I'm guilty of sometimes doing. I'm going to try to
1:17:48
Speaker 2: save us from that now by offerings and offer am
1:17:53
Speaker 2: Is there any any other resource, whether it be a
1:17:58
Speaker 2: book or a documentary or an online essay, or something
1:18:05
Speaker 2: that either one of you have found inspiration from, or
1:18:11
Speaker 2: have learned from, or could see value in someone today
1:18:19
Speaker 2: checking out as a kind of coda to what we've
1:18:22
Speaker 2: talked about today, Is there any favorite resource or recommend
1:18:26
Speaker 2: recommendation you could share with the folks listening related to
1:18:29
Speaker 2: the topics we've covered today, whether that be the history
1:18:32
Speaker 2: of the scoring system, or conservation and citizens science, or
1:18:36
Speaker 2: fair chase, or the use or moderation of technology, any
1:18:40
Speaker 2: of these things we've covered. Is there anything that comes
1:18:43
Speaker 2: to mind that we maybe should check out?
1:18:46
Speaker 4: You know what?
1:18:46
Speaker 2: Really just enough or if either one of you one if.
1:18:48
Speaker 4: It really depends on how far you know, how deep
1:18:52
Speaker 4: that rabbit hole you want to go. There's some tremendous
1:18:55
Speaker 4: reading the biography of Theodore Roosevelt. What what I found
1:19:02
Speaker 4: super intriguing was that his uncle actually started in fisheries.
1:19:05
Speaker 4: So a lot of our conservation movement originally was based
1:19:09
Speaker 4: off of the hatchery model. You know that that one's
1:19:13
Speaker 4: like the ultimate, like trying to answer the question of
1:19:16
Speaker 4: how do we get where we were? How did you know?
1:19:18
Speaker 4: How did this land? Just straight for technology? We just
1:19:22
Speaker 4: Boon and Crockett and the Ethics Committee just did a
1:19:25
Speaker 4: fair chase module for part of the n RA, a
1:19:28
Speaker 4: Hunter ed. You can go on to their n RAS platform,
1:19:33
Speaker 4: their Hunter edueducation platform. There's a fair Chase module that's
1:19:37
Speaker 4: kind of a two to oh one level. You know,
1:19:39
Speaker 4: maybe you've got a you know, team to twenties, it's
1:19:43
Speaker 4: starting to get into this hunting, really starting to take it.
1:19:45
Speaker 4: We tried to dedicate that fair chase messaging to that demographic.
1:19:51
Speaker 4: Jim Posowitz has a book Beyond Fair Chase. The Pause
1:19:55
Speaker 4: was awesome. It's great. You know, you're probably not going
1:19:58
Speaker 4: to agree with everything he wrote, but he brings up
1:20:00
Speaker 4: some very good questions if you really want to question
1:20:03
Speaker 4: this idea of fair chase and what is and isn't okay?
1:20:07
Speaker 4: You know, like I said, it just depends on the
1:20:09
Speaker 4: level of engagement in both clubs websites. I mean, there's
1:20:12
Speaker 4: a there's a fair Chase essay that Boone and Crockett
1:20:15
Speaker 4: did that kind of looks at some situations. Pope and
1:20:17
Speaker 4: Young has position statements on sites and definition.
1:20:21
Speaker 3: Of a bow. There's there's a ton out there.
1:20:25
Speaker 5: Do you have any favorites, John, I'm going to take
1:20:29
Speaker 5: the low hanging flute fruit and say every hunter should
1:20:32
Speaker 5: read a Sad County Almanac and if you're only going
1:20:37
Speaker 5: to pick one thing within that book where you think
1:20:40
Speaker 5: like a mountain and I think that's a good way
1:20:43
Speaker 5: to stay grounded and see how far this wildlife conservation
1:20:48
Speaker 5: wildlife management movement has come. And I think that's good
1:20:53
Speaker 5: for everybody to take to the duck blind, to the
1:20:55
Speaker 5: deer stand read in the offseason. It's just it's keep
1:21:00
Speaker 5: us all looking in the right direction.
1:21:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't agree more with you on
1:21:08
Speaker 2: that one. Justin I want to give you an opportunity
1:21:11
Speaker 2: for the last word, just to plug Pope and Young
1:21:16
Speaker 2: if you'd like, and give folks explicit directions on the
1:21:20
Speaker 2: U r L on any specific actions you'd like them
1:21:24
Speaker 2: to take. Uh. You know, something we maybe should have
1:21:27
Speaker 2: covered but didn't would even be a walkthrough of exactly
1:21:32
Speaker 2: what goes into making a submission to Pope and young.
1:21:35
Speaker 2: If you want to tackle any one of those, you're
1:21:38
Speaker 2: welcome to you, you know.
1:21:39
Speaker 4: I mean, go to the website Hope Have Hope hyphenyong
1:21:43
Speaker 4: dot org. There's there's membership options there. We'd love to
1:21:48
Speaker 4: have you as a member. We'd love to have an entry.
1:21:50
Speaker 4: There's a list of all the official measures. You know,
1:21:53
Speaker 4: if you're in an area that there's not a lot
1:21:55
Speaker 4: of official measures, we'd love to have you fill out
1:21:57
Speaker 4: one of those online applications and maybe get involve as
1:22:00
Speaker 4: a volunteer for US SCORING twenty twenty five, we're doing
1:22:04
Speaker 4: a big convention in Glendale, Arizona, April nine through twelve.
1:22:08
Speaker 4: We'd love to have you come out check out our convention.
1:22:12
Speaker 4: There'll be you know, seminars on these topics. You know,
1:22:14
Speaker 4: maybe maybe Mark would be nice enough to come out
1:22:16
Speaker 4: and talk to us out there. We'll see hit them
1:22:17
Speaker 4: up for that. But you know, anywhere you can get involved,
1:22:21
Speaker 4: we'd love to have you in the website. It's a
1:22:22
Speaker 4: great place to start, and uh, there's all kinds of
1:22:25
Speaker 4: different links depending on you know, conservation, whatever you want
1:22:29
Speaker 4: to go down. That's that's the best place to start.
1:22:31
Speaker 4: And we'd love love to have you in our ranks,
1:22:34
Speaker 4: and you know, we talk a lot about the future.
1:22:36
Speaker 4: Man get involved, help, you know, help me do my job,
1:22:38
Speaker 4: do one of the voices in the organization that rises
1:22:41
Speaker 4: up and helps direct our future.
1:22:44
Speaker 2: Love it all right, gentlemen, Justin John, thank you so
1:22:48
Speaker 2: much for taking the time to have this conversation.
1:22:50
Speaker 3: Thank you.
1:22:53
Speaker 2: All right, and that's a wrap. Thanks for being here.
1:22:56
Speaker 2: I appreciate you. Thank you for being a part of
1:22:59
Speaker 2: this community. Until next time, stay wired to hunt.
1:23:11
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.