Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 915: Can Hunters and Carnivores Coexist? with Casey Anderson

Transcript

Ep. 915: Can Hunters and Carnivores Coexist? with Casey Anderson · 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
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Casey Anderson, a big game hunter,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: a wildlife filmmaker, and a large carnivorre specialist to discuss
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: the much debated and pretty darn tricky topic of coexistence
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: between hunters and carnivores. All right, welcome back to the
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Life,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: and this week we are tackling a topic that I
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: have long wanted to discuss. This is a tricky, hairy,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: tough animal to wrestle with. Here we are discussing hunters
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and carnivore and whether or not these two groups, one
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: set humans, one set animals can coexist. What are the
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: challenges of living alongside large carnivores like bears, mountain lions, wolves,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: What are the realities that come alongside of that? What
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: are the pros and cons of having these animals on
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: the landscape, What are the risks? What are the benefits,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: what are the challenges inherent in trying to find some
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: kind of balance in between, because there are really strong
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: opinions on either side of this issue. There are some
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: who think that wolves and grizzlies are you know, God's
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: gift to the world, and they're going to solve all
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: of your problems, and they're going to cure world hunger,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: and they are angels, you know, spitting rainbows and butterflies
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: out of their butts. On the other side, you have
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: people that think that wolves and bears and lions are
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: the work of the devil, and they are going to
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: destroy ranching, and they are going to destroy your opportunities
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: to hunt, and they are everything that is making your
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: hunting worse. Right, there's some people saying that as well.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: There's some people who want to wipe grizzly bears or
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: wipe wolves off the map. There are some people who
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: say that we should never be able to hunt them
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: and that they're the best thing in the world. The
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: reality might lie somewhere in between. I would say my perspective,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and I'm leading you here a little bit with a
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: preview of what's to come, but my take on the
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: matter is that there is somewhere in between those two
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: polar sides of this issue that deserve some time and
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: attention and some discussion, and that is what we're going
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: to do here today. And joining me, as I mentioned
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: at the top, is a guy by the name of
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Casey Anderson, and he's someone who is very well equipped
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: to talk about this topic because he has lived this
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: from all sides. He is a hunter. He is a
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: big game hunter, he's a bow hunter. He's chased elk
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: and deer and all sorts of critters like that. He
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: grew up in this world, in this lifestyle, so he
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: understands our perspective. On the flip side, he is also
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: an animal lover, just like many of us are, who
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: appreciates these animals on the landscape, not just elkin, deer,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: but also bears and wolves and lions. And he studies
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: them and follows them and films them for a living,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and because he loves doing that and is fascinated by them,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: so he sees the value in having these creatures out
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: there too. So he's talked to the animal rights activists,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: he's talked to the hunters, he's talked to the people
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: going to Yellowstone to watch for wolves, and he's talked
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: to people in Montana where he lives about hunting wolves.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: He's seen all sides of this issue. He's explored it
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: and disgusted with experts. He's lived it himself. And that
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: is I think a really key thing here for this discussion,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: because he brings to this topic a perspective that is
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: not just informed by reading some papers or by reading
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the social media comments or by listening to some other
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: random person. His experience and perspective is based very much
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: so on his on the ground experience because over the
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: last thirty plus years, he has traveled all over this
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: country and world, getting up close to and studying grizzly bears,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: mountain lions, tigers, wolves, big toothy critters that evoke all
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: sorts of emotions. He's been up close to them, watched
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: them for days upon days upon weeks and years worth
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: of time seeing them, watching them, developing an intimate understanding
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: of the reality of these creatures, how they live, the
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: impact they have on the landscape and the people in
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: the area. He's seen it all the good, the bad,
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: the in between. So I wanted to chat with Casey
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: today to explore this kind of murky in between what
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: exists between the predators are horrible and the predators are
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: the best. What's there in between, what's the radical center
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: of this issue, and what can we as hunters do
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: to better understand how to make sure there's a positive
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: future for us in our hunting way of life and
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: the critters that we like to hunt and pursue, but
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: also for the health of the ecosystem out there that
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: supports those animals, which does include carnivores in many cases.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: So that's the plan for today. That's the chat we
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: have in store. I absolutely love this one. Casey is
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: a wealth of knowledge, has a lot of great stories.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: He just launched a new YouTube channel be called Endless Venture.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: I highly recommend it. It's very entertaining. By the end
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: of this conversation, I guarantee you're going to want to
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: go check it out. So I'm just gonna preview it
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: for it until you just go ahead subscribe to that
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: now and then come on back. Listen to this chat
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: with Casey. If you have ever wondered about, or been
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: frustrated by, or confused by, or just simply intrigued by
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: the challenges, the debates, the discussions you see online when
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: it comes to hunters and the animals we hunt, and
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: then how all that exists alongside stuff like wolves or
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: bears or mountain lions or coyotes, any of that stuff
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: has ever popped up in your mind and you're like, man,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: that's a doozy her Man, that's frustrating her Man, I
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: don't get it. This is the chat for you. This
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: is one to listen to. So, without any further ado,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: here's my conversation with Casey Anderson. All right, joining me
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: now is Casey Anderson. Welcome to the show, Casey, thanks
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: for having me Mark, Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: making time to do this. It's a conversation that I've
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: been looking forward to for a while. I never expected
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: it to be on this podcast, but my wife and
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I first started following your work. I don't know, it's
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: been a lot of years ago. Now you've been doing
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: this for twenty years, thirty years probably something like that,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Is that right, Casey? I think we first stumbled on
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: your stuff maybe fifteen years ago. But how long ago
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: did that start?
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Fifteen years ago I was doing National geographic series,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: but I've been doing wildlife filmmaking type stuff for about
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: thirty one years.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Getting old, it goes fast. I can't believe that thirty
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: one years. So I think most people probably are familiar
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: with you from that kind of stuff, from your National
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Geographic series, or you did some stuff on Animal Planet too,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Is that right I did?
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been all around the block animal Planet, History,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Channel Discovery.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've done all this wildlife filmmaking. People view
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: you as a wildlife expert. I've heard you talk about
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: yourself as like a animal activist or advocate, but folks
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: probably might not be as familiar with the fact that
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: you are also a hunter. Can you give me a
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: little bit of that background. How did you get into hunting?
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: What is that?
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: How is that a part of your life now?
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I grew up in Montana, was born
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: and raised, fifth generation, so hunting has been a big
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: part of my family very very long time. Yeah. I
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: mean I was hunting in Montana, you know, going out
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: with my dad since I could walk, you know, and
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: you know that it really hunting really made me who
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: I am today in a lot of ways, you know,
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: as a tracker looking for animals, being out in nature,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: you know, you know, even though we're pursuing elk and
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: deer most of the time growing up, you know, it's
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: having those interactions and encounters with the other wildlife always
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: left me a little bit curious wanting to know more,
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: especially the more elusive ones like mountain lions and grizzly bears,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: where you just you'd see them, you know, maybe once
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: a year or every once a decade, right or you know,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: you see their tracks, and so wanting to know more
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: about them really kind of led me into trying to
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: film and and learn more, you know. And funny thing
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: about the filming someone asked me, like how I got
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: into filming, And it did start in hunting in another way.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: I would go out have these amazing stories and these
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: amazing encounters with my dad, and I'd come back to
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: the school yard and I would tell these stories over
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: and over. And it got to the point where I
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: had such so many good stories that I think everybody
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: thought I was full of it. And there's a part
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: of me that started documenting this stuff just to prove
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: that I wasn't full of it, right.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: That's funny. So I've always thought, you know, watching you know,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: like Planet earth or any other wildlife you know, focused
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: film or documentary. You watch this stuff and sometimes wonder
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: do these guys really know what they're doing a lot
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: of these folks, they kind of imagine someone coming from
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: London or England or wherever it is over there where
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: they've got the BBC Studios where there's so much of
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: this wildlife expertise as far as documentary making, And I wonder, like,
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: these guys come over here to America and they're filming
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: bears or deer or elk or whatever it is, and
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: how often are they stumbling around half blind when you
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: could take a deer hunter or elk hunter, or someone
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: from Montana or Wyoming or Michigan who's lived out here
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: tracking deer or elk and they could probably do a
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: hell of a job finding these critters and filming these critters. Uh.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Have you found that a non hunting wildlife filmmakers struggle
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: a little bit more than folks like you who have
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: that hunting expertise. Is there some truth to that?
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Oh? Man, totally on p Yeah, sorry to me. My
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: friends that are listening that are in that camp, that
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: are but they know they are, you know, that's the
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: thing it's it's there's a I would say over they
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: a majority of the folks that you see on TV
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: don't know what they're doing, right, you know, they they
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: spend most of their time in the field on the
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: net's during these projects, right, so you know they're not
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: not you know, they're not like rookies, but they don't
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: have a lifetime and experience and definitely not generational knowledge. Yeah,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: you know, I hate to pick on them. You know,
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: usually they're pretty face that shows up and there's usually
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: somebody who has had the experience off camera who's tell
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: them all about it and leading, you know, guiding them
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: through the through the process. And yeah, but even even me, man,
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you I'm go all over the world, and
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: I'm the first to admit that, you know, I don't
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: know anything about tigers or snow leopards, but what I've
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: learned in Montana and western North America, you can't apply
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: that stuff. You know, there's a bit of resiliency gained
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: from hunting, but there's some simple tracking stuff you gain
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: from hunting that you can't apply to other parts of
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: the world. So you're not starting off from scratch. But
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: you know, being humble enough to realize that when you're
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: in somebody else's backyard, listen, watch learn. Yeah, I'm always
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: learning and I love it. You know, I'm always learning
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: in my own backyard.
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: That's the one thing. The more you out there, the
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: more you realize you've got so much to learn. Yeah,
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm an open minded dude. I never like
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: to use the word expert because I don't think there
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: are any yet.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: That's the beautiful thing about hunting or wildlife in general.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: It's an endless, an endless road to walk down. You're
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: never going to have it all figured.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: Out for sure. Absolutely. So.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: You grew up hunting as a kid with your family.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: You fell in love with the pursuit of wildlife, studying wildlife.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: You mentioned that in particular that the especially elusive critters
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: like mountain lions or maybe some of the other carnivores
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: that was particularly caught your attention. What was that like
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: and how did that kind of shift your career trajectories.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: You started not just pursuing wildlife to eat them, but
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: also to study and then film these critters, tell these stories.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: What was it about lions, wolves, bears that kind of
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: got their hooks their claws into for lack of a
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: better pun.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean more you're you know, as a
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: hunter and being out there and killing elk and I mean,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: I'll just just give you a little anecdote. I remember
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: one time because you reminded me of it.
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: Here.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: I was like in fifth grade and I must have
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: had a little bit of a knack for tracking because
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I'm in class and I remember the teacher. Ade walks
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: in the room and had to slip to the teacher,
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: and the teacher goes, O, casee, your dad's here to
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: pick it for that appointment. I don't. I'm like, I
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: don't remember this appointment. But I'm like, okay, So I
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: go to the office and there's my dad looking standing
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: there waiting for me, and so let's go to that appointment.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, I nod my head and we get
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: and get out the truck. He goes, I just shot
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: a big bull with my boat. We got to go
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: track this thing down. I lost the blood trail, you know.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: So he lost the blood trail, so he knew that
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: I could help, you know. I think it was a
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: you know, part of that being a young kid too.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: You don't get in your own way a little bit,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: you can get focused. But he would do this all
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: the time, So my tracking capabilities were My Dad definitely
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: noticed him right away, and I think the more he
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: kind of celebrated him, the more I wanted to lean
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: into him. So then I guess, I guess where I'm
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: going here is that you know? So now there's these
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: other animals you see tracks of. You never get their
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: eyes on them, but you know, you know, fundamentally if
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: there's tracks on the ground and you can follow those
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: tracks at the end those tracts as an animal. So
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: what about this mountain lion? Right where's this thing at that?
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: I see its tracks all the time? So I think
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: that I became almost just obsessed with the idea of
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: trying to find these things I knew that were out
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: there and leaving their tracks behind. And that led me,
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: you know, I went to Montana State to study wild biology,
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: and then in the summer months, i'd go down to
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Yellowstone and I would run into these guys that we
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: were talking about friars, these guys from la and New
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: York who were out here doing documentaries but not knowing
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: where to find things. And they would come up to
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: me and say hey kid, you know, I'll give you
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: fifty bucks a day to carry my heavy backpack on
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: top of the mountain and go try to find some
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: of these animals. And I'm like, seriously, like jackpot, right,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: this is what I'm good at.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: So that's how it started. That's how I started, that
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: made that connection to TV. I would take those skills
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: that I learned from hunting and those tracking skills, and
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: now I'm out in the park searching for these elusive
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: animals I've always wanted to and making enough money to
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: you know, buy beer.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: So it was like it's how it went down. And
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: so that just metamorphosized into like, you know, the producers
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: asking me to do a little bit more, me helping
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: him produce some of the story ideas. And then ultimately
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: about my junior year, used to before my junior year
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: in college, a guy came up to me and says, hey,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: I've got the series. It's this launched. I wanted, you know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: I need you to come along with me. I'm going
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: to go all over the world and you're gonna be
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: my sidekick and help me find animals. And I'm like yeah,
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: And I never looked back. I never did. I That's
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: what I've been doing since then.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: So that's how it all. Yeah, So you grew up
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: in Montana at a particularly interesting time because before you
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: were born, we saw many of the big carnivores in Montana,
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: across the western United States kind of reach a low point. Right,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Grizzly bears reached their lowest point there in the seventies,
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: mountain lines were pretty close to their lowest point. Wolves
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: have been completely essentially eradicated from the Western United States.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: And then in the nineties when you were in college,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: I guess wolves are reintroduced. Grizzly bears have been slowly recovering,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: reaching higher levels than they had in a while, Lions
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: showing back up more and more. What was that like
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: growing up and seeing that change and seeing these critters
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: start showing back up. Was there any point where you
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: kind of remember like a before and after or like
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: when you were really young, these things are pretty rare,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and then by the time you're in college and beyond,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: now all of a sudden you're seeing this different world.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Was that noticeable? What was that like?
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Oh Man so much? I mean he really kind of
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: painted the picture there, I mean literally, as my start
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: of my career that these animals were invisible and they
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: just started coming back. I mean, growing up seeing a
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: mountain lion, seen a grizzly bear, it is so rare.
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: You know, wolves like a fantasy, right, something from the
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: far North, and then to be you know, one of
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: the first projects I worked on knocked down on those
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: the pens. When they had the wolves ready to release,
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: we did you know, a guy guy showed me a map.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: He's like, hey, I'm going to get some footage of this.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: And I looked at him, like, well, let's this go on.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: The back door doesn't close back there, it's going to
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: take us about fourteen mile hike. And he's like, let's
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: do it. So we went back and shot some like
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: snipered some you know shots of the wolves and the pen.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: I didn't know at the time what was going to be,
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: what was going to happen. It was interesting. Even then
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: I was so skeptical. I mean, half my family are
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: cattle ranchers, and you know, they weren't real happy about it, so,
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: you know, it was it was interesting time. And then yeah,
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: as my career started launching, these animals were gaining ground
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: and you see more and more of them to the
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: you know, and arguably you know, then the early two thousands,
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: you know, the grizzly bear started popping up like crazy.
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: You start seeing more and more, and it was it
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: was interesting, and it actually had a lot to do
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: as the launch of my career. You know, I started
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: going out there and having pretty guaranteed sidings and observation
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: and opportunity with grizzly bears, and that was taken advantage
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: of it. Yeah, no, I mean it was. It's still changing.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: You know, it is a very strange time to be
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: involved in this because I've watched it go, like I said,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: from zero to one hundred in the last few decades,
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: and now we're trying to make decisions of what we're
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: going to do with all these animals, right.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where all sorts of interesting conversations come up.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And there's never been a shorte of controversy with these critters, right,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: I mean before the reintroduction of well even before all that. Right,
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: if we really rewind the clock, you've got you know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: European American settlers coming across the country and encountering gray
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: wolves and grizzly bears for the first time, and pretty
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: quickly not wanting them around, and then over the next
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: hundred some years essentially getting to work eradicating them, and
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: then they're rid of them. And then when we talk
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: about trying to help bring them back, there was all
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: sorts of fear and hysteria around. Well, if you bring
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: back wolves, it's gonna demolish all the elk, it's going
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: to kill all the cows, et cetera. There's a lot
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: of that. I'm sure you were hearing that from your
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: family members and people there in the mid nineties. And
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: then wolves were brought back and grizzly bears have been
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: protected and slowly have been returning. There's still a lot
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: of that talk today, right, there's still a lot of
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: people who say, well, you know, the wolves destroy the
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: hunting here, or the wolves are destroying our ability to
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: make a living on the land. What's the reality been
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: from your view? You've been in the middle of it,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: You've lived a lot of it. You have friends, I'm
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: sure I've heard you talk about friends who are elk
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: hunting guides and friends who are wildlife viewing guides. So
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: you've had people who've dealt with this from all angles.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: What's the reality on the ground. Bin Have we lost
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: all the elk? Has it become impossible to raise cattle?
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Is it something in between or is it the Disneyland
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: story that some folks also say where it's you know,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: wolves are just you know, shooting out rainbows and butterflies
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: from their butts and saving all the world's problems. What's
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: the truth?
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate the question, and and I can only
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: tell you the truth from one of my truth right.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: It's the truth is it's somewhere. It's very gray and
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: somewhere in the middle from what I see. You know,
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: I actually go out and try to find wolves all
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: the time. It's hard. It's hard, man. Wolves aren't everywhere.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: They're hard to They're hard to find. I see results
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: of them being out there. I definitely just let's just
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: take some kind of a metric here. Let's take elk.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Elk's a great one because I grew up hunting them,
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: and there was a heyday in the nineties before the wolve.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: Early nineties, Man, there were there were elk everywhere everybody.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: All my friends were out shooting them. You know, all
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: the guys that could couldn't hike up a trail quarter
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: mile or getting a bowl, right, So if you look
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: at it in that aspect, it was easier to haunt elk.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: But do I think the ecosystem was was healthy? Probably not.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: It was healthy for an elk hunter, but it wasn't
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: healthy holistically. Yeah. I think that I've, you know, in
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: some level, and I've I've talked about this. I've killed
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: my biggest bulls. Lately, I feel like there's bigger bulls
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: out there than there ever has been. I mean, I
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: remember in the early nine ers you can go out
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: there and you'd see like one hundred you know, brusheads
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: in a day, you know what I mean, But you
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: you know the real big whoppers. Man, I feel like,
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: you know, records are getting broken constantly. And I'll tell
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: you what I like to hunt better now. There's something
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: about it, man, beyond the landscape with predators, to beyond
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: the landscape with praise, species that are weary, who don't
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: give you the second glance when you crack the branch,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: because there's other predators out there that are not going
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: to be forgiving. You're hunting them more like there's a
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I have a lot more pride, I
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: guess in it in some level. So there's that. I mean,
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: I'm just giving you that. But you know, as a predator,
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: you know, the predator thing waxes and wings from just
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: a guy who's seeking them out all the time. You know,
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of there's a push right now for
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: grizzly bears. But I've notably noticed in the last couple
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: of years, I'm actually seeing less grizzly bears than I
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: ever have. I don't know why. Maybe they're changing their habits.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: I you know, the only wolves I've seen in the
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: last couple of years regularly or been in the in
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Yellowstone Park, and there's parts outside the park to where
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: I see wolves all the time. But I think they're
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: getting weary too, because they are getting hunted and they're
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: very hard to find, not an easy animal to hunt,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: whether you're with a camera or a rifle. So it's
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: all changing. I think there's that that mix between humans
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: and humans and predators is evolving, and they're changing their habits,
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: even if if even if there's more on the landscape,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: they're I don't know, they're just getting more weary period. Yeah,
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: that's what I'm seeing.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So so let's say you're at a diner or some
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: bar in Paradise Valley or Livingstone, or or maybe you're
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: traveling your over in Minnesota checking out the boundary waters
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: or something, and someone's sitting at the bar next to
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: you and they're talking about this very topic. And let's
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: say they're a hunter, and they're saying, man, we used
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: to have good deer hunting here up in northern Minnesota,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: and now I can't hardly see a deer. It's because
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: of the damn wolves. Or you're there in Livingston and
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: someone's talking about all the elk hunt is not like
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: it used to be in the nineties. Wolves ruined it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: What do you say to someone like that? How do
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: you carry on a conversation? What do you what do
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: you try to share with them? Given your experience that's
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: pretty unique from compared to many.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: You know, first thing I do, Mark, is I listened
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: to them, because everybody's got their living their own life,
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: you know, and animals, they all have their own values
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: out there, and you know, hympathize with anybody who's lost
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: livestock or and not seen as many deer around their
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: trees stand in Minnesota or whatever. Man, I do because
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: I think that there's change on the landscape. I'll listen
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: to them, and I don't ever I don't know. I
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: don't ever disagree or pushback or try to preach my agenda.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: I don't have an agenda, you know. I I think
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: the main thing I try to do is help them
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: understand the importance of a healthy ecosystem, and that includes
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: about I mean includes predators, a balanced ecosystem. I feel
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: like if we could all agree on that, if that
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: was the bottom line, no matter what are. You know
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: what our value is, you know what stakeholders we represent.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: That if we just want a healthy, well balanced ecosystem,
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: that's that a win for everybody. Yeah, you know, the
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: wolves in Montana is a tough one, man. I mean
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: there's part of me that wishes and that knew they're
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: just north of Helena. I knew there's wolves around there.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: I hurt them, howling have seen their tracks. This is
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: pre reintroduction. And if you took the amount of money
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: and and value the chaos that created and just gave
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: them time and try to open up corridors, wolves would
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: have been in Yellowstone. I've been social wise, they would
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: have been accepted. You know, a little lot more, and
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: I always wish that that would have been the case.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: But here we are, you know, bears. I think it's
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: another thing. I mean, we hear about them. You only
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: to hear about them because they've done something wrong, right,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: you know, And so I'm always trying to paint the
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: picture of the other side the truth. I mean, I
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: I've argued, probably have had thousands of bear encounters, and
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: they've all been pretty good, you know. But at the
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: same time, I'm not the rainbows and stars. You're not
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: your butt thing either. I mean, I've also carried a
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: man off a mountain who's killed by a grizzly bear.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: I've been around the dark side a lot too, So
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: I know there's a reality of that, you know, And
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: I think that the truth lies there in the middle.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: And the other part of it is, I think those
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: of us who lived amongst amongst all these animals, I mean,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: I think we have to have a pride in the
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: fact that we do and kind of you know, kind
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: of honor and respect our neighbors no matter what. Man,
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Because there's a lot of people that don't live in
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: the country with grizzly bears and wolves. There's a lot
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: of people that go in their backyard and don't have
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: to worry about them or think about them, and they're
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: not living man. And I think that I've tried to,
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: you know, get folks to realize that we that this
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: is a gift to have these animals in our backyard.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: And there is something about that the wildness that you
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: have by having large fetters on the landscape, that is
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: is such holds such value and you feel it when
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: you go to these places that don't have it. You know,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: my grandpa cattle rancher, you know, he was a he
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: had a lot of pride in being a Montana cattle
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: rancher and dealing with forty below winters and grizzly bears
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: and wolves and you know, and if you heard people
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: are you know, arguing about it or complaining about it.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: He always said, there's a lot of grass and Nebraska
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: and that's proby a better place to raise cattle, you know.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: And it's it's just kind of that the state of mind.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: I guess it's just like you gotta have pride in
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: some level. And I think it's gonna be tough. We
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: got to I don't know the answers. I think it's
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: gonna be give and take and compromise. And that's when
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: I sit down with those people that you're talking about.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: I try to find that compromise, you know, I try
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: to hear them out. I play double advocate from all sides,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: and that's say hey, can we meet in the middle
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: somewhere on this, because ultimately, I think that's what's gonna
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: where it's gonna have to end up. Yeah.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because because like you said, the reality is somewhere
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: in between, and for some reason, big carnivores. I guess
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: many things polarize these days, but big carnivores especially seem
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: to polarize, and you get someone on on one side
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: or the other believing the this kind of radicalized, curated
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: story about the critter where it's either they're they're solving
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: all the world's problems or they are all the world's problems,
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: right when, as you said that, the reality is there
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: in between. The reality is that, you know, the elk
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: population in Montana is actually higher now than it was
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: prior to wolf reintroduction. But to your point, it is different.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: There are some places where they're not as easy to
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: kill as they used to. I've got a good friend
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: of mine who I went on a wolf hunt with
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: last year, kind of studying this talking to people about
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: this set of issues. I went on a mountain lion hunt,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: I went on a wolf hunt, and I went wolf
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: watching and exploring Yellowstone, trying to talk to as many
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: different people as I could to understand this set of
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: topics from these different perspectives. Right, And the fact of
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: the matter is that, yes, like wolves have impacted prey
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: populations in some places, in some localized places a lot.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, they've not destroyed it everywhere.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: They've not ruined hunting. They've maybe just changed behavior or
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: shifted locations or you know, rebalanced populations in relation to
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: the habitat. Maybe we're closer to where they maybe should
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: have been at one point, but not as many as
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: some hunters of like. Of course, another thing is that,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: like I'm sure you've seen this and heard this a
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: thousand times, predators are very easy to point a finger at,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: like they are obvious things like oh, that's the problem,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: when in reality the truth is much more nuanced. Right,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: Oftentimes habitat related things and human development related things on
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: all that is impacting you know, prey populations but you
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: layer on top of that, then yes, there is some
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: predation happening, and then that's going to seem even more serious.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And then the wolves are a lot easier to get
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: mad at than the fact that I'm building a new
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: house and you're building a new house, and your buddy's
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: building a new house, and you know, habitat is changing
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, that's that's
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: a harder story to wrap your head. But on the
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: flip side, then you've got the same thing with you know,
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: folks who live in New York City who love wildlife
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: and who watch all the nature docum, they watch all
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: your shows, they watch everything on Netflix and Discovery Channel
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: and whatever, and they do a couple of nice posts
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: on Twitter or whatever talking about how much they love animals.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: But then they think that ranchers are horrible because they're
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: upset with the fact that wolves are killing some of
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: their cattle, or they hint that hunters are horrible because
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: some of us are frustrated sometimes with the impacts, And
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: so I think to ignore either one of the realities,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: the fact that there are challenges with predators, but at
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: the same time, there are real values to having them,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: like there's there's truth to both sides of that, and
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: ignoring you either one of those sides, you know, puts
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: you in a place where you're just not seeing truth.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: You're seeing this kind of kaleidoscopic view that's all painted
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: one color, and that makes it really hard to ever
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: find a solution. Like you said, right, the solutions probably
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: lay there in the middle.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Well said, that's all Well said now completely, And I find,
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: you know, because they now have the responsibility and you
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: you're in the same boat. We're talking to people. We
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: have a bunch of people listening to us. And I
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: find myself more and more these days trying not to
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: preach the choir. I try to lean it, you know,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: reach across the fence and pull folks in the middle.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: I tried to, you know, I just did a thing
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: about bear spray bolls versus bullets. I try to be
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: very honest about it, you know, show showcasing both sides,
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: not preach. Let people make their decision about what they wanted,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: what they want to use for bear defense, you know.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: And I know that I've nicknamed them, you know, I
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: used this before, But the jeth Rows and the moonbeams.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: So those are the extremists, right, the jeth throw sorry
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: jeth throw out there. I'm sorry to pick on your name,
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: but you know, they're the ones that are going to
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: push the button and eliminate all the predators. And then
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: the moonbeams are the ones, like I said, they have
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: some spiritual connection during a full moon, that have some vibe,
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: you know, and they love all the predators. You know.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: I may never get their ears, but there are a
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: lot of folks in the middle to both sides, and
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: they don't know which one to be on. And I
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: think that you know, giving them the right information and
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: talking to them about the things that you just mentioned,
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: most folks listen, and most folks are pretty smart. You
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: let the facts out in front of them and they'll
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: make some pretty good decisions. And I think we got
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: to resist the extremism. I think we got to We
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: just got to say no, we're not going that route anymore.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: We're tired of this polarization. It ain't working, it's broken,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: So it's time to let's find this compromise in the middle.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: And a lot of people, look, I have some friends man,
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: and both sides that look at me and call me
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: a whimp for picking that middle ground. And yeah, I'm sorry, man,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: I guess I'm a wimp, but I think it's the
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: way forward.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I've liked to refer to it as this, and
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: I think I heard you say the same thing or
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: something like it. It's like the radical center. It's kind
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: of radical now to be in the middle. And I
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: think that actually takes maybe the most boldness these days
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: is to resist falling into this while you're in this
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: camp of this camp, resist that that's the easy choice
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: to be like, Oh, that's my team and I'm just
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: going to follow them for wherever they go, whatever they say.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: It's a lot harder these days to carve out your
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: own path somewhere in the middle and maybe pick a
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: little bit from both sides and hear both sides and
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: consider different ideas. That's a that's a tough path to
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: to hoe.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: But yeah, and I think we got to make that
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: team strong. Man. I tell you I've gone to all
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: the I go to a lot of the Fish Wildlife
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: Commission and meeting they're listening at very least, and it
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: is the it's the jet throws and the moonbeams that
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: show up and talk they're allowed. Man, they're the squeaky
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: wheels and that radical center that we need that needs
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: to exist. They don't show up, and we need to
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: show up. The radical center needs to show up. And
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: we got to talk, and we gotta we got to represent.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: And I'm and you know, honestly most people officially in
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Montana that that's who they are. You know, they just
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: choose not to speak up for some reason. I don't
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: I don't know what it is.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you talked about earlier how you'd like to kind
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: of push back on the kind of I'm strgging to
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: think of what I'm trying to say here, but you
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: kind of push back on the obvious things like if
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: you're talking to someone on one side of the issue,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: you'll kind of give them the devil's advocate perspective, and
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: then if you're over on the other side of the
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: issue talking to folks of there, you'll give them the
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: other side and kind of, you know, push on, pushback
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: on both. So we kind of pushed back a little
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: bit on the idea that you know, large carnivores are
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: destroying wildlife and destroying hunting and destroying ranching. There are challenges,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: there are localized impacts, but all the studies have also
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: shown that, you know, it's not cataclysmic on the flip
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: side though, then there's also the Moonbeam story, you know,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: in Yellowstone for example. Right there was the reporting and
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: the studies that came out, you know, ten years after
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: reintroduction about the ecological impacts the wolves were having, and
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: there was the eventually social media posts and films and
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: videos talking about how wolves change rivers and all the
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: different things like that that the trophic cascades story and ideas,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: and then I don't know, ten years ago or however
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: long it was, then new studies came out saying, well,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: that's that's not quite right. There's actually other things that
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: are impacting you know, beavers and grassland production, all this
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff. So maybe the wolves change rivers thing
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: isn't everything that it was that those those stories told us.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: And when that all came out, what I heard from
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: my community from hunters was jumping on that and latching
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: onto it and saying, wow, all that stuff was overload
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: of croc All the trophic cascade stuff is blowny. Anything
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: like wolves and bears aren't all you know, everything that
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: the crazy California Disney World. People said get rid of them, right.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: That was like the Jethrow reaction to the news that
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: the Trophic Cascade store was a little bit more complex.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: The jeth Throw reaction was that means it's bs again.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: The truth is more in the middle. From what I've
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: learned in my research is that there is something there,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: but it's a little bit more gray. This is a
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: very long winded way to get to a question. Sorry case,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: My question is can you speak to what the reality
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: is of the positive impact of having these animals on
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: the landscape? Because you mentioned this earlier, You mentioned like, hey,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: there's importance to having a balanced ecosystem, there's importance to
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: having wolves and bears and lions on the landscape. It's
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: easy for someone to say that. It's harder for someone
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: to understand that. Can you help us understand what does
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: that mean? What does that look like? And and was
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: the Trophic Cascades story a load of croc or is
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: there some reality there but maybe just not as simplified
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: as those videos and early stories made it seem.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was some good, pretty good propaganda from that side,
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: you know, Like you said, I think that at first
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: it did appear that it was something that made sense.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: But I think you're right, it's blood gray there. I
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: think that part of it's true, But there's a lot
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: of other bits and pieces that are missing from that story.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: Are that actually add to that. What's happening in the change,
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: Like you mentioned, I's going there, So what have I
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: seen on the ground. Do I think wolves had created
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: a more vibrant ecosystem? Yes, it's the short answer is yes.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: But I think it's it's it waxes and WANs, it
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: gets out of balance and then we you know, you know,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: as soon as the wolf hunt came in and there
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: was some actual animals being harvested and they were moving
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: around and not getting the sedentary, at some level things changed.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: And I feel like I honestly do. And again there's
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: all the moon beams are getting mad at me, but
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: you know, there's a couple of things that happened there.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: The actual ecosystem seemed more vibrant. Everybody was a little
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: bit more happy, and I remember, I mean, and I
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: was like, yes, you know, like we got we got
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: like I've got friends that hated wolves ten years ago
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: and now love them because they love hunting them so much, Right,
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: and if you in ten years ago, if they could
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: push the button and all the wolves that disappeared, they
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: would have. Now there's no way they would do that
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: because they enjoy that. They enjoy going out there and hunting,
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: actually hunting them, so now they found value in them. Yeah,
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: there's not there's not a many elk on the on
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: the landscape. It's harder to find antlers in some of
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: these spots where I used to go find them laying
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: around everywhere, and during the shed season. There's a lot
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: of things like that. But you know, there's there's more.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: I see more diversity of wildlife, especially meso predators, you know,
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: things like bobcats and badgers and pine martin and things
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: that you almost never seen. Somehow there's more around. And
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: whether that's directly a tie to wolves, I don't. I
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: can't make that correlation, but there's certainly more. It's more vibrant,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: more variable than I've ever seen it, more closely to
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: pure you know. The other thing is the more we
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: curate the wild, we're just domesticating it. You know, if
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: we take freaders up the landscape, we have a bunch
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: of unculates kind of being lazily around, you know, and
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: we're one step away from putting fences around them and
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: call them cows. But when you have predators and lands came,
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: there's on the landscape and they're shaking things up. You
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: can see it, you can feel it. There's just something
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: about every animal is just a little bit on edge
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: living life, a little bit more alive. And I think
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: that that's that's something to consider, you know, we can
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: cons we can continue down the road of you know,
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: let's be honest. I mean, the more regulations and the
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: the more taking predators off the landscape and all that stuff,
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: we're just we're one step closer to Europe, you know,
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: and go there and go walk around the wild and
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: tell me how awesome it feels. Yeah, And I think
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: that on the next step is what we have down
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: in Texas, you know. And so I think that we've
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: got to look at it and realize that those animals
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: are doing something to make it better and making and
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: keeping and maintaining the wild. I'm not a biologist. I'm
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: not out there measuring things and stuff like that, but
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: I can just feel it, and I can just see it.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: And as a person who's out there pursuing multiple species
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: to film and wanting and finds value and seeing them
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: and their interactions with each other. I'm seeing it more
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: than ever. And I'm sure it has to do with
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: having predators on the landscape.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like that is so much
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: more relatable, I think, for people than a biological study
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: that says, well, because wolves are back on the landscape,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: it reduced the amount of time that elk spend on
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: this patch of habitat by fifteen percent, which increased grass
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: production by twenty two percent, which led to more birds
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: on the more birds in the valley, and slightly less
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: pressure on willows and aspens, which eventually led to more
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: beavers on the pond. And YadA, YadA, YadA, like all
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: those things might be true, and it seems like, right,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: there are these these cascading effects that when you insert
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: or remove an animal from a natural ecosystem, it has
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: a set of ripple effects on everything around it. Everything's
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: connected in some ways, right, But that's hard to wrap
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: your head around when you're reading some kind of thick study.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: But when you're out there, you're right, you can feel it,
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: and I know that's fuzzy, and that's obviously not irreviewable
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: or publishable in the journal. But you can feel a difference.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's like when you point out the difference
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: between like walking around in Nebraska versus Montana, I can certainly,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: you know, a test to the fact that everything is different.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: The volume is turned up to eleven. It just feels
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: like everything you and every other animal in the landscape
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: is on a different level. Everything is heightened, The stakes
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: are higher. Every sound, smell, shape, movement matters, and that
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: finds its way into every ounce of your being when
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: you're out there. Man, So there's something there. There's so right,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: there's something there.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a funny one, you know. I think another
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: thing is a lot of people they used the baseline
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: of what's a healthy ecosystem quote unquote, that's what it
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: was in the past. You know, like my my father's generation,
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: you know, grew up in an overpopulated health population at
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: some level, you know where that was all there everywhere,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: especially the yellows in ecosystem, and they think that that
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: that's the baseline where you need to get back to. Right.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: But it was very what's the word, you know, it
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: was just very uh, I can't think of it, but
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: it was just yeah, very it's artificial, artificial, yeah, and
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: it was just a lot of el but there was
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: a lot of not a lot of other things. Yeah,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: it felt different back then. So you know, I don't know, man,
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: I think that I have the wolves made it in
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: a better place. I think they have and they haven't.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: You know, if you take put the human factor in,
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: I think that there's some people who lost a lot
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: of jobs and the wolves came in, But there was
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: a bunch of people who got jobs, you know. I
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: know even in the Park County, the county and this
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: north of y Elstone here, I mean half a million,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: half a billion, five hundred million dollars go into tourism
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: and a lot of that's just to come see wildlife.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: And it's ever increasing. And I think that, you know,
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: a lot of people are celebrating the diversity of wildlife
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: that we have here that include wolves and grizzly bears,
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: because that is a big draw. White people come here,
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: but they also come here to see everything else, and
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: everything else is here because of those wolves and those
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: grizzly bears are here too. It's hard. It's hard, you know,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: It's it's like you're saying it's easy to connect those
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: little dots, right, but to look big picture and let's look,
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: let's look thirty years, forties, one hundred years. I mean
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: nature works in thousands of years, right, not not these
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: short term things. And are we doing something good? It
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: seems like we're on the right path. But I do think,
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: you know, these prettters need to be managed. And that's
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: the bottom line. We live in a world that is
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: greatly influenced by people habitat fragmentation. We're leaving our mark,
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: you know, and if we just left everything unmanaged, it
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: would be a catastrophe. So it's getting the other side
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: to realize that that's part of the equation. That's very
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: tough sometimes, but I think more and more people are
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: starting to come around.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's continue down that line. There's this the
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: reality of the of the situation. If we're willing to
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: look at things that, yeah, like you just said, management
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: is needed. There are all these different ways we're influencing
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: wildlife now that require that we maintain being a part
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: of it. Right, Maybe if you turn back the clock,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: you have to turn back the clock a very very
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: long ways, twenty thousand plus years. If you want to
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: see what North America was like before humans were here.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: But we've always been a part of it, but less
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: so maybe than we are now. So maybe twenty thousand
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: years ago or ten thousand years ago, we had a
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: lighter touch, and huge populations of carnivores existed on the
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: landscape with huge populations of herbivores, and they are able
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: to live in balance. But now, to your point, there's
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: all these different things going on. Having both of these
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: things out there is important, but you know, there are
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: all these human elements too, and part of managing wildlife
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: now is also managing wildlife people relationships, and sometimes that
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: is just as important for the future of a species
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: as the actual numbers on the ground.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: So to your point, when wolf hunting was reached, was
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: so wolf's are reintroduced. There's a lot of anti wolf
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: sentiments from hunters and ranchers. But then when wolf hunting
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: was opened back up, you mentioned that it made a
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: lot of people happy on the hunting side, right, Folks
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden had a sense of agency. They
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: felt like they could do something about it. They could
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: get out there and chase these critters and maybe impact
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: things a little bit. The way they'd like to see them.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, it's still managed, there were
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: still quotas, it was still regulated. So you said something
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: that confirmed a theory I've always had and I'd love
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: to hear more about it, which was that I've always
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: thought that by opening a hunting season, by having an open,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: carefully managed, and regulated season for a carnivor of some species,
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: it actually improves the long term prospects for that species,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: because yes, there will be some taken through hunting, but
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: it increases support for that animal because now you have
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: a new constituency that has a reason to value that animal.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: So you said it perfectly with wolves, right, because now
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: there are some folks out there who used to hate wolves,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: but now they're okay with wolves or even like wolves,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: because they've started hunting them. They feel if they have
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: some control. Maybe they've developed a relationship with the species
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: in a different kind of way now because they've spent
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: time out there looking for them, studying them, learning about them,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, you have more people that
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: want that critter around, maybe not the same levels that
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: an anti hunter or just an animal activist wants, but
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: they still want them around. I think mountain lions are
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: a great example of this. Right, some of the most
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: some of the most kind of like profoundly involved advocates
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: for lions in America are houndsman line hunters for sure.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: So is there you know, from your perspective, do you
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: think that that holds Is there that hold water? Is
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: that something that you know we could make a case
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: to the larger environmental crowd, like, hey, this is actually
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: gonna help wolves in the long run, this is actually
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: gonna help lions in the long run. Could this help
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: grizzly bears in the long run? That's very contentious right now?
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Could you could you expand on that a little bit more?
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the bottom line is is that if
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: if the majority or even more than half of the
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: majority of the people don't want the animal there, that
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: it won't be there. Changing the value quote unquote value
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: to for an animal within the perspective of people changes
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: a lot. And you said some things that I think
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: are really important. I'll try to touch on. But you know,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: so once an animal seems, once an animal becomes able
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: to hunt, it does the value changes? You know, now
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: you have it's a game species, it's an animal that
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: you can go out and enjoy being out in the
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: outdoors and in pursuit of you like you said, you
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: have that can you have that connection that you feel
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: like you're actually doing something to potentially save the elk
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: or whatever you you're worried about. Yeah, and then and
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: then again, what you were saying, I think is the
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: most important is that when you're on the landscape with
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: these animals, now you're hunting them, and you're learning about them,
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: and you're pulling the veil off them a little bit.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: As you learn about them and observe them, you start
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: you start to understand what they really are. And I
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: think that you know, like I said, once you understand
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: who these animals really are, then you can actually have
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: a real perspective of their place on the in the
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: ecosystem and their place in the world. You know, the
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: lion hunters, houndsman man, it was. It's a great example,
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: like I said, right now, there's houndsmen, especially in the
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: state of Montana, there's a you know, kind of a
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: big push to reduce the line population and the houndsmen
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: are like they're the biggest animal advocates out there right now.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're like hell, no, we won't go or
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: you know, we're going to draw the line. And it's
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: all based and real science. You know, in fact, a
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: lot of the sciences is from these line in the
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: front of these houndsmen. Because they're the only ones out
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: there looking for cats. Are the only people out there
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: that have any idea how many of them are out there.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: They've got their finger on the pulse of these animals.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: And I think that you see that with even bear
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: hunters in the North and Alaska and stuff like that.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: They're the ones that have the actual pulse on these animals.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: And if there was a quota that we got too
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: high up there, they'd be the first ones pounded on
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: the doors of the congressmen saying no, we're not going
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: to go there. So moral of the story is if
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: we can collectively all have value in these animals, and
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: again the common goal is that we want them to
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: be healthy on the landscape, because you can't hunt animals
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: that are not healthy on the landscape, and you can't
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: photograph animals that are not healthy in the landscape. If
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: that's the common denominator and we're all fighting for it,
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: then the animal is going to thrive long term and
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: everybody's going to be happy. And I think this we
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: go we look for it's it's pulling back. And here's
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: the thing, like with grizzly bears right now, you know,
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: and lions and wolves, it's all of them. As soon
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: as you introduce fear into the management any emotion or
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: lack of fear, you know, any of these. As soon
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: as you introduce emotion into wildlife policies and decisions, it
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: goes wrong. And I think a lot of the pushes
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: I see from a lot of people right now to
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: dealistic grizzly bear comes out of fear. We gotta hunt
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: them because they're getting too comfortable, you know, or you
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: know whatever. No, we gotta hunt them because because whenever
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: that happens, when the population is time to hunt them,
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: not because they're getting too comfortable or I'm too I
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: see three of them when I go ol hunting now,
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: and I'm afraid, you know, that's not why we hunt.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: We gotta hunt these animals. We got to hunt them
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: because they've reached the population now that they're a huntable population,
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: and I think that we got to hold that line,
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: you know, And so you know why protected animal they
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: are afraid of and that's one of the hardest things
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: right now. So another big part of what I do
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: is trying to help people understand that, yeah, these animals
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: can be potentially dangerous, but your fear might be a
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: little blown out of proportion here and let me tell
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: you why. And this is this from thirty years of experience,
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: and that's all I'm just trying to do. You're trying
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: to do. Yeah, did I answer that question? Kind of
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: went on a take it there a little bit, But
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: I think it does come down to value. And I
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: think that if we can get everybody to want these
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: animals to be in the landscape for whatever reason. But again,
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: the common denominator is that we want these healthy populations
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: to either hunt or healthy populations to either take pictures
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: of whatever. But that's the common denominator. If we can
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: all agree on that, man, then everything's good.
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the funny thing is, as I've been kind
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: of working through this myself and working on this book
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: that I was telling you about, one of the realizations
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: that I that I had was at both sides of
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: this issue need the same thing for their life values,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: their lifestyles to continue the future if you look at
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: the traditional animal lover environmentalists who wants to see lots
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: of grizzlies and wants to see wolves, they need those
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: critters to be In order for those critters to be around,
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: they need open, wild, healthy, intact landscapes.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: We have some of that on public lands, but as
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: you know, many of these critters live off of National
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: park lands. Many of these species. If we want them
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: to continue to live into the future, if we want
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: grizzly bears to maintain genetic variability, to not just be
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: an island population in Yellowstone, they need to be able
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: to have habitat outside of the parks, right, So they
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: need open, undeveloped, healthy habitat. So what is that that's
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: private lands? Who owns all these private lands around Yellowstone
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: or Glacier National Park or Colorado? Well, it's ranchers and
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: land owners who live in these valleys who are trying
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: to either make a living raising cattle or sheep, or
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: they're probably hunters. They're people who make a living on
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: that land. Well, what's happening to allow of those people, Well,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: it's hard to make a living these days, it's hard
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: to make a profit. They're having to sell off to
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: subdivisions or to whoever it is, all the many different
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: people that want to purchase these properties and develop them
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: for one reason or another. So for that to happen,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: for us to keep undeveloped lands, for us to keep
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: ranchers in business, and keep these undeveloped lands out there,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: what do we need to do. We need to help
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: make their life a little bit more manageable. We can't
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: make their life so they can't make a living. We
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: need them to be able to turn a profit and
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: to be able to maintain their way of life. How
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: do you do that? Help them coexist with carnivores, Help
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: lessen that burden a little bit, Help make it so
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: they can live alongside these critters. Now flip it to
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: the other side. These ranchers and hunters. They want to
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: be able to keep on hunting. They want to keep
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: on raising cattle or sheep or whatever it is. They
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: want to live their life. They want to be able
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: to do these things they've done. Well, what do we
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: need to do to make sure that they can do that.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: It's not going to be wiping grizzly bears and wolves
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: off the landscape. It's not going to be you know,
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: taking matters into our own hands and shoot, shovel and
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: shut up that kind of thing and making hunters look
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: horrible and making ranchers look like they're part of the problem. No,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: they need to showcase and would benefit from showcasing the Hey,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: we want these lands. We would love to be able
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: to make a living out here doing this kind of stuff.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: Maybe there's creative ways to make a little bit of
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: money from a fee added to National park passes. Maybe there's,
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: you know, all these different habitat leasing programs, ways that
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: we can you know, compensate folks who are bearing the
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: burden of having this wildlife on their property that's benefiting
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: them and everyone else around them. So I think there's
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: ways that if we look at what's needed, which is
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: healthy habitat open landscapes. You need that to hunt, you
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: need that to be able to see wolves. You need undeveloped,
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: intact places. You need that to ranch, you need that
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: for grizzly bears to spread out to where they are.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: We all want the same thing, but the only way
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: we're going to get it is by kind of realizing
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: there's some compromise in the middle that we need to
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: make and then we have to understand the two different
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: perspectives a little bit and give and take a little
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: bit here and there to finally get that stuff, because
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: we can't do it by ourselves, right, we need everyone
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: kind of pulling in the same direction. Does anything that
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: make sense? I'm kind of I'm laying all of my
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: ideas on.
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: Your singing my song. Man, you're singing my song. Everything
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: you said is so so accurate. I've once said one time,
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: like the ranchers man are the the It's the greatest.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: They're the greatest thing for wildlife right now. I mean
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: it really is. I mean without them, we'd be wildlife
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: would be in big, big trouble. And we just people
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: have got to connect the dots to make that realization.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: These wide open spaces under a threat of development. You know,
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: I've watched my family sell up, their sell off their
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: ranches and thirty acre parcels here and there to development
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: over the years. And it's hard. It's hard, but it's
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: because it's a hard living and and it's people aren't supported,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: you know, Yeah, you know, are there ways we are
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: we you know, in my backyard, we're working with ranchers
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: here who are willing to let all animals on their property.
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: We're trying to figure out ways to mitigate conflict. There's
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: a lot of innovation with AI and different technologies right
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: now that are really moving the needle, and there's going
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: to be a time I think that that people are
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: going to realize. I feel like people are moving that
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: direction that these wide open spaces are super important for
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: everything and that we need to maintain them and how
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: can we make them sustainable and through And it's through acceptance,
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: it's through taking through these technologies. Yeah, no, you're preaching.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: You're preaching my my gospel by all that. Man. I
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: think Kenyon Anderson for twenty eight, I don't know, let's go.
• 58:02
  Speaker 3: I think it's I think it's good. I mean because
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: I think that this is a this is a narrative
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: that not a lot of people are. It's not speaking loudly,
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: but I really do. I think it's common sense solutions.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: You know. I talk to ranchers that are like they
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: want the help. You know, sure there's the shoot shovel,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: shut up folks like you said out there, but they're
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: they're going extinct, man, they really are. I think a
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: lot of these younger younger folks that are taking these
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: ranches over. They they they see that they can raise
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: cattle through the summer months, hunt in the fall, and
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: then take take those same people out and show them
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: wildlife for the winter. You know, they can double dip,
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: triple dip. Right. They see the value of these animals
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: on the landscape. I mean, some of the best documentaries
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: I've made mountain lions, wolves, and grizzly bears have all
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: been on private land. It's some of the greatest habitat
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: out there. I'll give you another example, and I I've
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: seen firsthand. This is ridiculous, but it's true. I've seen
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: some spots where cattle overgrades in areas and some thistles
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: popped up, and then in the spring, the voles love
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: the thistle root and the bears come in and hammer
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: that area. And I've seen it, and it's in this
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: very specific time where the bears are mating. So you
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: see these large congregation of grizzly bears on the landscape
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: going to these cattle ranches mating, and then it's actually
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: bolster and the grizzly bears are actually populations getting bolstered
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: by being on cattle ranches, you know, and I always wondered,
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: is that, you know, is there an aspect of that
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: that's kind of emulating something that happened with the bison?
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: You know, who knows? Right, I think we just got
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: to dig into all these things and figure out what's
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: what's working. And we've got to make sure these large
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: these large spaces still remain because we lose them, we're
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: in trouble.
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So so another thing like and again I'm you
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: are helping me here, like pressure test some of the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: things that I've been trying to like put into words.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: So so I'm I'm getting an unpaid service out of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: you here.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: Case I appreciate conversation a lot.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: One of the best at well yeah, me too. This
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: is stuff like I've been thinking about for so many years,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: and and it's really hard to articulate it though in
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: like a social media post, right, because these things are complex,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: they're nuanced, they they resist simplification, right. So I've always thought, man,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: I need a big place to really put it all
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: out there. And so that's what part of this book
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: has become that I'm that I've been working on and
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: and one of the things that became very apparent to me,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: and I've always thought it is going back to like
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: what our values are for our community, the hunting community.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: One of the things that's very valuable to us is
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: the ability to continue hunting well into the future. Right
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: where it's very easy to get folks fired up about
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: defending our rights to hunt, right, that's that's an easy
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: thing for us to understand. We need to maintain our
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: rights and releg is to hunt well. What is that
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: dependent on? That is dependent on public support, because we
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: live in a democracy where the majority rules, and you know,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: if eventually the ninety six percent of the nation who
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: doesn't hunt, all of a sudden not you know, what's
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: the word I'm looking for here, stop supporting what we do.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: We're in trouble. There will be ways to lose our
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: rights to hunt if we lose that public support. So
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: this is a long winded way of saying that we
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: need to be careful about our pr We need to
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: be careful about how we present ourselves. We need to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: be careful about how the larger community looks at hunters
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: and the value the hunting provides. Right now, one of
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: the best ways we've done that the hunting community We've
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: always said, we've always liked to prophesize to the world
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: that we are the best conservationists. We're the original conservations
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: where the real true, you know, hands on the ground,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: hands in the dirt conservationists.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: We do a lot of good stuff, and there's a
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: lot of truth to that, tons of truth to that.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: But if at the same time we are saying all that,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: some hunters are also driving around with pickup trucks that
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: say shoot a pack, or smoke a pack a day,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: or shoot shovel and shut up, or posting pictures on
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: social media with an illegally shot wolf hanging by a noose,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: or different things like that that I've seen, And all
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, the non hunting public sees this and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: they say, oh, that's hunters. They're people who hate wolves
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: and hate grizzlies and want to kill them all, and
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: want to whack and stack and pile up two hundred
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: coyotes and just just kill them all. That's what hunters are.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: It seems like you only want to conserve the species
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: that you want around, but you're willing to just eradicate
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: everything else. That doesn't seem like a conservationist that raises
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of red flags about what hunters are, or
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: who hunters are, or what they are bringing to the
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: table here. I've always thought that this predator hate crowd,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: which is probably a small it's a bad apple, few
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: bad apples within our community, but they can be a
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: loud community. They are really self defeating. They are really
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: hurting our ability to maintain our rights to hunt in
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: the future. They're not helping hunters by killing a bunch
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: of wolves. In talking about it in this way, they're
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: actually hurting our future because of that. Have you seen that?
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: Have you thought about that? Have you experienced any of that?
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: What's your take?
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: I tell you you and I have the same mind. Yeah,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: one hundred percent.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: I think that we've got they may be doing the
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: most damage. I really believe that. And I've said this before,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: and I've got a lot of people come back to
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: me and say, no, gun rights folks and animal activists
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: like Peter are doing the most damage. But I don't know.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think that we all know
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: what they're doing. Most of the world knows what they're doing.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: They can smell what they're doing. But when they see
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: someone label themselves as a hunter and do exactly the
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: things that you said that that tarnishes the hunter more
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: than anything. And those folks who are on the fence
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: that you know about that, when they see that it's
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: it makes them change their mind. Those other folks have
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: already changed their mind. It doesn't matter. So it's a
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: big part of what I do, man. I tell you,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: I think it's an important thing is that, you know,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: I when it comes to demographics, and I mean I
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: can literally look at if I look at my socials,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: I'm about fifty to fifty, you know, I have fifty
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: percent hunters and fifty percent tree huggers, you know, and
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: so and sometimes I'll, I'll honestly do I'll do a
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: little bait and switch, man. I'll I'll put something up
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: and I'll pull in some hunters and I'll throw out
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: some heavy, fluffy stuff to them, and then vice versa.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: You know, I'll put something fluffy out there and I'll
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: pull it in and I'll, you know, take a picture
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: with an elkrack on my back and say this is
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: coming straight to you from a hunter, right. But I
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: want to pull people into the conversation because I think
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: that we got hunting will go extinct. If people don't
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: continue or don't continue to advocate for it, don't weave
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: the garden, meaning look for those people that are doing
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: that and just get tell them no, stop it, do
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: not support it, you know, and tr trust me that
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: pressure will go on when fellow hunters start saying, dude,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: that's not cool, over and over again, that pure pressure
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: will make a difference. And we got to do that.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: We got to call these people out because if we don't,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: we're in trouble. Per I mean, I think and I've
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: seen it, and it's that's there's some sloppy stuff out there,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: and you know, I even think it goes as far
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: as you know, these big issues like grizzly bears. If
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: you want grizzly Bears delisted as a hunter, talk about
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: it with facts, right, talk about it coming from a
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: place that makes sense. You know, if you start to
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: getting real emotional about it and it comes from a
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: bunch of bs and a bunch of old school mentalities
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: that don't make any sense. Everything else you say that
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: comes out of your mouth, no one's going to stand.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: You're going to listen to it. And that includes saying
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: I'm a hunter and it's worth being around. So think
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: about what you're saying, think about the decisions you're making,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: and make sure they're based on that. Man. I think
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: that's super important.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: So let's dive into the grizzly bear situation a little
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: bit more, because this one is is hot. It's been
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: hot for a long time. It's going to get hotter
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: now as it's seemingly likely given the political wins, that
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: they're probably or there's a high chance of them getting
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: delisted now and maybe they're being hunting seasons in this
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: somewhat near future. All of that is going to be
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: this huge Some will view as like a huge win,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: some will view as a huge loss. I will look
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: at as like this very fragile moment where things could
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: be made or broken for a long time. For example,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: if you are a hunter like we are, and if
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: you think that grizzlies should be managed like other animals
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: and that there should be a hunting season for them
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: at some point, can you imagine the negative ramifications if
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: a grizzly bear hunt were opened up and some famous
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: bear from the edge of Yellowstone or edge of Rantiiton
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: is shot by a slob hunter who posts something nasty
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: about it and like glad to have this piece of
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: shit off the landscape or whatever. Can you imagine this
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: will be cecil lyon CeCILL the lion times a thousand, right,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: So there's going to be this massive pr both opportunity
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: and risk if this happens right. It could be the opposite.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: It could be someone who comes into it like you're describing,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: who says, hey, I'm a conservationist, I'm a wildlife advocate.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: I am a hunter. And you know, the biologists say
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: now is the time to hunt them, and they're going
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: to do it in a careful, regulated way. So I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: want to be a part of that, and I want
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: to do it the right way, and I want to
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: show respect to these animals and to everything else out here.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: And that person could be a tremendous ambassador and maybe
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: change the minds or educate some people. But it could
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: go either way so easily. So I guess what I'm
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: curious about your take on this case is where do
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: you land on this delisting issue. It's a tricky one
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: because well, I won't say what I think, tell me
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: what do you think?
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: It's it's it's a tricky one and it's one that
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: I just I wrestle with obviously because people people really
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: listen to me about grizzly bears. I wrestled with it
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: for a lot of reasons. But again I draw the line,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: and I've drawn the line for myself and the same
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: thing I said that we got to talk to other
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: people about the same conversation I got to have with
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: the Minnesota guy in his tree stands in the north Woods.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: What is going to create a healthy ecosystem, a balanced
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: ecosystem if biologists say that the grizzly bear numbers have
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: reached saturation, reached capacity, and it's time to take him
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: off the list. I mean, delisting is what is a
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: wonderful thing for species? Right It's a It's a marker
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: that the population is growing and becoming more healthy. That's
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: what we ultimately want. Right now, At what point do
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: we start to hunt them? I think it's a different metric, right.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: They're an animal that has a low reproductive rate, They're
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: an animal that's very susceptible to changing environment. I think
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: all those things got to be in consideration. Like you said,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: it's a very fragile time in many ways, and that's
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: one of them. I think Montana. You know, I've heard
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: they're going to wait five years no matter what, to
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: really get a finger on the pulse of what the
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: grizzly bears are doing before they even think about hunting them.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: I think that's I think that's great. I think that
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: that's smart. I think the fact they put a number
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: on it like that right off the top is a
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: It shows the care in some level. But then you know,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: how many, how many can we hunt? What bears are
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: we trying to hunt? I think it's a lot of
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: stuff like that, And I think it's important that you
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: know this is these are biologists that are making this
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: decision that and have an agenda. I always like this
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: idea of kind of a committee of biologist that may
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: be on a little bit both sides the fence, you know,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: kind of really balance it out, because you know, no
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: matter what, when these desisions are made, there's always that
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: everybody's got a little bit of a a twist, a spin,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: no matter what. It's just in a human right, you
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: have a bias. Right, So I think it gets is
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: an unbiased of folks at the table that say, okay,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: it's time green light, right, and then man, I mean
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: that's my it's my take. What do we want? I mean,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: what do we want with grizzly bears? We want grizzly
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: bears to be on the landscape and the healthy population
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: that you can get along with people and coexist, And
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: if that that requires hunting to manage, then that is
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: then that is a great thing to do. And that's
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: the bottom line. Do I think that we're ready for
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: it right now? I mean, right now, there's a lot
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: of other management things that are going off with wildlife
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: that I think, Wow, they're really having a hard time
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: figuring this out. So do I think they're ready to
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: handle something as compli geated to the grizzly bear right now?
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: No?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: Do I think they can in the future if they
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: get their ducks in a row? Yeah, do I think
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: that that would be a big win for the grizzly bear.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: Believe it or not, it would be. If we can
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: get our ducks in a row, we can come up
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: with the statistics that bears are ready to be hunted
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: based on not fear, but on biological facts by as
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: unbiased committee of biologists, then it's a celebra It's something
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: to celebrate, absolutely, And then we've got to be super careful.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: As you said, Mark, you know, as hunters, we have
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: to be very respectful. We got to look at as
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: a gift that we're gonna we're gonna baby and take
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: care of respectfully. And then you know, we got to
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: look at something we're gonna be proud of a lower
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: forty eight states, and we have we live in a
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: place that we've managed and taken care of so well
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: that we're allowed to hunt grizzly bears because there's enough
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: of a healthy population and there's ecosystems that exist in
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: this place that are that are great enough to allow
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: for grizzly bears to live in a healthy way. That
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: is awesome, and we got to celebrate that and take
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: care of it. So let's hope we get there. Man,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Is that ten years from now, is
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: that three years from now, is that twenty years from now?
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know. We can't do it too soon. I
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: think we got to be very careful with that. And
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: I think it's hunters, we've got to respect that and
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: realize that let's not do this too soon. Let's not
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: jump the gun because we're a little bit afraid of
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: these animals when we go out there, Let's not jump
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: the gun because we're really bad at making elk cow
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: calls and a bear comes in like it's a predator call.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: Let's just let's just do it the right way.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many angles to this one, and so
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: much of it, like you said, is wrapped up an
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: emotion on both sides of the issue. For sure, on
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: the side that wants to hunt grizzlies. You mentioned the
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: fact that some folks want to do that because they
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: think we need to reinstill fear in the bears. There's
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: too many of them out there. When I go elk cunning,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: They're dangerous, They're a threat. Can you just expand on
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: that side a little bit more? Because you've spent so
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: much time with these bears yourself all over the country,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: you understand them more than almost anyone in the country. Probably,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: should I be afraid of grizzly bears out there? How
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: much wood hunting change or not change that?
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I appreciate this. I want to talk about this
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: because it's a good one. I've thought about this so much,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: and I've been in places where there's bears that are
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: not hunted, and I've been in places where there's plate
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: bears are hunted, and I've been in various places where
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: bears have different relationship with people. Here's the bottom line.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: The bottom line is that bears are not out there
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: to look. They're not looking for people to kill and
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: eat them. Okay, people need to get that out of
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: their head. Has that happened yes, Can it happen yes,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: but it's getting struck by lightning twice? Kind of statistics there.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: Why do bears attack people? Let's think about that. Let's
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: break that down from behavior away. The fundamental baseline behavior
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: why a bear attacks people is because they are afraid
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: of them and they see it as a perceived threat. Now,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: and I will, and I'm going to throw this out
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: there on the record. When we are allowed to hunt
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: bears and there's people actively pursuing them out there and
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: taking shots at them, we are going to see an
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: increase in attacks. And it's going to be two full
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: and there's gonna be a lot of reasons why there
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: can be more people on the landscape actually putting themselves
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: in bear scenarios. There's going to be bears that are
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: wounded and that are going to be acting in survival mode,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: and they're going to get people, and then there's just
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: there's going to be an increase of bears afraid of
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: people on the landscape. And the way that bears, grizzly
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: bears specifically deal with things that they're afraid of two things.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: They either run away or they fight. Fight or flight, right,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: And one thing about the lower forty eight grizzly bear
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: is that it chooses fight a lot more than a
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: lot of other bears do. So do I think that
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: making bears more afraid of people is a good thing,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: not necessarily, not in the way that most people think
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: it's going to because I think that is the very
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: reason why they attack you. Yeah, and you know what
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: dead bears don't teach real quick.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, before you go any further, how many times have
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: you been in close encounters like this with grizzles, Because
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: I want to make sure people understand this isn't just
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: like a random person saying this kind of stuff. You
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: have been in close contact in these types of situations
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: dozens hundreds of times.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: I mean it's not easily hundreds of times. I've been
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: charged by bears at least a dozen times more than that,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: more than that, but I've also charged bears, probably more
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: than that, more than I've been charged. I've bear sprayed
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: bears seven times. But I'm you know, I'm a unique guy.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: I go out in the forest and I'm actively pursuing
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: grizzly bears, often with the wind in my face, sneaking
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: up on them to close the gap so I can
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: get close enough to get a good shot of them.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: I spend time with them. I mean, I yeah, I
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 3: have again hundreds of encounters, and most of them bears
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: run away they see me, but in place that they're
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 3: not hunted. Let's stick like cat my National Park. I've walked,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, bears walk within ten feet of me and
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: don't even look at me. They just don't care. You're
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: not a threat. They don't look like you're at us food,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: they don't look at you as threat, and they just
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: leave you alone. They look at you like you're a
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: fox or something on the landscape and just don't care.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: But when we start taking shots at them, they're going
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: to care. And I think that, you know, some were
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: gonna run away again, some are gonna get more afraid,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: and some are going to use that flight part of
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: that response more. But there's gonna be those ones. They're
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: going to feel like they're in a corner and they're
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: gonna be extra afraid. There's gonna be a little bit
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: more fight. So that argument doesn't hold ground hold water
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: at all, and I wish hunters would stop using it
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: because it doesn't. There's no statistics about that anywhere that
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: I've seen, and from my thirty plus years or almost fifty,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: if you look at from a lifetime standpoint, I'd not
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: seen any any evidence of that being true. So it's
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: just a bad argument, and I think it's part of
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: one of those arguments. Like I said, stop saying it
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: because it just makes you look like you don't know
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: what you're talking about.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: Now, continuing down that line of thought though with like fear,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: another reason why folks like to suggest that we should
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: be hunting these grizzlies is that they are now spreading
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: outside of places that are appropriate for them to live. Right,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: some people would say, well, it's okay for grizzlies to
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: live in Yellowstone, but I don't want them in Cody,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: or I don't want them, you know, knocking on the
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: door behind my place and drigs, I don't want them
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: you know, bumping up to my ranch here in Livingstone
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: or wherever it is. There's folks who are afraid of
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: grizzly bears expanding outside of these little ranges that are
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: in now towards more of our historic range. You know,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: there's places like the here of Idaho excuse me, Idaho
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: that have been designated as a recovery zone for grizzlies
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: that have appropriate habitat that still don't have bears because
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: of the fact that they just haven't been able to
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: connect back into their consistently enough. Argument being by some peoples,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: if we start hunting them, it will keep that from
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: ever happening and will push them back into their tiny
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: kind of micro islands of habitat right now, what do
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: you think about that? Aon like the fear of them
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: expanding and then be on the flip side, which is
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: the benefits of them expanding.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a tough one because you know people don't
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: want them there. Then it's it's a tough you know,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: should they should they be there? I don't know the
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: answer to that. You know, there are they are expanding,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: They're going into their historic range. Where do we draw
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: the line of where they should be or where they
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: used to be. You know, eighteen fifty is that the
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: range that they should be able to get back into. No,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 3: I mean we've done a lot since then, So I
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: do think it's going to come down to again unbiased
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 3: biologists saying, okay this, you know, they're there's going to
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: be some collateral damage, right for let's just use the
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: eastern Rocky Mountain front. Right now, we're seeing a massive
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: expansion of bears pushing off the front. Bob marshabled in
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: this area out into the flatlands, and there's a lot
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: of ranchers there that haven't had a deal with grizzly
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: bears and it's you know, it's scary to them. They
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: don't know what to do about it. But simultaneously, there
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: are grizzly bears now moving into habitat that's completely suitable
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: for grizly bear and will benefit from having grizzly bears
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: on the landscape. So should we allow that happen? If
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: a few people are going to get mad, but it's
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: ultimately going to make the hundreds of thousands of acres
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: healthier ecosystem. I don't know the answer to that. It's
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: a tough one man it's a tough one. I would
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: love to see, you know, go out in the Missouri
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: River Breaks and know that there was grizzly bears running around.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: But I'll tell you what, most people that live out
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: there don't want that, so maybe they shouldn't be there. Then,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: if most people out there don't want it to be
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know public land, you know, it's again, it's
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: like if it's public land again, I think it's going
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: to come down to unbiased biologists kind of figuring out
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: what's best for that land and what's best for the ecosystem.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: I can't give you a hard answer.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: On that one, mark that's fair. It's a hard one
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: to answer. A lot of this I think comes down
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: to value, like you talked about earlier, and in either
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: demonstrating the value that they provide already or finding ways
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: for them to create value in different kinds of ways.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: So for example, with like a rancher, private landowner, you know,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: the public you or I might say that we benefit
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: from grizzly from grizzly bears being on their way towards
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: the Missouri Breaks because we know that that's gonna, you know,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: in some ways create a more healthy holistic environment and ecosystem.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: We would like to know they're out there, maybe see them.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: How do we make sure that the rancher that lives
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: next door is getting value out of that. Well, maybe
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: it's by compensating them in some kind of way for
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: the presence. Like I know there's programs out there in
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: eastern Montana around the American Prairie where they have programs
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: where if you get trail camp pictures of certain wildlife
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: on your private lands nearby, they'll pay you for that.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: There's habitat leasing programs down by you, and you know
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: southwestern Montana where folks are being paid for the presence
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: of elk or by doing certain habitat practices that would
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: be beneficial to elk or bears or wolves. They're going
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: to compensate the rancher saying that, hey, we know you're
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: bearing a burden of housing this public wildlife on your
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: land and there's some challenges that come with that, so
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: we're going to find ways to help, you know, make
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: this financially valuable for you too. Or like I mentioned earlier,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: you maybe you've heard about one of these ideas that's like, hey,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: let's add a wildlife fee to every Yellowstone admission price,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: so you add another ten bucks to every time someone
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: comes in on a bus into Yellowstone, and that ten
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: dollars from four point five million people a year all
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: gets put into a fund which then gets shared with
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: adjacent and landowners to help compensate them for the challenges
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: that they are bearing in there being elk or bears
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: or wolves or whatever. I wonder if there's more creative
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: ways that we can find to help make these animals
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: valuable to people, whether it be by allowing hunting so
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: it's valuable to you in that kind of way, or
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: with financial reimbursement or whatever it is. But we need
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: to make these things a win win win for no
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: matter which side of it you're on.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: Man, that's so spot on. I think that we got
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: to look at those things. I think I've heard, you know,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: even here in Park County. I'm part of a group
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: called the Wild Livelihoods Business Coalition, and we've talked about that.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: You know, we've got a big portion of those four
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: million people going through Park County down to the northern
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: gate of the park and they're spending money on bed
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: tax and you know all that stuff, and can could
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: there be a little bit of that chunk of percentage
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: of that that goes back and does help out these
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: folks that are basically harboring wildlife and keeping these ecosystems attacked.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: I think that's a great idea. Again changes the value perspective,
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: but overall it's a win win win, And again I
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: think that maybe that's the platform that the Kenyan Anderson
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty eight that we run on.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: At the very least, I need to drag you along
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 2: on my book tour.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: But no, dude, it's such a it's such a smart
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: I love it because it Let's be honest, man, you
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: hate to bring up economics when you talk about wildlife,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: but it's the way the world goes around. And if
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: that's the value is actual money, then that's the value.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: And it's it's just the way it works, and it's okay,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: and I think people would sign up for it. Man,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: people who love wildlife, you have a little bit of
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: money to help them out. You know, hunters can buy tags, right,
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: what can non hunters do something similar? You know, just
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: go buy a tag and it's some you know, and
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: it supports these initiatives that I think there's a lot
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: of people out there are smarter than me that are
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: figuring these things out all the time, and yeah, let's
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: just do it and let's make it cool. I mean,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: I hate to use that term. It's so simple. We
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: got to make it cool, right, It's got to be
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: something everybody thinks is awesome and believes in, and all
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 3: the silos are all thumb got the thumbs up about
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: it and saying this is good. Yeah, I think that's
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 3: what we got to do. And having this conversation right
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: now is a big part of it because there's people listening,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 3: and those people that are listening can talk tell the
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: same story to other folks, and we can make something happen.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: Move the needle.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, if you could envision a future fifty years
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: from no cases in which there are grizzly bears thriving,
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: There are wolves in manageable, healthy populations across the country.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: There are also terrific herds of elk and moose and
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: mule deer and pronghorn, and hunters are still around happily
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: doing what we love to do. And wildlife viewers are
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: still happily viewing and visiting Yellowstone and all these other
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: places and seeing critters and this imagine world where they're
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: still open and intact and undeveloped private lands surrounding these
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: public cores with ranching still a viable lifestyle. If all
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: of that were still true in fifty years, what would
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: have had to have happened over the course of that
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: period to get there? What are the key what are
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: the what are the key things? If we were going
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: to list out like the Casey Anderson's five commandments of
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: how we can coexist with carnivores for the next fifty
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: years to make it actually work, what are those like
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: key tenants that has to happen. They could be something
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: we've already talked about, or if there's anything we haven't
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: discussed yet, what has to happen to make this a reality?
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: I'll start off with, Man, I don't have high hopes,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: but I don't think it's impossible. And I think the
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: number one thing that would have to happen right now
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: is that we would have to just stomp on the breaks.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: I'm crazy right now, like everything that's crazy and what
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: I mean crazy, you know, and everybody knows what I'm
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: talking about on both sides. We just got to hit
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: the brakes on it, right now hard. We got it.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: We got to preserve what we have right now, right
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: and I think in fifty years, if we have what
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: we have right now, that would be a huge, huge win,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: even amongst the chaos. You know, we gotta we gotta.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: You know, this anti hunting movement, anti wildlife management movement's
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: gotta go away. The you know, eliminate forty percent of
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: the mountain population in Montana without even knowing how much
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: of the of a population of mountain limes. We have
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: kind of mentality gotta go away. You know, all the
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: wolves off the landscape. We don't need wolves in Montana.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: They're bigger wolves from Canada. All that stuff gotta go away.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: You know, wolves should not be hunted, No predators should
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: be hunted. That's gotta go away. All that's gotta go away.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: And I and I think so the biggest thing is
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 3: we got it. We just gotta. It's guys like you
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: and me, man, you know, that's why it's such an
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: honor to be you know, part of this this podcast
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: and part of the greater meat eater world is like
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, Meter is doing it. I mean, I think
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: you gotta you gotta keep talking. You gotta keep communicating
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: because most people who are making these decisions for the
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: world to be a better the place that you've spelled
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: out in fifty years don't know simply are ignorant to
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: all of it and ignorances. It's not their own fault,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: it's just that there's no one telling them, right, there's
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: not Grandpa who's a hunter talking telling stories anymore. They're
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: not listening to this. They're they're listening to crazy. And
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 3: so we we got the main thing is it's going
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: to be communicating all this stuff and having these conversations
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: regularly and recruiting people to believe and yeah, and it's
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: continuing to have biologists on the landscape who are making
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: who are you know in this day and age, or
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: keeping their finger on the pulse by the microsecond changing
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: you know it might they might have changed things a
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 3: couple of times a year to keep up with it.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: That's what it's gonna take, and it's it's gonna it's
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: gonna take listening to each other. Right, you know, you
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: and I might not agree on everything, but we're willing
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: to sit down in a conversation. I actually think we
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: might agree on everything based on the conversation but you
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, I think that, you know, we
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: got all talk, and I think it's important, you know,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: not just preaching to the choir. I think all that's
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: very important.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: I'm raised. I've got three little kids. I got a
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: three or five and a seven year old, and I
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: look at them and I take them out on public
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: lands and the other gona we gotta fight for public lands.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: We gotta keep those things, you know, not one acre
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: we can give away. But yeah, back to the kids,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, I take I take them out there, and
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: I just think, you know, I hope that you get
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: to have a kid childhood. I did, you know. And
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: it's scary because it doesn't look like it doesn't look
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: like it's going to be that way, but it can
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 3: be if we can hit the brakes on crazy, just
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: say no and help the other, and help the other
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: ignorant people who don't understand what we're fighting for understand.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I think that's it.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: I don't know, because I think I think most people,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: when the facts are laid out in front of them
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: and it comes from a place of logic, people make
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: the right decisions. They really do. But most people are
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 3: just not hearing that.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, folks are so divorced from the natural world,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: so distant from it, you know. I think the life
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: that you live or the life that I live is
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: pretty unique these days, and so it's easy just to
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: to either never even think about these things, or if
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: you do think about them ever once in a while,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: it's solely predicated on the one TikTok video you saw
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: last week, or the one the sensationalist headline they got
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: posted because of some crazy thing on Instagram or whatever. Right,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: So a lot of this too, I think, also comes
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: down to people just need to get out there and
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: experience this stuff themselves and see what's out there and
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 2: fall in love with it for themselves, because I feel
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: like oftentimes that is like the the initial barrier that
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: has to be broken before you can ever get someone
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: to really engage with this kind of these ideas in
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: a real way, or let alone get them to advocate
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: in any kind of way. Right.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a hard one because you know, we know
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: that everybody's not going to be able to do that.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: You know, we'd love that, you know, And I think,
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: and here's this perfect segue to doing some self promotion
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: but you know, me having my new YouTube channel, Endless Venture,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: you know, the only reason, you know, I can't keep
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: up with the kids these days. And everybody keeps saying
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: that most eyes are on YouTube right now, you got
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: to go to YouTube. And ultimately, it's all I want
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: is the most eyes, you know. I want people to
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: be able to go on adventures out into these wild
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 3: places and fall in love with it, even if it's
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: vicariously through my storytelling, you know. And that is all
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: my Endless Venture is is just it's you know, animals
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: and finding cool stuff out there and just and giving
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: and doing it. And like I'm just taking how many
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: people are how many people are watching on a hike
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: with me? Right? And if that if that initiates them
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: to get out and take a road trip to the
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 3: west and get out and walk around amazing. But even
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: if it's just when they sit down and they're deciding
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: who they're going to vote for, and it changes their
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: mind a little bit about some policy that they're reading about, Uh,
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 3: that's enough. I mean, that's that's big. So I think again,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: it's just it's important. We gotta Yeah, that's that's the
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: responsibility that you and I collectively and everybody and meat
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: eater and everybody in National Geograph and everybody have we
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: have the responsibility of representing these things as truthfully and
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: as honestly and as purely as we can and hope
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: that we get enough people to show up that we
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: can change some minds in a big way. Yeah.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's uh, that's certainly what gets me out of
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: bed in the morning. And I got to say, when
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: it comes to where, you know, connecting to where the
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: kids are on YouTube, you're well on your way.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: My seven year old son was very excited that you
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: had a collab, a crossover video with mister Coyote Peterson.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: And when he saw that, he's like, Dad, I think
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Casey's the new YouTuber I need to follow. Yep, thank you.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: Right, that's good. That's big news. That's a big win
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: for me right there. So tell your seven year old he.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: Said, yeah, he's seven, so he's he's on it. And
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: then he with that said he had he asked me,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 2: he said, I have to ask you, what is the
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: craziest thing about Coyote Peterson. We're spending time with Coyote
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: Peterson and for folks who aren't familiar Uh, Coyote Peterson
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: is like a more youth child, kind of focused YouTuber,
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: all kind of nature outside activity, his wildlife kind of
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: things that kids love, and my kids love him. He's
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: pretty wild. So yes, so Everett, my son, Everett has
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: to know, what's it like hanging out with Coyote Peterson.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: What's the craziest thing he did or does or anything
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So, Everett, Coyote is a He's one of the
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: nicest guys. I know, he's very you know, perfect example.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: I'll turn out to go too much onto this, but
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: you know, he's a guy with a very open mind
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: and not a hunter, and him and I have talked
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 3: about hunting a bunch, you know, and he's interested. You know,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 3: he's listened. But back to Everett's question, Kyote is a
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: bit of a superhuman. I don't know if it's because
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: he's been stung and bitten and you know, has had
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: so much poison into his blood that his body has
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: built up some resilience. But like just the other day,
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: I went actually back east and visited him, and he
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: like walked through this like worst of poison ivy. Everybody
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 3: else he was involved got your typical reaction, no reaction
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: at all. He's tough. He's a tough guy, he really is.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: And uh yeah, you know, and in the end, you know,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: his his thing. You know, it's awesome that evert's watching
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: him because you know, Coyote does he does that. He's
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: a showman. He's really good at producing his stuff. He
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: has these big sensationalized things. I think a lot of
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: adults would shake their head at, right. Yes, but as
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: you dive in, you click the clickbait and you get
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 3: in there. It's full of great conservation information. And he's
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 3: got millions of people watching him because of that all
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: the time. And again, these are people that are making
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 3: good decisions down the line because they're learning through Coyote
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: and even if they had to click the clickbait to
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 3: get there, you know, and that's just it. You know,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: he's he's a smart fella. And again, and I'm having
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: huge conversations with him, you know. In fact, I've had
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: long conversations about the wolf issue. And he came in
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 3: and where as you would a guy from Ohio has
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: never been out here, and there's an animal advocate, you know,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 3: he's like, what's going on out there? He saw the
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: guy run the wolf over in Wyoming and things that
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 3: that's what we're all doing out here. He really did,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: you know, and I and I had an opportunity to sit
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: down and have a conversation with him. That's now wait
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 3: a minute, this is we're talking about a small people
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: here anyway. Yeah, so Everett good guy. For sure. I'll
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: tell Coyote that, yeah about Everett.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: And uh, he'll get a kick out of that.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: He'll like it.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Everett my seven year old and Colt, my five
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: year old, are are both big Coyote Peterson fans and
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: uh and blooming Casey Anderson's.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: Okay, Well, so I won't disappoint. There's gonna this little
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: secret that you can tell Colt and Everett. I got
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 3: at least one or two more collapse with coyote coming home.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: They'll be they'll be stoked. So so on that note, then, Casey, uh,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: you alluded to it a little bit. But give folks
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: the full picture. What's what's Endless Venture all about? Where
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: do they find this? What can they expect to see?
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: Tell me all about it?
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Endless Venture is just exactly kind of like the title.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 3: It is my endless ventures into the wild. So over
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: the last fifty years of just being a kid in
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: the woods, right, and I've done it professionally, but I've
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: always just been a kid in the woods, and so
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: it's just going to be that more of that, you know,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: I've I've met so many cool people over the years.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 3: I go back and revisit stories that they've told me,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: and you know, I go, I'm just doing things like
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 3: I wake up the morning and go, what do I
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: want to go do that is going to be exciting,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: and I just make an episode about it. So that
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 3: can be anything from tracking man eating tigers in Nepal
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: to seeing snow uppards for the first time in the Himalayas,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 3: to stay and spending the night in a grizzly bear
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: den in the middle of winter. And the other thing
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: is I'm a you know, as you know, like when
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: you're out and about you see things like I'm fascinated
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: with it with Native American history and artifacts. So if
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: I find something like that, I'll deep dive into it,
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 3: bring archaeologists, archaeologists in really try to learn more about it.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: I discovered a cave that's never been explored with a
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 3: friend of mine that we were actually looking for mount
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: lions with his hounds. We found this crazy cave in
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: the middle of nowhere and now it's almost a mile
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: of unmapped cave that we've found that we're totally documenting
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: all this. So it's just, yeah, just being a I mean,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: something you can relate to. Everybody can relate to that
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: run around the woods, just me being my inner child
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 3: in the wild. Anything everything cool, and I just try
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: to but I try to expand on it and bring
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: an expert and teach more and tell the stories. But
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 3: all the treasures man, not just wildlife everything. So yeah.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: The other thing like I like to throw out to
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: an audience like yours, is like legends and stories, like
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: you know, I always hear from hunting stories like well,
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 3: I was hunting elk and then I looked up and
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: there was a cave in the rock face, and I
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 3: always wish I could get up there. I saw these
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: pictographs once and I never could find them again. I've
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 3: revisited a lot of these stories people told me over
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 3: the years, Like twenty years ago. Someone will tell me
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: a story and we'll go back and try to find
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: this very cool thing that they saw and sometimes we
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: strike out, sometimes we find it. So if there's anybody
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 3: with like really cool stories, or they've heard this crazy
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 3: story from their uncle or their grandpa and they want
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: to go look for these legends or whatever, if there's
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: any ounce of truth that maybe we can find something
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 3: very cool and like make this story come to life,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: let me know. That's exactly the kind of stuff I'm
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 3: looking for.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: That's cool, It's got to be. I'm making some assumptions here,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: but I guess I should ask as a question, is
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: it has it been freeing to be developing film for
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: YouTube in this kind of way that's probably with fewer
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: guardrails and restraints than maybe producing something for network television, Right?
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: Is that pretty fuch?
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, definitely trying to navigate the madness of
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 3: networks and streamers and all that and what they might
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: want and whatever. It's such a hard that's a hard animal, man.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 3: It's like that, you can't unpredictable. Yeah, Now complete creative control,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: can go do what I want. And I think at
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: some level that freedom comes out in me. And I
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: think people just love watching people be excited about something
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: and passionate about something, and because of that freedom I'm
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: probably more passionate and excited. I've heard people give me
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: feedback on this too that they think so I'd just
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 3: been more natural and more into my element than ever. Yeah,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm an old guy. I'm gonna turn fifty
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 3: this year. I've got a lot of a lot of
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 3: experience and a lot of cool stories and friends and stuff.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 3: So i'm's gonna just bring it all, like bring it
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: to life. But I don't feel like an old guy
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: when I'm out there right checking out all this cool stuff.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: That's the scary thing is that I don't feel old either.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: But I'm knocking on forty's door and that sounds really
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 2: old to me. And I'm realizing, like, oh my gosh,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna blink and I'm gonna be fifty, I'm gonna blink,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna be sixty. And so I better do everything
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: I can very single day and just soak it all
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: up right, because it goes it goes fast, and it goes.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: Fast, and things are changing. So you never know when
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 3: you go to your favorite place again and it's not there,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 3: and that's that's the scary thing. But yeah, it's I think, uh,
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: endless venture. So yeah, please go check it out and subscribe,
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: because that's the only one I get to do it.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 3: And I think, again, it's maybe for a little bit
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 3: more of a mature audience, but I think kids definitely
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 3: could watch it, and I'm glad to hear that they are.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: But I certainly think that a lot of folks in
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 3: this demographic that listen to your podcast would probably really
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 3: dig it because they could relate to it, because most
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: of us are just that's the words run around the
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 3: woods catching frogs in some way, shape or form, right.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: Just the adult version of it now, and sometimes I
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: still do the child version of it. Yeah or but
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: but yeah, I've watched a bunch of the new videos,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: the ones up in cat My, the stuff with Coyote.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: I liked your viral video court, you know, Sunday Morning
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 2: or Monday Morning Quarterback. That was great. So yeah, it's
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: great stuff. I've watched a lot of the previous network
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: television stuff that of course is great. So I'm excited
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: for you, excited for this new project. And yes, at
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: least in this sample size of three, a thirty eight
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: year old, a thirty seven year old, a seven year old,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: and a five year old, you have people who like
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: the content across that entire age range. So you're doing well.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: That's awesome. Thank you appreciate it.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: So endless venture on YouTube anywhere else that people should go.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: Instagram handle, any website or anything you want people to
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: go check out.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Instagram. And I'm still on old school
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 3: Facebook because that's old school now. But Grizzly Guy is
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: the handle. Yeah, just go check it out. I mean,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 3: I'm updating that stuff constantly too. Again, I do feel
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 3: like it's the way people can experience the wild without
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: being in the wild, and I find a lot of
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 3: responsibility in that. And I mean anything, I try to
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 3: post stuff up on there, and I try to at
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 3: least make it where you can learn something too along
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 3: the way. And you know, I'm always learning. I've had
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 3: even the day I just posted a crazy thing about
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 3: hundred guys versus gorilla because I saw that not a gorilla,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: Grizzly because I saw the gorilla thing going around for
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 3: a while. Yeah. I love I love the debates and
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 3: the craziness of it all. And but in the end,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 3: you know, I threw some real facts out there, and
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: I just want to get people thinking about nature. Right,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 3: And that's one thing you can count on. If you
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: click on any of my socials or YouTube, you're going
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 3: to be thinking about nature. And I think that we
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: all got to do that a little bit more.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: No matter what, man, no truer words could be spoken
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: in that Casey and I think that's probably a good
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: place for us to wrap it up. So I've loved this.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed this chat.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Oh, thank you. I've loved it too. One
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 3: of one of the best ever, all.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 2: Right, And that's a wrap. I appreciate you tuning in.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: Hopefully you enjoyed this one as much as I did.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 2: I could have chatted with Casey for a couple more hours.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: There's there's so much to cover on this one, so
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: many interesting stories of his that we did not get into.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: We probably need to have another chat with Casey just
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: to hear his stories, because he's done so much wild,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: crazy stuff that would just be fun to hear about.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: That probably needs to be on the schedule down the line.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: But today it was kind of a deep, kind of
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: sink your teeth into it discussion of carnivores and hunters
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: and how we can maybe get along into the future
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: and make sure that all the things that we need
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: and care about exist twenty years from now, forty years
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: from now, fifty years from now. So I hope, in
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: some small way we're able to address some of that,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: and I appreciate you sticking around here to tune in, So,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: without further ado, thank you, and stay wired to hunt