Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 034
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: M This is the me Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely,
- 0:15Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening. Don't eat podcast.
- 0:20Speaker 1: You can't predict that anything. Everyone, This is the me
- 0:31Speaker 1: Eater Podcast. We're in Missoula, Montana, celebrating Lanton He's birthday. Really,
- 0:38Speaker 1: we're here for the Bad Huntry Hunters and Anglers Annual Rendezvous.
- 0:43Speaker 1: And this is number five. Why did why did it
- 0:48Speaker 1: takes alone to have one? I just knowing every thoughts like, hey,
- 0:51Speaker 1: let's have it, get together because of what it takes
- 0:53Speaker 1: to put it on, you know, And I think because
- 0:56Speaker 1: the organization has been around how long I've been around
- 0:58Speaker 1: for this our twelfth year. But you know that was
- 1:01Speaker 1: when we first had staff. I think when we had
- 1:03Speaker 1: the first one, So you had to have someone to
- 1:05Speaker 1: plan it out. Exactly when I showed up here yesterday.
- 1:08Speaker 1: I got here and the first thing I saw his
- 1:09Speaker 1: callahan uh sneaking out the door going fishing. What did
- 1:14Speaker 1: you catch you in a two hour two hour float?
- 1:17Speaker 1: It was a little rushed three two hour cruise, little rushed. Yeah,
- 1:21Speaker 1: um got one rainbow? You know. Um, you know my
- 1:26Speaker 1: sister in law lives up that river. You run the
- 1:29Speaker 1: Blackfoot River. You met her. Yeah, you caught one fish.
- 1:35Speaker 1: You can catch one, but he did not. Was it
- 1:38Speaker 1: a big one that you caught. It was a nice fish,
- 1:41Speaker 1: it wasn't huge. And you guys did a full on float. Yeah.
- 1:45Speaker 1: My buddy, uh Ryan Thompson, Caitlin two wigs, uh husband
- 1:52Speaker 1: he name dropping. They live up there anyway, help me
- 1:59Speaker 1: out a on and basically at the boat on the water,
- 2:02Speaker 1: We ran up there, jumped in, floated down to their house.
- 2:06Speaker 1: He continued onto the boat ramp and took care of
- 2:09Speaker 1: all the stuff. Really yeah, and I came back here
- 2:12Speaker 1: in time for the fish released it just like you do.
- 2:18Speaker 1: I'm thinking about having you on. He's T shirt company
- 2:21Speaker 1: made me a T shirt down on the back. It's
- 2:22Speaker 1: gonna be like cud zoo a dandelion, spotted nap weed,
- 2:28Speaker 1: leafy spurge in a rainbow. It's gonna be like UMVASI
- 2:34Speaker 1: stopping vases. Now, how about bomb come on the front
- 2:40Speaker 1: and bomb that good catching release into the pan of grease.
- 2:45Speaker 1: So now, like, what's the goal of a of the
- 2:51Speaker 1: the whole deal? When you guys have a you know,
- 2:53Speaker 1: when the organization has an annual convention, it's like to
- 2:57Speaker 1: rally people up. Do you guys actually do bis this?
- 3:00Speaker 1: We do. We had our only face to face board meeting,
- 3:04Speaker 1: and then we had chapter leaders that came in from
- 3:06Speaker 1: all across the country. I think we had forty five
- 3:08Speaker 1: chapter leaders, and so we did some training with them,
- 3:12Speaker 1: and then, like what you talked about rallying the troops.
- 3:14Speaker 1: You know, I think a lot of us only see
- 3:16Speaker 1: each other one time a year, and so um, having
- 3:20Speaker 1: the ability to like bring everybody together kind of coalescee
- 3:23Speaker 1: swap stories just like kind of the traditional you know
- 3:25Speaker 1: rendezvous where the trappers would come together, um, and then
- 3:28Speaker 1: were rendezvous and his valley They never did in this valley.
- 3:31Speaker 1: It's weird, such a great valley. Um. But then you
- 3:35Speaker 1: have you know, like they go home fired up. And
- 3:37Speaker 1: I think, you know, we accomplished that in spades. Now,
- 3:42Speaker 1: when you say the board meeting, the board only gets
- 3:45Speaker 1: together once a year, face to face, face to face. Yeah,
- 3:47Speaker 1: how many people around the board? We have ten? Right now?
- 3:52Speaker 1: Are you on the board Nope? Okay, I'm a lifetime member.
- 3:59Speaker 1: You saw me try to take notes on the food
- 4:02Speaker 1: judging contest yesterday? Oh yeah, I mean we got to
- 4:04Speaker 1: mention that I was gonna talk about that. We judged
- 4:06Speaker 1: the Wild Game cook and cook Off. Yeah, and uh,
- 4:11Speaker 1: five teams had five teams and five different chapters. What
- 4:17Speaker 1: was the only five five different chapters. That's just who
- 4:19Speaker 1: signed up and who signed up. And it's also, you know,
- 4:21Speaker 1: I think logistically, you know, camp Chef was obviously a
- 4:23Speaker 1: great partner in that whole thing, and so um, just
- 4:26Speaker 1: logistically that's what we could do. And so five chapters
- 4:29Speaker 1: stepped up and unfortunately we were I was upstairs, so
- 4:32Speaker 1: I would love you to do So. Yeah, five teams
- 4:36Speaker 1: did it, and they all had they we had to
- 4:39Speaker 1: rate them on presentation, taste, creativity they're trying to remember,
- 4:49Speaker 1: also rated them on state. Yeah, Callahan. I looked at
- 4:52Speaker 1: Callahan's notes at one point and he had made another
- 4:55Speaker 1: category where he wrote down where they were from, which
- 4:58Speaker 1: was like just bringing some your biased and do it
- 5:01Speaker 1: not even being secret. And then Kaalien took all kinds
- 5:04Speaker 1: of notes, and then later when we got together with
- 5:06Speaker 1: the judge, he didn't refer to his notes, and every
- 5:08Speaker 1: time someone asked him or were tallying the scores, every
- 5:11Speaker 1: time someone asked him, he'd kind of look off in
- 5:13Speaker 1: the sky and didn't give a number without like, without
- 5:18Speaker 1: referring back to his notes at all. Pure genius. Thank you.
- 5:21Speaker 1: What were you? Uh, what were you like? Had you
- 5:25Speaker 1: memorized your notes or were you like just kind of still,
- 5:31Speaker 1: it was very hard for me, and I felt very
- 5:34Speaker 1: pressured and everything was really really good and there was
- 5:36Speaker 1: no crazy outlier in there. Every I mean everybody put
- 5:42Speaker 1: a ton of thought into every dish, and it was
- 5:46Speaker 1: weighing on me. A guy made, uh, one of one
- 5:49Speaker 1: of the teams made b bimbop the cream dish and
- 5:51Speaker 1: then did it with They had it garnished on top
- 5:55Speaker 1: with glacier lily, which is very pretty. That was a
- 5:58Speaker 1: pretty dish, vibrant colors, and then you know, the nettles
- 6:03Speaker 1: don't stood out great. They had there was a dish
- 6:07Speaker 1: they had fried quail in it, and then uh, some
- 6:11Speaker 1: sort of hoo dani I can't remember what the hoo
- 6:13Speaker 1: the animal there was and then they had oh, they
- 6:15Speaker 1: had elk hirt in the greens. Oh that was good. No, yeah,
- 6:19Speaker 1: that's right. It was like a corned elk cart with
- 6:21Speaker 1: greens and fried quail and like there was like a
- 6:23Speaker 1: couple like a honey because they did like a not
- 6:26Speaker 1: a waffle, but it was sort of a take on
- 6:28Speaker 1: fried chicken and waffles. And I gotta say, I saw
- 6:31Speaker 1: the corn to Elkhart. Uh, I saw a post of
- 6:36Speaker 1: it or something. I was like, No, that's not gonna
- 6:37Speaker 1: work out. Yeah, but it was great. You know what
- 6:40Speaker 1: I did their day? I brined Uh. You were for
- 6:42Speaker 1: dinner that night, weren't you? I brined uh moose heart
- 6:47Speaker 1: and just smoked it how to go? She was good?
- 6:52Speaker 1: Did you like it? Joannie? Keeping? It was good? You
- 6:57Speaker 1: didn't like it? It was good. Every time I tried
- 7:01Speaker 1: to do anything other than fry hard or slicing, throw
- 7:06Speaker 1: it on the barbecue, and I'm just not me it
- 7:09Speaker 1: doesn't work out. So now, Ryan, what do you gotta
- 7:14Speaker 1: save for yourself? We gotta We got another man here
- 7:17Speaker 1: that was gonna say you missed another meal. Callahan was there.
- 7:21Speaker 1: Thursday night we had a big what we called tack
- 7:23Speaker 1: barn dinner, four of us cooking. Um had some good
- 7:26Speaker 1: stuff there. What did you guys do with that? For food? Uh?
- 7:30Speaker 1: We it was all wild game hunter gatherer stuff. Four
- 7:34Speaker 1: different courses cooked, all camp cook so uh Dutch oven
- 7:39Speaker 1: grill over we had hank Shaw did five antelopine quarters
- 7:43Speaker 1: over open flame coals, hanging by a big tripod. Killer
- 7:47Speaker 1: good that we're dark good killer good. Yeah. We had
- 7:50Speaker 1: four dishes. I did elk loin Montana chickpeas. We had
- 7:55Speaker 1: Charle McGlen did uh Dutch oven. Lasagna made his own cheeses,
- 7:59Speaker 1: two different cheese. Is um, first time you've ever done
- 8:01Speaker 1: a Dutch of Amazagna nailed it. Of course, he's a
- 8:04Speaker 1: he's a stud of a chef. He didn't make those
- 8:06Speaker 1: cheeses out of like, uh, elk and deer milk, did he? Hey? Man,
- 8:12Speaker 1: check it out. We met a guy you honestly, we
- 8:14Speaker 1: met a guy in Texas who one time, um, because
- 8:16Speaker 1: you know the hide hunters, the Buffalo hide hunters used
- 8:18Speaker 1: to cut the mamories open and suck the milk out
- 8:21Speaker 1: of the mammories and they're butcher and animals. And we
- 8:23Speaker 1: met a guy down Texas. Remember that guy, which one
- 8:27Speaker 1: the dude that hunts cranes with the zombie cranes. Oh Mike, yeah,
- 8:32Speaker 1: nasty fanacy. Yeah he he one time was skinning the
- 8:36Speaker 1: dough and and uh he didn't want to admit it,
- 8:40Speaker 1: like he told me the story. And then later we
- 8:42Speaker 1: were recording one of these, and I said, hey, man,
- 8:45Speaker 1: talk about when you were drinking that milk out of
- 8:47Speaker 1: that deer you were cutting up. Didn't want to talk
- 8:50Speaker 1: about it. There's a private conversation that he wanted. Well, yeah,
- 8:56Speaker 1: we're a hardcore man, but we're not there yet. So
- 9:01Speaker 1: when the the whole legs, how did you how did
- 9:04Speaker 1: did you get cooked into the bone or do you
- 9:06Speaker 1: have to just keep catting away and letting it cook
- 9:08Speaker 1: more and keep cutting away and letting the coat. It
- 9:10Speaker 1: was a challenge on that one because we're cooking in
- 9:12Speaker 1: colder conditions than Hank usually cooks him, so it was
- 9:15Speaker 1: a little slower for him, but didn't It was rare
- 9:17Speaker 1: on the bone. Um, but I'd say we got the
- 9:21Speaker 1: we got it. Oh two thirds was cooked just right
- 9:24Speaker 1: with rare right at the bone. So we had variations
- 9:26Speaker 1: have done us through it. So it was like something
- 9:28Speaker 1: for everybody. Yeah. Yeah, and he made his own had
- 9:31Speaker 1: his own vinegar. He had over the top of it.
- 9:34Speaker 1: Brought sage, wild sage from California cooked in there with it.
- 9:37Speaker 1: Was fantastic. That's good. Where were the animal from not
- 9:40Speaker 1: from there? Montana members donated them. Yeah, they're pretty short
- 9:43Speaker 1: on analope in California. Yeah, they're they're running low over there. Um,
- 9:49Speaker 1: So Ryan, explain your role at b H A chairman
- 9:53Speaker 1: of the Yeah, I'm chairman of the board of directors. Now,
- 9:56Speaker 1: so what do you do? Uh? Well, oh, we'll try
- 10:01Speaker 1: to provide some direction and try to bounce ideas off
- 10:04Speaker 1: of each other and give Land as marching orders and
- 10:07Speaker 1: give the staff um ideas on where we'd like to
- 10:10Speaker 1: see the word go. And we've so the board is
- 10:12Speaker 1: chief over Land or Land is chief over the board. Honestly,
- 10:16Speaker 1: it depends on the day. And who you ask, Um,
- 10:18Speaker 1: it's his birthday, so I guess we'll let him be
- 10:20Speaker 1: boss today. Land, do me a favorite run through the
- 10:23Speaker 1: buckets again? I know you did this four year hour
- 10:25Speaker 1: with this, and we did. We spent like an hour
- 10:26Speaker 1: around the buckets, but hit me, hit me with the buckets,
- 10:28Speaker 1: but hit me in like real shorthand. Yeah. Yeah, So
- 10:30Speaker 1: we've got three buckets. First one would be that was
- 10:33Speaker 1: five buckets, and we changed it because it was too much.
- 10:35Speaker 1: Too many buckets you still can only carry. Yeah, I
- 10:39Speaker 1: got I got one of my mouth. I got one
- 10:41Speaker 1: of my mouth, So that's good. I know, we got
- 10:42Speaker 1: three buckets. First one is access and opportunity. I gotta
- 10:46Speaker 1: get back to why how did you lose? Okay, tell
- 10:48Speaker 1: me the buckets and explain, because I imagine you poured
- 10:51Speaker 1: a bucket into another bucket. We did, yeah, and so
- 10:54Speaker 1: give me a trick where that bucket came from. So
- 10:56Speaker 1: we have access and opportunities. The first one that was
- 10:59Speaker 1: a regular bucket. Um, that's our public lands work. That's
- 11:02Speaker 1: our access to public LANs as, our access to public waters.
- 11:05Speaker 1: And then on the second bucket, which got a lot bigger,
- 11:08Speaker 1: is the back country kind of controvation. And so within
- 11:11Speaker 1: that you've got special Places which used to be a
- 11:13Speaker 1: standalone bucket. And then you have kind of larger, big
- 11:16Speaker 1: scale their nesting pots. Sure, yeah, yeah, that's exactly. And
- 11:23Speaker 1: and then and then after that you have like larger
- 11:25Speaker 1: things like the Clean Water Act. You know that has
- 11:26Speaker 1: implications for everybody. Um, that's a lot bigger than like
- 11:29Speaker 1: special places. And then our final one is fair Chase.
- 11:33Speaker 1: And then that fair Chase bucket, you know, that's where
- 11:35Speaker 1: our drone kind of work comes in. That's where o
- 11:36Speaker 1: high fence work is going to come in. Um, and
- 11:39Speaker 1: kind of our illegal oh v us is under that
- 11:41Speaker 1: bucket as well. Why do you think that people have
- 11:43Speaker 1: been able to Well, I don't want to stay at
- 11:46Speaker 1: things on top of each other. So I think you
- 11:49Speaker 1: kind of explain where the buckets went. It's just like
- 11:52Speaker 1: your but but this is just the way you just
- 11:54Speaker 1: think in your own mind, right, I mean, this is
- 11:55Speaker 1: kind of way you guys categorize. Yeah, And we want
- 11:58Speaker 1: to make it simple for people to understand what we do. Yeah,
- 12:00Speaker 1: And so when I'm into five buckets, people start going
- 12:02Speaker 1: to sleep, right, and and so the three buckets and
- 12:05Speaker 1: the way I just explained, I think it's pretty sustinct.
- 12:07Speaker 1: And so people can understand that right away, Yeah, you can.
- 12:10Speaker 1: With the comedian Mitch Hedberg, Um, he died, but to
- 12:16Speaker 1: hear that probably the greatest American one of the greatest
- 12:19Speaker 1: American comedians ever. But he had a joke where he
- 12:22Speaker 1: was um talking about someone gave him, what's the drug
- 12:26Speaker 1: you taking? You have a d h D. Yeah, so
- 12:29Speaker 1: he would take riddling but he's not but he doesn't
- 12:32Speaker 1: suffer from the ailment. He would just take the solution.
- 12:36Speaker 1: And he said that, um, whenever tell when someone told
- 12:39Speaker 1: him something, he'd be like, there's gotta be more to
- 12:41Speaker 1: that story fair enough. So no way, I like the
- 12:45Speaker 1: five buckets man because I like a long story. But
- 12:50Speaker 1: why do you think I want to talk about the
- 12:51Speaker 1: drone situation? Because you addressed that last night at the dinner.
- 12:54Speaker 1: Oh also did um who wanted buying the float trip?
- 12:59Speaker 1: The float trip with you was your mom? Uh No,
- 13:05Speaker 1: I won't make my mom pay to go hang out
- 13:06Speaker 1: with me. Um, I supposed to get you a loan
- 13:11Speaker 1: on the boat and criticize you know. It was Actually
- 13:13Speaker 1: it was a friend of mine who after he bought it,
- 13:15Speaker 1: as I'm hugging him until he whispered to me, he said,
- 13:17Speaker 1: I'm gonna work that shift out of you. And so
- 13:22Speaker 1: then I told him where I wanted to go and
- 13:23Speaker 1: there's a portage and he said he's not going to
- 13:25Speaker 1: do the portage, and so that means that I'll be
- 13:27Speaker 1: working and I think we'll be going by holes and
- 13:30Speaker 1: then just he will say, like make me get out
- 13:32Speaker 1: of the boat and like drag it back up the
- 13:33Speaker 1: river or row it back up the river. So now
- 13:35Speaker 1: he told me last night he's gonna put like forty
- 13:37Speaker 1: flies in the willows. It might be an expensive trips. So, yeah,
- 13:42Speaker 1: you talked about the drone issue thirteen states of banned drones.
- 13:45Speaker 1: Now why are people why do you think people are
- 13:47Speaker 1: able to coalesce around drones when they'd be reluctant to
- 13:52Speaker 1: coalesce around other uh technologies being eliminated from the hunting
- 13:57Speaker 1: tool kit? Is it because it's totally new? It's definitely
- 14:01Speaker 1: part of it, I think, you know, I mean there's
- 14:03Speaker 1: no traditional use once you get something established, you know,
- 14:05Speaker 1: like when you've got a lot of money at stake,
- 14:07Speaker 1: but then you have a lot of people that have
- 14:08Speaker 1: already you know, like that that's the way they do business, right,
- 14:11Speaker 1: and so on the drone thing, we got out in
- 14:13Speaker 1: front of that, and um, you know, there isn't like
- 14:16Speaker 1: a a drone hunting association, right like you know, I
- 14:20Speaker 1: mean they're a drone owners of the drone lobby. There's
- 14:22Speaker 1: a drone lobby, but that's more for dot com Yeah, exactly,
- 14:28Speaker 1: and so and so. But you know, we want to
- 14:29Speaker 1: get in front of it, you know. So there's things
- 14:31Speaker 1: like live action cameras on trees, right, and we have
- 14:34Speaker 1: their band here in Montana, but in a lot of
- 14:35Speaker 1: states that's okay, and like to me, that's kind of
- 14:37Speaker 1: the same thing. And you know that's already been established,
- 14:40Speaker 1: and so that's a lot harder to put that back
- 14:43Speaker 1: in the box, right, And so um with the drone stuff,
- 14:46Speaker 1: you have people I mean, I think people when they
- 14:49Speaker 1: hear about that, they just can't believe that people were
- 14:52Speaker 1: starting to do that, right, So we were in a
- 14:54Speaker 1: good place when we did them. They give I don't
- 14:56Speaker 1: know how many years you'd have to go back, but
- 14:57Speaker 1: if you went back to the advent of trail cameras,
- 15:01Speaker 1: like right now, if you said, like in a national sense,
- 15:06Speaker 1: no trail cameras, people would have a ship fit. Oh
- 15:08Speaker 1: yeah there Arizona from Arizona, Wisconsin. I mean just just
- 15:12Speaker 1: places where you know here is weird when they did
- 15:14Speaker 1: it that you could he had to pull them one
- 15:15Speaker 1: season started, right, which I mean that's probably really hard
- 15:19Speaker 1: to regulate. But I don't know, if you see one,
- 15:21Speaker 1: you see one, true. But I think that's the thing
- 15:24Speaker 1: with it with drones too, right, like were you know,
- 15:26Speaker 1: there's all these laws about flying airplanes, you know, and
- 15:29Speaker 1: and and what you can hunt within like scouting on
- 15:31Speaker 1: an airplane. So I think it's twenty four hours, and
- 15:33Speaker 1: so we we thought about doing that with drones. But
- 15:36Speaker 1: drones are so much less invasive than an airplane. I mean,
- 15:39Speaker 1: you can hear an airplane and you know when you're
- 15:40Speaker 1: in the woods from a long ways away. For a drone,
- 15:43Speaker 1: you gotta be pretty close to it. And so um,
- 15:46Speaker 1: that's why we didn't do the twenty four hour rule there.
- 15:48Speaker 1: We banned him for the entire season. So some guys,
- 15:50Speaker 1: you know, if a law enforcement officer sees a guy
- 15:52Speaker 1: with a drone during hunting season, that's a pretty easy
- 15:56Speaker 1: way to do it rather than the twenty four Yeah,
- 15:58Speaker 1: like in Alaska, you got you know, there's there's a
- 16:00Speaker 1: lot of hunts you can people don't. A lot of
- 16:03Speaker 1: people don't realize it's there's a lot of hunts you
- 16:04Speaker 1: can fly and hunt on the same day, you know,
- 16:07Speaker 1: for black tail deer and cariboo and stuff. There's some
- 16:10Speaker 1: hunts you can some huns you cannot, But now you can't.
- 16:13Speaker 1: Like if you fly a drone, you don't hunt that season, right,
- 16:17Speaker 1: that's it. That's it, which is a little bit surprising.
- 16:20Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad I'd like to see it. I
- 16:22Speaker 1: think everybody likes to see it. But again I think
- 16:23Speaker 1: it's because it hadn't been in my mind. It just
- 16:25Speaker 1: hadn't become entrenched, like it hadn't become like a traditional
- 16:28Speaker 1: use issue. And traditions happen real quick if they do,
- 16:32Speaker 1: you know they do. And I think a lot of
- 16:33Speaker 1: those traditions that they come with money too, right, I
- 16:35Speaker 1: mean you think you just talked about trail cameras. I
- 16:37Speaker 1: mean think about the amount. Know what the dollar figure is,
- 16:39Speaker 1: but it's got to be in the high millions, right,
- 16:42Speaker 1: I mean, that's an industry now that would be taken away,
- 16:44Speaker 1: and so it would be people that would fight it.
- 16:46Speaker 1: But even more I think the people that are making
- 16:48Speaker 1: those things. Yeah. Another thing that's been funny to watch
- 16:50Speaker 1: is two way communications. Um, I don't know. Was some
- 16:55Speaker 1: friends of mine Wisconsin, they they spend seventy of their
- 16:59Speaker 1: time texting the time looking for deer. How's that work
- 17:03Speaker 1: out for him? Well if they just text, you know.
- 17:07Speaker 1: And then here in Montana, that first two way communications
- 17:10Speaker 1: I remember years ago, for one year you couldn't use them,
- 17:15Speaker 1: and people were pissed because people like, hey, man, I'm
- 17:17Speaker 1: out with my kids. I want to know what's going on.
- 17:20Speaker 1: I hunt with my dad. He's an elderly I need
- 17:23Speaker 1: to know what's happening with him, and so then they
- 17:25Speaker 1: clarified the language. You can't use it to assist the
- 17:28Speaker 1: same thing in Alaska. You can't use it so you
- 17:30Speaker 1: can have it, you can't use it to assist into
- 17:32Speaker 1: taking a game, which I thought I wanted being a
- 17:34Speaker 1: pretty reasonable Um. I thought it wanted to being a
- 17:37Speaker 1: pretty reasonable compromise. But I know, guys, you know, guys
- 17:41Speaker 1: especially it seems like down in the Southwest, if they
- 17:44Speaker 1: can't have two way radios, ain't going hunting. You know,
- 17:47Speaker 1: you get a guy at every point find an animal,
- 17:50Speaker 1: nine guys watching it, one guy going after and they're
- 17:53Speaker 1: all on radios. A goddamn seal team. What do you
- 17:56Speaker 1: think of that? I don't know. I don't I mean personally,
- 18:02Speaker 1: you know, you get into this thing all the time.
- 18:03Speaker 1: I've had this conversation. I did a like a talk
- 18:07Speaker 1: two nights ago in Michigan, and the guy asked me, like,
- 18:09Speaker 1: what do you think of baiting? I'm like, I think
- 18:11Speaker 1: if baiting is okay where you're at, great, is it legal?
- 18:16Speaker 1: You know, if it's illegal, I think you should probably
- 18:18Speaker 1: stop doing it. UM. I grew up first, second, third, fourth, fifth,
- 18:21Speaker 1: dear I killed to kill over a pile of carrots. Uh.
- 18:26Speaker 1: Later I got real curious about what deer doing when
- 18:29Speaker 1: they're not eating my carrots. Um. What I learned about
- 18:32Speaker 1: deer from hunting over bait is a dea bowl like carrots.
- 18:36Speaker 1: As you get more experience, I think you start wondering
- 18:39Speaker 1: what they're doing when they're not eating them, and where
- 18:40Speaker 1: are they going? And how would you find them if
- 18:42Speaker 1: they're going about their natural rhythms, you know, And that's
- 18:46Speaker 1: just where I'm what I wound up being more interested in. Um.
- 18:51Speaker 1: If I'm out hunting and I'm going after an animal, Uh,
- 18:57Speaker 1: it's very tempting to have information like hey, man, it left,
- 19:01Speaker 1: or a dude that got up and beded back down
- 19:03Speaker 1: again twenty yards over by that rock. It's like tempting
- 19:05Speaker 1: to have the information. But in the end, after the fact, um,
- 19:09Speaker 1: I think that it would I think that it would
- 19:12Speaker 1: diminish your memory of the animal. I think you diminish
- 19:14Speaker 1: your memory of the hunt when not growing up in Montana, Right,
- 19:18Speaker 1: no communicator. I don't know how the loss says it,
- 19:23Speaker 1: but you can't use communication to target animals. Or yeah,
- 19:28Speaker 1: they were an assist in the taking game. The first
- 19:32Speaker 1: time ever hunting out of the state. I'm guiding in Idaho,
- 19:38Speaker 1: and you just make some assumptions on some rules and
- 19:41Speaker 1: typically if you assume on the side of the animal,
- 19:45Speaker 1: you're gonna be correct. And we're riding up the trail,
- 19:51Speaker 1: got the I'm just learning. The guy ahead of me
- 19:54Speaker 1: radio cracks and it's like, hey, you guys just rode
- 19:57Speaker 1: past the ball. Oh jump off. These guys are just
- 20:01Speaker 1: writing into camp, you know, the clients, and you know
- 20:06Speaker 1: ten minutes later, dead bull. And I was, oh my god,
- 20:11Speaker 1: I was just part of something highly illegal. What am
- 20:14Speaker 1: I gonna do? Like, what are you talking about? That's
- 20:17Speaker 1: how you kill hell cup here? It's totally illegal and
- 20:19Speaker 1: I don't and I just couldn't totally takes away from it.
- 20:22Speaker 1: And doesn't that prove that legality is only part of
- 20:25Speaker 1: your ethics. Well, it's that's tricky as hell, man. Because
- 20:33Speaker 1: I brought this point. A lot of guys in the
- 20:35Speaker 1: Southeast run deer with dogs that traditional use. They've done
- 20:39Speaker 1: it for a long time. If you decided you're gonna
- 20:40Speaker 1: you know, people in Michigan, when they see a deer
- 20:42Speaker 1: chasing dog, they shoot it. I'm saying, when they see
- 20:44Speaker 1: a dog chasing the deer, you shoot at it. So
- 20:47Speaker 1: they would act like if I said, oh, yeah, I'm
- 20:49Speaker 1: going up to Michigan, I'm gonna be running deer with
- 20:52Speaker 1: my dogs, that'd be illegal, unethical, all that kind of stuff.
- 20:56Speaker 1: In the Southeast, it's it's a traditional use practice, you know.
- 21:00Speaker 1: I think, like I think that that's why the conversation
- 21:02Speaker 1: about ethics gets so sticky, because everyone's brought up in
- 21:05Speaker 1: their own area, and they're brought up to think that
- 21:07Speaker 1: that what they do is the right way of going
- 21:08Speaker 1: about things. You know, So it is. It is tricky.
- 21:11Speaker 1: It's hard to draw definites. I do have some definites,
- 21:14Speaker 1: I think, But I think that some stuff that I
- 21:16Speaker 1: used to think is definite is tricky. Like your carrot deer,
- 21:19Speaker 1: though your ethics you thought more of that deer after
- 21:22Speaker 1: you got strictly from past the legality. It's legal for
- 21:25Speaker 1: you shoot overcarets, but your ethics led you to something else.
- 21:27Speaker 1: Your deer was worth more. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it did it.
- 21:31Speaker 1: It means more. And in the end, oddly, they really
- 21:34Speaker 1: started to curtail bait use in Michigan shortly after I left,
- 21:38Speaker 1: because the disease transmission, because you're bringing animals in rubbing
- 21:42Speaker 1: noses and eat and dirt that's infected with their own saliva,
- 21:46Speaker 1: and you know, and you wind up having a much
- 21:47Speaker 1: higher chance of disease transmission. So they started regulating when
- 21:51Speaker 1: you put it out, how much you put it out. Now,
- 21:52Speaker 1: that was kind of on the tail in. So then
- 21:54Speaker 1: I think in that case you do wind up in
- 21:56Speaker 1: a in a thing where someone's like, it's not healthy
- 21:59Speaker 1: for the animal, you know. And another thing with technologies,
- 22:02Speaker 1: man uh, Eldo Leopold had deadline about well, first, who's
- 22:09Speaker 1: the guy? Not long ago rold A Peace like, let's
- 22:10Speaker 1: stop talking about ethics and fair chase and let's talk
- 22:12Speaker 1: about fair use or fair um fair portions. What was that?
- 22:17Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about? Nope, he was just
- 22:21Speaker 1: saying that we're using the wrong language. His point being,
- 22:27Speaker 1: you have a well, right well. This is how Aldo
- 22:29Speaker 1: Leopold put it. You got a well full of water.
- 22:32Speaker 1: If you improve the pump and never improved the well, right,
- 22:36Speaker 1: the well is not gonna hold up as well as
- 22:38Speaker 1: it did. So we're constantly improving the pump with technology,
- 22:42Speaker 1: but are we improving the well. So I think an
- 22:46Speaker 1: issue like that is if you go like, yes, baiting
- 22:49Speaker 1: is in fact hazardous to our heard depletes the well,
- 22:53Speaker 1: improves the pump, and then through disease transmission, depletes the well.
- 22:57Speaker 1: I think that then you get very firmly and do
- 22:59Speaker 1: an ethical issue. But if you've got a state, it's
- 23:01Speaker 1: got a lot of deer, and they found it over
- 23:03Speaker 1: the course of many decades, they've been able to manage
- 23:05Speaker 1: deer at a level they're comfortable with. And people are baiting,
- 23:09Speaker 1: and and it's how people do it. I have a
- 23:11Speaker 1: hard time condemning it. The first two bears I ever
- 23:14Speaker 1: eight were shot off bait from carp and invasive species
- 23:17Speaker 1: carved to be shot with our bows and frozen and
- 23:19Speaker 1: uses them bait deer to bait bears with my brothers
- 23:22Speaker 1: drew bear tags in Michigan. Um, I have no like,
- 23:26Speaker 1: It's just not that exciting to me to think I've
- 23:29Speaker 1: never shot a bear over bait. I've been invited to it.
- 23:31Speaker 1: I have no desire to do it. Just because it's
- 23:32Speaker 1: just bears eating bait isn't interesting. But I have a
- 23:35Speaker 1: hard time like acting like all I'm gonna translate that
- 23:38Speaker 1: into an ethical conundrum. You know, it's hard for people.
- 23:44Speaker 1: We think about all that land you can't you gotta
- 23:47Speaker 1: walk a fine line, dude, because you're like I always
- 23:50Speaker 1: like to clarify whent On talking to Land that I'm not,
- 23:53Speaker 1: um speaking for us. I don't speak for Land, which
- 23:59Speaker 1: I'm glad though you are much more eloquent than I am. Well, No,
- 24:02Speaker 1: but I don't want people to confuse what I think
- 24:04Speaker 1: with somehow because we're sitting here talking. I don't want
- 24:05Speaker 1: people to confuse my personal opinions with your official policy. No,
- 24:09Speaker 1: I mean we don't have an official policy on baiting. Uh.
- 24:13Speaker 1: I'm with you personally, I have no interest in doing it.
- 24:17Speaker 1: And you know, and I think sometimes when I hear
- 24:20Speaker 1: about baiting, it's especially around bears. It's like we have
- 24:23Speaker 1: better jelly donuts and they did and that's why that
- 24:25Speaker 1: bear came in. And that, to me is not a
- 24:28Speaker 1: skill that I want to acquire. Is knowing which like
- 24:31Speaker 1: doughnuts bring in the bears. That's just me, you know.
- 24:34Speaker 1: And um, but when you hear you know like that.
- 24:37Speaker 1: I think it was in Maine, right, I think they
- 24:38Speaker 1: were talking about the banning of baiting in Maine and
- 24:42Speaker 1: they talk I mean, they have a large population with
- 24:45Speaker 1: black bears there and they need to manage them. And
- 24:46Speaker 1: when you talk to the fishing game, that was a
- 24:48Speaker 1: tool that they were using. There's no other way to
- 24:50Speaker 1: hunt them, as there's no other way to them. But effectively,
- 24:54Speaker 1: it's like when you banned dogs for lions, you're kind
- 24:56Speaker 1: of banning lion hunting. Yes, right in the East, like
- 25:01Speaker 1: for instance, where I grew up, or where we first
- 25:04Speaker 1: familiarized ourselves, like any kind of hunting bears. I talked
- 25:07Speaker 1: about my brother's journal's bear tags. It's flat swamp, it's hemlock,
- 25:15Speaker 1: and just like older swamp, you can't see your hand
- 25:18Speaker 1: in front of your face. There are bears around. I
- 25:21Speaker 1: think in all my time running around there, I saw
- 25:23Speaker 1: one bear across the road. I mean, while it's got
- 25:26Speaker 1: extremely high densities of bears, you just don't see them.
- 25:30Speaker 1: So to talk about, oh, you're gonna ban baiting for
- 25:32Speaker 1: bears in Michigan, it's like, okay, but let's just be
- 25:33Speaker 1: honest what you're doing. You're banning, you're banning bear hunting effectively. Yeah.
- 25:39Speaker 1: So I I advocated against the mains. I mean not
- 25:41Speaker 1: that I had any real saying it, but I advocated
- 25:43Speaker 1: against the thing in Man. So I thought that that's
- 25:45Speaker 1: what it was doing. I always think about what are
- 25:47Speaker 1: the private conversations that people have? Right, some guy reached
- 25:51Speaker 1: the cane to me and he's like, oh, yeah, we
- 25:52Speaker 1: got up. We're doing a thing where we want to
- 25:53Speaker 1: ban trapping on public land in Montana. I'm like, that
- 25:58Speaker 1: doesn't interest me. And they're like, oh yeah, we got
- 25:59Speaker 1: a lot the hunters were with us, and were theyking Like,
- 26:02Speaker 1: what is the private conversation of the person. What what
- 26:06Speaker 1: are they when they're sitting around drinking in their house
- 26:08Speaker 1: with their buddies, what are they talking about? They're talking
- 26:11Speaker 1: about how they want to like cut away. Yeah, well,
- 26:15Speaker 1: and I mean I think on the band on public lands,
- 26:18Speaker 1: I mean, we do not want to do things like
- 26:19Speaker 1: that on a referendum, Like it's up to in my opinion,
- 26:22Speaker 1: it's up to the people who have the knowledge our
- 26:25Speaker 1: fishing game agencies on how like we regulate, you know,
- 26:28Speaker 1: in our fishing game commissions. We start doing that through
- 26:31Speaker 1: about initiative, and that's where we lose at some point, right,
- 26:34Speaker 1: And I think what you're talking about this chipping away.
- 26:37Speaker 1: The woman that runs Trap Free Montana, um, I think
- 26:40Speaker 1: she came actually to that thing that we had at
- 26:43Speaker 1: the roxy and I don't remember that, um, when you
- 26:46Speaker 1: were talking about I think you're doing a book signing
- 26:49Speaker 1: or something there. And she came and she stood up,
- 26:52Speaker 1: and then she was talking about it, and she was
- 26:55Speaker 1: starting with uh, with trapping, but really it was about hunting,
- 26:59Speaker 1: and she was nerves us about being in the woods
- 27:00Speaker 1: during the fall, right, And and to me, um, so
- 27:04Speaker 1: it's just it's like for her, it's it's just the
- 27:07Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. When you talk about trapping. There's
- 27:09Speaker 1: there's more that she's going after. Yeah, I believe in
- 27:11Speaker 1: incrementalism many I think that everything moves in incrementalism. Death
- 27:14Speaker 1: of a thousand cuts, right, I mean in a positive
- 27:17Speaker 1: and in a negative way. I think that the gay
- 27:20Speaker 1: rights move has been like an increment, very incremental victory.
- 27:24Speaker 1: That's very incremental civil rights victory, you know. I think that,
- 27:28Speaker 1: like the civil rights movement, very incremental thing. I think
- 27:31Speaker 1: the hunting is going the can go in the opposite
- 27:33Speaker 1: direction of being just a very incremental death. Sure, I
- 27:36Speaker 1: would say that on like the trapping side in particular,
- 27:39Speaker 1: I think sometimes trappers their own worst enemy. And so
- 27:42Speaker 1: like here in Montana, we've been trying to do, you know,
- 27:44Speaker 1: get some mandatory trapper education, like you'd setting too close
- 27:47Speaker 1: to trails and just having the knowledge about it, right,
- 27:50Speaker 1: Like if anybody can go out, you know it's a
- 27:52Speaker 1: bob boards tomorrow and buy a trap and you know,
- 27:54Speaker 1: and has no knowledge besides, you know, they just bought
- 27:57Speaker 1: a trap. And so you know, if bow hunting has
- 28:00Speaker 1: mandatory education, why shouldn't trapping have that, you know. And
- 28:04Speaker 1: and so they've they've you know, they've fought that every
- 28:06Speaker 1: single time the state legislature. And I think that means
- 28:09Speaker 1: that their own their own worst enemy, right, and so
- 28:10Speaker 1: that gives people more credence to talk about this banning
- 28:14Speaker 1: trapping on public land, which I totally disagree with. We
- 28:17Speaker 1: can see how that path gets there. I had a
- 28:18Speaker 1: good friend here, you know, I think he said it well.
- 28:21Speaker 1: He was at the bh A and he said, will
- 28:22Speaker 1: continue to be able to do this as long as
- 28:25Speaker 1: we behave in a way that's defensible to the public.
- 28:27Speaker 1: And so part of this, it's on our shoulders to
- 28:29Speaker 1: do it, whether it's take bow hunter safety or hunter
- 28:32Speaker 1: safety or maybe a trapping safety class. Definitely don't want
- 28:34Speaker 1: to see it go away, but we have to behave
- 28:36Speaker 1: in a way that's defensible to the public when they
- 28:38Speaker 1: came out with hunter's safety to people bitch about it.
- 28:42Speaker 1: Uh you're forty one. Yeah, I don't. I don't think.
- 28:46Speaker 1: I don't know that because it's always been contentious. Maybe
- 28:52Speaker 1: probably because it was like at that point, probably it was.
- 28:55Speaker 1: I think it was contentious when they came out with
- 28:57Speaker 1: drivers in. Yeah, someone's probably what you know, Kelly and
- 29:03Speaker 1: talked about. You know what we're talking about, someone saying
- 29:04Speaker 1: that they were afraid to be out in the woods
- 29:06Speaker 1: during hunting season top a boat. If you're comfortable what
- 29:09Speaker 1: you're telling me about. Remember we had a big email
- 29:12Speaker 1: chain debating with you and me and Doug Dring and
- 29:16Speaker 1: my brother arguing about uh, hunter recruitment. And you bring
- 29:21Speaker 1: up a point about the way skiing is perceived in
- 29:25Speaker 1: your town and the way hunting is perceived in your
- 29:27Speaker 1: town relative to hazardous risk. Do you remember this, talk
- 29:31Speaker 1: about that speak to that. Um, well, yeah, catch your
- 29:36Speaker 1: Idaho skiing is the end all be all. It is
- 29:41Speaker 1: why you're there. Everybody's a skier. That's how people love
- 29:45Speaker 1: to identify themselves, even if it's not true. Um, it
- 29:51Speaker 1: is the only it is like the only like truly
- 29:59Speaker 1: acceptable form of recreation. I've I've found out there, and
- 30:03Speaker 1: and uh, hunting hunters get a bad rap. We're in
- 30:10Speaker 1: the paper there all the time, not ever hunters speaking
- 30:14Speaker 1: out because for some reason it doesn't make paper, but
- 30:17Speaker 1: people speaking out against hunters. And I just started thinking
- 30:22Speaker 1: of how interesting it was that, um, skiing, you have
- 30:26Speaker 1: you know, multiple just I mean just between Montana and
- 30:30Speaker 1: Idaho and Wyoming, you have multiple deaths a year and
- 30:36Speaker 1: people are, oh, that's just skiing. Yea. Also one dudes
- 30:40Speaker 1: kicked down an avalanche on other dudes. It's not you're
- 30:42Speaker 1: not even killing yourself exactly. Now, imagine that happening in
- 30:47Speaker 1: the hunting community. It would be would be in a major,
- 30:52Speaker 1: major fight. Well yea, every year you had two or
- 30:54Speaker 1: three gunshot death during hunting season. Yeah, and and some
- 31:00Speaker 1: of these you know avalanche fatalities there people doing just
- 31:06Speaker 1: mining their own business and uh an avalanche comes down
- 31:09Speaker 1: and wipes them out. I'd be like a hunter, you know,
- 31:13Speaker 1: picking off a hiker. Yeah, let's not perceived that way.
- 31:18Speaker 1: Not perceived that way. And I just why is that
- 31:21Speaker 1: it's all a recreation for you to be out in
- 31:23Speaker 1: the woods. Yeah, come on, um, thanksky, no problem. Let's
- 31:32Speaker 1: go back to bucket number one. Access. Yeah, yeah, give
- 31:37Speaker 1: me the lowdown on that. So, I mean, I think
- 31:40Speaker 1: the biggest thing under access and opportunity is this, uh,
- 31:43Speaker 1: this whole public lands kind of divest your movement that
- 31:48Speaker 1: seems to be um very prevalent right now. And you
- 31:52Speaker 1: know those folks that want to steal our heritage and
- 31:55Speaker 1: take it for their own. I think that is like that,
- 31:58Speaker 1: it's the issue. We can't talk about any other things
- 32:01Speaker 1: if we get that one wrong. Well, tell me this
- 32:03Speaker 1: because this is this fine is helpful. Put yourself in
- 32:07Speaker 1: the place of a very smart person. That's gonna be
- 32:11Speaker 1: I don't know, hear me out try land. Put yourself
- 32:15Speaker 1: in the place of a very smart person who's explaining
- 32:18Speaker 1: to me why we should divest federal lands. What would
- 32:21Speaker 1: they tell me? Don't spin it. I think they would
- 32:25Speaker 1: tell you that, uh that local control is better because why,
- 32:30Speaker 1: I say. I would then say, why because it's their
- 32:33Speaker 1: backyard and they know it's best for that land. Okay,
- 32:39Speaker 1: that's what I think. That's what they would say. I
- 32:41Speaker 1: think definitely you would get though, Um, I mean, I
- 32:46Speaker 1: don't know anything in this movement that's not based on
- 32:48Speaker 1: extractive resources, And I think the core of it would
- 32:52Speaker 1: be in the argument would be our communities exist because
- 32:56Speaker 1: we can extract resources from these federal properties. The federal
- 33:00Speaker 1: them is inefficient at allowing us to restract to extract
- 33:03Speaker 1: resources from these properties in the way that we think
- 33:05Speaker 1: we should extract resources and we want to be able
- 33:09Speaker 1: to more efficiently take the resources out to make more
- 33:12Speaker 1: money on them because by proximity, by proximity, we have
- 33:16Speaker 1: more of a right to that than other owners who
- 33:19Speaker 1: are not living in close There's. I think there's two issues.
- 33:22Speaker 1: They believe that proximity uh allows them more rights to
- 33:26Speaker 1: those resources, and they also believe that distance meaning federal
- 33:31Speaker 1: federal lands managers who are distanced geographically from their lands
- 33:35Speaker 1: don't know best how to take which tree, or which mine,
- 33:38Speaker 1: or which gas well or whatever it is. And so um, yes,
- 33:42Speaker 1: it's more there's because they're closer to it. But also
- 33:45Speaker 1: just generally speaking, federal government, you know, isn't perceived as
- 33:48Speaker 1: the most efficient uh extractor of those resources, and and
- 33:52Speaker 1: the laws that are adhered to by the Feds, that
- 33:55Speaker 1: have to be adhered to by the Feds tend to
- 33:57Speaker 1: slow down, um those sorts of decisions with good reason.
- 34:00Speaker 1: And you know, um is that sixty character Twitter thing
- 34:07Speaker 1: where it's like, well, who can manage it best? Somebody
- 34:10Speaker 1: in d C or somebody locally. It's not do not
- 34:13Speaker 1: have to know more? Yeah, it's not like the office
- 34:19Speaker 1: there in d C flies somebody out for one day,
- 34:23Speaker 1: he says, hey, can we cut down this timber? Well,
- 34:25Speaker 1: I don't know. Better fly back to d C and
- 34:27Speaker 1: talk it over with the boys. Yeah, there's regional offices everywhere,
- 34:32Speaker 1: district offices, the close one. I mean, it's it's crazy.
- 34:37Speaker 1: There are the people taking under a mandate to do
- 34:39Speaker 1: a lot more than make there they're opera under a
- 34:43Speaker 1: mandate to do a lot more than make a temporary
- 34:47Speaker 1: amount of money for a said individual. Well that I
- 34:51Speaker 1: think you hit on it. And the one sixty characters
- 34:53Speaker 1: that we live in a bumper sticker world. You know,
- 34:56Speaker 1: if you can't boil it down to something that can
- 34:58Speaker 1: fit on a bumper sticker and piss somebody off, that's
- 35:00Speaker 1: just not cool. And so these these things that are complex, um,
- 35:03Speaker 1: like federal lance management, it's a complex thing. You have
- 35:06Speaker 1: to satisfy all these constituencies. Um, nobody's gonna get their way. Well,
- 35:12Speaker 1: there are people now who want their way a hundred
- 35:15Speaker 1: percent and don't understand the complexities of it. My brother
- 35:17Speaker 1: just made a bumper sticker that says, I heart gluten.
- 35:23Speaker 1: He just feels bad for gluten. I I can totally
- 35:26Speaker 1: see Matt doing that. But yeah, I think, yeah, there is.
- 35:32Speaker 1: I don't know why where did it come from? The
- 35:34Speaker 1: reluctance to grapple with complex issues we used I mean,
- 35:37Speaker 1: I really believe the internet and frankly, you know, the
- 35:40Speaker 1: twenty four hour news cycle plays into this. We used
- 35:43Speaker 1: to sit around. Frankly, people used to sit around with
- 35:45Speaker 1: beers and coffee and do what we're doing. Now you
- 35:48Speaker 1: get on your computer and send a flamer to somebody,
- 35:50Speaker 1: You get on Facebook and piss somebody off you. You know,
- 35:54Speaker 1: there's no appreciation, or there's insignificant appreciation for the complexities
- 35:58Speaker 1: and different and other people's outlooks and working together. So
- 36:01Speaker 1: now go back into yourselves. Now you don't have to
- 36:03Speaker 1: play the role the really smart guy who wants who
- 36:06Speaker 1: wants to privatize federal lands or privatize public lands or
- 36:11Speaker 1: whatever or have uh what's the word unfettered? Who wants
- 36:15Speaker 1: unfettered access with no what I would oftentimes see as
- 36:20Speaker 1: unfettered access with no real eye towards long term future.
- 36:25Speaker 1: And you can kind of see that at play when
- 36:26Speaker 1: you watch energy prices. When when like mineral or energy
- 36:30Speaker 1: prices go up, people get really interested in something, they
- 36:33Speaker 1: go down, their interest seems to fade, and so you're like,
- 36:36Speaker 1: so you were kind of looking at this as a
- 36:38Speaker 1: very temporary thing. You know, it couldn't even hold up
- 36:41Speaker 1: through a market cycle. But go back to your regular self.
- 36:44Speaker 1: That's that's me, not land talking, and tell me sell
- 36:48Speaker 1: me against divester of public lands. M I think the
- 36:54Speaker 1: I meant, I mean this is like a divester. I
- 36:57Speaker 1: always add a syllable for some reason. This is what
- 37:02Speaker 1: is uniquely American, right, I mean, it's what separates up
- 37:05Speaker 1: from the entire world, that these lands belong to the
- 37:08Speaker 1: people instead of the short term use. We have this
- 37:11Speaker 1: conservation ethic which is for future generations. And so it
- 37:14Speaker 1: doesn't mean no use, doesn't mean no extractiveness, but it
- 37:18Speaker 1: means it has to balance that for future generations and
- 37:21Speaker 1: also other uses. And so you know, you you divest
- 37:24Speaker 1: those either to the states or to individuals, and we
- 37:29Speaker 1: lose that intrinsic value that I think is uh the
- 37:34Speaker 1: main piece of fabric that we weaves all across this
- 37:36Speaker 1: country that is truly American. And and you know, the
- 37:41Speaker 1: the idea that the States can you know, manage this better,
- 37:48Speaker 1: there's been no study that's been done that says that's
- 37:51Speaker 1: the truth. And you know, Utah came close and that's
- 37:54Speaker 1: when oil you know, it was at a real, real high,
- 37:57Speaker 1: high level and it was like a hundred over hundred
- 38:00Speaker 1: dollars of barrel and then it dropped out just like
- 38:03Speaker 1: you just talked about, right, And so now all those
- 38:06Speaker 1: plans that they had, even though they were short term
- 38:07Speaker 1: extraction like go crazy and do it, those an't even
- 38:10Speaker 1: pencil out now. And so they cannot manage those lands.
- 38:13Speaker 1: And so they'd have a couple of different options. You know.
- 38:15Speaker 1: You you you either extract that very quickly and get a
- 38:18Speaker 1: little short time money U or um you raise taxes.
- 38:23Speaker 1: When was the last time you heard a politician get
- 38:25Speaker 1: away with raising taxes like that's going to be their platform.
- 38:27Speaker 1: Nobody does that, right and or at the very end
- 38:31Speaker 1: of that as they sell it. And I think you
- 38:33Speaker 1: know Ryan is right that there's there's there's the industry
- 38:36Speaker 1: that is behind this. The extract of industry. I think
- 38:38Speaker 1: that's very real. But there's also folks. I mean, look
- 38:41Speaker 1: at the Wilkes brothers and what they've done in Montana
- 38:44Speaker 1: here in the last ten years. They're now the number
- 38:46Speaker 1: one landowner here in Montana. They're trying to, um, you know,
- 38:50Speaker 1: take a public elk herd in the dirty hills for
- 38:53Speaker 1: their own. They're salivating watching this all happen and ready
- 38:57Speaker 1: to buy all their bits and pieces of a Marya.
- 39:00Speaker 1: And you know, they're billionaires and they got the money.
- 39:02Speaker 1: And it's not just them that I'm worrying about. It's
- 39:04Speaker 1: the you know, foreign entities like the Chinese. I mean,
- 39:07Speaker 1: the Chinese are buying places all over the world right now.
- 39:11Speaker 1: And if they owned our public lands and our clean water,
- 39:16Speaker 1: I think about how crazy that would be. Oh, they
- 39:18Speaker 1: do a great job environmentally in their own country, right,
- 39:22Speaker 1: you know, I would say it's beautiful clouds, those beautiful
- 39:24Speaker 1: clouds they made over all their cities. It's nice, you know. Uh.
- 39:30Speaker 1: Some folks on the side of this argument, the pro
- 39:32Speaker 1: side of the best. Sure, sorry, that's like uh adding
- 39:36Speaker 1: a syllable there, But um, you know, they believe in
- 39:39Speaker 1: American exceptionalism. They often tout American exceptionalism and all sorts
- 39:42Speaker 1: of foreign policy issues and governmental issues and constitutional issues.
- 39:47Speaker 1: And as far as I'm concerned, you know, one of
- 39:49Speaker 1: the top two, after our form of government, examples of
- 39:52Speaker 1: American exceptionalism is what we have in our public lands.
- 39:56Speaker 1: I don't think you can be a fan of American
- 39:58Speaker 1: exceptionalism and then want to ruin And the number two
- 40:01Speaker 1: example in my opinion of what American exceptionalism is, we
- 40:04Speaker 1: have this thing that every citizen in the United States
- 40:08Speaker 1: has deed, as you said last night, has deed to
- 40:10Speaker 1: these millions of acres. There isn't no other group of
- 40:13Speaker 1: people on the planets ever tried this. Yeah, that was
- 40:16Speaker 1: one of the frustrating things with me about the wildlife
- 40:19Speaker 1: refuge takeover in Oregon is the way it draped itself
- 40:23Speaker 1: in the American flag. In in a very literal way,
- 40:27Speaker 1: I mean literally like draping itself in the American flag.
- 40:30Speaker 1: And we're looking at it thinking, but what aspect of
- 40:32Speaker 1: America are you talking about? It is not the rule
- 40:35Speaker 1: of law, not the part of America where we don't
- 40:37Speaker 1: tolerate pointing weapons at peace officers and civil servants. Not
- 40:42Speaker 1: the part of America we don't terrorize the populace, Like
- 40:45Speaker 1: what aspect of America do you mean? You know, it
- 40:48Speaker 1: was just very puzzling to me to see, like what
- 40:50Speaker 1: part of America were you promoting? You know, yeah, what
- 40:54Speaker 1: do you think would have happened? Like an ices flag
- 40:56Speaker 1: would bab be more? Well, but what with those guys?
- 40:59Speaker 1: What do you think would have happened if they were
- 41:02Speaker 1: of a different religion and they occupied a federal facility
- 41:06Speaker 1: in some city with uh, you know, armed and threatening
- 41:11Speaker 1: federal officers, You think we'd let that go on days?
- 41:15Speaker 1: They would have got dusted up pretty quick. It was, Yeah,
- 41:19Speaker 1: it was pasive. Like I just don't understand that interpretation
- 41:22Speaker 1: of America that America is that doesn't admire rule of law.
- 41:28Speaker 1: I think one of the things that makes as great
- 41:29Speaker 1: is like we don't in most cases, we don't need
- 41:32Speaker 1: vigilantism because we have a way to address the government.
- 41:36Speaker 1: You know, I'm actually doing it right now. I'm in
- 41:39Speaker 1: the appeals process fighting the federal government on something I'm
- 41:42Speaker 1: not in trouble. Your rebel rouser, Yeah, me and Yanni,
- 41:46Speaker 1: Well that's what you know. You look at those guys,
- 41:49Speaker 1: don't get me invitance, They say, they're you know, they're
- 41:53Speaker 1: they say they're they want to adhere to the Constitution,
- 41:56Speaker 1: But I mean to your points, Steve, for them to
- 41:59Speaker 1: believe in what they do, they have to first twist
- 42:01Speaker 1: the hell out of the Constitution so that they can
- 42:03Speaker 1: read it upside down her sideways in a way that
- 42:06Speaker 1: nobody else reads it, including every constitutional attorney that's ever
- 42:10Speaker 1: looked at it. So once you twist it, then you
- 42:12Speaker 1: can find this odd way to defend it and wrap
- 42:15Speaker 1: yourself in a flag that we don't recognize. Did you
- 42:18Speaker 1: guys see the German gale that came by the food
- 42:22Speaker 1: contest yesterday? It was amazing. She'd exchange student or something. Well,
- 42:31Speaker 1: I don't want to talk to me out here. Think
- 42:32Speaker 1: it just pressed me off too much. The She's like,
- 42:37Speaker 1: what are you guys doing? Is this a festival? Said, well,
- 42:40Speaker 1: it's a public lands thing. What are public lands? The
- 42:44Speaker 1: stuff you don't have? Yeah, it was amazing. All of
- 42:47Speaker 1: a sudden, I was like, oh, I'm representing the United
- 42:50Speaker 1: States first of Germany was like I better get this right.
- 42:56Speaker 1: All all I could think about was article I recently
- 43:00Speaker 1: read about you know, going out and meeting your gamekeeper
- 43:04Speaker 1: and paying your trespass fee because everything's private, and like,
- 43:09Speaker 1: so you want to take those private lands, like, no,
- 43:13Speaker 1: they're they're public. You can use them. Do you pay taxes?
- 43:16Speaker 1: Here's like no, I pay taxes in Germany said oh
- 43:20Speaker 1: well you can still use these lands and it was
- 43:24Speaker 1: very cool. Yeah, yeah, I didn't know you were engaged
- 43:26Speaker 1: in diplomacy last night. That's a big day, the ambassador. Um.
- 43:34Speaker 1: I hear a lot of times people when you're having
- 43:35Speaker 1: this discussion, Like someone mentioneds recently how the tracing back
- 43:41Speaker 1: public lands use back to pioneer days? Um? How? And
- 43:48Speaker 1: I've done it too to say, like, oh, you think
- 43:49Speaker 1: of a guy like Daniel Boone. You know he came
- 43:52Speaker 1: from British or you know, English to sin and in England,
- 43:57Speaker 1: if you get caught on someone's private land, you know
- 43:58Speaker 1: they would set traps for you and poison you and
- 44:01Speaker 1: shoot you and you could be hung for it. To
- 44:02Speaker 1: be hunting on someone else's property. Um, but when those
- 44:07Speaker 1: guys came here, they were trespassing in many respects, Like
- 44:13Speaker 1: Daniel Boone was often hunting on ground claimed by the
- 44:17Speaker 1: British in an enormous amount of friction there claimed by
- 44:22Speaker 1: indigenous groups. You know there was a muddy picture back then.
- 44:26Speaker 1: I think the only the idea of like sort of
- 44:28Speaker 1: what we're talking about when we talk about wildlife in
- 44:33Speaker 1: the public trust and public trust lands is something that
- 44:37Speaker 1: is not new, but very much you know, a nineteenth
- 44:41Speaker 1: and twentieth century creation. It's an experiment, right, I mean,
- 44:46Speaker 1: it's it's such a new thing, um that that we
- 44:50Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think we totally know the value
- 44:52Speaker 1: of it yet, right, I mean, I think when you
- 44:55Speaker 1: were talking last night, um, you know, it's just having
- 44:59Speaker 1: it there has this in intrinsic value and I don't
- 45:02Speaker 1: think we fully realized what that is yet because it's
- 45:04Speaker 1: such a I mean, the history in this country is
- 45:06Speaker 1: so young, and particularly the public land history is so
- 45:09Speaker 1: young that I don't think we understand the breadth of
- 45:12Speaker 1: what that means to us yet. No, it comes gradually
- 45:14Speaker 1: because now we've all settled in I mean, both sides
- 45:17Speaker 1: of the aisle have settled in that. Roosevelt was a
- 45:21Speaker 1: was a you know, had incredible foresight and was a
- 45:24Speaker 1: great hero. He had to do. He had a twist
- 45:28Speaker 1: lot of arms and do a lot of shady dealings
- 45:30Speaker 1: to create the national force that he created. Yeah, the
- 45:34Speaker 1: Midnight Force. Yea, so he was really pissing people off.
- 45:38Speaker 1: Now we're like, man, what a visionary. I mean William Clark,
- 45:42Speaker 1: you know, one of the Copper Kings, was senator at
- 45:44Speaker 1: that time in Montana when he set it aside. I mean,
- 45:47Speaker 1: this is a guy that was hanging out a hundred
- 45:49Speaker 1: dollar bills on the Senate floor to get votes. He
- 45:52Speaker 1: became a senator in Montana and he fought this because
- 45:55Speaker 1: they wanted to do nothing but rape and pillage. And
- 45:58Speaker 1: so it's not like, you know, everybody with this idea,
- 46:02Speaker 1: they're like, oh, that's awesome, good idea. No, people, now
- 46:05Speaker 1: it's like what you know, what a tremendous you look
- 46:07Speaker 1: at like, yo, Samity. It's now hit where we widely
- 46:10Speaker 1: regarded as being a great move Yellowstone. At the time,
- 46:14Speaker 1: someone could have made a pretty good argument you could
- 46:16Speaker 1: draw a lot of money, and you still could draw
- 46:19Speaker 1: a lot of money out of yell Stone. But it's
- 46:20Speaker 1: becoming our minds now it's like, wow, we're visionaries. There
- 46:24Speaker 1: was the argument. Yeah, it was contentious at the time.
- 46:26Speaker 1: I just don't think we're done having that conversation, and
- 46:28Speaker 1: I think things are gonna keep moving into the realm
- 46:30Speaker 1: of of Wow. I can't believe those guys had the
- 46:33Speaker 1: foresight to have this stuff. No one else has it.
- 46:37Speaker 1: I mean, these these these places that are still like
- 46:41Speaker 1: they were thousands of years ago. I could become much
- 46:44Speaker 1: more valuable as this country it develops. Yeah, as the world,
- 46:48Speaker 1: as the world goes to ship we're going to be
- 46:51Speaker 1: more and more like I can't believe those dudes have that.
- 46:54Speaker 1: Think about how it's similar to our government. I mean, uh,
- 46:57Speaker 1: lots of mistakes were made, we learned, We learned from
- 47:00Speaker 1: European mistakes, We learned from all sorts of mistakes and
- 47:02Speaker 1: what mistakes we made as a as a populist, and
- 47:05Speaker 1: we formed our government a constitution, a government owned by
- 47:08Speaker 1: the people. Same thing happened with with land. I mean,
- 47:11Speaker 1: we made all sorts of mistakes we've had, We've done
- 47:13Speaker 1: horrible things to indigenous people's we've but we learned through
- 47:17Speaker 1: trial and error, and we came up with a lamb
- 47:19Speaker 1: system very similar to governments owned by the people. These
- 47:22Speaker 1: are two very similar things, our constitutional system of government
- 47:26Speaker 1: and our public property, same same sort of thing. Most
- 47:29Speaker 1: egalitarian thing on the planet as far as I'm concerned.
- 47:32Speaker 1: I think one of the best arguments for public lands
- 47:34Speaker 1: in wild places is that we don't want to have
- 47:36Speaker 1: people like like, um, British people who do nature shows
- 47:41Speaker 1: because they don't have any trees in any woods left
- 47:44Speaker 1: and then you look like like bear grills. He's I
- 47:46Speaker 1: was like, holy shout, I'm in the woods. I gotta
- 47:47Speaker 1: get out of here quick for something bad happens, you know.
- 47:54Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I think that it's like part of
- 47:56Speaker 1: the American tradition to find comfort in wild places instead
- 47:59Speaker 1: of having to be like this adversarial relationship. You know.
- 48:02Speaker 1: That's why I think about it, just to limit Yeah,
- 48:05Speaker 1: just because I hate those kind of nature shows. Oh
- 48:09Speaker 1: my god, it's an animal run. Speaking of big wild
- 48:12Speaker 1: places we talked with the other day. When we talked
- 48:15Speaker 1: to Dan, he was talking about the is it the
- 48:16Speaker 1: American Prairie Project. Yeah, Are you guys in as h
- 48:21Speaker 1: involved in that at all or can you speak to that? Yeah,
- 48:23Speaker 1: You're gonna keep twisting their arms make sure it stays
- 48:26Speaker 1: open for for yeah, I mean so, I mean what
- 48:28Speaker 1: they're doing there is quite amazing, right And for those
- 48:31Speaker 1: that don't know about this, it's a Central Montana they're
- 48:33Speaker 1: trying to tie into the Charles m National Wildlife Refuge
- 48:36Speaker 1: and the Missouri Breaks National Monument uh CMRS about one
- 48:40Speaker 1: point one million acres. I think they're looking at trying
- 48:42Speaker 1: to pull together um property at about three million acres.
- 48:46Speaker 1: And you know it's it's native Willing seller William exactly,
- 48:51Speaker 1: private market for sale and nobody's forcing anybody to do anything.
- 48:55Speaker 1: And so I think the American Prairie Foundation has a
- 48:58Speaker 1: really long term look at this. And and so I
- 49:01Speaker 1: think they're into almost a half a million acres that
- 49:05Speaker 1: they have that is dated plus like least Land on
- 49:07Speaker 1: on on blm Land, and so their ideas to try
- 49:11Speaker 1: to be able to bring all this together again they're
- 49:13Speaker 1: able to buy. They do grazy they like get grazing leases,
- 49:15Speaker 1: They get grazing leases, and they're turning those over so
- 49:18Speaker 1: that they can have those used for bison. And you know,
- 49:20Speaker 1: when they get they're getting past the whole brucellosis issue,
- 49:23Speaker 1: which I think is pretty hilarious because you know, elk
- 49:27Speaker 1: in this state carry more brucellosis the bison. But they're
- 49:29Speaker 1: such an established species that we hunt and that everybody
- 49:32Speaker 1: loves that nobody's going to touch him. But with a bison,
- 49:35Speaker 1: old man he might have brucellosis, and so we can't
- 49:37Speaker 1: have any bison from you know, Yellowstone that are up
- 49:39Speaker 1: here in a p R or in this this regions.
- 49:41Speaker 1: What they're doing is they're taking those bisons from Elk
- 49:43Speaker 1: Island that have never ever you know, up in Alaska,
- 49:47Speaker 1: that have never been exposed to brucellosis. And so that
- 49:49Speaker 1: takes that argument away really quickly. And so now they
- 49:52Speaker 1: don't have that argument. Um, it's it's more about competition
- 49:55Speaker 1: for grass, which I think it's always been about. And
- 49:58Speaker 1: so think that's even a debatable point. People will debate
- 50:02Speaker 1: it all day long. But I don't think the argument.
- 50:06Speaker 1: I don't think it's about brucelloisis and as soon as
- 50:08Speaker 1: that bison eats an elk placenta, they could get brucell
- 50:14Speaker 1: Bison do love elk placena, don't they. I don't think
- 50:19Speaker 1: so calories are in No. I mean, I think that
- 50:22Speaker 1: argument it doesn't hold water. It's just one of those
- 50:24Speaker 1: like red herrings, right, that's easily easily to talk to
- 50:27Speaker 1: people about, and it's scary. Um. But again, I mean
- 50:30Speaker 1: the vector there that I think they should be more
- 50:32Speaker 1: worried about as Elk and you know that's never gonna like,
- 50:35Speaker 1: nobody's ever gonna take that on. I don't think anyone
- 50:37Speaker 1: should be worried about. I mean that they should be
- 50:39Speaker 1: maybe using as their argument, not that they should be
- 50:41Speaker 1: worried about. Yeah, I love and I've written about that group,
- 50:45Speaker 1: and I really talked to anyone with that organization. But
- 50:48Speaker 1: am I clear that they do that that that they
- 50:51Speaker 1: enroll lands and block management public acts? I shot um um,
- 50:55Speaker 1: I shot sharp tails on their on their property this year,
- 50:59Speaker 1: and uh yeah, they're I mean, they were being very
- 51:01Speaker 1: good stewards. And I would love for them, instead of
- 51:03Speaker 1: doing block management to kind of get into like a
- 51:04Speaker 1: long term kind of easement, like an access easeman, because
- 51:07Speaker 1: I think everybody's fear is is okay, right now, you're
- 51:10Speaker 1: doing that, so every all these hunters are happy, but
- 51:14Speaker 1: then they're gonna pull the you know, the rug out
- 51:17Speaker 1: at some point. And so you know, if they truly
- 51:19Speaker 1: are committed to access, which I think that they are,
- 51:22Speaker 1: they should think about doing these long term kind of
- 51:25Speaker 1: like access easements and so that that gives a lot
- 51:27Speaker 1: more certainty to this whole situation. And you know what
- 51:30Speaker 1: I mean, I'd get behind I'd get behind their mission
- 51:32Speaker 1: a lot more if I didn't have, if I didn't
- 51:34Speaker 1: have similar suspicions about it. Yeah, and it's I mean,
- 51:37Speaker 1: and and hunters, I think in general are suspicious kind
- 51:39Speaker 1: of have a suspicious nature, right because every guy that
- 51:43Speaker 1: grew up in the out of doors has to look
- 51:44Speaker 1: at a lot of places he used to be able
- 51:46Speaker 1: to hang out or they used to be pretty good
- 51:48Speaker 1: and now they're not so good that they can't hang
- 51:50Speaker 1: out anymore. They're locked up or their least or whatever
- 51:53Speaker 1: that said. Though, I mean there's phenomenal upland bird hunting
- 51:56Speaker 1: down there. The waterfowl hunting is very short, but you know,
- 51:59Speaker 1: they not much water down there, and so before it freezes,
- 52:02Speaker 1: it's phenomenal. Yeah, it just gets good then it gets over.
- 52:05Speaker 1: And I mean, can you imagine, I mean you've you've
- 52:07Speaker 1: I've never hunted bison, um, but like to be able
- 52:11Speaker 1: to hunt bison in that place, and you know the
- 52:12Speaker 1: bisons they had, I went out and watched them and um,
- 52:16Speaker 1: and I was ready to kind of you know them
- 52:19Speaker 1: to be cows, you know, and like when they saw us,
- 52:21Speaker 1: they come up and you know, like you stick your
- 52:24Speaker 1: hand out and they eat out of your hand or something,
- 52:26Speaker 1: take a selfie with them. Yeah, yeah, that's very dangerous Yellowstone. Um.
- 52:33Speaker 1: But when we saw them, I mean they were wild animals.
- 52:35Speaker 1: As soon as we got out of the truck, they
- 52:37Speaker 1: were running. And by the way, that was gorgeous to watch,
- 52:39Speaker 1: you know, on the prairie, you know, heard of about
- 52:41Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty bison running. Was just gorgeous. But
- 52:43Speaker 1: I mean there is an opportunity for a true hunt
- 52:46Speaker 1: there and you know down in Yellowstone coming out of there,
- 52:48Speaker 1: and again I haven't hunted them, and I think that's
- 52:51Speaker 1: that that as all as all changed, but it's it's
- 52:53Speaker 1: not quite as much of a hunt as this would be. No,
- 52:55Speaker 1: I've been down watching that happened, um, and it's not
- 52:58Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know, yeah, I would categorize more
- 53:02Speaker 1: like in the harvest category. And I don't think anyone
- 53:04Speaker 1: who draws that tag thinks of it much beyond that.
- 53:06Speaker 1: And I've gone down there and observe people doing it. Um.
- 53:10Speaker 1: When I drew a tag in two thousand four on
- 53:13Speaker 1: the Copper River area in Alaska, it's a very difficult hunt.
- 53:17Speaker 1: My brother drew that tag last year and they were
- 53:19Speaker 1: they blew a number of stocks. I mean, those animals
- 53:22Speaker 1: just but you know that they have been there a
- 53:24Speaker 1: long time, and they've been hunting a long time, and
- 53:25Speaker 1: they've adapted the human pressure, and um, yeah, it becomes
- 53:29Speaker 1: it becomes a very legitimate hunt, which I think is awesome.
- 53:32Speaker 1: But I think the ones, yeah, I think the ones
- 53:33Speaker 1: leaving the park have a hard time adjuscent to it.
- 53:35Speaker 1: Elk have over you know, Elk have been pursued for
- 53:38Speaker 1: so long that they have a tendency to know sort
- 53:42Speaker 1: of what the rules are where they happen to be
- 53:45Speaker 1: hanging out, you know, and Elk can being in the
- 53:46Speaker 1: park and be cool, and he leaves the park and
- 53:48Speaker 1: he knows that it's a whole different game going on.
- 53:49Speaker 1: I think it's gonna take more time for those animals
- 53:52Speaker 1: to figure it out. But yeah, I mean personally, you know,
- 53:55Speaker 1: I've been admirer of that animal since of of Buffalo,
- 53:58Speaker 1: since I found a skull in the Madison Mountains and
- 54:02Speaker 1: um and studied up by them a lot, and I
- 54:04Speaker 1: think that helping that species become you know, we never
- 54:08Speaker 1: we almost have biological extinction. Um now the term people
- 54:15Speaker 1: uses ecological extinction, where we got a half million of
- 54:20Speaker 1: the animals in North America, I think or privately owned
- 54:23Speaker 1: are basically manages as a livestock, you know. And um,
- 54:27Speaker 1: I think that would be one of those things hundred
- 54:29Speaker 1: years from now, if we were to able to have
- 54:33Speaker 1: some large, publicly owned herds that Americans could interact with. UM,
- 54:40Speaker 1: I think be one of those things where it became
- 54:42Speaker 1: like people would be surprised to hear that there were
- 54:46Speaker 1: adversaries to that plan. It become the future, It become
- 54:49Speaker 1: the future. El so people like really people didn't want
- 54:51Speaker 1: this to happen, like yeah, you know, as they didn't,
- 54:53Speaker 1: But think about this. I mean, as hunters, we've played
- 54:57Speaker 1: a vital role in establishing just about every game species
- 55:01Speaker 1: back to wild Honnable populations in North America were only
- 55:05Speaker 1: one short. The only one we haven't accomplished yet, as
- 55:09Speaker 1: Pozzis would say, it was bison. And I know there
- 55:12Speaker 1: can be opposition to these things sometime, but imagine a
- 55:15Speaker 1: small town in eastern Montana near the only free roaming
- 55:19Speaker 1: bison herd, Honnable Bison herd in the lower forty eight
- 55:23Speaker 1: re established. Do you know how many hunters and sightseers
- 55:27Speaker 1: and wildlife watchers and everything would flood to that town
- 55:29Speaker 1: every year, it would be like a tourist trap on
- 55:32Speaker 1: the edge of Grand Canyon. You get familiar with the writer,
- 55:35Speaker 1: um uh, Bill Kittridge from a long time Missoula resident
- 55:41Speaker 1: brop in Oregon. But he has a book called Hole
- 55:43Speaker 1: in the Sky and and it's it's all about issues,
- 55:45Speaker 1: land management issues and environmental issues. And you know he
- 55:48Speaker 1: was talking about an old version of this called Buffalo commons.
- 55:53Speaker 1: It's an idea that keeps coming up. But he in
- 55:54Speaker 1: the end of his book he says, um, go to Jordan,
- 55:58Speaker 1: Montana and talk about Buffalo comms is a very good
- 56:00Speaker 1: way to get your ass kicked. It's it's a contentious issue.
- 56:04Speaker 1: I totally understand it. Man. I could put on like
- 56:07Speaker 1: a different costume and go argue and probably somewhat effectively
- 56:11Speaker 1: argue against it. It's not that I don't see where
- 56:12Speaker 1: people are coming from. I understand both sides of it
- 56:16Speaker 1: very well. If you go like, oh, yeah, you're you're
- 56:18Speaker 1: great grandparents and your grandparents fought very hard and suffered
- 56:24Speaker 1: all kinds of economic calamities and gave their hearts and
- 56:27Speaker 1: souls to this idea of settling the land, tilling the land,
- 56:34Speaker 1: making the desert bloom. And now we want to go
- 56:38Speaker 1: and say, oh yeah, yep, but we're going in a
- 56:42Speaker 1: different direction now as a society is a hurtful thing
- 56:47Speaker 1: to hear. Yeah, I man, I mean, it's one of
- 56:50Speaker 1: the toughest places in the world to make a living,
- 56:53Speaker 1: you know. I mean, as a rancher, I mean, it's
- 56:56Speaker 1: it's one of the toughest places in the entire world.
- 56:59Speaker 1: And so you know, as that population was established, um
- 57:05Speaker 1: and and folks came out to a prospect and you know,
- 57:10Speaker 1: and and set up there kind of own flag on
- 57:12Speaker 1: a piece of ground like that population has been dwindling
- 57:15Speaker 1: since those people came out there, right and and and
- 57:18Speaker 1: but they're tough. I mean, they're tough, and they're some
- 57:21Speaker 1: of the greatest people in the world. And you can
- 57:22Speaker 1: see how they've been watching kind of their populations shrink.
- 57:27Speaker 1: You know. I'm in Missoula, where it's all prosperous, you know,
- 57:29Speaker 1: and everything is on the up. There's their whole generations
- 57:33Speaker 1: where it's been on the down. But they're so tough
- 57:35Speaker 1: and they're hanging onto and and it's and I mean
- 57:38Speaker 1: I respect that in a lot of ways. And and
- 57:41Speaker 1: so I and I definitely see where they're coming from
- 57:43Speaker 1: and it's a different, you know, way for them to think.
- 57:46Speaker 1: And you know, I think it you can almost have
- 57:48Speaker 1: both in a lot of ways to write. I mean,
- 57:50Speaker 1: this big scary thing about the American Prairie Foundation, it's
- 57:53Speaker 1: all willing sellers and willing buyers, right, so you can
- 57:56Speaker 1: still have cattle next to license and it's whole Brucelison's
- 58:01Speaker 1: issues out the door, right, And so I mean, I
- 58:04Speaker 1: mean you could definitely do it, um, but you know
- 58:06Speaker 1: that that population has been doing for a long time,
- 58:08Speaker 1: and it's because it's a hard place to make a
- 58:10Speaker 1: living in order, because because these issues are so complicated,
- 58:15Speaker 1: it's it's helpful, I think to try to find some
- 58:17Speaker 1: kind of shorthand things. And the thing I often come
- 58:20Speaker 1: back to where I'm when I'm trying to find clarity
- 58:22Speaker 1: on the issue, often think like like what are the lines?
- 58:26Speaker 1: What are my personal lines? I tend to always look
- 58:31Speaker 1: at an issue, and I tend to come from the
- 58:33Speaker 1: angle of what's best for habitat and wildlife because everything
- 58:38Speaker 1: is so complicated, right, and every issue has so many things.
- 58:40Speaker 1: But that's sort of what I've decided are like my
- 58:44Speaker 1: primary interest. Well, I think it is best for the country,
- 58:47Speaker 1: the best or future generations is to advocate on the
- 58:50Speaker 1: behalf of the thing that is is most likely to suffer.
- 58:54Speaker 1: And I think that wildlife and habitat as we go
- 58:57Speaker 1: forward UM are going to be the things that have
- 59:01Speaker 1: the greatest potential for loss. I don't worry about running
- 59:03Speaker 1: out of roads. I think if we had a group,
- 59:07Speaker 1: if we had a meeting this weekend and it was
- 59:09Speaker 1: a group advocating on not running out of roads, I
- 59:13Speaker 1: don't know how many people would show up for it
- 59:15Speaker 1: and donate money. It's just I don't think we're going
- 59:19Speaker 1: to run out of roads. I don't think we're gonna
- 59:21Speaker 1: run out of concrete, you know, like to save the
- 59:24Speaker 1: pavement foundation. UM, it's not going to inspire I think. Yeah,
- 59:32Speaker 1: it's just like there's some stuff that if you look
- 59:34Speaker 1: at what's happening around the world, it's just there's things
- 59:37Speaker 1: that are getting lost at a rapid rate. And we're
- 59:40Speaker 1: in a good position to find a way to coexist
- 59:45Speaker 1: in an economic you know, in an economically feasible way
- 59:48Speaker 1: to have prosperity and coexist with wildlife in a way
- 59:51Speaker 1: that hasn't been done. I think, you know, using your
- 59:55Speaker 1: UM Pavement Association of America or whatever you know it
- 59:59Speaker 1: would be the advocacy group. Is that on the flip
- 1:00:02Speaker 1: side of that is that you can you can continue
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: to make roads. Like you said, we're not worried about
- 1:00:06Speaker 1: running out of roads because we can continue to make
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: and make and make more roads. We're not making any
- 1:00:10Speaker 1: more of this bad country, right, We're not making any
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: more of this pristine wild that fishing wild, that habitat.
- 1:00:16Speaker 1: And so that's why I think it's it's and that's
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: like that second bucket, right is this is it protecting
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: special places? And there's Since we're not making any more
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: of it, let's make sure that we keep that stuff
- 1:00:28Speaker 1: the way it is right now. Yeah, you never go
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: to your friends. He just bought some property and he's like, yeah,
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: I'm gonna put some wilderness in over here, and my
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: hotels going over here, right like you know, I mean,
- 1:00:39Speaker 1: I think another good examples, you know, is wetlands. You know,
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: all these wetlands that are drained um and then people
- 1:00:46Speaker 1: try to make them again. We can't even come close
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: to making them again, you know. I mean, you can
- 1:00:51Speaker 1: kind of have a semblance of a little bit of
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: water in there, but the complexity of those wetlands and
- 1:00:55Speaker 1: all the insects and the plant community is in there.
- 1:00:59Speaker 1: You cannot replicate it, you know, I mean, as smart
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: as we are, as much as I you know, love
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: our ingenuity, we haven't figured that out and we never
- 1:01:08Speaker 1: will because that happened over you know, Eon and how
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: that was developed. Funny is that funny case? Studying Phoenix?
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: They made artificial wetlands, but it got destroyed by beavers?
- 1:01:20Speaker 1: For real? Alright, is probably be good to take some questions? Oh, yeah,
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: we're gonna do questions. Yeah, Land lead the question thing? Ryan,
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: all right, is there any questions from the crowd? And
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: I think we'll have to use this other microphone. Is
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: there any questions from the crowd, Just restate the question. Oh,
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: we can do that. It's good. Any questions? Didn't that
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: I didn't invent that. He's done this before, Josh Kins.
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: You we're at a campaign here. The candidates out there,
- 1:01:58Speaker 1: they probs, can they not look at Mount rush for?
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: Where Pedo Rosel's on? The four presidents selected do on
- 1:02:06Speaker 1: Mount Rush for? And then they're up there for Racus
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: saying I want to do something completely opposed to him,
- 1:02:11Speaker 1: his most powerful latencies talk to the mapulating Oh yeah,
- 1:02:17Speaker 1: so and so I'm sure he's probably could be on
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: alt Rushmo left Field had a good face because he's
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: in direct opposition like Theodore Rosemo. No, I think they'll
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: have to chisel down Roosevelt and put up because you're
- 1:02:30Speaker 1: not gonna put him next to the guy. You have
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: to chisel him down and put up a new phase
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: on Well. I mean, I'll hit this without tangentially, I'll
- 1:02:40Speaker 1: hit it. So the question is basically, I think, um,
- 1:02:44Speaker 1: how can politicians now claim to be claimed to carry
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: the mantle of Roosevelt and be anti everything Roosevelt ever did? Um,
- 1:02:53Speaker 1: I would say, it's kind of what Josh is asking.
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: I think our problem with Sportsman and as advocates for
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: habitat is that, through whatever political um nefariousness has gone on,
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: we've allowed our issue to become one of these partisan
- 1:03:06Speaker 1: footballs where it can only be kicked around on one
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: side of the island, not the other. And um, you know,
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: if you go back fifteen years, twenty years, conservation, lands management,
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: environmental policy, these are debated, but they weren't partisan issues.
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: Nobody was against clean water fifteen years ago. Nobody was
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: against public land. You couldn't speak. I mean, could you
- 1:03:27Speaker 1: imagine fifteen years ago presidential candidates loudly advocating in the
- 1:03:31Speaker 1: Western United States to divest ourselves of federal land. They'd
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: have been run out on a rail tardan feathered and
- 1:03:37Speaker 1: it was e p as a Nixon policy. Um So
- 1:03:42Speaker 1: I think what we have to do, and what I
- 1:03:43Speaker 1: think groups like v h A do. We're pulling this
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: back to the center where it's no longer a partisan thing.
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: Democrats are for it, Republicans are for it, and it's
- 1:03:52Speaker 1: because it's a good idea. And I believe that most
- 1:03:55Speaker 1: of these people in their heart, they know it's a
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: good idea, but they're in the business of playing political advantage.
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: It's not about doing the right thing. It's about playing
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: political advantage and getting reelected and getting big pack contributions.
- 1:04:08Speaker 1: We got to get it back to where it's doing
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: the right thing, and that's that's what we're trying to do.
- 1:04:12Speaker 1: We're not one side or the other. We're pulling it
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: back to the middle. So everybody's for it right up front?
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: What for you? A little bit of devil's advocacy here
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: and means not necessarily might assas. But some of the
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: folks who are less interested in the back country and
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: more interested in the extraction might take the argument back
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: and say, well, you know what, America was never populated.
- 1:04:34Speaker 1: Would you want to protect the whole thing? Would you
- 1:04:36Speaker 1: never want to let anybody live here? And do you
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: miss the animals who were extincted? Yes? Yeah. If I
- 1:04:44Speaker 1: could get a mammoth tag tomorrow, I'm all over it. Yeah. So,
- 1:04:48Speaker 1: so no doubt when you restrict the march of industrialization somewhere,
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: does that not full fact people who are not as
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: wealthy as we are. And I say, every funny in
- 1:05:00Speaker 1: this room, is it very wealthy to even be here?
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: Anybody who goes to the background of the hunt, regardless
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: of what you can see your reconolicets, is very wealthy.
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: And the argument give it many times is that when
- 1:05:09Speaker 1: you want to spress carbon the nations where you want
- 1:05:12Speaker 1: to preserve too much background doing so, And it's a
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: bunch of rich guys. Whether you feel like you're the
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: rich guys hold the land for everyone, it's a bunch
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: of rich guys trying to hold back other people in industrialization.
- 1:05:22Speaker 1: And so that's one of the arguments here. And I
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: have fred progress that us not my advocation, but what
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: do you say land restated? So I think the question,
- 1:05:31Speaker 1: like the restated for me is is that there's this uh,
- 1:05:36Speaker 1: this rich elite. They're trying to protect us from ourselves.
- 1:05:40Speaker 1: Is that fair? And and and and trying to and
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: say that these these these lands are only they're only
- 1:05:47Speaker 1: do they want to be set aside for the rich
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: early and not used by anybody else? Is that fair?
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: Very few number of people? You look at, how many
- 1:05:53Speaker 1: people really going to the backup? You about our owners,
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: the stuff on our back. We want the government to
- 1:05:58Speaker 1: preserve this for us, not that other people maybe have
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: their rayed standard of living, better medical cares on. But
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: that's majority of people do not necessarily made direct life,
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: so that direct benefits. So you're so, I think, because
- 1:06:14Speaker 1: because I'm what's probably gonna happen is no one's gonna
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: hear that, and we're gonna accid like so I'm trying
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: to find a way. Yeah, that that's great, but everyone
- 1:06:22Speaker 1: else ask a question has to be like a tight
- 1:06:24Speaker 1: clean question, but not that that's not tight and clean,
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: but it's gonna be hard to follow. So a gentleman,
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: that's a two pronged questions just Devil's advocate. He's stating
- 1:06:36Speaker 1: people who are into uh, saving animals, preserving wild places,
- 1:06:40Speaker 1: if they went back in time, would they have said,
- 1:06:42Speaker 1: no one can come into America because it's all wilderness
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: and we don't want to lose any wilderness. And if
- 1:06:47Speaker 1: you want to save buffalo, does that mean we should
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: save the short faced bear in the Willia mammoth? Um,
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: let's talk about that part first. It's like, I don't
- 1:06:58Speaker 1: know if people from outer space came and lived here,
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: would they be covered under civil rights protections? I just
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: don't know. It's so um. It's just something that it's
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: a fun thing to juggle mentally. I don't know how
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: it really um. I don't know how it really helps
- 1:07:18Speaker 1: us to ask that question, because it's the kind of
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: thing where you go to someone and they say, I
- 1:07:23Speaker 1: believe in clean water, and then they go, oh, yeah,
- 1:07:26Speaker 1: but you use dish detergent. You're a hypocrite, so nothing
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: you say matters. UM. I can't speak to it on
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: a very personal level. I wish Wily mammoth hadn't gone extinct.
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: I have a wily mammoth tooth. I wish the whole
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: thing was still there with its tooth in it. Um. Uh, yeah,
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just like it's too revised, it's
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: too revisionists for me to even grapple with. And I
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: just sort of tend to look at it like, where
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: are we now? What's going on in the world. I
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: think that whatever definition we were to arrive at and
- 1:07:59Speaker 1: how we define and wilderness, how we define wild places.
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: In my mind, um, if we got a giant panel
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: of interested stakeholders together and came up with a working
- 1:08:10Speaker 1: version of what is a wild place and we agreed
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: on that nationally, and then we just said, do we
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: want more of this stuff or less of it? However
- 1:08:19Speaker 1: we define it, I would say I'd like to have
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: a little more. The second part of the question is,
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: isn't this all just a bunch of rich recreationalists trying
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: to get the government to curtail people's ability to make
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: a living so that we have a fun playground. It's
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: a great question, Um, that one I think is worth
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: wrestling with. I think that one of the big things
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: about wild lands advocacy and wildlife advocacy is we don't
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: really know what we have yet, and that there are
- 1:08:49Speaker 1: a lot of activities that can occur on it that
- 1:08:51Speaker 1: will not diminish it, including some extraction extractive industries, including
- 1:08:57Speaker 1: very light footprint things. Um, I don't look at wilderness
- 1:09:01Speaker 1: is being defined by people can't go there. Hell's You know,
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: you have the Hell's Canyon wilderness. It has a wonderful
- 1:09:07Speaker 1: avenue through it in the form of the Snake River.
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: It's very accessible. People can go and experience that level
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: of wilderness. I think there are many cases where people can.
- 1:09:17Speaker 1: I just don't think that it has minute to minute
- 1:09:19Speaker 1: be able to justify its existence based on what's happening
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: there right now. I'll say this too, I think a
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: lot of a lot of the beauty of the public
- 1:09:28Speaker 1: lands is an aspirational American kind of thing. I don't
- 1:09:32Speaker 1: get to Alaska there as much as I'd like. I
- 1:09:34Speaker 1: wish I was up there, you know, every other week.
- 1:09:36Speaker 1: Even if I got there only one time in my life. Hell,
- 1:09:39Speaker 1: even if I never got there, the aspirational nature of
- 1:09:42Speaker 1: being there me dreaming about it is worth something to me.
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: A single mom in Chicago. She may never get to
- 1:09:48Speaker 1: Glacier Park, she may never get to the Badger Tombad
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: or the Flathead National forest, but it's an aspirational thing.
- 1:09:53Speaker 1: She can go, you can dream about it. That aspiration,
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: that and that sort of aspirational stuff is driven Americans
- 1:09:59Speaker 1: for you know, over two centuries. And if you remove that,
- 1:10:04Speaker 1: even the ability to do it, the aspiration goes with
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: it is gone. So just because I would say to
- 1:10:09Speaker 1: to a single mom who might say that it's not
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: just for Yeah, we're using it a lot, maybe we
- 1:10:14Speaker 1: use it more than everybody else, but it's there for
- 1:10:16Speaker 1: everybody to use if you want to. You can aspire
- 1:10:18Speaker 1: to do it because it's there. There's some inspirational, soulful
- 1:10:21Speaker 1: thing of it just existing, so you can do it.
- 1:10:23Speaker 1: You can dream about it. But if someone came to
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: me and said I'm gonna make it, if someone came
- 1:10:29Speaker 1: to me, like like God came down and said to me,
- 1:10:33Speaker 1: I'm gonna make a deal with you. I'm either gonna
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: destroy the boundary waters or you and any child you
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: ever have and any children that ever come from any
- 1:10:45Speaker 1: children you will ever have, can't go there. I would say,
- 1:10:50Speaker 1: we'll step back. So I don't think that it's always
- 1:10:55Speaker 1: a highly personal thing. Do I like to go there? Yeah?
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: It does me going into these places affect them in
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: a long term negative weight. No, if I had to
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: decide between my access and its existence, what would I
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: go with? I would go with its its existence. There
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: are many places I will never go. I just probably
- 1:11:10Speaker 1: won't get to all of them. Does that mean I
- 1:11:12Speaker 1: have antipathy towards their well being? I think it goes
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: beyond the personal well I want to I'm gonna address
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: like give been an answer of some might you know
- 1:11:23Speaker 1: might ask him this, um, it's now being presented as this.
- 1:11:27Speaker 1: I think the genesis of the question is that, well,
- 1:11:30Speaker 1: you are an assumption based on it is you're sacrificing
- 1:11:33Speaker 1: a bunch of other jobs and economic opportunity because you
- 1:11:35Speaker 1: guys want to hunt there. You're making the rest of
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: the company country suffer economically because you guys want to
- 1:11:41Speaker 1: protect your elk hunting spot. I say, no, what about
- 1:11:44Speaker 1: the elk hunting jobs, the guides, the outfitters, the restaurants,
- 1:11:48Speaker 1: the towns. What about these What about these vibrant communities Missoula, Montana, Bozeman.
- 1:11:53Speaker 1: They're based largely on outdoor recreation. There are jobs associated
- 1:11:57Speaker 1: with the wilderness. It's not just all or nothing. There's
- 1:12:01Speaker 1: other kinds of clean jobs. I mean, I work in
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: an industry. We were all here because of it. You know,
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: it's not tied to a volatile market. We wouldn't be
- 1:12:09Speaker 1: in the fight that we're in. If these uh single
- 1:12:12Speaker 1: moms in Chicago, to stick with that example, they may
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: see these places as aspirational, and I hope they do,
- 1:12:19Speaker 1: but they will not fight UH fraction as hard as
- 1:12:23Speaker 1: we do without being there for themselves and and seeing
- 1:12:28Speaker 1: what it really is. And and I think those are
- 1:12:32Speaker 1: the people they're going, Oh, National Forest, I don't even
- 1:12:37Speaker 1: know what that is. That's on the other side of
- 1:12:38Speaker 1: the country. You know, they're yeah, understanding, appreciate. I recently
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: had a conversation. We've been working on a documentary project
- 1:12:46Speaker 1: and as part of it, I interviewed at length UH
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: animal ethicist. He's a he's a professor, he teaches animal ethics.
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: He's animal rights advocate UM activists. And we're in a
- 1:12:57Speaker 1: conversation about how you saying he was. I was asking
- 1:13:00Speaker 1: him like, let's say you're a really smart hunter. Tell
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: me what you think a really smart hunter would tell
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: me to justify his existence the same way I did
- 1:13:07Speaker 1: the land earlier. And he talked about, oh, you would
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: tell me about all the money you guys spend on
- 1:13:13Speaker 1: wildlife habitat and wetlands. We kind of holding on the
- 1:13:17Speaker 1: duck idea and talking about ducks on limited. He's like that,
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: you tell me that you spend all that, But I
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: would just say, you're just doing that because you want
- 1:13:23Speaker 1: to shoot it, right, And I was describing to him
- 1:13:26Speaker 1: after this. I was describing him, you know what happens
- 1:13:29Speaker 1: when you go to ducks on limited banquet and people
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: who hunt maybe a day a year go and spend
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of dollars and give money to an
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: organization that is just going to turn around and buy
- 1:13:40Speaker 1: wet lands and open it up to the public. And
- 1:13:43Speaker 1: he's going, oh, yeah, but yeah, but they only are
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: They only do that because they want to kill ducks.
- 1:13:47Speaker 1: I'm like, man, you know what, I don't care what
- 1:13:49Speaker 1: they're doing it for. If it takes some level of
- 1:13:51Speaker 1: exposure to wild places to turn you into an advocate
- 1:13:55Speaker 1: of wild places, does that then make it a negative
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: because you have this ulterior motive. I'm like, oh, I
- 1:14:00Speaker 1: know about advocating for it because I've experienced it. How
- 1:14:04Speaker 1: can you expect that? How can you expect it to
- 1:14:07Speaker 1: How can you be suspicious of a person who advocates
- 1:14:10Speaker 1: on something, but you're suspicious of them because they like
- 1:14:13Speaker 1: it too. Who doesn't do that? I mean, who advocates
- 1:14:17Speaker 1: on ship they don't like So it's just it's like
- 1:14:21Speaker 1: the weirdest roundabout argument to be like, oh, yeah, you
- 1:14:24Speaker 1: just like you just want to save it because you
- 1:14:25Speaker 1: like it, or you caught me red hand. Yeah, I
- 1:14:29Speaker 1: do love it a whole bunch, you know. I mean
- 1:14:31Speaker 1: the way I would answer that question when somebody says
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: that you're just setting it aside um for this elite
- 1:14:36Speaker 1: kind of hunting preserve or whatever, I would ask them
- 1:14:40Speaker 1: a question before I answer that, And I said, do
- 1:14:42Speaker 1: you like clean water? Our clean water starts on public lands,
- 1:14:48Speaker 1: and so do you want to make sure that you
- 1:14:50Speaker 1: have clean water? That's the that's that's the question. Yeah.
- 1:14:53Speaker 1: Now I would get into that too. Just like you
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: don't understand ecologically, we don't understand as a people ecologic
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: what these places mean entirely. I mean, you have this
- 1:15:03Speaker 1: like interwoven connectivity. I recently heard this theory that was
- 1:15:07Speaker 1: really interesting where a guy was taking He was saying
- 1:15:11Speaker 1: he was looking at the ocean as an organism that
- 1:15:16Speaker 1: you would take an entire ocean and say it's an
- 1:15:18Speaker 1: organ is the same way we have like our body, ourselves,
- 1:15:21Speaker 1: and we're comprised of organs and fluids, right, and electrical
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: impulses that allow us to move that. He's like, imagine
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: that we have the ocean and we treat the ocean
- 1:15:29Speaker 1: as an organism, and the fish, all the fisher, organs,
- 1:15:34Speaker 1: everything that happened there. It's like this living being and
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: think of it that way. I think you can think
- 1:15:40Speaker 1: of our cology in that way, and we don't really
- 1:15:42Speaker 1: know what we're gonna lose in other places by messing
- 1:15:47Speaker 1: with these things. Look at one, when agricultural practices in
- 1:15:51Speaker 1: Louisiana and Texas changed and they started doing a lot
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: more rice production, you created such an explosion of snow
- 1:15:58Speaker 1: geese that it's denuding portions of the Arctic and damaging
- 1:16:04Speaker 1: wildlife habitat in the Arctic. It's a long ways from
- 1:16:10Speaker 1: Texas to the Arctic, but you create a wave that
- 1:16:14Speaker 1: travels with activity. I don't think we're really understand in
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: a wildlife sense and in a clean air and clean
- 1:16:21Speaker 1: water sense, what would happen if we don't draw the
- 1:16:24Speaker 1: line on wildlands protection. I don't think it's just gonna
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: be like you can just pluck it away and act
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: like that's gone, but everything else stays the same. We're
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: not done making mistakes. I mean, we've done ridiculous stuff
- 1:16:39Speaker 1: and made ridiculous mistakes, and now we laugh about what
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: our grandparents did. Our kids and our grandkids are gonna
- 1:16:43Speaker 1: be laughing about ship we're doing right now that we
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: think is perfectly normal. Hope they're laughing in the back.
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: Much briefly on badrics you mad and Glacier, and then
- 1:16:56Speaker 1: also of water because you talk maybe a little bit
- 1:16:58Speaker 1: about what's still going on on the tribe. It's Bessie,
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: what's going on the tribe up there? And what was
- 1:17:05Speaker 1: trying me down? And where we're at with that? Yeah, so, um,
- 1:17:12Speaker 1: I don't remember the exact number of leases, and I
- 1:17:14Speaker 1: don't remember. Won't restate that question, Okay, So the question
- 1:17:19Speaker 1: is what's going on with the Badger two medicine? And
- 1:17:21Speaker 1: I'll orient everybody about what that is. That's a area
- 1:17:24Speaker 1: of the Rocky Mountain Front, essentially south of Glacier Park
- 1:17:28Speaker 1: in Montana, all the way down to Chodo. Um. It's
- 1:17:32Speaker 1: about a thirty five mile by thirty five mile area UM,
- 1:17:36Speaker 1: sacred to the Blackfeet Indians, sacred to me personally. UM.
- 1:17:40Speaker 1: In the eighties, there were oil leases let in the
- 1:17:45Speaker 1: Badger too med and it has long been argued by
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: the Blackfeet tribe the improper UH environmental review was followed
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: before those oil leases were let because the tribe was
- 1:17:57Speaker 1: not giving was not given UM proper overs at a
- 1:18:00Speaker 1: proper comment period on it. That's been fought in the
- 1:18:02Speaker 1: courts for quite some time. Company in Louisiana called solan
- 1:18:06Speaker 1: X has one of these leases, and solon X stepped
- 1:18:09Speaker 1: up a few years ago and decided, well, out of
- 1:18:11Speaker 1: the several companies that own several of these tens of
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: thousands acres leases, we're gonna push it. We're gonna drill there.
- 1:18:17Speaker 1: We're gonna call the bluff, we're gonna see what happens.
- 1:18:19Speaker 1: And so they started pushing to drill, exploring, sending, you know,
- 1:18:23Speaker 1: applying for permits. They're saying, we're gonna drill. And so
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: these leases had just been set there kind of simmering
- 1:18:28Speaker 1: for some time in a place that's you know, really
- 1:18:30Speaker 1: really is a sacred, beautiful place. UM. My kid's name
- 1:18:34Speaker 1: badge after the badge of two medicine. Um, well, just
- 1:18:39Speaker 1: recently the federal government decided with the Blackfeet tribe, we
- 1:18:42Speaker 1: have one of those leases. The federal government said, you
- 1:18:45Speaker 1: gotta do whatever you gotta do or get off the pot.
- 1:18:48Speaker 1: And you either got to cancel the leases or you
- 1:18:50Speaker 1: gotta let them drill one or the other. You gotta
- 1:18:51Speaker 1: go and find the federal government Sally Jewel Environmental secretary
- 1:18:54Speaker 1: or the Interior secretary canceled the lease. So we have
- 1:18:58Speaker 1: one gone, but there's still a whole bunch of leases.
- 1:19:00Speaker 1: There's we think probably that the president is is that
- 1:19:03Speaker 1: that's going to be too difficult to drill there, and
- 1:19:06Speaker 1: we'll hope for some kind of system to retire or
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: buy out or whatever the rest of the leases. We
- 1:19:12Speaker 1: have a good precedent, it's on a good path, but
- 1:19:14Speaker 1: the fight's not over yet. Up front. Yeah, So you know,
- 1:19:19Speaker 1: the n r A does their candidacy indoors from the
- 1:19:23Speaker 1: rate candidates political candidates in like Yo, we are free
- 1:19:28Speaker 1: national delegates all get a radis. But they're also the
- 1:19:31Speaker 1: ones we the char for the transfer of public land.
- 1:19:34Speaker 1: So I'm curious if he's been talks of maybe like
- 1:19:38Speaker 1: doing some sort of rating system for candidates that are
- 1:19:41Speaker 1: positive for public plants. Yeah, so the question is is
- 1:19:46Speaker 1: uh is b h A ready to kind of start
- 1:19:48Speaker 1: rating candidates right and letting people know where they stand
- 1:19:51Speaker 1: on issues. Uh so this last year or in this
- 1:19:55Speaker 1: cycle right now? Um, you know there's with the presidential candidates,
- 1:20:00Speaker 1: they all went down to Nevada and um, and then
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: I think it was the Renal Journal that asked them questions.
- 1:20:06Speaker 1: There was five questions. One of those was about public lands,
- 1:20:09Speaker 1: and so it was a great way for us to
- 1:20:12Speaker 1: without doing like a candidate scorecard, to like just just
- 1:20:15Speaker 1: provide information to people. Now, I will tell you that
- 1:20:18Speaker 1: the legalities of a scorecard are very complicated because right
- 1:20:23Speaker 1: away they're looking like endorsements and you know, and and
- 1:20:26Speaker 1: so you have to be very careful as a five
- 1:20:28Speaker 1: oh one c three, which we are where we cannot
- 1:20:30Speaker 1: engage in political politics at all. So it's be very
- 1:20:34Speaker 1: careful of that. And you know, the I've been involved
- 1:20:36Speaker 1: in the scorecards, and what the way that you kind
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: of get around that is have instead of having like
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: two questions about public lands that are very leading, you
- 1:20:44Speaker 1: have to have a big array of things that you
- 1:20:47Speaker 1: ask them, right and and that threshold is I mean,
- 1:20:51Speaker 1: that's it's very complicated, but that threshold you can do it. Um.
- 1:20:54Speaker 1: Is that something that we want to do? I say, yes,
- 1:20:56Speaker 1: do we have Do we have the resources you know
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: to be able to do that? Uh? This last cycle? No? Um,
- 1:21:02Speaker 1: But I think it's something that's uh, you know, providing
- 1:21:04Speaker 1: information to people is something that we're supposed to be
- 1:21:07Speaker 1: doing right and giving them letting them make their own decisions.
- 1:21:10Speaker 1: And so without us endorsing candidates, which we cannot do,
- 1:21:12Speaker 1: we can provide that information. I think that's something we'll
- 1:21:14Speaker 1: probably do in the future. You know, I totally agree
- 1:21:17Speaker 1: with landing without getting in the exact politics of it.
- 1:21:20Speaker 1: Are endorsing anybody or anything? And back to Josh's question
- 1:21:24Speaker 1: a bit. I firmly believe that until some people lose
- 1:21:27Speaker 1: their races because of their public land stances, it won't change.
- 1:21:30Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not saying who it is or
- 1:21:33Speaker 1: who is endorsed or not, but until a sportsman rise
- 1:21:36Speaker 1: up and penalize people at the ballot box, this is
- 1:21:40Speaker 1: not going to go away. Because there's political advantage in it,
- 1:21:44Speaker 1: and we have a lot of power. By the way,
- 1:21:46Speaker 1: it's unharnessed yeah, it's I'm not gonna get too deep
- 1:21:50Speaker 1: into presidential politics, but it's been. It's frustrating to me
- 1:21:55Speaker 1: that of all front runners either party, there's not a
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: person who has even an idea of a background in
- 1:22:03Speaker 1: the out of doors, an idea of a background and
- 1:22:05Speaker 1: and and hunting fishing. Um. I don't think it's over,
- 1:22:09Speaker 1: but you know, we've had such a strong tradition of
- 1:22:11Speaker 1: of outdoors people in politics in this country, and there
- 1:22:14Speaker 1: are some phenomenal senators and congressmen who have, you know,
- 1:22:19Speaker 1: a strong land ethic both sides of the aisle. We're
- 1:22:22Speaker 1: just we're lacking at right now. I know a lot
- 1:22:24Speaker 1: of hunters get frustrated because either have you got one
- 1:22:28Speaker 1: party who tends to advocate on behalf of wilderness and
- 1:22:32Speaker 1: clean air and clean water, you got another party that
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: tends to advocate on behalf of firearm ownership and hunting
- 1:22:38Speaker 1: heritage and UM. I always feel like a political eunuch
- 1:22:44Speaker 1: because you're just you're torn between these two things. I
- 1:22:47Speaker 1: lament the days um of having both. I think that
- 1:22:51Speaker 1: I don't want to say a name. There's a guy,
- 1:22:53Speaker 1: there's a senator out of New Mexico that I think
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: hits a very like a wonderful balance. Yeah, super to
- 1:23:00Speaker 1: start for us. Yeah, strikes of wonderful balance between hunting, heritage,
- 1:23:05Speaker 1: firearm ownership, clean air, clean water, wild their habits at
- 1:23:09Speaker 1: But right now it's just absolutely missing from the political realm.
- 1:23:13Speaker 1: John Tester, same thing. So you heard it here first,
- 1:23:16Speaker 1: Steve Ronello for President. Nope, I talked about a whole
- 1:23:22Speaker 1: bunch of stuff that most Americans could care to less about.
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: Man couldn't care less about, you know. To Steve's point, though,
- 1:23:28Speaker 1: that's why organizations like b H are so important. Because
- 1:23:32Speaker 1: we don't have Teddy Roosevelt's uh in office. It's gonna
- 1:23:36Speaker 1: take advocacy from very sharply minded organs like us to
- 1:23:42Speaker 1: influence policy, you know, in the smoke filled rooms, and
- 1:23:45Speaker 1: without you know, orders like us doing it, we don't
- 1:23:48Speaker 1: just have the innate knowledge of it in the corner
- 1:23:51Speaker 1: office anymore. I was laughing at this internal, very brief,
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: internal debate I was having when you mentioned the Badger
- 1:23:59Speaker 1: two Edicine, because it is a very very special place
- 1:24:03Speaker 1: and I love it, and I was listening to you
- 1:24:05Speaker 1: talk and thinking, I don't say that, don't say it's beautiful,
- 1:24:09Speaker 1: And I'm like telling there's a lot of grizzly bears.
- 1:24:11Speaker 1: Don't go up there, you know. But in every hunter,
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: every fisherman, any birdwatcher, you know you have your special
- 1:24:20Speaker 1: spots and you don't want to show up and see
- 1:24:22Speaker 1: other people there. But you've got to be open about
- 1:24:24Speaker 1: this stuff now, and you know it's time you got
- 1:24:26Speaker 1: to take the gloves off and be willing to say, Hey,
- 1:24:30Speaker 1: these places are incredible. You should go there. Just so
- 1:24:33Speaker 1: you know, I've been known to fly across the room
- 1:24:37Speaker 1: grab the phone out of my wife's hand as she
- 1:24:39Speaker 1: starts to mention utter the first letter of the name
- 1:24:42Speaker 1: of a creek. I might have been in her So
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: for me to even mention this place, I will tell
- 1:24:47Speaker 1: you I killed the bowl in the batch of tomad
- 1:24:49Speaker 1: Uh two or three years ago. I saw six different
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: Glusay bears the day I killed that bowl, six different bears.
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: So I'm not lying when I say there's a bunch
- 1:24:56Speaker 1: of bears there. But I like those places. We allys
- 1:24:59Speaker 1: uh well when we're our cold is steing Cole Creek
- 1:25:04Speaker 1: for every creek, every creek? All right, you got in
- 1:25:10Speaker 1: the concluding thoughts were done with questions, Oh no, we
- 1:25:14Speaker 1: need more questions. I just I don't know how long
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: has been been, just over an hour really, two or
- 1:25:19Speaker 1: three things that um, folks that are listening to this
- 1:25:23Speaker 1: podcast going to do after or lands, whether the lawn
- 1:25:30Speaker 1: Chicago or whether it's sportsman or just aspirational, what would
- 1:25:36Speaker 1: they they you to talk? So the question is is
- 1:25:41Speaker 1: what can the listeners of this podcast do to advocate
- 1:25:44Speaker 1: on behalf of these wild places? It's up fair? Can
- 1:25:48Speaker 1: I give one and you give to sure number one?
- 1:25:53Speaker 1: You gotta start voting your sport. You gotta strip your
- 1:25:57Speaker 1: sport from the rest of the partisan politics. Make ballot
- 1:26:01Speaker 1: box decisions based upon this stuff. If it's important to you,
- 1:26:06Speaker 1: So I totally agree. Um, I would say join an organization.
- 1:26:11Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm I'm selfish, and so I said,
- 1:26:13Speaker 1: join back Country Hunters and Anglers because I think we are,
- 1:26:17Speaker 1: um you know, we're tapping into something and we are
- 1:26:19Speaker 1: the advocates for public lands. So join b h A.
- 1:26:23Speaker 1: But if you know you want to join the Elk
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: Foundation that helps protect Elk habitat, ducks On Limited that
- 1:26:29Speaker 1: helps protect duck habitat, mean the list, I mean, you know,
- 1:26:33Speaker 1: National Wild Turkey Federation. There's many many groups out there, um,
- 1:26:37Speaker 1: and often times people like one of the UM. I'm
- 1:26:41Speaker 1: gonna let you get back to your list. But one
- 1:26:43Speaker 1: of the things that an organization like this provides is
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: a sense of camaraderie, brotherhood and sisterhood. Right. You can
- 1:26:52Speaker 1: meet like minded people and share information. I mean, there's
- 1:26:55Speaker 1: a tremendous um reservoir of experience to draw for um.
- 1:27:00Speaker 1: If you have a passion for particular type of hunting,
- 1:27:04Speaker 1: particular type of fishing. Let's say your thing is trolling
- 1:27:06Speaker 1: salmon on Lake Michigan, you can find an organization that
- 1:27:10Speaker 1: is fighting for clean water in the Great Lakes, you know, um,
- 1:27:16Speaker 1: and then you will find like minded people and and
- 1:27:18Speaker 1: get a lot out of that engagement. I would you know,
- 1:27:22Speaker 1: and truly if if, if, if you want to, if
- 1:27:24Speaker 1: you care about public lands, there's not another organization besides
- 1:27:28Speaker 1: the BHA that's advocating for you. These other organizations that
- 1:27:32Speaker 1: do great work. A lot of that's on private land,
- 1:27:35Speaker 1: which is vitally important. But if you like public lands,
- 1:27:38Speaker 1: BHA is gonna defend that such very species specific. We're
- 1:27:41Speaker 1: not we're ecosystem why so I think that's one and
- 1:27:45Speaker 1: that's another big plug for b h A. But I
- 1:27:47Speaker 1: think too is make a phone call. You know, I
- 1:27:51Speaker 1: mean a lot of people think that their voices don't count.
- 1:27:55Speaker 1: And you know, we had we had Centator Tester here
- 1:27:56Speaker 1: earlier this week, and we're asking them how can we
- 1:27:58Speaker 1: be better advocates? Like what can we do? Your voice
- 1:28:01Speaker 1: counts is what he told us. He said, when somebody
- 1:28:03Speaker 1: calls them on the phone, that represents a hundred other
- 1:28:06Speaker 1: like minded individuals. So then that's one call. Let's have
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: ten calls in a day. That's a thousand people back home.
- 1:28:13Speaker 1: That's starting to get somebody's attention. So that was the
- 1:28:15Speaker 1: first one, make a phone called. Second one is as newspapers,
- 1:28:20Speaker 1: you think they're going away, but they're still read very widely.
- 1:28:23Speaker 1: And you know, senators and congressmen have staff that every
- 1:28:27Speaker 1: single day they go to those editorial pieces of the
- 1:28:30Speaker 1: paper and if that senator or congressman's name is mentioned,
- 1:28:34Speaker 1: that thing is flagged for them right away. And so
- 1:28:37Speaker 1: while we that's kind of a venue that's going away
- 1:28:40Speaker 1: in a lot of people's minds, it's not the chip
- 1:28:42Speaker 1: shots on social media exactly exactly, and so it's something
- 1:28:47Speaker 1: that has staying power. And so I like getting involved,
- 1:28:49Speaker 1: and I think, you know, we can help you do that,
- 1:28:51Speaker 1: but you can do that as an individual as well.
- 1:28:53Speaker 1: So those are the like the two things that I
- 1:28:55Speaker 1: would say. I think too, it's important for people to
- 1:28:58Speaker 1: to learn how to parse out the planks and the
- 1:29:02Speaker 1: politician's platform. You know, it's easy to fall into. I
- 1:29:07Speaker 1: guess so sick of hearing people tell me, like, you know,
- 1:29:10Speaker 1: oh I'm a liberal, I'm a conservative. I mean, boy,
- 1:29:14Speaker 1: good luck applying that to me, because I go by,
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: give me an issue, man, give me an issue. And
- 1:29:20Speaker 1: I think that if you admire a certain politician and
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: they have, you know, a platform made up of many,
- 1:29:26Speaker 1: many different things, you don't need to go piece me.
- 1:29:30Speaker 1: You don't need to go like wholesale throw in with
- 1:29:33Speaker 1: them on it. You can challenge them. You can still
- 1:29:35Speaker 1: like that person and like what they stand for and
- 1:29:38Speaker 1: challenge them on particular issues, and people can move someone
- 1:29:42Speaker 1: in the right direction on a particular issue. It doesn't
- 1:29:44Speaker 1: mean you're abandoning your political identity. I think it's hilarious
- 1:29:50Speaker 1: when politicians are called flip floppers. You know, now, if
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: if they're flip flopping back and forth within a week,
- 1:29:56Speaker 1: that makes sense to be but what you just described
- 1:29:58Speaker 1: to me is getting more knowledge and and having a
- 1:30:00Speaker 1: different view on things, which I if I if I
- 1:30:04Speaker 1: was beholden to everything I thought when I was an
- 1:30:06Speaker 1: eighteen years old, if I was beholding everything, I'd still
- 1:30:08Speaker 1: be shipping my pants. It's like people change over time, man,
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: exactly right. And if you're not, if you're not using
- 1:30:16Speaker 1: the environment around you to help educate you and help
- 1:30:20Speaker 1: you evolve, then you're stuck in this space, right and
- 1:30:24Speaker 1: you're just this dogmatic views. And so I think you know,
- 1:30:26Speaker 1: when people um uh are educated and and and learn
- 1:30:32Speaker 1: more about an issue and they change that, that's not
- 1:30:34Speaker 1: a flip flopping. That's evolving. To me. Yeah, I always
- 1:30:37Speaker 1: admire someone one if they've had an opinion and then
- 1:30:39Speaker 1: later on they have to say, based on what I'm
- 1:30:44Speaker 1: hearing from my constituency, I'm gonna have to support this
- 1:30:47Speaker 1: because in that way it is it's like you can
- 1:30:50Speaker 1: take that too far. But in that ways, when there's
- 1:30:52Speaker 1: like overwhelming pressure from the majority of people, I think
- 1:30:56Speaker 1: it's perfectly acceptable for political figure to say instinctively, I
- 1:31:02Speaker 1: was supposed to this, but I cannot ignore what I'm
- 1:31:05Speaker 1: hearing from my constituency. If this is overwhelming. I have
- 1:31:10Speaker 1: to go against my what my my gut reaction on
- 1:31:13Speaker 1: this and support wilderness or any number of things. You know,
- 1:31:20Speaker 1: I think, yeah, we're too like, you know, we're it's
- 1:31:22Speaker 1: too easy to be like, oh, you're a flip flopper. Yeah,
- 1:31:23Speaker 1: but again, if someone changes there, if someone says something
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: and then there's an immediate Twitter revolt and they go
- 1:31:28Speaker 1: a hunter eight degrees, It's different than having then listening
- 1:31:32Speaker 1: to your people who are just driving you insane by
- 1:31:36Speaker 1: telling you you're wrong on this, you're wrong on this, this,
- 1:31:38Speaker 1: and then you change your opinion about it. That kind
- 1:31:41Speaker 1: of stuff happens all the time. Man. We should embrace it,
- 1:31:44Speaker 1: and you can move it. You can move people in
- 1:31:46Speaker 1: a certain direction just by being around them, articulating them
- 1:31:49Speaker 1: and not being I'm being an a hole to them,
- 1:31:51Speaker 1: but trying to explain where you're coming from. We did it,
- 1:31:54Speaker 1: Badger too mad, We did it. I mean, that's a
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: great example. We move people. We motivated b A. You
- 1:32:00Speaker 1: help motivate our members. We sent letters, we made calls,
- 1:32:03Speaker 1: we went to meetings, we contributed um, we swayed opinion,
- 1:32:07Speaker 1: We got u s Senators asking Secretaries of Interior to
- 1:32:11Speaker 1: cancel leases. I mean we can on both sides that
- 1:32:14Speaker 1: we can make we can have impacts. Um, there's a
- 1:32:17Speaker 1: lot of victories we've had. So you're saying the people
- 1:32:20Speaker 1: spoke up and the government made changes on behalf of
- 1:32:23Speaker 1: the people the shot at them, right, Yeah, I know
- 1:32:27Speaker 1: it sounds weird, but it works. You know, instead of
- 1:32:30Speaker 1: like like you said to your Facebook, instead of just
- 1:32:32Speaker 1: throwing something up there with half baked facts to piss
- 1:32:35Speaker 1: off the whole world. Um, you know, try being constructive,
- 1:32:38Speaker 1: make a call, get involved. They listen. They listen way
- 1:32:41Speaker 1: more than some men on Facebook. I like that. Well,
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: last question. There on the left have talked pretty extensively
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: about preserving the ecological integrety probably I used felt generations,
- 1:32:57Speaker 1: and we hadn't really talked about what is pass the
- 1:33:00Speaker 1: elephant is corner, and that is that the same science
- 1:33:03Speaker 1: that we rely on for our management decisions, for our
- 1:33:06Speaker 1: biological matter's decisions, for our eutological integrity assessments, and suggesting
- 1:33:11Speaker 1: that by a lot of the lands that we rely
- 1:33:14Speaker 1: on for the production of the animal species that we
- 1:33:17Speaker 1: care intense and about are going to be very significantly
- 1:33:20Speaker 1: harmed by climate change. So what do we do as
- 1:33:23Speaker 1: sportsman and sports women and life and its associations that
- 1:33:26Speaker 1: are interested in preserving the ecological integrity of these lands
- 1:33:30Speaker 1: to consider climate change is an issue. So the question is, all,
- 1:33:36Speaker 1: this is great, but what about climate change? Is that fair?
- 1:33:43Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to answer as quickly as possible because
- 1:33:45Speaker 1: we should just have a whole other discussion of this
- 1:33:47Speaker 1: for an hour and a half. I think that the
- 1:33:50Speaker 1: solution about saving wild lands and wild places I think
- 1:33:54Speaker 1: is is the solution is personal and political. I think
- 1:34:00Speaker 1: the climate change issues, it's uh technological that issue. I
- 1:34:08Speaker 1: don't think that issue is going to be resolved by
- 1:34:10Speaker 1: American restraint. I don't think you canceling your vacation is
- 1:34:14Speaker 1: going to move the needle on climate change because you're
- 1:34:17Speaker 1: not going to be in a jet. It's like there
- 1:34:20Speaker 1: are some gigantic countries out there who aren't thinking about this.
- 1:34:23Speaker 1: I think that the solution is going to come from
- 1:34:26Speaker 1: technological advancement, is going to come through market incentive. On
- 1:34:31Speaker 1: the on the wildlife side, it's a monster issue. Um.
- 1:34:35Speaker 1: Anybody who thinks about this stuff, I think personally struggles
- 1:34:38Speaker 1: with it. I say, the beautiful thing from a wildlife
- 1:34:41Speaker 1: from a b H. A kind of standpoint is even
- 1:34:45Speaker 1: if you even if you, even if you struggle climate
- 1:34:48Speaker 1: change and what if and all that stuff, Um, you
- 1:34:51Speaker 1: can't tell me that preserving wildlands is contrary to good
- 1:34:55Speaker 1: science on climate change. Perhaps it's not enough, but I
- 1:34:59Speaker 1: know we're gonna be on the right side of history there,
- 1:35:01Speaker 1: even even if history is a little uglier than I
- 1:35:03Speaker 1: it proves to be a little uglier than I wish
- 1:35:05Speaker 1: it was. Preserving some more wildlands is not going to
- 1:35:08Speaker 1: add to climate change. You know we're on the right
- 1:35:10Speaker 1: side of that. The way I would answer that is
- 1:35:13Speaker 1: that you know, we are seeing impacts already from climate change,
- 1:35:19Speaker 1: and what we need to do to help fishing wildlife
- 1:35:23Speaker 1: have a chance as this world changes is keep these
- 1:35:27Speaker 1: wild places so you have connectivity of habitat, whether that's
- 1:35:32Speaker 1: an elevation or that's north south or east west. And
- 1:35:36Speaker 1: so if we fragment the wildlife habitat that we have,
- 1:35:41Speaker 1: now they got no chance, right and so and and
- 1:35:45Speaker 1: you know, whether you believe in climate change and the
- 1:35:47Speaker 1: impacts or not, we're setting up a place for them
- 1:35:52Speaker 1: to be for a long time, whether or not the
- 1:35:54Speaker 1: impacts are huge or not. Right now, give things room
- 1:35:57Speaker 1: to adjust exactly. I just there's a lot of people
- 1:36:02Speaker 1: in other areas are just looking at as you know, again,
- 1:36:08Speaker 1: I don't want to get into the to the housing
- 1:36:10Speaker 1: the too details the house and wise, but whether we're
- 1:36:13Speaker 1: seeing a natural phenomenon that will naturally reverse. So if
- 1:36:16Speaker 1: we're seeing something that is a one way street, I'm
- 1:36:18Speaker 1: not gonna address my opinion on it right now. But
- 1:36:22Speaker 1: there are people looking at just if all this stuff
- 1:36:26Speaker 1: is gonna move uphill what's up hill? Are we ready
- 1:36:31Speaker 1: for that? Are we making it that animals and and
- 1:36:33Speaker 1: that that that wildlife has like some room to change
- 1:36:39Speaker 1: and adapt um and and go to new places to feed,
- 1:36:43Speaker 1: to go to new places to bead, new places to win,
- 1:36:45Speaker 1: or new places the summer. So I think again, like
- 1:36:48Speaker 1: Ryan was saying, you're on either way, you're on the
- 1:36:50Speaker 1: right hot side of history. You're not gonna, uh exacerbate
- 1:36:53Speaker 1: the problem by removing connective corridors between wild areas. Yeah,
- 1:37:02Speaker 1: totally great, gal Yep, what are we gonna lose? I mean,
- 1:37:12Speaker 1: what are we gonna lose by protecting these places? What
- 1:37:16Speaker 1: are we gonna lose if we don't protect them? You know,
- 1:37:18Speaker 1: it's it's a very simple thing can we do concluding
- 1:37:23Speaker 1: thoughts now? Be honest, I think we should. Okay, you're honest.
- 1:37:29Speaker 1: I have one. Today. I had a great conversation with
- 1:37:33Speaker 1: the gal I was from a third time in my
- 1:37:36Speaker 1: life Floridian. She lives all over the country, but I
- 1:37:42Speaker 1: got lucky for the third time on the left and
- 1:37:44Speaker 1: got upgraded. So I feel like, what's not just great
- 1:37:47Speaker 1: about the leg room up front? But I actually have
- 1:37:49Speaker 1: great conversations with the people I get to sit next
- 1:37:51Speaker 1: to in the front of the plane. So I was
- 1:37:53Speaker 1: I was stoked, and all I had work to do.
- 1:37:55Speaker 1: I engaged. But anyways, she's out on the board for
- 1:37:58Speaker 1: the Florida Wildlife Federation. Not a hunter, like just a
- 1:38:03Speaker 1: little bit of a fisherman, but she she basically introduces
- 1:38:08Speaker 1: herself as a conservationist. I said, really, because really, usually
- 1:38:12Speaker 1: if you're not like hunter fisherman person, you don't identify
- 1:38:16Speaker 1: with that. Are you sure you don't want to call
- 1:38:18Speaker 1: yourself an environmentalist? Like, isn't that who you are? She's like, no, no,
- 1:38:22Speaker 1: I'm a conservationist, you know, first and foremost. And so
- 1:38:26Speaker 1: that spawned this great conversation. And I guess my closing
- 1:38:29Speaker 1: thought is that I think we need to find adversaries
- 1:38:34Speaker 1: outside of hunters and fishermen, you know, allies. Yeah. Sorry,
- 1:38:44Speaker 1: I was struggling with that, but anyways, Yeah, she was
- 1:38:47Speaker 1: telling about how in Florida she seems to think that
- 1:38:49Speaker 1: they have no problem whatsoever getting hunters and fishermen together
- 1:38:53Speaker 1: with the environmental types and and you know, meeting in
- 1:38:56Speaker 1: the middle zone and moving forward. And I just feel like,
- 1:39:00Speaker 1: too often here we're like setting ourselves apart and not
- 1:39:04Speaker 1: you know, getting find those allies in other places. Because
- 1:39:07Speaker 1: I really feel like in the end, if we're talking
- 1:39:09Speaker 1: about public lands and clean water and whatever, we all
- 1:39:11Speaker 1: have the same goal. And so yeah, well, if you're
- 1:39:13Speaker 1: a guy in Florida and you have to open up
- 1:39:16Speaker 1: your newspaper to see pictures of literally tens of thousands
- 1:39:19Speaker 1: of dead fish from sugar production runoff, I think you
- 1:39:23Speaker 1: get some fishermen fired up. Yeah. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes
- 1:39:28Speaker 1: an image like that. Um, other things play out in slower,
- 1:39:32Speaker 1: less dramatic ways, and they don't get as much attention.
- 1:39:39Speaker 1: Concluding thought, please, Yeah, it's like dealing poker. Now it's
- 1:39:44Speaker 1: Cal's turn. I think I'm all set. You know. In
- 1:39:49Speaker 1: room fall out, folks, it's an easy crowd right, like
- 1:39:54Speaker 1: everybody is here for the right thing. Like we're fighting
- 1:39:58Speaker 1: the good fight and keep it up. And uh as
- 1:40:01Speaker 1: our new chairman here, Ryan Bussy said, you know change,
- 1:40:06Speaker 1: she'd just said, how change is possible? Don't go occupying
- 1:40:10Speaker 1: any buildings. How's your remodel coming? Oh it's rough, man,
- 1:40:15Speaker 1: is there just not doing it? Cal's remodel in the place,
- 1:40:19Speaker 1: all buys lonesome. You don't need to sell me on.
- 1:40:24Speaker 1: It's going good. I'll find a gal here. Don't worry
- 1:40:26Speaker 1: about it. No, but no, but no, is it coming?
- 1:40:31Speaker 1: That was going? No, I'm not going. I'm not going
- 1:40:33Speaker 1: in that direction, honestly. Is it coming along? Yeah? Is
- 1:40:36Speaker 1: it like done? Yeah, next time you guys come down,
- 1:40:39Speaker 1: I'll be short. You gotta kitchen in there. He's cooking out.
- 1:40:43Speaker 1: He's cooking at a camp stove for a long time.
- 1:40:47Speaker 1: Congratulates only six months land. Uh, great to have you here, Steve.
- 1:40:53Speaker 1: I was really glad that you and your team were
- 1:40:55Speaker 1: able to come. You know, we've we've you were here
- 1:40:58Speaker 1: five years ago at our first roundnboo and you got
- 1:41:01Speaker 1: to witness Ah, the growth and the energy of this
- 1:41:05Speaker 1: organization is experiencing and and I think, Um, you know,
- 1:41:09Speaker 1: and for the listeners that weren't here, Um, you know,
- 1:41:13Speaker 1: b h A is on the rise. We have members
- 1:41:16Speaker 1: in all fifty states. We have chapters now in twenty
- 1:41:19Speaker 1: four states. The stuff that we are trying to put
- 1:41:23Speaker 1: in this bottle, this lightning that we're trying to put
- 1:41:25Speaker 1: in the bottle, you can't experience it unless you go
- 1:41:27Speaker 1: and meet with other people. And I think what I
- 1:41:29Speaker 1: heard over and over this weekends as people found their
- 1:41:32Speaker 1: tribe and so that energy that we had this weekend,
- 1:41:35Speaker 1: I want to make sure that goes all across this country.
- 1:41:38Speaker 1: And so the stuff that we've been talking about today, Um,
- 1:41:41Speaker 1: we have that for future generations and and and and
- 1:41:44Speaker 1: so for the listeners, check us out. And when there's
- 1:41:47Speaker 1: local events, come talk to those people and see who
- 1:41:50Speaker 1: we are and make up your mind for yourself if
- 1:41:52Speaker 1: you want to come engage. Ryan, Yeah, I echo that.
- 1:41:57Speaker 1: Um you know, we've we've just come from end as
- 1:42:00Speaker 1: Lee far. Everybody wants to be a part of a winner,
- 1:42:02Speaker 1: and I feel like b h A is really winning.
- 1:42:04Speaker 1: And I really appreciate you, Steve. Not only have you
- 1:42:07Speaker 1: witnessed it, you've really influenced it. You're a role model
- 1:42:10Speaker 1: to a lot of people in this orc um, you know.
- 1:42:13Speaker 1: And I met here over the weekend a guy came
- 1:42:16Speaker 1: from Washington. Um, and this is just an example the
- 1:42:20Speaker 1: sort of people that we pull in and how this
- 1:42:22Speaker 1: energy is building on itself. You know, we got a
- 1:42:25Speaker 1: guy like Steve Ronnella, who's the ultimate badass, doesn't have
- 1:42:28Speaker 1: a problem killing stuff, grilling it up, eating it. We've
- 1:42:31Speaker 1: got this guy from Washington who I ran into heard
- 1:42:35Speaker 1: about b h A. It got him fired up. He's
- 1:42:38Speaker 1: never punched a tag in his life. He drove from
- 1:42:40Speaker 1: western central Washington to come here to meet other people
- 1:42:44Speaker 1: from He didn't know a soul to meet other people
- 1:42:46Speaker 1: from Washington to meet people in b h A. He
- 1:42:49Speaker 1: wants to know how to do this. He wants to
- 1:42:51Speaker 1: know how to punch his tag. He wants to know
- 1:42:53Speaker 1: how to preserve wildland. So we've got this spectrum of
- 1:42:56Speaker 1: people who want to be involved, from from the old
- 1:43:00Speaker 1: you know, like I said, the ultimate badasses like Steve
- 1:43:03Speaker 1: to the guy who's starting and it's gonna be the
- 1:43:04Speaker 1: ultimate badass. And you know, we want people on board
- 1:43:07Speaker 1: and um, we're thrilled to be doing this. Yeah, that's
- 1:43:10Speaker 1: what I want to do. For my concluding thought, is
- 1:43:12Speaker 1: it something I've talked about a bunch before, is we
- 1:43:14Speaker 1: get probably the number one email. If you're gonna categorize
- 1:43:19Speaker 1: the emails we get in, I think the top category
- 1:43:21Speaker 1: would be people saying, UM, I want to get involved
- 1:43:25Speaker 1: in the out of doors. I didn't grow up around this, Um,
- 1:43:30Speaker 1: how do I do it? You can? You know, even
- 1:43:34Speaker 1: if that's your motivation, you can find great inspiration and
- 1:43:38Speaker 1: great business information by joining an organization like this and
- 1:43:42Speaker 1: finding like minded folks. Um. Yeah, the way you can
- 1:43:45Speaker 1: do a good thing, move the needle in the right direction,
- 1:43:49Speaker 1: and also learn a lot of skills. I mean that's
- 1:43:51Speaker 1: not something we've gotten into, but a big part of
- 1:43:53Speaker 1: what's going on at a weekend like this is people
- 1:43:56Speaker 1: are talking shop. You know, I hould some good information
- 1:44:01Speaker 1: about an area I've always been interested in. Last night,
- 1:44:04Speaker 1: eating my dinner, stay out of the badgeck too. Man.
- 1:44:08Speaker 1: You No, it wasn't there as a different spot, but
- 1:44:10Speaker 1: I'm real curious about going in there. So it's like, yeah,
- 1:44:14Speaker 1: it's not all you know, it's not. You don't need
- 1:44:15Speaker 1: to come down and just have a big weekend. A
- 1:44:17Speaker 1: good e two shoe and I mean you can come
- 1:44:19Speaker 1: down and uh enjoin the group and find some people
- 1:44:22Speaker 1: who like to be out there as much as you
- 1:44:24Speaker 1: like to be out there and m yeah, man, develop
- 1:44:27Speaker 1: a tribe, you know, and have it be the tribe
- 1:44:29Speaker 1: that's on the winning side and doing good work. That's it.
- 1:44:34Speaker 1: Thanks for joining h