Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 936: Something From The White House That We Can All Applaud

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Ep. 936: Something From The White House That We Can All Applaud · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the news show, everybody. We got a doozy
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: for you. This week, we've got big, great news from
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the White House, which is very nice, and a welcome
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: break from a string of bad news from the White House.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We've got a new U.S. typical whitetail deer record, which
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: nudges out the Huff Buck, who we interviewed here on
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the podcast, so condolences to you, Huff. We got a
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: dude in Pennsylvania who put on a onesie and shot
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: a new Pennsylvania state record elk with a crossbow. We
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: got Etsy really is the devil. We've got fresh wolf news.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: And we hear from U.S. Representative Ryan Zinke about a
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: piece of legislation called, get this, a River Runs Through
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It Act, which is artful naming. But first, back to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: that giant buck.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Earlier this month, Boone and Crockett announced that there is
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: a new USA record for typical whitetail deer. And it's
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: a buck that was killed 35 years ago. Here's how
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: that came to be. Sam Iupa of Northern Illinois was
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: out pheasant hunting on November 28th, 1991. Sam's passion was
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: bird hunting, and he considers himself just a casual deer hunter.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: He said he'd always buy deer tags, but he never
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: put much time or effort into actually deer hunting. However,
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: it was actually pheasant hunting that helped him kill what
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: would end up being the new USA record. Here is
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Sam telling the story of that hunt via Boone and Crockett.
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: Okay, I was hunting birds.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Around 3.30 we put the dogs up.
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: I had a stand there because I saw a lot
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: of scrapings and a lot of deer tracks.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm going to go in the deer stand.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: This was around 3.30 in the afternoon. Just before sundown,
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: this deer come walking down the trail. He stopped, he
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: looked around, walked a little bit, and stopped and looked around.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: I lift up my slug shotgun. I took one shot.
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: He jumped up to the air. came down, went over
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: the hill. Stood in my stand for another 15, 20 minutes,
• 2:08
  Speaker 4: came down, saw the blood, went over the hill, and
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: there he was laying dead on the other side of
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: the hill. Called my buddy, and we helped process the
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: deer at that time.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: No, that's a deer hunting story. Just no nonsense.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: He cuts all the bullshit out.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Guys would take longer to tell you about a doe
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: that they didn't kill. That's just how quick.
• 2:30
  Speaker 5: Totally.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: And this is the USA record.
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: Plus, it doesn't seem like he was out there after
• 2:35
  Speaker 6: a record, you know?
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: No.
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: It's great.
• 2:36
  Speaker 6: It's like the Hanson buck.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Dude, what an unbelievable deer. So, but hold on a minute.
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: You're going to get to all this. Because this is
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: a long time ago.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 2:45
  Speaker 5: What a giant.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: That's bigger than the one laying in my yard.
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's that big. And what Sam doesn't mention in
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: that clip is how the gun he killed it with,
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: a Remington 870, was also his pheasant hunting gun that day.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: So he just went home, swapped out his birdshot for slugs,
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: and then went deer hunting. That's how it goes down.
• 3:02
  Speaker 6: So he wasn't even using a rifled slug barrel. It
• 3:04
  Speaker 6: was just a smoothbore.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: So Sam kills that buck with very little fanfare. He
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: skullcaps the deer, nails it to a plaque, and hangs
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: it in his basement.
• 3:13
  Speaker 6: There he is.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: At that point, the buck basically disappears for three decades. Then,
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: in 2023, Sam has an electrician at his house to
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: do some work. The electrician's name is Don. Don starts
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: working in the basement, and that's when he spots the deer,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: and he can't believe his eyes. Don goes to Sam.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: He's like, Sam, where the hell did this deer come from?
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: And Sam tells him the story, how he killed it
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: 30 years prior, and that's when Don tells Sam, hey, Sam,
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: this might be the Illinois state record. And so Don
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: pleads with Sam to get the buck scored because he
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: thinks it might dethrone the Mel Johnson buck, a very
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: famous whitetail. It was the Illinois state record of 204
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: inches that has stood since the 1960s. So Sam gets
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: the buck roughly scored and it's even bigger than anyone imagined.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Initial measurements show that this deer is actually of world
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: record caliber, not just state record size. So the buck
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: has now at this point, like kind of entered the
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: public eye and an antler collector in New York hears
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: about it through the grapevine. He drives 600 miles to
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Sam's house to see the rack and ends up purchasing
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: it from him for an undisclosed mountain. So the rack
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: sits in a basement for 30 years. Antler collector hears
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: about it prior to it being officially scored. Antler collector
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: goes and buys it from Sam.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Man, I bet Sam got screwed on that deal, man.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm guessing he didn't get his top dollar at
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: that point.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: That would be my assumption.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: The Antler Collector then has it officially scored by Boone
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: and Crockett, and it comes out to a typical score
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: of 207 and 7 eighths.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Even with those big old drop times.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Even with those droppers. It made it the new Illinois
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: record by three inches, the new USA record by two inches,
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: but it fell short of the world record that was
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: killed in Canada by about six inches. Here are some
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: highlights of the rack. The gross score was 233 and
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: seven eighths inches. It had 13 points.
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: Back up.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Why is it all stuffed now?
• 5:16
  Speaker 6: Because they do that.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: The antler collector went and got it stuffed?
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's totally. I don't think.
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: Buy a cape and put it on there.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I get all that. But I mean, why?
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: Because it looks bad.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: What's wrong with the way it's saying it?
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Just so you can look at it on a whitetail.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: It's not even his.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: It's not him.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: It's not his body.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: A whitetail's hide that's not his. This is just like
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: what happens with these things, you know?
• 5:36
  Speaker 6: And man, the brow times are what got him the record.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: I think brow times 13 inches each, uh, where the
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: brow time, that's probably the highlight of the rack. The
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: first thing you notice, uh, the bucket 13 points, the
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: frame is a six by five, two abnormal points on
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: the left antler.
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: Uh, one of.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Those is a seven inch drop time inside spread of
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: 20 inches. Uh, the biggest mass measurement was six inches.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: And each antler measured over 100 inches on their own.
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: Man.
• 6:07
  Speaker 6: We would have counted them little points where I came from.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Well, if you can hang a ring on it.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: The whole rule is you can hang a wedding ring
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: on it. If Fred Trost from Michigan can hang a
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: wedding ring on it, it counts, man. Here's the deal, man.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Here's where your reporting has really fallen short for me.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: That antler buyer, I feel like he's screwed. What's the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: guy's name? Sam?
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: Sam?
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: No, Sam was the hunter. The antler buyer was something Martin.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid that Sam got boned because I was just
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: reading about it. My kid was reading me this. Our
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: kids get this kiddie news magazine. My kid the other
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: night was reading me a story about some kid goes
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: into a thrift shop and buys a Lakers or a
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Lakers warm-up jacket for a couple bucks, and then it's
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: sold at auction for $ 86, 000 because it was Wilt Chamberlain's
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: warm-up jacket.
• 6:55
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I feel that he pulled a one of those.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I hope not.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: But did he pull a one of those on that dude?
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: No one's going to tell me the price. I asked
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: some of these folks in the past what they got
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: paid for their racks. Usually NDAs come with these.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: It's like going to a yard sale in Michigan and
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: finding old man Ronell's tree stand.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but that dude's giving me that back.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: I know, but he probably got it for a steal.
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: Oh, I see what you're saying.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: It could probably be worth some money.
• 7:25
  Speaker 6: I don't know. You might be signing an NDA.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: When I get it back, we're going to talk about
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: it on the news show. Anyway, this is great. This
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: is great.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: There's a few more wrinkles to this story. Again, it
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: is the world's second biggest typical whitetail ever killed. However,
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: when it was killed, it was actually the world record
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: because the Milo Hansen buck wasn't shot until 1993. So
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: two years after Sam Iupa killed this deer. So that
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: thing sat in his basement for two years as the
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: world record whitetail. without anyone knowing that it even existed.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: God, this guy got extra screwed on all of his money.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: If he'd have known that, he would have sold that
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: thing for a quarter million dollars.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Another interesting detail, although it took over 30 years for
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: the buck to resurface, it turns out this deer wasn't
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: a complete unknown. A shed hunter actually picked up the
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: buck's right side that would have been from the deer's
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: 1989 rack, and another shed hunter picked up the buck's
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: matching set that were from the 1990 rack, so the
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: season prior to it getting killed. And those antlers had
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: some global fame in the whitetail world because the 1990
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: left shed measured 105 inches, making it the second biggest
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: shed of all time.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: What?
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Hold on, why is that glued to a skull?
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Again, people just want to see it on a rack
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: or on a hide. And so the shed person who
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: found these two matching sets put them on a skull
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: that was not the deer skull. Steve's looking at a
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: picture right now of the shed hunter. So the second giant,
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: second biggest shed of all time. And it wasn't until
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: recently that this, it wasn't until recently, this deer was
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: known as the James Albring buck. named after the man
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: who found the 1990 matching sheds. But of course, it
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: is now the Sam Iupa Buck, the guy who killed
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: the thing.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: They don't know exactly how old.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: It was, do they?
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: No, but he throws a pretty similar rack from like
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: 89 to 90 to 1991. It looks like he's still
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: on his way up. So I would guess when he
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: was killed, six and a half, probably. Six and a
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: half or seven and a half is when they'll start
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: to go downhill.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the Hanson Buck was only four.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Is that what they said?
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: The world record was four. Isn't that crazy?
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: That is crazy.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: So this dude unknowingly down on his mantelpiece next to
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: pictures of his kids graduating high school.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Not even on his main floor, in his basement.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: In his basement. There's a picture of it. Next to
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: his pictures of his kids graduating from high school, he
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: had for two years the world record whitetail.
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: He did.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: And I don't know this detail. I just assume it's
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: an unfinished basement. Like, you know, it's within a couple
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: of feet of like some duct work.
• 10:03
  Speaker 6: It wasn't next to his kids, pictures of his kids.
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: It was next to the breaker box. The electrician was working.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: That makes you think how many world record bucks are
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: out there right now.
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: Totally.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: We don't know about.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: There's that great story about this dude that had the biggest,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the guy that holds the Idaho mule deer record. He
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: shot it years ago. I think his name was Ernie
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Shot it years ago. Remarked that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: it looked like a screwy buck, quote. Threw it in
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: his barn. And then a long time later, someone's like, hey,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: you ever have that measured?
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And this dude was out pot hunting. He's like, no,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I was going out to get some deer meat. Shot it,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: thought it looked like a screwy buck.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: I'm sure there's stories like that.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: All over the place.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: The world record desert bighorn sheep was killed in Baja,
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: California in 1940 by a Native American who was just
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: meat hunting. He didn't even take the skull from the field.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: It was a.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Rancher who found the skull out there, brought it back
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: to the ranch, sat it there. A year later, some
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: other hunter comes in who does kind of, is aware
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: of these things. And he's like, where did that thing
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: come from? And they're like, oh yeah, some native fella
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: killed it here last year. Turned out to be the
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: world record. And nobody had any.
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: Idea about it.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's crazy.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: You know, I was telling Spencer the other day and
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: he didn't seem that interested in it.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: No, what?
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: If I could see any buck in the world, it
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: would be this buck. So, you know, Colonel Dodge, like
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Dodge City.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Dodge City, everybody thinks is named after Colonel Dodge, but
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: it was already named Dodge City when Colonel Dodge got there.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: But like, Colonel Dodge, a big hunter. This is back
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: in the, you know, he's a big hunter in the
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: mid to late 1800s. He's down in Texas. I think
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: he was down in Texas when it happens and shoots
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a buck, a mule deer. And he's like, this was
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: a buck the likes of which no one had ever seen,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: but I lost it in a fire. So you wonder like,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: what was up?
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's a dink. I don't think it's a dink.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Because at that time, all that unhunted ground, and he's
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: talking about no one's seen a buck like this.
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: What was that buck?
• 12:12
  Speaker 6: Back then, a lot of people didn't even care about it.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: I know, but he did.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: The fact that he, in his memoir, is like, dude,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: this was a smoking buck. You've got to wonder what
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: that buck was. He says he's interested. Brody's interested.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: I'm into it.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I'm into it. You see those old timey black and
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: white photos of people having, you know, the buck pole photos.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: They're not even smiling.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And every single deer there is like a giant. Yeah.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Or they got all these deer hanging on a pole
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and like laying off in the background of some giant
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: that's like off to the side.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: One final thing. If, if all of these numbers are like,
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: if this isn't your language and, and, This is making
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: you dizzy in the words like typical and non-typical and deductions,
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: and it seems kind of convoluted. That's because it is.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Here's a great example of how complicated and ridiculous big
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: buck measurements get. We had Dustin Huff on the podcast
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: in 2022. It was in 2021 when he killed his
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: famous whitetail that he named Moose. The title of the
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: podcast was episode 338, the biggest buck in the USA.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: And that was an accurate title until 2025. Here's what happened.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: Every three years, the official awards program judges panel from
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Boone and Crockett gets together for a meeting. And it's
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: at this meeting that they verify the scores of all
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: of the biggest animals that were entered into the books
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: since the last time that they met three years prior. Well,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: at the 2025 triennial panel, the group of judges remeasured
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Dustin Huff's buck and wound up giving it an official
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: score of 205 and six eighths. This was five inches
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: smaller than previous scores. And it wound up making it
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: three eighths of an inch smaller than the James Jordan buck. Thus,
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Dustin's deer went from number one in the USA to
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: number two.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: And of course, with the addition of Sam Iupa buck,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: Huff now sits at number three. So I talked to
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Dustin about this earlier this week. He's still, of course,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: like thrilled that he killed the deer. Doesn't care if
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: it's one, two or three. But he said how the
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: whole process has made him wonder if there's a better
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: way to measure the size of deer antlers where there's
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: not so many things that are, you know, just like
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: left up to judgment calls. And you have to wait
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: 60 days. Well, actually, you have to wait three years
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: until this panel can get together. It's all very complex.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Do you want to know what it is?
• 14:33
  Speaker 6: And you get different guys scoring them.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: Well, I know what Steve's answers are going to be.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: Here's what Dustin wants to be. Dustin would love it
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: if there was a 3D scan that could be done
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: that throughout any like human error, there would be no
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: more judgment calls. It would take into account all of
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: the mass measurements rather than just eight of them, like
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: the Boone and Crockett system. And maybe if that program existed,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: we would look at the top 10 deer in the USA,
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: all different because of how- it would take into account
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: the actual size of the rhino.
• 15:05
  Speaker 6: That's basically the same thing you're going to say, isn't it?
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I was just going to say, just to be provocative,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, I've always been curious about
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: water displacement.
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: It's the same thing, I would think.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Don't come in a tank of water. But then you're
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: throwing all this non-typical, typical thing and all that. So
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: maybe for non-typical... You dump it in a tank of water,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: measure the volume of antler, and that's like the deal.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And you can shoot some big, crazy club horned buck.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: That's the problem, right?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: If some dude shoots some big, crazy buck that's got
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: like a weird growth on it, it winds up being like, ha,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: number one.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't even look like a deer.
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: So a new USA record buck.
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: All right, man.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm waiting for Phil.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, normally you go, now let's move on to....
• 15:58
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: You podcast listeners that remember back to a very popular
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: episode we did called... I don't remember what the hell
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the thing was called. It was with author Brian Burrow.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: It was episode 740 and it was about the gunfighters.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: About the gunfighter era. And about the weird thing that
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: he explores in his book and he talked about on
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: the podcast is... Why do all of the gunfighters come
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: from Texas or have passed through Texas? What was it
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: about Texas that produced all the famous gunfighters? Well, check
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: this out. It was so popular and such an intriguing
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: idea of the history of the gunfighters that Brian Burrow
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: is coming on to our podcast network and launching a
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: podcast called the gunfighters. It drops weekly on Tuesdays on
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: the gunfighters feed. It's out now. So check out that podcast,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the gunfighters, which is the story of all the great gunfighters. Also,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: we keep talking about this pre-sale and all that BS.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: The live tour tickets are just like regular old on sale.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: If you want to come see us in the live tour,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: it's on sale. December 14th, we're going to be in
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Grand Rapids, Michigan. December 15th, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. December 16th, Madison, Wisconsin.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: December 17th, Des Moines, Iowa. December 18th, Minneapolis, Minnesota. December 19th, Fargo,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: North Dakota. Meet Eater Live, the Christmas tour.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: I've heard that the Fargo venue is the hottest one
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: right now. If you're thinking of going in Fargo, you
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: better get your tickets.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: You know why I was worried about that one? Because
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: all these other places, I got buddies there, and I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: couldn't think of many buddies in Fargo. Who's going to
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: buy the tickets?
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Steve's going to make some.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: My mom's not there.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: All right, our next segment is sports ball fights. Football
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: season is here, and we are going to predict the
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: winner of some games this season, but we're not basing
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: this on talent or coaching or home field advantage like
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: every other analyst. We are picking based on the merits
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: of their animal mascots. Thanks to DraftKings for sponsoring today's segment.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: This week, Steve is going to predict how it would
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: go if a Bronco fought a Ram. Steve, who would
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: win that skirmish?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Well, there's who would win. If I picture a Bronco
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and a Ram fighting, there's who would win and who
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: needs to win.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Okay. Explain.
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: I'll explain.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: And they wind up being the same answer. When a Ram,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: these guys measured the impact of... I can't remember if
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: it was bighorns or dolls. But they measured the impact.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: You know when they jump up to butt heads? When
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: those things butt heads, they measured how much force it is.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: It's something like.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: It's something like 50 times the amount of force it
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: would take to shatter a human skull.
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: Jeez.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: A devastating car accident is what's happening.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, meaning if you sat there and got strapped in
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and let a bighorn ram do his thing where he
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: gets up on his back feet and gets wheeling head
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and does it, you're a dead man.
• 19:30
  Speaker 6: Even if he got a football helmet on. Probably.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: No, you know what it is? I remember now.
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: It's 20X. Okay.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: 20X what it takes to crush a human skull.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: I wonder how they measured that.
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: Force?
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Same dudes that figure out car crashes?
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: It's a good question.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Car crashes a little more.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: They got all these, they got all these, they got
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: all these sponge. If you, if you look at the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: skeletal structure on them underneath that, there's like these, like
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: these sponge structures.
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: That are like shock absorbers.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Anybody that's heard, it sounds like a 22 going off.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it really does. Like you can be out
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: in the woods in November.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Someone's shooting a gun. It's like, no, it's bighorns hitting heads.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So if you strapped in some bronco horse, strap them
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: into a thing and let a ram smoke them, dead.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: That's who would win.
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Now here's why it needs to be that way. Because
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: when I hear the word broncos, now a lot of
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: cowboy guys are going to hear the word bronco and
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: they're thinking like, you know, riding around on horses. I
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: hear the word bronco and I'm thinking feral horses.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Or quote.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Quote, unquote, wild horses.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Something that wandered off some BLM land in Nevada.
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: And because of some poorly construed legislation back in the 70s,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: we've created a problem where we now have a infestation
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: of wild horses and burros, a.k.a. broncos, running around on
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: desert bighorn habitats. and using up food resources and water
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: resources that should be going to native wildlife. That's what
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I think when I hear the word bronco.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: So these actual rams should be fighting these broncos.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: These rams should be fighting these broncos. If they could
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: smoke them, they'd smoke them. But they need to win
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: because there is an existential fight in the American West, Nevada, Utah, okay?
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: There's an existential fight in the American West between rams
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and broncos.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: So there's just a lot at stake for a Ram.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot going on.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: You're taking a Ram.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Dude, they would and they have to.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Rams beat the Broncos. One app, every sport, all 50 states.
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  Speaker 3: The crown is yours. Thanks again to DraftKings for sponsoring
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  Speaker 3: today's segment.
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• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, your news.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm not going to play it, Steve, because
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: you don't like it and I need to think of
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: a new one. I thought about just going.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Just keep playing it just so people can see how
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: bad it is.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure. I'd love to.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Just to remind people how dumb it is.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: It's like a non-thing. It's not that bad.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Do it again.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, when I say three... No, no.
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: Sorry.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: It's so dumb and so short, you don't even know
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that it happened.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: Okay, ready?
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to count to three.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, here we go.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: One, two, three.
• 23:14
  Speaker 6: There's like the little pigeon noise. It's below Phil's normal
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: high standards.
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: If I said to my 10-year-old, hey, make a little thing,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and he made that, I'd be like, oh, it's so cute.
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: Good job.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: But it's like Phil. Phil's got a career of great
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: things he's made. It's just his worst thing he's ever made.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: As long as you hang it up on your fridge, Steve,
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: that's all I care about.
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I don't think it's that bad. I said it
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: last week when I was putting these together. That was
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: the one where I was like, I can do better,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: but we record in five minutes. So I ran downstairs
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: and I can do better.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Phil, share with listeners the quote that you looked up yesterday.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, there can be no deep disappointment without a deep love.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. I thought he was talking about America.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Phil said he was talking about the church. But I'm
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: saying that talking about Phil.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Aw.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 24:15
  Speaker 6: Powerful.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: No great disappointment without deep love. So, like, he, like,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody's got their worst stuff.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: It's like not all Stones albums are great.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Steel Wheels. It's like, come on.
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: I love music.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: That's Phil Steelwheels.
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: I went to that concert. I was not impressed.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: I love music from the 70s, and I heard someone
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: express one time how amazing and phenomenal, and they just
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: didn't miss in the 70s with the music. And someone
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: was like, well, no, you're only hearing what survived the 70s.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: There was actually a lot of bad music in the 70s.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: It just doesn't get played on the oldie station today.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: It's funny you mention that because my favorite thing in
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: the world to do is goof on Seth about how
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: little Seth knows about 70s rock and roll. It's a
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: joke that never gets old.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: It happens a lot lately.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah goofing on seth about him not knowing who wrote
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: famous 70 songs is the is the best thing i
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: could do with my time i haven't found a way
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to make it came up daily.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: When we were in florida last week yeah when you
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: guys get to travel again.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: We know we're like hey seth you know who this
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: is no that's just what we do for hours.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I can bring back a gordon lightfoot parody again if
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: you want all.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Right brought to you by banished i'm holding a banished
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: can right here and um With kitty deer season coming up,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: this is becoming a very important part of my arsenal.
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: Yep. Dude.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, I like it for me, but if I'm
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: hunting with my kids, I especially like it because it
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: makes them like shooting.
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: It's great.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Um, so hit it, Seth. Etsy.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: We're back with more Etsy hypocrisy. Um, Was it the
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: last one where I talked about the Etsy thing with fur?
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: I think so. Last week was the AMA with Steve,
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: but I think it was the week before that.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: It's totally coincidence that I'm holding this squirrel.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Did you buy that on Etsy?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: No, but isn't it bizarre that now, okay, now on Etsy,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: you would not be able to sell a squirrel. I
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: didn't even grab it for this reason. On Etsy, you
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: would not be able to sell a roadkill squirrel koozie.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: But I thought, well, go.
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: Ahead.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Well, so a United States fish and wildlife biologist wrote in.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Who chooses not to be named.
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Does not want to be named. But they wrote in
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: with this email. I listened to your Etsy hypocrisy piece
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: with great interest. Under the Migratory Bird Protection Act, it
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: is illegal to possess most native bird feathers. Under the
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: Lacey Act, it is illegal to move protected animal products
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: across state lines. CITES strictly regulates foreign birds across national borders. However,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: if you start poking around on Etsy, you will find
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: many stores where bird feathers are for sale that clearly
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: violate at least one of the above acts for CITES.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Try searching for burrowing owls or barn owl. Some of
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: the stores... say the feathers are ethically sourced or from
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: captive birds, but that makes no difference according to the
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: laws when people don't get permits and they both, and
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: they both, the buyer and the seller, need them. And
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Etsy does not bother with it. And they ban ethically,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: legally sourced fur and fur products. The hypocrisy makes me sick.
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: Ahem.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: You know, some more hypocrisy on Etsy now that I'm
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: on this whole thing about just how like misguided this
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: fur ban was and counterproductive and contradictory of any kind
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: of regulatory structure and what's actually going on with these
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: wildlife species in America is that you can go on
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: there and you can go on Etsy and buy, you
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: know what a bust is? Like a carving thing. Like
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: decorative busts, like carvings of people's shoulders.
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: Like the marble ones.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, there's this.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Whole industry on there. You can buy Sean Combs busts.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: You can buy Jeffrey Epstein busts. You can buy sculptures
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: of Sean Combs and Jeffrey Epstein with their arms around
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: each other. You can buy Spring Break 2000 Epstein Island t-shirts.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: There's this whole genre of products on Etsy which capitalizes
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: on the pain and suffering and exploitation. of young women.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: And Etsy is like, oh, that's cool. That's totally cool.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: What we don't want you doing is selling a koozie
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: made of squirrel fur that you harvested legally with a
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: license that funds your state fish and game agency. It
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: is so dumb and sickening.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: You know what's interesting I just saw right now is
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: that you can buy large barn owl pellets. So you
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: can buy fur, but it has to be eaten by
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: an owl and then thrown up.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: The fact that they caved to that, we got to
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: hear from someone that's working on this. There's someone working
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: on an Etsy alternative. An alternative to Etsy where you
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: can support a company that's not so immoral and hypocritical
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and full of shit.
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Man. There's all kinds of feathers.
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: And stuff.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: You can buy Canadian goose wings or Canada goose wings.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Because it's not fur.
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: It's not mean.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: The news. You got a good one for this film? Oh,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: this is good. What happens in the end there?
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: I think he gets eaten by a cat or something.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: What does the machine that's going.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: It's the Morse code machine that.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: It's eaten by a cat.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: It kind of morphs into a nuthatch. I tried to
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: find a bird that sounded like Morse code and I morphed.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Okay. That's very good. That bird is then eaten by
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: a cat.
• 30:19
  Speaker 5: Understood.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: I can add a little hiss in there to make
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: it more obvious.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, out of, we talk about like a really good piece,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: like a pretty complex long piece of great news for
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: hunters and anglers that came out of the White House.
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: All right?
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Now, let me adjust my fonts here because I'm blind.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm going to put my glasses on for
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: this son of a bitch right here.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: He's getting serious.
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, getting real serious.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's the deal. Here's the deal. Now, these are
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: executive orders. A couple of weeks ago, they had in
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the White House, they had this like party. I saw
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: this invitation floating around. They had this like reception, like
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: celebrating American hunters and anglers. And you could get invited.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I wasn't invited. I was sad about that. I have
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: friends that were invited.
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: They went. I wasn't there.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: And out of this, out of this meeting came a
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: couple of executive orders that are like really sharp and
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: they're good. And they're nuanced, and these are lists, these
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: big lists of fixes that are coming out of the
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: White House to fix certain management issues. There's a fishing
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: one and a hunting one. The fishing one that came
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: out of the White House is like an executive order.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Restoring American saltwater angling and recreation. Let me give you
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: with a little... how this, how this kind of thing
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: words out what it looks like. It starts out by
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: saying by the authority vested in me as president by
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: the constitution and the laws of the United States of America,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: it is hereby ordered colon.
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Now it starts out that this executive order starts out
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: with an approach that I'm sometimes uncomfortable with, but it's
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: very common to, And it comes from enemies and allies alike.
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: And it's this.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Approach where you say, you're like, hey, nature is worth
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a bunch of money and hunters and anglers spend a
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: bunch of money. Therefore, these things are important, right? And
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: I'm always like, the reason I say I'm uncomfortable with
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: that approach is while true, I don't think that those
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: things need to be economically important to be valuable. So
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, that's all great, but that's not the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: final point, okay? So that's why I say I'm uneasy
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: with that. But it happens all the time. Everybody does it.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: They mean well. It's more of an intellectual argument around that.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: But again, these executive orders are all great news with
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: one potential exception that I'll get into. But the order
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: goes on. From there, it goes on for a sentence
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: like this. It says, America's outdoor recreation sector. So this
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: is outdoor recreation sector. generates over $ 1. 2 trillion annually and
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: supports over 5 million jobs. To ensure America's recreational fishing
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: remains strong. So this is an important sentence here that
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I want people to pay attention to. It says this,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: to ensure America's recreational fishing remains strong, federal fisheries management
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: must appropriately prioritize both recreational and commercial fishing. So it
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: suddenly kind of sets up that there is an emerging
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: rub between recreational and commercial fishing, which we'll get to
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: because it's saying, it doesn't say to ensure America's recreational
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and commercial fishing remains strong. It's not what it says.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: It says to ensure America's recreational fishing remains strong, federal
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: managers must appropriately prioritize both recreational and commercial. just give
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: you another little more flavor for how this thing reads out,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: and then we'll get into the points. It says, this
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: order modernizes federal management by shifting the federal posture from
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: restricting recreational access to fishing to actively empowering affiliated industries
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and coastal communities. It is the policy of the United
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: States to elevate the marine recreational fishing industry As an
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: important consideration in all federal, ocean, coastal, and public land decision-making.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: So that's kind of like the overriding gist, the thrust
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: of it.
• 34:50
  Speaker 6: Can I ask a question?
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 34:52
  Speaker 6: Do you think this is linked to the red snapper thing?
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Give me a minute.
• 34:57
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: It's way more complicated than that.
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: I'm just wondering.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, it gets into that. The tricky part of this is.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: In doing my research on this executive order, I had
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to talk to a lot of people who deal in
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: these certain things that we're going to get into to
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: be like, what are they trying to fix? Like it
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: proposes fixes, but it doesn't get into what the rub is.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: So you have to a little bit track down and
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: you'll find experts in these fields that are like, oh, well,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: here's where that comes from. Here's what that, here's the
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: annoyance that that is trying to address. Because the order is,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like seven or eight pages, right? So
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: it doesn't give the whole background. But if you get
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: into these, you can find out, here's the annoyance that
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: this is addressing, or here's the specifics that this is addressing.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And I'll try to provide some of those where I can, okay?
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Here's some more language from this. So I can't go
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: through the whole thing and read you the whole thing.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: It would take forever, but I'm going to read you
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: some key parts. Section three. Okay, again, this is from
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: the president of the United States. This is from Donald J.
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: Trump.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Section three. It begins like this. Modernizing data collection infrastructure
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: for recreational catch and effort estimates. It says, to resolve
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: chronic inaccuracies and latency in federal commercial catch and effort estimates,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the federal government must transition away from antiquated data collection
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: and sampling practices. Basically, it comes down to this. And
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: if you're mom and dad work at noah like all
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: respect but basically it comes down to a an educated
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: perspective that noah has in large measure shit the bed
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: on fisheries data collection all right they're relying on these
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: old systems of like random creel surveys you know you
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: have a guy go down to the dock hey what'd
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: you catch randomly okay or these mail-in questionnaires where fishing
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: season ends and like tons of time goes by and
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: you get a mailing questionnaire and they're asking you to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: try to remember back to such and such date and
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: how many fish you caught their system that they're using
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: to measure how much people are fishing and how much
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: they're catching was built around this idea of establishing these
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: very long-term trends okay so they're sort of looking at
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: like over time what do the trends look like and
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: meanwhile they're getting their asses kicked by the states who
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: are doing a much better job of finding out what
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: is happening on the water and in the water at
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: any given moment. A thing that's not brought up here
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: but that drives this is this whole red snapper debacle,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: where NOAA is trying to assess red snapper stocks through
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: these antiquated systems, and they're just not getting an accurate
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: picture of what goes on in the ground, and they're
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: getting a picture that contradicts the picture that the states
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: are getting, who are otherwise managing all the fisheries. And
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: it leads to these kind of crazy seasons. Seasons that
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: are a couple weeks long. Seasons that are a couple
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: days long. And creates this kind of like bonanza atmosphere.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: And then even then they don't know what's actually happening
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: in the water. Okay? So it's given them, like the
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: order is giving them a little bit of a nut
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: tap and saying, there's people that are doing this better
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: than you, that they're better staffed. This is not in
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: the order.
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: But it's true.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: They have like a better rapport with anglers and you're
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: getting beat up on this. Instead of mailing papers off
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: through the postal service, they're going to end up in
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: like junk mail piles. How about using a thing that
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: this order specifically addresses? How about using apps? Mandatory or optional,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: where appropriate, apps where people are telling what is happening
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: on the water right now. When am I fishing? How
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: many fish are we seeing? So that you can make
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: educated management decisions and have adaptive management strategies that play
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: into what's happening. The same way, if you think about
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: in hunting, the same way you have all these quota systems.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: You can turn on a hunt and you can monitor
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: what's going on and then make adjustments. So that's what
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: that one is. Then there's this other fisheries one here.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: It says, to address the decline of iconic recreational fisheries,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: such as the Atlantic striped bass and other depleted stocks,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: the Secretary shall generate a list of key species to
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: use in partnership. with the recreational angling community, charter captains,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and state agencies to gather real-time data, deploy advanced tagging technologies,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and improve catch-and-release mortality estimates. And I've tried to find
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: for people when they say improve catch and release mortality estimates.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Let me check my text messages. I'm waiting on some info.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think I'm going to get it in time.
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: No.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: What I'm wondering on this, my guess, my gut on
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: this is that they're saying that on things like striped bass,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if they're saying these guys are
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: killing way more fish than they think they are.
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: I'm sure.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's the other way around.
• 40:19
  Speaker 6: And it may be that they're saying, why have a
• 40:22
  Speaker 6: catch and release season and just have a very limited
• 40:26
  Speaker 6: catch and kill?
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: I think that, because if you look at, well, the
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: stocks are depleted. We're going to make this super narrow,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: like with Stripe Bass, stocks are depleted. We're going to
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: make this super narrow slot limit where you can keep
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: a Stripe Bass between 30 and 32 inches. Everybody runs out.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: They want to get a keeper Stripe Bass. They run
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: out and catch three dozen fish, turn them all loose,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: get their one slot fish, and they're like, I killed
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: a fish. And I think that the answer is, buddy,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: you killed 10 fish, man. You killed 10 fish. And
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: so getting an accurate sense of what's happening when you
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: create these situations where you're generating all this catch and
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: release effort thinking you're saving fish when you might be
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: smoking fish. So that, my guess, I don't know, I
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: haven't verified it with anybody. I was hoping to get
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: a text in time verifying this. That's what I think
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: is happening right there. So again, also updating management, like
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: updating data collection. It's all good stuff. Then there's more
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: stuff about a direction from the interior department. to do
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: that money thing that I talked to earlier, like how
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: big is this industry, basically saying that they want to, well,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I'll just read the words. Within 180 days of the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: date of this order, the Secretary shall develop a comprehensive
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: five-year strategic plan with clear implementation milestones to improve the collection, analysis,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and application of recreational fisheries economic data to support fisheries management.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: This plan shall ensure that the economic impact and value
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: of recreational fishing, blah, blah, blah, is fully accounted for
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: in federal fishery management decisions and harvest opportunities. Because what
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: you're going to do is this. Earlier I said this thing,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: without saying it, I believe that this thing is setting
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: up a potential, I don't want to say a conflict,
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: but a potential reckoning between recreational angling and commercial angling,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: where commercial angling has always had this value around economic output.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: And I think that, not I think, what this is
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: saying is we need to look at how big recreational
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: fishing is and what it is as an industry. So
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: in these areas where we're looking at recreational use versus
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: commercial use, they don't mention this, such as the trawl industry,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: in Alaska, for instance.
• 43:07
  Speaker 6: Or like commercial king salmon and recreational king salmon in Alaska.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: We're saying, oh, no, no, no. The commercial fishing is jobs.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Recreational fishing is people messing around and having fun. And
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: they're saying, let's get a full picture of what this
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: industry looks like because you might find in time that
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: that's a bigger industry. It's better for the country as
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: a whole to support recreational more. This doesn't say that.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: This is me editorializing on what it says. Now, here's
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: where things get really good. Section six, fast-tracking artificial reefs
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: and habitat creation. I don't want to spend a ton
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: of time on this one, but it's this. You get
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: all these offshore oil rigs, and over the years, there
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: has just been an ever-evolving sense of what should happen
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: with these offshore oil rigs. Sometimes they're using them to
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: make this program called Rigs to Reefs. Right now, what
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: they've been doing over the last bunch of years is
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: just harvesting these reefs. So you build these oil rigs,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: they go offline, and these things have.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Some people out there are going to contest this, but
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: they're wrong and I don't even care what they say.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: These things have created a fishery. They've created a habitat
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: and a habitat desert. Seth can back me up. Anyone
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: who has ever jumped in on an oil rig and
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: jumped in where there's not an oil rig in the
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Gulf of Mexico will tell you they have created, I mean,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: they are an artificial reef. They have created and maintain
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a fishery. These rigs create biodiversity and these rigs create biomass.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: They've been operating on a program recently where they take
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: these things called rig reapers. They remove the whole damn
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: rig down to subsurface And take away every scrap of
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: anything and call that good news. And it pisses off
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the fishermen in these places who are like, you're hauling
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: away all the habitat. Like, don't even burden the conversation
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: with why those rigs are there in the first place.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: They're there now. They provide habitat. And this is saying,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: this is a program, the Federal Outer Continental Shelf Reef
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: in Place Program. to facilitate the conversion of decommissioned offshore
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: oil and gas and other use structures. There's an interesting
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: carve-out for wind energy, which Trump hates. But anyways, everything
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: but wind energy, which kind of cracks me up. So
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: everything offshore other than shit built for wind energy, which
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: Trump hates, into permanent artificial reefs, through reef in place,
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: topple in place, or other approved reefing methods. That's great news.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: There's just no two ways about that one being great news.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Here's another one. I mentioned earlier the Wild Horse and
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Burrow Protection Act, where you create some legislation and it
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: winds up coming around to screw you because no one
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: can see into the future, and you shouldn't make binding resolutions. Sometimes.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Here's a big one. Section 7, Managing Predators. And it
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: is looking at shark and pinniped depredation methods. on fishery species.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of places in the country where
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the shark populations are out of hand. Now, people can
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: look and be like, well, how can that be true?
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: I hear all I read about is sharks being depleted. Yes,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: it is a big planet. Three-fourths of the earth is
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: covered in ocean. There are plenty of places in those
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: oceans where sharks are depleted. But I'll point out, you
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: can only hunt elk on about 14% of native elk habitat.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: The fact that elk are not recovered in southern Wisconsin
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: does not mean that elk are not recovered in Colorado.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: It's just a big place. And so this is opening
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: up some latitude to look at shark depredation and take
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: appropriate management efforts. And probably what this is getting at
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: without saying it is loosening up shark harvest regulations. It
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: seems like every other year you're reading about some state
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: that says total ban on shark harvest. You shouldn't be
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: doing that stuff because It's not like adaptive management. And
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: this seeks to address some of that. Projects for increasing
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: fish abundance.
• 47:30
  Speaker 6: Can you back up? You didn't address the pinniped thing,
• 47:33
  Speaker 6: which I think is kind of important.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Super important. I should have talked about the pinniped thing.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: A great pinniped example would be trying to recover salmon
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: in the Columbia watershed. The problem, one of the problem,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: not the problem for Pacific salmon in the lower 48.
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: The problem for Pacific salmon in the lower 48 was
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: the construction of dams, which have all these obvious problems
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: with you have, you have anadromous migratory fish, dams obstructed.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: They keep fish from going upstream and they keep young
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: fish from coming downstream. That's the core primary issue. And
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: trying to work around that and find a way to
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: move forward on fish recovery while dealing with the dams
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: being present. There's all these steps you can take. But
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: there's a big thing happening is over the decades, sea
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: lions have figured out that if you want to kill
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: a ton of salmon, go to a dam.
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: Yep. The dams are great for them.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Because the fish, even when there's structure there, fish ladders
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: and things, the fish pause at the dams. And sea lions,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: just through word of mouth, have learned to come. You're
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: going to think that I'm lying.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: I'm not.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Sea lions have learned to come from literally hundreds of
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: miles away to bitch slap salmon at those dams. And
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: you got strong sea lion numbers, but people are like, oh, no, no,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: you can't mess with sea lions because of the Marine
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Mammal Protection Act. And the Marine Mammal Protection Act becomes
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: an impediment to restoring salmon. So you have healthy sea
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: lion populations now, which you can't mess with, and you
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: have sea which you're trying to help, but now you
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: can't help them because you're stuck and got screwed by
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: this other piece of legislation called the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: And it's trying to do some necessary work to allow, again,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: like nuanced, thoughtful adaptive management practices and get out from
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: under a lot of like very burdensome counterproductive regulations it's
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: all it's it's it's good stuff and i haven't even
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: gotten to the main thing i'm trying to move fast
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: now projects for increasing fish abundance yes and it's all
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: the big one on this is that section eight projects
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: for increasing fish abundance um here's the key sentence there's
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: always habitat stuff going on here's the key sentence Agencies
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: are encouraged to transition habitat restoration metrics toward production-based goals.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: Which is saying, if you're going to go do aquatic
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: habitat projects, we want you to measure, is it producing fish?
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Good stuff. And then the end always cracks me up.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: the final thing in all these orders. The costs for
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: publication of this order shall be borne by the Department
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: of Commerce. I don't know what that means, but I
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: think it's cute that they end these all that way.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Donald J. Trump, the White House, September 17, 2026. Now,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: the other executive order. It's twin cousin. It's fishing cousin.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: Executive order reinvigorating America's hunting heritage. Starts out a similar way.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: This one's more flowery. This was a different writer. This
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: writer starts out, section one, purpose and policy, section one.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: It's very flowery.
• 51:10
  Speaker 6: Trump didn't write this?
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: He says, I think if he wrote it, there would
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: be the word, there's a word, an enigma. So, American hunters, anglers,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: and landowners are the greatest conservationists the world has ever known.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Hunting promotes healthy and robust animal populations, conserves our beautiful
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: wildlife for future generations, and ensures that every American can
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: enjoy our rugged, diverse, and untamed frontier areas. It says
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: our forefathers looked with awe on our vast prairies, towering mountains,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: serene deserts, coastal paradises, and rushing rivers. It says that
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: same awe Not the language you'd expect from the White House.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: It says, that same awe motivates millions of Americans to
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: invest billions of dollars and countless hours into stewarding our
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: land and conserving our wildlife. Now, again, this is all
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: or 99% good news. And I'll tell you where the 1% might.
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: Be a little bit weird.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: But the above, I have to point out, in celebrating
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: these executive orders, I have to point out, that there's
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: a rub here. There's like a contradiction here, okay? But
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: he's just talking about the awe, the wilderness quality, okay?
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Untamed frontier. The same email, I got some, a bunch
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: of people sent me this executive order. I also got
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: this executive order from the external affairs team at the
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: White House. And in this thing, in this email, in
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: the body of the email, There's a reminder about a
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: bunch of things that came out of the White House
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: that I feel were assaults on the untamed frontier areas.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Also coming out of the White House was an executive
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: order to unleash American energy that opened up hundreds of
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: millions of acres of federal lands and waters to energy
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: development and also took out a lot of regulatory checks
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: on those developments. Not great for hunters and anglers. In
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: August 26th, Department of Agriculture took action to rescind the
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: 2001 roadless rule.
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: All right.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: On 45 million acres of national forest system. Really bad
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: for hunters and anglers. So that untamed wilderness, those are
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: things that people do to tame the untamed wilderness. It's
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: spirit of the unwild. But I don't want that to
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: totally detract from all of the good news found in here.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: There's a sentiment expressed in this executive order up top
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: that is puzzling. Not puzzling, but it says, despite this legacy,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: accessing federal lands for hunting has never been harder. Hunting
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: opportunities in our nation have declined due to the federal
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: government's regulatory overreach, confusing and inconsistent access policies and heavy-handed restrictions.
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: But then right off, it gets really detailed with really
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: great news. It's just good news. All right. It instructs
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: within 90 days, the Secretary of the Interior is directed
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: to allow for hunting within the Castle Mountains National Monument
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: So boom, right off the bat, when I'm saying good news,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: it's like boom. There's 21,000 acres of new hunting access
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: in California and potentially hundreds of thousands of acres of
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: hunting access in Idaho. When these monuments were created, they
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: did the worst thing you can do with a monument,
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: which is hand them over to the Park Service. The
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Park Service then puts park rules on them and cuts
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: out hunters. The order is guided by an idea that
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: unregulated hunting is incompatible, or sorry, the Park Service perspective
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: is that regulated hunting is somehow incompatible with monument status,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: which is totally bogus. And the order confronts this head on.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: It says, I have determined that appropriately managed hunting would
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: not put the objects of historic and scientific interest that
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: these monuments protect at risk.
• 55:30
  Speaker 5: Boom.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: It's like, it is, it's flawless. The only flaw it
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: has is that it didn't strip gates of the Arctic,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: the gates of the Arctic National Park away from the
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: park service.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: Are you familiar with Craters of the Moon?
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: It's like varied.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: Barren land.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Sure. A lot of it is.
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: This feels like, how many elk or deer are actually
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: going to be killed there?
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: Single digits.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: I'm just saying.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: You think some dude hunting is going to mess up
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: those rocks?
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: No.
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: I don't think that.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: There's no reason. There's no reason that they should have
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: ever gone in and said, you know what's not compatible?
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: With all these really hard rocks is hunting.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter to say that it's opened up like
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of acres in Idaho to hunting would
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: be like, well, now we're going to let people Elkhorn
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: in Florida, you know?
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: No, it's not like that.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: There's just like, you think I don't really, I don't,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: I'm not even like interested in your opinion on this.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: To be frank, it doesn't matter. Why would you have
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: excluded it in the first place? If there's nothing there, especially.
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: Go for it. It's just like, there's not going to
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: be a lot of elk and deer killed there.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. If you came and said to me, hey,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: you know what? We're going to, for a year, give
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: you exclusive access to this hundreds of thousands of acres.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go kill a Boone and Crockett mule deer.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: Somebody's going to.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. It's not your call to make.
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: These are gonna be the good old days of craters
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: of the moon hunting for like these next couple seasons.
• 57:06
  Speaker 6: Mule deer.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Craters of the moon is like a geologic feature. I'm
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: not talking like a little crystal sitting there on a pedestal.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: It's a geological feature.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: Miles of lava rock.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: Lava rock.
• 57:15
  Speaker 6: I see what you're saying, Spencer, but mule deer, elk,
• 57:18
  Speaker 6: and coyotes roam the area. Pronghorns also cross the monument.
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: Predators include bobcats, mountain lions, red foxes, and badgers.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Spencer, what he's saying doesn't matter.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: I'm guessing the state already has their boundaries drawn for
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: units this year. I would assume no big game is
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: going to be killed there in 2026, but I don't know.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Might miss the season.
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: But it's great news because it is bullshit that hunters
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: got pushed out of those areas. It has no impact.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: It has no impact.
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Here's another thing.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: It's a funny one to choose.
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: That's all.
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: There's 150 national monuments or something to be like, go
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: hunt Craters of the Moon.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: I expect more to come. I expect more to come.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: Like I said, a really good move, but it's been
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: explained to me that it would take an act of Congress.
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: Gates of the Arctic National Park should have never been
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: handed to the Park Service.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: Ever.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: It's a park that gets about a visitor a year.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: I was reading this being like, please, please, please. But
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: someone said it's not an executive order thing.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: Castle Mountains I'm not familiar with. Maybe that place is
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: crawling with.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Listen, I got a friend I have a dear friend.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: And one day I was trying to explain to him, God,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: we're gone. This segment's going too long. I have a
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: dear friend. And one day I was explaining to him,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: I was trying to explain to him, he's like a
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Republican absolutist. And I was trying to explain to him
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: one time, I'm like, yeah, but there's a lot of
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: issues where, there's a lot of issues where Democrats tend
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: to have our side on habitat protections. And I get it.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: I get it. But it's just more complicated than what
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: you're making it. And he said to me, I'll never
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: agree with what you're saying. He says, Democrats have taken
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: away from me everything. in this world that i love
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: and when he told me the things that he loved
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: one of them was hunting in the mojave desert okay
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: so no matter who's whether you got Republicans or Democrats,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: there's always little gifts they can give you. The same
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: way when you're a kid, you know what to go
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: to your mom about, and you know what to go
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: to your dad about.
• 59:35
  Speaker 6: Right?
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: You learn.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: This would be a good thing to go to my
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: ma about. This would be the kind of thing I
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: go to my dad about. Republicans and Democrats are like that.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Hunters and anglers, one's your ma, one's your dad. This
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: is the, I don't want to say the dad stuff.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: laughter This is the one of them stuff. This is
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: the one of them stuff. All right, where are we?
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to move fast. All right, here's the potential rub.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: Here's the potential rub. Allow for the construction, repair, and
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: maintenance of infrastructure that provides access to federal land for
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: the purpose of outdoor recreation and wildlife management. The second thought.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: That is followed up by this line. Improve public access
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: to difficult-to-access federal lands and waters by prioritizing practical access opportunities.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: It then lists good things. It lists, including voluntary access easements,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: land exchanges, cooperative agreements with state and local governments, and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: other tools that respect private property rights. Here's the only
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: area in all this stuff that could be causing trouble
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: because I would hate for the sentiment here to get
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: hijacked by people who just want more roads. And they'll
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: get those roads any way they can get them. If
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: someone's like, dude, I want to build roads because I
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: have in my mind that we're going to do a
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: mine down the road. I'm just like a pro-road guy.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: I look at wilderness as wasted real estate. They might
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: look and go like, oh, sweet. I'm going to tie
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: my shit into this.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 6: Yeah, attacking the federal wilderness area program, that's scary.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: But it's not... That makes me nervous, but there's nothing
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: in here that says that's what's going to happen.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 6: It doesn't have to say it.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: Like I said, this is either 100% good news or
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: it's 99% good news. And I said, where are the 1%?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: That's the sentence that I'm like, eh. I don't know.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Here's a good one. This is just
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: like a, okay. Encourage the use of qualified volunteers to
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: manage wildlife populations and invasive species.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Put hunters into the game. When you're hiring sharpshooters to
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: go kill whitetails in suburban areas because the suburban people
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: are afraid of dudes hunting deer with their bows, screw them.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Or when they're trying to get mountain goats out of
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: certain parks, you got to jump through all these hoops.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: All these different programs of like, if you have hunters
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: that want to go do it, let hunters that want
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: to go do it, do the work rather than paying
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: government agents.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 5: To go do it.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Put the stuff in people's freezers instead of putting it
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: in landfills.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: There's some other stuff. There's some great stuff for veterans
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: in here.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 6: That permit the use of traditional lead ammunition.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, did I miss that one?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 6: I'm assuming that's directed at wildlife refugees where you can't.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: But you're ahead of me.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: You jumped way ahead, I thought.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Authorize the use of assistive technology on access trails and
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: hunting locations, okay? Handicap restrictions. A veteran that's a double
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: amputee having access opportunities. When people say assistive technology, that
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: is technology that's meant to support Handicapped individuals. Who's going
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: to argue against that? It's good news. It's good news
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: for veterans and others. Permit the use of traditional lead
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: ammunition and tackle. Pretty much yes. Pretty much yes. The
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: fishing sinker thing is a joke. The fishing sinker thing
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: is a joke. There are some areas where... There are
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: some areas in condor recovery areas... There are some areas
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: where we should not be using lead ammunition in condor
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: recovery areas because... When you have such a small population
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: of birds, a couple of those birds dying from lead
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: is a population level impact. Where you have a demonstrable
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: population level impact from consuming lead, lead should be looked
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: at and restriction should be considered where it's population level impact.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 6: But if it's a wildlife refuge in Nebraska that says
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 6: you got to use non-lead ammunition for deer hunting, that's
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 6: kind of.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: When no one can point to any population level impact
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: and be like cars hit more Hawks than get killed
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: by lead ammunition. But we're not talking about banning cars. Um,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: there's another one. It's just really like, this must be someone,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: this is, there's one of these in here. That's gotta
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: be that someone's just got a case of the ass
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: about something. Listen to this one. This has got to
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: be coming from some guy that had like someone's ear.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: And he's like, you know, it burns my ass. Cause
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: listen to this one. Um, The Secretary of Agriculture shall
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: review high-demand Forest Service-administered river access lotteries and shall initiate
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: the reform of such lotteries to prioritize U.S. citizens, including
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: prior unsuccessful applicants, and prohibit the use of automatic computer
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: entries into the lottery.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: It's ridiculous that Americans are waiting in line for permits
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: to float their own rivers, and those permits are going
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: to foreigners.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 6: 100%.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: But just, again, it's got to be someone with just...
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: There's some dude that can't get a Grand Canyon permit,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: and he's like, how in the world is some dude
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: from Paris floating down that river?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying about Craters of the Moon. There's
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: some guy who knows about a 400-inch bull... Like one
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: of a dozen elk that lives there. Who's like, you know,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: we should actually allow some hunting there.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: It burns his ass.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: He's going to get that whopper bull.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: But I still like that stuff. There's one about, it
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: took me a long time. Max, the one and only
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: Max Bart, the smartest man in the duck swamps. Track
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: this one down for me. There's one about season setting
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: for migratory waterfowl. It's largely a clerical issue. He reached
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: out to some contacts and one of the contacts, I
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: didn't tell him I was going to read his thing,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to say his name. One of Max's
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: contacts in the duck conservation world said to Max this morning,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: my understanding is this just cuts out basically the way
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to read his thing because it's long. Basically,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: migratory bird season's always get canceled every year and they
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: have to be reset every year. And it creates this
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: whole clerical issue. It's cleaning up a clerical. It's cleaning
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: up a season setting behind the scenes, paperwork issue that
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: isn't going to be felt by waterfowl hunters. It's just
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: an annoyance. Here's a big one though. Maybe not the
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: biggest one, maybe the biggest one within a year of
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: this order. I don't know why it takes a year
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: within a year of this order. The secretary of the
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: interior shall encourage state fish and wildlife agencies to promote
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: and expand Sunday hunting opportunities on state and federal lands.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: That stuff's a joke. I understand it as states have
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: taken steps to loosen Sunday hunting restrictions. There's can be
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: a lag where those restrictions are sort of encoded and
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: into land management agencies and a state might loosen and
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: the federal or state management agency might not follow suit quickly.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: Like their Sunday restrictions stay after the states goes away.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: But that just, that stuff has to be just like
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: flat out Sunday hunting restrictions just have to go away.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: They will, they're going away. Growing a new generation of hunters.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Interior's got no secretary of labor, secretary of education. They
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: got 90 days to clean up messes they've created about
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: federal education funding for archery and hunting education programs in schools.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: One of the things they're talking about is this whole like,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: this whole anti-gun thing has created this problem that like
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: you can't train kids in hunter safety in schools because
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: somehow something to do with dumb thing with guns.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: That's got to go away. I took my hunter's ed
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: was through my school. It was very easy to do.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: You did a hunter's ed through school. Within 180 days
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: of the order, identify opportunities and incentives to assist states
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: in cultivating hunting traditions among American youth and veterans. And again,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: opportunities in adaptive sports grant program. So, yes. Helping disabled,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: handicapped individuals have hunting opportunities. Promoting robust game species populations.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: All kinds of good stuff in here. Helping people. helping
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: landowners with voluntary removal or reductions of barriers to wildlife
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: movement and habitat connectivity. You got a rancher. He's got
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: antiquated fencing. He's got whatever. It's a barrier to wildlife habitat.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: He wants it cleaned up. Doesn't have the means to
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: get it cleaned up. Let's get it cleaned up. Reduction
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: of invasive species, habitat degradation, disease and other factors contributing
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: to population declines. So just getting after it on taking
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: care of some of this stuff. The details are missing.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: The money is missing, but the directives are clear. The
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: directives are good. We'll see if it gets carried out.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Targeted management. Here's a tricky one. I'm surprised that like
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: the Guardian and Washington Post aren't having a total shit
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: fit about this one. Targeted management of predators, competing species,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: and other population limiting factors. Okay. Use of prescribed fire,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: vegetation management, water development, grazing, agricultural practices, and appropriate habitat
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: management tools. And seeking voluntary agreements with landowners and agricultural
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: producers around habitat improvements. There's a big thing about Increasing
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: wild game donation. It's just not my thing.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: That one's way cool.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: I eat that stuff. What's that?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: That one's way cool.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: Okay. Tell everybody about it.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: Well, they promote that wild game should be given to
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: schools and fed to kids.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah. Emergency food assistance program.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: That would help with the white-tailed deer overpopulation issue.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: Well, that's what they talk about in the next one.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: No, you're right. It does.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: I should have been more enthusiastic. The words are carefully chosen.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: They're saying use Pittman-Robertson funds to manage hyper-abundant populations of wildlife,
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: especially white-tailed deer, through activities that facilitate the donation and
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: processing of wild game for consumption in schools and food banks.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: You're right.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: I was just getting toward the end. I'm very aware
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: of how much time I burned up. That's good stuff.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: I just think it's like a creative thing. A lot
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: of this is like, it feels kind of common sense. Like, yeah,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: it should have always been that way.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 6: What were those sharpshooters doing? What has happened to the
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 6: meat from the sharpshooters? Probably nothing.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: This is fun. And as much as in these areas
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: that have hyperabundant whitetail populations to the point where it's
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: causing habitat degradation and disease transmission, The more you can
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: lubricate the wheels for people to get those deer off
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: the landscape and put to good use.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 5: Sure, you're right.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I poo-pooed it. And again, the
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: cost of publication is the order shall be borne by
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: the Department of Interior. Commerce had to pay for the
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: other email. Interior pays for this email.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 6: On to the wolf desk.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: Take my glasses out.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 6: We hit Molly's pack.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 6: How long ago was that? month ago, a.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: Couple weeks ago.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 6: Molly's Pack is Yellowstone National Park's last original wolf pack
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 6: from the introduction that occurred. Their lineage is from the
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 6: original introduction in the mid-90s.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: I don't want to get into it, but... Let.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 6: Me at least get through this part. Molly's Pack is mostly...
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 6: They left... Months ago, they left and went on to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 6: public land in the Shoshone National Forest. Five adults, five pups.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 6: In the Shoshone National Forest in the Absaroka Range. They're
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 6: named after a.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: U.S.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 6: Fish and Wildlife Service director, Molly Beattie, who died of
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 6: cancer during that original introduction. And everyone was worried. They
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 6: left that they're Hunters were going to get them. Wolf
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 6: advocates are very up in arms that Wyoming should somehow
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 6: change their wolf hunting regulations to like carve out exceptions
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 6: for Molly's pack.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: People were going crazy about it. I got to butt in.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 6: I got to butt in.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine how stupid it is to say, oh,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Bob the Elk. is over there, we need to change
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: the state's hunting rules so that nothing happens to Bob
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: the elk.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 6: Oh, for sure, it was crazy.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: It would never happen.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: No, it's ridiculous.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 6: Anyway, they're mostly back in the park. Five adults, five
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 6: pups were about six months old. And that's when they're
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 6: old enough to kind of cruise and travel with the
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 6: adult wolves. They're back in there. The worry from the
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 6: wolf advocates was that Wyoming's wolf hunting season opened on
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 6: September 15th and they were still kind of out there
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 6: outside of the park. It's interesting to me that they're quick,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 6: these wolf advocates, very quick to point out, it comes
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 6: up all the time, that Molly's pack matriarch is 12
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 6: years old. So like one of the oldest wolves wolves
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 6: on record but some for some reason that makes them even.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: More special she's walking dead.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 6: Right she's two and a half times older than the
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 6: average lifespan of a wolf um so cool for her
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 6: but um i don't think you know you carve out
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 6: exceptions for animals based on how.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: Old they are yeah be like it's like biden should
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: stay present because he's so.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 6: Old um so The local hunt area. Do we have
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 6: that map? Yeah, there it is. So they were in
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 6: the Clark's Fork Wolf Hunt area in Sunlight Basin. Reached
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 6: its four wolf limit within days and got shut down.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 6: So they went back in the park. They made it
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 6: back without getting killed. I didn't get the picture, but
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 6: in an article I read, there was a picture of
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 6: a trailhead in Sunlight Basin. packed with hunters horse trailers
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: like they were in there looking for him.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: For sure yeah because that one dude was offering bounties
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: on hunters yeah.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: Well no no oh you're there's the other dude who
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 6: who like put a bounty on publicly said he is
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 6: going after the matriarch he's gonna get the mate which
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 6: i thought was kind of kind of weird um.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: Are you serious like you feel like dudes were like
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: but it was also general big game or not it
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: was archery season.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah, but it was packed.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's not true.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 5: I believe you.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 6: So the Wyoming Fish and Game Agency, they like to
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: point out that wolf hunting is a notoriously difficult pursuit.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 6: On average, Wyoming's hunters devote about 500 days of effort
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 6: per animal they kill.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Which i mean there's 500 days worth of hunter effort
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: for every wolf.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 6: That gets killed like so that means like you're spending
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 6: how many years trying to get one because you're not
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 6: hunting 500.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: Days no that's not you're reading that wrong oh.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 6: I got you five so 500 hunters one.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: Day or yeah like 500 days so if you look
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: up all the days of hunter effort Yep. And all
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: the wolves killed. Hunters collectively are spending 500 days a
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: field for every wolf killed.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 6: However, statewide, 10 of the 22 wolves that can be
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 6: killed in the trophy management area that surrounds the park,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 6: they were killed in the first week of the season.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 6: So they got after it pretty quick.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: But no one got this big famous wolf.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 6: No one got her or kids or brothers or sisters.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 6: So if they stay in the park, they're off limits.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 6: But who knows, they may run into trouble if they
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 6: wander out.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 5: To the park.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: I had said it on the show, and then I
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: saw it quoted in the Idaho Statesman or something, where
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: it was like, man, I don't, like, Wyoming can't capitulate,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: but I bet there's, and I was like, I hope
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: those wolves go back where they came from.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: Just to avoid all the BS.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it would be like national level craziness if it
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 6: did happen.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: It'd be like that Cecil the Lion program all over again, man.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. Right.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 6: You know, and if one gets shot near the border
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 6: of the park, maybe that won't be such a big deal,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 6: but we'll see what happens. If a collared one gets shot,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 6: people are going to raise hell about it. There you go.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 6: That kind of saga is kind of over for right now.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We'll talk about it again in like nine months.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: We're going from Yellowstone National Park all the way to Pennsylvania. Yeehaw.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about elk that were introduced
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: to Pennsylvania from Yellowstone National Park. Oh, what a segue.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: Good little detail there, man.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Michael Skvarla of Port Matilda, Pennsylvania, killed a big old
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: giant bull elk.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: My goodness diddy.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: The elk was an 8x8 typical that scored 428 inches.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: This elk was taken on September 15th during the archery season.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: And he shot it with a crossbow. And it's potentially, well,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: I say potentially because it's green score. It hasn't hasn't
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: had the, the time to dry yet, but.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 6: It's going to be the new, it's not going to
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 6: shrink 50 inches.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: The last, the previous holder get it with a Bobo
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: or was he using a crossbow?
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: Uh, I don't know that, but the previous shattered that dude. Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: The previous, uh, archery state record for, for Pennsylvania is
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: three 81. A little over 381, which this is green
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: scored at 428. By the time it shrinks, I don't
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: know how many inches it loses when it shrinks, but
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: it's going to blow that out of the water. And
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: it's going to beat the number one typical firearms category
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: elk too, which is 407 inches. Which is surprising that
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: it's only 407 for firearms.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 6: We were talking earlier that the next world record could
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: definitely come out of Pennsylvania.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 2: Yep. Yep. But so for the archery season this year,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: there was only, what was it? There's 15 bull tags
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: for the archery season were issued to 50,000 lottery applicants.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 5: God, that's why I don't draw it.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: I was wondering why I don't draw that.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: Phil, hit the next photo. I showed that one earlier.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 6: You didn't comment on his apparel, Steve?
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: You did earlier.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: He had a onesie on. Dude, that's the greatest suit
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: in the world.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. This photo was sent to me through a friend.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: This one was, I think, kind of making its rounds. Yeah,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: a giant elk. But, Phil, if you go to the video. Oh, sure.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: This is a bull that I got trail cam video
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: of on my family's property.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 6: Damn.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: That's the world.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: Which I think will blow that one out of the water.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: It is on this trail camera that Seth has set
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: up on his grandpa's place. It is nonstop. And his
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: grandpa's been putting in since they brought elk into the state.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 5: Look at that thing.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: That was two weeks ago.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: Dude.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: It's just like, you can't keep track. All these bulls come.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: That's called pond cam.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: Yep. That's the pond cam. But yeah, those bulls come
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: in there to wallow and drink.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Seth gets videos of them coming and just ripping bugles
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: in front of the camera, like insane bulls that you'll
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: never see.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: I know. I'm waiting right now for a video to
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: come through of a bull that's just bugling right in
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: front of the camera that I was hoping would come
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: through before this.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: A bunch of, I don't know, 390s, 400-inch bulls.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: Yep. But this bull was killed in Center County, which
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: is the same county where that trail cam video was.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 5: Um, and.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, let's see. He was, it was, so this guy's
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: a professor at Penn state. He, he didn't have a
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: whole lot of time and, and drew a tag of
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: a lifetime. So he went with a guide, um, trophy
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: rack lodge and, uh, they hunted for a couple of days,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: ran into, uh, several bulls bugling the one morning and, uh,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: This bull ended up coming in. He shot it 40-some
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: yards with his crossbow.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: Dude, I'd give up two of my kids for one
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: of the milk.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 5: Tags, man.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: I don't want to get into that. I don't want
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: to feel bad. I'd give up two of my kids.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: I'd keep one, give two away for one of the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: milk tags.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, the general or the regular firearm
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: season is yet to happen in Pennsylvania, so I'd be
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: curious to see if this record gets broken. It's possible.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 5: Yep.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: Wearing a vintage camo pattern that I can't identify. I've
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: been trying to reverse Google image search then for like
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: 10 minutes, and I can't come up with who the
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: maker of that is.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: It's a great onesie, man. You know, it'd be sweet
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: if he gave us that onesie for the Auction House
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: of Oddities.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, that'd be great.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: Like, if you're listening.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: That might be the only camo he owns.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: If you're listening... No, here's the deal.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: If you're listening, if you.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: Send us that onesie for the Auction House of Oddities,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: we will send you a complete.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: We'll send you a complete cold weather and complete warm
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: weather kit.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 5: Uh-huh.
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: If you'll send us that onesie for the Auction House
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: of Oddities.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: That would be great.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: I need to identify what this pattern is.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: So if you're listening, I have a deal for you.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: We're going to end the show with an interview with
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Montana representative, former Navy SEAL Ryan Zinke, who's going to
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: talk about, he came into the studio, the other studio,
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: And we sat and talked about something called a River
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: Runs Through It Act. And the conversation mostly gets into
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: the question of how can you find compromise solutions for
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: vexing land management issues? So check that out. See you
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: next week. All right, everybody, we're jumping over to a
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: conversation with... Ryan Zinke. So Ryan Zinke is a congressman
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: for Western Montana, former secretary of the interior, retired Navy
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: SEAL commander. Throughout his career, this guy has been very
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: tangled up in public lands issues, outdoor issues. He's joining
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: us here in the twilight of his congressional career, which
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: ends what, this January?
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 5: It does.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: And you're a free man in January?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 5: I am free of this vocation.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Free of this vocation in January. We had Representative Zinke
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: on before. He was Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnerships. He won
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: the James D. Range Award in 2025, and I was
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: present there as a board member and actually was there
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: to help hand him the award. And that was around
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: his work on public lands advocacy during some important times
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: around public lands. This year, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's Excellence
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: in Advocacy, that's 2026 award, and Safari Club International's Legislator
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: of the Year award in 2026. So garnering a lot
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: of recognition for his work on public lands issues from
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: the hunting and angling communities. And what we're going to
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: talk about right now is a thing that I've been
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: reading about. I don't fully, totally understand it all, but
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: it's been passed around a bit, is the A River
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: Runs Through It Act.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: Absolutely.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: Tell me about this. And I know that this issue
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: has had a long simmer.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 5: It has had a long issue.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 8: Over 20 years in the making around Sealy Lake, the Swan,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 8: Big Barrel Wilderness, Scapegoat. And then they combine the Lincoln
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 8: area that they've been working about 13 years. And this
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 8: is a made in Montana solution. We live in a
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 8: political environment where it's so partisan that we fight about everything.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 8: But in Montana, our public lands, the debate has always
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 8: been on how to manage it between the mirrors, the wilderness,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 8: and let's say the pinchos with multiple use. And then
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 8: you have extremes on both sides on it. But this
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 8: is a solution that looks at landscape and understands the
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 8: importance of the outdoors.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 5: The reason why we live in the West is because
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 5: we have outdoor experience.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 8: And we were given the outdoors experience largely from the
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 8: great ones. Roosevelt and Pinchot and Muir looked at the
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 8: landscape and said, this needs to be protected and cultivated
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 8: for the next generation. So what this bill does is
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 8: it takes a look at wilderness areas. It takes a
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 8: look at wilderness study areas. And when you have the
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 8: wilderness society in the same room as the snowmobilers, you
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 8: got the backpackers, you got the outfitters, you got the
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 8: logging guys, and they all came together and said, you
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 8: know what? The outdoor experience is different for all of us,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 8: but all of us understand the importance of it.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 5: So can we look at better ways of management?
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 8: And so we had Tracy Manning from the wilderness society
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 8: and with the snowmobile guys sitting in the same room said,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 8: you know what, let's work together from the snowmobile perspective,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 8: they want public access and they want corridors rather than
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 8: going to point aid and turning around and coming right
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 8: back to the same trail.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 5: So they want trails connect. Well, you know, so do
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 5: a lot of people. So do a lot of people.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 8: That do, you know, skiing and hiking and, and, and
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 8: et cetera. And, on our forests themselves, I think there
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 8: was a concurrence that we shouldn't allow them to burn
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 8: down every year all the time.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 5: Can't we manage our forests better?
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 8: So from a logging perspective, you know, you can go
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 8: in and harvest timber. You can cut a road in
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 8: temporarily if you're going to do a prescribed burn because
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 8: a prescribed burn, so it doesn't get out of hand,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 8: requires safety equipment. And so when you do it, you
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 8: do it right with the right science, the right people,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 8: the right equipment. You get the burn done, and then
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 8: you can remove the road if necessary. But a lot
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 8: of it focuses on public access.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: So on that thing there, what were the Wilderness Society
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: people in the room for?
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 8: Well, because we looked at areas.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 5: Remember, in a wilderness study area.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 5: That's what I want to talk about.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: This could confuse people, but I'm sure you can explain it.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah, a wilderness study area is administrative areas.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 8: In a category, not by Congress, but it's a wilderness
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 8: study area administratively put in place, but you have to
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 8: manage it as if it is a wilderness. And Congress
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 8: is the only one that can designate a wilderness. So
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 8: Congress actually is going to do their job and look
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 8: at some wilderness study areas that were probably, well, according
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 8: to this bill, they looked at them carefully. They should
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 8: not be designated as a wilderness. But you can do backpacking.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 8: You can do outfitting. You can cut a trail. You
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 8: can manage the forest better than letting them burn down.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 8: There's areas around the scapegoat and around the Bob Marshall
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 8: that make sense, the wilderness study areas. Let's permanently put
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 8: this in part of a wilderness because that's what wilderness
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 8: is for.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, can I butt in on this? Because this is important.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: I just want to make sure people that live outside
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: of the West get this distinction where wilderness with a
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: capital W is like federally designated wilderness. So when we
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: say wilderness, we don't just mean like the woods or
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: the mountains, but like it's a federal designation.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 8: And we're going to manage it as a wilderness. No wheels,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 8: no combustion engines. There's a lot of restrictions on a
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 8: wilderness because primarily lightest touch, let nature take its course.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but within that, for years now, we've had these
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: study areas, or what was the term you used?
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 5: These are wilderness study areas.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the study areas, and they're sort of, and I
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: don't know if it would be, if it's how you
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: would describe it, but a lot of the study areas
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: are sort of in limbo. And there are plenty of
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: people who would like to see all the study areas
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: go the other direction, go one way. There are plenty
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: of people who would like to see all of them
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: go to wilderness. And then there are the pragmatic ones
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: who envision that at some point in time, there will
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: be some compromises made.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: And they will ease into, they will be moved into
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: the wilderness category or they'll be moved into a more
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: general national forest category. And so here and there, now
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: and then you see little chunks of this puzzle get
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: resolved because the limbo can't last.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 8: It should not last, but it should be based on, again,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 8: this is a Montana-made solution. So you had the local ranchers,
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 8: you had the timber folks, you had the snowmobiles, you
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 8: had the wilderness people, you had the recreational people all
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 8: come together and say, you know, we honor the landscape
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 8: of these two important areas. So how do we make
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 8: sure that we can harvest timber? How can we make
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 8: sure the previous wilderness study areas How do we make
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 8: sure that they're protected and managed? Because there's a reason
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 8: why they became wilderness study areas, to study, to determine
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 8: whether or not they meet the requirements and conditions to
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 8: actually be a wilderness.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 5: Congress makes that decision.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 8: But out in the West, what can happen is you
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 8: have a superintendent that puts something in a wilderness study
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 8: area designation, and then it stays there forever.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: And people get uneasy about how it's going to break.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 8: Well, and there's restrictions. So you won't be able to
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 8: take a vehicle in. You won't be able to take
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 8: a snowmobile in. You won't take a wheel in. Or
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 8: if you were to do a prescribed burn, you can't
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 8: put the safety equipment in. Or if you're going to
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 8: do trail maintenance, you're not going to allow to.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 5: Use a chainsaw, for instance. You'd have to do a
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 5: buck saw.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 8: It takes a lot of buck sawing to clear a
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 8: trail after a windstorm, as you know. So what this
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 8: does is it looks at a landscape.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 5: View.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 8: It brings corridors for wildlife movement back and forth. It
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 8: looks at trailheads to make sure the trails connect between
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 8: the different categories of land.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 5: But it really is a solution. It's not perfect.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 8: But this 20 years of effort of people working together.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 8: And how do you break through the partisan lines? Well,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 8: you find something that you're passionate about on both sides.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 8: And then you get together, and then you have to
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 8: work through trust because now you're working together for a
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 8: common goal, and you're going to have to trust your
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 8: groups in there to make sure they articulate what's important
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 8: to them, but also they're wanting to give a little.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 8: And in every case in this bill, which is a
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 8: river runs through it, that paints a picture as well,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 8: is that there's something for everybody.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 5: Someone gave up a little in order to gain a lot.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 8: And again, it's about understanding how important the outdoor legacy is.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 8: And I think this can be a model for national use.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 8: Because there are issues in Utah, there's issues in Idaho,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 8: in the West. There's always issues between a lot of
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 8: it is how to manage our lands. I think this
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 8: is a pretty good model of how to constructively get
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 8: to a solution that benefits everybody.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: With this arrangement, as you're talking to people about it,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: you got guys like me, and I would have been,
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: if I was emperor of the nation, I would have,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: just from my perspective, I would have said, I'm going
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: to take all experimental wilderness and I'm just going to
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: make it all wilderness because I'm a big wilderness guy.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: You got other people who would have wanted to go
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: the other way and ditch it all. If you look
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: at the, in striking this compromise, who do you feel,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: of the people that are still not happy?
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 5: Which is just margins.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: But who is most not happy?
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 8: I would say most not happy are the people that
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 8: believe the federal government shouldn't have a federal estate at all.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 8: And then on the other side is that public lands
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 8: are really not for the public.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 5: They're for other species. Yeah. You have those two extremes.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: And each would like their position articulated differently, but from
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: your perspective. Yeah, I understand what you're saying.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 5: But I'll give you an example.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 8: The Wilderness Society on a wilderness study area looked at
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 8: it and said, no, this is going to be wilderness.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 5: This is our position. The snowmobilers said, you know what?
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 8: We would like to transit across this to connect our trails.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 5: Now, those are two different views. Yeah. You know what happened?
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 5: They came together. Yeah. They said, you know what?
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 8: This is a great corridor to bring back and forth.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 8: And oh, by the way, this other area, we're going
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 8: to designate that and connect it to the Bob Marshall
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 8: because it makes sense to protect that watershed.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 8: And then on designation of, let's say, outfitting. Well, outfitters
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 8: need to go in there, but they also need a
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 8: trail cleared.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 8: So they can use trail clearing method during the season
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 8: and to make sure that the trail and public access
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 8: is there. And that's an important part of it, looking
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 8: at the landscape. But at the end of the day,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 8: these two areas are special. Lewis and Clark had much
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 8: the same view in a lot of these different areas.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 5: And now what we have done is.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 8: We've looked at what's important how to manage it to
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 8: make sure that your children and your children's children can
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 8: have the same landscape view that was given to us
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 8: that Lewis and Clark shared.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 5: Understood.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: I think that when it comes to the kind of
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: compromise you're talking about, kind of the best way it
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: was articulated to me down the road, and this isn't
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: so much the particulars of this arrangement, but just this
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: idea of compromise, would be people would look at the
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: wilderness study areas. And you'd be like, well, why not
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: just wait? Why not just wait until the right moment
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: when they can all be wilderness? And people go, you
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: might wait for that moment and you wind up in
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: the opposite moment. Waiting isn't a guarantee that it's going
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: to go how you want it. And so I've had
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of people explain to me a great compromise
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: now where everybody can have a voice is better than
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: the alternative of trusting that you're going to hit where
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: it's going to go all your way. Cause then it
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: might go all the other way. So if we can
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: find opportunities to find a solution that is acceptable to
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: a broad group, like there's an argument that those are
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: the moments to seize upon.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 8: Well, and you know, again, we were given what we have.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 8: I think the challenge the next hundred years is how
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 8: to manage it. Yeah. Next 100 years is looking at
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 8: wildlife corridors to make sure winter ranges connect to summer ranges.
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 5: Correct.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 8: To make sure that you have movement, but also public access.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 8: And on some of these wilderness study areas, they're managed
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 8: for a healthy forest. But the consensus was all groups,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 8: left and right and middle, don't want to see these
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 8: catastrophic forest fires burn at the scale they're burning and
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 8: the heat. I mean, in some cases, these forests are
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 8: burning so high, you're not gonna see a regrowth of
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 8: forest for generations. They have sterilized the soil. Is that
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 8: really necessary? Well, let's look at the American conservation ethic.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 8: Best science, best practices, greatest good, longest term. That's the
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 8: American conservation ethic. So how do we get there so
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 8: we don't have these catastrophic fires? Well, we'll look at
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 8: the geography. And you say, you know what? This area
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 8: needs to be thinned. Do we want to do it mechanically?
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 8: Do we want to do it? harvesting timber? Or is
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 8: a prescribed burn more appropriate? But a prescribed burn, let's
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 8: make sure it's a prescribed burn and not an out-of-control burn,
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 8: like we did with the Wheeler home in Glacier Park,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 8: and they had a recent fire in the Grand Canyon.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 8: which burned up, you know, historic, you know, sites and buildings.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 8: I don't think we want to go there again. So
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 8: we can use best science and best practices and come
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 8: up with a solution so we have a healthy forest.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 8: And those areas that need to be protected in a
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 8: different degree in the wilderness, lightest possible footprint, you can
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 8: still hunt. You know, you can graze in a lot
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 8: of wilderness, but sometimes grazing isn't going to reduce the
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 8: load of dead and dying timber and fuel.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 5: So maybe a prescribed burn is more appropriate.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 8: Again, when you do a prescribed burn, you should do
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 8: it with the right safety equipment to make sure it
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 8: stays in that prescribed box and doesn't get out of hand.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 8: That may require a temporary road to be put in.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 8: That temporary road would be removed after the prescribed burn,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 8: at least so you can get the equipment in there
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 8: or evacuate.
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 5: The firefighters in the ground doing that burn.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: So tell, tell me how something like this, tell me
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: how something like this works from this point. Um, because
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: you go in, you go in and there's this long
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: simmering issue. People want it resolved. You talk to the
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: local people and get these different user groups that you're
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: talking in. And you're like, I understand you, you ideally
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: would want this. And you on the other side would
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: ideally want this. Here's a, here's a workable solution that
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: addresses everybody's concerns.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 5: Then what?
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: You give it a name, you know?
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 5: Well, you put in a bill. It's interesting. As a representative,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 5: you represent.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 8: So when you represent, you not only represent the people
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 8: that voted for you, but you also represent the people
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 8: that didn't vote for you. You represent the people who
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 8: will never vote for you. So it's important as you
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 8: represent people, because it is about people, you listen. And
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 8: when such a diverse group of people, again, from the snowmobilers,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 8: the motorcycle guys, the wilderness, to timber guys, to outfitters,
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 8: they're all saying the same beat, the same message. You know,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 8: it's time to then take those elements, and when you
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 8: put it into a bill, what does that mean? That
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 8: means you look at the legal review, you look at
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 8: what other laws it affects.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 5: So you put it in a bill. that's ready to pass.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 8: And in this particular case, it's more Montana-centric. So how
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 8: do you get it passed? Well, there's two senators, we
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 8: have two congressmen. All of us should get behind the
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 8: bill and all of us should convince our peers that
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 8: this is important to them too.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 5: Because public land- That's the part.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: That seems hard to picture is that you then got
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: to go to DC and there's 98, other senators that
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: aren't really aware of the issue. And there's 300 and.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 8: A couple of them likely will be opposed to anything
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 8: that's then federal land other than divesting.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: And then you got, I don't even know the number anymore.
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: Hundreds of people that are otherwise unfamiliar. And you got
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: to say, Hey, um, can I get everybody's attention on
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: this thing?
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: Well, you're exactly right.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: You didn't know about till yesterday or today and then,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: and then make time for it.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 5: Well, I'll give you an example.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 8: Um, Never in my life did I ever think that
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 8: public lands would be at risk of being sold. The
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 8: argument and the debate has always been about how to
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 8: manage it. But never divesting on scale. Well, it came up,
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 8: this Congress. There was an effort that nearly succeeded in
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 8: selling off a lot of our public lands without public
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 8: input review, all those types of things.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 5: And taking a step back, why? I thought it would
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 5: be easy.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 8: I led the charge to save it, and I thought
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 8: it was going to be like going up San Juan Hill.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 8: I had a bunch of guys behind me, a little thin,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 8: because public lands is different from different people. If you
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 8: live on the east and you say, we're not talking
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 8: about our national parks. Don't worry, our national parks are
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 8: free of this.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 5: They're protected.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 8: Well, if you live in the east, a lot of
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 8: your public access and public lands is parks. because they
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 8: don't have the huge tracts of BLM land, Bureau of
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 8: Land Management land, or U.S. Forest Service land. So primarily,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 8: your public, your outdoor experience is national parks. Well, that's great,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 8: but when you're out west, national parks.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 5: Are a part of the outdoor experience, and certainly not
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 5: the whole.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 8: In Montana, you have more forest service than you do parkland,
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 8: and when you add the CMR, Charles M.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 5: Russell, and BM Land.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 8: A lot of Montana's land is not in a park category.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 8: But I was surprised at how few initially picked up
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 8: the charge on, look, we're not going to sell our
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 8: public land. Now, in truth, when I was secretary, I divested,
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 8: I added, I subtracted, I exchanged.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 5: But the process was... Public input, looked at it.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 8: If a school needed to expand a gym, let's say,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 8: in New Mexico, okay, that 40 acres makes more sense
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 8: for a school. Or there was a runway that needed
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 8: a little more runway because the jets are bigger, okay.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 8: But those are case by case.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a process for that.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 5: There's a whole.
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 8: Process that looks at whether it's subsurface and Indian rights
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 8: and all those type of things. But I think our
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 8: public lands, you know, This is, I think, why, as
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 8: it turns out, I came back to Congress for this purpose.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 8: And God had a mission for me, and the mission
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 8: in this case was to lead the charge and make
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 8: sure our public lands in the next generation are as
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 8: strong as they were in the last generation.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: There are some very vocal Republicans who are generally antagonistic
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: to the public estate. Like philosophically, they're troubled by that
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: the federal government would own so much land or own
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: such a heavy proportion of certain states. Often they will
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: express a frustration about that on these places, management tools,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: and that can mean a bunch of things to different people.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: They will often express that like management isn't occurring. They're
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: not being properly managed.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: If you look at a solution- And that's legitimate, by
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: the way, frustration. If you look at, I guess the
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: question is, how honest are they? Because if you look
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: at what you're doing here, where you're looking at this
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: River Runs Through It Act, and you're looking at management issues,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: and you're looking at fire mitigation issues, timber harvest, timber reduction, right?
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: Does that really, do you think that you'd have some
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: colleagues who would look and be like, yes, that's what
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: I mean? Or do you feel that they're- that they're
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: just using that as a red herring?
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 5: Well, let's say an example of Libby, Montana.
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 8: You're in a sea of trees as far as the
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 8: eye can see, and you can't harvest to one of them.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 8: Lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, judges that would side on
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 8: for grizzly bears, even though grizzly bears have recovered.
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Right? They like cuts. But they don't look at timber.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 5: As a legitimate purpose in the woods. Yes.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 8: And in this case, we had the timber guys coming
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 8: to look, you know, those trees are going to come.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 5: Out of the woods one way or another. Yeah.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 8: You can mechanically bring them out, you can prescribe burn,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 8: or you can have these catastrophic burns.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 5: So wouldn't it be better? It's going to happen.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 8: Wouldn't it be better to manage how to remove the timber, where,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 8: look at the interfaces where you might have a fire,
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 8: thin that area out, Because when the forest burns, I fish,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 8: you fish, a lot of sediment will go in those streams,
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 8: and that's not good. And the habitat that we're all
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 8: trying to preserve burns the ground, and that's not good either.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 8: And in some cases, these forests are so hot, it
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 8: sterilizes the soil. Generationally, you won't have recovery of canopy.
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: And you get, to add to that, you get situations
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: where you have this massive monoculture, and you don't have
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: edge habitats and all.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 5: These other things.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 8: Then you have disease that runs through, if it's a
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 8: mono tree out there, you have disease that affects a tree,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 8: then the whole forest is going to go.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 5: But there is frustration out there. They watch our public
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 5: access to be diminished. They look at the forest burning.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 8: Up year after year after year, lack of management, sometimes
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 8: lack of leadership.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 5: And I understand the frustration.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 8: You know, if you're on a county road and all
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 8: of a sudden you have BLM with the lights on
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 8: and you're thinking, well, there must be a lost kid
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 8: someplace or maybe it's a bear they're going to warn
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 8: you about. No, they're going to give me a speeding
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 8: ticket on a county road. You know, a lot of people,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 8: deservedly so, are a little upset about that. But I
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 8: give the analogy of, okay, you have a hotel. and
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 8: it's terrible management. Well, you don't sell the hotel. You
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 8: get new management, and you get to construct a way
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 8: to manage your forest back to where they're healthy again.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 8: I think everyone wants to walk through a forest that's healthy.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 8: Some forests walking through... should be the lightest touch because
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 8: nature has its bounty and glory. So that's why we
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 8: have wilderness. Now, should we let Bob Marshall burn down
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 8: the ground all the time? Well, that's a discussion that
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 8: we need to have on fire management on it. In
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 8: this particular case, we looked at, for instance, wilderness study
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 8: areas and said, you know what? A road or a
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 8: prescribed burn or management of trails I think makes more sense.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 8: Making sure that there's a parking lot someplace where people
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 8: can park and have access to go into, that makes sense.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 5: In some cases, some of the roadless rules, should it
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 5: be a roadless rule?
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 8: Well, let's look at it, but let's look at it
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 8: case by case. Let's not do these broad canvases of,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 8: we're just gonna put in roads or we're gonna remove
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 8: roads in every inch of federal state. Best practices, greatest good,
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 8: longest term, but good science. Why do you need the
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 8: road in there? Should it be during hunting season? Should
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 8: it have a covert? Should it be used for fire?
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 8: Should we maintain it in case of a fire? All
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 8: those things need to be considered to make the right decision.
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, can I do one last super quick question?
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: We'll do it as quick as possible. Chris, what's going
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: to happen? Is this thing going to pass? Is it
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: going to come up for a vote and it'll pass?
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 8: We have two Navy SEALs. We have Tim Sheehy, the senator, myself.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 5: We don't give up.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 8: I think this has enough momentum behind it and enough
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 8: passionate people that have worked 20 years. I'm fairly confident
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 8: at the end of the day, this president or next
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 8: will sign a river run through it.
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 5: Great. Thanks for coming on.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: Thanks for explaining that. Love to hear from, you know,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: someone that's been involved for such a long time on
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: natural resources issues and explaining how that process people come together.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 8: I got to tell you, you're knocking out of the park.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 8: You deliver a message that's got to be delivered. And
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 8: people are enthusiastic about you and your effort.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 5: And thanks.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being a patron. Appreciate it. I know you
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: got to run, so we'll let you go.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 6: Thank you.