Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 071: The Buttery Tones of Karl Malcolm

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Ep. 071: The Buttery Tones of Karl Malcolm · The MeatEater Podcast

0:08
Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
0:13
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. He
0:18
Speaker 1: can't predict anything, all right, very roll, that's roll. So
0:30
Speaker 1: just to be uh, just to recap real quick somewhere,
0:33
Speaker 1: just talking about a minute ago, a guy finds a
0:42
Speaker 1: dead mountain lion. But he's not just a guy. No,
0:46
Speaker 1: he's like a lion biologist. The reason he finds this lion.
0:51
Speaker 1: So he wasn't just a guy, No, he was. He
0:55
Speaker 1: was saying he wasn't just a guy, but I didn't
0:58
Speaker 1: know to what extent he wasn't just a guy. You know,
1:02
Speaker 1: he was the guy that got the message that the
1:06
Speaker 1: collar on the lion was showing was showing dead. So yeah,
1:11
Speaker 1: I mean that's why I'm glad I brought it back
1:13
Speaker 1: up because I've been ruminating on it. Yeah, okay, it
1:17
Speaker 1: was collar. Because I'm like, line, is a dead lion,
1:22
Speaker 1: which doesn't happen. Okay, that's not going to just happen.
1:26
Speaker 1: Well it could, I mean yeah, probably not very unlikely.
1:30
Speaker 1: So he's a lion guy, his lion. He gets a debt,
1:35
Speaker 1: a mortality signal from an immobile collar. Okay, yeah, and
1:40
Speaker 1: we should we should preface what we're saying right now
1:43
Speaker 1: by stating explicitly that we have not like revisited this story.
1:48
Speaker 1: We've just been kind of bs and about it for
1:50
Speaker 1: the last few minutes. So no, we haven't the specific like,
1:54
Speaker 1: we haven't pulled up the there's a peer of view
1:56
Speaker 1: journal article and we can post that when when we
1:59
Speaker 1: present this material. Well we'll make that that link to that,
2:04
Speaker 1: so folks can can then you know, get the facts
2:07
Speaker 1: absolutely straight. But the the general story here is there's
2:12
Speaker 1: a lion proce. You're listening to the buttery tones of
2:16
Speaker 1: of Carl melcol Dr Carl, thanks for the intro. Yeah,
2:20
Speaker 1: so the story goes that this researcher and you know,
2:23
Speaker 1: we should also say we're not trying to make light
2:25
Speaker 1: of this situation. This is a tragic story. It's a
2:28
Speaker 1: tragic story. Yes, we've been chatting over dinner, but it's
2:33
Speaker 1: also become it's it's also become a public tale. Yeah,
2:37
Speaker 1: and we've been we've been discussing over dinner the topic
2:39
Speaker 1: of zonotic disease. We've been going through the laundry list
2:42
Speaker 1: of all the lawns, were laying it all out. Yeah,
2:44
Speaker 1: we also explained dinner. Well, I would like to hear
2:48
Speaker 1: you and Yanni explained dinner because I would like to
2:50
Speaker 1: get your perspectives on what we just experience. Hold tight
2:55
Speaker 1: on the guy with the deadline, which is a worthwhile tale.
2:58
Speaker 1: And uh Carl and his work UM has had occasion
3:06
Speaker 1: to go to China and work on wildlife issues in China,
3:12
Speaker 1: and in China he eats all manner of things and UH.
3:17
Speaker 1: One of the ones that he decided a little bit
3:19
Speaker 1: of technology he decided to take home with him was
3:22
Speaker 1: a dish called ogaga, which translates into English hot pop
3:30
Speaker 1: pepper pots. That's totally different South American dish pepper pot
3:33
Speaker 1: hot pope walk wa. So he makes, Carl makes He's
3:38
Speaker 1: got a camp stove out on his brand new deck,
3:40
Speaker 1: which he did a wonderful job building, and UM on
3:44
Speaker 1: his camp so he's got double burner camp stove, and
3:46
Speaker 1: on each burner he's got a very peppery broth full
3:52
Speaker 1: of all kinds of peppers and and uh aromatics, um
4:00
Speaker 1: Chinese flavors. And then he cut he had frozen and
4:06
Speaker 1: then right at the moment of thaw that it becomes
4:11
Speaker 1: conducive to nice uniform thin slices, sliced, a bunch of
4:17
Speaker 1: el mule deer, turkey heart, turkey gizzard, wally, prong horn heart,
4:28
Speaker 1: prong horn heart, several fun guy, you know, crazy mushrooms.
4:33
Speaker 1: You had some good MUSHes and then you get back
4:36
Speaker 1: joy right up, flat out green leaf, loose leaf, lettuce,
4:43
Speaker 1: and uh, then you get these little things ripping and
4:46
Speaker 1: everyone just sits around. I got a fondue party, dipping
4:49
Speaker 1: hunks of meat and guts into Wait, do those organs
4:54
Speaker 1: constitute guts? When I think of guts, I don't think
4:56
Speaker 1: a heart. I guess gizzard. Yeah, gizard's gut. I'll give
4:58
Speaker 1: you that. I think of it as a gut, all right,
5:00
Speaker 1: So dip it into that, and my god, is that
5:02
Speaker 1: ship good man? The key is, don't let it? Don't
5:07
Speaker 1: don't we only I only let one piece linger. Then
5:10
Speaker 1: it just becomes boiled meat. You're not making boiled meat.
5:14
Speaker 1: You're making like you watch it. It's kind of like
5:17
Speaker 1: flash poach. I don't know what the what the problem
5:20
Speaker 1: it would be. I mean, honestly, if that water, if
5:23
Speaker 1: that not water, the broth the hot pot is simmering. Um,
5:28
Speaker 1: you can call it a blanche. I think, yeah, you blanch,
5:32
Speaker 1: you blanch the meat. Um, thirty seconds isn't too long,
5:38
Speaker 1: but it's plenty. Yeah. And as you're listening through those
5:42
Speaker 1: those ingredients the things we're cooking, one that was notably
5:46
Speaker 1: missing from that list that's really popular in China. That
5:49
Speaker 1: would be a unique culinary experience that I'm sad I
5:52
Speaker 1: couldn't provide is uh coagulated duck blood. That's one that like,
5:59
Speaker 1: just pour a blood in there and let it. Yeah,
6:01
Speaker 1: but you don't really pour it. It's almost got the
6:03
Speaker 1: consistency of like a jello gelatin. You can slice it
6:07
Speaker 1: and it retains its uh integrity as you pick it
6:10
Speaker 1: up with chopsticks. You can dip it almost like a
6:13
Speaker 1: piece of liver. Then Yeah, it's it is very livery Yeah.
6:17
Speaker 1: And I didn't think back when we were in mid
6:20
Speaker 1: December amid these massive southward traveling flocks of Mallards. At
6:27
Speaker 1: no pointed across my mind that I would have an
6:29
Speaker 1: opportunity to serve mallard blood via hot pot to you boys,
6:33
Speaker 1: because if it had, I might have been out there
6:35
Speaker 1: trying to figure out a way to extract that blood
6:37
Speaker 1: in the field. Yeah, I'm not sure how that would
6:40
Speaker 1: have worked. Out. But I've looked into it for blood sausage,
6:43
Speaker 1: and it's difficult or to capture the blood. I don't
6:48
Speaker 1: think it'd be that difficult. Now, I got a friend,
6:51
Speaker 1: a dog trainer, and he this is Jacob Zeiski up
6:54
Speaker 1: in Arena, Wisconsin. And uh, he's big into training versatile
6:59
Speaker 1: hunting dogs. And these dogs are expected to point on
7:01
Speaker 1: dry land to retrieve in the water North American versus
7:05
Speaker 1: the Hunting Dog Association. The dogs running around here are
7:08
Speaker 1: dogs that have been tested through NAVTA trials. Yeah, do
7:13
Speaker 1: you know Ronnie. I don't. Well, I know Ronnie, you
7:15
Speaker 1: know through what you do. I've not met him, but
7:18
Speaker 1: I'd love to. Guys, So this dude, Jake had to
7:20
Speaker 1: leave the room. But man, you guys talk about So
7:24
Speaker 1: this dude Jacob, like you know, there was a stint
7:26
Speaker 1: where we were hunting as college students, like more than
7:31
Speaker 1: anyone has any reason, like any right to be hunting.
7:34
Speaker 1: We're hunting a lot, and he had worked out a
7:37
Speaker 1: way to kind of capture blood from big game animals
7:42
Speaker 1: that we've shot, and you get it into jugs, you know, see,
7:45
Speaker 1: you know, and you're like field dressing a deer and
7:47
Speaker 1: in the Midwest, you typically have the opportunity to bring
7:50
Speaker 1: like the whole deer out if you want to. You
7:52
Speaker 1: could feel dressed. But just if you hit it through
7:54
Speaker 1: the lungs, just tipping on its back, wait five minutes,
7:57
Speaker 1: and scoop it all out of there totally. Yeah. So
8:00
Speaker 1: my point is it's not difficult to capture blood from
8:03
Speaker 1: a big game animal. I'm not sure how you do
8:04
Speaker 1: it from a duck. What was he doing with it?
8:07
Speaker 1: He'd freeze it and then he would use it for
8:09
Speaker 1: basically simulating blood tracking, like over time, and that's for
8:15
Speaker 1: human consumption. No, no, that's why. That's why I mentioned
8:18
Speaker 1: the whole dog. The purpose of capturing the blood was
8:21
Speaker 1: related to dog training. You only have, you know, a
8:23
Speaker 1: couple of months out of the year when you can
8:24
Speaker 1: be shooting white tailed deer. You want to have a
8:27
Speaker 1: steady supply of dear blood over the course of the
8:29
Speaker 1: training season. So we had these chest freezers that had
8:33
Speaker 1: all assortment of fish and game products in them, among
8:36
Speaker 1: which were these jugs of dear blood. Have you seen
8:40
Speaker 1: the movie Only Lovers Left Alive? I have not seen
8:44
Speaker 1: that movie. Laid on me, that's it, okay, alright, alright,
8:49
Speaker 1: watch it well, discuss next time. A. No, when I
8:52
Speaker 1: looked into making blood sausage, is that the end of
8:54
Speaker 1: your things? Blood? Yeah, that's all I have to say.
8:58
Speaker 1: Like that, I feel like that was the main missing
9:00
Speaker 1: agredient because we had surf and turf, we had some
9:02
Speaker 1: Oregon meat, we had a good representative cross section of
9:06
Speaker 1: the big game species of New Mexico. China. We would
9:08
Speaker 1: have been having a little blood too. Yeah, and China
9:10
Speaker 1: we there definitely would have been the blood would have
9:13
Speaker 1: been a key ingredient that we were missing. But I
9:15
Speaker 1: appreciate the feedback. You know, like when I'm not I'm
9:19
Speaker 1: not gonna pretend to be the culinary student that either
9:28
Speaker 1: of you guys are. But when you're gonna be hosting
9:31
Speaker 1: you know, Steve Rinella and Janice Patelis for dinner, damn
9:36
Speaker 1: you better got you got? Well, you gotta figure out like,
9:38
Speaker 1: all right, I'm not I'm not gonna like I'm not
9:41
Speaker 1: gonna pull out a package Oscar Meyer Wieners and uh
9:45
Speaker 1: slap those in a white bread bun. We'd have had
9:48
Speaker 1: something that you had shot would have been surprised. Yeah,
9:52
Speaker 1: well I think that's probably standard. Like if yeah, I'd
9:55
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, if I'm gonna go to carl sus,
9:56
Speaker 1: I'm gonna eat some wild meat that Carl went out
9:58
Speaker 1: secured for himself. Weep. But no, I don't have any
10:01
Speaker 1: I'm not like I used to be good cook, but
10:03
Speaker 1: I'm not a good cook anymore because the kids, Yeah, yeah,
10:07
Speaker 1: they change it. It's just like I just don't have
10:09
Speaker 1: that kind of time like now, it's just they eats
10:13
Speaker 1: damn early. It's like yeah, I like, yeah, I just
10:17
Speaker 1: don't have I don't I don't get the every day spend.
10:19
Speaker 1: I don't get the every day when I'm home spend
10:21
Speaker 1: hours messing around. I'm like cooking for a two year
10:26
Speaker 1: old or four year old and seven year old who
10:29
Speaker 1: at seven thirty, I'm we're brushing their teeth. The honestly
10:33
Speaker 1: were saying something blood, So you want to get your
10:38
Speaker 1: hands out some blood? No I do. I would love
10:40
Speaker 1: to make blood sausage. It's a very you know, popular,
10:44
Speaker 1: Um what do you want to say, like you know,
10:47
Speaker 1: cultural Latvian dish, right, Like I grew up eating blood
10:51
Speaker 1: sausage with cranberry, uh not jam, but like a like
10:58
Speaker 1: what do you call like a jam? That still was
10:59
Speaker 1: like the like rough rough berries and stuff kind of
11:02
Speaker 1: in it. I call that maybe like a well I
11:05
Speaker 1: can tell you the difference between jelly and jam, but
11:07
Speaker 1: it's such a dirty but anyway, I looked into like
11:12
Speaker 1: the whole like getting blood to make it right, and
11:15
Speaker 1: you can ask for it and buy it at a
11:17
Speaker 1: butcher's shop, but the you want it in a liquid state, right,
11:22
Speaker 1: and it doesn't take long for that to change to Yeah.
11:25
Speaker 1: So the whole thing is like how you cool it down?
11:28
Speaker 1: And you basically would have to have like a giant
11:31
Speaker 1: vat with an ice Wand is what it would take
11:34
Speaker 1: to do it out in the field really yes, because
11:37
Speaker 1: you could sit there and basically stir it with an
11:39
Speaker 1: ice wand to bring the tamp down, maintaining the liquid state.
11:43
Speaker 1: If you get serious about this, I would just think
11:45
Speaker 1: if you get seriously want to be the first guy,
11:47
Speaker 1: or like not the first guy, because everybody's at this
11:49
Speaker 1: point in our history, someone has done everything. But if
11:54
Speaker 1: you want to be one of the guys with the
11:56
Speaker 1: first guy you know about to do it, I would
12:00
Speaker 1: think that you'd go and do it at a place
12:02
Speaker 1: like Doug's place, you know exactly, get already, right, get already,
12:09
Speaker 1: and then on opening day when you know that ample opportunities, right,
12:15
Speaker 1: and then you're all set and blouch and then run
12:20
Speaker 1: over there and start processing your blood sausage. And yeah.
12:23
Speaker 1: So the question is would you shoot it in the
12:25
Speaker 1: lungs and go what you were just explaining that that's
12:31
Speaker 1: where I would capture the blood or would you shoot
12:34
Speaker 1: it somewhere else where you would not cause that internal
12:37
Speaker 1: hemorrhagy and cause all that blood to be in the
12:40
Speaker 1: cavity and then some sort of like try to then
12:43
Speaker 1: cut its throat and drain it that one. I see
12:45
Speaker 1: where you're going with this, But you're into ethical you're
12:48
Speaker 1: into an ethical mind field. If you're saying that you're
12:51
Speaker 1: gonna cripple it up. No, no, no no, I'm not saying
12:53
Speaker 1: so you can then run over their shot place and
12:56
Speaker 1: you can make and and dispatch an ani on the
12:59
Speaker 1: neck sure shoulder shot is probably what I would know
13:04
Speaker 1: if if I was in that situation where God comes
13:08
Speaker 1: down and puts a gun to your head and says
13:10
Speaker 1: you gotta make dear blood sausage. Um, I would uh,
13:18
Speaker 1: I would shoot it through the lungs and then hustle
13:22
Speaker 1: over there and get it on its back. So the
13:27
Speaker 1: blood's not exiting the wound. Hustle over there, get it
13:31
Speaker 1: on its back, wait some number of minutes and uh
13:37
Speaker 1: and and collect it out of there. Going there with
13:40
Speaker 1: a small picture. Yeah, just like a maybe a ladle
13:45
Speaker 1: ladled out start making blood sausage. Um you uh so
13:50
Speaker 1: you haven't watched Only Lovers Left Alive? Have you watched
13:55
Speaker 1: the film's Southern Comfort? I can't say that I have
13:59
Speaker 1: okay insating comfort. It's a great movie. Uh, kind of
14:03
Speaker 1: a ringing endorsement. Well, it tries to take a little
14:06
Speaker 1: bit too much from Easy Rider towards the end. But um,
14:11
Speaker 1: in it, some National Guard guys are on like doing
14:17
Speaker 1: a mock war game scenario and the Bayous of Louisiana
14:23
Speaker 1: and they're out there with just blanks and they get
14:27
Speaker 1: someone get lost, and they steal a you know those
14:31
Speaker 1: like the Cajun dugouts to pure rogues. They steal one
14:35
Speaker 1: because they're lost and they're sick of being lost, and
14:38
Speaker 1: they steal one. And that leads them to getting cross
14:41
Speaker 1: ways with some people that you shouldn't get cross ways with.
14:45
Speaker 1: And then all kinds of it has a lot of
14:48
Speaker 1: elements of deliverance. I was a lot of deliberance, debating
14:52
Speaker 1: whether if you if Deliverance had sex with the easy Rider,
14:57
Speaker 1: that would be the baby. Baby would be Southern comfort.
15:00
Speaker 1: So that's a better enforcement in this. In this they
15:03
Speaker 1: make blood sausage in this movie. Um, and it's like
15:07
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a it's a pretty captivating scene.
15:12
Speaker 1: And another one a documentary called Brother's Keeper. It's a
15:16
Speaker 1: documentary about three brothers who murder their father and their
15:21
Speaker 1: trial for killing their father. Um, they kill a pig
15:25
Speaker 1: and collect some blood out of it. And Yanni, before
15:28
Speaker 1: you embark on your little mission here, you should you
15:30
Speaker 1: should take in some cinema and uh and get some pointers,
15:36
Speaker 1: I will carl Um, Oh, real quick. Now the lion. Yeah,
15:43
Speaker 1: let's get back to that lion. But let's not dwell
15:45
Speaker 1: on it just kind of late. So that again the disclaimer,
15:48
Speaker 1: like we we've all heard this story Steve Johnis and
15:52
Speaker 1: I and we're kind of recounting facts that are maybe
15:55
Speaker 1: a little murky in hindsight. But the takeaway was this
15:58
Speaker 1: guy was a biologist working on the line project. One
16:02
Speaker 1: of the collars goes into a mortality mode from basically
16:06
Speaker 1: being immobile for a certain amount of time, So you
16:09
Speaker 1: know there's likely a dead cat out there. The guy
16:11
Speaker 1: goes out, finds this cat and it looks flawless, like
16:16
Speaker 1: there's no visible evidence that could lead to a an
16:21
Speaker 1: obvious conclusion about the cause of death. So the biologist
16:26
Speaker 1: scoops up the mountain lion takes it back to his garage.
16:29
Speaker 1: If I remember properly, and I want to say it was,
16:31
Speaker 1: it was kind of like the in retrospect looking at
16:33
Speaker 1: it's like the perfect storm because it's the weekend, right,
16:36
Speaker 1: so it's not like during the week where he would
16:38
Speaker 1: then have maybe taken to a lab. And I remember
16:44
Speaker 1: you telling me this part of it. Yea, so, and
16:46
Speaker 1: and that's a perfect example of a detail that I
16:48
Speaker 1: either didn't know or have forgotten already. So hopefully I
16:53
Speaker 1: sufficiently like, listen, trust your instinct, trust remember, because I
16:58
Speaker 1: was recounting es a plane crash that I witnessed the
17:03
Speaker 1: aftermath of and and and this was when I was
17:09
Speaker 1: a child, yeah, okay, not even ten probably, And I
17:14
Speaker 1: was recounting details and I'm like, I can't remember. I
17:16
Speaker 1: think this happened, Think that happened. And then someone found
17:18
Speaker 1: the article and sent it to me, And dude, you
17:21
Speaker 1: gotta when it comes to stuff like this, I feel
17:23
Speaker 1: like you can generally kind of trust the little feelings,
17:27
Speaker 1: like things you kind of felt like you remember. Yeah,
17:29
Speaker 1: And I would feel like that would be a more
17:32
Speaker 1: applicable mindset if this was something that I had experienced
17:36
Speaker 1: as opposed to articles that I'd read, but I did
17:39
Speaker 1: where you're coming from. So, Yeah, the guy takes the
17:43
Speaker 1: cat back to his garage, and, like a good biologist
17:47
Speaker 1: would want to do, he's hell bent on determining the
17:51
Speaker 1: cause of death of this mountain lion and elects to
17:55
Speaker 1: perform a necropsy on the cat, which is basically not
17:59
Speaker 1: a necropsy. Nope, knee crops. Knee crops. I'm gonna I'm
18:02
Speaker 1: gonna give that a firm did that, because I was
18:07
Speaker 1: always confused about that word. Yeah, and I'm sure there's
18:09
Speaker 1: some people who would disagree, but I'd be happy to
18:12
Speaker 1: hash it out with them at a later date. So
18:15
Speaker 1: the process of knee crops, he's essentially going through an
18:20
Speaker 1: eliminating possible causes of death. So one of the first
18:23
Speaker 1: things you do is try to get the skin off
18:25
Speaker 1: the cat and look to see if there's any evidence
18:27
Speaker 1: of trauma that's visible. Kind of superficially once you once
18:33
Speaker 1: you skin the animal out, is there any you know,
18:36
Speaker 1: any explanation, um. And essentially the guy made some mistakes
18:45
Speaker 1: in terms of the standard protocols around limiting your exposure
18:50
Speaker 1: to potential pathogens. And again, if memory serves me correctly,
18:58
Speaker 1: he was using some standard like the kind of tools
19:01
Speaker 1: you would find in your average garage to conduct this
19:04
Speaker 1: knee crops, like reciprocating saw yeah, saws all. And in
19:11
Speaker 1: the process of cutting this cat apart trying to figure
19:14
Speaker 1: out what killed the cat, he ends up exposing himself
19:18
Speaker 1: to a various bodily fluids from the cat. And I
19:23
Speaker 1: don't recall what the exact mode of exposure was, whether
19:28
Speaker 1: something got in his eyes, or whether it got in
19:30
Speaker 1: his mouth or cut in his hand, or if they
19:33
Speaker 1: ever even determined what the route of exposure was. But
19:38
Speaker 1: the takeaway was that within a matter of a very
19:41
Speaker 1: short period of time, like on the order of a
19:44
Speaker 1: day and a half or two days something to that effect,
19:47
Speaker 1: the guy was dead from the plague, which is what
19:50
Speaker 1: had killed the mountain lion. Yeah, And we got on
19:54
Speaker 1: this subject because we were going down the laundry the
19:56
Speaker 1: impressive laundry list of zonotic diseases that Steve and or
20:01
Speaker 1: Janice have wrestled with, which is which is a no?
20:06
Speaker 1: And that's when you don't want to And I used
20:07
Speaker 1: to be used to do tree work, tree surgeon work,
20:10
Speaker 1: and um, the guy worked for hated squirrels, and we
20:14
Speaker 1: differed on that because I always love squirrels, but he
20:15
Speaker 1: hated squirrels because of the plague. Really, and I was like,
20:19
Speaker 1: come on, dude, the plague. But apparently it's something to
20:26
Speaker 1: watch out for. And I don't want to make light
20:30
Speaker 1: of this man's debt. No, I don't either go and
20:33
Speaker 1: find to go and find. Uh. If you go to
20:38
Speaker 1: the me eater dot com slash podcasts, you will find
20:42
Speaker 1: podcast descriptions of all the episodes and within that, when
20:46
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, go there and we will have that.
20:52
Speaker 1: We will find that pure reviewed journal article and put
20:56
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah, and I'm glad that you said that, Steve,
20:58
Speaker 1: because I could I could see myself or any number
21:06
Speaker 1: of colleagues potentially making that kind of a mistake, you know,
21:11
Speaker 1: like the notion of being killed by the plague when
21:14
Speaker 1: you're trying to do any cropsy on the mountain line.
21:16
Speaker 1: It was not the first thing on that gentleman's mind.
21:18
Speaker 1: And you know, we're obviously not trying to make light
21:22
Speaker 1: of the situation in any way, but it's a it's
21:25
Speaker 1: a powerful story because um zoonotic diseases are not something
21:29
Speaker 1: to mess around with. And I feel like, you know,
21:32
Speaker 1: we have a tendency to kind of get cavalier with
21:34
Speaker 1: the way we handle dead animals. Yeah, there's no reason
21:39
Speaker 1: why I don't use latex gloves, but I don't use
21:42
Speaker 1: latex gloves. Um. I even sometimes carry him with me
21:47
Speaker 1: and don't use them. Well, even when I use them,
21:49
Speaker 1: I feel like half the time I end up with
21:50
Speaker 1: as much blood inside the glove as you know, more
21:52
Speaker 1: than I would I have for garage chores. I have
21:56
Speaker 1: some very heavy duty ones that I keep thinking about
21:59
Speaker 1: bringing with me, but I don't do it because one,
22:01
Speaker 1: I don't like it when I don't like going down
22:04
Speaker 1: that path, and I don't like going down it with
22:06
Speaker 1: myself or with my kids, of always thinking that everything's
22:11
Speaker 1: gonna hurt you. Yeah, And I don't like when I
22:16
Speaker 1: catch myself in a paranoid state, and and I don't
22:20
Speaker 1: like to act like the world so dangerous all the time,
22:24
Speaker 1: and that everything's bad and gonna get you. Well, let's
22:27
Speaker 1: let's talk on this. What is the threat of um, Like,
22:31
Speaker 1: just let's take the white tail deer and you're gutting it.
22:34
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what blood born what
22:38
Speaker 1: blood born pathogens one is trying to avoid on a
22:41
Speaker 1: white tail deer. Yeah, I would say, I am not
22:46
Speaker 1: really well equipped to answer that, but I'll give you
22:48
Speaker 1: a brief tail along these lines. Um, some good friends
22:52
Speaker 1: of mine up in Wisconsin, we would have these annual
22:56
Speaker 1: parties where we would all make a mountain of sausage,
23:00
Speaker 1: right the annual sausage Fest. And so you're you butcher
23:05
Speaker 1: and deer and all the random cuts that you wouldn't
23:07
Speaker 1: be packaging as like a roast or steak or whatever.
23:10
Speaker 1: You throw those in a big heap. And then at
23:12
Speaker 1: some point later on in the year, after the hunting
23:15
Speaker 1: was over, though, have a big sausage party. So not
23:19
Speaker 1: naming names, you guys know who I'm talking about here,
23:23
Speaker 1: the guy. The guy's listening will know we had a
23:26
Speaker 1: sausage party where the the rules of proper like hygiene
23:34
Speaker 1: and handling the meat we're not followed. And by all accounts,
23:38
Speaker 1: the series of events was one of our sausage making
23:41
Speaker 1: team with meaty hands, touched the door knob with the
23:47
Speaker 1: meaty hands not doing enough hand washing between touching the
23:51
Speaker 1: meat touching the door knob, and ended up later like,
23:56
Speaker 1: not not very long later, but after the sausages are made,
24:00
Speaker 1: grabbing the door handle which still probably had some of
24:02
Speaker 1: this meat juice on it. And other members of this
24:07
Speaker 1: individual's family also did the same thing and ended up
24:11
Speaker 1: with a pretty wicked case of food born illness cranking
24:14
Speaker 1: through the family from well, you know, it came from
24:18
Speaker 1: the door knob. Well, like, the series of events is
24:21
Speaker 1: what leads to the conclusion that it had to do
24:23
Speaker 1: with the meat handling. So the door knob is the
24:28
Speaker 1: the point on the house that was identified as the
24:31
Speaker 1: likely thing. A lot of people were handling, and there
24:34
Speaker 1: was a point in time where the hands went from
24:36
Speaker 1: the sausage meat to the door and this person was like, oh,
24:40
Speaker 1: it's no big deal. Yeah, And the conclusion, and it's
24:45
Speaker 1: not bulletproof, but the conclusion is that it likely came
24:49
Speaker 1: from getting this meat juice, So it's kind of a
24:52
Speaker 1: food born thing as opposed to his ownoutic disease. But
24:55
Speaker 1: I do think like in general, we have a tendency
24:59
Speaker 1: to be kind of cav leer around this stuff. That said,
25:02
Speaker 1: your point about choosing what you want to be scared of.
25:06
Speaker 1: You know, when I think, you know, you don't have
25:08
Speaker 1: to be an an actuary scientist to recognize that the
25:13
Speaker 1: things we do that are the most dangerous do not
25:16
Speaker 1: involve handling dead animals. Right, It's like getting behind the wheel.
25:21
Speaker 1: So if you want to be scared about something, I
25:23
Speaker 1: would suggest that's like at the top of your list.
25:26
Speaker 1: That would be like a high priority scary thing. Yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: so your point is well taken. But I the reason
25:31
Speaker 1: I I'm going on about this is that I could
25:34
Speaker 1: see a lot of really good people, like sound biologists
25:39
Speaker 1: being a little bit cavalier in approaching a dead animal
25:43
Speaker 1: like that, wanting to get to the bottom of what
25:45
Speaker 1: killed it, and making the same mistakes. So I have
25:48
Speaker 1: a lot of sympathy for what that man went through
25:51
Speaker 1: and also his family. You know, it's a horrible story. Yeah,
25:54
Speaker 1: and it's like what what what not? That you blame
25:58
Speaker 1: the debt, But what's to alleviates blame is it it
26:03
Speaker 1: was so unusual that we're now sitting around talking about it.
26:08
Speaker 1: This was a couple of years ago too, they wrote
26:11
Speaker 1: someone wrote a paper about in a peer review journal.
26:15
Speaker 1: So it's like if it was just a thing that like, oh,
26:18
Speaker 1: any idiot would know right right, me and Yanni got
26:22
Speaker 1: sick from eating undercook bear meat while talking about how
26:26
Speaker 1: we're probably gonna get sick from eating undercook bear meat.
26:29
Speaker 1: So that's like a level of stupidity that this really
26:33
Speaker 1: isn't because something that just like so unexpected and without
26:36
Speaker 1: precedent struck this guy. It wasn't like, ha ha, uh
26:42
Speaker 1: this is really stupid. We could get sick from this
26:44
Speaker 1: undercook bear meat. Let's have some more, you know. Yeah,
26:49
Speaker 1: like if we'd have died from that, I'd be like, yeah,
26:51
Speaker 1: that's worth a chuckle, like the stupid ending. Yeah, now,
26:59
Speaker 1: just changed subject real quick. The thing I wanted to
27:01
Speaker 1: tell people about, um, you know, they're unrelated, like not
27:06
Speaker 1: that any of this is related. Can you real quick
27:09
Speaker 1: get into that? You used to uh be a contract
27:15
Speaker 1: dear shooter for airport, So I'll get into that. Uh,
27:20
Speaker 1: it's not not a very accurate that's not inspanation of
27:24
Speaker 1: how it went, Like me isn't a good job? No, well,
27:30
Speaker 1: but it was not far enough off the off the mark.
27:32
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. Um, I actually, as an undergraduate,
27:39
Speaker 1: incorporated my own business and then bid for a number
27:42
Speaker 1: of contracts to wildlife management work. And I had a
27:45
Speaker 1: number of clientele that included, uh proving grounds for automobiles
27:52
Speaker 1: and no airport work in essence. It was very similar
27:57
Speaker 1: to airport work where you were trying to alleviate human
28:01
Speaker 1: wildlife conflicts in essence by removing wildlife from the scene.
28:06
Speaker 1: And uh, so I've shot a lot of deer, a
28:11
Speaker 1: lot of turkeys, and situations that were far from hunting context.
28:17
Speaker 1: And for folks who haven't done that kind of work,
28:19
Speaker 1: you know, it might sound like, oh, man getting paid
28:21
Speaker 1: to shoot deer, that sounds awesome that you get over
28:25
Speaker 1: that real quick. Yeah, And it's you know, it's really
28:27
Speaker 1: hard work. And also, you know, my my mentality around
28:32
Speaker 1: hunting around wildlife is such that I don't take killing lightly.
28:39
Speaker 1: And when I when I have a successful hunt, and
28:45
Speaker 1: my mindset is in this mode of thinking about meals
28:48
Speaker 1: like the one we just had and stocking up. You
28:52
Speaker 1: know that the translation of death to food. It feels good,
28:59
Speaker 1: it feels something to celebrate and feel happy about. But
29:03
Speaker 1: when you're thinking when the animal is in this context
29:06
Speaker 1: of being a problem, and you're like, I need to
29:08
Speaker 1: eliminate this problem by killing this animal. It is a
29:15
Speaker 1: very different set of emotions that I personally experienced in
29:18
Speaker 1: that sort of a setting. So we're talking, you know,
29:20
Speaker 1: like in a given year, I might I might shoot
29:25
Speaker 1: or I might have shot in some of those years
29:27
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of like fifty or sixty deer in
29:30
Speaker 1: a year, and it doesn't take too many deer into
29:35
Speaker 1: that fifty dear, let's say before You're kind of like, man,
29:40
Speaker 1: this is not pleasant at least again for me personally,
29:44
Speaker 1: that Lincoln was all that. If that was your only relationship,
29:49
Speaker 1: it might have been different. But you're juxtaposing it to
29:51
Speaker 1: the feeling, to the celebratory feeling of hunting for meat.
29:56
Speaker 1: So you had that that confusion occurring in your head.
29:58
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's confusion. I've feel like even
30:00
Speaker 1: now and yeah, I feel like it's just it's so disparate.
30:06
Speaker 1: They're so there's such different things, you know, Like and
30:09
Speaker 1: again in the hunting world, this this word hunting two
30:12
Speaker 1: folks who haven't especially to folks who haven't experienced it,
30:15
Speaker 1: a lot of different things kind of get put under
30:18
Speaker 1: that umbrella. A lot of different activities and this this
30:21
Speaker 1: is very much we're talking about calling wildlife, which is
30:25
Speaker 1: a very different thing from hunting. Both involve killing wildlife.
30:32
Speaker 1: One of them, to me is something you know that
30:36
Speaker 1: I enjoy more than almost any other activity, Like it's
30:42
Speaker 1: one of the most satisfying things I've experienced is being
30:45
Speaker 1: able to hunt and feed my family through that activity.
30:49
Speaker 1: The other thing calling UM, I see the I see
30:53
Speaker 1: the merit, I see the value in that management approach,
30:59
Speaker 1: and there's there's a utility to being able to manage
31:03
Speaker 1: wildlife in that way. But when you're the person pulling
31:07
Speaker 1: the trigger, at least based on my experience being in
31:10
Speaker 1: that role, it is a night and day different experience
31:15
Speaker 1: from going out with the hope that you're going to
31:18
Speaker 1: fill your freezer. How how would you how would you
31:21
Speaker 1: get paid for that kind of work? Well, I had
31:24
Speaker 1: a had a corporation I incorporated. It would have been
31:28
Speaker 1: about two thousand three, and I ran that business for
31:32
Speaker 1: ten years. UM. I had contracts in place where I
31:36
Speaker 1: was I would essentially charge by the hour, so I
31:40
Speaker 1: keep track of the amount of time I was out
31:42
Speaker 1: doing the work. UM and then for virtually all the species.
31:47
Speaker 1: All this work was done in Michigan, by the way,
31:49
Speaker 1: and none of it involved migratory wildlife species. So it
31:53
Speaker 1: was always the situation that the State of Michigan would
31:56
Speaker 1: issue a special essentially permit to be able to kill
32:01
Speaker 1: those species in the interest of of managing Were they
32:05
Speaker 1: sanctioned to do that for geese or would that fall
32:07
Speaker 1: under migratory waterfil Yeah, so geese are a good example
32:09
Speaker 1: and actually resident in the It doesn't matter if the
32:12
Speaker 1: resident or not because it's a migratory species. So in
32:16
Speaker 1: order to secure a similar permit to manage migratory waterfall
32:19
Speaker 1: as an example, um, you need to also have federal
32:23
Speaker 1: involvement fishing, Wildlife Service involvement to get a permit for that.
32:27
Speaker 1: So never crossed into that arena. Predominantly what we were
32:30
Speaker 1: dealing with, we're white tailed deer and wild turkeys. So
32:33
Speaker 1: I've shot, like for a midwesterner, I've shot more turkeys
32:36
Speaker 1: with a rifle than probably any guy you'll meet. Um.
32:40
Speaker 1: And again that also was very you know, a lot
32:42
Speaker 1: of this was shooting from vehicles. A lot of the
32:45
Speaker 1: culling work with white tail deer happens at night. Shooting
32:48
Speaker 1: him with spotlight. So it's not at all about fair chase.
32:53
Speaker 1: You're not. You don't charge by the deer, You're charged
32:56
Speaker 1: by the hour. That's correct, Yep, got you. You know
32:59
Speaker 1: that was gonna be. My question is it's like, so sure,
33:03
Speaker 1: the point the trigger is different, you know that aspect
33:06
Speaker 1: of it was different, But did you ever feel like
33:07
Speaker 1: you're hunting during the things like you're using totally different
33:13
Speaker 1: You're just max like you know, one of the and
33:16
Speaker 1: I love to I love to bow hunt. Um, I
33:20
Speaker 1: love hunting and challenging situations. We've been talking a little
33:24
Speaker 1: bit about this archery Ibex hunt here in New Mexico
33:27
Speaker 1: that I've enjoyed the last few years, which has a
33:29
Speaker 1: very low success rate. So I like havin the deck
33:34
Speaker 1: stacked against me. I like the challenge and with the
33:37
Speaker 1: culling operations, you are doing everything you can to be
33:42
Speaker 1: as efficient as you can be while accounting for human safety,
33:48
Speaker 1: because that's another element here as we're talking about wildlife management,
33:51
Speaker 1: oftentimes in a landscape that is very much human dominated,
33:56
Speaker 1: so you have people all around you know you're you're
34:00
Speaker 1: dealing with trying to be absolutely safe with every shot
34:05
Speaker 1: you're taking. As is the case obviously when you're hunting
34:08
Speaker 1: as well, but it's so much easier to accomplish that
34:10
Speaker 1: when you're in a remote landscape, when you're in like suburbia.
34:14
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, like no holds barred. You're talking about
34:19
Speaker 1: shooting at night, shooting from vehicles, baiting, um you name it.
34:25
Speaker 1: And that also, you know, feeds into this easily discernible,
34:30
Speaker 1: discernible disparity that I've I've been talking about a little
34:34
Speaker 1: bit already. Yeah, I would. I wouldn't do that. I
34:37
Speaker 1: mean there's many times for the bulk of my life
34:42
Speaker 1: I would have It's a luxury to be able to
34:45
Speaker 1: say that I wouldn't take that work now because I
34:48
Speaker 1: don't need to. But I did do like work like that, trapping,
34:54
Speaker 1: animal controls, animal damage control, trapping, but never shooting, and
35:00
Speaker 1: um no, no, man, I wouldn't be like sweet, it's
35:03
Speaker 1: like a type a hunt. Yeah, it wouldn't. I wouldn't
35:06
Speaker 1: feel like that. Another thing that makes it feel way
35:10
Speaker 1: more like work is when you're talking about dealing with
35:13
Speaker 1: that number of animals, because a lot of times what
35:15
Speaker 1: we end up doing is like donating the meat to
35:18
Speaker 1: a food bank, you know, like you couldn't do that.
35:20
Speaker 1: I was gonna guess that you had that you had
35:22
Speaker 1: to discard it because of the permit process, now we
35:24
Speaker 1: were able to we were able to donate, donate the
35:27
Speaker 1: meat from the turkeys and the deer. So you dress
35:30
Speaker 1: all those deer out, yeah, yeah. And when so imagine
35:33
Speaker 1: you're on like a five day deer hunt and you
35:36
Speaker 1: succeed in filling your tag and getting a deer, and
35:39
Speaker 1: all that work of field dressing, dragging the animal around
35:42
Speaker 1: or quartering it up, packing it out, that all feels
35:45
Speaker 1: kind of like a celebratory part of the process. You know,
35:48
Speaker 1: it's hard work, but it's kind of the icing on
35:51
Speaker 1: the cake. It's like the hard the hard work that
35:53
Speaker 1: you have earned the privilege of doing through your successful hunt.
35:56
Speaker 1: But when you start talking about like okay, we know
36:00
Speaker 1: we want to try to remove forty or fifty deer
36:03
Speaker 1: from this site, that that becomes a huge amount of work.
36:08
Speaker 1: So I got like I thought I knew how to feel,
36:11
Speaker 1: dress and handle a white tail based on my hunting
36:14
Speaker 1: experience leading up to that point. But I got a
36:16
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of experience in a short period
36:18
Speaker 1: of time handling that many deer. But it felt entirely
36:23
Speaker 1: like work. I was. I had to like, I don't
36:30
Speaker 1: want to call it hunting, um uh, but because I
36:36
Speaker 1: can't think of a better word right now. I I
36:38
Speaker 1: hunted in Scotland one time, and in Scotland, you know,
36:42
Speaker 1: in Scotland, hunting typically refers to fox hunting. We start
36:46
Speaker 1: say stalking, right That's it was funny about it was
36:49
Speaker 1: it there's this guy and he and you know, and
36:52
Speaker 1: they're like, what we have the North American model of
36:55
Speaker 1: wildlife and here wildlife is public property. So whether if
36:59
Speaker 1: wildlife on private properties still owned by the public, it
37:02
Speaker 1: just happens to be residing on private in Scotland. If
37:06
Speaker 1: you own the land, you on the animals on it.
37:09
Speaker 1: And uh they sell the meat into marketplaces. So when
37:13
Speaker 1: you go into a butcher's shop in Scotland, it's you'll
37:16
Speaker 1: find rabbits and ducks that have shotgun pellets in them,
37:20
Speaker 1: and you'll find deer that have been shot by guns
37:23
Speaker 1: hanging in there. And so on one hand they're running
37:26
Speaker 1: an operation where they're coaling deer and selling them, but
37:32
Speaker 1: when there's a client, they put on a different, even
37:35
Speaker 1: different outfit of clothing. You get dressed up in the
37:38
Speaker 1: like the tweeds, which is ridiculous, dressed up in a
37:42
Speaker 1: little suit and you go out and stock or hunt
37:47
Speaker 1: red deer. So I went and did this with the gamekeeper, um,
37:51
Speaker 1: the yeager meister, right, the gamekeeper, and I remember what
37:54
Speaker 1: we did this, And the next day he was going
37:58
Speaker 1: back out to coal, different clothes, different firearm, but would
38:04
Speaker 1: go out into the same area and set up on
38:07
Speaker 1: a knob and shoot red deer. And he somehow was
38:15
Speaker 1: able to maintain the dichotomy that there's no there's cooling
38:24
Speaker 1: and then they're stalking, and I'm like, but as best
38:26
Speaker 1: as I could tell, they had to do with the tweeds, right.
38:33
Speaker 1: And when it gets when hunting gets that like hunting
38:39
Speaker 1: that borders that close on something else, it's like, it's
38:43
Speaker 1: just like you said, it's just not honey, it's not hunting.
38:49
Speaker 1: It's like you're shooting in a semi wild form of lot.
38:53
Speaker 1: You're like dispatching a semi wild form of livestock. You know,
39:00
Speaker 1: there's nothing I want to ask you about. Oh what
39:02
Speaker 1: kind of gun? Jeus, and you're doing that. I shot
39:05
Speaker 1: a Tica M in a two forty three caliber, so
39:10
Speaker 1: I've shot with like a suppressor. I did not shoot
39:13
Speaker 1: a suppressor and the reason for that was the licensing
39:17
Speaker 1: process in Michigan was sufficiently difficult to navigate that I
39:23
Speaker 1: did not embark down that path. That was a funny
39:27
Speaker 1: thing about Scotland. This is before suppressors started to be
39:31
Speaker 1: able to use here, and um, you know, quite a
39:33
Speaker 1: few years ago and I was like, man, I can't
39:36
Speaker 1: believe you boys can use suppressors. And they're like, I
39:39
Speaker 1: can't believe you boys hunt without them? You crazy? Yeah,
39:43
Speaker 1: they thought it was irresponsible to hunt without a suppressor.
39:47
Speaker 1: My ears would agree with you, not just yours, with
39:50
Speaker 1: the dude next to you. Um, let me now, let
39:53
Speaker 1: me ask you this question, because is something you told
39:54
Speaker 1: me about. Uh, You're in China and you're at the
40:00
Speaker 1: latitude roughly the same latitude where you spent your entire life,
40:06
Speaker 1: and you're telling me how you're out in the woods
40:08
Speaker 1: and there's like equivalents yeah for everything. Yeah, tell that,
40:14
Speaker 1: explain that and untell the like the big exception. Yeah,
40:19
Speaker 1: do you know what I'm talking about? I do. I
40:20
Speaker 1: totally do. And in Michigan, at least one of the
40:22
Speaker 1: cool things is you travel from south to north um
40:27
Speaker 1: the state of Michigan along the side of the highway
40:30
Speaker 1: has these signs that indicate when you've passed the parallel.
40:35
Speaker 1: I don't know if other states do that or not.
40:36
Speaker 1: Have you seen those other places, but I know I
40:38
Speaker 1: think of it as a distinctly Michigan thing that sells
40:40
Speaker 1: you when you passed that was that was where Dixon
40:44
Speaker 1: line I think is the Yeah. So the like if
40:49
Speaker 1: you look at a map of the US, that big
40:51
Speaker 1: arcing line that defines most of our northern borders, the
40:55
Speaker 1: forty nine. But when you you crossed the fort they
40:59
Speaker 1: put a line because you're halfway between the equator in
41:03
Speaker 1: the North Pole, and like each degree of latitude I
41:06
Speaker 1: think gives you about seventy miles as you march up.
41:09
Speaker 1: It sounds about right. Yeah, So that was my you know,
41:13
Speaker 1: like as a middle school student, I remember passing those
41:16
Speaker 1: signs and that was finally what helped me like differentiate
41:18
Speaker 1: between longitude and latitude. And I have fond memories of
41:23
Speaker 1: traveling traveling up to the cabin and passing the parallel
41:27
Speaker 1: sign on our way up there. And so if you
41:29
Speaker 1: think you would say, like halfway between the equator and
41:32
Speaker 1: North Pole, yeah or something, it worded it beyond just
41:36
Speaker 1: explain what that meant. I would love to have that
41:40
Speaker 1: sign in front of me right now to refresh my memory.
41:43
Speaker 1: But I do remember, like the notion of equidistant between
41:47
Speaker 1: the equator and the north pole. So if you were
41:50
Speaker 1: to hop on that forty parallel and just start trapsing
41:53
Speaker 1: along that line at the same latitude and then get
41:56
Speaker 1: over to China, the same kind of distance between your
42:00
Speaker 1: equator and through Wisconsin Minnesota, Well that's if you go north.
42:06
Speaker 1: I'm just you could go either way. Damn near the
42:09
Speaker 1: same distance either way. So the study sites. Can I
42:13
Speaker 1: interrupt you, because remind me of something? Bring it, you know,
42:17
Speaker 1: like when your kid and they say, like, oh, if
42:18
Speaker 1: you dug a hole straight down, you'd come out in China,
42:24
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't you would if you got your angle
42:26
Speaker 1: right most people in America. But you know what that's called.
42:28
Speaker 1: It's called the antipities. Wherever you are, if you burrowed
42:33
Speaker 1: the hole nuts down through the the core of the
42:39
Speaker 1: earth and hit you would arrive at your previous locations antipities.
42:45
Speaker 1: And that's that's singular or those those two points would
42:48
Speaker 1: be antipoities that I don't know all right, but there
42:51
Speaker 1: you are, so follow that around the globe halfway, and
42:57
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere in like west west central China, Sichuan Province,
43:02
Speaker 1: so I was doing I was doing some research there
43:04
Speaker 1: in eight different nature reserves in Sichuan, Shanxi, and Yunan provinces,
43:10
Speaker 1: kind of the southwestern part of the country. And for
43:13
Speaker 1: for folks to imagine kind of the geography of China,
43:16
Speaker 1: it's got some striking similarities to the layout of the
43:20
Speaker 1: United States, where along the eastern coast of China you
43:25
Speaker 1: have these major concentrations of people, like huge cities, you
43:30
Speaker 1: know that like the termite mound housing just like high
43:35
Speaker 1: rises with tons and tons of people. But then if
43:37
Speaker 1: you go out to the wild west of Chinese, startetting
43:39
Speaker 1: into some rugged country that is relatively remote um and
43:46
Speaker 1: in that chunk of the country kind of west central
43:52
Speaker 1: southern China is where you'll find Shanshi, Sichuan, Yunan provinces.
43:59
Speaker 1: And I was doing some work the Asiatic black bears
44:01
Speaker 1: in eight different nature reserves in those three provinces, and
44:05
Speaker 1: one of the study sites where I worked is in
44:08
Speaker 1: northern Sichuan Province and a nature reserve called Tanja hu
44:13
Speaker 1: and this this place, it's kind of it reminds me
44:16
Speaker 1: kind of like the Chronicles of Narnia, where you'd see vegetation.
44:21
Speaker 1: That makes sense because you're at this latitude where you know,
44:23
Speaker 1: I grew up around oak trees and kind of maple
44:26
Speaker 1: beech forest, and you know, I knew the pine trees
44:31
Speaker 1: and the spruce trees of my home forests in northern Michigan.
44:37
Speaker 1: But if you caught a glimpse of a deer in Michigan,
44:41
Speaker 1: you know you didn't have to double take. You know
44:43
Speaker 1: it was a white tailed deer, whereas in Tanjah Huh.
44:47
Speaker 1: I believe there are seven different ungulate species in that reserve.
44:50
Speaker 1: So you might catch a little glimmer of how big
44:52
Speaker 1: is this reserve. It's a good question, and I would
44:57
Speaker 1: have to do a little digging. I think I've actually
44:58
Speaker 1: got that fig year. I I printed off a couple
45:01
Speaker 1: of papers from there, so I'll try to get you
45:03
Speaker 1: get your number on that while I chatting here. But
45:06
Speaker 1: you would see species like musk deer, um mount jack
45:12
Speaker 1: or barking deer as they're called gorel zero. There was
45:18
Speaker 1: this amazing you know, one of the most epic animals
45:21
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in the wild is the Sichuan Golden Talking,
45:26
Speaker 1: which is this huge mountain Yeah. This this description won't
45:32
Speaker 1: do it justice, Like people should just look this animal
45:34
Speaker 1: up and check out pictures of its Sichuan Golden Talking.
45:37
Speaker 1: But it's like a stout, really sort of front heavy
45:44
Speaker 1: goat of the mountains that's massive, like on the order
45:47
Speaker 1: of I'm just winging a guest here. They probably weigh
45:50
Speaker 1: five d six hundred pounds the wild mountain goat. Yeah,
45:54
Speaker 1: but I'm staying mountain goat. And it's like, you're gonna
45:57
Speaker 1: see a picture of this thing, be like that doesn't
45:58
Speaker 1: look like a mountain goat, this big golden uh like
46:04
Speaker 1: flowing for they stick out on the side of a
46:07
Speaker 1: hill like you wouldn't need good glass defying these things.
46:10
Speaker 1: They just stick out like a sore thumb. And when
46:13
Speaker 1: I was when I was working in these nature reserves,
46:15
Speaker 1: I was thinking, you know, what kind of animals do
46:18
Speaker 1: you need to be worried about out here? Asiatic black
46:20
Speaker 1: bears are notoriously more aggressive than American black bears, So
46:25
Speaker 1: I was always kind of like bears in the back
46:27
Speaker 1: of my mind. And then I'd heard stories about nature
46:30
Speaker 1: reserve staff having gnarly encounters with wild boars from time
46:34
Speaker 1: to time, especially if they had young with them. So
46:36
Speaker 1: it's you know, kind of hip to the fact, and
46:38
Speaker 1: that's wild boars in their native ring yep. And then
46:43
Speaker 1: what I didn't realize is that this animal to talking.
46:47
Speaker 1: According to the folks who live in that chunk of
46:49
Speaker 1: country and told me all their stories, that was the
46:52
Speaker 1: animal to be the most worried about. And the reason
46:54
Speaker 1: for that is that they lived in such rugged stuff.
46:58
Speaker 1: There were these these paths us is that villagers would
47:02
Speaker 1: use to traverse the reserve between communities, so like footpaths,
47:07
Speaker 1: and they'd be up in the rugged high country and
47:12
Speaker 1: on the same trail as a talking and people would
47:16
Speaker 1: fairly often, apparently based on the stories I was told,
47:19
Speaker 1: have situations where they would they would have an option
47:22
Speaker 1: of either getting run over by these things because they
47:26
Speaker 1: they'll charge you if they feel like they're threatened, or
47:29
Speaker 1: bailing off the side of some nasty cliff and breaking
47:32
Speaker 1: their legs, or even dying. And there was a researcher
47:36
Speaker 1: on a talking project working in that chunk of country
47:39
Speaker 1: who um, I was trying to dart one of these things,
47:43
Speaker 1: and I didn't witness this happen, but I heard the
47:45
Speaker 1: story and the guy was in kind of a tight
47:48
Speaker 1: spot when he took the shot and the talking after
47:51
Speaker 1: getting hit with the dart ended up chasing him off
47:54
Speaker 1: a ledge and he jumped off this ledge and and
47:57
Speaker 1: kind of jacked up one of his ankles, like not
47:59
Speaker 1: a major or fall, but on the order like fift.
48:02
Speaker 1: So the talk and it turns out, was the animal
48:05
Speaker 1: to be most concerned about in that landscape. So just
48:09
Speaker 1: the biodiversity was amazing. But the story that I was
48:12
Speaker 1: telling you a while back, Steve, was, you know, I'm
48:15
Speaker 1: in this forest for the first time. I'm I'm kind
48:17
Speaker 1: of trying to get my bearings from a botanical perspective, understand, Like, Okay,
48:22
Speaker 1: so there's a that looks like a chestnut tree, that
48:25
Speaker 1: looks like, uh, an oak tree, it looks like a
48:30
Speaker 1: walnut tree. And I'm kind of starting to feel like,
48:34
Speaker 1: all right, I get this forest. And as I'm walking
48:37
Speaker 1: along this ridge up ahead, I see tree limbs swinging,
48:42
Speaker 1: I hear branches breaking, and I'm thinking, oh, maybe that's
48:45
Speaker 1: maybe that's a bear up there or you know who
48:48
Speaker 1: that who that knows what it's gonna be I kind
48:50
Speaker 1: of close the distance a little bit, and there's this
48:53
Speaker 1: whole string of golden monkeys in the oak forest, jumping
48:58
Speaker 1: around in the tree tops, and they see me and
49:01
Speaker 1: start vocalizing, barking, yelling, and there are monkeys running along
49:08
Speaker 1: the forest floor. There are monkeys crashing through the treetops,
49:12
Speaker 1: and I remember just standing there thinking to myself, I'm
49:15
Speaker 1: not in Michigan anymore. This is a different ball game here.
49:20
Speaker 1: So yeah, really fantastic as as a wildlife biologist, just
49:25
Speaker 1: getting a chance to experience a different a different piece
49:29
Speaker 1: of ground, um with that kind of biodiversity. And it
49:34
Speaker 1: was really humbling too, because I thought, you know, I
49:36
Speaker 1: had these these preconceived notions of what China was like
49:39
Speaker 1: that we're really really ignorant, frankly, Um, I was just
49:43
Speaker 1: imagining like a massive sea of humanity and people, you know,
49:49
Speaker 1: packed in on top of each other, and some of
49:51
Speaker 1: the cities, you know, I've I've felt that way in
49:54
Speaker 1: the cities. But there are places in these reserves that
49:57
Speaker 1: are every bit is breathtaking as anything I've seen anywhere
50:01
Speaker 1: else in the world, and the biodiversity is unbelievable. Places
50:04
Speaker 1: where you can you know, drink the water that's bubbling
50:07
Speaker 1: out of streams and high elevation rivers where you can,
50:14
Speaker 1: you know, stand on a cliff and look down and
50:15
Speaker 1: see every pebble on the bottom of the stream. Just
50:18
Speaker 1: beautiful landscapes. But another important distinction that I love to
50:23
Speaker 1: point out to folks who enjoy recreating in our public
50:26
Speaker 1: lands here in the US is that some of these
50:30
Speaker 1: reserves are in essence very difficult for the average Chinese
50:37
Speaker 1: citizen to access, and the recreational opportunities are very limited
50:43
Speaker 1: because it's cost prohibitive to get there. No, because they're
50:47
Speaker 1: not they're not the lands are not set aside to
50:51
Speaker 1: provide necessarily uh for recreational opportunity. These are these reserves
50:57
Speaker 1: were in large part established to protect the remnant habitat
51:01
Speaker 1: of pandas so they they exist primarily as a conservation
51:09
Speaker 1: tool for a species of you know, kind of globally
51:12
Speaker 1: recognized significance. It's like the poster child of Chinese conservation.
51:18
Speaker 1: And they're not operating under a multiple use now, it's
51:22
Speaker 1: a conservation mandate. Now that being said, it was also
51:25
Speaker 1: really interesting to note how much agriculture was happening inside
51:31
Speaker 1: the boundaries of some of these reserves, And that was
51:33
Speaker 1: one of the things that the research I was doing
51:35
Speaker 1: focused on was um the degree to which agricultural activity
51:41
Speaker 1: inside of the nature's or boundaries related to the stress
51:49
Speaker 1: responses of bears in that landscape. So I was looking
51:53
Speaker 1: at the relationship between the production of hormones indicative of
51:58
Speaker 1: sort of a stress response to a variety of factors,
52:01
Speaker 1: including human activity, including natural food abundance, including whether the
52:06
Speaker 1: bears were within the boundaries of a nature reserve or
52:09
Speaker 1: outside the boundaries of the nature reserve, the overall kind
52:12
Speaker 1: of quality of the habitat um. And so you hear
52:18
Speaker 1: the word nature reserve and it might elicit a picture
52:20
Speaker 1: in your mind of, you know, kind of an undisturbed landscape.
52:24
Speaker 1: But within the boundaries of some of these reserves you
52:26
Speaker 1: have people living, raising livestock, growing crops, in some cases poaching.
52:35
Speaker 1: So it's not as simple as it might seem at first. Blush,
52:39
Speaker 1: what is the um? You can approach us wherever you want.
52:44
Speaker 1: But but I know that one of the things you
52:46
Speaker 1: did there is you delivered a lecture on the North
52:50
Speaker 1: American model. So you delivered a lecture on the idea
52:54
Speaker 1: of publicly owned wildlife and public harvest of sustainable resources,
53:02
Speaker 1: which is like a foreign concept there. Explain that, but
53:07
Speaker 1: also explain what what is like and what what forms
53:11
Speaker 1: does hunting take in China. So I'll start off by
53:19
Speaker 1: saying I've presented that kind of a presentation in a
53:22
Speaker 1: variety of formats in China, and that included speaking to
53:27
Speaker 1: university classes at Peaking University about the various models of
53:31
Speaker 1: resource use around the country, including the North American model, Yeah,
53:36
Speaker 1: thank you, around the world, So talking about subsistence hunting,
53:40
Speaker 1: talking about the European model, the African model, the North
53:44
Speaker 1: American model, and what's the African model real quick? So
53:47
Speaker 1: the African model would be basically wealthy international tourists paying
53:55
Speaker 1: high dollar to come in typically in a guided form
54:00
Speaker 1: at and hunt and pay in a way that the
54:05
Speaker 1: finances directly benefit the community and the conservation of the
54:11
Speaker 1: place where the hunting is take is occurring. And China
54:14
Speaker 1: actually had a very similar model to that up until
54:18
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. So this kind of gets into
54:20
Speaker 1: your second part of your question. Um, one of the
54:24
Speaker 1: forms of hunting that has historically occurred in China is
54:28
Speaker 1: this same model where you know, wealthy international adventure seekers
54:33
Speaker 1: would pay big money, um, you know, tens of thousands
54:37
Speaker 1: of dollars for a tag and pursue any number of species,
54:42
Speaker 1: including by the way, the Sichuan golden talking that I
54:45
Speaker 1: talked about, that was one of the species that people
54:47
Speaker 1: would pay to be able to hunt. Another one that
54:49
Speaker 1: would that would incentivize local people to not kill and
54:56
Speaker 1: eat the animals. It's more alive, it's it's worth far
55:01
Speaker 1: more to some out of town dude than it is
55:04
Speaker 1: in your cooking pot. Yeah. So a really good example
55:07
Speaker 1: of that, and one of the one of the places
55:09
Speaker 1: where I presented on this subject. In two thousand and ten,
55:13
Speaker 1: there was a workshop that was hosted by a variety
55:17
Speaker 1: of partners, including the Chinese government, to essentially explore the
55:22
Speaker 1: idea of reopening this sport hunting program that had been
55:27
Speaker 1: closed in two thousand six. And this was hosted up
55:30
Speaker 1: in the northwest part of China in a province called Shinjian,
55:34
Speaker 1: in a city called Urumuchi, and that's close to the
55:38
Speaker 1: border with Mongolia. By close, I mean it's like a
55:41
Speaker 1: I don't know, fifteen hour horrendous bus ride. But if
55:44
Speaker 1: you go north in Shinjian towards Mongolia, there's this huge
55:50
Speaker 1: wildlife park where historically, prior to the two thousand six
55:55
Speaker 1: ban um, there was international sport hunting as they term it,
56:02
Speaker 1: for marco polo are golly sheep. So one of the
56:06
Speaker 1: reasons that the marco polo are golly rams are so
56:09
Speaker 1: appealing as a trophy species for these international adventure seekers
56:14
Speaker 1: is that they carry around a set of horns that
56:18
Speaker 1: would make you know, the North American wild sheep kind
56:22
Speaker 1: of pale in comparison, if you'll forgive such a comparison,
56:26
Speaker 1: all right, because we're talking about an animal with horns
56:30
Speaker 1: potentially up to six ft on each side of its
56:35
Speaker 1: head if you had to uncurl them. Yeah, So it's
56:38
Speaker 1: like it grows like so so Americans, like you know,
56:42
Speaker 1: artists are aunist. You look at a big horn or
56:44
Speaker 1: a doll sheet. Now they're getting big when they achieve
56:50
Speaker 1: what we call full curl. Okay, a lot of big
56:54
Speaker 1: doll sheep are well passed full curl, but meaning when
56:57
Speaker 1: you look at it from the side, that horn describes
57:00
Speaker 1: the three sixty degree circle. If you were to like
57:03
Speaker 1: uncurl that circle and measure the length on a big
57:07
Speaker 1: doll sheet, like forty inches is the threshold where a
57:11
Speaker 1: doll sheet becomes like, holy sh it, do you hear
57:14
Speaker 1: about Dave? He shout of forty plus inch doll sheep.
57:19
Speaker 1: So that's a big one. But these sons of bitches
57:21
Speaker 1: are six ft long horns and they get like double curlers.
57:26
Speaker 1: We used to joke about a doll sheep like because
57:29
Speaker 1: you're trying to find a full curl because it's legal,
57:31
Speaker 1: and then we joke like, he's like a double curler,
57:35
Speaker 1: But they really are double curlers, like they're darn near.
57:38
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm swiping in right now on the
57:42
Speaker 1: on the phone here, and it's just I mean they
57:44
Speaker 1: so go look at a picture of a Marco poland
57:47
Speaker 1: you can see why, now I shouldn't say this, if
57:51
Speaker 1: you understand people's devotion to sheet, you can see why
57:56
Speaker 1: you might spend say six, he's seventy. Like you look
58:03
Speaker 1: at you look at what you know, a wild cheap
58:06
Speaker 1: tag goes for here in North America, and you know
58:10
Speaker 1: sometimes those get up into six figures if they're being
58:12
Speaker 1: auctioned off at like a Wild Cheap Foundation event or
58:15
Speaker 1: something like like. And well, the so if you okay,
58:20
Speaker 1: if you're gonna go doll sheep hunt in Alaska. There's
58:22
Speaker 1: no tag limitation right, generally no tag limitation. So if
58:27
Speaker 1: you want to go this year, if you can find
58:29
Speaker 1: an outfitter, he's gonna get tagged for you have if
58:31
Speaker 1: you're a nonresident UM. If you're a nonresident and you
58:36
Speaker 1: don't have a direct relative in Alaska, you can only
58:39
Speaker 1: hunt doll sheep with a guide. That hunt is gonna
58:42
Speaker 1: cost you to do, like a high quality doll hunt.
58:46
Speaker 1: It's gonna cost you north of twenty grant. You can
58:50
Speaker 1: spend more. You can get it for less, but expensive.
58:55
Speaker 1: The most expensive tag that sells in the country every
58:58
Speaker 1: year is what's called the Governor Is tag in Montana
59:02
Speaker 1: UM for big horns, which lets you hunt. It gives
59:06
Speaker 1: you the whole year and you pick your unit anywhere
59:09
Speaker 1: in the state that's open to sheep hunting, and that
59:12
Speaker 1: tag will sell UM for as high as more than
59:19
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand dollars. It's the it's and it's pushed
59:23
Speaker 1: up close to a half million dollars to hunt a
59:26
Speaker 1: big horn. But the guys that do that then go
59:29
Speaker 1: hunt along the Missouri breaks where the biggest big horns
59:34
Speaker 1: in the country are killed. UM so you get hunt
59:41
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of Marco polos for what
59:44
Speaker 1: it would cost you to buy a governor's tag and
59:49
Speaker 1: shoot it. All Western states governors tags usually go for it.
59:53
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say, Oh, most Western states big horn governors
59:57
Speaker 1: tags go for more than one dollars. Yeah, and I
1:00:03
Speaker 1: with the Marco polo hunt. Man, there may be cases
1:00:09
Speaker 1: of them getting into the six figures, but the numbers
1:00:11
Speaker 1: I've heard thrown around are in like the twenty dollar
1:00:14
Speaker 1: range for a Marco Polo hunt. Yeah, that was a
1:00:17
Speaker 1: lot more expensive than that. Yeah, And and what you're
1:00:19
Speaker 1: all in maybe it is, Well, yeah, that's the thing,
1:00:22
Speaker 1: like the logistics of getting there, and you know, the
1:00:25
Speaker 1: logistics of traveling with a firearm. I have no idea
1:00:28
Speaker 1: what it would even entail to bring a rifle into
1:00:31
Speaker 1: China if that's an option. China is much more restrictive
1:00:34
Speaker 1: in terms of the the management of the public's possession
1:00:39
Speaker 1: of firearms. It's it's virtually prohibited for the common citizen
1:00:44
Speaker 1: of China to be in possession of a firearms draconian man. Yeah,
1:00:48
Speaker 1: you're controlling a Popwell we'll say that, so there you are. Yeah,
1:00:52
Speaker 1: so I went presented at this conference UM in in
1:00:58
Speaker 1: Shin John Province and then had a chance to go
1:01:01
Speaker 1: up and visit this park where historically um the ability
1:01:07
Speaker 1: to offer a limited number of Marco Polo our Gali
1:01:11
Speaker 1: sheep ram hunts was an important element of conservation on
1:01:16
Speaker 1: the landscape and some of the primary it was funding
1:01:20
Speaker 1: it was it was funding a couple of things, you know,
1:01:23
Speaker 1: first and foremost, it put a large finance. It attached
1:01:29
Speaker 1: a large financial value to an animal that otherwise might
1:01:34
Speaker 1: be poached and reduced to the value of you know,
1:01:38
Speaker 1: a plate of food. And this this conversation, actually it's
1:01:41
Speaker 1: kind of it's uncomfortable for me to be thinking in
1:01:44
Speaker 1: these terms, right, Like the notion that this animal has
1:01:47
Speaker 1: this high dollar value on the landscape to the point
1:01:50
Speaker 1: where somebody wouldn't want to eat it because it's only
1:01:53
Speaker 1: worth as much of its food as I'm saying that,
1:01:55
Speaker 1: it kind of makes me when you have that conversation
1:01:58
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a valid converse station around rhinos, elephants, okay,
1:02:04
Speaker 1: where it's generally you're generally talking about um depleted resources totally. Yeah. Yeah,
1:02:13
Speaker 1: so you you take away you disincentivize poaching because people
1:02:19
Speaker 1: recognize if I leave that thing out there, that the
1:02:21
Speaker 1: financial gains for my community will far exceed the caloric
1:02:25
Speaker 1: gains I will have from consuming that animal. Then the
1:02:28
Speaker 1: other thing is, uh, that's a limiting factor is poor
1:02:33
Speaker 1: range condition. So we're talking about a landscape where, um,
1:02:38
Speaker 1: pastoralists have been grazing livestock predominantly yaks for thousands of years.
1:02:45
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to pretend to be an expert
1:02:48
Speaker 1: on the range conditions up there, but um, the general
1:02:52
Speaker 1: kind of lay of the land was a very mode
1:02:56
Speaker 1: appearing kind of rolling hills, not as rugged as I
1:02:59
Speaker 1: would have sspected, but just not like a preponderance of
1:03:02
Speaker 1: forage for domestic or wild species to consume. Um. So
1:03:09
Speaker 1: part of the goal, my understanding is, was to work
1:03:14
Speaker 1: towards reductions of the amount of livestock grazing in occupied
1:03:19
Speaker 1: sheep habitat in that landscape. It's kind of a twofold conservation.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: So if you're going to do that, you had to
1:03:25
Speaker 1: bring in some sort of cash economy. Yeah. So in
1:03:31
Speaker 1: two thousand six, apparently, as the stories go that I've
1:03:37
Speaker 1: heard from my friends who are natural resource managers in China,
1:03:41
Speaker 1: the Chinese government wanted to revisit their policies around managing
1:03:45
Speaker 1: this trophy hunting program, and as part of that process,
1:03:49
Speaker 1: at some point, we're seeking some public engagement in the conversation.
1:03:56
Speaker 1: And it was a surprise to the public this hunting
1:03:58
Speaker 1: program existed, and there was sort of a public outcry
1:04:02
Speaker 1: against having this sport hunting taking place where foreigners were
1:04:06
Speaker 1: coming into China paying big money to hunt these big
1:04:11
Speaker 1: game species. So there was a moratorium placed on the
1:04:14
Speaker 1: sport hunting program in two thousand and six, and my
1:04:17
Speaker 1: understanding is that that has persisted through now that there's
1:04:21
Speaker 1: still no sport hunting program. So putting that part of
1:04:26
Speaker 1: hunting in China aside, there is a lot of uh,
1:04:31
Speaker 1: people going out into the woods and killing animals for
1:04:34
Speaker 1: their consumption. Um, pop hunters, pot hunters, there's definitely a
1:04:38
Speaker 1: lot of that. And one of the but I guess
1:04:44
Speaker 1: pot hunters kind of implies illegal take. Yeah, And so
1:04:52
Speaker 1: it's interesting to be in a country where, um, you know,
1:04:57
Speaker 1: you're you're you're trying to get your bearings in a
1:04:59
Speaker 1: lot of way as right. So I was very much
1:05:03
Speaker 1: on a steep learning curve about the ecology of the system,
1:05:07
Speaker 1: the social dynamics, the political dynamics, and I think there's
1:05:13
Speaker 1: a lot of gray area around the amount of risk
1:05:16
Speaker 1: someone is taking in pot hunting, if want to use
1:05:21
Speaker 1: that term, um, you know, going out and killing let's
1:05:24
Speaker 1: say a wild board that they're going to bring home
1:05:26
Speaker 1: and eat. I think a fair bit of that in
1:05:28
Speaker 1: these really remote rural communities is essentially condoned and not
1:05:33
Speaker 1: likely to result in anybody being prosecuted. But I also
1:05:37
Speaker 1: think it's not really legal, and I and I know
1:05:41
Speaker 1: that there's a fair bit of ah essentially corruption around
1:05:47
Speaker 1: the subject. So one of the nature reserves where I worked,
1:05:51
Speaker 1: as an example, I would routinely spend the morning doing
1:05:55
Speaker 1: some field work, come in for lunch, and then go
1:05:58
Speaker 1: back out in the afternoon for more field to work.
1:06:00
Speaker 1: And at the reserve headquarters as part of a uh
1:06:04
Speaker 1: eco tourism model, they had a hotel with a restaurant
1:06:10
Speaker 1: and I would stay at this hotel and the mountains
1:06:12
Speaker 1: were like right out the back. It was a beautiful
1:06:14
Speaker 1: place to work. And one day I came back from
1:06:18
Speaker 1: my field work and there were a load of police cars,
1:06:22
Speaker 1: like dozens of police cars that were there, and they
1:06:25
Speaker 1: were having a meeting of police officers from all around
1:06:29
Speaker 1: the surrounding communities and they had all come to this
1:06:31
Speaker 1: place as a gathering point. And I went in for lunch,
1:06:37
Speaker 1: sat down, and the waitress came out to take my order,
1:06:41
Speaker 1: and she asked me if I would be interested in
1:06:42
Speaker 1: trying any mount jack. Mm hmm, I was like, mount jack.
1:06:47
Speaker 1: We're in a nature reserve. And it turned out, based
1:06:50
Speaker 1: on what she had told me, that these police who
1:06:52
Speaker 1: were there for the convention in the nature reserve had
1:06:55
Speaker 1: gone out killed some mount jack for their lunch inside
1:06:58
Speaker 1: the reserve, and she was offering to share some of
1:07:00
Speaker 1: this meat with me. So you have the law enforcement
1:07:03
Speaker 1: officers there participating in what, based on my my understanding
1:07:09
Speaker 1: of the situation, would be a clearly illegal activity if
1:07:12
Speaker 1: anybody else was to engage in it, but essentially doing
1:07:17
Speaker 1: so with impunity. So that's an example. There was also
1:07:21
Speaker 1: a case that I heard about another police officer accidentally
1:07:28
Speaker 1: shooting a villager by mistaking the villager for a wild boar.
1:07:33
Speaker 1: That was his defense that he had missed mistaken this
1:07:37
Speaker 1: human being in the thick brush for a boar that
1:07:40
Speaker 1: he was out trying to hunt, and that guy was
1:07:42
Speaker 1: prosecuted for shooting the dude. He didn't kill him, but
1:07:47
Speaker 1: he shot the guy. And the whole conversation about well,
1:07:51
Speaker 1: what about the fact he was out there hunting? Isn't
1:07:53
Speaker 1: that illegal? And the reason I was digging into this
1:07:56
Speaker 1: stuff and asking these questions I was I was kind
1:07:57
Speaker 1: of curious, like, I wonder what it takes if, you know,
1:08:00
Speaker 1: if somebody wanted to go hunting here. So I was
1:08:03
Speaker 1: always kind of trying to feel out the situation and
1:08:06
Speaker 1: get a handle on what people were doing. But in
1:08:08
Speaker 1: terms of asiatic black bears, a lot of the poaching
1:08:10
Speaker 1: that happens there is a result of direct conflict between
1:08:13
Speaker 1: humans and the bears. So are they as bad as
1:08:18
Speaker 1: uh or is prone to getting into tangles with people
1:08:23
Speaker 1: as grizzlies or just worse than black bears, but not
1:08:28
Speaker 1: as bad as grizzlies. It's a it's a it's a
1:08:31
Speaker 1: good question. I think. You know, obviously, if a person
1:08:34
Speaker 1: gets into a tangle with the grizzly, I think the
1:08:37
Speaker 1: outcome is probably more likely to be fatal. But there
1:08:42
Speaker 1: were instances. In fact, during the research I was conducting
1:08:47
Speaker 1: um down in you Non Province. In one of my
1:08:48
Speaker 1: study sites, there was a guy who tried to run
1:08:53
Speaker 1: a bear out of one of his corn fields and
1:08:56
Speaker 1: the bear turned around and killed the guy while we
1:08:58
Speaker 1: were working there, and you know the people. It was
1:09:01
Speaker 1: actually kind of an upsetting deal because I was traveling
1:09:04
Speaker 1: from reserve to reserve and I'd kind of gotten to
1:09:07
Speaker 1: know folks in the on the staff of these different
1:09:10
Speaker 1: nature reserves, and they knew I was like the the
1:09:12
Speaker 1: foreigner bear researcher, and so I got to this. I
1:09:16
Speaker 1: got to this dinner one night after a long day
1:09:18
Speaker 1: of traveling, and this guy who worked on the reserve
1:09:21
Speaker 1: came running up to me. And my Chinese has never
1:09:25
Speaker 1: been great, and oftentimes, like virtually all the time, I'd
1:09:28
Speaker 1: be communicating through a translator. This guy came running straight
1:09:31
Speaker 1: up to me with his camera. He like he really
1:09:33
Speaker 1: wanted to show me something, and I had no idea,
1:09:37
Speaker 1: like you know what he wanted to show me. So
1:09:38
Speaker 1: I start flipping through these pictures and there were pictures
1:09:41
Speaker 1: that were taking of this this guy's corpse, after the
1:09:44
Speaker 1: after the bear malling, and they're pretty grotesque photos. It
1:09:49
Speaker 1: was pretty upsetting stuff. So the conflicts between black bears
1:09:53
Speaker 1: and um farmers in these communities are very real. I mean,
1:09:58
Speaker 1: crops get rated livestock are depredated and people are not armed,
1:10:03
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of poisoning, a lot of snaring. UM.
1:10:07
Speaker 1: And then there are these incentives. So not only does
1:10:10
Speaker 1: the black bear represent you know, this this difficulty for
1:10:16
Speaker 1: your livelihood, this animal that comes in poses a threat
1:10:20
Speaker 1: to you physically, has the potential to decimate your crops,
1:10:24
Speaker 1: has the potential to destroy your apiaries because a lot
1:10:27
Speaker 1: of people were keeping bees in that country, Um, has
1:10:31
Speaker 1: the potentially kill your goats. But there's the quick, justt
1:10:36
Speaker 1: physical description of the bear compared to are really really
1:10:40
Speaker 1: similar to American black bears in terms of size and
1:10:43
Speaker 1: kind of physical structure. Um, they have a more a longer,
1:10:49
Speaker 1: kind of more pronounced mane around their neck. And then
1:10:52
Speaker 1: the classic distinguishing characteristic is the crescent moon on their chest.
1:10:57
Speaker 1: So one of the common names given to the Asiatic
1:11:00
Speaker 1: black bears the moon bear. Have this beautiful white animal
1:11:05
Speaker 1: moon bear. So aside from you know, all of the
1:11:10
Speaker 1: perceived and real difficulties of coexisting with that species, for
1:11:15
Speaker 1: these folks who live who overlap habitats with the bear, um,
1:11:21
Speaker 1: these animals have a huge price tag attached to them.
1:11:24
Speaker 1: And there are two reasons for that one is the
1:11:26
Speaker 1: value of their gall bladder, which is a key ingredient
1:11:30
Speaker 1: in traditional Chinese medicines UM. And the other one is
1:11:33
Speaker 1: that their paws are a key ingredient in one of
1:11:37
Speaker 1: the most epic feasts that exists anywhere in the world.
1:11:43
Speaker 1: And have you ever eaten bear paw? Janny, You're eaten
1:11:48
Speaker 1: a bear paw. So there's this feast called the Manchu
1:11:53
Speaker 1: Han Imperial Feast, and depending on who you ask, it
1:11:57
Speaker 1: has somewhere between a hundred and eighty four and three
1:12:00
Speaker 1: hundred twenty different dishes spans over the course of three
1:12:03
Speaker 1: days three days. And this feast first took place during
1:12:09
Speaker 1: the Qing dynasty and Ching dynasty was like mid sixteen
1:12:13
Speaker 1: hundreds until the early nineteen hundreds, and it was exclusively
1:12:19
Speaker 1: for um. The elites right like emperors would be the
1:12:23
Speaker 1: people consuming this, and very elaborate um. You know, basically
1:12:29
Speaker 1: you'd go from meal to snacking, to another meal, two
1:12:34
Speaker 1: more snacking, and everything was all these exotic, difficult to
1:12:38
Speaker 1: obtain ingredients, so includes things like, uh, eating the birds
1:12:43
Speaker 1: nests that are made out of birds saliva. They make
1:12:46
Speaker 1: that into soup that I've messed around trying to make
1:12:48
Speaker 1: that with with you know, uh, swallows nests here swallows.
1:12:55
Speaker 1: That sounds like I can never distract the stuff I
1:12:57
Speaker 1: was after out of it. Yeah doesn't. I didn't have
1:13:01
Speaker 1: any luck with it. I think they consummated. Yeah, they
1:13:05
Speaker 1: thicken consummatee with it because the bird picks up sticks
1:13:10
Speaker 1: or mud and coasted with a saliva, and his slave
1:13:13
Speaker 1: is like sticky. And then you take that stuff and
1:13:16
Speaker 1: boil it down in it extract and it liquefies it
1:13:21
Speaker 1: and then you reduce it down and your left with
1:13:23
Speaker 1: like a sticky substance that you use the thickened soup
1:13:26
Speaker 1: and broth. Yeah, it's thought to have all kinds of
1:13:28
Speaker 1: medicinal benefits to I think one of the things it's
1:13:31
Speaker 1: believed to do is really improve the health of your skin.
1:13:35
Speaker 1: And a lot of these different ingredients, do you know,
1:13:37
Speaker 1: according to traditional Chinese medicine, and some of it's been
1:13:40
Speaker 1: validated by you know, Western medicinal tests as well. You know,
1:13:45
Speaker 1: like some of these ingredients are certainly bioactive, and bare
1:13:49
Speaker 1: bile is one of those things that is a bioactive ingredient.
1:13:54
Speaker 1: It has medicinal properties, but that that same chemical can
1:13:59
Speaker 1: be manufactured in a laboratory setting. But can we hold
1:14:02
Speaker 1: up on us from it, because yeah, for most of
1:14:05
Speaker 1: my life, when you killed the black bear in the US,
1:14:09
Speaker 1: you were not allowed to even have in your possession
1:14:13
Speaker 1: the bears gall bladder. And then do you know about this?
1:14:21
Speaker 1: What I know about this is that they've busted some
1:14:23
Speaker 1: major poaching operations, including you know in the Great Lake States,
1:14:28
Speaker 1: there was one in Minnesota for pause, pausing. But I
1:14:32
Speaker 1: think now you're allowed to have you're you're allowed to
1:14:34
Speaker 1: have it, but not sell it. Like you can retain
1:14:36
Speaker 1: your own bears, So so rather than screwing with you
1:14:41
Speaker 1: on what you use, you can retain your own thing,
1:14:45
Speaker 1: but it cannot be sold. Yeah, it's interesting to you know,
1:14:51
Speaker 1: to forbid someone from fully utilizing and you know, parts
1:14:56
Speaker 1: of an animal that they would want to potentially, yeah,
1:14:59
Speaker 1: make it's been legally, it's like legally take you can
1:15:02
Speaker 1: understand where it's coming from, because we know that these
1:15:04
Speaker 1: parts are being circulated around the globe. Like there's almost
1:15:08
Speaker 1: certainly right now somebody somewhere in Asia consuming an American
1:15:12
Speaker 1: black bear gallbladder in some product. As you and I
1:15:15
Speaker 1: are speaking, my body um found some bears that had
1:15:20
Speaker 1: just had the pause removed where in Virginia? Yea, So
1:15:27
Speaker 1: people everybody knows, I mean, most people are aware of
1:15:30
Speaker 1: the fact that there's this market for ingredients involved with
1:15:34
Speaker 1: traditional Chinese medicine. That's kind of a wildlife conservation challenge
1:15:39
Speaker 1: that a lot of folks are aware of. But this
1:15:41
Speaker 1: thing about the bear pause is something fewer folks realize.
1:15:44
Speaker 1: So this Imperial feast, the bear paw is served sometimes
1:15:52
Speaker 1: along with sturgeon as one of the ingredients, one of
1:15:55
Speaker 1: the one of the key dishes in this Emperor's feast,
1:15:59
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a prestigious dish to be serving.
1:16:05
Speaker 1: A lot of folks are aware of the Emperor's feast.
1:16:08
Speaker 1: Other things on that menu include like being curred simmered
1:16:13
Speaker 1: in various bird brains like cuckoo brain and chicken brain.
1:16:19
Speaker 1: So it's it's a wild list of dishes. And the
1:16:25
Speaker 1: longer list, the one that totals three twenty includes a
1:16:28
Speaker 1: hundred ninety six main dishes and a hundred and twenty
1:16:30
Speaker 1: four snack dishes spread over the course of three days.
1:16:34
Speaker 1: The first time this place, the first place this particular
1:16:37
Speaker 1: meal was ever served, was in the Forbidden City, so
1:16:40
Speaker 1: in in Beijing. So there's like there's a history of
1:16:45
Speaker 1: bear paw being consumed by the elites and it persists
1:16:48
Speaker 1: to this point in time. So from a conservation standpoint,
1:16:51
Speaker 1: you have this animal, asiatic black bear that presents all
1:16:55
Speaker 1: of these difficulties in your life, and then in the
1:16:58
Speaker 1: meantime has this huge you know, dollar sign or yuan
1:17:02
Speaker 1: sign in China over its head and to give you
1:17:06
Speaker 1: an idea, and that together can inspire some illegal take. Yes, yeah,
1:17:13
Speaker 1: so bare Bile. I was looking up some facts on
1:17:16
Speaker 1: this front, and bare Bile, the going rate is as
1:17:19
Speaker 1: high as like close to seven ounce. And to put
1:17:22
Speaker 1: that in perspective, the current price of gold when I
1:17:28
Speaker 1: checked a couple of days ago, was sixty eight dollars
1:17:31
Speaker 1: and ounce, so it's about half the price of gold
1:17:33
Speaker 1: by weight, this Bile. And so from a an outside perspective,
1:17:42
Speaker 1: you know, initially you can be like, man, these villagers,
1:17:44
Speaker 1: there's such a problem, you know, killing these bears, that
1:17:48
Speaker 1: there's a there's this conservation concern over But then you
1:17:51
Speaker 1: spend some time in these villages and you you see
1:17:53
Speaker 1: how hard people are working to scrape by and it
1:17:56
Speaker 1: doesn't take long, at least it didn't take long for me.
1:17:58
Speaker 1: To come to the conclusion if I would is living
1:18:00
Speaker 1: in this setting and I was trying to support my
1:18:03
Speaker 1: family here, it would be not much of a stretch
1:18:08
Speaker 1: for me to see myself trying to poach one of
1:18:10
Speaker 1: these bears and market it. Because there's there's just so
1:18:14
Speaker 1: so many incentives stacked up on top of each other,
1:18:18
Speaker 1: so it's it's pretty easy to empathize with those folks.
1:18:23
Speaker 1: And one of the villages where I was doing this work, um,
1:18:27
Speaker 1: there's a nature reserve called Yallah that's down in southern
1:18:29
Speaker 1: Sichuan Province. And you know a cool thing about traveling
1:18:35
Speaker 1: in these remote hinter lands of China. Everywhere you go,
1:18:39
Speaker 1: people are just wanting to meet you because they don't
1:18:41
Speaker 1: see a lot of Westerners. So I got to this
1:18:44
Speaker 1: village after a very long car ride. Village is called
1:18:47
Speaker 1: show Yaw and we're having dinner with a bunch of
1:18:52
Speaker 1: the local folks there, and I met a gentleman who
1:18:57
Speaker 1: was going to be helping us with field where and
1:19:00
Speaker 1: the guy was, you know, he was pretty relatively old
1:19:04
Speaker 1: to be out working in the mountains all day, like
1:19:06
Speaker 1: he was probably somewhere in his early sixties or so,
1:19:10
Speaker 1: I would say. And through the translator. He made this
1:19:13
Speaker 1: comment saying, you know, we don't we don't see a
1:19:18
Speaker 1: lot of white people here, and in fact, you guys
1:19:22
Speaker 1: are some of the first white people who have visited
1:19:24
Speaker 1: this village since the president's kids were here. I was like,
1:19:29
Speaker 1: the president's kids, what you was this? What year was
1:19:32
Speaker 1: it that I was there? Would have been two thousand
1:19:35
Speaker 1: and ten probably, I'm like the president's kids. I'm like,
1:19:38
Speaker 1: what are you? What are you talking about? And so
1:19:40
Speaker 1: the guy goes on to say, you know, the president
1:19:42
Speaker 1: who's famous for conservation. And this is all through a translator, right,
1:19:46
Speaker 1: I'm like, the president who's famous for conservation. He's like, yeah,
1:19:50
Speaker 1: when when I was a small boy, my dad this
1:19:54
Speaker 1: is this is the sixth year old guy talking. My
1:19:56
Speaker 1: dad was a guide for the President's son when when
1:20:00
Speaker 1: they came here to hunt for a panda. No, yes,
1:20:06
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute. Roosevelt. Roosevelt's sons
1:20:09
Speaker 1: Kermit and Ted, So we're panda hunters? Yes they were,
1:20:15
Speaker 1: so man, that's something that would not go over well
1:20:18
Speaker 1: these days. So I started jointing people. Get piste. When
1:20:21
Speaker 1: you shoot, yes ahead, I should give so well, we'll
1:20:26
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about why they were there
1:20:27
Speaker 1: hunting pandas. But initially I was totally skeptical about this
1:20:30
Speaker 1: and like, you gotta be kidding me. But the guy,
1:20:32
Speaker 1: like the fact that after driving for days, bouncing around
1:20:35
Speaker 1: on these dirt roads and arriving at this village, the
1:20:38
Speaker 1: fact that this guy knows that there's a president who
1:20:42
Speaker 1: has a conservation legacy. I thought that gave it some credibility.
1:20:45
Speaker 1: Amazing because you know, if you were to go to
1:20:48
Speaker 1: you know, a remote rural corner of the USA and
1:20:51
Speaker 1: asked him about the Chinese leader a hundred years ago,
1:20:54
Speaker 1: they're not going to know much. Dude. People watch us
1:20:57
Speaker 1: so much more closely than we watched them. Yeah, fair point.
1:21:01
Speaker 1: I still felt like it led some credibility. So I'm
1:21:06
Speaker 1: thinking myself, if this is true, this is just two
1:21:08
Speaker 1: epic of a story. I've got to capture like as
1:21:10
Speaker 1: many details as I can capture. So I started jotting
1:21:13
Speaker 1: down notes, um. And then when I got back to
1:21:16
Speaker 1: the USA, I started doing some digging. And the guy
1:21:20
Speaker 1: who was with me, his name was Suggio Muji, and
1:21:23
Speaker 1: his dad's name was Sugio Shila, and I caught that
1:21:26
Speaker 1: those details from the stories and this is all through
1:21:28
Speaker 1: a translator. As we're out doing the field work for
1:21:31
Speaker 1: my project, and when I came back to the USA,
1:21:35
Speaker 1: I learned about the Kelly Roosevelt's Asiatic expedition, which included
1:21:42
Speaker 1: a detailed account of them traveling to this exact place
1:21:46
Speaker 1: on the map and at like a blow by blow
1:21:49
Speaker 1: story of them finding and returning to Western science the
1:21:55
Speaker 1: first specimen of a panda bear. So they were like
1:21:58
Speaker 1: their old man and that they specimen hunters. They were.
1:22:01
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. So on that expedition, and this wasn't
1:22:05
Speaker 1: the first, but on that particular expedition, in addition to
1:22:07
Speaker 1: bringing back the panda, they brought back more than five
1:22:11
Speaker 1: thousand bird skins from that trip. So they're just they're
1:22:14
Speaker 1: shooting everything. And this was in the era the old
1:22:17
Speaker 1: Man was very heavily involved in that as well. For
1:22:19
Speaker 1: a long time. That was biology. Yes, absolutely, we're still
1:22:24
Speaker 1: in it, like you gotta realized, in his era. Okay,
1:22:31
Speaker 1: so late eighteen we were still in a descriptive phase, yes,
1:22:38
Speaker 1: cataloging what was here. Yeah, and a big like in
1:22:44
Speaker 1: a thing that Roosevelt like when he wanted to be
1:22:48
Speaker 1: a biologist, that's what he thought that that was. Yeah,
1:22:52
Speaker 1: I'm not taking anything away from this. I'm not like
1:22:56
Speaker 1: yelling at you about it, but I'm just saying, like,
1:22:58
Speaker 1: it's just like audible you mentioned like Audubon, Audubon, shoot it,
1:23:07
Speaker 1: um Darwin. It was a specimen hunter that was biology
1:23:14
Speaker 1: like comparative analysis of dead ship laying on a table. Yeah.
1:23:19
Speaker 1: Now there's a string of these, and so the cool
1:23:22
Speaker 1: thing about that experience, you know, I'd learned a little
1:23:24
Speaker 1: bit about about tr at that point, but it opened
1:23:29
Speaker 1: up all these stories about the next generation of the Roosevelts,
1:23:32
Speaker 1: and that's some of the most interesting you know, some
1:23:36
Speaker 1: of the most interesting stories that are out there are
1:23:38
Speaker 1: around Kermit and Ted and some of their adventures Kermit ted. Yeah. Yeah.
1:23:45
Speaker 1: So Roosevelt had a daughter, Um with his first wife,
1:23:48
Speaker 1: and she died during delivery of that daughter. Then he
1:23:51
Speaker 1: went on to remarry a childhood friend of his and
1:23:54
Speaker 1: they proceeded to have I believe five more children that
1:23:57
Speaker 1: were included I think four boys and a girl. And
1:24:03
Speaker 1: the first two sons, Ted was the oldest and Kermit
1:24:07
Speaker 1: was the second oldest, and they went gallivanting on these
1:24:10
Speaker 1: adventures with their dad. So I know you're into suggested readings.
1:24:15
Speaker 1: There was a there was a trip that Kermit and
1:24:18
Speaker 1: Teddy Senior, the President took um exploring the River of Doubt.
1:24:25
Speaker 1: That was nineteen nineteen fourteen, that expedition, and it damn
1:24:29
Speaker 1: near killed Teddy Roosevelt. He was he was threatening to
1:24:32
Speaker 1: overdose on morphine so as to not be a hindrance
1:24:35
Speaker 1: to the rest of the party and the drama of
1:24:38
Speaker 1: that trip they had. They had one guy, one of
1:24:40
Speaker 1: the most skilled canoe handlers on that trip, drown, You
1:24:44
Speaker 1: had another guy get murdered. You had Teddy Roosevelt so
1:24:48
Speaker 1: sick with malaria that he was threatening basically to overdose
1:24:52
Speaker 1: and commit suicide so as to not slow the party down.
1:24:56
Speaker 1: You had Kermit saying to his dad, if you all yourself,
1:25:00
Speaker 1: you're going to be more of a burden because I
1:25:02
Speaker 1: am guaranteeing you were going to bring your body out
1:25:04
Speaker 1: of here, and it's gonna be harder to lug your
1:25:06
Speaker 1: corpse than to have you helping us move your sick
1:25:09
Speaker 1: self out of here. They were down to like so
1:25:13
Speaker 1: little the what's some larity drug quinine? Is that right?
1:25:17
Speaker 1: By saying that right? So the rarium I think it was.
1:25:21
Speaker 1: It's like what they used to tonic water was something
1:25:26
Speaker 1: that in the British Empire. It was like a malarial
1:25:31
Speaker 1: preventative drink like tonic waters. Quiet was like Solda water
1:25:34
Speaker 1: with quinine and the sweetener in it. Yeah, so they're
1:25:37
Speaker 1: doubt that they have this. They have like a ration
1:25:40
Speaker 1: of quinine for the trip. And Ah, Kermit had malaria
1:25:45
Speaker 1: as well, and he he was basically foregoing treatment and
1:25:51
Speaker 1: given it to his dad and the doctors finally forced
1:25:54
Speaker 1: him to take an injection of it because he was
1:25:56
Speaker 1: all messed up but didn't want to admit it. So
1:25:58
Speaker 1: they got back in Later in life. You know, Teddy
1:26:03
Speaker 1: either here as doctor at one point claimed that like
1:26:07
Speaker 1: years of his life had been shaved off. It might
1:26:09
Speaker 1: have been a doctor who after Teddy's death said, yeah,
1:26:12
Speaker 1: he would have had that malaria case, he would have
1:26:13
Speaker 1: lived another ten years. So it was a rugged, gnarly trip.
1:26:17
Speaker 1: And Kermit and and Ted they did another They had
1:26:21
Speaker 1: done a previous uh asiatic expedition in the nineteen twenties,
1:26:27
Speaker 1: and they published a book from that expedition as well,
1:26:29
Speaker 1: and that the title that book is East of the
1:26:31
Speaker 1: Sun and West of the Moon. So the expedition that
1:26:34
Speaker 1: involved the hunting of the panda. They published a book,
1:26:37
Speaker 1: Trailing the Giant Panda. I got a copy of this
1:26:40
Speaker 1: book after hown like scrounging libraries all over the country
1:26:43
Speaker 1: to try to find a copy of this book, And
1:26:46
Speaker 1: everything in the in the account lined up perfectly with
1:26:49
Speaker 1: what this dude told me. A hard hunt. It actually
1:26:54
Speaker 1: was surprisingly hard. And what what made the big difference
1:26:57
Speaker 1: was the fact that they had a snow come in
1:26:59
Speaker 1: and they were able to pick set of tracks in
1:27:01
Speaker 1: a bamboo thicket and trail the bear after I mean
1:27:05
Speaker 1: they they had walked and ridden on horseback countless miles
1:27:12
Speaker 1: in search of a bear, and then finally, in this
1:27:16
Speaker 1: what is now the Yella Nature Reserve and southern Sichuan,
1:27:19
Speaker 1: they finally bumped into a man who knew the mountain
1:27:22
Speaker 1: well enough to get him to the right place, and
1:27:26
Speaker 1: they cut the track of a panda, and the story goes,
1:27:29
Speaker 1: then they're nibbling on some bamboot. Yeah, so the bear
1:27:32
Speaker 1: ended up and here they come. Yeah, if I remember right,
1:27:36
Speaker 1: the bear was like in the process of disappearing into
1:27:41
Speaker 1: the thicket as both sons fired simultaneously, taking this panda bear.
1:27:49
Speaker 1: And then then you know, they came back to the US,
1:27:51
Speaker 1: and in addition to all the all the other skins
1:27:54
Speaker 1: they had, they had the first panda delivered to Western Science.
1:27:58
Speaker 1: And if anybody's interested in seeing this panda, it is
1:28:01
Speaker 1: on display in Chicago at the Field Museum right now
1:28:04
Speaker 1: as we speak, and has been ever since. No No Kermit, Kermit,
1:28:10
Speaker 1: Kermit and Ted and the amount of adventures that guy
1:28:14
Speaker 1: got mixed up in who are we talking t r oh, Yeah,
1:28:17
Speaker 1: like Cuba for example, everything how he became president. So
1:28:23
Speaker 1: McKinley president gets killed by an anarchist. Yeah, he becomes president.
1:28:29
Speaker 1: He gets shot, his glasses in his pocket deflect the speech.
1:28:37
Speaker 1: He had, like such a lengthy speech, and it was
1:28:39
Speaker 1: folded up enough times in his pocket that in conjunction
1:28:43
Speaker 1: with his glasses case, it slowed down the slug enough
1:28:46
Speaker 1: that it lodged inside his rib cage. And he knew
1:28:49
Speaker 1: enough about anatomy. He knew he had been shot in
1:28:51
Speaker 1: the chest, but the fact that he was he was
1:28:53
Speaker 1: not coughing up blood led him to the conclusion that
1:28:57
Speaker 1: his lungs had not been perforated. And gave his speech
1:29:00
Speaker 1: and and you know how he started off his speech
1:29:02
Speaker 1: tougher than a bull moose, Ladies and gentlemen. This is
1:29:06
Speaker 1: roughly what he said, Ladies and gentlemen. I'm not sure
1:29:08
Speaker 1: if you're aware of this or not, but I've just
1:29:10
Speaker 1: been shot. But it will take more than one bullet
1:29:13
Speaker 1: to stop this old bull moose. And then he went
1:29:16
Speaker 1: on to or right for a couple of hours. This
1:29:19
Speaker 1: was in Milwaukee. See, that's that's the difference Lincoln. His
1:29:23
Speaker 1: speeches were so tidy and short that they wouldn't hit
1:29:27
Speaker 1: Like a Lincoln speech isn't gonna stop a bullet. That's
1:29:31
Speaker 1: true because he wrote his best one on an envelope. Yeah,
1:29:37
Speaker 1: I was back in the old days. Short and sweet. Yeah,
1:29:41
Speaker 1: my old man always he like my my father was
1:29:44
Speaker 1: fond of that quote some people attribute to Mark Twain.
1:29:47
Speaker 1: But it's ah, forgive the long letter. I didn't have
1:29:52
Speaker 1: time to write a short one. I don't know if
1:29:54
Speaker 1: that's actually everybody attributes everything to Twain. Yeah, but I've
1:29:57
Speaker 1: I've heard that one attributed to Twain by a a
1:30:00
Speaker 1: number of folks too, so I think that I think
1:30:03
Speaker 1: that might be valid. But yeah, it was like I
1:30:05
Speaker 1: had a little, a little chill go down my spine
1:30:08
Speaker 1: when this when this guy in all southern China is like, oh, yeah,
1:30:12
Speaker 1: the president's sons are here. We haven't seen a lot
1:30:14
Speaker 1: of white people around here since then. It was it
1:30:17
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. So do they have, um, do they
1:30:22
Speaker 1: have populated wildlife populations that like are even capable of
1:30:28
Speaker 1: sustainable harvest? Yeah? Absolutely, So they could have sustainable regulated hunting. Yeah,
1:30:37
Speaker 1: not enough, you know, not enough. The ratio of people
1:30:42
Speaker 1: to hunting opportunity would be so high, so much higher
1:30:46
Speaker 1: than in the USA. But yeah, I mean a lot.
1:30:49
Speaker 1: You know, one of the interesting species I encountered during
1:30:54
Speaker 1: my field work was bumping into pheasants in their native habitat.
1:30:59
Speaker 1: You know, I'd be hooking around looking for bear scats
1:31:01
Speaker 1: as part of my research. I mean, man, this looks
1:31:03
Speaker 1: like some pretty good bird cover. I was like the
1:31:06
Speaker 1: rooster and go cackling off. Yeah. Yeah. And then you know,
1:31:10
Speaker 1: driving around on mountain roads, come around the bend and uh,
1:31:14
Speaker 1: in the middle of the two track there would be
1:31:16
Speaker 1: a golden pheasant standing there, a wild golden pheasant. And
1:31:21
Speaker 1: they look they're so just incredibly bright gold in their coloration.
1:31:28
Speaker 1: They look like they have to be fake. But yeah,
1:31:32
Speaker 1: they tried to get people have tried to get golden
1:31:34
Speaker 1: pheasants established here in the US. Yeah. Why, that's a
1:31:41
Speaker 1: good question. I don't know. I don't know. I mean,
1:31:44
Speaker 1: they're you know, I love hunting. I love hunting pheasants,
1:31:46
Speaker 1: but I do feel like, and I mentioned earlier that
1:31:49
Speaker 1: I've had a great time hunting these ibex down in
1:31:51
Speaker 1: the Florida Mountains of southern New Mexico, and that is
1:31:54
Speaker 1: I think one of the toughest archery hunts probably anywhere
1:31:57
Speaker 1: in the world. It's an early hunt. Uh, but there
1:32:01
Speaker 1: is something, in my opinion, detracted from the experience when
1:32:06
Speaker 1: you know the animal that you're hunting is not indigenous
1:32:09
Speaker 1: to the landscape where you're hunting. Oh. Yeah, man, that's
1:32:11
Speaker 1: why I couldn't really, I couldn't. I couldn't really deeply
1:32:17
Speaker 1: enjoy hunting in New Zealand. All of the wildlife, not
1:32:21
Speaker 1: all the wildlife, all of the huntable wildlife is non
1:32:24
Speaker 1: native and doesn't have like a historic context on the ground.
1:32:30
Speaker 1: Now I'm full of hypocrisies because I'll hunt turkeys in
1:32:33
Speaker 1: states that aren't native turkey range. Um. I like the
1:32:38
Speaker 1: hunt wild pigs, but I don't like hunting them as
1:32:41
Speaker 1: much as I like hunting the native stuff. At the
1:32:44
Speaker 1: same time, I also like hunting in areas that have
1:32:51
Speaker 1: a deep history of human interaction with the animals. You know.
1:32:58
Speaker 1: That's why I'm interesting in the Arctic. But I'm not
1:33:02
Speaker 1: interested in the Antarctic because it's absent of of of
1:33:08
Speaker 1: of human history and absence of of uh a legacy
1:33:13
Speaker 1: of human interaction, human relationship with the wildlife. So it
1:33:19
Speaker 1: does detract from it for me. Now, my friend Remy,
1:33:22
Speaker 1: who likes to hunt in New Zealand a lot, you know,
1:33:25
Speaker 1: he points out that there is like they've established a
1:33:28
Speaker 1: culture of hunting, a cultural relationship with hunting, but there's
1:33:32
Speaker 1: just a big difference there where in New Zealand you
1:33:35
Speaker 1: might have a conversation like, or we should go hunt
1:33:38
Speaker 1: that area because the government cohlers haven't been in there lately.
1:33:45
Speaker 1: So on one hand, you have government efforts to eradicate
1:33:49
Speaker 1: or greatly reduced wildlife populations because they're causing irreparable environmental
1:33:55
Speaker 1: damage according to some people, and you're also out trying
1:34:00
Speaker 1: to do like, you know, a recreational sport hunting, the
1:34:07
Speaker 1: meat based sport hunting. It just it's just gets too
1:34:10
Speaker 1: damn confusing, you know. I just had a very difficult
1:34:15
Speaker 1: time enjoying it. Yeah. Yeah, And the same thing goes
1:34:19
Speaker 1: for the fisheries too, you know, like I would, I
1:34:23
Speaker 1: would rather and I do often hike into remote stream
1:34:29
Speaker 1: sect sections where I can catch the indigenous trout that
1:34:35
Speaker 1: exists there but which have been supplanted by non native
1:34:40
Speaker 1: trout farther downstream in the watersheds, you know, like there.
1:34:45
Speaker 1: And and I would say the most beautiful pheasant I
1:34:49
Speaker 1: have seen was that one that came cackling out of
1:34:51
Speaker 1: the thicket in China. I was like, oh, a native pheasant.
1:34:54
Speaker 1: I've never seen that before. That was that was awesome.
1:34:58
Speaker 1: So yeah, your question that led to the sorry about
1:35:00
Speaker 1: the pheasant is whether or not there's opportunities to hunt
1:35:02
Speaker 1: these species sustainably, and absolutely there would be. Um are
1:35:08
Speaker 1: the mechanisms in place to really manage it effectively at
1:35:12
Speaker 1: this point in time, not that I'm aware of. I mean,
1:35:15
Speaker 1: you know, we have a whole infrastructure of game, game
1:35:19
Speaker 1: and phish agencies operating essentially at our equivalent of the
1:35:22
Speaker 1: province level, which they do not have, at least in
1:35:28
Speaker 1: a way that specializes around hunting and angling the way
1:35:31
Speaker 1: ours do. Yeah, we've been toying with this for a
1:35:35
Speaker 1: hundred years here. Yeah, and I don't think we've got
1:35:38
Speaker 1: it all perfected or figured out either. Frankly, we're getting
1:35:41
Speaker 1: We've got it pretty good, better than anywhere in the world.
1:35:45
Speaker 1: We got room to im We have a more sustainable system, yes,
1:35:49
Speaker 1: I agree, and we have room to improve. Yeah, Okay,
1:35:54
Speaker 1: what do you feel we're not doing right? I feel
1:35:57
Speaker 1: like the most pressing needs, which are directly related, is
1:36:05
Speaker 1: a broader base of funding for conservation work, and linked
1:36:10
Speaker 1: directly to that is the notion of a consistently available
1:36:15
Speaker 1: form of funding for non game conservation work. So I
1:36:21
Speaker 1: think you're familiar with the Blue Ribbon Panel project. Yeah,
1:36:25
Speaker 1: I am. I've been paying close attention to that, and
1:36:27
Speaker 1: I got to say, some of the people who have
1:36:28
Speaker 1: been involved with that work, Um, the soon to retire
1:36:33
Speaker 1: director of Arizona Game of Fish Kindamed Larry Boyles, has
1:36:37
Speaker 1: been right in the middle of that work. And there's
1:36:43
Speaker 1: there's nobody I admire more than Larry as a conservationist
1:36:46
Speaker 1: right now. And so there's some brilliant minds who are
1:36:49
Speaker 1: putting a lot of thought into how to address that need.
1:36:53
Speaker 1: But that is I would say the overarching um example
1:36:58
Speaker 1: of what I'm when I'm talking about what I'm saying,
1:36:59
Speaker 1: we don't have it all figured out yet. Yeah, we
1:37:01
Speaker 1: don't have the money figured out from one thing. You know,
1:37:03
Speaker 1: you're You're at a dinner that I was at at
1:37:06
Speaker 1: in New Mexico and someone got up was talking about
1:37:09
Speaker 1: desert big horns doing desert bighorn conservation work, and he said,
1:37:14
Speaker 1: uh we we joke. In New Mexico the wildlife conservation
1:37:21
Speaker 1: comes down to water and money. But with desert big horns,
1:37:26
Speaker 1: you don't even need the water, just the money. Yeah. Yeah,
1:37:31
Speaker 1: And you know, desert big horns are I would say,
1:37:36
Speaker 1: one of the species that are probably easiest to raise
1:37:39
Speaker 1: funds for. You have a lot of a lot of
1:37:41
Speaker 1: individuals and organizations with relatively deep pockets who are looking
1:37:45
Speaker 1: to pony up money to support that work. And that's
1:37:48
Speaker 1: fantastic and I applaud that. I'm glad that's going on.
1:37:52
Speaker 1: But I'm always that association with them being a game animal, yes,
1:37:55
Speaker 1: but I'm also a huge fan of and in act
1:38:00
Speaker 1: biota that includes all of the obscure species that we
1:38:06
Speaker 1: can't shoot and eat, and I see those as being
1:38:09
Speaker 1: key elements too. A fully rounded outdoor experience you know,
1:38:17
Speaker 1: like going out and this is an extreme example, but
1:38:21
Speaker 1: to go out on a an elk hunt and have
1:38:24
Speaker 1: elk be the only thing you encounter would be a
1:38:27
Speaker 1: very hollow experience. In my opinion, No gray J is
1:38:30
Speaker 1: no Stellar J is the pine squirrels. Yeah, And so
1:38:34
Speaker 1: weasels throw another J the opinion J because we're not
1:38:37
Speaker 1: worried about Stellar's J is too much around here, but
1:38:39
Speaker 1: opinion j's we are. And it's hard to get money
1:38:43
Speaker 1: for UM funding the research or doing the conservation work
1:38:47
Speaker 1: to support that species because the way we fund conservation
1:38:51
Speaker 1: through hunting and fishing souse like most like state level
1:38:59
Speaker 1: conservation work is funded by hunters and fishermen, and hunters
1:39:04
Speaker 1: and fishermen are interested in fishing game and so a
1:39:08
Speaker 1: lot of that money goes to support fishing game. But
1:39:12
Speaker 1: there's the thinking that you're you're well aware of. There's
1:39:16
Speaker 1: a thinking that by taking care of these apex animals,
1:39:24
Speaker 1: UM you're taking care of that has a cascading effect.
1:39:29
Speaker 1: You're taking care of all these other things. Like it's
1:39:33
Speaker 1: a piece of rhetorics thrown out there right, that elk
1:39:37
Speaker 1: work often comes down to securing winning range water foul
1:39:42
Speaker 1: work comes down to securing wetlands. When you secure wetlands,
1:39:47
Speaker 1: all things benefit. When you secure big riparian zones, all
1:39:52
Speaker 1: things benefit. So that's like a justification or a rationale
1:39:57
Speaker 1: that's put forward by groups who are investing very heavily
1:40:02
Speaker 1: in game animals when people bring up to them. But
1:40:05
Speaker 1: what about everything else? Yeah, and there there's validity to
1:40:09
Speaker 1: that argument. And I do think hunters and anglers, you know,
1:40:13
Speaker 1: we have a lot to feel really good about that
1:40:18
Speaker 1: we have collectively accomplished and contributed to over the last
1:40:22
Speaker 1: century plus. That being said, um, I think there are
1:40:28
Speaker 1: conservation opportunities missed as a result of inadequate funding for
1:40:32
Speaker 1: some of these others. And so where could the money
1:40:34
Speaker 1: come from? Do you feel that other user group should
1:40:36
Speaker 1: be ponying up the way hunters and fishermen have ponied up,
1:40:39
Speaker 1: or how do you think it should go? I think
1:40:41
Speaker 1: are just hard funding from the federal government. Well, there's
1:40:44
Speaker 1: a few ways to skin that cat. Um. I think
1:40:47
Speaker 1: we've got some examples of success. You know, the ability
1:40:52
Speaker 1: of the state of Minnesota, as an example, to pass
1:40:55
Speaker 1: an increase in their state sales tax um to support
1:41:00
Speaker 1: this interesting combination of conservation and the arts, Um, two
1:41:06
Speaker 1: things I'm interested in. Yeah, likewise, I mean, so there
1:41:11
Speaker 1: there's an example. UM. I do think you know that
1:41:18
Speaker 1: people rightly point to Pittman, Robertson and Dingle Johnson as
1:41:23
Speaker 1: phenomenal advancements in our conservation model. And there's obviously applicability
1:41:32
Speaker 1: of that kind of an approach to all kinds of
1:41:34
Speaker 1: other gear that people buy. And it's fascinating to look
1:41:37
Speaker 1: back at the history of those pieces of legislation being
1:41:43
Speaker 1: debated and discussed and how well supported they were by
1:41:47
Speaker 1: the industry. And it's a little puzzling to me that
1:41:50
Speaker 1: there's not similar support and leadership coming from private industry
1:41:56
Speaker 1: now to push for similar exercise taxes on all the
1:42:01
Speaker 1: other stuff that outdoor enthusiasts by. And I personally I
1:42:06
Speaker 1: don't have any qualms about more people paying into the
1:42:11
Speaker 1: system and being vested as UH self identifying supporters of conservation.
1:42:18
Speaker 1: I think if we are able to approach discussions around
1:42:22
Speaker 1: UH consuming wildlife from a thoughtful place, which many of
1:42:30
Speaker 1: us can do well, those those discussions, I believe will
1:42:38
Speaker 1: open up the minds of other interested conservationists as opposed
1:42:44
Speaker 1: to like digging our heels in and say no, we're
1:42:47
Speaker 1: the ones who are paying for conservation, and you know
1:42:50
Speaker 1: you're not You're not welcome here in our kind of
1:42:52
Speaker 1: decision space, that exclusive approach um that it feels kind
1:42:59
Speaker 1: of like trench digging to me, Like, yeah, but oftentimes
1:43:02
Speaker 1: when other people come in and want to have opinions,
1:43:06
Speaker 1: they go against our interests. And hunters have developed over
1:43:11
Speaker 1: the last hundred years a sort of they kind of
1:43:15
Speaker 1: a stake to claim on how wildlife decisions are made.
1:43:21
Speaker 1: And this, this conversation um is one I've had a
1:43:26
Speaker 1: lot of times with a lot of people whom I
1:43:29
Speaker 1: really respect and admire, and I can understand that mindset,
1:43:33
Speaker 1: but I also I have to kind of reject it
1:43:36
Speaker 1: a little bit. And here's why I don't think in
1:43:41
Speaker 1: the long run, if we want to retain are hunting
1:43:47
Speaker 1: and fishing rights as our culture changes around us, we
1:43:53
Speaker 1: have to be able to communicate about that with the
1:43:57
Speaker 1: broader community of non hunters, whether or not they're paying
1:44:04
Speaker 1: into the system. Because the fact of the matter is
1:44:07
Speaker 1: people can mount challenges to hunting and angling and trapping,
1:44:14
Speaker 1: whether they're buying into the system or not, and they
1:44:16
Speaker 1: have done that successfully. There are examples, you know, the chipping,
1:44:20
Speaker 1: legal challenges, legal challenge, Yeah, every election. So the notion
1:44:24
Speaker 1: that we're gonna you know, we're gonna win in the
1:44:28
Speaker 1: long run by digging trenches and not be able and
1:44:32
Speaker 1: and not effectively with an openness to dialogue with people
1:44:41
Speaker 1: who have different viewpoints talk about this stuff and explain,
1:44:45
Speaker 1: and I think you know you, you and others do
1:44:48
Speaker 1: a good job of representing the the mindset and the
1:44:56
Speaker 1: the heart of many of us where we're coming from.
1:45:02
Speaker 1: We need more of that. What we don't need is
1:45:04
Speaker 1: like entrenchment and an unwillingness to engage in thoughtful dialogue
1:45:13
Speaker 1: about this stuff. Oh yeah, and I admire all that,
1:45:17
Speaker 1: but so much of what you hear is so ridiculous.
1:45:22
Speaker 1: When when other when people who aren't immersed in this
1:45:27
Speaker 1: decided to dip a toe into wildlife management, oftentimes it's absurd. Yeah.
1:45:35
Speaker 1: So that's where sound science being like that happened around
1:45:40
Speaker 1: the things that happened around Florida's bear hunt. Yeah, where
1:45:44
Speaker 1: they have a recovered, popular or recovered above objective population
1:45:50
Speaker 1: of black bears, open a season and put a quota
1:45:54
Speaker 1: system in place, we will not pass this threshold of
1:45:59
Speaker 1: bare more mortality get close to the threshold much quicker
1:46:04
Speaker 1: than they thought they would have demonstrated that they might
1:46:07
Speaker 1: have more bears than they thought they did, and the
1:46:12
Speaker 1: hunt early before they hit the quota. Anyone looking at
1:46:18
Speaker 1: this would be like, that's a successful that's a successful
1:46:22
Speaker 1: hunt allowing people to exercise the right of extracting and
1:46:28
Speaker 1: renewable resource in a way that is raising money for
1:46:33
Speaker 1: wildlife work. How is it treated in the press? Florida massacres. Yeah,
1:46:40
Speaker 1: three bears, let's shut it down. So no ship that
1:46:50
Speaker 1: you generate a lot of antipathy from people who who
1:46:55
Speaker 1: who aren't just not really welcoming to the new voices
1:47:01
Speaker 1: who are coming around who haven't aren't vested in this,
1:47:07
Speaker 1: aren't invested in it, aren't really aware of the underlying,
1:47:11
Speaker 1: like core principles of the system. But they are just
1:47:14
Speaker 1: like going based off some ship I heard this morning
1:47:17
Speaker 1: on the news. It drives you nuts. It does drive
1:47:22
Speaker 1: you nuts. I agree, And I think so it's like
1:47:25
Speaker 1: I wish like that. You sometimes wish that like New
1:47:28
Speaker 1: Jersey cat ladies would stick to their cat. Yes, So
1:47:34
Speaker 1: what's the solution to that? What's the solution to addressing
1:47:39
Speaker 1: this valid concern that you're raising? I don't know. I
1:47:44
Speaker 1: don't know, and this I I don't I don't believe
1:47:50
Speaker 1: that entrenchment over time will be a winning strategy. I
1:47:54
Speaker 1: agree with your So I think here's here's what I
1:47:57
Speaker 1: believe coming in forcefully. Thanks, here's what I believe the
1:48:00
Speaker 1: solution to be. Okay, I believe if you can talk
1:48:04
Speaker 1: about this stuff eloquently, we and listen. I agree with
1:48:09
Speaker 1: you too. I'm just bringing up a way of looking
1:48:13
Speaker 1: at it. Yes, and and it's a valid it's a
1:48:15
Speaker 1: valid way of looking at it. But I like it's
1:48:17
Speaker 1: like that's saying like, Okay, I'm wrong, But am I right? Right?
1:48:22
Speaker 1: I don't bring you up a way of looking at it.
1:48:23
Speaker 1: I don't think we can collectively stick our heads in
1:48:26
Speaker 1: the sand and ignore the cultural changes around us, the
1:48:31
Speaker 1: biggest one of which is the increasing urbanization of our citizenry,
1:48:36
Speaker 1: which comes hand in hand with a disconnection from the
1:48:39
Speaker 1: natural world. So I think the solution to that is
1:48:44
Speaker 1: that rather than sticking our heads in the sand and
1:48:46
Speaker 1: just digging trenches where we're in our own little echo
1:48:50
Speaker 1: chamber about how what we're doing is totally right and defensible,
1:48:52
Speaker 1: and those people out there who see things from a
1:48:55
Speaker 1: different vantage point have it all wrong. I believe the
1:49:00
Speaker 1: action is that we capitalize on what EO. Wilson termed biophilia,
1:49:07
Speaker 1: the fact that there's this innate desire in human beings
1:49:11
Speaker 1: to interact with nature. And I don't think that's going
1:49:13
Speaker 1: to go away over a generation. I don't think that's
1:49:15
Speaker 1: going to go away over two or three or four generations.
1:49:17
Speaker 1: I think it is innate to our species that we
1:49:20
Speaker 1: have this desire to be somehow interactive with nature. And
1:49:26
Speaker 1: I believe if we have the right ambassadors for these activities,
1:49:32
Speaker 1: we can welcome in folks from that urban majority to
1:49:38
Speaker 1: be mindful participants who engage in the outdoors and join
1:49:42
Speaker 1: us as ambassadors for these these thoughtful, beneficial, constructive activities,
1:49:48
Speaker 1: and over time, our ranks and our impact, rather than
1:49:54
Speaker 1: being diminished, swell, and our relevant swells, and our base
1:49:58
Speaker 1: of funding swells. And I think the path to that
1:50:02
Speaker 1: approach involves thoughtful discussion, thoughtful discourse, respect for other viewpoints,
1:50:10
Speaker 1: and a willingness to speak authentically about where we're coming
1:50:16
Speaker 1: from with people who maybe have a different set of
1:50:18
Speaker 1: life experiences. Have you ever done a hunt where you
1:50:21
Speaker 1: had to go and pass a test for you can
1:50:25
Speaker 1: apply for the hunt. The only thing that pops into
1:50:31
Speaker 1: my mind is that classic fence crossing and hunter education.
1:50:35
Speaker 1: I'm talking like you got to hit a plaine if
1:50:38
Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt moose on the Kenai Peninsula. Yeah, as
1:50:42
Speaker 1: of this year, you need to go in and pass
1:50:45
Speaker 1: the online course about antler configuration on moose in Montana.
1:50:54
Speaker 1: When you go to get a black bear permit, you
1:50:56
Speaker 1: need to pass an i D course. Can you differentiate
1:51:01
Speaker 1: from a grizzly? A grizzly at New Mexico has a
1:51:04
Speaker 1: lion identification? Colorado has a lion identification? Yes, Utah, I
1:51:11
Speaker 1: just did mine the other day. I did a fifteen
1:51:13
Speaker 1: question exam before you can apply for a tunder swan
1:51:17
Speaker 1: permit because they want you to damn sure know the
1:51:20
Speaker 1: difference between a tunder swan and a whistler. Okay, all right,
1:51:25
Speaker 1: ye now, I and this is this isn't just this
1:51:31
Speaker 1: isn't just like I'm not just applying this the hunting.
1:51:34
Speaker 1: But I feel like there should be a thing in
1:51:41
Speaker 1: a utopia, There would be a thing where in order
1:51:44
Speaker 1: for you to have an opinion where you're going about wildlife,
1:51:50
Speaker 1: wildlife politics, and wildlife conservation you need to go in
1:51:55
Speaker 1: and pass a course, and the course would be drawn
1:51:58
Speaker 1: up by people to be where it didn't reflect a
1:52:02
Speaker 1: particular viewpoint. It just measured your understanding of where we've been,
1:52:08
Speaker 1: where we are now, what the picture is, and what
1:52:13
Speaker 1: different people are, what vision people are trying to pursue.
1:52:17
Speaker 1: At which point, when you pass said test, you can
1:52:20
Speaker 1: then say, man, I feel real bad about pedals the bear,
1:52:26
Speaker 1: yeah or whatever, that's utopia. Yeah. And you know, the
1:52:30
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is, the sad fact of the
1:52:31
Speaker 1: matter is that, well beyond the discussions around hunting, a
1:52:36
Speaker 1: lot of people have a lot of opinions about a
1:52:38
Speaker 1: lot of stuff where they really don't have try so hard.
1:52:43
Speaker 1: Unless I'm like arguing with my wife about something, I
1:52:46
Speaker 1: try so hard to not articulate opinions about ship that
1:52:50
Speaker 1: I have no business talking about. Yeah, And I think
1:52:56
Speaker 1: the world would be a better place if more folks
1:53:00
Speaker 1: took that approach, and if more folks, you know, had
1:53:03
Speaker 1: a real appetite for learning new things and having broadened horizons. Unfortunately,
1:53:10
Speaker 1: that's not the world that we live in. But I
1:53:13
Speaker 1: sincerely believe, and a lot of this is based on
1:53:16
Speaker 1: my experience with Learn to Hunt programs and with interacting
1:53:20
Speaker 1: um with a lot of new hunters who have come
1:53:22
Speaker 1: into the activity as adults, particularly from urban backgrounds, that
1:53:28
Speaker 1: this desire to experience the kinds of you know, perspective
1:53:37
Speaker 1: altering outdoor moments that the three of us and you know,
1:53:43
Speaker 1: a lot of folks listen to this have a healthy
1:53:46
Speaker 1: dose of every year. The desire for those experiences exists
1:53:50
Speaker 1: in a lot of people who are just trying to
1:53:52
Speaker 1: figure out how to get there. Furthermore, there are a
1:53:56
Speaker 1: lot of people who if given the right catalysts, the
1:54:00
Speaker 1: lightbulb can come on. And I believe in the grand
1:54:08
Speaker 1: scheme of conservation in this country, one of the most
1:54:13
Speaker 1: impactful things that we can do is help open up
1:54:16
Speaker 1: the door to those folks, and that is a different mindset.
1:54:21
Speaker 1: I've taken thirty of them on their first hunting trip. Yes,
1:54:24
Speaker 1: so don't be telling me about this, dude. I'm I'm preaching.
1:54:28
Speaker 1: I'm preaching less to you and more just kind of
1:54:30
Speaker 1: I'm getting all defensive. My feelings are getting hurt. Oh no, dude,
1:54:34
Speaker 1: So what I'm what I'm saying, and you should be
1:54:37
Speaker 1: taking it this way. What we need is more people
1:54:41
Speaker 1: willing to engage in these thoughtful conversations and willing to
1:54:44
Speaker 1: take people under their wings. And the folks that you've
1:54:46
Speaker 1: taken out, you know, I think a lot of those
1:54:48
Speaker 1: individuals embody exactly what I'm talking about. You have a
1:54:51
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of adult first time hunters, a
1:54:54
Speaker 1: lot of women, a lot of people motivated by food. Um.
1:54:59
Speaker 1: These are These are like universal. The ability to to
1:55:04
Speaker 1: have kind of a communal experience outdoors that results in
1:55:08
Speaker 1: being able to eat something healthy and share that with
1:55:11
Speaker 1: your family. The ability to go out and actively procure
1:55:16
Speaker 1: the calories that you're going to use to sustain yourself
1:55:19
Speaker 1: and sustain those whom you love. These are like fundamental,
1:55:24
Speaker 1: hardwired desires in human beings. Interact with nature, Eat something
1:55:30
Speaker 1: good biophelia and meat fhelia, Yeah, dude, meat Yeah, I'd see.
1:55:35
Speaker 1: So they're one and the same. It's one and the same,
1:55:38
Speaker 1: interacting with nature. I had a guy email their day
1:55:41
Speaker 1: and said, uh, his girlfriend doesn't like to hunt. Sounds
1:55:45
Speaker 1: of my wife like his. They don't like to hunt.
1:55:48
Speaker 1: They just like to eat wild meat. And he said,
1:55:50
Speaker 1: is there a word for someone who just eats wild meat? Yeah?
1:55:56
Speaker 1: I thought was wild terrians. I gome up with I
1:55:59
Speaker 1: got it it wild to terran. No, it's not um
1:56:03
Speaker 1: so too. That's a tight word. I like wild to terran.
1:56:06
Speaker 1: I've got one. I've got one that's even tighter for
1:56:07
Speaker 1: you though. So if you look at the Latin root
1:56:13
Speaker 1: for venison, yeah, h venado in Spanish, then venny that
1:56:24
Speaker 1: means that means to pursue. It means to hunt. So
1:56:28
Speaker 1: technically speaking, when somebody says venison, what do you think
1:56:30
Speaker 1: if you think of dear meat? Right, if you were
1:56:32
Speaker 1: to take a literal translation of venison, it would be
1:56:36
Speaker 1: meat that has been hunted venison like you could. You
1:56:39
Speaker 1: could pull out a quail and say, here's some venison.
1:56:42
Speaker 1: So I think these individuals you just described they would
1:56:45
Speaker 1: be venivoes. Oh man, I like that. But the problem
1:56:50
Speaker 1: is the problem is not enough people know that that's
1:56:54
Speaker 1: what that means. Well, and we just invented it. Okay,
1:56:59
Speaker 1: let me lay it. Look Yeah, but yeah, but you
1:57:02
Speaker 1: got a factor in that. No, I like it, but
1:57:05
Speaker 1: you need to you need the factor. You can't factor
1:57:08
Speaker 1: in knowing. You can't have me just because you know
1:57:10
Speaker 1: that you're right. You gotta look at it like venison
1:57:13
Speaker 1: means dear meat. But they're saying, but that's not because
1:57:16
Speaker 1: I snaff too, right, So in pursued. But let me
1:57:23
Speaker 1: tell you a tale. Okay, okay, this is the last
1:57:26
Speaker 1: different top. Yeah, yeah, I In the mean time, have
1:57:27
Speaker 1: you come any closer and you're thinking about how you're
1:57:29
Speaker 1: gonna capture blood for blood sausage? No, I haven't been
1:57:33
Speaker 1: sitting here googling. No, what about like a siphon? You know,
1:57:39
Speaker 1: like if you're trying to drain in aquarium and you
1:57:40
Speaker 1: got the hose, you kind of get like the down
1:57:44
Speaker 1: downhill gravity thing going. Yeah, that's all fine. Like I said,
1:57:48
Speaker 1: you just gotta be there with the implements to cool
1:57:50
Speaker 1: it down. What if you shoot one on like a
1:57:53
Speaker 1: late season hunt when it's negative ten degrees out? Wouldn't
1:57:58
Speaker 1: that be part of the I would think you want
1:57:59
Speaker 1: to put it to a capped container and limit its
1:58:02
Speaker 1: exposure to air. Yeah, I think that's a big part
1:58:05
Speaker 1: of it. That is what I would be thinking about. Oh,
1:58:08
Speaker 1: but here's what I want to tell you. Okay, this
1:58:10
Speaker 1: isn't even relican. This be our bedtime story because I
1:58:13
Speaker 1: think I have to go to bed and then get
1:58:14
Speaker 1: up and make it and get a flight all within
1:58:16
Speaker 1: like four hours. Isn't it beautiful out here? Though? Stars,
1:58:20
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you the thing I was gonna
1:58:22
Speaker 1: tell you. You gotta can't do that. You gotta do
1:58:26
Speaker 1: it like a cliff notes. Okay, So I have a shirt. Um,
1:58:31
Speaker 1: I had a shirt that that just takes so damn long.
1:58:36
Speaker 1: All right, I say, I had a Savage rifle shirt. Okay.
1:58:41
Speaker 1: And the company is Savage, right, And their logo for
1:58:44
Speaker 1: a long time was it was a planes Indian with
1:58:47
Speaker 1: a head the head dress. I remember the rain with
1:58:50
Speaker 1: his head dress and it says Savage. So I go
1:58:56
Speaker 1: to someone and I say, hey, what do you what
1:58:58
Speaker 1: do you see? What's the shirt? Right? What does the
1:59:02
Speaker 1: shirt say to you? And she says, well, it says
1:59:04
Speaker 1: to me that you got an Indian on your shirt.
1:59:06
Speaker 1: And you're saying that that Indian is a savage or
1:59:08
Speaker 1: Indians are savages. The truth of the matter is that
1:59:15
Speaker 1: Savage the Firearm Company was founded started by a man who,
1:59:20
Speaker 1: due to no action of his own, happened to have
1:59:23
Speaker 1: the last name of Savage. Arthur Savage was the guy's
1:59:27
Speaker 1: name when he was starting his company out making lever
1:59:30
Speaker 1: action rifles or early client of his was chief Lame Dear.
1:59:38
Speaker 1: He gave lame dear a good deal on a bunch
1:59:41
Speaker 1: of rifles. They became friendly. Lame dear said, you know what,
1:59:48
Speaker 1: you could put my likeness. I like you so much,
1:59:51
Speaker 1: you can put my likeness on your rifles. Arthur Savage
1:59:57
Speaker 1: says that sounds great. Okay, So there's what someone hears
2:00:04
Speaker 1: and thinks they're seeing and what they're really seeing. And
2:00:09
Speaker 1: to say of veniceitarian or whatever, venivore, a venivore, a venivore,
2:00:16
Speaker 1: that's such a good term. You can't go around exploit
2:00:19
Speaker 1: like like it's like wearing my shirt where you gotta
2:00:22
Speaker 1: go around the people being like no, no, no, no,
2:00:24
Speaker 1: check it out right. Really, it just takes so much energy. Yeah,
2:00:30
Speaker 1: so I would have to say people be like, oh no,
2:00:32
Speaker 1: because I eat snap turtles and quails and ship too,
2:00:34
Speaker 1: And it has to been oh no, no no, because
2:00:36
Speaker 1: really the root word it just I just gets so
2:00:39
Speaker 1: tired halfway through any time you got any concluding thoughts, Yeah,
2:00:45
Speaker 1: you you'd have to be like me. You you have
2:00:49
Speaker 1: to be like me, where instead of even giving people
2:00:52
Speaker 1: your full name, you've been relegated to saying JP. Yeah,
2:00:57
Speaker 1: so that you don't have to be like, yeah, it's
2:00:59
Speaker 1: Lavians all of the j da da every day, this man.
2:01:05
Speaker 1: Every day, this man has to explain his name. Yeah,
2:01:08
Speaker 1: now I saw he's got Yanni has an email signature
2:01:12
Speaker 1: for those of you who have not emailed with Yanni,
2:01:14
Speaker 1: where it's got the spelling j A N I S
2:01:18
Speaker 1: and then in parentheses y A N I S closed parentheses,
2:01:23
Speaker 1: like so people can help to help people understand how
2:01:25
Speaker 1: to pronounce his name. That I read that and I thought, oh,
2:01:29
Speaker 1: his name is Janice Jannis, Yes, Prince Yannis parentheses. Now
2:01:35
Speaker 1: even my car I got the kind of car you
2:01:37
Speaker 1: can talk to you when you want to call someone
2:01:38
Speaker 1: who I have to say, uh, call Janice Boodless and
2:01:47
Speaker 1: it'll then and then my kids like that's not his day.
2:01:50
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, the car takes his name is that's
2:01:53
Speaker 1: what we're gonna call him right now, until we get
2:01:54
Speaker 1: him on the horn, they're gonna call him Yanni and
2:01:56
Speaker 1: then your your Yanka. Um. Yeah. Once the computers figure
2:02:02
Speaker 1: out that you can just say call and it dials
2:02:07
Speaker 1: me up, we know we're in trou then you'll know
2:02:08
Speaker 1: you've you've achieved artificial intelligence. That's when you know, like
2:02:13
Speaker 1: the beginning of the end has come and soon the
2:02:16
Speaker 1: technology you'll be taken over. Okay, I don't have any
2:02:18
Speaker 1: concluding thoughts because I'm my mind was my mind was
2:02:24
Speaker 1: the story about the T shirts. Thought about your name,
2:02:28
Speaker 1: that name, Thanks mom, Dad. Now I'm on board with
2:02:34
Speaker 1: Karl's thinking on how we should be moving forward with
2:02:40
Speaker 1: you know, taking the time to accept those other viewpoints.
2:02:44
Speaker 1: And it's I didn't feel like it's our responsibility to
2:02:48
Speaker 1: educate these people. And you know, I hate that word
2:02:54
Speaker 1: educate because people don't usually mean when people say they
2:03:00
Speaker 1: need to be educated. I find the people what they're
2:03:02
Speaker 1: really saying is they're saying I need to convince them
2:03:06
Speaker 1: to agree with me. That's people. It's like code. It's
2:03:09
Speaker 1: like a weird code language. But we're like, oh, the
2:03:12
Speaker 1: public needs to be educated. What you're saying, it really
2:03:15
Speaker 1: is like the public needs to see. Friend. Greg Blaskovic
2:03:20
Speaker 1: showed us, like through his research that so many people
2:03:26
Speaker 1: out there think that hunting is completely unregulated, that you
2:03:31
Speaker 1: all you need to do to go hunting is get
2:03:34
Speaker 1: some sort of weapon and walk out into the woods
2:03:37
Speaker 1: and if it's brown, it's down. Okay. So when there
2:03:41
Speaker 1: is that level of ignorance. Then I don't feel bad saying, yes,
2:03:45
Speaker 1: I should be going out and educating people. No, I agree,
2:03:48
Speaker 1: I like it. I like it. I understand what you're saying.
2:03:51
Speaker 1: But I've just over the years, I've found when people
2:03:54
Speaker 1: say they want to educate people, what they're saying is
2:03:56
Speaker 1: they want to get people to agree with them. And
2:03:59
Speaker 1: funny ring up Gregg's study because Greg was testing ways
2:04:05
Speaker 1: in which he could get people to agree with him.
2:04:08
Speaker 1: M hm, So yeah, let's go educate him, meaning let's
2:04:12
Speaker 1: get agree with us. But I also think this is
2:04:14
Speaker 1: like a little bit of cynicism where when people say, like, oh,
2:04:17
Speaker 1: we I want to be opened up to other people's viewpoints,
2:04:21
Speaker 1: you're sort of saying I want to pretend to be
2:04:24
Speaker 1: open to your viewpoints so that I can educate on
2:04:28
Speaker 1: my you about my viewpoints and have it be that
2:04:31
Speaker 1: you come out agreeing with me. You're not saying. You're
2:04:35
Speaker 1: not saying that I am this mushy, undecisive thing open
2:04:41
Speaker 1: to you telling me ship that's gonna make me requestion
2:04:44
Speaker 1: my core fundamental beliefs. So the dialogue you're supposedly fixing
2:04:51
Speaker 1: to have you might not even have a core fundamental
2:04:54
Speaker 1: belief about what we're talking about. I have core fundamental
2:04:57
Speaker 1: beliefs about what I'm talking about right now, but wildlife
2:05:02
Speaker 1: management in America. Okay. So I'm not gonna go around
2:05:06
Speaker 1: acting to people like I'm open to your viewpoints, because
2:05:09
Speaker 1: I'm not. Really. I'm curious to hear what you think
2:05:12
Speaker 1: so that I can hear what you think and then
2:05:14
Speaker 1: tell you some ship to make you think otherwise, kinda
2:05:22
Speaker 1: kind I'm nodding my head in agreement, like agree with
2:05:25
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, or you want to go to bed,
2:05:29
Speaker 1: so that I'm done, I have I swear to God
2:05:32
Speaker 1: I'm not saying in our thing. Just turn that sheen
2:05:36
Speaker 1: off and you're ready. Honest, it's been a good discussion.
2:05:40
Speaker 1: It's been a lively, lively chat. So this notion about
2:05:44
Speaker 1: h now a whole lot of it. That was a
2:05:46
Speaker 1: joke because I'm not saying anything, all right, This this
2:05:48
Speaker 1: notion about educating folks, um. I think there's utility in
2:05:55
Speaker 1: sharing information that is pertinent to the topic where to discussing.
2:06:00
Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of folks out there
2:06:02
Speaker 1: who have no clue of the basics, and in those instances,
2:06:06
Speaker 1: if they have the desire to actually be informed. A
2:06:11
Speaker 1: degree of education is warranted, absolutely, But the fact is
2:06:17
Speaker 1: where we have the most potency around this topic I
2:06:24
Speaker 1: think has less to do with like convincing people of
2:06:30
Speaker 1: hard facts with data and speaking about this in more
2:06:36
Speaker 1: personal ways that I believe are broadly relevant to our
2:06:41
Speaker 1: fellow human beings on like a species level. So reverence
2:06:46
Speaker 1: for nature, desire to eat well, desire to be active,
2:06:52
Speaker 1: desire to have healthy functioning ecosystems in which we can
2:06:56
Speaker 1: be participants. Those are those I believe for most people
2:07:03
Speaker 1: who have their their basics met. You know, folks who
2:07:08
Speaker 1: are otherwise, they're covered and they have they have the
2:07:12
Speaker 1: ability to think beyond just survival mode. And it's important
2:07:15
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that for some people their reality is survival mode.
2:07:20
Speaker 1: People who have have survival mode box checked. What we're
2:07:23
Speaker 1: talking about here around healthy land, eating well, being active,
2:07:30
Speaker 1: getting a good dose in nature. I think those are
2:07:33
Speaker 1: like universally appealing, and I believe that based in part
2:07:40
Speaker 1: on my experience interacting with people from other countries that
2:07:43
Speaker 1: are far more ecologically degraded than ours is, you know,
2:07:50
Speaker 1: talking to people who have spent their whole lives living
2:07:52
Speaker 1: in urban centers in China about the recreational opportunities that
2:07:57
Speaker 1: we have here in North America and having them say
2:07:59
Speaker 1: I want to come do that with you sometime, and
2:08:02
Speaker 1: then having them come and experience that, and having those
2:08:07
Speaker 1: experiences literally bring tears to people's eyes, like the star
2:08:12
Speaker 1: I was telling you earlier today about the deer hunt.
2:08:14
Speaker 1: So these are things that I believe are hardwired into us.
2:08:17
Speaker 1: And I think it's more about communicating on a personal
2:08:22
Speaker 1: emotional level, um than it is presenting facts. But I
2:08:27
Speaker 1: agree the facts are relevant, YOHNI. Yeah, I could. I
2:08:32
Speaker 1: could rephrase it to uh to uh, I guess, I
2:08:38
Speaker 1: guess appease you so that it's more of just like
2:08:41
Speaker 1: exposing you appease me, Yeah, so that you're like, yeah,
2:08:46
Speaker 1: I like what you're saying, So that they're just like,
2:08:49
Speaker 1: expose people to whatever we do. Don't try to educate them,
2:08:55
Speaker 1: but just expose them to what it is and then
2:08:58
Speaker 1: let them make up make their own decisions. You know,
2:09:00
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be mad if if they don't jump on,
2:09:03
Speaker 1: you know, jump on my side and all of a
2:09:07
Speaker 1: sudden becoming the biggest conservationists and hunters in the in
2:09:11
Speaker 1: you know, history, United States. Remember how Michael Jordan quit
2:09:16
Speaker 1: basketball then came back. Yeah, I'm back into this recording.
2:09:21
Speaker 1: I'm coming out of retirement hard. I quit earlier right
2:09:25
Speaker 1: when I'm back now. And that's why i'd beverages around
2:09:30
Speaker 1: this table. I've quite clarified that I am real comfortable
2:09:35
Speaker 1: with people who don't agree with me, especially if they
2:09:38
Speaker 1: have a good reason for it, um, the reason that
2:09:42
Speaker 1: I accept as valid. So it's complicated, Carl, Thank you
2:09:45
Speaker 1: very much for joining us, Batman. Always glad to be here. Um.
2:09:49
Speaker 1: You always say things that make despite all the ship
2:09:53
Speaker 1: I've been saying, you always say things that made me
2:09:56
Speaker 1: think a little bit different. I come out of the
2:10:01
Speaker 1: experience of talking to you every time, UM, a changed person.
2:10:08
Speaker 1: So thanks for that. Appreciate it. Man, that's a great
2:10:11
Speaker 1: compliment and you're honest. Thank you, Hey, pleasure to be here. Yeah,
2:10:16
Speaker 1: what a nice night. God dude, glad you guys like
2:10:19
Speaker 1: the deck man that that means a lot too. Well.
2:10:22
Speaker 1: The light pollution is low here so you can see
2:10:24
Speaker 1: the night sky beautiful. If you've made it through this
2:10:27
Speaker 1: marathon podcast, please go to iTunes or wherever you listen
2:10:33
Speaker 1: to podcasts and uh leave a review, give us A
2:10:37
Speaker 1: rating we'd much appreciate it