All right, Welcome back, guys to another episode of Cutting the Distant Podcast. I'm Dirk Durham, and tonight I've got an old friend and fellow podcaster, old Jim Huntsman himself.
Who you call an old.
I guess I am the guy with the white face here.
How's it going?
Man? Good good?
I would grow a really big, big beard, but every time I even get a little bit shaggy, everybody says, oh, hey, Santa Claus.
Yeah, no kidding, that's I'd look like zz tap man. I'm just I keep mine nice and trimmed.
Zz top or old Bolt Bill Golden from the Oakreage Boys, big Beard and along hair man ooom up a mile out. Well, Hey, I got Gym on the podcast here tonight, and we want to talk about something that's kind of been grinding my gears for a while and been you know, I've been kind of watching social media and whether it's a hunter posting or maybe maybe a fishing game entity, they post on Facebook or whatever and they talk about, hey, it's time to voice your opinion on different regulation.
Changes or whatever. But there's this big.
Division, and I think we see it everywhere. America is divided, right, it seems like if you like purple, if you like green, if it doesn't matter when people are taking a lot of sides and really divided right now in America, and I don't think social media or media in general is helping things out. So I thought i'd kind of talk to you about it. And it kind of bothers me a little bit, because if you look at the if you look at the overall picture, I think we're all in this thing together.
We all want the same goals.
But man, we get kind of caught up in all the bickering and back and forth on on social media and commenting and and on it. I honestly think there's some people on there that would would never say the kind of things they say on social media to another person's face, but for some reason, they start typing and and they they feel like, you know, they don't have to respect their human their their their human counterpart. They
don't have to respect their fellow hunter. And uh, what are your thoughts, Jim.
Well, I think that it's I think it's a bigger problem than what a lot of people are even giving it credit for. I think that this division is used against us by not only you know, the the hostile
vegan crowd or the anti hunting crowd. I think that it it creates like this disparity in beliefs and values that are going to be important when we have to come together when the anti hunting movement grows larger and louder and more influential on the non hunter and so that, you know, having that what's the word I'm looking for. There's when when people are mad at each other, they're
gonna not want to support each other. So like, for example, if there is some regulation being passed about a rifle season, for example, and the rifle hunters and the bow hunters have been bigger and back and forth, and they've got like this animosity build up. Why is that bow hunter going to go help support that rifle hunter if there's some kind of you know, regulatory or peace of legislation
or commission decision coming down the pike. Because they don't like each other essentially, and we're like looking at each other in the it's it's misplaced anger and animosity when we have a much bigger threat and a much bigger problem and a much bigger enemy, you know, so to speak. So yeah, I think it's a major issue. I remember, Dirk, when when I was a kid, there was this gas station in our town and during hunting season, everybody but it would take like polaroids or they'd go get pictures
printed up. This was before like you know, social media and all that. Obviously we're talking like the early nineties and maybe even in the late eighties, I can't remember, but everybody would post the picture of their buck or elk or whatever on the on the wall in the entryway of this gas station, and everybody kind of stand around and and look at this. And I remember at some point some jokester took a marker and blacked out a tooth on somebody's picture, right, just being being funny
or whatever. But people hunters back then, this was like the talk of the town in the cafe and all this stuff where people were pissed that somebody respected that hunter, that fellow hunter, and and that was like the attitude back then, and and all it was was probably some kid that decided that, you know, thought he was funny to black out a tooth, and uh, but but people took that as a sign of.
Did was probably me? It was probably you. I That's what I said back then.
I was like nine years old.
It was a little bit of a Yeah, that was a little bit of a whitacre. Well, I still kind of am. I would do it today.
I would. I'm dude, I'm in my forties. I'd black out somebody's tooth in a funny picture. But uh, you know, it's it just kind of speaks to the difference in how respect levels were in terms of you know, these are these are fellow hunters.
Uh.
They didn't care about the method of take in which they killed that buck. They didn't care about you know, brands that you wore, or bows that you shot, or you know whatever, it doesn't matter. They the point was there was there was a lot of unification and that doesn't exist today.
Yeah, it's crazy and the tangents people get on. For instance, I've seen one here on Facebook the other day. It was Idaho Department of Fishing Game. They were wanting some public input on whether people wanted to continue using number eleven musket caps or is it number the eleven number eleven? No, yeah, number.
Eleven, number number eleven percussion caps and and good luck with that because you can't find them anywhere anyway.
You can't buy them two falls ago. I was going to take advantage of the muzzli ter season, and I searched tying Low on the internet and locally thought, well, every little mom and pop gun shop somewhere should have a you know, a handful of these. No, I just couldn't find them, and luckily a friend of mine gave me some of his. But so, anyway, then they acknowledged that that it was kind of a they're hard to hard to find these days, and they're they're saying, you know,
wanting public input. What do you think about going to the shotgun grammers?
Right?
You know, can are you guys against it or for it? And honestly, I'm I'm for it just because of the fact that if you don't have musket caps, you can't make your musket go boom?
Right yeah?
Yeah, and then who knows, you know, ammunition and primers in general have been really hard to get. So anyway, so I supported that. I got online and went and took their survey and there was a couple other questions on there, and I think they talked about jacketed bullets, sabage bullets and such, you know, for the in lines or whatever, and oh man, it was a garage fire.
In the comments, people were mad and then they're saying, you know, you guys are trying to put scopes on muzzleloaders and you're trying to do this that there was scopes were never mentioned in the questionnaire, but you know, everybody seems to want to kind of roll downhill, go negative on it. But it was just crazy, you know, and then pretty soon people are bicker amongst each other
and then they're you know, well have you ever killed anything? Yeah, I've killed a lot of stuff, And you know, it just the conversation just degrades from there and you see that more and more, and it it doesn't matter what it is. If it's just a tiny bit controversial. If you were to post a picture of a wolf and you put that on your your social media feed, you're gonna have a lot of supporters. But eventually somebody's gonna start throwing rotten eggs. And then then the conversation just
goes south really fast. And I think, you know, the anti hunters and the wolf loving community they I think they kind of band together, so they're like, hey, go go blow up this guy's picture, this guy's feed, and then you got you know, those guys tag team each other and get in there and.
Type a bunch of mean, hateful things.
But I don't know, it feels like it seems like it's so easy to go down that road these days and get negative. And sometimes maybe I see something that upsets me on on social media, maybe someone did something, maybe some company did something that's hey, I thought those guys were supposed to be hunters, or I thought they supported gun rights or hunting, and now everybody kind of almost jumps to the worst conclusion really quickly, seems like on some of these topics instead of like push and pause,
and I usually have to do that. I'm a little bit of a hot head myself sometimes and I have to push pause and be like, Okay, well, what are the facts besides? But this little thing I read on this little snippet on Facebook, Instagram, wherever, and let me do some research before I get an emotional response to it.
Maybe there's more to it. And ninety nine percent of the time you've just got a little snippet of what the problem or the situation actually is, and then once once you were kind of read through it, mull it over a little bit. I have a lot more understanding and maybe I'm not so spirited on my on the repla I would initially would have put, Yeah.
I think we're all guilty of that, Derek. I mean we we've all gotten on Facebook, especially Facebook seems to be that one in Twitter seemed to be like the most fiery where people get super emotional and have these these crazed responses. And I'm you know, I'm working on this one project, so I you know, as a test, this was a total this was a non serious post. But as a test, I posted the meat yield difference between my four and a half or five and a half year I'm not sure how old this buck was.
This buck ey'd killed. The meat yield of that one versus my daughter's spike she just killed. And I and I everybody, anybody who's hunted, we all know it's obvious. You know, these bigger, these more mature bucks, you're gonna get a lot more meat, right, And so that's what that's exactly what I wanted to try and see how easily people are triggered when it comes to this hunting topic, because let's face it, hunter are just you know, we
are passionate, We're emotional people. We get you know, this stuff is important to us, and so I posted it, and I took a picture. I put a picture of the my buck and my daughter's buck and kind of put them together, you know, And and I like just basically reported the meat yield, purposely, not advocating whether or not we should hunt big bucks, mature bucks versus little bucks or anything like that. I said nothing about that.
It was just strictly like the facts of here's how much meat this buck gave, here's how much meat this buck produced, and you know, we butchered all all ourselves, so I was able to control all the all the weighing and everything. And man not not five minutes after posting that, somebody went but just absolutely berserk and well, don't tell me what kind of buck I should I should hunt and what I shouldn't hunt. And like, man,
I didn't. I didn't. I literally posted this to see what people would say that in that kind of response, and it's again, it's for something else, I'm more, but it's it's interesting to see again, going back to what you said, you know, we've all been there where we see something and we kind of have this knee jerk reaction without understanding, maybe the context in which something was posted, whether it was from like a fishing game agency or
somebody just sharing, you know, some of their success in the field or whatever, and people just have this. I don't know what it is about social media that makes people this way, other than the fact that we're not
sitting down face to face. Because if if we were sitting in a cafe or something, you know, if we were having breakfast together, we were sitting in a bar having a beer and talking about this stuff, and I showed somebody a picture of these two different bucks, and I said, hey, this buck produced you know, whatever amount of meat, and this smaller buck produces this much amount of meat. The person sitting next to me is not going to freak out on me because we're face to face.
And so this lack of being face to face, and it's this, you know, we all know hunters are just opinionated in general, just by our very nature, and we all have different experiences and we were all taught different things.
And so you know, if if if somebody like I looked up to my grandpa big time, if my grandpa said it man, that his word was gold, and that is how things were right and so I have things from when I'm like five years old that I remember my grandpa taught me about hunting or fishing, especially because he was a big time fisherman. And as to this day, I have proven what he said was actually not entirely accurate, but to him it was, and I still think he's right,
even though I know it's not. Does that make sense how I'm explaining that? And so we get stuck in those We get stuck in that maybe what we were taught that what is that there's like a fancy term for like cognitive dissidents or something where it's like we we think things are true that might not be true, or we wanted to fends something that we've always believed
because it's how we've done it. But because we're on social media, we have this ability to get super aggressive about it and not get punched in the face.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, And I think some of that, like is confirmation bias. You have an opinion on something, so you're always looking to confirm that opinion in everything you see. You know, for instance, I believe pretty strongly that every year during the Year of the Huckleberry, you know, when there's years of the I call it the year of the huckleberry. When we have a bumper huckleberry crop. A lot of the elk don't beegle worth a crap.
In the places I hunt.
And it's kind of a funny little term, but you know, I think it all goes back to how much water it's getting soaked into the ground. There's how much feed there is, and you know you have you know, you have elk spread out all across, all across the landscape instead of like on a dry year when things are a drought. You know, you don't have feed in certain spots to congregate. There's more competition for those those cows because every all the elker in that spot anyway. But no,
you're you're right. You know, everybody wants to defend their their opinion. Grandpa said this. Grandpa said that my dad, he was an avid sportsman, about the most opinionated man you'll ever meet, and a lot of the things he told me growing up, you know, taught me. You know, I was like, oh yeah, my dad, he knows, he knew. But I've I've dismantled a lot of those a lot of those ideas of hunting and the way things work, just just through my own experiences and not on purpose.
It's just like, huh, this just didn't turn out the way, you know, my dad saw things. And yeah, I think people everyone sees things through a little different lens, kind of like the old the old game, what.
Is it, the telephone game? Right? You?
You somebody tells you something, you whisper into the person next to you ear and you tell them exactly what that other person told you. And you have a room full of people. So you go around six or eight people here, and by the time the message gets to the last person, it's changed dramatic. Yeah, because the way people hear it, they process it, they paraphrase, they put it out to the next person maybe in a way they think they're going to understand it in the same
way they understood it, and it changes a lot. So I feel like everybody's so quick to judge another person's opinion and not like, well, well why don't you tell me your opinion and listen and maybe analyze it and mull on it a little bit. But I feel like that instant satisfaction or gratification of fire and back really quickly with that emotional response is is really it's damaging, honestly to our hunting heritage.
Oh absolutely, because again it goes back to that animosity thing and that resentment thing. How are we supposed to come together when you know you've got for uh, I'll
use Washington as an example. You know, they've got this this part of their commission or like hot their flat hostile towards hunters, right, And and they're trying to push this this agenda that is taking away whether it's spring bear or or any other predator type hunting they're trying to they're trying to get rid of like mountain lion hunting, and trying to change the model of wildlife management in the state of Washington away from like the North American
model to something that they see as like this utopian, leave everything alone kind of model. And and if we're if we're over here and the Anni hunters know this stuff, you know, they monitor us, they watch this stuff. So so we're over here, we're bickering about whether or not a six point five creed More is deadly enough for an elk, And and they're over here pushing things under the under the table through the commission, saying hey, this is how we can get rid of spring bear hunting.
This is how we can get rid of all bear hunting and mountain lion and hunting. This is how we could do away with with hounds and and all these things that are precious to us. That that they're they're working on that, you know, that saying how to you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. They're taking bites. Meanwhile we're just nipping at each other. And and you know, hey, you know that I don't care if you shoot a spike.
You should you can't eat the horns. And then you got the other guy going, you know, oh, well because of you, there's no big bucks left on this mountain because you're killing all the spikes, you know. And and and really the problem, like, I hate that argument. I hate that particular argument more than any other because I have wanted to take a side on that argument, and I cannot find tangible information to back up either side of that, and so I have no strong opinion on it.
And if I can't form like a strong opinion on it, I just don't like the argument. And I think that people start forming these arguments and these opinions on things that really cannot be back up and and again.
It's just this.
Big distraction from from a greater enemy and a greater threat, and we're wasting our time. It's it's just a it's going to it's going to come back and bite hunters right in the behind being being this hostile towards each other. It's so unnecessary.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
We have these bigger fish to fry than like you said, the six fight creed, more conversation, more traditional archery versus compound. You know that that's a very spirited, spirited conversation a lot of times, and within a niche. There's a lot of supporters within those niches, but they don't back up sometimes on both sides and think, dang it, we're all hunters. I want to support hunters, you know. Gee whiz, I decide I want to shoot a recurve bow and limit
my shot distance or whatever. Maybe not maybe maybe a person's an excellent shot with a recurve it at a long ways away.
But but to.
Sit there and throw rocks at a compound shooter for having sights or or vice versa. You know, the compound shooters think they're superior or or what I mean, you could if you search the internet, you can find every situation or scenario argued about. But in the in the end, guys and gals were you're both bow hunters, support your
bow hunters. Okay, gun hunters versus bow hunters. You know, within those conversations, you see somebody if there was a question about what we should would what should we do with the bow season and the rifle hunters or maybe would say, oh, we we want more rifle season during the bow season, or or you know where the bow hunters may want more bow season that would take shortened
the rifle season. But nope, pretty soon the conversation degrades again, and in the end we're they're both hunters, you know, bow or and gun hunting. I mean, you're both hunting. I've always been an opportunity, opportunistic hunter. I love hunting of all kinds. So I started out as a rifle hunter and then found out about bow hunting, and I'm like, wow, I can hunt another month.
I love hunting.
I want to be in the woods as much as it possibly can. So I'll pick up a bow and wow, I can chase bugling bulls the month of September.
This is awesome.
And then back when I was a kid, then you could you could continue with the same elk tag. You could continue on from archery season to rifle season with that same elk tag. Things have changed a lot in Idaho. But I was like, wow, this is this is great. I can I can hunt with a bow, I can hunt with a rifle. And if I don't get one with the rifle, I can get one with a muzzle loader.
What this is awesome? Like opportunistic.
So I have a I have a massive respect for for all of all of the hunting.
You know what.
You know, maybe it's a maybe somebody wants to use a crossbow.
That's not my cup of tea.
But you know, if if you want to go lug one of them things around, I mean, if by all means, go do it. As long as it's legal, right.
Yeah, as long as I'm legal.
And it's a we shouldn't poo poo on other people's parades.
Yeah that and and you nailed it. And that's the thing. Uh not to keep up bringing my grand my grandparents up, but my grandma would say, uh, mind your business, in mind your manners. See those two things hunters need to take into account. When we're talking about like social media, because I think two things happened. I think, like, like you said, I'm an opportunist as well. Uh, there was a time where I went to I tried to be like this purest bow oh hunter, you know, all strictly archery.
Everything I was going after was archery and and the and and that's great. I don't I don't care if somebody wants to do that. I don't, you know. That's that's the great part about hunting is you have these options to to worry about. But I think what happens and and and like social media is a really good place to air all this dirty laundry. But I think that somebody thinks about their Let's use elk hunting for an example. Let's somebody thinks about their archery season all
year long. You know, maybe maybe they get a new bow in December, in January or something. They get it all you know, set up for them, and and they start getting out there in the spring and flinging arrows, and they you know, go to some three D archery shoots, and they listen to podcasts, and they watch a bunch of videos and and and they buy like the some of those online hunting courses, and and they're putting all
this effort. They buy a bunch of new gear, new new Camo, new boots, and they they come around to season and they get in an air a situation where they're not here in bugles and maybe their unit is really crowded. These are real problems. These are real problems. You'll go into an area that looks super elky on like on X, and then you'll get there and it's like a desert well, like the aliens came in and abducted They abducted all the elk. You know that you're
not getting a sound. And you'll go to another unit and it's like everybody and their dog and the governor and the governor's dog is there bugling for elk, you know, and they're just super swamped. I'm not saying those issues don't exist, but I'm saying that people don't allow themselves to be flexible enough to adapt to whatever the situation is. And then you know, season ends, they don't notch a tag.
And the best place to air that dirty laundry is to make excuses as to why that happened by blaming the fish and game or blaming the rifle hunters, or blaming the muzzleloader hunters, or the houndsmen, or the bait, the bear bais, you know, all these different hunters, these other these factstions, if you will, that make up hunting, and they can use that as an excuse, and they could they could take their that pain and anger that builds up from not notching a tag and put you know,
some kind of label as to why it didn't happen outside of the fact that maybe you just didn't go far enough from the road. Maybe you didn't weren't flexible enough to switch units or drive thirty miles down the dirt road and find an area that wasn't so crowded. Maybe maybe those were some of the things that led to you know, tag soup, and not the fact that you know, I heard I this like perfect for this.
Somebody was complaining about wolves killing all the elkiness unit that I know almost for a fact, there's no wolves over there, and so it's like it's that kind of stuff, you know. And and the other part, too, is what you were talking about when you're saying, like, you know, you like to you enjoy the archery c and then going into the rifle season and the muzzleloader. I like all those two because I like the experience. I love rifle hunting. I think it's fun. I really enjoy rifle hunting.
It's a totally different experience, and I love bow hunting too. But people have a tendency to want to blame the system versus blaming themselves. So like, if the season are not set to what you think they should be, that does not mean that every hunter out there thinks or agrees with your opinion on it, because there if you take a hundred hunters, you're going to have a hundred different opinions as to how that season should be set.
And the better approach to it would be to check out what those seasons are and work hard with those seasons. Don't work against them, work to those seasons, you know, focus on how they are laid out. Okay, rifle season doesn't open until you know middle of October. For elk, what are the elk doing in middle of October? What are they doing towards the end of ours Cober? You know?
And and focus on that. Focus your energy on that instead of worrying about whether or not the entirety of the fish and game agency and whatever state you're hunting in is going to change that season because you don't like it.
Yeah, absolutely, I have to look in the mirror.
Oh me too.
This season twenty twenty three, my ELK season here, I want to choose a unit that was a little closer to home and have the opportunity to hunt with my son some more. And I didn't do all my due diligence, and you know, I did my summer work, did scouting, you know, check the unit out and found ELK. It's like, wow, this place is great. It's beautiful, has a little bit of everything. There's back country, you know, if you want to pack in, if you want to try real hard
and hike to the deepest holes, there's that. If you want easier days where there's some roaded areas, there's that. So fast forward to opening opening day. Opening day was great. There's a few people around them, not too many. But after lay day, you know what happens that Labor Day weekend, everybody shows up and nobody went home, and more and more people came and this place was a zoo.
There were people everywhere. Literally every place that you.
Could possibly camp, there was someone camped and Immediately your mind starts racing, like.
Gee whiz.
You know, the fishing game, they shouldn't sell so many tags in this units?
A yeah, yeah, yeah.
The funny thing is like I hardly saw any non residents. They were all Idaho plates.
Yeah.
No, Idaho's had a been big influx of people moving recently. That's true else but yeah, we won't say that, say that place. But anyhow, I was just like, man, they need to cut the tags back here, you know. And immediately that was my first knee jerk reaction. Then as you sit and dwell on it a little bit, it's like, no, dummy, you should have done your homework a little better. The fishing game provides it's all the all the information and
data at your fingertips. I should have looked of how many tags they sold that in that unit last year?
How many and what was the harvest rate? What was this? What was that?
You know, it breaks it down, you know, spikes, how many percentage of elk that were harvested were spikes? How many were six point or bigger? You know, there's a lot of data there in the hunt planner, But I I overlooked that.
That's my fault.
That's one of those everyone else's fault for trying to go out and have a good time.
Yeah, and it's that it's that same thing where it's the mistake I make all the time where you'll find a unit that seems like it's close and convenient to town, and you'll look at it in the summer and nobody's up there, but comes September, the place is packed because everybody else has the same mindset. They they you know, if you're if you're hunting outside of like a big metro area, everybody wants that closer access. We don't want
to drive six hours every time. It'd be nice to just drive an hour from home and get up in the sticks and find some pugl and bowls. And so that's that's always a factor. And you know, there's no getting away from it either way, because like even if it's three hours from home, there's people that are gonna be like, I'm gonna get away from the crowds by getting further away from town, and it's still crowded, you know, And so it's it's hard to it's hard to say, yeah,
what's gonna work. But I don't know. That's I guess that's that's why they call it hunting, and it's it's not you know, we're not We're not just going up to fetch an elk, right and and uh a couple of hundred pounds of meat. We're going up there to hunt, and and it's gonna be tough. And what makes it tough or not just the elk and the terrain you gotta cover. It's it's uh, it's the other hunters. It's the non residents and the residents, and the and the
seasons that the Fishing Game Agency sets up. It's it's all that. And you have to play into that game because if you're not playing the game, you're not gonna you're not gonna be successful. And and you know, bitching about it on facebook's not gonna not gonna help you next year.
Right right? Absolutely? Yeah.
I feel like people don't like to look at the man in the mirror too often, you know, face the fact that, well, maybe maybe I'm the culprit, maybe I'm the problem, maybe I should.
Have planned better.
Now, what are your thoughts on bad apples? So we do have some bad apples in hunting. You know, young people who are caught poaching, you know, the people who are maybe putting videos on there that maybe the general public is just not ready to see yet. Those are usually pretty pretty polarizing as well. Yeah, and kind of a dumpster fire as well. What are your thoughts on that stuff?
That's such a tough question, man, That's been a big discussion on my show. It's like a who decides what's okay to post? You know, because I have my opinions, and you're going to have your opinions, and maybe your opinion isn't the same, and everybody listening to the this is going to have their own opinion. In terms of the bad apples, I don't care if you're talking about a church, a company, an organization, a government entity, a
knitting group, club, or a bottle cap collecting club. There's always a percentage of bad apples that tend to shine that negative light on the rest of us.
Right.
I think I just told this story. But when I just got out of boot camp in the Marines, and you know, you're all you're all pumped up, You're all, you know, filled with pride and motivation. No, I'm a US Marine now, I just got out of boot camp or whatever, and then I get out and they give you like this ten day leave time to go home and walk around and in your dress blue uniforms and flaunt the fact that you just became a marine or whatever.
All over in the newspapers was the headline was two US Marines post wild horses in like the Mojave Desert.
Oh geez.
So instead of saying that two guys went out and poached horses, they labeled it two US Marines and they were they were Marines. They were stationed at a camp Penalton or whatever in California there, and they went out and had killed some horses, you know. And the problem with that is is that reflects on the entirety of the Marine Corps. So everybody thought that Marines were nothing but a bunch of innocent horse killers, wild horse poachers,
you know. And this went on for like months. Everybody was talking about it, you know that it was national news and and so that sort of thing that that same thing happens in the hunting space. If we have somebody like if you remember, if you remember back a couple of years, those those uh, those younger guys had wounded that little buck and the buck is struggling, but couldn't get up, and they're over there like filming them
selves kicking this buck. And then there was this other video that came out where they they had hung the carcass in a garage and uh, these young again young young guys were pouring beer into the chest cavity and shooting like, like, what do you call that where you beer really fast foot Like, yeah, beer bombing, that's what it was. I was drawing a blank. Ye I've drank. I drank so much beer in my life, I can't
remember cool terms like that, beer bonging. And they were like bonging the beer out of the mouth of this this buck hanging upside down in a garage, and then they put that they chose to put that on social media. Now, those two examples are super obvious things of stuff that we need to police ourselves on. We can't allow stuff like that to be posted because that reflects on the
entirety of the hunting community. PETA is going to grab a hold of that video and they're going to put it out to thousands, if not, if not millions of
people and say, look look at what hunters do. Look at what these red I kill billies do to these innocent animals and that that message is gonna you know, and then you're gonna have some some lady sitting on our couch watching a late night show and this peda commercial comes on and these these hunters are kicking the crap out of a deer that's wounded and can't get up, and it's making all this noise, and that is going to be her representation in her mind, that is going
to be her perception as to what a hunter is. So like two weeks later, maybe she that same lady sitting in church and the guy next to her is like, Yeah, I can't wait for church to get out so I can get up on the mountain and go deer hunting. She's gonna look negatively on that guy because she thinks he's gonna go out there wound a deer and then kick it and paunch it and film it and put it on Facebook. So those are the obvious things that I think as hunters, as a community, we need to
jump on that kind of stuff. Those kids that were pouring the beer down the chest cavity, I hit them up all on Facebook and I was trying to get them on my show. They one of them responded, but they wouldn't come on my show. But those are the kind of people we need to police ourselves. It's the other stuff that is a is a much more difficult conversation.
It's stuff that is like h and I bring this example a lot up on my show where they they've got a coyote in a foothold trap and they're they're filming themselves walking up to this coyote that's just freaking out, making all this noise, yipping and yapping and that circle of death. He's going crazy in this circle of death. And the guys are laughing and making this big deal and this scene and and oh, we're killing or I'm sorry, we're saving a bunch of deer because we're gonna get
this kyot. And then bam, they shoot this coyote and then they post that video. The thing is with that is there are some gnarly realities that come out of hunting and trapping, and we know that as hunters, we know the brutality that can come out of it. We don't have to show that stuff. We don't have to show that stuff. And I am not going to be like the judge and jury as to what we should and shouldn't post. But I think obvious things like that we need to police ourselves and start reaching out to
those kind of people. And you know the proverb proverbial guy, I can't speak tonight, man, shake your finger at those kind of people and let them know, hey, man, that that is not a good look for us as as a community. You need to take that video down. And I am not saying you know, your your average kill shot with a bow or rifle shot and stuff like that. I am talking about the extreme ones that that the non hunter. I'm not talking about the anti hunter. We're
not going to change their mind. It's the extreme or I'm sorry, the non extreme, non hunting, average citizen that doesn't have any real exposure to hunting that are going to see something. And you have to really use common sense. If some non hunter sees this post, are they going
to think negatively or positively about hunters? And that is what's going to bode for us in the future when it comes down to who the stakeholders are in the future of hunting and if it comes down to like a ballot initiative, you know, should deer hunting continue in America? You know, not that I think that's right around the corner. But I do think that that is in our future. At some point, it's going to come down to like a vote, a populous vote, and those people are going
to remember those nasty videos that we posted. Are that poor coyote in that traphold? I love hunting and trapping coyotes too, so don't anybody mistake me. I know the brutality that goes into it, especially when you're trapping him, but I don't show that stuff. I don't think I've ever posted one of my coyotes, and I've killed a lot of coyotes, and I don't care if you do.
I'm not saying you shouldn't. I am saying in that context, that's where we got to police ourselves, not showing them in that circle of death and everything else, you know, and showing that helpless coyotes sitting there with his foot stuck in a foothold trap and a bullet going through his head? Why show that? Why do we have to show that? I don't know, what do you think?
I think it's just too graphic.
And here's here, I think as hunters we sometimes forget our personal individual roots. We don't forget, we take that for granted. So where you came from, what you've seen, what you've done in your life. You know you've seen, you know, maybe you've done a lot of you've run a trapline, maybe you've shot and butchered a lot of animals, you know, in the woods, you know, cut them up in pieces, pack them out, you know, whatever you were, you grew up in the mountains, a small town, you've
done a lot in the woods, in the backwoods. But what a lot of us don't realize, I think, is not everyone has had those same exposures in their life. So a non hunter, new hunter, maybe a hunter who's been hunting for twenty thirty years, they just never have seen something of that kind of a graphic nature, or maybe haven't participated in anything similar to that to where
they see it, and it's it's disturbing. And as a non hunter, if they've never been exposed to any kind of animal death, then that would be a gruesome thing to witness, right absolutely. If you're a trapper and you've shot lots of lots of coyotes and then you you're you know, you know what it's all about, right, Yeah, For instance, here here there. There was a video that kind of went viral on Instagram the other day. The
guy was he shot an elk. He cut the head off, and it was really steep country and is so steep. Rather than cut the meat off of the carcass right there and pack it on your back down this steep hillside, he rolls the elk, the headless elk, down the hillside, and it rolls and tumbles way down the hillside, saving him.
You know, lots of work, lots of you know, you got a lot closer to the truck, you know, right, But not every but he's ready to see that, you know, the video to exact cost that video, not everybody is ready to see it.
You know.
I don't personally don't have a problem with I thought it was wow, that's ingenious.
That's good. I saw that.
I saw that video and and I thought the same exact thing. You. I'm like, I'd do that in a heartbeat. I just wouldn't film it and put it on Instagram.
No, No, And you know, I don't think anyone. I don't think he was probably trying to disrespect the animal. You know, the animal's dead, he's taking his life. He's going to try to get that thing closer to, you know, his destination, and probably it was probably warm out. Let's let's get this thing down the hill quick as we can.
You know, it's not a good look.
Though.
Maybe maybe I'm not going to share that kind of a video. Yeah, maybe I'm you.
Know, maybe maybe some things can remain a little bit of a secret, right, you don't. And so I feel like because there was a he got a ton.
Of hate mail.
Oh I read I read all those comments.
Lots read all the comments, you know, and people were very mad and upset, and I think, you know, as I read through the comments, I'm like, you know, and that's what got me to thinking, like, you know, not a lot of people have had the same upbringing or have had experienced taking an animal's life. Even there's a lot of new hunters, you know, maybe they've never even killed an animal, but they would like to kill a deer or whatever, but they haven't shot ground squirrels or
coyotes or other deer or elk or whatever. They have no experience with that. And then they see that and that's kind of one of the it's kind of graphic in something I'm really hard to digest if you've never thought about it or seen it. So yeah, man, that maybe before posting videos like that, we you know, I would censor myself like oh this is cool, until like, well, I don't think this is not something for everyone to see.
And I actually I've always I've always like respected the way that you post when when you get an elk down, your posts are always super tasteful looking like it's there's just something you always give, like reverence and respect to the animal in some way. You're not like laying down next to it, trying to give it a kiss in the ear or whatever some of these weird pictures people do. You know, it's always just a good clean photo, you know,
like an honoring and it's honoring multiple things. You're honoring yourself as a honor, you're honoring the animal, and you're honoring the the experience that it was. But you know, getting back to what we were talking about, you you nailed it, man, that there are people that go through this life that have no experience. You've got to remember there's a huge part of the population, even if they're meat eaters, they have never been on a farm, they've
never seen something butchered. They've never seen something killed outside of maybe a spider getting stepped on, and even that bothers them. So I saw a post the other day somebody was out muzzleloader had had got a cow elk down, and it was a big, beautiful cow elk and they had got a good shot of it, and it was kind of like, you know, the snow light snow had fallen and they'd kind of staged the yel cleaned it
up a little bit. But the problem, See, what hunters don't like pick up on, because this is something we've
been exposed to for a long time. What we don't pick up on sometimes, and I'm guilty of this is, uh, the blood bath that ensues from a fifty caliber muzzleloader going through flesh like this, right, and so around this this elk was just I mean, it looked like somebody brought in a garden hose full of blood and it's it's up and down the tree, and it's all over the snow and and like to to guys like you and I, that's just normal. We we expect that, right,
and it's it's not it's not bothersome. But think about the person that has never been and uh, that has never been exposed to that, and how are they going to react? And we can be jerks and we could be we could sit around and talk about how well I don't care how how they are. I'm a hunter. They need to know how this is, this is this I I only care about what I post. Okay, they need to toughen up and grow a pair or whatever. But you have to understand that these people, it's not
about that. Like, I've never been to a place where they butcher cows, and it would probably disturb me. And I raised cows when I was like, I didn't personally raise them, but our family are we we raised cattle, and uh we would send them off and we'd never see him again. You know, I didn't go out there and butcher these things. And you know, so something like that, I imagine I might be slightly disturbed by seeing that
that that rod or whatever go through the head. But the other side to that too is you know, have you seen that meme Dirk that has been going around where it's like everybody's there at Thanksgiving and uh, it's like, oh, there's our deer hunter. And then the next next person is like, oh, there was deer I saw some deer in my yard, and and somebody else was did you bring me some deer?
Me?
You know that whole thing where you're you're sitting there and there's a fan to catch, Did you catch a deer's yet? And I always text you that. I think I text you that this year? How many elks have you catched yet? Dirk?
Anyway?
The uh? But but if you as funny as that meme is, you have to think about those are the people when you post, when you post something that you've killed out in the field. Those are the people that see that, that are sitting there and they're they're the ones asking you if you catched a deer right, and and they don't have exposure to this life. They don't know how. They couldn't even begin to tell you how to gut a deer. They couldn't tell you how much blood is visible when when you do got a deer.
They can't tell you how quickly a coyote'll come in and snatch your venison right out of your head, you know, wherever you leave it, if you're taking one load out. They don't know how all that stuff works. And it's not because they're stupid. It's because that's just not what they do. And so those are the people when you post something, is one of the people at that table and that meme going to see that on Facebook while they're sitting there after dinner one night and think, man,
that is some brutal shit. Why would somebody do that? And I think that we need to start having more conversations about what that means and how we kind of police ourselves and clean up our own house before we start judging these other houses, like the hostile vegan crowd or the anti hunting crowd and all these other crowds that want to see our lifestyle taken away before we
start getting after them. We need to clean up our own house and look at what the non hunter has been expo because we already have things like Hollywood is against us, we have anti hunting groups putting out propaganda, we have some hostile commissions on some of these wildlife agency boards. We have all these things that are against us, and we're just like playing right into their game plan.
And I think that it's time to stop kind of pussy footing around the fact that these conversations need to be had because the future of hunting really is at stake, and we are the ones that are solely responsible for any of the negative press that comes out of it.
Absolutely, absolutely, I think everybody just needs to step back sometimes and think about when somebody voices an opinion or you know, maybe they just said something online, you know, and it's maybe not a method of maybe you don't like bow hunting, or maybe you don't like traditional archers, or maybe you don't like whatever, and but you have to think about that person and what what part of hunting do you like? Well, I like this part and this is what's really important to me, and I am
very passionate about it. Well, you have to understand that other person. They're just as passionate about what they like as much as you're passionate about what you like. And it's all a form of hunting, right, so as long as it's you know, as long as you're not shooting holes in the boat, you know, and long as you're not being a bad apple, you know, if it's a legal method to take and the optics are good on it.
We should support each other. We should, you know, we should have each other's we should have each other's back. We shouldn't be so quick to rain on somebody's parade because they don't shoot the same bow you shoot, or the same rifle caliber or.
Muzzle, whatever it is.
Yeah, we shouldn't be so quick to rain on someone else's parade. We should we should have, you know, applaud them if you if you have some negative to say, maybe you should think about it before you say it, and maybe not say it, just like let it go.
Because really, if I learned this a long time ago on the internet, like, if you want to sit there and argue, you can argue for as much time as you want to sit at a computer and type the keys, and as fast as you can type, the people will do the same thing.
So I've been so guilty of that. Yeah, oh yeah, you know it's not my day. First day on the internet.
Right back when I first got on the internet, they felt like I needed to talk to say some things.
But honestly me too.
Sometimes you know, it just ain't it's not worth it, you know that the time to try to try it, especially if you're going to say something negative.
I don't know.
I think I think if we can all just work together towards supporting hunting all types, that's legal, that's ethical and has good optics. You know, I think we should all kind of work work towards that instead of trying to tear each other down over over car caliber of cartridges and broadheads and lighted knocks and expandable broadheads. Yeah, traditional bows and wheelbows, and there's I mean, there's a million different things to argue about.
Is there a public land versus private land? Yeah?
Yeah, private or you know, high fence hunter versus public land hunter. And it's like you have the problem is is we're breaking these down into like these these factions and there's like nothing worse than that post that you just mentioned that, Hey, what's the best caliber for elk hunting? Or what's the best caliber for deer hunting? Man, I cringe anytime I see that, because, hey, for let me tell you something. I've been deer hunting since I was a kid, and I don't care. I don't care what
caliber you choose. Everybody has their opinion. I have my favorite, but I've killed deer with all sorts of different calibers and all sorts of different ranges. Yeah, it's really that that's such a question that is so dependent on the particular individual hunter. But back to you, But to your point that you just made, I think it's really important that we talk about that because those are some of the factions we have. We have your your private land
versus public land. Hunter, You've got your OTC versus you know, your your special draw or whatever. You've got your guided hunter versus DI I Y. You've got your you know, high fans versus public land, and you can there are a million different ways to break this down, but at the end of the day, I've I've always maintained that hunters we're looking for three things. And and I don't care what your method to take is. I don't care if you're a rifle or a bow hunter, or a
fly fisherman versus a bait fisherman. Specifically, for hunters, we're looking for three things, and that is that primal connection to nature is one right, and then you've got the meat in the freezer. You may not even know, you may not even you might not even recognize that. But the re and why it is so exciting, and this is, you know, this is probably more specific for like men's personalities, but that is something that we seek and we almost required in our lives. And that's why I think, well,
that's a whole other podcast episode. So we're looking for that primal connection in nature. We're looking for meat in the freezer. And the third thing is we're looking for that memory. And those are the three things.
That's it.
That's that's all all hunters are always looking for. Sure, does are there variations out of that where you know, somebody might go hunt a brown bear that's not good eating or want to go hunt a wolf that's not good eating. Yeah, I get it. We don't need a nicolin Again. That goes back into why rip this whole concept apart, because the concept of what ninety nine point nine percent of hunters are pursuing is we are looking for that primal connection we're looking at, which is adventure.
That that feeling of fulfillment you when you get out there and it's yourself up against a wild beast and you're successful. That's that connection we're looking for because we're not participants in nature. We are part of nature when we are hunters, and that that freezer full of meat is a super important aspect. Like I am I am very serious about filling our freezer. That's that we don't buy a lot of store bought meat unless I have a really bad year and that happens. And then that
third thing, that memory. That memory could be anything from a big, you know, nice taxidermy mount on the wall, or it could be just something that's in your mind, you know that memory. Thirty years from now, you'll remember getting your first cow elk with a with a muzzleloader, for example, or my daughter shooting your first spike, you know, buck or something like that. Or it could be a nice euromount, or it could be like this bear rug or bear hide on the wall behind me, you know
those kind of things. Those are the three things that hunters are pursuing, and it's it's consistent across the board in North America and Africa or anywhere else where anybody hunts. Those are the three things that we pursue, and they
are all three individually worth fighting for as themselves. But when you can bind all three, it is worth it for everybody to keep that in mind because if you're some otcdy public land hunter, which I am that's what I do, and you're giving somebody a hard time because they paid thirty grand to go hunt on a ranch, that outcome is the same for both parties. If they're both successful, that primal connection is there. Sure one may have been a little bit harder, but maybe not, maybe not.
I've never hunted at high paid ranch, so how do I know what if that hunt is harder than an OTC tag, I don't know. But the point is is we're not going to judge it because we have the three same goals with that endgame is the same for all of us. And when it comes to us picking a side when the bigger threats come down the pike against the hunting community, we're going to be standing on
the same side of the aisle. And I don't want to have animosity towards my brother or sister over there that that may have had the money to go spend thirty grand on a hunt. We're still going to be on the same team. We were on the same team, and I'm not gonna judge them for it. And that's how I feel about it.
We'll say you, yeah, absolutely, I couldn't agree more.
And that that person that maybe threw down that that big money to go hunt on a on a private land hunt, maybe they have some money to put towards, you know, a worthwhile project for a hundred all hunters in general. You know, maybe they want to donate money to a to a good cause, you know that's going to fight against against anna hunting.
Yeah, we got yeah bigger fish to fry. We want people.
There's people that want to take away or hunting rights. They want to take away the right to eat meat in general. I mean there's there's crazy radical groups everywhere they want to put they don't even think people should live in certain parts of the country.
I mean, you name it.
There's there's there's somebody that's got an organization trying to take away something.
And as far as hunting rights and.
Stuff goes, we all need to like put our sides, se our differences aside, and stand up together and be one voice and kind of push back against these ni hunters because if not, if you look like if you rewind a little bit, if you go back to like when Washington and Oregon lost hound hunting back in the day. You know, back then, hunters there was no internet, there was no there was no good way for hunters to
connect and to join forces. You just kind of heard about stuff in the newspaper, you know, and you know, some people would go down to the town hall or go to the meetings and say, you know, we don't want you to do that, but it wasn't enough of a ruckus to to stop that kind of litigation or legislation and keep those laws.
From getting pasted.
Right.
Well, now there's no excuse for it. Like there's we have a lot of hunters all across America. There's social media to spread the word when things are going wrong. And then instead of like sitting here tearing each other down, that'd be a good opportunity to spend that time advocating for hunting. You know, don't waste your time keyboard warrior in it for for you know, because you're against six or five creedmores. You know, take that time and advocate
for hunting. Put honey where your mouth is, put your time where your mouth is. Join a conservation group. Absolutely. I always look at it.
I always look at it, Dirk, Like it's like we're all in the same football team and we're getting to the super Bowl, you know, the Super Bowls coming up in a couple of weeks or whatever, and we go to practice or whatever, maybe we go to some football camp or something like that, and like, you know, everybody's like the they didn't like the the jocks drap that the quarterback picked out, and so they're all kicking him in the knee and so now his knee's all jacked
up by the time the super Bowl comes around. And that's kind of how I see it. And if you look at the other side, the folks that are anti hunting are like the hostile vegans because there's like a way to and we don't have to get into all that. But they're separated, and they're separate and they have different motivations. But like the anti hunting crowd, they're not kicking each other in the kneecap man, they're not fighting, they're not
behind the scenes pulling each other's hair. They're not elbowing somebody in the face in public and ripping each other apart. These folks are they They are well tuned into the fact that hunters are are essentially ripping each other apart. It's almost as if they I've heard I've actually seen some of them say this. If you follow some of these like I geek out on this stuff. I actually
follow them in Facebook groups. I like disguise who I am and join some anti hunting Facebook groups, you know, and and I'll watch them and the comments that they make are literally, you know, even if we don't have the money to pursue this through litigation, the hunters are are are ripping each other apart anyway. They're they're fighting
about such and such hunting season and stuff. And I've literally seen them write this kind of stuff in their comments, and and they you know, they'll say stuff like they're
losing support amongst the public. They are public support for hunting for meat has dropped ten percent in the last twenty years, and you know, and they're putting all these little statistical data in there, and then they're they're they're backing that up with the fact that all we have to do is keep letting these hunters do what they do on social media and and the general public's going to be turning against them anyway. And so that's why
these conversations are so important. It's not like this stuff is just you know, Dirk and I sitting around making
stuff up and creating problems that don't actually exist. These problems actually do exist, and they actually strategically plan for this kind of stuff to come after our rights as hunters and our future as hunters, and I am not going to sit around and risk my daughters and my grandchildren's future of being able to do what I love to do because I chose not to say something about it because I was afraid of maybe being less popular
or or somebody disagreeing with me. Is time that we come together and defend our principles as hunters and be unified and not give a crap about what caliber somebody shoots.
There elk with.
It's just it's so silly that we do that. I don't get it.
Absolutely.
I couldn't agree with you more. Everything you just said I echoes my thoughts as well.
Well.
Jim Man, we're pushing up to an hour here, and it feels like we've been talking for about ten minutes. If you guys haven't heard Jim's podcast, it's called The Western Huntsman, and he's got all sorts of guests on there. I've been on there a couple of times. He's got all sorts of different guests and all sorts of different topics.
So if you like to to like to.
Listen about hunting stories or hunting tactics, or he does this really cool thing called the School of September where he talks about elk elk calling tips and tactics by a bunch of different guests and some some con conservation stuff too. He gets all sorts of folks on there. How do we best find your your podcast and and you on social media?
Well they could just the easiest places on Instagram. It's at the Western Huntsman and you can. You can find the podcast anywhere podcasts are found, or at the Western Huntsman podcast dot com.
Awesome.
Well, thanks again, Jim. Always a pleasure to get on here and talk with you. We need to connect somewhere again here real soon in the future. Maybe I can get on your podcast and we'll talk about some other fun stuff.
Yeah, let's do it, man. I love chewing the fat with you anytime, brother, all right, thanks ma'am.