Ep. 274: Farewell, Red Wolf

you remember, I feel like I can't. Was a diving No, it was a vehicle vehicle accident. Yeah, I think sixteen or seventeen, pretty paralyzed from the neck down. Um, but I had enjoyed hunting and fishing, you know, and even had worked with people to devise and and and fine tune. I remember, like a way to cast a rod. Yeah, he can cast spinning rod reel it in. H did shoot a rifle, did some hunting his hunting body basically didn't hunt, but just helped. Like they just teamed up

to try to help Chris. They don't have experiences anyways, Chris Classy passed away UM related to his condition, started having a difficult time breathing and and um, I think that he always kind of assumed he would not live to be an old man. But condolences to Chris Clasby's family and friends. And again episode one Adaptive Hunting and Fishing. I think we yeah, we recorded that here, not here here, but here. It was in Bozeman. It was actually the last day that I was ever in the old Bozeman

ZPC office. I remember it was cleared out. It was there's just a table sitting and I remember that you were in there. But no, it's a it's a good episode. Everybody should go back and listen to that one and you'll realize that whatever your problems are, they're not as big as you think they are. Yeah, that's a good point. Um, moving down here. So you know, I've said in recent episodes, I'm always talking about how the only thing that should be allowed on Instagram is the Turkey dock. Mm hmm.

Instagram said the Instagram should be called the Turkey Dock and that's the only page you can follow. But I said, like, if there was two, yeah, yeah, you should be able to follow Nature's medal. Um, if you hadn't really had to follow something else, you could choose that. Well, we just found out something quite titillating about the Turkey dock. Mike Chamberlain, who been on the show before here in

the studio. He's been on the show in a sort of more ethereal way right where he we just had his voice because Karin conducted an off interview with him and then we played, so we were like playing a recorded interview. But uh, Dr Chamberlain came up recently because we were reading the thing that about the the what the hell you even calm? The Red Wolf of the Southeastern US, whatever partis, I'm messing up, Uh, Mike Chamberlain. Le square is the way on. But there's only like

basically none left next to none left, um. And we were kind of hunting around to try to find someone who understood this world so they could explain the saga of the Red Wolf of the Eastern Um of the Deep Southeast or we're into Texas red Wolf. And the first guy we went to was a real wolf expert that we're I was talking about halfle Finger James Halflefinger, halfle Finger Um says, I know a lot about a lot of things, and I don't like to talk about things I don't know about and red wolves are one

of them. But he said happened just so happens that the Turkey dock is not just the Turkey dock. He's like the red wolf dock. So we reached out and Mike Chamberlain is joining us remotely here and he's gonna give us a rundown on what the hell happened to the red wolf, Like, what happened to it, what's happening to it now? And why are there now articles saying there's ten y Yeah, yeah, that's that's right. That's right. It's been quite as sorted, uh assorted past if you will. Yeah,

so so red wolves. You mentioned that Steve red wolves were historically the the Canaan in the Southeast. They were the they were the top predator, if you will, um intermediate in size between gray wolves and and coyote, so not as large as a gray wolf and quite a bit bigger than a kayote. For for many many years they were the they were the top dog in the South, and then, as human beings are apt to do, we

we extirpated them for most of their range. Part of that was just conflicts with humans, part of it was it was basically government mandated and and funded eradication programs too to get rid of the wolf for for human desires, if you will, Hey, let me let me let me heat with this. About the range though, um, because I know that we talked about him now in the southeast

Virginia to Texas. But like the wolves that Daniel Boone encountered, Like I remember a guy and Daniel Boone's hunting party once got bit by a wolf and then got rabies and developed hydrophobia and died. Would that have been a red wolf in Kentucky? Yes? So when when when the frontiers mean we're talking about wolves, they're talking about red wolves. Yeah, basically from latitude Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky south to the Gulf Coast and then over to eastern Texas. Yep, got it, Okay,

go on. Yeah. So so we removed the red wolf um for most of its range. And then there was a pocket of of wolves slash hybrid animals that kind of persisted in southwest Louisiana. And in the nineties seventies, UM, the US Fishing Wildlife Service went in and and captured as many of those animals as they could and using what we thought at the time, This is what a red wolf looks like. This is how big they are,

this is what they're their appearances. They selected animals out of those captured animals and they considered them as pure red wolves, and they moved them to um captive breeding situations and they started a captive breeding program. What had they been hybridizing with? What had they been hybridizing with in in Louisiana? Was it not domestic dogs but coyotes?

Was kayats And basically what you had and you guys know this, So you had this, You had this pocket of wolves that were left, and then you had this swarm of kayotes that you know, they're numerically superior. And as they kind of moved into areas where wolves were, they hybridized with with wolves because they're numerically superior. And um, so you had all sorts of wolf like preachers. You know, you had animals that were that were hybrids between kyotes

and red wolves. Those animals were were removed and the quote unquote pure red wolves became founders for what is now the red wolf that we know as a species. Um those ended up being fourteen That quick question when the hybridization happens. Is it usually female coyote male red wolf or vice versa, or would it go both ways? It goes both ways, but it tends to be smaller

red wolves, that's what that's what we've seen. The smaller red wolves tend to be the ones that that hybridize with kyos, which makes sense because there without going too far in the weeds, you know, wolves are bigger, so they can use more space, they can eat larger prey more efficiently, so a smaller wolf would be closer in size to a coyote, so they would be more compatible when it comes to pairing together and using a home range together because they're they're comparable in size, if that

makes sense. If you do mean smaller like as in younger or smaller as in just smaller stature or even at maturity, smaller as a you know, morphologically smaller, they weigh less, they're they're shorter, shorter ear, shorter legs, you know, etcetera. So morphologically they look quote unquote more like a kaya than say a larger wolf would. That's the wolves that we see as being the hybridization issues, which makes sense. But but to Yanni's but I want to make sure.

I don't know. I don't know if you caught Yanni's question the particulars of it, but he's saying, like, is it generally that uh, a male red wolf breeds of female coyote or vice versa place it goes Okay, so you did catch that. Yeah, yeah, it goes both ways. It just tends to be. It tends to be size driven in particular as you would expect. I mean, you and I'd have to go back and look at our date. I think it tended to it tends to be more prominent with a with a smaller male wolf and a

female kayote. But but that's kind of getting too far into weeds. But the bottom line is, yes, both males

and females will hybridize with coyotes. Yes. So those fourteen founders became became what is now the red wolf, and for years the Fishing Wildlife Service, through cooperation with zoos and um island propagation sites off the East coast, bread red wolves, and the idea was to eventually create a wild population, uh, somewhere else other than where they were removed from the wild, which was southwest Louisiana, and that

that happened in the late nineteen eighties. Those wolves were say, those captive bread wolves were moved and released on the Albemar Peninsula peninsula, which is northeast North Carolina. And the reasons for that were many. One, there's a lot of federal and state lands in that area. Two, there are not a lot of human beings in that area. It's it's it's an agricultural type landscape um with large private landowners.

And there were no coyotes there at the time. So in seven those animals, you know, the first releases occurred and from there you saw a fairly rapid increase in the in the red wolf population Mike during that time when they did that, knowing what you run into when you get coyotes, was there anything that could be done or was attempted to be done to keep that Knowing that kyotes are spreading everywhere and moving into areas they had never been before, was there anything like a plan

to prevent Kyle from getting in there, not not per se keep kyodes from getting there. But once they did get there, there was an immediate recognition that there needed to be an adaptive management program in place. And what I mean by that is, as soon as kayote started infiltrating the recovery area, if you will, which was a

five county area. As soon as kaya started getting in there, the Fishing Wildlife Service realized they were going to have to have a plan to mitigate this hybridization potential that we knew existed with this with this sees. And that's really when the more kind of hands on management of the wolf began and what that program this was. This came about in the late nineteen nineties. There was a workshop convened. I actually attended that workshop as a graduate student.

I was, I was in all of the people I was, I was sitting around because they were the gods of of the wolf and coyote world. But anyway, the outcome of that workshop, which was dedicated to trying to figure out what do we do moving forward knowing that kayots are there and they'll hybridize with wolves. And the outcome of that was an adaptive management program where the U S Fishalilife Service would go in and capture kayotes that

had infiltrated into the recovery area. They rather than euthanized them, they would sterilize them and released them as sterile placeholders. And the reason for that was was simple. If you remove a kyote, then another kayote comes in and replaces he or she very very quickly. We know that with kayot with kayots in general. But if you release them sterilized and you leave their hormonal systems in place, they

don't know that they're sterile. They continue to maintain space, they maintain their pairs, they continue to try to breathe, but they don't produce pups. You leave those sterile kyotes out there until you can go in and insert a wolf a wolf pair into that territory and you allow the wolf to usurp that space that that kayote was using. And as some people listen to that and they go, wow,

that's crazy, uh, that it had been used previously. And when that methods started being used by the US Factionalilife Service, the recovery program continued to flourish um And what you actually saw was a stair step across the landscape of wolf territories packs that were intact and they were fighting off, if you will, kaya infiltration, because a wolf pack can take care of itself relative to coyotes that are coming in trying to to infiltrate the area. In other words,

they fight, kill, expel kayats from their territories. So at some point, and this was around the mid two thousands, mid to late two thousand's, you had a hundred and fifties shred wolves across the landscape. You had intact territories, large packs, and they were maintaining themselves through this adaptive management program that was, you know, a fairly heavy handed, constant type of approach where you know, the Fish Walife Service,

the recovery program. Biologists were constantly monitoring animals as you can imagine, they were constantly trapping, They were constantly trying to determine when a coyote showed up, was that kaya paired with a wolf? Was a wolf paired with a coyote. If a wolf was lost to gunshot, mortality or vehicle collision, well who did he or she pair with? As you can imagine, this was essentially a year round activity that these biologists conducted to keep to keep this population and

you know intact. And what are those wolves feed. None Red wolves eat a lot of deer um. They eat other things as you can imagine, you know, fifty sixty pound cane id that's living in a pack. In North Carolina, they can eat pretty much whatever they want. So you see deer, raccoons, anything mammal wise they would tend to eat.

But deer was a was a primary prey item. And our residents in this area on this peninsula, with a hundred and fifty of them, are residents seeing them frequently, like like wolves are sort of a part of their life.

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, as you can imagine if you go to northeast North Carolina, you see kind of wood lots, you know, in these precosin wetland areas and and there's a lot of agriculture and wolves being a fairly large animal, Yeah, you see them all the time, you know, if and they what we've showed, what are the research that we were doing. I did a lot of research in that

area obviously with students graduate students. Um is those wolves used agricultural fields a lot, So they hung out in those fields, they raised pups in those fields, they hunted in those yields, so they were readily observed. Did they did they run into trouble with livestock predation much at all? Not a lot um you know, you you'd see occasional losses, and the Fishing Wilife Service their recovery program biologists at the time they're there now gone. They most of them,

they're few on on site. They maintained really close working relationships with the local landowners and if there were issues with with livestock take they address those issues. Um. But that landscape is a pretty prey rich landscape. The deer density in that area is quite high, so you didn't see a lot of livestock issues, and there was broad

support from the public for wolves being there. Of course, as you which public though, like the public meaning North Carolina in general, or the public meeting the residents of the peninsul both both there there there was broad support both locally and and across the state for the wolf being there. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure you're familiar with the phenomenon of UM. When you pull people in a state about who loves wolves, they tend to score lower among the people that lived by them than they do

the people that are in cities thinking about them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So obviously, you know, you you could it was a lot easier to find somebody in Dare County or Hyde County, North Carolina that had that wasn't in favor of wolves than there was in Charlotte, North Carolina. You know that that wasn't experiencing kind of day to day life with the wolf. Yeah. Absolutely, but in a broad sense there was. There was There was a lot

of support for the for the wolf being there. So we go from such broad support, which is a little surprising to me. I've spent a fair minded time up in that country, and uh, it's not the country where I would expect the locals to be like, yeah, wolves kicking around and eating our deer. So what happened? Yeah, So you know, despite the fact that there was broad support, you know, not everybody is is pro wolf, And I will say, you know, and it's heyday. The recovery program.

Part of the reason that that the interactions between the wolf and the private landowners was kept on a kind of a positive was the recovery program. Biologists worked their asses off, educating people, talking with people, trying to help

mitigate any concerns or complaints with the wolf. Um those biologists would go on and and obviously they needed access to private lands to trap wolves every year as part of the adaptive management program, so they had a really strong working relationship with those with those local land owners, and they were able to walk up to the front door and and have a forth right, honest conversation about

concerns that those landowners expressed. So when there was a wolf that was was a problem, Chris lu Cash or or one of the other biologists would go knock on the door and have a conversation, and and sometimes those conversations were very pointed and very difficult, but that willingness to go have those conversations was one of the reasons that the program continued to flourish um And then all of a sudden, and it wasn't really sudden, but what

we started seeing around the mid two thousand's was an increase in gunshot mortalities. As an aside um, when the red wolf was restored to that part of the world, they were considered as a non essential population and therefore they did not carry the same protections as other species would under the Endangered Species Act. So shooting a wolf in mistakingly shooting a wolf did not carry the same

consequences as it would in other areas. So what started happening around the mid two thousand's is gunshot mortality started skyrocketing, and part of that was was mistaking identity. You know, someone thinking they were shooting at a coyote or honestly not caring what they we're shooting at. They it was a canaid of some kind, and and they shot it. And we started seeing that with this gunshot mortality, that all of a sudden, these breeding pairs were being dissolved

because of of us, because of humans. And what I mean by that is, you know, you had this pack and all of a sudden, you lose the breeding female or the breeding male, and chaos and sues and those packs started being whittled away by gunshot mortalities. Instead of ten, there were six. Instead of six, there were three. And now all of a sudden, the pack dissolves, and now you're essentially managing in favor of a coyote and against a wolf, because coyotes weren't numerically superior and still are.

Was the was the gunshot mortality? Was that a concerted effort or do you think there was? It was just randomness, but but an increasing randomness. I think there was probably and this is me, this is me speaking um just kind of a from a logical person's perspective, not an academic. I think it was both, Steve, You know, you you

probably had some people that I don't say probably. We know there were people that targeted wolves, and we also know from our own field interactions with people that there were some people that legitim and Lee thought they were shooting a coyote and and we're shocked, were stunned that they had killed a red wolf and weren't happy about it. You know that that they were not pleased with themselves that that they had done that. So it was a

combination of both. And honestly, I think part of it centered around the kind of the narrative, the rhetoric that you started seeing in the Deep South around two thousand five, two thousand and six, you started seeing a lot of

discussion about coyotes and their impacts on game species. And this is my this is my speculation, but it seems a bit coincidental that we started seeing these issues skyrocket about the time A lot of that that rhetoric was going around, and people like me were actually part of that because we were we were publishing a lot of information at the time about the importance of coyotes on deer populations and how they can affect dear population, and there was a lot of talk and there still is

a lot of talk about the coyote being a problem for dear populations and therefore if we didn't have the coyote, we would have more hunting and harvest opportunities. And I think the red wolf in some ways got caught up in that, and that's that's truly truly unfortunate. But so you started seeing a lot of gunshot mortalities. The population

started declining. At the same time, you started seeing issues with with private landowners that were politically connected UM clamoring for uh a lack of protection for wolves, clamoring for the US Fishing Wilife Service to remove wolves from private lands and put them back on public lands quote unquote where they belonged. UM. There was pressure on the Fishing Wildife Service to issue take permits where wolves could be taken on private lands because they were quote unquote a problem.

And that was pretty much the beginning of what I consider now to be the end. Is the wolf population plummeted. UM A series of lawsuits resulted. Those lawsuits involved the State of North Carolina, the US Fishing Wildlife Service private groups, and basically the outcome predictably was poor for the wolf. And now what you have is you have the Fishing

Wildlife Service that has abandoned the recovery program. They have UM basically said we're only going to quote unquote managed this species and captivity and we're going to let them do their own thing as wolves on federal lands on the peninsula. And now, as you mentioned at the opener, we have just a handful of red wolves left in the wild. The remainder of them have been assimilated into

the Kayote population as hybrids. And if you want to go see a red wolf, if you can't get your eyes on that tin or so that are left out there, you need to go to a zoo. UM and that in about fifteen minutes is what I consider the sad and unfortunate um recovery and then loss of law red wolves. Is there not another place across its historical range where maybe people and in the state would would welcome the population.

Has that been discussed? Yes, it has, guys. We we and I say we have only been tangential in some of these conversations, but yeah, there's been a lot of discussion about well, Okay, could we go somewhere else with these animals? And as an aside, and I didn't I didn't mention this, but that's a great question. This was attempted a second time, so after the population on the Peninsula got got rolling, the Fishmaller Service also tried this

in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. And if you've if you've visited that beautiful part of the world, you know that it's very rugged. Um there's a lot of federal land there, but there are not a tremendous number of deer and other prey items in most of the Smokies Outside of these um these open kind of manage early successful areas like Cade's Cove and some of those places.

So what happened in that in that instance, the wolves were released in the park and they almost immediately went to private lands and went down to lower elevation areas where there's agricultural properties. And of course they encountered some some problems with people there, uh pulp survival and that

study was very very low, almost zero. So it didn't take long for the Fishing Wilife Service to pull that that effort and put those animals back in the North Carolina into the album or peninsula because that effort was a failure. Since then, yes, there have been discussions on okay, well where do we go from here? Could we go somewhere else? And there are areas that in many ways

are are suitable for wolves. The problem is twofold. One is us as humans and two is the recognition that you don't have anywhere in the Southeast that is absent of cayats. So this issue that that the recovery program ran into again, that the sterilization and release of of sterile place holders that would need to be conducted wherever we go with this wolf um and and it was working right well, you know, as we meant, as we discussed, but but that is something that would have to be

in place. Do you think that with new leadership um with with a new administration and new leadership at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, do you imagine that there might be a real about face in the next couple of years and that they might reinitiate this and then I'll hate My second question right now is we know that we don't win. We know that we can't win every conservation fight. And there's such a thing as throwing

good money after bad mm hmm. What's you take on that. Yeah, the answer to the first question is is no, I don't. I don't see uh uh about face, um, unless it's perhaps a half hearted about face. And and maybe that's a maybe that's a jaded um and a sarcastic answer. But you asked me the question, and that's my honest that's my honest assessment is given given the past, I don't.

I don't see, regardless of a change in administration, I don't see about face unless it's again a half hearted um, not really a genuine about face the good money bad man, Steve. That's a good question. And as you can imagine this, this program costs money. I mean, it cost money to do this. It costs money to pay the people that that did this, It costs money to have the framework

in place, the logistics in place. These animals were monitored weekly by airplanes, as many wolves and other populations are, so there. Yeah, there was a lot of expense associated with this program, and there would be. There will be if they continue it, if they expand it, there will be. And that competition for resources is certainly something that that

would be at play. Yeah, and that's some of the some of the anti wolf rhetoric, if you will, that was generated in the late two thousand's and early two thousand's that resulted in a lot of those there's lawsuits. That was one of the complaints is you know, look how much money is being spent on this program and for for what? This is what the critics were saying, and for what for so that we can have a wolf in North Carolina that we constantly have to help that.

This was one of their arguments. What's that? What's that term? Remember when we had John mu Aluman, the author John MoU Alum, he introduced the terms that hadn't heard before was something like conservation reliance. What's that expression? Yeah, yeah, conservation reli. It is like a conservation reliance species, like it's only gonna cut it if we're putting time money, protection effort is never going to get on autopilot. Absolutely,

that's yeah. Now, the interesting sing and some of the wolf the pro wolf people and and I won't label myself as that, but the research was very clear if if you had enough wolves out there, they were capable of managing themselves. In other words, what you saw if if you look at a map of the album or peninsula. If you look all the way over to the east and Derrick County, and then you moved westward, you know, towards Raleigh Durham, on the easternmost part of the peninsula,

there were no coyotes. And what coyotes were there, there were very few because the wolves maintained space and they excluded coyotes from the landscape. And as you moved westward, you moved into an area where at the far edge there was hybridization going on, as you'd expect. But as soon as you moved far enough east to where you had large, intact packs of wolves, they took are of their own business, if you will. They excluded kyotes from

those territories. And therefore, and this is something I think is sadly ironic. Would you rather have six or eight red wolves consuming deer or sixty two hundred kyats? And that's what that's what you see in in wolf territories, you only have a small number of wolves that are

eating deer or any other prey. But in the absence of those wolves, you replaced them with the species that uses a much smaller home range eats a much greater diversity of prey, including many, many birds, and you replace them in in a situation where they're now numerically two, three or four or five times superior to the wolf that was there. That's something that I I would often talk to people about and and sometimes you know, it fell on deaf ears, but that is that is something

we saw with the research. Sure, the timelines don't add up for this what I'm gonna ask you next, They don't add up in a real literal way, because while they've populations can move so slowly. But would you think it's safe to say that had we not extra pated, wolves in the eastern US are virtually everywhere um at a time in the lower forty eight do you, like, would you ever look at that and be like, if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't have had the explosion of coyotes,

or do you think it would have been inevitable? I think it's it's kind of somewhere in a gray area in between, because you know, removing wolves from certain parts of our landscape was inevitable, whether we actually tried to extirpate them or not. You know, so if you kind of look at the Eastern United States. Um, you know, just because of population, human population, you were going to be in a situation where would create parts of the landscape that a kayote can use but a wolf can't,

if that makes sense, just the urban suburban landscape. Yeah, you can have wolves that are you have coyotes in Central Park, but you don't you don't see many gray wolves running around in Central Park. Yeah, thankfully. Um so, yeah, I think there's there's probably a little in both directions on that, but I think yes, in many broad areas, rural areas, the removal of the wolf, there's no question

it's benefited the kayak. There's no question the removal of wolves, in particular the red wolf allowed the kaya to colonize the southeastern United States in a ridiculously fast manner. Um, had they encountered intact wolf territories, that expansion would not

have been nearly as rapid as it has been. And Mike, Um, why why and how is it do you think that this is like kind of flown under the radar, like as his population has gotten whittled down to nothing, like you're not seeing it on the national news, like pro wolf advocacacy groups aren't making a big deal out of it, like anything anytime anything happens with gray wolves, like the Wisconsin hunt or Idaho saying they're gonna kill the gray

wolf population. That is not what they said. Okay, that is what that That is what the lame stream, the lame stream, That's what I'm getting at. It becomes a story. It becomes this national story. Pro wolf advocacy groups jump on it, like, why haven't we've seen that with this? Can you please clarify what they said. Now that you said that, I'll let you do it. Since am it Brody. They had agreed, they had agreed in that state many decades ago that wolf recovery looked like a hundred and

fifty wolves. They're now sitting on one thousand, five hundred to say that they're still operating on that recovery objective, which everybody agreed to. Don't yell at me. I'm not I'm not I know, I know. I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at Reuters. I'm mad at every click bait generating not not you, Spencer, but every every click bait generating person on the planet. They're loosening some hunting restrictions. They've loosened to hunting restrictions all the way along to

no effect. You Like, It's not like all of a sudden, the Idaho is gonna loosen a couple more restrictions and all of a sudden they're gonna be like bamo at recovery objective. You're not gonna do it. I understand that. I'm not mad at you, Brodie. I'm just saying, why hasn't there been that level of scrutiny put on this situation? Especially? I have no I know someone's governor kills the gray wolf and holy smokes, Yeah, that is a really good question, man, Um.

And I will tell you had a problem in the question. Yeah, the question itself was flawed. But as Steven is the latest, but the root of the question was was was a good one? That that question has been bannered about amongst myself and many others. And and I don't have a great answer, guys, Um. I think in some ways because of where this this occurred. You know, northeastern North Carolina

is a very rural area the state of North Carolina. Uh, the state agency UM was not particularly vested in this in this project, there will there were conflicts between the agency and the US Fishing Wilife Service. So you basically had a small group of people the recovery program that

we're working in isolation out in in this area. And when these issues started popping up and these things started happening, instead of going to the top of the mountaintop and saying, damn it, people, we've got a problem here and we need help, we need you to help us figure out a way to stop what's happening to this animal being there being shot. That didn't happen. And it didn't matter if I got up at a conference and and gave a talk about what was going on, which I did,

it didn't matter. Um if people interviewed me or students are biologists, it just didn't. It didn't seem to matter. There wasn't a lot of traction around it. And a lot of us have openly discussed why that, why that was. It's a it's a travesty. You know. I wish I could be like a traffic cop and direct American sentiment two to like proper areas, because we get distracted by things.

But if we we had this conversation about caribou herds in the lower forty eight in our lifetimes in my in my young little lifetime here we watched and allowed caribou and the lower forty eight to blink out. It just gave up. No one ever gave a shit about that ever. Ever. Yeah, we're just in Hawaii. There's a group of people in Hawaii who made it their mission to go around feeding feral house cats at night, and they have a legal team. Just just the fact that

that exists is ridiculous. That coincides with like, oh, we'll just kiss the red wolf goodbye, kiss the caribou goodbye. Um, and then poor our Oh my god, what was your fault? I got thick skin. I'm okay, I just I just read too many of those headlines. Mike, you're telling you, you're telling me that you think the red wolf got kind of caught up in the hatred of the coyote and whether in the minds of folks they were really ever seen as a distinct species or there's some gray

area around that. Yeah. Yeah, and that's that's something we haven't talked about, but it's a it's a very important point. Thank you Korean for bringing that up. But there has been some taxonomic debate about this. This critter as well. And and I'm not a tax on must and and I kind of look at this from the standpoint and I have from the start as long as this canaid is recognized as its own species, then I'm going to

study it. Because at the time I was I was really the only p I principal investigator that was studying red wolves in the wild. And and the graduate student that was working for me, Joey hinton Um, was really the the forefront of red wolf research. There were there were other and I'm not trying to step on other anybody's toes, there were other researchers that were doing red wolf work, but Joey's dissertation research was really the the

penultimate work on red wolves. And while all of this was going on, there were constant taxonomic debates about well is it is the red wolf really a species or is it just a hybrid? And yahda, and you know taxonomists and offensive taxonomists, but you know, they get paid to have these debates, and yeah, and they got hijacked by they got hijacked by the geneticist. Man like, they got overthrown by the geneticist. Yeah. Yeah, And there there was a lot of back and forth. You know, well,

they're the red wolf is not a wolf, it's a hybrid. Well, no, it's it's actually a species and etcetera, etcetera. I mean, we're hybrids. We're human, we're human neander tall hybrids. At about the you know, it's you'd have thrown out bison recovery. They tried to throw out bison recovery on the same grounds.

There's a little teatsy bit of cattle intro aggression at the screw Now when when you say hybrids, Mike, like, hybrids of what like a gray wolf and a coyote, Like they're basically that that they're just a they're hybrid canid, that that there was no such thing as a And there are are some that argue this there there's never been any such thing as a red wolf. That actually what's running around there is just a a kind of

gray wolf slash you know, mutt if you will. And yeah, again that argument that mindset has been at play and has been out there for for decades. Really what's funny about that too, is it that's how species I mean, that's species creation. Yeah, you could you could say the

same thing. By some understandings. You could be like, screw muled here, It's just it's a it's a it's a white tail blacktail hybrid, yeah or some such you know, yep, yep, yeah, And I get this question A lot in in the Turkey arena is like, well, hey, doc, this picture is this ario or amariums or an Eastern or whatever? And I'm like, um, well looks like an Eastern. But let me ask you who cares? Who really cares? Well, I wanted it from my you know, for my slam, and

I'm in whatever state. Well are you within the rains that's considered that subspecies? Well yeah, then just okay, move on, man. I mean you shot a turkey and it was awesome. Um, good opportunity to bring up your slam. Steve. Oh yeah, I can never remember what slam I have, something like

the Super Great Slay, the Royal Great Slam. Yeah. So, so to Cren's point, yeah, that the taxonomic issues certainly didn't help didn't help what went on with this animal because there was a narrative around well wait a minute, there's some scientists saying this is you know, it's not supposed to be a species, really, and that didn't help for sure, yeah, okay, can we ask you a turkey question? Absolutely, it's not as depressing as the Red Wolf for sure,

Someday it might be. I don't know. I hope not, I really do. Uh. I want to ask you turkey question. Then I want you to tell people how to find you and everything. But we had a guy right in um, he says, in Missouri, and now in Idaho where I live, he hears about how a primary turkey predator is crows and ravens. We're gonna talk and later in this episode, we're gonna talk a bit about ravens killing some some crazy stories about ravens killing stuff, um, and how they'll

find the nests. They'll see hatchlings poults and kill them. They'll find nests and eat the eggs. And you're saying, anytime he kicks up this this Hunters saying, anytime he kicks up a hen, they'll set to him scrounging around on the ground. And this is no easy task, I'll point out, but they'll set the looking around on the ground him until they find the female's nest. M Then they'll camouflage that nest with sticks and leaves. Do her the favor of camouflage and her nest with sticks and

leaves so that nothing eats them while she's gone. And he says they'll even be working a time kick up a hen, stop working the time in order to locate the nest and camouflage it. And he's wondering, Um, if anyone else does this, and if you would, as a biologist, if you would discourage or encourage this very you know, admittedly like very well intentioned conservation move. Yeah, well intentioned. Um, don't do it that. That would be my recommendation for

for a couple of reasons. I understand the notion of the bird leaves the nest and you feel like it's your fault. You want to hide those eggs and keep these mariting predators from from getting the eggs. I know a couple of things. One, if you just get the hell out of there, she's coming back most likely. Um, if she's later an incubation, after say the first eight ten days, she's almost guaranteed to come back. And she's

not going to wait that long to do it. It's not like she's going to be gone for half the day. She's coming back quickly too. If you walk around that nest and you're looking searching, you're trampling vegetation, you're leaving your scent in the area, and that's something that that predators can queue in on um beyond just the sin of the hen or or the nest. So I think in many cases, particularly with predators that our old factory, that that smell that us approaching the nest is a

real problem. And that's one of the reasons that my field crews we don't We don't go to the nest until it hatches or it fails, even though we know exactly where it is. We don't go. We have but we don't typically put cameras at nest. We don't do any of these things that compromise the situation at the nest site because we're concerned with predators queuing in on on our activities and are sent more importantly so that I would I would not encourage people to do that.

And if that person contacts me and he's really mad, I understand, but that would not be something I would encourage people to do. He uh, he's definitely not framing it up like, by God, this is the way to do it, and I'll do it for the rest of my life. Come hell or high. I think he's saying like, hey, I've been doing this. Yeah, it's a good idea, not not not a great idea. All right, we're gonna move on to some other stuff. Uh, Mike, but hit us with um, you know, hit us with your how to

finding stuff. Yeah. So if if you want to see not red Wolf stuff, but Turkey stuff, UM, you can hit me up on any of my social media accounts on Instagram and Twitter. It's just at Wild Turkey Doc. It's all one word Wild Turkey DC and you'll see up post stuff every week about Turkey stuff of some kind, research,

just general anecdotes, great but great graphics. Yeah. Yeah, I tried a lot of stuff, like what animals are doing when they're wearing tracking devices and kind of how they move on the landscape, where they stay, how they react to each other, how they react to hunters. It's fat. I've got some I've got some pretty cool ones coming up for this summer too. Some stuff some students are

doing now that that's pretty cool. We were doing some drone work which is really cool looking at vegetation and stuff. So I've got some pretty sweet things I think people will be interested in. So Yeah, you can find me there on Facebook. You just type in my name and if you can get the same information you want to get some radio collar action, you need to put a collar on me and my son this weekend for the last couple of days of Turkey season. Man, you can

see a hardcore mortality event. I'm jealous. I hung it up. I hung it up for the year. I've I'm so tired and my wife is so mad at me. All right, man, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, man, take care of guys. Thanks Mike. Thanks. Uh. You know, we're talking about this guy, you know, Ravens killing Turkey nows uh Native Alaskan uh wroting about Ravens. He works on the remote island outside of Juno. It sounds like he's in the mining business. They got a mill shop, they got

a rock pile. But he said that at their camp where he works. When I say Native Alaska, I don't mean like, like know, when someone says like I'm a Native Idahoan, they mean that they were born in Idaho. Native Alaskan. Um, you don't say Native American in Alaska. They'll say Native Alaskan. Uh says that they had they found a fawn with a broken leg at their mining camp, stumbling around, and they were able to grab it and splint its leg, and it made it back to his mom.

But um, a small gang of ravens got onto it, plucked it to death, picked it to death, picking its eyes, picking at its snout. Eventually they killed it, got through its rib cage, and got to its vitals to eat. Then around their camp this is where it gets weird. It was a group of he says, four to five young male ravens around their camp like they He's wondered did this group just learned to do this? Because around

their camp they then started laying waste of fawns. They watched one they were attacking a fawn and the dope kept coming in trying to defend it. And eventually the dope got some injuries on her ears, injuries on her eyes, gave up. They killed that. The best they can tell, they killed six to ten fawns around him, he said something, they just left, like they once they figured out how to do it, they just left and they got to learn. The his co workers, they were worried about what to do,

and there's a you know, migratory bird act. You know, you can't legally kill them. And they were asking him, like, as an Alaska Native, maybe he can kill the ravens. Um. He explained that the relationship between his people and the ravens and their cultural beliefs and um, that was out of the question for him. And he's warning, has anybody ever heard of this? So we got looking at it a little bit. Man, they're in the livestock world. Ah, it's a real known thing. There's like manuals. What is

some of this stuff here? We got manuals about, um, the cost to livestock of ravens killing baby lambs. We got a picture of someone made a little pile of lambs that all look like they have like racket not even like like like golf ball sized holes bored into them all over the place. Is this just a this is just a raven thing, not a crow thing? Do we know crows as well? Crows as well? And so

Heffelfinger brought this up. He brought up, how there's that old saying, you know, like the how the different herds and stuff are murder of crows. He doesn't know, but he brought up it makes you think about the term murder of crows when they'll descend on livestock out when they'll descend on livestock operations. A livestock manager in Colorado was saying they had a very hard winter in two thousand eight tons of snow food got real scarce. They

lost a lot of calves. The two ravens getting them around the eyes, the tailhead, which I guess is where the tail joins the body. I've never heard of that term tailhead, meaty part of the hip. She's talks about golf golf balls. Oh, there it is, golf ball size holes pecked all the way over down to the bone. He said, it's sickening. Yeah, that was a bad winner. There's a huge meal to kill that one. There's a book the American Crowing the common raven and it gets

into their predatory instincts. And then the Department of agg has this paper about ravens and it talks about just their insane intelligence and that groups of them will learn to do things. Talks about being bad for crop damage, but also praying on livestock, newborn livestock, and then complications where ravens become a hindrance to endangered threatened in sensitive speed sees this, uh Department Agriculture report gets into where

they have impacts on sensitive threatened endangered species. Um we're part of, like we're part of recovery plans are impacted by them, Desert tortoises, California least terms, snowy plovers, piping plovers, plovers, What hell is that word? Plover? Plover, piping plover, the old California condor, marbled mr letts, San Clemente loggerhead shrikes, greater stage grouse are good friends. Uh goes on and on.

So that guy is it's interesting that that guy had that like occurrence around that camp and it winds up being like pretty well corroborated as not not unusual. Yeah, not unusual at all. I mean this Department of agg paper is fascinating in terms of like what behaviors it seems, documents of of ravens and just kind of digging into like local town public publications. You'd see that this happens

so much with livestock. But I wonder if other listeners have ever come across you know, like we're looking at this photo of of a bunch of young lamb exactly as Steve had mentioned, with like golf ball size holes like a cookie cutter, you know, part of their abdomen in their eyes. And I just wonder if any hunters or you know, folks around the outdoors have ever come across a fallen or some young deer I got. I got a tree surgeon I used to work with when

I was in the tree bizz. He watched and he had like a blow by blow account, like I have no doubt that this guy watched it happen, not not Crols and Ravens. He watched two golden eagles kill a prong horn. He said, man, it took They took their time with it too, And he said they very much knew what they were doing. And it wouldn't run. It's just going circles and hang out. It's like, how are you gonna run? Remembering the fog night, we saw those golden eagles dive bomb in that elk and they were

really harassing it. And there was something about it that was acting weird too, like they were like they were very intent on it. Dive bomb in its neck, dive down its face. The guy that saw him hit the kill the pronghorn, he said they'd come down and rake it's back. They'd come down, rake it's back and then crashing into the ground like they maintained that level of velocity. So he goes it actually like kind of like poof when they hit the dirt. They'd be going so fast

and just rake their talent and it's aid. Eventually they got a big wound on its back and and uh got down into the backbone and tendons and stuff, and that was it. He said, it was just running circles. So did it well, you may not know, but did it die of exhaustion or blood loss or they just wore it down and picked it apart. He said, they got a wound on it. I mean grass, I mean, the stress has to be just such an enormous factor. Couldn't run anymore. Uh, we're just out in Hawaii. I

was gonna talk about this stuff. Remind me of something I was gonna mention about the spear. The spear fisher. Kimmy Werner was telling me just about predation things and she was one time in the water with killer whales workers is the PC term for him. Uh, Their feed on herring and they're just chasing these big balls and harring around underneath her bubbling them, or she didn't. She

didn't mention that part, but she mentioned this. She sees a half of a herring coming up, floating up towards the surface, bubbling, and she's like, why hell's it bubbling and realized it was like like it's swim bladder had just been nicked when it was cut in half, so it was like kind of making a bubble line as it came up half of you know, a big herring is means not as long as your hand, right half

of a herring. All of a sudden here comes a bull killer whale up SIPs that little half harrying down and goes back down again, just for a little crumb, like the thousands of pounds of that thing. And he's like, oh, miss, that one came up and nabbed it. What should be like? Like, you know, it'd be like you going out of your way to go grab a a quarter of a smartie wait waiting like the chalkiness like sugar and chalk mixed together. How do you feel about neco waifs? Those are? Those

are heinous? Anyway? A guy wrote in a couple of interesting things that we got from other good piece of feedback is uh, we're talking about getting accidentally shot. Guy was messing around the be begun when he was a kid, and he had one of those kinds where you had

to unscrew the bear old cap to load it. And he was unscrewing the barrel cat with his teeth, got a baby shot into his tongue and carried the baby in his tongue and dental X rays he could keep an eye on that little b because dental X rays had turned it up there. Another guy wrote in there were in Kentucky on a southeast Kentucky on a float trip. They get to a gravel bar. This is like the list of things that will make a turkey gobble wake up in the morning. They got a camp on the beach.

There's a big cliff cross from camp. He gets up in the morning, makes some mimosas pops open the prosecco and got a shot gobl off prosecco. Bottle man, that's good stuff. Uh Northerly that came in is interesting? Me is I used to fish right when I lived in Seattle. I was I was a a major cause of perch mortality in Lake Washington. And I don't mind like I don't like the spot burned, dude, but it's beyond it.

Like it's a huge lake. Anywhere you go at the edge of a weed bed, which is the entire perimeter of the lake, go out to eighteen feet of water, and as you catch perch, a cyclone of perch comes up with the perch. Me and my boy caught seventy in an hour, like usually like doubles. I mean, you're not gonna mess it up. And now that lake was in the Midwest, old men with lun skiffs would empty it out. They would part camper trailers along the banks

and emptied out, but no one there cares. When I was serch scenary, they had health advisories on the perch, and I'd always be I'd always be having perch fries and pete. They're not supposed to those fish. The health advisory was pertain to perch over ten inches or some such and it was you always supposed to eat certain amounts like so many ounces every so many months of

fit of perch over a certain size. And the health advice because they used to have a lot of you know, heavy metals, industrial solvents from all the manufacturing in Seattle, Um, someone just said, you'll be pleased to know a lot of those health advisories for Lake Washington have been dropped. Now there's only to fish from Lake Washington with the health advisory the common carp in the Northern pikemantal. The health advisory is everyone should not eat but perch. Karina

is gonna find out. Is this because it's getting cleaner? And it is? Right? It is we're like limiting pollution, doing clean up measures and then time and flushing and rain water, right, all all help dilution is the solution to pollution? Uh? Is it that? Or is it that they realize that you can eat a lot more of that nasty ship than you thought you could. Karin's gonna find out is the water better or is the monitoring or the recommendations different? Right? Um, I need to know.

But it is good to know because now when I if I was ever go back there and have a giant perch fry, I wouldn't yelled just need I wouldn't need to be able to say to people, well you see these aren't These are all nine and three quarters of an inch long, and they don't get they don't kill you till they're ten like now, I just be able to be like. In fact, no, there is no health advisory on yellow perch in Lake Washington. It would have made perch fries more fun. That was some good

fishing there. Missouri had its first black bear season. Someone explained this, Yeah, first black bear season and quite some time, might be like a hundred years. I don't know when the last one was. We don't have that in our notes. But they were dang mere extra payting, just like next door over there, and uh, we're not next door. I guess Arkansas would be to the south, correct, which is next door? Ask lay Oh speaking in Arkansas, guys sent in a new one. This is terrible, but we're talking

about Arkansas and dogs. He says. What they call a siphoning hose is Arkansas credit card as for clean too. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Well anyways, Uh, conservation efforts have have brought the bears back in Missouri and now they have a estimated eight hundred and they're going to give out four hundred black bear permits for for October. Damn. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Nine year over your population growth. They're figuring that they're gonna have um in the next ten years,

they'll double their population. I just saw something from I think it was Iowa Fishing Game that said they're expecting bears to become more and more prevalent in Iowa. So they're spreading. They're good, They're good, they're good at uh they figured out. Remember we had Carl Malcolm on years ago when we talked about the Wisconsin supersow and his he was specifically studying black bears on the edges of range.

So his particular thing was, I mean in different areas, they're moving in different directions, right, but in his area, it was bears in Wisconsin moving to the south, and um, what was crazy is the health in fecundity of those bears on the edge, bigger, more cubs, batter like they you know, because they're in there moving into new untapped resources. Man, and presuming you're talking about smart bears, because they're coming from population. It's not like you're like moving them into

a whole new area. It's like he's familiar with the area. He's just pioneering new spots where no other bears are in there messing around. And that super saw remember that put off something like four years, four years in a row four cubs or something. It did five, it did five that it got to one hundred pounds, took a year off as they do, did five cubs, got them all to a hundred pounds. That's when they quit monitoring them. And then when they left her off, she was pregnant

with five super sou super sou pretty soon. Man, it's gonna be like the bald eagle. You know. When we were kids, like anytime someone saw one, if you were traveling somewhere where they lived, you'd be like, oh, we could see a bald eagle. And now people are just like, it's scavenging something like that. Franklin thought about him. He thought they were just gross scavengers. Yeah. Where I grew up in northwestern Pennsylvania, there was never bears when I

was a kid, and they're all over them. They got the biggest damn bears in the country. Well, there was always bears, but not like way up in the northwest part of the state along Lake Erie. And now they're like in the city of Erie. Do we know what percentage of bare tags purchased across states are filled? Yeah? That I was when I was surprised to see the four hundred I would like to know as a slow

open slow can't open right there? Um, I'd be curious to know if you were allowed, Like I'm I'm assuming you can't bait and you can't run hounds, because if you had a hundred bears and you'd never hunted the population and it was gloves off, I'm baiting and hounding, You're gonna kill a lot of bears. I wonder if it's that you can't and they're giving out four hundred tags because they think they'll kill a hunter bears because they think the efficacy efficacy even that would be a

pretty high. But I mean, if you I'd be curious because I was like, man, that's like, I wonder if you know I bet Reuter's right now. I was writing an article, Um, Missouri to kill half of all bears. This is something we don't cover Taiwan. We need to Taiwan death. This is an interesting this. I was shocked to find this out about Taiwan. Taiwan has indigenous groups.

So as we'll talk about a little bit later here in the US we have our predominant Euro American population that displays indigenous peoples, and in Taiwan, the have indigenous groups and people are gunning. That's a good pun. People are gunning for their hunting rights. So they've been Taiwan has sixteen indigenous groups that hunt two point five percent of the population. Uh. They can only hunt on certain days and they have to use homemade rifles. This one like,

I don't understand that. Yeah, so traditionally they had use homemade rifles. Homemade rifles are dangerous. So they're like, well, you know, we want to keep hunting as our tradition dictates, we would like to do it with safer firearms. But there's a big battle going on. The Wildlife Conservation Act is seeking to restrict indigenous hunting rights, saying you can only use homemade guns. And this is interesting. They would have to file an application and then report how many

and what kind of animals they'd hunt. So beforehand you gotta tell what your plans are. Then afterwards you got to issue a report about what you got. This is where it gets interesting. In their tradition, hunting animals are the blessing of ancestral spirits. You cannot boast or show off. These people are probably not on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, they would not like my Instagram page, which I use the

boast and show off about stuff I caught. So if you boast or show off about your hunting prowess, you're punished by God in their legal system. So they don't want to issue reports tallying up what they got that you then sent off in the mail. It looks like they're not gonna overturn these new rules because they say that environmental protections are as equally important as indigenous rights. This all started with a lengthy legal battle. Guy named I'm gonna I don't I don't know how he pronounces

the name. Tama Tuloom, Toma Taloom. I don't know Toma Taloom. Let's say he's sixty two years old. Back in two thousand, um he killed a couple protected species were a modified rifle, so um, he was trying to feed his mother and she had always been raised on wild game, preferred wild game, and he killed a car and protected species got three and a half years in the old clink. And that's what started this whole brew HAA, I'm rooting for the

indigenous hunters. It seems unlikely that they're the ones that are responsible for That's what it gets into. Yeah, they used to have so market hunting. Up until nine, they had commercial market hunting. They banned commercial market hunting, and a lot of the endanger they hunt mount jack deer, they hunt monkeys. A lot of that stuff started to recover. And they're saying that subsistence hunting by indigenous peoples is not what's driving extinctions. Yeah, m hm hm hm hm bullshits?

What would I say? Alright, So moving on, but but keeping what. We're gonna move away from our Thai our Taiwan desk, but we're gonna stay on and and and stay on indigenous culture, indigenous hunting rights. We're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk to our next guests here. Also joining remotely, we're still having like residual let me explain this real quick. So COVID forced us to do a lot of remote stuff,

which I don't really like. But then I started to kind of like aspects of it because it allows you. We used to I used to have a firm like no remote guest rule. But and as much as I'd like to have people here, it kind of opened up like there's people that we wanted to talk to you that simply couldn't talk to you. Because of issues lining up schedules, so um one of the long term pandemic results. You know, I keep meeting people who say, like, I, for now, I will always wear a mask on airplanes

now that I'm used to it. Well, I don't know if we talked about this recently, but I've been talking with quite a few people about a couple of interesting things that we realized that we haven't had a cold or a flu in well over a year. It's come through our household, and I've talked to a couple of doctors and they said that you can look at national flu numbers and there was no peak last winter. It just stayed as flat as a pancake all through the winter.

And you're like, there's two thoughts. One it's like, oh, great, we should just all wear masks all the time and nobody's gonna get sick, and you know, great, But at the same time, we do need to get sick to build immunities and stuff. So yeah, there's there's that, And there's also like if someone said to me, you can kind of go where you want to go and do what you want to do, but you might get a cold now and then, or you can hide in your house with a mask on and never get a cold.

I'd probably be like, yeah, I'll take the cold definitely. UM be the way like some people I know, like very reasonable rational people are like, now that I'm used to it, I always fly with the freaking mask because every time I go somewhere in the winter, I get sick. Another long term COVID impact will be that we will always allow to limit a degree from moote people to come in and tell us about stuff. It's a long

term like COVID impact. So today telling us about some stuff, Jacob, I know, he just told me how to say it. Jacob Brusard. Jacob Brusard, that's right, okay. Uh comes from his family. It's from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and he's a law student Arizona State University UM doing his law degree along with a certificate in Federal Indian

Law and a concerned and passionate hunter. Jacob, Jacob, I know I filled it in, but go ahead and hit any missing points there, a little bit about where you're at in your in your in your in your young career, and then we're gonna get into some we're gonna get into some definitions and stuff like that that are helpful

to know. Yeah, I appreciate the introduction, Steve. Well, you know, like you said, I'm in law school now, but prior to coming to law school, I graduated from University of Southern California, and and I worked for a year in Washington, d C. For the National Congress of American Indians, which is the largest most representative Indian advocacy organization on the

Hill and in the nation. UM. And we did a lot of work advocating for Indian country, addressing issues that are pertinent to Indian country, including things like land use, hunting, and fishing rights on tribal lands as well as elsewhere.

And I've also done some work in Los Angeles alongside the Human Relations Commission, working on again some issues that are pertinent to Indian country in uh sort of a city context, so sort of spanning the board from whether it be urban or rural land and everything in between. I've been very fortunate to have some experience learning from nationwide leaders both in Indian country and some of our elected representatives, and and how we're touching on issues as

they pertained to Indian country. UH. No top here, I have a question for you. Is it equally acceptable, Like is it is it synonymous to say Native American or to say Indian, Like in your mind, is it it's either as cool? Yeah, that's a great question, and you know, it's it's funny because it ties into you know, some of the things we'll talk about later. And Um, the the issue comes up a lot, right, you know, folks, some folks take offense to the term Indian. Some folks

are completely fine with it. Uh, I would say, in terms of navigating people's impressions around the terms native American is the term that I think is most widely accepted in referencing individuals. However, Uh, the Constitution of the United States and the laws that we have set out as it pertains to the Native community references Native Americans as Indians,

and that the political designation. And so it's actually a really fascinating, uh conversation around what is most comfortable for folks from different backgrounds to use in terms of the terminology. But you'll hear me today use the term Indian and use the term Indian country. And the reason I use those terms is because we have actually codified in law those terms referencing tribal nations as Indians and referencing anything

that pertains to those communities as Indian country. And Indian country can mean actual reservation lands, it can mean lands that are owned by tribes, or it can mean lands that are neither of those things, but there is perhaps a tribal community living on those lands. UH. And so Indian country is sort of the blanket term we use

both in terms of legislating law. The judiciary uses that term in writing judicial opinions, and so whenever we're talking about native communities, those terms come up a lot, and I'd say you're completely fine to use the term uh Indian country and referencing the land um and in referring to the communities, I think tribal nations or tribal communities is probably the best terminology to be using, just to help create that designation of exactly who it is we're

talking about in the language that our nation's leaders are using themselves. Yeah we were. I mentioned this prior, but we were on now Nevak Island in the Baring Sea one time, and it's the um, it's the coals. The people on the main land are the Yu. Pick. This is this right? The yu pick and then on the on on now Nevak they they are Chupic. Yeah, that's right, and they would say chupick eskimo. Now I know, like in my later life, I'm always corrected from people who say,

like it's a derogatory term. It's a pejorative. It means like eat raw fish. It was given to them, and you'll hear people clarify like into it, and you can't say that the word eskimo. You shouldn't say the word eskimo. And I asked some Chupicks who called themselves chupick eskimo, and I said, what what is your preferred term? And he goes, if I'm not an eskimo, I don't know what the hell I am. And was adamant in that case too, that that was like, that's what he preferred

to be called. That's what he that's what his people were known as. And so I felt to put you in this weird situation a little bit where certain people in the lower forty eight are reading your use of that word in a way that isn't aligned with how he traditionally spoke of and viewed himself. And so you kind of either like right, either right by the local or you're right by this maybe ill informed idea from the outside about what people are supposed to call themselves.

And I think one of the things that happens with a lot of folks as they get like, um, we're open to complexity in some areas, but people get piste when it seems like it's complicated to figure out what names people like, and they're like, to hell with it, I'll just say whatever I want because those people can't get their stories straight, you know, or some such thing.

And so I found it's a little more effective just to kind of like hopefully just be able to ask and not be not and not be offensive and not be offensive and asking right right, and ultimately you can't go wrong there. You know, if if someone asked me for what's, you know, your single piece of advice, I'd say, just ask, because like you said, I mean, there are I know tribal citizens who refer to themselves exclusively as Indians. I know other tribal citis citizens who take offense to

that and refer to themselves exclusively as Native American. And then also, you know, depending on where you are in the world, different tribal communities in different countries might refer to themselves as native, as Aboriginal, and you slew of other terms, and I think the safest thing you can do is ask. But coming from my angle and those of us who work in and around and with the law,

we use that term Indian and Indian country. Uh, specifically because that's the term used in the law, not necessarily because it's the term we prefer. Yeah. Now, our our interests, as you know, um around the term sovereign nation will

often come around with that. Reservations will often have um their own wildlife management systems, right, so you can go down and you know, you go to there's some states where it might be illegal to hunt black bears with hounds, but then on on a reservation it is legal to hunt black bears with hounds. Or they have completely different season structures and you have to get a separate license. Like there's there's reservations here in Montana. You um, you

need to go buy a tribal hunting license. Okay, because we'll hear the term like because it's a sovereign nation. Um, you don't need to like don't you can talk you don't need to like talk about it through the lens of just wildlife management. But but explain what we mean

when we say a sovereign nation. Yeah, it's a great question, and you know, I think it's a it's a topic that not a lot of people really fully understand because it's so complex and in a lot of ways, it's almost foreign to us and doesn't come up a lot in you know, basic educational courses. As we're coming up.

We we learn a lot, I think in elementary school and high school about this idea of federalism and what that means is this conversation, in this discourse between the United States federal government as a whole, and then the fifty states and their relationship between them. And states are

actually their own separate sovereign entity. And that's why when you go into a given state, maybe you're traveling and you go to Montana, for example, you might not be from Montana, but you're still expected to abide by Montana's lass. And that's because Montana is their own sovereign entity. And

tribes are really the same way. And the way that comes about is because during the era of colonization, the United States often entered into treaties with tribes, and when you look at when it is that the United States signs a treaty or enters into a treaty with another nation. It's just that they only sign a treaty with another nation. And so in signing a treaty, we recognize a given

group as a sovereign community. And so if the United States wants to enter into a treaty with community that's in South America or that's in Africa, they are inherently in doing so, most often recognizing that group, or they have already recognized that group as its own sovereign nation. And so the treaty concept is really important in Indian country because it's a constitutionally recognized contract between two sovereign nations.

And so when we understand that, we see that the United States is actually this really unique land where we're a body of three sovereigns. We have the United States federal government, we have the states, and then we have tribes. And these treaties between the United States and tribes are all protected underneath the Constitution UH and they exist, as the Judiciary has told us, the supreme law of the

land um. And so it's really critical to tribal communities who want to be able to exercise some regulatory authority like you're mentioning, being able to control some of the wildlife management on their lands, to have these treaties or

other agreements that established them as federally recognized tribes. So this concept of federal recognition is really important because when the United States elects to federally recognize a tribe, whether that was done decade ds ago or whether it's done today, and it still is happening today, more and more tribes

are becoming federally recognized. Ah. It sort of entitles the tribe to have all of these powers that they have traditionally exercised to control certain elements of the land that they occupy, and that is designated for them and held

in trust for them by the federal government. And there's a shockingly large number I think for a lot of people of these federally recognized tribes, you know, I I know, just talking with some colleagues and folks who aren't necessarily thoroughly involved in the conversation around Indian country, and maybe they learned what whatever the public schooling system taught them coming up through elementary school and such, and when they ask me about you know, is Native American is the

idea of Indian communities is at all pretty uniform, is it homogeneous? And a lot of folks are shocked to find out just how many tribes there are that are distinct sovereign nations. And today in the United States there's actually five hundred and seventy three distinct federally recognized tribes. If you to put that to me, If you'd put that to me, and one of the options was like, way less than a hundred out? Is that way less

than right? And I think, you know, I would argue that probably the majority of Americans would you know, not a lot of us are growing up near communities that have a tribal nation nearby. And even for those that are, again there's usually only exposure to a few tribes. And

it's difficult to conceptualize that. Within the United States, we have, like I said early, we have fifty distinct sovereigns in all of the states, and then within that there's five hundred and seventy three additional independence sovereign nations um that all exist under the purview of the United States federal government. Uh. And these tribes all have their own laws, they can

set up their own regulations. They can just ey'd what is the process for being deemed a citizen of that nation and then what rights you're entitled to as a citizen of that nation. And a lot of people are also, you know, shocked to see the extent of what it

means to be sovereign. Uh. You know. The fun fact that kind of share with a lot of people is that tribes if they want to, and none to my knowledge do, but they could print their own money, they could form their own military if they wanted to, and

they can trade with other nations. And a lot of tribes today just as a means of economic development, are doing a great deal of uh, contracting and development work with other nations besides the United States in terms of building up and bolstering their own economies and trading with other nations. Uh. And this again is just all a very meaningful exercise of what it means to be sovereign, even in a way that goes beyond just there borders

in their land. We are we cover, you know, over the years, we cover a fair bit about the whoever is running the Department of Interior, because that department oversees the vast majority of our public lands. Um, we talked a lot about the you know when when Zinky came in with Trump and sort of a lot of uh high expectations around Zinky as an avowed hunter angler, and

then his tenure there did not go real well. Um. His replacement was Bernhardt, who there was a lot of handwringing early on with Bernhardt because he was coming from the extraction industries. But wind up doing you know, there were some areas where we definitely had disagreement, but I want up in my in my view, Um, it was a pretty good Secretary Interior and did a lot of good work in some important places. Was disappointing other areas, but a lot of good stuff. And one the respect

of the conservation community because he was fourth right. Um, if he was gonna go against you on something, he would save you a lot of time. I just know from talking. This is like the reputation. If he's gonna go against you on something, he'd save you a lot of time by saying he's gonna go against him. There's nothing that's gonna happen. If there's room to move, he tell you there's room to move, let's talk. And so he was regarded as like a good person to deal with.

You might not win everything, but with the conservation community, cordial relationship, forthcoming, well informed, UM a respected adversary where

it need be. Uh, what's your take on on Biden's appointee Deb Halen, who will point out first Native American UM to take on Secretary Interior, and so I should I'd like you to explain kind of like why that matters because there's I talked about public lands management, but there's a little hell of a lot more that the Secretary of Interior does beyond They have implications for um, the fact that Hayland is UM native, right, and uh, you know, it's a great point that you bring up

that just you know, the vast scope of what it is the Department of the Interior actually handles, right, And so you know, i'd say, looking back at that idea we just talked about, which is tribal sovereignty, what sort

of is the next step? Right? Okay, a tribe today, Let's say they get recognized today and they go through the process, which is a quite extensive one to receive that federal recognition, and now the tribe is in this position where they have hopefully some land set aside for them, they have their community, maybe it's a community of both native and non native individuals, tribal citizens non tribal citizens

on the same land. And the question comes up, Okay, how are they now coordinating with the federal government on any relevant issue that might come up. And the department that is assigned via the Executive Branch to handle that is the Department of the Interior. And under the Department of the Interior exists the Bureau of Indian Affairs UH, the Bureau of Indian Education, and several other sub agencies that are handling and addressing issues pertinent to Indian country.

And so when deb Holland was selected and appointed as UH Secretary of the Interior and subsequently confirmed, it felt like, I would say the general consensus in Indian country was just this huge success because it means a lot of things.

First of all, to have representation at one of the highest levels of government is just a huge win for any community because it uh it does a lot for younger generations who are looking up and seeing people that are maybe from their community or look like them, understand some of the things they've gone through in their life.

To see that leadership up there, But beyond that, it can be very meaningful to have someone who understands the needs of tribal communities having a hand in directing these sub agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in how they serve those communities. And so it was a really

you know, big win. But even beyond just who she is as a native individual, you know, she comes from a military family, she grew up in a public schooling system, she's a parent, UM, and she's you know, been known to express some of her memories both with her family growing up in her family now spending a lot of time on public lands, and her family themselves are and

she herself are all hunters. And so it's something that for me is a native individual but also a concerned hunter and angler who wants to see someone who's a responsible individual heading the helm of what is the agency

responsible for my access to public lands? UM, it's encouraging to me to see an individual who has some of those similar passions that I do, uh and you know, coming from New Mexico before she became the secretary, just as a congress person having that constituency of hunter and anglers, it confirms for me that something that's on her mind, surely is the rights of outdoorsman and all individuals to access their public resource which we all share an ownership of,

you know, one of the things that comes out of the haland nomination. And I'm I don't want to say I'm guilty of because that makes it seem like a negative is um from my perspective, Okay, someone who's benefited quite a bit from the public lands policy and availability that that I've enjoyed in my life and my perspective, I had a kind of oh, meaning that um, recognizing that that this could be something great for other people. But you know, humans are selfish, and right away I'm like, oh,

is this gonna mean a radical reappraisal of priorities? Okay, Like we've come to We've come to like I've come to notice, um where the Secretary of Interior, the actions they take that have implications for the areas where I go and the and the things I go and do. And I didn't know this till the other day, that the that the Secretary of Interior oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Indian Education. So whatever they're doing, they're like I wasn't paying attention to it.

I didn't know about it, so I had a narrow scope of where they focus their time. When I knew that someone's gonna be coming in with perhaps like very different priorities, I had oh, and still have a bit of an oh of, um, well, what about the stuff that they do that that I think of when I think of the job, is that are they going to be paying attention there? You know? Um, So for for people that are having that a little bit of like the hell's this going to mean? Like what what's your

you know, what's your what's your guidance or feedback there? Yeah, it's a it's a great question. And I've heard those same concerns, and you know, both from people that are tribal citizens and even folks who are non tribal citizens.

You know, regardless of the walk of life that you find yourself in, you want to make sure that the person who's you know, directing the Department of the Interior, who's responsible for so much, is going to be you know, catering to your needs, um and and accurately and responsibly

representing all people of the United States. Uh. That said, I think it's important to note what it is that the Interior as a whole, and specifically the Secretary of the Interior, now de Bolin, can actually do in that role, because I think a lot of times, you know, depending on what media and individual consumes, you can hear some pretty big ideas of they're going to make these tremendous changes, um of just an enormous scale that are going to

impact your daily life, and it's gonna happen right now, and you ought to be very concerned about it. And you know, I think we can sort of quiet that alarm a little bit when we actually look into what these individuals are entitled to do under the Constitution. And so the Secretary of the Interior, you know, you go on Department of the Interior's website, you do a little bit of research, you'll see that their role is described

as having this administrative responsibility for coordinating federal policy. And what all that means is federal policy gets handed down by our lawmakers, in other words, Congress, and then when Congress passes that law, it doesn't just magical you start working. You need people who are actually putting it into play. And obviously, you know, we refer to that as the executive branch, and the Department of the Interior falls under that.

That's why the President gets to nominate the Secretary of the Interior, and Secretary Holland's role is actually to carry out what Congress's intentions are. Her role does not extend beyond actually putting laws into place. Um, the executive branch does not make the law. And I think a lot of folks get concerned that the Secretary might make new laws or change laws, but legally she has no power

to do that. Uh. The Secretary of the Interior's power only extends to implementation of laws and guiding regulatory agencies

in their interpretation of that law. Um. And you know the I sort of use an example sometimes to describe this as this idea of you have a restaurant chain, right, and you know, maybe I get hired as the manager of a given restaurant and I decide, I'm going to put in some certain policies at my restaurant to make things a little more efficient, to work better, maybe make sure folks get their food faster, can have access to better services, etcetera. But you're damns, you're not going to

get rid of the golden arches. That's right. You're not going to get rid of those Golden arches. You're not going to get rid of the Big Mac because no matter what McDonald's go to, you don't have a choice. You can you can own that franchise, you can manage it, but you don't get to make that decision. The people at the top who are passing the laws, making the policies,

they act that decision. You can you know, you have a little bit of freedom and how you want to carry it out, and you know for sure it's it's we need to be concerned in active citizens and and keeping an eye on how the Interior is actually carrying these laws out. But I think we can all rest assured that there's not going to be sudden significant change to our access to lands or to how individuals can use lands, whether lands are going to get taken away

all that um. When you look to the source of power of the Interior, you'll see that they have the power to regulate, they have the power to navigate those laws, but they're not making any new laws themselves. Hit me with your take on Hit me with your take on land back. The land back movement now, when I hear it like I was view that UM, at any given year, I would like to see an increase and the number

of acres open to the American public. So an increase in in particularly through a lens of hunting and fishing, like an increase in areas where we can go to hunting fish. But I'll have you know, not needing to pay trespass fees, leases, whatever, but just increase. I hear land back, and I'm like, that must mean a decrease UM And like every like I said earlier, I laid my biases out there, right, Yeah, I have the human

tendency to view things through what it might mean for me. UM. So I'm like, you know, a little leary about land back, this idea that we would take presumably it's taking like public lands, because you're not gonna we're not gonna give Manhattan back to you know, the tribes. Like I could see an argument for that, but I have a feeling we're not talking about that. We're probably talking about federal lands, um. And that's where it's not coming from. It's not coming

from urban areas. It's not coming from suburban areas, will be coming from open federal lands. Or maybe I'm way off I don't know. Hit me with your you can tell me I'm right and I should be scared like that one. We're still friends to be very very afraid. Yeah, hit me with hit me with what if we're presumably if we're gonna hear more, if people are gonna hear more about this, what are they gonna be hearing more about? You know, and you can you can you can buyas

it as much there as little as you'd like. Sure, Well, you know, I would say, just to answer that question, what folks are gonna hear? I you know, I'm gonna have to be candid and say folks are especially as this movement continues to gain traction, folks are going to hear all manner of things. And that's going to come from you know, folks who are talking about this movement, writing about it, um all have their own perspectives that

they're bringing to the table. And again I would just caution that little bit of h hesitancy from just believing what you hear right away, because there are going to be folks who are talking about what they want to happen. Um, it might leave out the realities of what actually can happen.

So just kind of like what we're talking about with what the Interior can do, as you might imagine, uh, it would it would likely be a severe overreach of the Department of the Interior's power to unilaterally decide that we're going to take a huge swath of maybe let's say, National park land and just redesignated as tribal land and give it away to a tribe. Well, I have no problem with that. Yeah, they do parts zero gripes for me.

I actually support it, And so you know, I think oftentimes what I like to say is, you know, let's talk about what the land back movement is not, and what it is not is just the federal government coming in taking a look at a big swath land and saying, you know what, let's go ahead and give this away. I'm feeling charitable today. Let's go ahead and find a given tribe who maybe had rights to this land at

one point and just give it away. Um, what it is requires a little bit of a look back in history. And I was telling you earlier about how tribes received

federal recognition and how tribes signed treaties. Well, oftentimes the reason for these treaties was that during the colonial era and during Western expansion, the United States came upon a tribe that was occupying lands that they had historically occupied for generations, and the United States government may be said, we really need this land because our people are spreading further and further west, and there's a lot of conflict, and we got to find a way to peaceably settle

this conflict. And so what the government would do is sit down at a table with tribes and sign a treaty. And generally what would happen is that the tribes would agree to cede that land to the federal government in exchange for another piece of land somewhere else. And that's where we get this idea of reservations. The federal government said, if you give us this land you have, now, we're going to reserve for you a piece of land in perpetuity that will be yours and yours alone, and you

get to control the sovereign nations. Now, obviously, there were a lot of times that those treaty agreements and people sitting at those table uh tables weren't having the same understanding of the treaty terms, and oftentimes tribes were taken advantage of um. But the treaties nonetheless, we're signed. A lot of tribes were given these reservations, and now today we see some tribes that are occupying those reservations ever since.

But on occasion there were times where the federal government subsequently came and said, look, we know we promised you this reservation, but actually we're going to need that land back, and the federal government then through Congress would pass a law that would disestablish the reservation and take it away, breaking those treaty promises, and that has now subsequently led to this land back movement. Um. And I would just say, you know, this is sort of a very simplistic explanation.

It's certainly more complex. But there are tribes today and people today who believe that when this land was set aside and promised in perpetuity and then subsequently taken away, that those tribes should have a right to come to the federal government and ask to have that land back. Um. And so again, it doesn't mean just giving land away for no reason. The people who are actually who are actually on the ground floor of this land back movement or folks who are saying, you promised us this land

and you gave it to us. Uh. And then you took it away, or maybe you promised it and never gave it to us at all. And so now we're just asking the federal government to do no more than just fulfill the promises they made in these treaties, which again, as I mentioned earlier, are considered by the United States is the supreme law of the land. And so in that way, and it just makes sense for some people, and it has proven to be a very divisive, uh subject.

And I think you know, in my opinion, what the land back movement can mean in a productive way is having tribes who are responsibly handling their lands going to the federal government showing the treaty agreements and saying we want to exercise control over this land once again in a regulatory fashion, to carry through on what was promised to us. But it doesn't mean even if that tribe gets that land back, that suddenly it's gone forever. Um. You may have seen driving along the road. I know

you travel a lot and you hunt a lot. You're talking about up in Alaska, You've been on different tribal lands. Um. You know, if if you're driving from California to Arizona, coming out to Phoenix, where I am. Now you'll see a sign on on the ten that says now entering the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation, and you're just driving through it. And I promise you, when you're driving through that land, you're not going to see a bunch of

walls put up. And oftentimes I think folks who have been on tribal lands, uh, they probably haven't seen a huge wall surrounding the borders of the reservation. And that's because most tribes, just like states, allow people to freely

come on and off. And even if land goes back to a tribe, that land is held in trust for the tribe by the federal government, and now the tribe has rights to actually carry out and meaningfully apply their own regulatory regime for things like wildlife management, for things like hunting and fishing. It's no different than if you drove to another state to do some hunting and angling. You're just now doing it on a tribe on tribes land.

Maybe it means going to a different website to get your permit um, but ultimately I think there's a lot of concern that this means you're going to lose access forever. And I'd say my response to that would be a this isn't a quick process. It's no unilateral decision where someone can come in and take the land away. It

would be a long and meaning conversation. And two, should that land be transferred to the tribe, chances are you will still have a meaningful way to access that land and still engage in recreation on it, just under the regulation of the tribe as opposed to the state. Can you hit real quick on um and we just take the lower forty eight on us because it gets infinitely

complicated UM in Canada, gets infinitely complicated in Alaska. But extra privileges that tribal hunters get what you seem to hear a lot about Yeah, UM, And I noticed in in when when you and Karan were talking earlier, UM, you had a number that tribal hunters UH. Of the total take of deer and elk, tribal hunters account for two percent. I was giving Karin a great example of sort of the how a tribe and a state can work together, and a great example of that is the

state of Washington. And UM. Oftentimes you get this notion that tribal members have all these extra privileges and because of those extra privileges, they're significantly harming the wildlife or the wildlife take overall in that given area. And in the state of Washington, where you have a very high number of tribes for the size of the state itself and a large number of tribal citizens who are going hunting, they're actually only taking, as you mentioned, two per cent

of the harvestable deer and elk. Um. I believe the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife release some statistics and in they said that non Indian hunters took approximately thousand deer, whereas treaty tribal hunters harvested about four And in that same period, non Indian hunters took about seven thousand, two hundred elk and treaty tribal hunters harvested about three hundred

and five. And Washington, again is a state where you're hearing a lot of that uh that jargon around they get these extra rights maybe they have, you know, can access lands I can't access, they're going to wipe out the population. But when you look at the numbers, it

just isn't the case. Um. And in fact, the state of Washington has said that most of the elk herds there are a very healthy and be the biggest threat to the health of those elk herds is the loss of habitat in the state UM and when we look at where that occurs, it's occurring not on tribal lands but on state lands and is is oftentimes a product of UH state development and infrastructure on you know, traditional habitat of those animals and of those herds UH and

the tribes themselves are often the ones who are advocating the most heavily for new programs and new infrastructure that

actually helps protect these animals. So, you know, we we're talking about these concerns right A lot of non Indian hunters have around extra privileges that may be some tribal citizens exercise UH and whether or not they are extra privileges, just this general concern that you know, tribal nations and tribal hunters might be harvesting more animals than anyone else um or and we just address that, but there's still that concern of well, what if I want to hunt

in an area that is run by a tribe and falls under their sovereign jurisdiction and regulatory authority for hunting and fishing, and I'm concerned that I'm not going to have the means or I'm not going to have the opportunity to do that because I'm not a tribal citizen. Um. And this comes up a lot in different states that have larger, uh, you know, tribal populations, and being here in Arizona, where a third of the land mass is actually saw over in tribal land, it's a huge concern

for hunters here. UM. But I can tell you that Arizona actually has one of the most fascinating examples of tribes doing excellent management of wildlife resources. And here, if let's say you want to go on a black bear hunt, the state of Arizona, like many states and and it's its own topic in itself, has prohibited hunters from hunting with hounds at certain times of the year. Uh. And they've prohibited individuals from hunting bears via baiting at all

times of the year. And so you go up to perhaps north northern Arizona or central Arizona where there's larger bear populations, and maybe you've been hunting with hounds in the spring, for example, every year for decades, and now the laws passed and you can't do that. You can only do it in the fall. What some hunters are now realizing is that they can actually go onto tribal lands. And a great example of this is the Fort Apache Reservation here in Arizona, where they allow hunting with hounds

year round. And just a few weeks ago, I was actually out on a hunt and I was right along the border of the Fort Uh Fort Apache Reservation, and sure enough, first thing in the morning, I hear some hounds going crazy, and I hear him going down from this ravine a couple of miles away, and I look over in that direction. I realized it's on reservation land. And maybe that party that's thinking, hey, that's not very fairy and I'm gonna call it in. I just realized, oh,

that's awesome. You know, a hunter decided that's something he wanted to do, he or she wanted to do, and they got in contact with the tribe, found a tribal guide, and they now get to continue in that practice if they're a hound hunter, being able to do that year round. Um specifically because they're utilizing the resource of having a tribal hunting regime really next door uh and it's the

same thing with baiting. If you want to bait bears, um, however you may feel about that, you have you're entitled to go do that on certain tribal lands here in Arizona. Again, the White Mountain Apache Nation will allow you to come onto the land and just like you would if you're an out of state resident, you would come to Arizona and buying out of state permit over the counter, you just go onto the reservation by your non member permit and you can then go and carry on a baiting

hunt or a hound hunt. And the same thing applies and tribes throughout the nation. And not only that, but you you know it again brings up that issue of well, I the tribe is allowing it, isn't that just killing the numbers of animals for the rest of us? And

on this sign I went on. I spoke to a game warden who used to be a guide, and he actually told me, he said, you know, we call all the bears around here res bears because the best ones that you know, the top bears that people hunt around here, we track some of their movements and we see they're coming over from the reservation oftentimes or elk. Same thing. And when you look at top ranked you know, however you may feel about ranking of animals, top ranked hunts,

um and animals that are harvested in the US. Every single year, several of the top bears harvested are all coming out of the Fort Apache Reservation. UH. And so you're looking at the success rates on the reservation versus off the reservation, and the success rates just continue year after year to be incredibly high. You can do research and find uh statistics on herd health on the reservation

and it's some of the best in the nation. And so oftentimes we're seeing now that the tribe's way of managing the land and of managing the wildlife resource is often superior to that of the state. And folks who want to do some of the best hunting in the country can go to a tribe, purchase a permit just like they would anywhere else, grab themselves a guide if that's what they want to do, and have just an incredible hunt and some of at least here some of

Arizona most beautiful country. All right, man, uh, this is great. I got like three million questions. They're gonna have to have you on more and in and in honestly, some areas where um, some areas where I'd be like, yeah, but what about but what about? I got a bunch of but what about bum gonna We're gonna let you go for now under the agreement that you're gonna have to come on now and then to um debate with us and explain stuff to us, and and and give your take on stuff. But I don't know if you

want people to do you want? I mean, if you if I say to you, like, hey, tell people how to find you, you will get great emails and you'll get emails from some mal assholes. So it's up to you, man. Do you want to tell people how to find you? Absolutely? Yeah, I I believe that. You know. It's up for everyone to decide the extent to which they want to help educate the community. But it's something I'm passionate about. I'm always happy to entertain questions. Um, you can find me

on social media. I'm happy to give you some contact information to do folks. And I want to remind people this is a guy that came on in good faith, uh, in the spirit of of education cooperation to explain some stuff. So as much as you might be sitting there with your hackles up about everything's gonna be different. We invited him, I mean, he did a great job and he's now going to tell you how to get hold of him.

But keep in mind it's a conversation. Go ahead. Yeah, so you can look me up on on social media. I'm on most platforms at Jacob Broussard. Um. I'm sure if you're listening to the podcast, you'll probably see my name I imagine in the podcast description. Uh. And if you feel like sending me an email, uh, you go ahead and reach out to me as well. Um, I'm happy to give that over to the Meat Eater team and and if they want to facilitate any contact like that,

you can feel free to reach out to me. Yeah, that's a good idea, is um. Uh Corey Colkins who runs our email inbox, he'll he'll get everything where it needs to go. All right, thanks man, This is this is great. Uh. I like it. I learned a lot talking to you. I still got a couple of what about dress any what about anytime? I appreciate you having me on all right, thanks so much, man,