Ep. 295: A Soft Spot for Outlaws

so happy to see him. Yanni's here, Sam Laurie's here. You would know if you listen to uh um Are Close Calls series, he tells the tremendous the mud Puddle story called the Mud Puddle Former game Warden. Yeah, get way closer to that, Mike. I guess I'm supposed to acknowledge it. Yeah, I know you'd say something like, oh, good to be here. Oh Steve, it's great to be here. There you go. Well, we'll get to you in greater detail later on. He's here, Crans and the lazy boy

with a crazy ass shirt on. Um, Yeah, what what's what's that kind of animal? Yea, it's got a like a cosmos pizza slice, sloth shirt, love that uh phills here, Paul Lewis from f HF. This is the first time you been on the show now, Yeah, first time? Is it? Really? You look familiar over here with those headphones. Ve never been in You've never done it before? Sure, yeah, I only live a few blocks away, it seems like. But the first time in here is Yeah, something about you

in the headphones seems familiar. It's probably shying off my head. I don't know. You send Rick down here now, and then yeah, Rick comes down a lot. Rick Hutton. So Rick Hutton who you've seen and he's been on the show. Rick Hutton's like, I don't know, boss, Yeah, he likes to think, so Paul, it was. And then we have a special guest, Ray Lockhart. Ray. So, if you paid attention a long time ago, we did UH fundraiser for the local public school and uh Ray won that one

the chance to come to the studio. Is it everything you dreamed of? So far succeeded my expectations. Yeah, and he started. Yet this guy's already happy. UH quick announcement the fuds. So this is an internal explanation. This is I'll give you some production thing. Have I explained this before, Gran, Like what s R M E means and all that, I don't believe. So you've mentioned it briefly just in passing.

I think okay. In the production world, UM, I don't know if this is across the board, but in the production world that I'm accustomed to, you come up with acronyms. When you're packing boxes like production equipment, you use acronym acronyms.

So in the ZBZ offices in the old days we operated out of there, we'd have like if our show was going out on the road, the pelican cases would all have masking tape on and it would say s R M E. So it'd be like Stephen Ronella me either beyond the things, and then it was um A B N R would be a bunch of pelicans, and that would be Anthony Bourdain, no reservations and not and on and on. So we've adopted that a little bit. The Floods calendar is the funked up old deer stands

calendar is bag in stock. It might be sold out again aggressive order this time. Phil Yes, speaking of like behind the scenes, we're recording this several days before. You will hear it, and the calendars are back in stock there on sale, but moving at an astonishing clip. Yes, so there is a small chance a by the time you hear this, they will not be in stock anymore, but you should try your luck and check it out. Yeah.

And this is one of those things they do, like on the radio and stuff, where they'll say like they're going fast so act Now I'd always ask myself, well, if they're going fast, why are they buying an advertisement? Do? I mean? Like I like, I felt like I was being manipulated. They weren't really going fast. They're not like worried about you getting one, but these but to beyond and all. Honestly, these are moving like hotcakes. It's just

like the vindication. The vindication keeps flowing in. Um, it's gonna give me more. I feel like it's gonna give me more leverage to do the Chetiquette book, which is Chester around Etiquette. Know about this, Johnnie, Yeah, so Chester wants to do a book. Oh, he was telling us about fishing etiquette needs bigger. He wants to do a fishing etiquette book. I think it needs to be the Chetickutt Book of Outdoor Etiquette and it's Chester on all

things outdoor etiquette. So even would include we're gonna start doing where he's gonna start. We just today Krand and I are emailing about he's gonna start doing little guest segments so you can sort of test the appetite public appetite. Uh, he'll do guest segments in which he'd explain like, you're on a trail and you're walking and here comes a rider, a horseman. Is that a good term for that? A horseman? Yaman? What's etiquette? Right? Um, you are walking down a trail

and there's a biker. Let's say you're the biker and you're biking and you're coming up behind someone, what's etiquette? I like it? And usually they're screaming on your right, on your right, and you're so confused you let go right or you know, like so this whole the whole world of cheticuott outdoor etiquette. STEPID that include a chapter on fishing against ducks, sprinklers, and yep, he'd get into all that floating etiquette. Yeah, doc etiquette. Yeah, he needs to.

He needs to start thinking big. He wanted to just fishing, but I think it's a great idea outdoor etiquette. And then I think there's a lot of regional like there's like regional specific etiquette things. Probably remember when you were down in uh, hunting ducks in North Carolina, all that craziness about the blinds. Oh yeah, like we can't even

really get into it time. Um. I saw quite a few comments after when on Instagram when we announced that these calendars are back and stop, quite a few people were writing to say that, man, would be great if you guys just did like a like a big coffee table book. There's people that refused to buy the calendar because they're waiting for the book. And this is all leading up to the book. Good. I think Ross is

into the book. Idea to anyone who's gonna send in more pictures of their tree stands, give us some background. We need a story with that stand when you send in your submit, Yeah, that would help a lot, because we just had to make up stories for all you. We did some dig and as much as we can, but yeah, we we got creative with some some of them. Well, no, you guys did a good job because one of well it was a Christyl photograph, but it was from my

family's property. In Wisconsin and yeah, high stand and you guys did a good job because without knowing the background, you guys did a good job of you know, painting a good Yeah. But we we'd love to have the real info. Uh another thing, no small Yeah, so so those are back in stock. Another another small announcement, Uh, Waterfowl season kickoff. We have a um a new episode up out on YouTube. And this is good because this is if if you've been here, you know, everybody always

hears Krine's voice. This is a chance to see Karin in the goose woods. Uh. It is a goose film, a speckle belly goose hunt between three women that work here. So Hillary, it was her first time ever hunting. Samantha Bates, who's a producer on our Netflix show Grinch Schneider producer is hunting along with Jonathan Wilkins of Black Duck Revival. So you can go check that hunt out now. Plug at CRINT say something like maybe people sell people on it.

It's a standalone We don't normally do that here. It's probably one of the first standalone videos we've got. We normally have stuff in series and so uh yeah, I mean we had a fantastic time with Jonathan Um. He was really sensitive and solid mentor for all of us. It's beautiful landscape. I don't think anything at meat eater. I don't think we've had any meat eater hunts filmed involving the spec goose species. Do you think we have have we speckle bellies? Can you make the noise of

the speckle belly? Nah? That was close work that in. You get some gun playing on that episode, grin, Yeah, Yeah, that's how many shotgun shells did you shoot? You can see the trials and tribulations of our of our two day hunt. Uh. There's some funny moments and some poor shooting form, and then you can see the failure and then the turnaround and then the success. Are you one of those kind of goose hunters who when everybody shoots, you're like, I got that one. Actually, that was one

of the most challenging parts of the hunt. Um. We We're in Arkansas and December and in order our camo was like these white uh suit exactly the white painter suits, and we were kind of in a in a long row of folks. UM, and you kind of sit up like you just use your abdominal muscles to sit up and really quickly like when you pop up, rest your put your gun butt into your shoulder and pick one goose out and shoot. And I was terrible at that because there were I mean, it was really there are

so many birds in the sky. It was incredible, incredible and they were so loud, but there are so many and to just like identify one and then to follow it and do that like paint brush technique that you've mentioned to me a couple of times. And like, I think after my major failure the first day, I called up Yanni and I was like, what do I do? I'm like aiming at the ass of the animal and I'm missing, and so he's like, you gotta aim like in front of it, and like where you know you

want to you want to greet him with the shot. Uh, there's a quail hunting thing, like aim at them all you're getting on want to get to. Yeah, it's pretty damn true. So I don't do what you asked because I failed a lot, but then like had a success which was fun. But yeah, go check it out on YouTube. What's it like, what's the best way to find it? I got just go to our YouTube channel. Yeah, I go to our YouTube channel. It's I think it's the

most recent thing that we've released. It's called Speckle Belly Goose Hunting with Jonathan Wilkins. Just that pretty straightforward. So go watch it. Enjoy um auction House of Bodity. So phase one is over? What do we what do we calm? It'n't that phases there? Uh? Groups? The group one auction is over. So around with the group to auction. Do you know how much my pheasantil went for? Yeah? Do you know? I saw some random numbers that were thrown around,

but then people were wondering if it was real or not. Yeah, it's it's absurdly high. It's now I feel like I should have held onto that because who knows what it could have been worth in another five years for guys. Pheasant first peasant tail. Hey, I might shoot another pheasant this year and then we can auction off my second more maybe. Uh oh. This auction group, this includes the puppy, Danielle's puppy, an actual live puppy. It is a yeah yeah, and you do you like dogs more than I do?

It's a draft hour, the Deutsche Draw Hour of course all draft hours are Deutsche. So Danielle Prufe, our Wild Foods editor, is contributing this puppy an offspring over her dog. So this is a high test. Damn dog. Oh they do it all, including the fox in the box. Yeah, and you can uh and Danielle's then they come in the house, they turn off the hunting and they just become couch lap dogs and just family dogs. We interviewed her at length about this dog, but she's gonna have

the dog. We'll probably get around and talk some more about the dog. We should do that, cran have her come in and talk before it's too late. Have we talked more about the dog, like again, just to drive up the bidding. I remember all like when when you go to the auction house of Bodity is all the money. All the money goes to the two our land access initiatives. So it's not like you're giving us the money. You're giving the money for us to do the land access

initiative projects. We got a handmade river hawk knife. Oh, here's another one. Are remember the Gnome project where we had the Gnome packing out. It was my brother's vision of a Gnome packing out a unicorn in his backpack. So we commissioned that with an artist. He's we're auctioning off his original Gnome sketch signed by the illustrators. So this is like the ancestral original sketch of the Nome

with a severed unicorn's head in his backpack. So in his bow, he's got his crazy Nome bow and he's walking through the woods there. The original artwork is for sale at the auction hous of ooditys Oh. Now, we got a collection of prototypes, so we just did a new uh desk skull mount like for putting freedom mounts if you want to like formerly known as a uro amount, but you want to put a freedom out on a stand on your desk. All the prototypes that went into

making that one we got. Brody's got a black bear baculum, also known as a pecker bone. It's a drink stir do whatever you want with it. Man bro does a Carrot's your it's your packerbone. What's the largest vaculum of a mammal in the world? I know what the walrus is big enough to use as a cane. Is it the biggest in the world? You know how you can estimate estimated a bear's rough size by the width of its pad. Yeah, I think it's the same thing with length of the baculum. Is that true? I don't know

it was with this one. Oh, like you measured the vacuum and added an inch. Oh, you've got an add an inch. Then it's when you measure a bear's footprint you add an inch to get squared. No, I'm not right. Which is pretty damn reliable. Like a five foot bear is going to have a four inch wide pad. This one is very reliable inches defeat. It was a good match. I feel like by the time you get your hands on the baculum, you probably know how big the bear is. Yeah,

that's a good point. It's a good point. But if anyone wants to know how big the bear was, that's an excellent point. But it is, like it's still a good little trivia bit. Yeah. My boy, my six year old, the other day, we were talking about what all had backul limbs and didn't have bacul limbs, and he said, people do oh boy, stop me for a mix. I was like, should do that? And I'm like no, I definitely did the conversation end there he was very Adam

and they had a pecker ball. Um. Oh so anyways we announced last week is it like so in the first round of the Auction House of oodity is when you you could go in and sign up to get that bottle of skunk Essence that we extracted from Skunks no more. That's gone. The new free thing, the new free sign up item at the Auction House of Bodies is a chance to come to the studio to participate in trivial tribute. That not trivia pursuit, that's someone else's game.

What's our thing called trivia Media to trivia. You get to come and play media or trivia with us. That's the new thing. You can win. Um. That would be the second time ever we've ever allowed someone to come in here. The first time is today with our friend Ray.

So starting today as you're listening this, if you're listening to this on launch day, starting today through Halloween, you can bid on all these items, including the new dog and everything um and then for free you can sign up for a chance to come hang out with us in the studio to play me Eater trivia with Spencer new Heart. Right. We've had a lot of listeners on this podcast reach out to us about donating items, which

is very generous of you. So we've had like the NFL dudes with the jersey, We've had Major League Baseball dudes with other stuff. Artists what all lots of stuff, a lot of artists. I want to donate stuff to the auction house of Oodities and uh, if you want to do that, here's what you need to do. You just email, just email met eater at the meat eater dot com and then uh in the subject line do auction donation and uh, Corey'll get you squared away and

sent over the right person. Am I saying that? Right? Grint? Okay, Steve. If I wanted to donate a signed book of game Board entails and to have you guys signed it as well, would that be of interest? Yeah, and you don't even need an email that email. I'm not gonna make you jump through. I brought it right here today. I'm not gonna make you jump through who you can just do it. We'll just do it right now. Oh that's a hardcover. That that's the quality one. Most people buy that one.

Oh really a little joke. No, we'll do that for sure. We'll that's perfect uh So, anyways, Ray Lockhart is here all the way from Maine. He won the Hawthorne Elementary School auction that we put on earlier. Welcome. Thanks. Uh do you have any messages you want to broadcast with the broader world? Um, like I say something your mom?

Uh no, not really. I'm not on any social media and the kind of stuff I specifically stay off of their trying to keep myself but just excited to be here and uh, yeah this is uh, this is really cool, really really like the brand and been following you guys for a long time. So do you more power to you on social Do you stay off social um just because you haven't gotten around and gotten onto it? Or

do you hate it? Uh? I just never felt like it was something I wanted to It was really probably staying away from some of the family that I didn't really want to connect with on Facebook. You know, they'll find yeah their arms length and then they then they come and find you friends the same thing. You know, I got a circle of friends that have a hard enough time keeping up with as as it is. So I am a consumer obviously for your guys stuff and

things like that. But it turns out to be one of the better decisions I made, because I feel like it's a rabbit hole it's tough to pull out of once you're done. So yeah, good, thank you. Did you let the kids do it when they were growing up? Uh yeah, I mean my wife, and my wife does all the all that stuff and just feeds it to me. So I get at arms length, you know, feedback off

of social media. But I have an a buffering system in the so you know that some friend of yours you haven't seen for twenty five years got a new dog in the family, all that stuff. I get it all filtered and the report report out and that's it's a lot more efficient that way. Uh. Here, here's a note that came in uh through TRCP, and it was why it was wildly broadcast as well. But TRCP has

been pretty focused on c w D. Uh. This is these these new like major outbreaks c w D outbreaks going on chronic waste and disease, which, if you're late to the game, is a I'm not too far off when I say it's like the deer and elk version of mad cow disease. UM. New outbreaks in Texas, new outbreaks in Pennsylvania, one just recently occurred in Wisconsin, including it's one of the most, if not the most extensive web of dear shipments from a c w D positive

facility on record. According to industry officials, there's a deer farm in Taylor County that sold three hundred and eighty seven deer to forty facilities in seven states. Since that we're in infected with c w D. Unbelievable. Do you still and no one wants to do anything to curb it, like anything meaningful, that something that's got to change. The deer farmers have power. Yeah, but how are they finding out there positive? So there's testing involved? Is it after

the fact? I don't know so. I mean I would have imagine they get tested when they're shipped across state lines or there's got to be some kind of protocol that's going on for that, But that doesn't come in before they're sent out. In other words, there's not a there's not there's not a gating item to let him

out of the state before. They don't know they're going to a facility and have a percent in faction rates inside of facility, and then you go look at where that facility is sent to m Yeah, I'm just wondering, how do you that that'd be a way to get in front of it. It's like they do with other things, get to get the test back before you green lit the ship. And well they're in the captive they're letting

the captive deer industry. And it's like it's not even uh it's it's you know, in quotes, it's like captive deer hunting. It's not this is not like agriculture. It's not like supplying like venison. Okay, so I thought I'll hear something like this is this is mostly this is mostly like deer breeders sending around animals for like captive herds. Yeah, that will be used in a sort of quasi make

believe hunting scenario. And they just keep grinding and grinding it, and people keep relying on the industry to self police. But they're overseen by the Department of Agriculture, not not

fishing game. So yeah, and most people who are most people who are watching to give the U. S d A a pretty a failing grade on their willingness and ability to get out ahead of this and stop having these like captive deer breeders corrupt wild herd the Joe blow America hunts for from getting an infectious disease from captive deer. Right, I gotta think it would be handled

differently if it was US Fish and Wildlife Service. Well, there's are the captive deer of native origin or their white tail or so you'd think there would be some jurisdictional responsibility of the state overseeing those that. There's. Yeah, there's been efforts on that behalf. Some states you can do it, some states you can't. But they the captive deer breeders are those herds fall under like an egg. Those herds fall under like an agricultural administration and are

regulated through an agricultural industry rather than through wildlife. Even though these are like these are a native wildlife species that give an infectious disease too. Wild animals is still on a on an interstate federal level. They're oversaw U s d A, not not wildlife organizations. It's a mass man. Uh oh, we have if they come in. We're talking about,

say George, because we're doing this. We talked about this call we're doing with with Phelps Game calls where we cut down a black walnut and O s A George. We're gonna make about a thousand turkey calls out of that walnut tree and about a thousand strikers out of the S. A. George. And we're talking about how that tree has so many damn names. Um, we're talking about burdock or like some people call it burdock. But it's uh,

you're saying. Bow dark is a term for O. S A George And it comes from the French like bow to arc. You notice word anyone when you see O. S A George boa arc, it's like, uh bow you know, basically it's like bow wood that you'd make bows from bow dark and it's a derivation of that French word boat dark. No, I don't know, but both but like the derivation is boa dark. So when you hear like we're talking about how people would call it, I don't know,

boat dark or burdock or whatever the hell. Um, this guy was just writing in like what you're what you're trying to say. What you're getting at is it's a you're you're sort of butchering a French word bow. It's like bow bo I asked d hyphen A r c here looked us up. Look tell me what looked us up. I've seen it spelled that way because it didn't, didn't Boone? When Boone moved to Missouri, didn't he live right now? On like the boat dark river? Why dark the common name?

It's French from bow. Would I told you so? I said, right, bad Art, you knelled it would of the ark? Yeah, like like a boat or the flight of an arrow. That's good man. These turkey calls are getting cooler by the minute. Broughty brought Broughty do the book report Forest about the uh, what's going on? The latest, the latest twist and turn on on what America loves to call Yellowstoness wolves. Yeah, I like to call Wyoming's in Montana's wolves.

I'm gonna talk about them, but you can't talk about them without talking about what's going on in a couple other states too. But anyway, late September, uh, northern border of Yellowstone Park, so just south of here a little ways, three wolves from Montana's from Yellowstones Junction, butte pack got killed on private land, um, which hit the news. It

was two female pups and one female yearling. Um. So you know, people were kind of up in arms when the news hit about it that some of Yellowstones wolves got killed because the junction Buttepack is uh the most viewed wolf pack in the world, and they only spent about five two probably the other the other ones in the park. Um. But they they then right next to like a major road, so they're like seeing all that time. Yeah.

If you ever drive through the park and all those people standing up around uh Lamar Valley standing around there, Yeah, that's what That's what they're trying to get a gander at. So but you know, wolves don't know there's a border there, some line drawn on a map. So they spend about five percent of their time outside the park, usually in

late fall. And uh until recently that part of Montana, UH, the the state Fishing Game Agency limited the number of wolves that were taken from that area adjacent to the park's and northern boundary. But they recently changed the rags, loosen them up, UM and lifted restrictions on the number of wolves that can be taken there. And H part of those loosening of restriction changing of regulations was authorizing baiting from private property. But you know what you can bait.

I just said this big argument yesterday because I thought I had I thought, I came up with like a secret idea. You can you can bait on public. You can bait wolves on public. You can't night hunt or use thermal vision to hunt wolves after dark on public. It's in the rags. I'm not doubting you, but I'm just I ran around. I read this thing that you're

talking about, and I ran around. First off, that had a genius idea occurred to me when I'm not being that genius, because I thought it was like only private land baiting, which you mean basically, take could you find a deer to get hit on the side of the road and drag it out and into a good spot and sit there. Uh. And when I thought it was private only, a light bulb went off in my head. But then uh, Garrett Long pointed out in the actual rag you can bait public or private. You cannot night

hunt on public. Can. I think probably the reason the private property thing came up is, uh, about a third of that northern boundary of Yellowstone borders private property, and these wolves were shot on private property. I'm assuming they were baited across the border where which maybe where they chasing livestock. You know, they were shot by hunters. It was you know, the wolf season had opened and they

were shot by hunters. Um As as angry as some people got about this, it was all completely legal, right, nothing, no laws were violated. Um And I think what a lot of people forget is, you know, there's twenty seven wolves in that pack. Yeah, there's only twenty four now. But if they're managed as a renewable resource, those those three are going to get replaced, even though you know, some people think it's the end of the world for you know what the number one cause of death is

for wolves. The number one cause of death is that a wolf gets killed by wolf. Yeah, yeah, how much I forget what she said now, her name's uh, Diane, Diane Boyd Right. How much? What percentage of the population dies off every year? It was a lot. So like if there was a hundred wolves in the yellow Stone Greater ecosystem, it would go down to something like fifty and then the next year and then the next year be back up to a does that every single year?

And I think if this hadn't been wolves from that junction, beaute pack, they're just wolves from the middle of Montana somewhere, you know, it would have never made the news, but the media is pretty focused on Montana and Idaho's war on wolves these days. Yeah, and then there's the reporting problem that happens in the news all the time that I think is they're always using like, no matter where

it happens, it's always yellow Stones wolves. So there was a story where our governor um killed the wolf, and I look at the headline, it's like Montana's governor kills Yellowstone wolf. I was like, that's so weird that our governor would go into Yellowstone and kill but lo and behold, it's not. Yeah, it was in Montana. There's no fences. He did kill one. Yelso's you could say he killed

the Montana wolf. But they This is why this is this is partly fueling my thing where part of my life goal um is to get Yellowstone turned into a desert to a wilderness area like rip out, all the infrastructure, leave the highway is in place, it becomes a wilderness area that will give it enhanced protection, no motorized use.

It's more protected. And then while the management goes to Montana, whelming you can have a raffle for the Yellowstone supertag go get them all like ten super tags, and it's like more protected, more pristine, less human involvement, restore human predators to the landscape. It's like better for everybody. It will never happen, Steven, You're gonna have torat a way to replace those tourist dollars that are gonna be cut out super tag lottery. I think that will do it,

So I got to think on it. Over in Idaho, the Department of Fishing Game entered into an agreement with a nonprofit hunting group to reimburse hunters for the expense of a proven wolf kill holdment. What now, well, they're calling it a reimbursement program. Oh okay, I'm reading that as bounty on wolves, which you know whatever. Um. The Foundation for Wildlife Management is a hunting group that describes

its mission as protecting deer and elk. So they coughed up two under grand to reimburse hunters for the expenses they incur while killing wolves. UM, two thousands you to turn in receipts. I'm assuming you got to bring a dead wolf. I don't know, but they have like here you go, two thousand per wolf and hunting units where fishing games as predators are keeping elk below objectives a thousand per wolf in the northern tip of the state

and five hundred elsewhere. So this is getting attention is last wasn't It wasn't even last year when it was like i'd ho was killing of their wolves, which wasn't you know, even close to the whole whole story. Um. So there's a lot of people that are irritated about this, uh, this bounty system they got going on. They're not calling it a bounty, No, it's like an expense reimbursement brom huh. I don't think they're like that's got to be intentional

that they're not. So they've got two grand, they're gonna dish it out in two thousand dollar increments two thousand, a thousand, or five hundred, depending on, yeah, where it is. But you know, like bounties don't usually work well for like coyotes and smaller predators. But I could see that that kind of money motivating some wolf unders. That's really interesting. I can see why people will be a little that's like a hard one on optics, man. Yeah, yeah, that's

a hard one to manage right there. Well, once you put a dollar sign out there, then you have some motivation for an unethical behavior. Yeah, that's right. I can see it triggering it. Yeah. Yeah, because you see guys who mess with coyote bounties by like bringing them from other areas, other states, you know whatever. Yeah, I get I get what they're getting at it. I gotta I gotta think about it. I gotta sleep on that one. I knew that that was I knew that that I

knew heard of that happening. I come here if I heard it in the Idaho Panhandle or something, or maybe Diane Boyd was talking about that program. That's a tricky one. Yeah, I get it, but I I just I'm trying to think about how to how to market that one, how to how to sell that one. So then finally over in Wisconsin, I'm sure everyone remembers last year, they had

their first wolf hunt in a while. The quota was a hundred nineteen wolves, and they exceeded that by about a hundred wolves and a couple of days, I think it was. It's very quickly and the and the hunt got shut down. Um this year, there's a citizen panel that recommends h quotas for game animals, and that citizens

panel recommended three hundred wolves this year. The d NR didn't listen to them and went with one thirty UM, which you I'd assume that they're thinking they had to react to what happened last year and avoid over harvest UM. And something I learned that that I did not know is half of those tags go to the Jibwe tribe and which and the and they have historically chosen not to use those tags. So essentially there's gonna be sixty

five tags available to hunters this year. You know that that that resource split is something you see around the country on different wildlife issues. Like when I was living in Washington, we would do a lot of clam dig and and they would have on some of those beaches on the Olympic Peninsula, there'd be a there'd be a biological assessment that was done in tandem between the tribes and the state, and they would do, like let's say

they're looking at razor clams. They would agree on a razor clam abundance, right, they didn't agree on like what total harvest should look like. And then they whatever that total harvest should look like for the year, they just split it fift so went to the tribes and the tribes could conduct their own thing, do commercial digs whatever, they had their end of it, and then the state would deal with their half. However, they dealt with their

half through you know, recreational clam digging. So like that, that concept of doing a tribal state resource split. But it does get a little skewed when it's gonna go unused. But if it goes unused, then you imagine the next year's recommended that the next years recommended harvest might be higher. Yeah, and interestingly, the a Jibware currently suing the federal or there let's see, yeah, federal lawsuit to cancel the wolf Fund altogether, arguing it violates their treaty rights. Um, they

don't harvest wolves because they view them as family. But they also believe that Wisconsin failed to use sound biological principles in the past. You know, when setting these quotas, We'll see where that goes. It's a tricky one all around, man, because the minute you start talking about how you believe in wolf harvest, people think you're anti wolf. I'm like anything, but anti wolf. Like I don't think I don't like us, uh,

just me speaking personally. I don't think that humans are really in a position to decide that certain wildlife species should be like eliminated from the earth. That's like a level you know, we have I think a moral ethical responsibility to keep native wildlife on the ground, but I also think that they should be manage and hunt for. I agree, and and like, if if the last decade or longer has taught us anything, is that you can

absolutely have wolf hunting and wolves. Because we've got wolf hunting now for years, and we got more wolves than we have when we started. So you will fun plan, don't you know? You Oh, just messing around. Yeah, I got well, I got a couple of irons in the fire them the new snowmobiles burned, burned a hole in

my pocket. Oh yeah that Um no, we got a couple. Yeah, But I gotta I gotta make a couple of phone calls and the people I've been very interested, uh and predator calling four of them, h which is a little bit tricky. There's these I don't want to see what these boys are doing because I haven't like tested it myself yet. There's an emerging strategy. I've been catching windows. This is unredated. When I thought I had that little

break through his road kill deer. But I haven't done that. Uh, alright, So continuing on with continuing on with the I think we've been exploring lately, which is fisherman harrassment, Which how's that even the thing? But like hunter har askedment, I get, you know, like whatever you're out duck hunting, some person

comes out freaking out on you. But fisherman harassment is we We've got a lot of stories for listeners about being out fishing and having dock owners come out and try to scare the fish away from their dock area, scared fishing her ass, shoot garden hoses at fishermen and whatever you can do to like ruin their fishing, which

is illegal. But this one came in from Acosta County, and uh that that holds a special place in my heart because I grew up south of there and I used to Uh, I used to trap in Mosquegon County, Diego County, but then for a bunch of years in December, late December January, we would trap up in Macosta County. So we go up to Macosta County and trap through the ice for beaver and muskrats. Now it's kind of like the highlight of the trap and you I used

to love hanging out up there. Um, and these guys run into They've had this, uh a lot of encounters with an anti angler. What's the world coming to it? Was the anti angler. He would uh used to go down and if you tried to fish his docks. So if you're going along and you're pitching jigs under his dock,

this dude to run out yell at you. But recently, this guy is out doing yard work and you had one of those backpack leaf floors, like a like a leaf flower strtus back and as they're coming by trolling, he runs down to his dock and starts leaf blowing the water, blowing the water every which way in the effort to spook off fish. Um. So this is interesting.

We have two uh, two law enforcements. Forward, I should I should call you guys are law enforcement who can speak freely because you're a former correct, So now you can tell people what you really think. So Paul was a former regular policeman, sheriff's deputy, sheriff steputy. That's not a regular policeman, I mean, not a game ward, not a game warden. Correct. Sheriff's deputy. Yeah, and Sam was

an Arizona game warden. Correct. So I want to ask each you guys, you get a call from an angler who says, I'm out fishing right now, and I'm coming by a dock and there's a man blowing his leaf blower around in the water to scare fish away. Um, do you like turn the sirens on and race over? Like what would be your attitude? Yeah, there's certainly no sirens. Uh my, my first thought would be to call the

game warden because it's obviously uh wildlife related. Yeah, because in Montana, at least, you know, we've got a whole

set of rules that fit under game laws. If they weren't available, it would be just under normal laws, would be disorderly conduct, which everybody calls disturbing the peace and kind of the catch all, or you might you might get a disturbing the peace type situation going potentially, Yeah, that would be the that would be where it would fall under in Montana if it if the game warden

wasn't there to write wildlife ticket. Yeah, And that was often the case where the local sheriffs or police department would get ahold of us when it was a wildlife related thing, and vice versa. When we got into drugs and drunk drivers, we got ahold of you guys. I didn't want to deal with it. The first thing it hits me is, you know, is there any way I

could deescalate that thing. Sometimes these people out trying to harass, whether you're a hunter and angler, want the publicity out of it and make a big issue out of it. And in fact we had when you're saying, the harasser wants broader attention, wants the attention. And the next thing, you know, next weekend there's three people out with leaf blowers. They started movement. Yeah that's the leaf blowing program. But yeah,

I would if I received that call. There's nothing on the books from a game and fish at that point dealing with harassing anglers. It was literally hunters and hunter harassment um, which which we did find many many times where they just sought publicity. They just wanted officers to show up and and make their case and it was on the news, and so you de escalate it. So that's what I would have certainly done in this case. What does walk me through it? What does that wind

up looking like? Well, I probably get ahold of in how many geese did you shoot? And so if I got a call, obviously there was a person that called the dispatch, and I would get in touch with them and see if I can meet them, and go all right, here's this guy. He doesn't want you. You don't want to meet with the fisherman? Yeah? Yeah, And I mean there's this whole agg here. This guy obviously doesn't watch

you out here. The more you make an issue out of this, the more likely he's probably going to get somebody's doing it too. Just back out of there, really, Yeah, And then i'd probably go talk to the guy. Okay, Okay, I just say, come on here, let's try to reach some kind of a balance. Why are you doing this? Well, every time I go down there and try to read my book, here's some guy and one time he almost

hooked me in the air. Okay, I can understand that, you know, And but let's think of some other options. You know, this guy had a kid with him, he wanted to introduce him to fishing, and how his whole day was Ruined's let's talk it out. Yeah, no tickets, Yeah, I'd agree with that therapy session. That's what you know you feel better already in readings saying so we're gonna

talk more about Sam's book. Sam's book is our stories of the past in Arizona game range of remembering the outlaws, and the thing that strut me most in the book is you aren't. Um. You don't wake up in the morning wanting to bust someone's balls. Only a few people that was generally like a generally lenient Yeah, no, lenienst the right word. Um, like you, uh you didn't, you know, you don't seem to have real acts to grind well,

you know, it's like I think I told career. You know these people that uh, well well, let's just say this. For those of us that are actively involved with hunting and angling, I mean almost avid, and that means greedy. If you haven't violated a game and fish regulation, I'd be surprised. And so mistakes happen all the time. And you look at the people out there. Of them are are good, you know, conservationist, enjoying recreation and passing on

a tradition, and accidents happen. Certainly you recognize those kinds of cases and walk into it gently. But the real bad guys, darn right, I stayed awake at night. I wanted those guys and I was going to put them out of business. Uh, some of those stories are in there. Can I get squeezing? A follow up siren question? Oh? Yeah? How how how civilians use it to mean the lights? No? No,

go ahead? No different? So everybody's seen it. I think when you're driving along and all of a sudden, like uh, some sort of law enforcement officers next to you, and lights come on and they buzz down whatever X road or highway for seemingly a shorter distance, and then the lights go off, and then he just continue about that happens. That happens all the time. That's what I think is going on. Okay, please, I think that they got an

emergency call and then someone called sit there mind. Okay, that's that's a he is like, I gotta get home real quick because I gotta go number two. See. Is I gotta another errand to run? Or indeed, is I have this power? I'm just gonna like a little bit. Why do you do that? I'd say, sometimes all of the above could be true. That's a diplomatic answer. I've seen. I've seen guys, you know, after leaving I don't know

the taco joint. You're like, I need to get back to the office right now, um and uh and and use the old lights and siren. Yeah. I mean that's usually night shift thing, but the more often than not, it's something that is like an emergent call but not necessarily worth risking anything for. And you just catch a red light and you're like, man, I'm gonna sit here for five minutes or I'm gonna get through this one and keep rolling. That's probably the most common instead of

causing all the chaos of going down the street. Yeah, because you know how hard it is that drive, even through Bozeman, much less a big city, um in rush hour traffic, and you just sit there for hours. And so sometimes a call comes up that you're like, man, I just you know, I could be there and in well in Gallanton County and be there in ten minutes, or I'm gonna not be three blocks yet in ten minutes. So you get through it, just kind of get through

the the cluster and move on. We should do a whole we should do a show like a weekly show called Ask a Cop and get a whole panel of cops and you ask them like why do you guys always you know, I know a couple. Did you ever get involved with any um montannas stream acts like access law? Yeah, yeah, there's there's. Because I'm obviously worked in this area, I

have to be careful who I talked about. But the um you know, there's several landowners I'm reading between the lines on that one nearby here, um nearby, you know in Bozeman, being a big fishing community has got you know, just loads of people parked all the way down around all the bridges, and we have guys who have you know, cameras out ready to you know, if you take one step above high water mark there they have motion activated cameras and alarms on their phones and they're calling and

they want everybody sided. And it's typically I'm sure Sam can can relate, and then it's typically spurred on by somebody and you know some fishermen with bad behavior causing them to get a burn unto their saddle about it. But we've had cases where you know, bridges, there's not really great parking areas, and we suspect the landowners who typically would call every day with with fishing or you know,

access issues. Those are the bridges. We would show up and there'd be you know, create a nails spread around in the ditch, so everybody who parked ended up with flat tires and limited the numbers of people who would go out there and try and park in the ditch. But yeah, we dealt with it fairly often. And then you know a lot of times. You know, I had a guy who he's a young college kid. He was trying to do the right thing. There was a bank in the river that he couldn't stay in without swimming,

and he was outside of the bank. Now maybe it was just a couple of feet he had to he had to go around a rock to get around, and he came. You know, the guy had the motion activated alarm on his phone, had the recording by the time I got there, and everything on camera, and said, I don't care he was trespassing. I want him sighted. And he's dealt with it enough that he just he he hasn't signed very well. The guy. You know, if he had known the law, I'm sure probably would have avoided

that whole side of the river. But yeah, written a few tickets that I've almost like I needed to apologize for. He's gonna wear kid's gonna wear that river bank out well, you know, good for nothing anymore. After he comes walking through. Uh oh, guy wrote in here's another like, this is an access question. So he's talking about legally accessing landlocked

public land. This is this is a good topic of discussion. UM. Landlocked public land is like where you have state or federal land and it's surrounded on all sides by private land. There's no public access road cutting through it, which makes it sort of like de facto private land. Um. More and more people are using helicopters to access that stuff if the land management agency that holds the land allows you to land a helicopter on it. But this guy's wondering, Um,

why can't you parachute onto the land? I see, of course you can extraction, just throw a military term at it becomes an issue. But remember that John Wayne movie Green Brays and they caught that like high profile target and green and a cook that dude to those balloons, and that plane came by and hits the string and pulls the guy into the back of the plane. You gotta get a rig like that in a long time. Uh yeah, so you can parachute in I don't know

how you can get out of there. Yeah, I think you gotta hire that helicopter short haul your way out of there with a long line. If you can't land, yeah, or if you're just moving there, I guess you could parachute in. And what's what's the attentionve? What do you after? You hunting or fishing? Uh? He does? I'm assuming he saw about honey he wants to go hunt it. So yeah, I guess good after it and then have a pickup. I think I'm gonna get into this a little bit,

this parachuting on the places. I just get to figure out how to get out. That's a good idea. It's a great question. But yeah, I don't see, and it would because a lot of stuff you can't because you cannot land the aircraft on it. But there's no thing with you just landing there in your boot. But you still gotta get picked up. Can't you jump out of

a helicopter? You know that? That's another good question. I'm guessing there's some like if you're if you go on unlet's see, you're going on to a part of a land agency that says no landing helicopters. I wonder how they view. I'm sure we can get a concrete answer to this. What what the airspace implication is? Because you're not gonna be like cute and have it be that

the helicopter never touched and you just hopped off. I'm guessing that they're gonna there's a point at which they're gonna not really care about how clever you are that it's like it didn't actually touch. Yeah, I did that watch and I forgot to take my helmet off with the mike oh jumping off the skid and right at the end, I remembered I still had that help. That would have been stupid. Um. Yeah, that's a great question, man, It's it's interesting to think about. And uh yeah, no,

I don't know. I don't know how it would go, Like just to jumping out of a helicopter, I'm guessing that you have to stay that that thing has to stay a certain distance above what does it? Like parks have it right, like National parks You fly helicopter over park, but you have to do a ceiling and you can't go on even shoot video or you know whatever commercial pictures in the wilderness out of a helicopter. You cannot

Oh really really. I just remember that because a guy gosh, I think it was this guy named Chris Davenport, a skier that skied all in Colorado's fourteeners and he had a bunch of images and I think video that was or he had maybe even done some accessing through helicopter. I can't remember exactly what by know that they shut him down for the helicopters use stuff. We had an interesting thing coming into uh. Last note, A guy was a guy named Gilbert. That's probably first dude named Gilbert

right us. Guy named Gilbert road In. He's hunting in Illinois this weekend and discovered an interesting regulation. This is a quote road to kill deer may only be claimed by those individuals who are residents of Illinois and are not delinquent in child support payments. Very specific. I think Sam, you'll be able to speak to this. But isn't it true that in a lot of states you can't hunt and fish and have a hunting license and fishing license

if you're delinquent? I believe so. I think it's getting more and more. When we used to sell fishing licenses, there's a question on you. Are you delinquent? You have to be a citizen Illinois. So the driver a driver hits a deer, the driver says, I don't want the deer. The next guy in line can't be from Wisconsin. He's gonna be from Illinois, and he's got to be up

on his child support. Good. He could be like, well, I murdered some people, but I'm cool on child support and be like, well, go ahead, or at least he's getting a process and delivering it to his child. Yeah, maybe he's like, no, no, no, you don't get it, man, I'm giving the deer too much. Cut your break here, all right, bumping down, I'm gonna talk more about Paul Louis. Paulows, you're cool with me dropping that motor off? Right? Yeah, I have had it. We gotta show roomy. You can

fill up as much as you want. Just put stuff in there and leave it there. It's like a big storage in it for you, you know you. So here's the thing I wanted to one of the things I want to talk about. So Paul is the founder f HF. So when you see us on the show running around with um a vinyl harness m that's an f HF binal harness. I first I don't know if I've ever even told you the story. I first my late friend

Eric Kern, who died years ago. Now I remember he was the first person that made me wear of your products a long time ago. Yeah, and yeah, back then I was doing basically all custom stuff. And uh yeah, I don't remember I got asked the question before how how that first interaction happened. I don't, like I remember getting an email from Joe Rogan, who was introduced to it through you guys, but I don't. I think I got a random phone call from which I don't answer

a lot of phone calls. I don't know the number for. There's a Bozeman numbers. I answered it, you know, for me, it's like, hey is Steven Ronella. I'm like, you're bullshit. Um, I think that's how it was there it was. It might have been an email and and yeah, so we as I made you a couple of custom ones early on. And uh, because you were a stitching vinyal harnesses that just on your free time as a a cop. Yeah yeah, I was sidegig trying to make a little extra money,

and uh yeah, I started doing custom work. Uh, like I said, kind of a hobby and then and just to pay the bills, and and kind of caught on being in Bozeman. I was doing a lot of tactical gear initially, you know, first SWAT team buddies, and then you know, had kind of involved in some online forums. You know that we're doing tactical gear stuff, and but

being Ambozement, Oh my hunting buddies. And then there's a couple out or jobs in Bozeman, so there's a few people that hunt around here, and that is sort of what took off. Were Yeah, when you were out doing uh all your police duties, were ever wearing your own accessories that you made for yourself, not on patrol. But originally when I first started, actually that's that's actually how

I started. As I was too cheap to buy something because I was on our swat team as well, and you know, we have a part time team, and I was too cheap to buy something and figured I could make it, so um, and that led to making stuff for teammates. And I there's one guy at work. His nickname for me was either zippers or pockets or something, because I always had if I needed a something, put something in a pocket. I'd make a pouch for it. Did you always have a sewing machine kicking? That's the

same question. No, I I took seventh grade home eck and I made a Fannie pack. Yeah, I did too, and uh those were cool in the eighties or nineties, right, Yeah, I skateboarded all around Councilzoo, Michigan wearing that thing, and uh yeah, I Uh I had been able. I had just enough skill. I felt like to, you know, repair something if I had to, And uh, my wife had a sewing machine, and so I figured I could make

this thing that I was too cheap to buy. And that just led me to buying more materials and more machinery and more of everything. And it just kind of I feel like, you got to be a real confident in your masculinity. When yeah, it helps that I sell camouflage things rather than lacey things. You still feel like you still feel manly, right, yeah, try to and it's like ballistic nylon, right, but it's like curting you both,

you know, very manly individuals. But there's like there's a point where I think a lot of people are like, yeah, I'm not messing with the soule machine. It's just too dainty. Yeah, my wife has one. I don't want to be a seamstress. And we got you know, I got that from guys I worked with, like oh yeah, you know, giving me that snicker and you're selling again. But you know, when I really occurred to me if I would, I wish I could have a soul machine and knew how to

use it. Mad be selling all kinds of jump. Yeah, well that tune change. You know, you start making more money on your side, um, than your main job than they're like, wait a minute, maybe it is worth doing. So you uh, how did it be that you went to school for wildlife management way back in the day. Well, it's I had I was going to be a game biologist and you want yeah, that's where I was aiming.

And then yeah, my junior year and in college, after spending all this time and money on classes, they came in and said, you will never get a job as a biologist, so find something else that you specifically at the time, And it was a no. It was a big, full on classroom. They came in and said, you know, here's all of your chances of getting a job as a biologist, even with a PhD. It was slim to none.

And I had been doing some internship work, um with like student security and and m s U. Like I dispatch for m s U p D just because it was usually pretty slow and I get a lot of study and done at night. And but I got to

know those guys had some interest in enforcement. And then, um, when I realized that being a biologist was going to be a lot of work, and you know, I had this plan to be able to travel around and be a a tech and take side you know, short short term jobs all over the country and do studies and realized that probably wasn't gonna work as a an adult

trying to be trying to you know, be responsible. So uh, one of the game wardens came in and gave a talk in the same class and said, you know, we're hiring, and you know, we give you a truck and a four wheeler and horses, and you know you can be outside all day and and you don't need more than a bachelor's degree in a related field. And I was like, I think that's probably what I might look at. So

so I started aiming for that direction. But um, you know, did internships with the wardens here, worked in the Wildlife Lab. Did you know? That's when right when I graduated college, I end up taking a job as a security officer up on the Flying d and thinking that was as close as I could get to UH job experience, and um, when I graduated, they did a hiring freeze here and weren't hiring any wardens. So I took the written test,

which happened to me. I was on search and rescue, a volunteer for search and rescue with the Sheriff's office, and they were hiring. They take the same written tests, the police standard police test, and I applied really just canda to see how I would do on the test, and they ended up hiring me. And I realized they at the time at least paid better than the state.

They got to stay in Bozeman and still getting shipped to who knows where in Montana, and it's a lot easier to get time off during hunting season when you're not a game warden. So that's uh, that's what I did. How many years have you spend on that, uh with Sheriff's Office? I did my full twenty retired with twenty year retirement. I got a friend I don't I don't

want to see what town he's in. But I got a friend who grew up in a town um and did all the bunch of professional things around construction, and then I guess, probably late in life for police work, but late in life went to academy and became a city policeman in his hometown, and it radically transformed his idea of the town that he lived in. Where he said he had no idea. Yeah, and I had no idea. That's true here. I didn't grow up here. I mean

I went to college here. But I think for the most part, people are you know, Bosman is a nice place to live, but you know, we as law enforcement and there you certainly stay busy, and there's a lot more going on here than people realize. Yeah, he was

astounded by the child abuse, the spouse abuse. It's like, how do you live your whole life somewhere and have like an impression of it, and then you get a look under the you know, and and and you look onto the covers, and he's like, it just mortified him. It changes you're outlooking. I worked six years straight at night shift and you aren't dealing with your general population three in the morning. Um, you're you just you're seeing people at their worst. You know, even if they're good people,

they aren't. You know, it's not normal to be having one on one dealings with the police at three in the morning, and so your outlook on life sort of changes. And that's when I started this side gig. It was one of those things that really helped me kind of realize, you know, because you know, it's hesitant to meet people customers having gear built. You know, I'm like, I'll meet you in a parking lot somewhere and I'm not gonna

tell you where I live. Yeah, I my only friends were other cops, and you know, night shift cops because you know, we had our barbecues at seven in the morning instead of normal times. And uh, um it uh. Having this side gig come up really kind of helped me realize that there were still decent people in the world, and especially hunters and anglers as a general rule, is kind of much better people than I was used to

dealing with. When you when you started building FHF, did you uh did you get like a guilty conscience that you had that you weren't like hunter? You know, I guess you still aren't you're still doing your shift. But I mean, did you feel bad like you were betraying your occupation or something? Um, in what way? What do you mean, like like that you had another love, right? Um? Not really. I mean I was able to kind of balance,

you know. I mean I ended up. I was in charge of our detective division, and you know, that was my main job. But definitely all of my off time was spent as this. As FHF kind of grew, I never planned it to grow as quickly as it did. In fact, I tried to slow it down several times because I was so busy and I was, you know, doing everything myself. Um, But it just kind of took

on a life of its own. And so you know, by the end, I was, you're trying to hang on to make my twenty years and and uh, you know, I'd say there are times where I probably gave a little more attention to that to my side gig than I probably should have. But I tried really hard to not not let it affect my day job. Um. On the like the gradual path to binal harnesses, we like in the old age, we put like a pair of bonn oculars around our neck, right on a rigid strap.

I remember getting I wish I still had to sing, and maybe I do. But we started inexpertly sewing stuff and I remember taking um taking a cutting a strip off of a pair of neoprene waiters, old neoprene waiters, and made my next strap of a neoprene waiter stitch piece,

and then stitched strapping to that. Did hooked the key rings that were in the tethers, like in the fastening points on my binoculars, and then we'd take a piece of bungee cord and fastened one end of the bungee cord to the binocular to that key ring running around behind your back, and to the other key ring. You'd have a piece of para cord in which you tie up prusick right and tie the prussick around the bungee. You follow me, so as you shed layers, you could

like tighten the prusi up on the bungee. It was to have the bungee so when you put your binoculars up, you'd have the resistance of the bungee for stability, and then when you're belly crawling, that bungee suck him up to your chest. I like it, Yeah, we should hire you as a designer. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think I invented this. I think this is just like looking at stuff and doing if I remember that dude Eric Current being like, oh no, man, there's this

guy in Belgrade. It like makes these whole things. You gotta te him what you got, you know, and he makes it all And it was funny. Is at the time, like no one really knew about that stuff. And and um, we get the biny harnesses. And remember camera guys, so we we had a lot of dealings with production people. Um no interest hunting at all. I remember one of

our camera one of our longtime camera guys. I don't know how many episodes of mo film like being like they carry all their batteries and media everything in there. You know, he'd run around being like, I can't believe my whole life, I wasted this real estate. And he'd even be going like he'd be shooting Bourdain show. You know, they'd be whatever, like Singapore shooting Bourdain show. And those dudes that all have bought your bino harnesses on with

their like camera equipment and stuff in there. You know they loved it. Man and they're all wearing the chest rick. Now yeah, now they got Yeah, they don't have to stick in the buyo pocket now because now there's like an actual chess rig. This more excess rise. But that was this big things, like this whole life. He'd wasted this this space where who knows you could keep all

your stuff here? Paul, when you came up with like that by no harness design, what were you seeing that you didn't like, you know, in the other options that were out there. Um, well, it's funny because there weren't. I have to admit I hadn't actually researched making it based on what you didn't like about other ship. The first one was actually made for a custom order for somebody else, um and you know who had had a bunch of elks scared away by Um he had one

of those early magnetic ones that stayed open. The wind caught it, popped it shut and made a huge noise. Elk got scared away, and he's like, I want something without a magnet. So that was the first first one I started making. I made a few for you know,

a few other friends and customers. Went to Uh. Actually, one of Randy Newburgh's really early like get togethers, and came away from there with a bunch of orders and and uh, you know, and I had been wearing just the the old elastic crooked horn um by guy, you know, and I had had my own issues with that. You know, you're hiking around and bouncing, hitting in the waste or you know, lower if you weren't lucky, and sometimes well

that's the thing. I tried to jump over a stream one time, and you know, I jumped and ended up hitting the other bank buy knows went one way and came back and hit me right in the nose, end up standing in the creek, bleeding, and like, there's gotta be a better way to do this, And uh yeah, that's kind of how it started and just kind of evolved from there. You know, it hasn't changed a whole lot um. It just kind of added a few features

here and there over the years. And you know, now, to be honest, I got so busy as the company grew where I was running kind of day to day business stuff all the time and really had very little opportunity to update products or even design new ones. And now we're finally getting to a point where I feel like we're moving forward on all sorts of new stuff.

When you started your when you start your business, will being a full time police officer, what was the how many years did you do it before you did it? A year where you're like I had a profit, Like realize that you had an actual business. Um, it wasn't until I actually started. We we ended up working with a company to help so gear for me, so like certain things that I would have a list of. Um, I don't know how many years it was into it, probably probably two or three where you know, I was

just sewing everything myself. And I am one of those people who are like, that's not worth that, you know, give me five bucks for that. I'll you know, it's probably not worth that much. And so I look at some of my early stuff, I can't believe people paid for it, but um they like when I found a company that helped me, like my most requested products I just had made for me, and um, that's when I started seeing a profit because it was just the time

of actually sewing. I could just sell those things, um, one after the other instead of spending you one by an artist would take me four and a half hours to make by myself. You know, that's when I was selling them all the time and felt good at it. And so you know, at the time I was probably selling them for sixty bucks. It's hard to make a profit at that rate. Well, when you were early on, are you tempted to not stick to having everything be

American made? UM, just as you could have gone and had like hundreds of them maid and just have it all be like No, I've pretty much always stuck to that that I try and source everything I can, both materials and obviously labor um in the US and UM. It's kind of been one of the things throughout the whole history that have stuck to and kind of built a customer base around and I think a lot of

people appreciate that. UM. And early on, you know, I was I didn't want to invest too much money into something and you know, going overseas you have to do huge orders and wait a long time. And it's been nice with US production is that you know, if I have a change, I can make that change and have a turnaround pretty quick versus a two year planning process to try and you know, get something made overseas. Uh, you don't know they want I want to ask you do you have how many how long has been since

you retired? Uh, since two thousand eighteen. Do you have a lot of days where you uh I wish you hadn't done that and stayed in it. No. Um, A lot of the guys still there. I still see and I recommend retirement to them every day, especially so you're like the opposite of a recruiting force. Yeah. Yeah, you know,

I missed the people. I missed the work. Um. Sometimes, UM, I miss being in the know what's going on in the valley and in the news, and but I don't miss the stress and the politics and uh, the bs that you have to deal with every day. I mean I don't. I haven't been shot at yet since I retired,

so that's kind of nice. Yeah. Do you feel like whatever kind of Um, I don't mean to like I'm not trying to lay a diagnosis on here anything like that, but whatever sort of I don't know, Like PTSD is ship happens to you from being like the first on a car crash, Like yeah, you're just like you right right, You're running into like like dead people become a part of life in some way, like this inescapable part of life.

Like most if you went out and pulled Americans like, have you ever seen have your like been in proximity to a dead person? I feel like at this point in human in American history, a majority of people would have a no answer outside of a funeral home, you know, something like like you know that you like encounter in close proximity a dead individual, not not in a funeral home. Like I think that a vast majority of Americans would say no, I have not right, Like it's just out

of whatever it is societally, we've gotten cleaned up. Like you're talking to my dad and he's a little boy. It seemed like you couldn't turn around without being a dead guy laying there. But like nowadays it doesn't happen. But then you're forced in that line of work. It's just like a thing. It has to have a new impact. Yeah,

I think it does. I actually like read something once from a law professor who talked about you know you kind of you get used to it, or you never get used to it, but you get to see it so often. They talk about grains of sand where you it's something that you don't realize it's irritating you, but it is irritating you every call you go to. It's

all those things. And I think many in law enforcement, any emergency service, they kind of the this analogy that was made by this law professor was, you know, we all learned to like build a pearl around those grains of sand and polish him up. And you know a lot of that polish has dark humor in it, and you know you just kind of you try and find what's funny and what you can laugh at later and vent your stress that way do you find it getting

out of it? You start uh, drifting back to whatever you were pre I don't know if I'll ever get there. I still have that yeah, yeah, I definitely. You know, I still can't go in eat at a restaurant without sitting with my back to the wall somewhere. Seriously. Oh yeah, I don't what is your concern? I don't know the

guy you coughed and stuffed, it's gonna come up. Yeah, And you just kind of you learned to always be ready, and you know, driving around a patrol car, you're you're always thinking what could happen next, What if this happens? You know, kind of the what if scenarios, all the time, and um, you know, luckily of the time it's pretty boring, but that one percent of the time when it's not, if you're not ready for it, it's it could be

real trouble. And that's you go out to eat and you're like, you know, what if somebody comes in to rob the place? What if somebody I know, you know, or arrested or whatever comes in and recognizes me or you know, I don't know. I just don't want to be hitting the back of the head. I'd rather see what's coming right now. Yeah, he said, yeah, he said, in the back corner, watching the What are the type

of what let me rephrases. Uh, it's from a night shift going back into obviously working with more of a day shift operation and any of the residual health pieces of that. And how did that unwind, you know, from trying to change your basic I don't know. So I worked nights. I was luckily I was a lot younger than I can tell. As I got older, things got harder. Um to stay awake all night. Um, I remember I went through a full year. I learned to tie flies

on night shift. And you know, because you wouldn't your days off you'd stay awake, you couldn't sleep. Really. Um, I didn't have kids yet early on, and my wife at the time worked night shift, and so it just

were like the vampires of the neighborhood. And so you stay on the you stay on the regis, stay on my schedule, and you know, made a lot easier on the work schedule to go back to the night shift and I tie flies, and I remember that's when I finally decided, you know, I probably had to get off a night shift when I had so many flies done because I never fished. Yeah, it was dark out, so I had so many flies tied up. I'm like, man, I'd never gonna get to use it if I don't

get off this shift. Um. And then I went through a long period where like I had a hard time having kids, you know, not you know, I was used to hibernating for twelve hours during the daytime and you know, blocking out the lights and turning the A C on and you know, just I did great on nights. But then when I had kids, it was pretty tough to transition, you know, and realize my life now revolved around their schedule and not not my own. Uh, you know that

jumpiness you're talking about. Uh do you feel that you do you make your kids jumping? Um? Yeah, I don't. It's hard to say whether I cost to hear that, but you sense that at them that they pick up because they they're they're like they pick up a lot man. Yeah, I don't know. They had a teenage daughter who and it's pretty oblivious to anything but her phone, So I think she's not like a gunfighter. No facing the door. Do do you ever look back? I wish you hadn't

gone into that work? Um? Yeah, Uh, like what because primarily what like what is the main thing? I don't know. You know, it's it's hard. It's like I'm torn because I enjoyed the work. I actually when I got hired, I never planned to go into that that line of work, and and honestly, when I got hired, it was like, I'll try this for a few years and see what happens. Um, but I had fun. I think the people I worked with are genuinely, you know, some of the best people

I've ever met. They always would have my back. They um, you know, we come came to rely on each other. So you know, it's similar to I'm sure what I'm sure I wasn't in the military, but similar to and we hired a lot of veterans and and that same mindset came with them, and it was different in that, you know, I worked with i'd say, the same core group of people for twenty years doing the same thing, and you just get to know those people, and so

I wouldn't give that up for anything. But at the same time, you know, I'm sure, like you said, I'm there's some scars there. I'm sure that will always be there. But you know, I guess that's who makes me me so hurt, what makes me me and I think, you know, it'd be nice to not have them, But at the same time, they're there. And I think I've learned from a lot of things, and I was very naive when I got hired, and I feel like, hopefully I'm not

not so anymore. I'm guessing that's probably accurate. Well, I appreciate the service to the community, you know, that's what I really I don't know if you feel that yourself. I think that's like a something that I'm feel like I'm missing sometimes. You know, it's kind of an adult in their prime, and I'm always thinking like man, how could I do more just around, you know, to help out? But like that that weighs on your honest and legitimate way, man, Well,

and it does for me too. I want to get more involved with some of the conservation stuff now that I'm out. You know, I'm just used to being um. You know, I try and help with cleanups and different things around the community. But yeah, there are times where I'm like, man, I wish I could get more involved. When I was in law enforcemately, you know, it was different. But it's funny you bring it up and kind of

tie what Steve said earlier about getting in later. Like when I first got hired, I was twenty one years old, and you know, I wasn't thinking about just starting drink. Yeah, um, yeah right, And m I p s to people that I'm like, would have partied with a few weeks earlier.

Last night, I've been with you. Um. But you know when when you're young, and you know, maybe not everybody's like this, but I didn't realize really what I was getting getting into, or maybe what the what effect I could have, you know, And of course then you get into that and I think Sam talked about it at some point where you get into feeling like I can clean up this community, I can fix everything, and you

realize that that's not possible either. You go through a phase where you're you know, nobody can clean up this community and screw it all um. And then as you get older, and I saw it with older hires, you know, you mentioned somebody else getting into it later in life. You I think those were some of the best hires we had because you had guys that already knew what was going on in the community, what they'd like to

see changed. They had community connections. You know, I was a college kid basically, you know when I got hired, my connections were, you know, what bar are we going to go to? Um? You know, it's just it's a different outlook on life and being involved, and so yeah, it was good when we hired, and you know, the Sheriff's Office here did a really good job of hiring

and picking those people that wanted to be involved. So it was you know, by the end, you know, certainly I was at a place where that was one of the best parts of it, where you got to go talk to kids and you know, help out at different places. You were out of the game when it happened to you a goal. But when you saw stuff like when you read like defund the police and stuff that that hurts that that's staying a little bit. Yeah, definitely. I feel bad for the guys you know, that are still

working that I have to put up with. You know that what I hope is kind of the vocal minority of people that you know have that hatred. But um, you know, not to say that there isn't room for improvements in certain places, but um, you know, I have my whole I go on for hours about that, but

I won't. But they you know, there are certain things that could be done to help I think improve the outlook of the public and the police working together, and I think defund the police is certainly the wrong message

to send out there. I just read an article in the in the Times the other day about the radical reversal of that movement and it looked I think it was the most particularly looking at like Dallas or Houston, I remember, and he was like that they had stripped overtime funding for a while and then all they're back in with more overtime. People are like, oh, I don't really mean that, you know, And it's like a widespread sort of movement away from thinking that that's actually not

the plan, like that's not the path towards more peaceful neighborhoods. Yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a tough, tough topic to cover, and you know, obviously every other area the country is different.

I was lucky I worked in Bozeman, Montana. There's worse places to work, um, you know, so I have a limited perspective from that end, but you know, it's still you know, I've worked with a lot of guys who moved here from Bozeman or sorry, from big cities, you know, d C, Dallas, different places, and they moved to Bozeman to get away from the crime and the lifestyle, and

they wanted the Bozeman lifestyle. And they realized, well, you guys don't have very many people, and so you're still dealing with almost the same number of calls every night, same number of you know, deaths. You know, we don't have the homicide rate of Chicago or something, but um, you know, we were small enough. We don't have the gang problems and different things, and but we're still dealing with a lot of the same stressors. And it's just fewer people to deal with calls. And so your your

ratios are still yeah, yeah, the travesties per person. Yeah yeah, it's still there. Um, what tell us about what's coming up at FHF at your at your at your now business. Um, you're now not You're now not as traumatic business. Um. Although I joke when people ask if we're staying busy, I say, I don't get to take as many coffee breaks anymore. So I think I'm busier now, Um, but

I don't know it. Just don't call um a whole another story about where where your food comes from and not eating at restaurants and uniform and only uh yeah, yeahs you've usually arrested most of the cooks. Um. But um, so starting in November, we're gonna launch a bunch of accessories to our chest rig kind of that that launches, you know, limited items that were built to accessorizes the chest rig and make a little more versatile, more modular.

Um should start seeing that stuff trickling out. Yeah, explain the chest rig. It's like it's like it's like a imagine a binal harness, but it's just like a rig like a carrier, and you can do like fishing parts, other kinds of inserts, you know, like a zip top pouch that you you wear on your chest. It's not waste in real estate. Yeah, and not wasting real estate.

And that's why I'd make made a fishing chest rig for years, always with the plan I built it with velcro inserts so that you could customize it to how you wanted. And I always had plans to do a bunch of inserts for it and different accessories. Never had the time and until recently and finally we kind of reworked a little bit and started so calling it bare and then have a fishing kit that you can set it up for fly fishing or you can set up for um turkey hunting. UM. We're one of the things

we'll be coming out with is UM some water fell stuff. UM. Just some options to make it a little more versatile Carrey, So if you don't want to wear it on your chest, you don't have to. Um you think about making a beaver trapping insert, I I would if I had some had some insight, I'll get Rick on that. I'll talk. It needs to have a little liner so that the cast or lure doesn't do you have at least ten customers. Yeah, I got mine rigged up for coon and lion hunting. Yeah.

We've been talking to Clay quite frequently about potential upgrades we could do for for him hunting down there. He's really loving for Oh yeah, ius, get all the whatever, GPS ship and all that. Yeah, you got a leash in there, and you still got to have a skin a knife. And he's not wearing the big buyos you know all the time down in that country, So he's got the real estate. I just tucked my little eight by, which are like the best gear kind of thing I've

done in the last year. You gotta get a pair. You just don't understand Turkey season with those things. I'm a ten. I can see it. I can see it. Check try him out. But yeah, we'll have a better way to carry some smaller buyos. Um. But hopefully we'll have a lot of that stuff out in November UM, and then our next big launch probably won't be coming until spring. UM. Some of that stuff. My wife Jen runs our marketing side of things and brand management, and

she'd be upset if I tell you all this. But you know what, I can't believe you want just talk about what I'm most excited about, you the rifle sling. This you already put it on the instant. But this thing is no No, I didn't get in trouble um that. I think it's the coolest thing. I think it's gonna The feedback on it so far has been really good. Um, everybody's been out testing it. Um to what degree can

I explain it? Well, you already explained it pretty strongly in the Okay, So picture you know when you got your backpack on, how you can't get your I'm talking to you the audience, not you, Paul, necessarily, but I'm sure you're a wear of this when you got your backpack on and your rifle sling, and your rifle sling

will stay put. I've in the pound, if you've ever seen this, I've in the past taking a big gass button off an old coat and sewing that big gass button to the top of my shoulder strap so you had a place to hook your sling. So I sold it to the top of my backpack shoulder strap and you can like tuck your sling into that button. You picture what I'm saying, Um, which kind of works. But

either way, it's a pint in the ass. But this thing you have, there's like an attachment clip, like what do you call a normal buckle, Yeah, side release buck where you pinch it that the female end of that hooks to your backpack strap. And then the male end of that is just on your sling. What was the vice personal on the sling? Okay, females on a sling,

the males on the backpack. So when you put your rifle over your shoulder, you can just take one hand and and that's some bitches clicked two Like the top of your sling is clicked to your pack and you can do any amount of crick crossing, log jumping. No slippage, that's the worst thing about it. And then when you want it down, it's just like you just reach up and it's free in your hand or this is our thing. You can like actually hook it to the bottom your

waist belt too. But that thing just man like going up sheep hunting, going up and around junk all the time. I just kept it clicked in because the other thing is you don't you're not like looking for a pull cord raining. It's just like right there, just reach up very very fast and you can walk without holding your sling the whole time. You need to hold your sling the whole time. You can hold your track and poles.

Tell you what, man, it's like Nobel Prize. I hope there's like a Nobel Prize and rifle sling making no offense. But that's such a simple innovation that's gonna I'm like, add a cart. I'm ready to push the button because I've struggled with that same thing. And just as you're describing it, it's like, where's that been all my life? Pull up a prepay for ray here, Matt. He's ready to go. He's ready to make a pen working on the website. The no, it's like, man, it's like, you

guys got some other cool stuff that I've had. I've been pretty to you, but I don't want to like spill the beans and know all the stuff like it might change. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all production dependent, but we're hoping it all shows up and we'll we'll be

ready to go by early spring. And a lot of that stuff, and like the sling, for example, you know, we're we have it with a bunch of guys here at Meat Eater, and we're all using it and making sure there's not any last minute changes before we you know, pull the track around a full production run. But you know, I just heard you today about you know about like you're talking about like businessmen people in manufacturing, like having all these problems with like shipping and all that. Right now.

I heard today that this thing that there's a huge like just like there's a shipping crisis in this country, particularly import export, but even even domestic there's shipping issues. And they're saying that when the um Infrastructure Bill passes that they're anticipating um it. Actually this is just this is and I'm not like a subject matter expert on this.

If when the infrastructure Bill passes, the amount of like shipping and trucking resources that will go into construction because the money is so much better that it's gonna worsen and that you haven't even this is the good old days right now, and shipping and transportation in in context of what the next couple of years could look like. Yeah, we've heard that, like no one's like, oh, we're getting out of it. We've heard that that we should prepare

for some some uh some of that those issues. Although it's weird because We've gone the last ten years with not being able to keep anything in stock, and right now we have a pretty good We're opposite. You're sucking the trend, all right, man, next time you come out, we got we gotta talk a whole bunch about we were gonna do it. I don't know what happened about the big horn. Yeah, I thought about bringing that head in and listen to the honest bringing his in. What

you do with the hide on that thing? It's actually I so I tried to do a full cape. I was by myself full body mount. My wife suggested I do a full body mount, which I was going to take her up on, and um ended up being by myself and in a bad position and ended up doing three quarters, but brought it out. It's all tanned up. I'm gonna do a pedestal mount with the reproduction and then you owe the freedom mount. I'm gonna have to get one of these, uh, one of these uh desktop pedestal.

Oh you know it won't work. I was gonna ask, are they That's the only thing I found? Like, I won't hold a musk ox and want the Oh no, no, it'll hold a doll sheet. What am I saying it holds, It holds the sheep. But see those big horns are so heavy, it won't hold the musk ox. I know that I put. Okay, our desk amount that we're talking about, you can put. I've put everything from prong horn, we put white tails of all shapes and sizes, mule deer of all shapes and sizes. It holds everything. I put

doll sheep on it. It holds a doll sheep beautifully. But the big horns like got a little more, a little more gir but you should throw one on there. Yeah, I didn't see what happens, but yeah I was wrong. I feel optimistic that it will hold it. We'll try it out and then you have it on your desk. That's what I want. Okay, shifted gears. Here minute, we're talking to another law enforcement from the Fish and Game fish Cops, fish foze. What do you guys call yourselves?

Fish fuzz fish fuzz fish cops, fish falls. So let me reintroduce Sam. Here is an interesting story I found out about Sam because when we're working on our Close Calls, we're like casting, for lack of a better word, for our Close Calls series and um, I was talking to someone I can't remember who else talking you now, and so I was like, Oh, there's this guy. He's got this crazy story about the mud puddle story. Then like he's alive today. I don't Wane gives you a detail

away on that one. Then we played the whole damn thing on the show. So yeah, you heard so if you listened to the show Reggae, they already heard Sam's mud puddle story. But anyways, I found out about him. Someone told me this story was like but they didn't know who it was, and I think they said something like whoever was I can't remember his name, but I think he went to work for like Pheasants Forever or

something like that. So I send out a text to a few of my colleagues are pretty well connected, and I'm like, hey, guy, Arizona game Warden, something new with

the mud puddle and pheasant is Forever. And like thirty seconds later I get like a thing like Sam Laurie, you know, And we got in touch and we recorded story, and then the process of doing that, we kept talking about that you had completed a book of like a really good book of game Warden stories and you call it remembering the Outlaws, and uh, I don't even full title. It's stories of the Past. So this is from two thousand four an Arizona game ranger remembering the Outlaws, and

basically and read it that that was funny. Is um uh it's almost like you can correct me on this, but it's almost like remembering them fondly, like you have you have a little bit of Uh you got a real soft spot for the Outlaws. Yeah. I think each one of them kind of left a little notchuring me somewhere, you know. I mean there was a lot of personalities out there. Yeah. Uh. You know I used to tell a lot of these stories two friends and my kids and things, and I always say, Dad, you got to

write those down. And uh. So it's actually when I was working for Friends forever, because we were traveling all over the country and at meetings and evenings at the hotels, I'd write rather than go down to the watering holes. And yeah, fell more productive and uh but only you know I as Paul was saying, you know, he had a desire to become a wildife a game officer. It's funny. I spoke to the University of Montana Tuesday wildlife class about careers and wildife, and I said that to of

them that when I went to school. Uh the professor stood up and said, two of you out of this class of a hundred will become biologists. The rest of you are going to be car salesman's or lawyers or whatever. And uh so I was strictly a biologist. I wanted to. I was a waterfowl nut. I went to work for Northern Prairie while I've researched station study and pintails, and my whole life was ducks. And I had a move to Arizona, where I ended up doing more work with

some big game animals. And a buddy of mine said, you have to go out for the wildlife officer of the game warding jobs. And I didn't want to be a game ward and I thought that's beneath me, and but no I did. I went to the academy, ended up hiring on and uh. You know, as you've probably heard a lot of people refer to the game warding job as the most dangerous law enforcement job there is.

I think yours was, Paul. I mean, we deal with people with guns all the time, but I don't have to do that stuff you guys did all the time with real crime. I guess if you call it so so anyway, yeah, uh, as the unit manager there, you're also the biologist, so we had to do all the wildlife surveys and fisheries management and all that. But you're in charge of a big geography um as also the warden. And uh, that's where those tales started. I I got

a real interest in interview and interrogation. I became kind of a specialist. And yeah, there's a lot about that in the bookman like kind of like like your approach, like you don't come in hot, I want I want you to kind of I guess, uh, well, I just want to get the truth out of you. And uh and at the end, I can't tell you how many times people pretty much told the whole story and thank me for because they needed to get it off their chests.

One of the things I like about the book too, is, uh, maybe you're able to do this because you've got enough distance from it now, but you kind of lay out It's a bold move because in the beginning you kind of lay out your sort of violator credentials, which which like, like you said, earlier. Man, if you're a passionate hunter and anger like you just have, you've broken laws, and you talk about being a kid, and I'm sure there's more we talked about being a kid and like an

uncle saying, don't cross the river. You know, we're not allowed to hunt outside of the river. And how at the end of the day, sure enough you're on the other side of the river, and it's just right. And I think that that that you tell them that story about yourself and kind of that you know, in a lot of ways, you're a product of generations ahead of you, you know, And and I wrote about it one of my books. Man, I mean, um, we like I grew

up around a lot of game law breaking. There were certain inviable things, like there's certain things you just would never do, Like no one in my family would ever go jack lighting deer, like, but you would definitely. Um, it was just they people don't even go out of their way to like hide it. That modu a dough tag, which means that everybody has a dough tag until Mak comes out and puts the dough tag on a deer.

And it wasn't even like and it wasn't even like when I was looking at it wasn't even like a s It was just just it took me a long time to realize that somehow you weren't supposed to do that. And I think you kind of acknowledged in little ways of having like some of that in your upbringing, which probably leads to that thing of how you had a

little bit of you never had hate for hunters and anglers. No, And as I said, I think the far majority of them were all, you know, good people and ethical users of the resource. I can't tell you how many how many times if you know, this book focuses on a lot of bad guys, um, but that was one tenth of one percent of one percent of all the people I contacted. And when you saw, you know, they're what

I call opportunistic poachers. They didn't leave the house that morning to violate a game law, but they got a situation where they're excited and they shot the wrong animal, or they they shot one in a unit they weren't supposed to be in. And and those guys, uh, they're like a dime a dozen, you're gonna run into it all the time. What I kind of focused on was what are what is that one percent. I had a guy tell me once that every small town or every town has a one percent poacher, the real bad guy.

And those are the ones you kind of want to focus on and spend a lot of attention on trying to to put out a business. If you have you heard the turn of the criminologist who had a term superpoachers. Yeah, I guess like a form of sociopath seeing those people. They're not they're not bothered at all by their activities

on the resource. I mean there's one guy that I don't know if you read the one about the the the lion guy like setting those baited hooks out I mean trouble hooks with meat on him on steal leaders to catch anything he could. Yeah, I'll guarantee you that guy is still alive. He's doing something wrong right now for a while. Guarantee there's no no I got you,

you know. And and I think that's one of the things that that I hope people that read this book might just have a little more inclination to say, you know what, maybe I won't put up with no one old Bob doing what he's doing and and give a call and well that that's like there's a certain egregiousness.

And you pointed out in that story about the guy with the bated trouble hooks where it's like and you describe going on the scene and you can tell where he's caught somehow, I've gotten a line in one and he's got just like junk out and like meat scraps and and just it almost like the way you describe it, it's almost like walking and it's like kind of like an insanity that someone's dealing with. It was and I can tell you this, that was way way in the backwood.

I mean we we took a four wheel drive probably three and a half hours before we trailered and got horses and went. We were actually doing a deer survey at the time. And when you come across something like that that far out into Buddhi's the guy had no concern at all that they were going to be caught. I mean there it was such such an egregious act that I mean, those are the ones that bother you. And I'm sure Paul you you can remember the cases

that bothered you a lot of times. With you guys, it's it's people, it's children, and from a wildlife officer when you see just an absolute disregard for critter. Yeah, and this guy, you know, the arrogance. I can remember interviewing him, you know, for me to you, and this guy was kind of like the old sociopath and looked right through you. He didn't give a yeah what you were about to talk to about? You can tell him

your stories. A lot of the guys, um, they they're they're good enough where they immediately go into a game like as you interview in them, it becomes like everyone in the room knows but you the way you describe how also their wheels are turning and they're like this guy knows, he knows what I did, but I like, here's I'm already playing my defense. I mean like he's

already in the courthouse, do you know what I mean? Like, And they're they're not like, oh you got me, and they don't break down in tears, you know, but they're like, okay, I can play this game with you. Well, you know, it was was always funny to me, is, uh, let's just say Steve did something wrong. And Paul called me up and said, hey, Steve shot a deer out of season, And I said, well, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do to gather a little bit of information. But I

want to go talk to Steve. And I pick up the phone and I call you, Steve Sam Laurien with Game and Fish Department. Hey, I just wanted to know if I meet you this afternoon, kind a few things I wanted to ask you. Um, yeah, I guess after work. Uh yeah, that'd be fine. Show up there and I'd come up and Steve, do you have any idea what I want to talk to you about? And they'd say, well, no, Well the person that was innocent would always say on

the phone, what is it about? Oh, the bad guy already knew what it was about, and I'm going to talk to him. So the first chink in the old interview process happened before I even got there. He just gave that away. Yeah, I've got a kind of a good little one. You shouldn't revealed that. There's so many more though, for my brothers and sisters that are out there still enforcing while if flaws and other laws, you'll replace that check with another trainers and many many more.

There's a funny story you got here where you're out checking, you're like working along the shore of a lake checking licenses and you get your guy and he's like, I don't have my license on you, and so um you kinda you're trying to give them the benefit of doubt, and you're like, hey, just leave your gear here and just go get your license, you know. And a while goes by, he's like, the guy never comes back. The

guy never comes back. Guy never comes back. Eventually you gather up his gear and tell about how you caught up. We'll tell you how you caught up with the guy. So there was that's what we call furtive gestures. This win here, you're shaking you. If someone asked you for your fishing or hunting license today, you're gonna be shaken when you get it out of your wallet, no matter what, no matter what, because I don't know, maybe I did something wrong and you love it. I just love it. No,

I'm just kidding on that. So there was furtive gestures, a little bit of excess with this particular guy. And I thought, boy, there's something wrong here, and the old warrant is what's hitting me in the hand. And he has a warrant. That's what I'm thinking out because there's more to this than blah blah blah. So yeah, he says it's in his glove box. And there's a bunch

of other fishermen on the shore. And I said, well, I'll just continue I'm checking these guys and and then I'll i'll you could come back here and leave your gear here. Well, he never came back. So I gathered up his gear and started walking back to my patrol truck. And at the trail, I go on a little branch fell. I looked down on the ground a little five inch hunk of oak leaf, and I could kind of what the heck. And I looked up there and there he was.

He was hanging on that like a gibbon. I can't remember his name, but I summoned him to come on down out of that tree. And this is just a fishing violation, you know, and and uh, I don't want you to fallow it out of Yeah, I think long story shore. I think he did have a warrant and he I think he got a little ride. Yeah, yeah, maybe that's bad. Yeah, another I'm gonna lay out another game warding trick, you guys got. I guess he told

the books. I can tell it, uh that when this kind of surprised me a little bit when game draws come out so limited tag draws that you like to go one, you go see if you got anything, and then you like to see did any do do our known violators? You are one percenters? Have our one percenters drawn any tags? But of more interest you is have our have our one percenters had a mother who drew a very coveted big game tag. Yeah, and you're like, I just have a feeling it's not his mom. But

in Arizona mom could have given to him. Right. No, No, you have to shoot the animal with the tag, and there's no there's nobody hunting transferable way. Yeah, because I think I know a lot of people who's who have their spouses apply when they get enough points and they just chant the kids. There might be some new regulations associated with kids or something. But well, the reason I think that he was right at the time is he

tells the whole damn story and then arrested the guy. Well, if you have these, yeah, you have a few red flags. But I remember this is some time of co where you know, you look at an officer's car now and there's a laptop there. You know, we had this hard print out. Then you'd go through it and find, oh, there's so and so's grandma and and uh you'd pull into camp and you know there's no Grandma to be found, you know. And so yeah, you kind of push it

a little further. And you know, I mean everybody says, so what a minute, just buddy hunting. They allow that in all kinds of states, and but where they don't allow it, you know, and you could get into this. It's based on the models for for genuinating the permit numbers and and it's based on the harvest. And if you're just an outstanding hunter and you can shoot five elk, that's going to disrupt the model that they're putting together

that generates the permit number. And so you need to you need to follow the follow the law in those cases outstanding hunter or unethical hunter who shoots five right, And I think you know this is you know, a pitch if I will to to to all of your listeners. Is as you know, there's little teeny pieces of information that come across to wildlife officers or law enforcement officers in general that you might not think as much. I pulled into a gas station last night and I noticed

there were some blood on a bumper. It's not hunting season. Well, the either guy did something wrong, uh you know, maybe maybe did something to his a human or there's some kind of wildlife in fraction. Try to license number down and just call and and uh, you know, there were many cases that we made that we were looking for the shooter of an animal and LOI behold, someone called

and gave us just that little piece we needed. And I think if more people did that, uh, you'd see a little bit less of some of the things going on. But one of the things I have to say too, and this goes back to that whole thing with law enforcement and and the feelings about law enforcement these days, and in order for people to come forward and say, hey, so and so did this, they have to trust you

and and so the rewards both male and female. A wardens out there really have to build that community trust so that you will go talk to them and know that that's not going to come back to haunt you. And I think they do a great job at that. And my hat's off to all the the wildlife enforcement officers nationwide that go out there every day and try to do the right thing. Because as you know, all of you from meat Eater, the seven principles of the North American model. I can't name them all, but I

know i'm aware of them. Number one, well, let's just go to number four is allocation by law, and so the permit structure is allocated and regulated by law. And obviously it's a public trust all that information to other pillars. But if you take that one pillar away, the models. So it's just as important as game populations need to be managed by science, right, It's just important as equal opportunity for all. It's just important there's no commercial harvest

that will impact the population. So don't break the pillars down. That's what I told people. There's an interesting story, uh that has to do with those I was reminded of it when you're talking about the subtle queues. I remember you're talking to a guy and you just notice that blood under his fingernails as you're talking to him, Like,

why is this guy got blood under spirals? And I think it's the guy that turned into These guys had this huge bear, huge they killed illegally, and what as funny is your you confiscate the bear and their last requests that can they get a quick griffin grin and you let it, and I'll guarantee you that picture is sitting somewhere on somebody's wall. It's like, just can we just please get a gripp and grind? All right? To get a grip and grind, then I'm out of here

with your finger. You got you gotta do that, because how are you gonna load a four pound bear? You know, they had to help me before, I like you, because the guys like it was just an explanation for his actions. It was just so big. It ran across the road and we had to shoot it. It was just do you feel a little like they got what they wanted out of the deal with by getting a picture? Did they really want to hide in the meeting? Yeah, they wanted that trophy, and who knows they wanted to vaculum

to boot, but they want but a little trophy. And these guys there, those are some of the ones that you can actually look back and laugh because they weren't a threat to me or they probably weren't going to ever do it again, but they got caught. So it was just so big, so big. So one of the easiest ways that I see these these dumbasses getting caught Today?

They posted stuff to social media, so it doesn't take a lot of detective work to see a guy post him with a you know, uh, what was maybe you know, in the days, you probably were coming in on very much the beginning points of any kind of a flip phone, you know, people taking camera stuff like that. What was sort of the dumbass approaches to getting caught? You know, you were doing some detective work there with blood of the fingers and things like that. You had you had

to be sort of aware of your surroundings. But what were the egregious ways that people tried to get caught? Um, you know, it was just they couldn't keep quiet, and you know, you'd you'd, uh, in certain instances, you'd work undercover, unmarked and go to a couple of different taverns and get right in there amongst them. Spend an evening at a popular bar with hunters. Yeah, and you start, you know, throwing out bear hunting and guiding or I want to get into this, and oh, you need to talk to Bob.

You know, what do you guys doing here? We're looking we're real estate folks from California looking for some property to invest in and and then all of a sudden you started hearing all kinds of stuff. Back then, you you really imagine that being the pathway into hearing all kinds of stuff. I mean, I know you mentioned that the story that you when you're undercovered, but well, if you're if you, I mean a lot of those undercover ones in the book were specific I was working a guy. Oh, okay,

so your story is Taylor do it? Yeah. But if if you were you know, let's just say living in a small town and you had suspicions about you, but I knew you hung out at whatever two lanes, I'd send an undercover officer in there to work. You find out what he's all about. Uh. You know. An other funny thing is you guys had that deal where you're working an illegal reptile enthusiast had like all these illegal snakes and stuff hiding his walls and stuff like that.

But it was funny that he It's like a very small detail you mentioned the book because he kept his weed in a break open shotgun. That was like his his hiding place was in his gun, right, So it's just like such a weird place to hide your weeds. So you break over the shotgun, it's all in the barrel. Will never look here. You go into a search warrant.

You make the place safe, right, So the first guys through the door, we put this guy in a handcuffs and he was in his bikini underwearld or forget that. A sickening site. But then we had to make the place. He's like, you're gonna go grab and check the guns, well, just everything, you're looking for everything, you know, And and here's this gun leaning against the bed and we've cracked it over to make sure the shell in the chamber, and what's that baggy in there? And that was just dope. Yeah,

that was a bizarre one. Now you talk about strange, Yeah, you know, like tell people about what he had. So he had u just five different kinds of reptiles and I'm not a reptile guy, and all the food for him and everything. Man, when you walked in out house, your eyes burnt from the ammonia from all the mice that he was feeding these critters and h Anyway, we had some undercover officers work him that he had to gaboon vipers, which are nicknamed the one step snake. They

bite you you get one step and you're done. And so I was the search team lead on that one, and I had four or five officers in there, and I didn't want any of them getting bit by one of these dark things. And and we couldn't find him. We had fishing poles, we were flipping out dirty clothes. And for some reason, Paul, why were the search warrants always in the worst places You can imagine? It's I don't know. I think it's just what they do. They're awful. Yeah,

I don't even know. Every search warrant we did, it was like another set of gloves on top of my gloves. Oh yeah, gloves, gloves and gloves and both their houses and their cars. Oh, just terrible. We who are inclined to have a search warrant issued for them tend to be messy, I'd say, on a more than general rule, Yeah, very so. Did you enter a really plush place and they bring there and they bring their sex toys everywhere?

That's why would you would you? When you're right through warrant, you know you're you're pretty wide open in the areas that you can search, And of course for a while, if you're you're specific I'm looking for an elk or I'm looking for these snakes. But you also are looking for records and photographs. And when you when you start looking through the photographs and and things of that nature, you see exactly what Paul is talking about, some of

that kind of stuff, especially with a snaker. Well, then you probably wind up I want to get back to the story, but you probably wind up with like collateral damage, right, because you're in looking for snakes, but you can find certain crazy ship that all sudden becomes like its own thing. Right, So if it's in plain view right when you walk in, here's a big bowl of pot back, then anyway that was, you know, you could collect that with the with the

search warrant. If I'm looking for records and I go through whatever his desk and find something, then if it's you know, let's just say it looks like a big baggy of dope, I'd stop and go have one of you guys for that. We even did the same thing. If you came across something in a place you could look, but it wasn't what you were looking for, we would stop and get a separate search warrant. So this guy

you use that as your probable cause or whatever the hell. Yeah, Once we're in the door and it's written down in a reasonable place to look for it, that's open um. But Sky's caboon vipers were nowhere to be found. And there was a Tucson Police Department officer there with arms about the size of an oak tree. And I walked up to the the bad guy and I said, look, and I got a bunch of officers in here. We're looking for these snakes. We know they're here, and I

need you to cooperate with us. Where the snakes? I'm p and Mr nice guy again, And the oak tree guy came up and grabbed him by the head and gave him a little encouragement, and he said, there behind the dresser in the bedroom, there's a hole in the wall. And sure enough, we moved the dresser and here was a little round piece of plywood and you could spin it to the side, and there's a hole in the wall of the drywall, and that's where he keeps them.

That's the weirdest. And we had a herpetology. Do you think he threw them in there when someone banged on the door? Was that like their high that's where he had because there was droppings and all kinds of stuff in there. It seems like they could get yet night. But I, I literally said, okay, that's really well. Herptologists grabbed asked for a mirror, and he gets a mirror in a flashlight and he looks and low there they are.

They're beautiful, and oh my goodness. And and I said, what, you're gonna have to get them out of there pretty darn quick, or I'm taking a sledgehammer knocking this wall down and we're gonna get rid of these things. Oh no, no, give me a chance. Long story short. He he asked for a couple of white mice and started dangling him by the tails in the hole, and all of a sudden he's and I was holding the mirror, and here they come. They're coming after those mice, and he had

the tongs and just snagged them up. In that in the book, and there there's a picture of me walking out with a box with those two gaboon vipers. And I don't want to see. He was getting in trouble

just for like illegal wildlife traffic. So they they were he was selling, uh, you know, commercialized trafficking of not only a dangerous species, but prohibitive wildlife, and it was it was really important they got these gaboons because they're from South Africa in a very similar climate and uh, you know, they could have been all over Arizona, who knows. But yeah, that was a creepy one. Uh. One more

I got. I got a couple more, just general questions, um about how advice from you two hunters and anglers about how to interact with game words I think we should talk about. But I want to bring up one thing is you, Uh you talk a lot about experiences with like robot deer and robot turkeys and whatnot, which seems like a help of a lot of fun. You know, I told you earlier I was an avid duck hunter and sitting in a blind watching a decoy is better

than shooting ducks. Uh. So we had turkeys, and we had elk, and we had deer, and it would we we always put them out in areas where it was just gonna be a no brainer that you had an intention to illegally take this credit and and so the unit was closed for example, two turkeys, and we put a turkey out and we had robotics in them. So you could move them with a little you know, gyro and truck comes by and comes to. Sounds like it would be like when you set these things up, it's

like the first set of headlights, here comes one. Sure enough. It was pretty predictable. It was pretty predictable. And you know, and I think you the scary part of that was what we found, which actually we kind of got a policy out to all the wildlife agencies. That is what I want to ask about. The decoys were new, we were we were one of the first agencies to use them, and you know, there was we had to go through all the county attorneys and judges to to make sure

it wasn't considered entrapment. Yeah, you know, let me because I feel like I didn't set this up problem just real quick. What we're talking about is they can take so let's say it's illegal to hunt deer at night. These guys will take a decoy and they'll actually make it robotics, so it's heddle moving stuff and you just

set it out. So you just wait for some guy to come out and start shooting at the deer at night, or you go to an area that you can't hunt turkeys, but let's put a turkey decoy out and wait for some guy to drive down the road and try to kill the thing. And um, and then yeah, speak to the entrapment things. I always feel like it's a little bit like you're kind of like tempting people, right. So the courts and the county attorneys were were they encouraged

us highly. Don't put a big rack on a mule deer. Don't make it a trophy, because now you're crossing that line of possibly in trapman. God, it's the biggest deer I've ever seen in my life. I had to shoot it. So we would use little forked oors um and and really the few cases that I actually went to trial on always came out there. We didn't put the gun in your hand. If I stood there along the road and said, look at that, it's a buck and a gun.

Here's my gun, now, you know, clear in travement. But um, yeah.

We were doing a night deer operation one evening and up in the White Mountains, and it was on you put these decoys on a turn of the road, so when the headlights came around in ninety degree turn, the illumination of the ice hit you have to place it so you had a good backdrop backdrop you didn't, and you do a lot of recon to make sure there were no camps around or ricochet bullets could hit a trailer or whatever, and picked the spot and then set the set the decoy up, and we'd have a blind

right where you suspect to. The vehicle would stop on the other side of the road so you can hear him, and then we'd have a patrol rig ready to go to uniformed officers about a quarter of a mile away hidden ready to respond to the vehicle. So we're watching this truck parks and these guys get out and we in this case, there was the blind with the people observing him, and then me and this other officer were

about a hundred yards away. Actually we were with that the vehicle to catch them, and but we're looking at him with binoculars and we can see this guy coming towards the decoy and it's dark, and then all of a sudden, I'm looking and my partner's looking, and I say, good God, Kim, he's aiming at us. And when the store case was all done and we apprehended them, we asked him and he said, yeah, there was a pair

of deer eyes on the other side the road too. Reflec. Yeah, so we immediately got out of thing to all the agencies saying, no binoculars on nighttime tecoy operations. Yeah, you can see that being a little dicey. Yeah, tell about the guy you had, The guy you had that was approaching the turkey when the turkey's head flew off. So that was funny that the guy actually responded when we

stopped him. We were whoever was running the decoy was a little bit vigorous and knocked the head off the decoy, and the guy stopped and he was in pursuit of it, and we started approaching him. Hey, hold game and fish. And the guy look, hey, Sam, is that you said? Yeah, and you don't in a small town, I knew most of the people. What do you what do you do? Oh? I knew it was a decoy and was, well, you got a shotgun in your hand, Oh, it's not loaded.

And he leans down. He's got leading right on his toe, and I said, well, let's just make sure unlow peppoo that goes off gravel shoots everywhere. And so that and the guy was a hunter safety. It was kind of bad. So you rent into a ball So, uh, what like, based on all your experience doing that, UM, give us tips hunters and anglers, tips for how to how to engage with uh, how to engage with wardens in a way that just makes d you know, decreases tension like whatever.

Like if you had to give people some advice you get your license checked. Here's a couple of pieces of advice. Good question. Uh. Number one, I would just say, know that that officer put on underwear of the morning the same morning as you did. Here's a human being and they're out doing a job, and it's okay to be a little nervous because everyone is. Even if I get pulled over on on the streets and I'm looking for

my registration or something, I'm fidgety, So it's okay. But just recognize that they're out there, um, and they're they're human being just like you. So it's okay to be nervous, to be you don't take nervousness as a sign that like you, don't take nervousness as a sign that they must be guilty. I almost looking at the opposite of your two cocky something's wrong you know or or but a lot of people are pol I know you've seen

it where they're they're they're calm with you. They've been through at a time or two, and this is nothing new to him, where you know, all of a sudden, I don't know, how have you ever been checked by a game officer? Right? Not in a long time? But yeah, yeah, were you nervous? Uh? Yeah? I was in my twenties, so it was quite nervous, even though I hadn't done

anything wrong. I mean at that age, you like when you see a coffee, like turn the radio down, right, Like you're just generally nervous, right, but you know, you you try to calm your nervousness. I'd say they're human beings. Um, if you're not doing anything wrong, there's nothing to worry about. How how do you feel about the guy that when you pull up, he's already got his license out. Well,

he's either been through the routine a couple of times. Uh. For example, if you check a common lake and you see a bunch of fishermen that you park and start walking down there, there were people that literally would have their license and you don't take that as a sign of something or not. You're good, you're good. I didn't even look with binoculars. We pull up on watercraft and come to the shore and just look at alder license

up and you're good. But you saw me approaching, and all of a sudden your chair folded up and you started going up the hill. That's the way he matches. This is our trick. He talks about coming onto a lake. He's always real curious and who has to get to the rod very quickly? But we don't always we don't

always take a don uniformed warden. But if there's a row of a hundred fishermen, non uniformed officer would go down on the other end, just a lot, just ship there, just to see who really needs attend to the rod. And now I come out and I make a big display. I pulled right up onto the boat ramp. Get out, start walking. Here's three or four you gotta go. I just called. Uh So, the funny thing about getting your license out is you want to get it out. But then I always think that the war is gonna be

like why do you think I need to? Like like it's a little presumptuous, Like how do you know that's what I want how do you know? So then you stand there like should I offer it? Do you know what I mean? It's just like it's also awkward man. Well, and if a lot of it has to do with the communication of the officer, right, you always immediately it come down and whole you're gonna say, how's it going today? Nice day out here? In it? You want to hear that from a person, Yeah, talk to him a little bit.

If you walk up and it's an immediate you know, I need to see your license what we're saying. You'll ask them how it's going, sturn out, talk to him a little bit and how's it going to see you got a couple of fish there? Does a warden want the hunter angler to be chatty? At times? You're pretty lonely out there, so it doesn't you know, So if you're like, hey, how's it going, that doesn't it doesn't set off a red flag. No, I mean you can detect if there's something not quite making sense here. This

is a little false. Yeah, you could feel it. What was your attitude towards self reporting? We did you were you? Did you actually? Were you actually able to be lenient to people that would self report absolutely, so what what And And again even with that note, you know, if if you make a mistake out there, uh, you know, turn yourself in. It's it's the way to go there. There might be a couple of horror stories out there

where uh you wish you hadn't. But if if the officer finds out some other way and that you shot the wrong deer or you you did whatever you did, and then things are going to go a little harder. We had the luxury at least to work with our county attorneys and in many cases we just had jps that we could talk with justice to the peace was the judge, and we could go in and see the judge and go I want you to know this was an accident, um, and the person called me, I showed up,

We got the animal salvaged and and you know donated. Um. So I just want you to know that I didn't. You know a lot of times they'd ask you, well, what do you want to do? What do you think the right? Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, even on my side over there, that the same way if somebody self reports something or have an accident, was cooperative

and just want to do the right thing. Even if a ticket got written, you had those conversations with the prosecutors and the judges and say, this is not the guy that needs to, you know, have the book thrown at him. We need to And a lot of times they just get you know, dismissed or or you know, if you're don't get in trouble for six more months, it'll go away. Um. So yeah, by far, the best way to deal with it was just to be upfront

about it. Sam. You're telling their story where this has a little to do with like like discretion or or you know, individual by interview, I was not thinking the right way to put it. But um, where you're able to take like a level of subjectivity to what's going on, and you talk about going into uh I think it's an antelope poaching incident. We're going into a home and extreme poverty, no food already ate the thing like that. You ended up approaching that a little bit differently. Yeah,

you know. It's it's funny because um, as we said, a lot of times, when you conduct a search warrant, the places are less than let's just say, the nicest places you've ever seen. And yet I didn't have that kind of feeling when I was issuing a search warrant um in the in the case you're referring to, it was an antelope that was allegedly poached. And when we got to the location, I mean, these people were hurting, said no running water, and they were cleaning a jack

rabbit the sink. There were there were flies all over the kitchen and about four jack rabbits in the sink and uh no running water, kids outside playing in dirt. The meat that we found was wrapped in more of an ice box. It wasn't you know, kept fresh. So whatever they killed, they're gonna eat probably that week. So you gotta make a call to yourself. Am I getting out of am I writing a ticket? You know? Or what are we gonna do here? And it was also a young kid. I remember you just telling the mom

like you gotta talk to your boy. I don't want to come back out here. I don't want to you know, we're we're leaving, but I'm gonna put you in touch. There's a lot of programs out there that can help you people, and programs that can give you food. And you know, the wildlife resource out here is sparse, and you can't do what you're doing, so I don't want to come back. You know that we do. We understand each other. Are we good? And it's kind of it was a touching story, man, Oh I was that was? Yeah,

you went home that night and hunt your kid. Yeah, that's good man. So tell people how to tell people how to find the book. Well, it's funny because when I did the bud Puddle story for the Campfire Tales, Savannah told me to give her my Instagram. I said, I bought my wife an insta pot. I don't know what an Instagram is, so my daughter set up an Instagram account. Is it properly? It says at Sam Lowry and on there is a link, so you wind up getting at Sam Lawry. Someone else didn't have that. No,

I got it. That's cool. Yeah, I think have you ever checked it out? Yeah, he'll check for us Sam Laury and it s a M L A W R Y So that's on there. Uh and and and she told me to say you can find a link on there to buy it. Uh. These proceeds from anything I make on this this go to my kids because she did the pencil drawings in it, and my daughter put it together through that account those third project. Now, yeah, my stories are out there and I hope people enjoy it and if they want to get it for a

stocking stuffer, go for it. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. So again the title Stories of the Past an Arizona Game Ranger Remembering the Outlaws by Sam Laurie and of course also Paul Lewis support. Paul go to f HF Yeah, fish on fight, Yeah, American made accessories, all kinds of cool ship. More stuff coming out any else. Y're on, You're good, feeling good. I'm good? Thank you? All right, everybody take care. Thank you,