Ep. 322: Better Hunting and Fishing For America

for you. Unmay three, We're doing a live show in Billings, Montana at the Alberta Bear Theater. So Alberta like you know Canada and bear not like a bear that you'd go hunting for it, but be a I r Berta Bear Theater. Get tickets through them live show May three. I'm gonna be there, uh j honest, But tell Us will be there old Cow for the entire show. The flip Flop flesher seth Morris will be fleshing beaver and raccoon hides off on I believe what's called stage left

in a beautiful spotlight Chester. The Divester will be there and everyone that buys a ticket gets a signed copy of my new book, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. Get your tickets now. Go to Alberta Bear Theater website. May three billings, Montana. Can't wait to see you guys. Love y'all. All right, everybody, Uh, here's the deal. Normally, the way the show works as we do, Um, like

what kind of intro? I don't know if anybody out there actually listens that carefully enough to notice this, but you guys probably don't even realize this they're in here. I think we do. We'll do like a light intro of a gas right, like a light intro, a little banter. Are you explaining to us how this works? And listeners, I think we got it, but okay, tell me then what happens? Do light intro? Light intro? Then we introduce everybody,

if you remember, and then what happens? And then we go into talking about ship that either people wrote in about or stuff that we did that week, or a couple of rabbit holes maybe yeh, go on a few tangents, and then we sometimes argue about ship, and then we go to the guests and talk about that that's been paying attention. We're gonna change things up because we're gonna do a light I'm gonna do a couple of talking points,

then the light intro. Cool Um. This is going to further test people's ability to pay attention because just because of a weird issue, I don't want to get into where we we recorded a show that we're gonna release after this show. It's It's it's features are beloved, your honest to tell us who's sitting here right now? Uh? And I don't want to miss it. In it, I allude to a fleet at the end, I allude to a flee story that I wanted to tell but ran

out of time. So now people are going to in the future hear me allude to a flee story that I want to tell, but I have already told it. Can I can? I can? I tee it up for you? So Steve had me come over and put a rack on his canam the other day. Well I would I wouldn't put it that way. Well, we we worked out. Yeah, yeah, And I just want to run in the project. Though I was I was happy that I was happy to

do it. But I show up, Steve comes out of his garage and he's hold on you can't just say I just he has me to come over to put a rock installing installing a cargo rack. Chester was Jester came over to help me install a cargo right, but I wasn't able to give it my full attention because of my problem. Yeah, so I show up, you know, and Steve kind of comes out of the garage and he's like, oh man, guys. He's kind of frantically moving around a little bit. He's like, I'm in deep trouble

right now, guys, I'm in big trouble. Just hold on, Just do your thing. And this is why I had brought a kyo at home at night. And my dog hates kyle and hates kyote fur skin, hates kyles, won't go near it. If you come in with a kyote hide, even a pelt, she goes the other end of the house. She can tell she loves dogs, but she knows that that dog never met a dog she didn't like. But she can smell something on that that like that son of a bitch is not a right. She just knows.

So I laid on the floor of the garage and think, you well, she'll never go into that. Then I'm down here in the studio and I'm looking at my text messages in my wife and our babysit are having this like ongoing thing about holy shit, the fleas on the dog. And they're like, is it from the dog park? How could it be? They're like they're all over I mean, her head's crawling and fleas, And I'm thinking, no one

knows about the thing in the garage except me. I gotta be like, I think I might have a little something to add here. You wouldn't have believed you should have had just Chester roll over there and grabbed that coyote and just hide it. Oh and it just played dumb. Yeah, I really should. It's like she went, you know, like when something's body tamp gets to like there's a point at which fleas they're on a sink and ship they're on a sink and ship. It's like she laid down

and spooned with that thing. There's no way to explain the number of fleas on that dog. I've heard um like trappers that have a have something that's got fleas will put like a warm rabbit next it, so they like a like a cold that something they trapped that's cold, it's got fleas, they'll put a warm rabbit next to it, so all the fleas get on there. Who told you that? I don't know where I heard it and then put it?

I don't know. I'm saying I heard it, and then you burn the mouse the on it didn't make a warm rabbit? Is that like forty five seconds on medium high? I don't know. I look, I'm just saying it's a funny story. I hear all kinds of stuff. I don't talk. You had a warm dog next to a cold Oh? Really? Yeah, give me an example of something funny. You heard that, then you decided not to talk about something like that. Uh,

you want another good, real quick flee story. Yeah, but okay, go ahead, because I'm gonna finish my fleet story up. But go ahead, holdout. Fitter I worked for. He used to collect rabbits for a mink farm in Colorado. That's how I put himself through college, partially anyway. And he would load up the trunk of his car with jack rabbits every night, and his roommate was like, hey, man, can I borrow his car? He used he did this

business in a car with a trunk. Yeah, and the fields at night and and just thump rabbits with with his front bumper. You know, maink farmer wasn't real particular about how the meat showed up field care um, and so he didn't get a chance to drop the rabbits off to the mink farm. Lets his buddy take his vehicle, and his buddy and his date seemed to really hit it off, and they were using the backseat up until point where they neither one of them could concentrate due

to the itching involved. And apparently these two were just coated. Had to tail in uh in fleece. That was me this day I'm talking about. I went to the gym. So I got in the morning and took the kyle out of my truck and I almost a bear hugged that some bitch without thinking about it. I'm at the gym just itching like blue blazes. I'm sitting here itching like blue blazes and not like man, I gotta freeze

these clothes, which I did. I gotta go home and put these clothes in the freezer and take a shower. But I thought it was like I wasn't even think about the damn dog. I'm still got, I got, I'm still itchy. Is that I got a question. Is that the coyote that's sitting by my desk right now? Yeah, but I froze it, alright, I froze the hide. Garrett's using it as a wall he wants, he's keeping it as a wall hanger, Dude, that I'm surprised that you

didn't get in trouble. You probably did. Actually, No, the smell of that thing was you know, they don't they know. I'm not even I don't even care to hear about that kind of stuff. That was. Yeah, it was. It was a really fecund odor. Uh oh a another pre talking I was getting checked by a game warden in Arizona a couple of weeks ago, and he said, oh, after you checked my license and realized that I was cool,

he goes. He says, oh, you were talking on the podcast and why we do grip and grin's with confiscated material, He goes. It's not like a grip and grin he said later in court, it's to demonstrate the magnetude. It's to later in court for a jury. It's just to like demonstrate the magnitude of something. Because you can tell people all day long about X pounds of whatever, And it's kind of in one year and out the other. But when you're like out, you the same thing with

when they lay all the narcotics out. It's just so people can be like, my goodness, and you weren't like and so it's not because you guys are a little bit proud that you guys, he said. It's it's just a it's just a thing to present in the courtroom. Just too, he said, saynything with drugs, like you tell people like key lows or whatever, and then they see it, they're like, holy cow, look at all that stuff. So

that's why he does that. Uh Oh. Another funny thing is I on Sunday was ice fishing and stood up my phone iPhone twelve right down the ice hole of water and we had a flasher going and you could watch that phone not if you call his phone a perch pick. So yeah, I wouldn't stood over the whole yesterday. And it was like, it's so like Chester was off doing something twenty roughly thirty ft away, and I'd like to think Chester that my phone that I'm as close to you as I and my phone, but it's so

far away. So you guys were fishing yesterday, which was a Monday, kind of took picture. We were it was Sunday after this Monday, and Monday was worse than Sunday. Um, you know, it was worse than fishing. I was sitting friend the computer all day about that, it's day day of fishing is better than a bad day work. Uh. That was me saying I have a pretty good quote on that. Actually, we're not ready for you yet. We're gonna get into you hardcore in a minute here. Uh oh,

another thing people need to start. I want people need to start. Uh go go on Clay Nucombe so like Newcomb Clay underscore NUKEM and start pressuring Clay for Beargreas podcast. I've been trying to get Clay to do a deep dive on the Wetzel brothers. Lou Wetzel and the Wetzel brothers. They won't do it. Start to piss me off. Can you tell us why? What's interesting about the Wetzel brothers very controversial frontier figures um and very controversial frontier figures

from the Indian Wars along the Ohio River. Why don't you just do something on them? Because the Clay should do something to them. If you're so interesting. I used to call him the death Wind. There bringing it up, and we're all interested to death Wind. There were sociopaths, Um, you could like they were psychopathic killers who were sort of tangled up in the Indian Wars. They haven't made a movie about those guys. Fascinating, blood thirsty little bastards. Um.

He should really do a dive on the Wessels. But he's like, he likes to do things that have redemption, and there's no redemption. With lou Wessel it sounds like a Tarantino movie. Yeah, I mean his family was like his family was mostly killed off by the tribes. He didn't like to do vengeance through the military. They just like to go with their go their own, go with their own. They would cross the Ohio and just go on.

He's like murderous trips. Fascinating dudes, Horrible people, but fascinating And and he won't do it because there's no redemption. So you could just put a comment on everything that Clay posts, just start writing the death Wind. Last quick note before we get to our guests is if anyone knows if someone could write in there's gotta be like a like a ten twenty two experts out there? Who does souped up ten twenty two? Mm hmm, Well then you guys cover all the buy afflon and shoot stuff

and all that. I mean, no, but but but I bought my boy a Ruger ten twenty two for his birthday. He doesn't like it because it's not a tack driver. I an't got to do a lot, like a lot of money making those things. And they spent a lot of money. Yeah, the Olympic ten twenty target, right, A lot of guys use it for dialing in big game rifles too. But you know, so, why is it a ten twenty two target. It's not just a target, it's it's the target that they use for like competition twenty two.

It's not ten twenty two. You just said, yeah, I did. Oh I'm trying to find someone who get a bunch of Amma all as many manufacturers you can dig up, get that target and little Jimmy and try to solve the problem that way. I think there's a lot of tweak and that goes on with those. That's what I'm curious about, because it's got like I'm just curious, like what people do the competition you do yourself a CZ The only you need to do is tume and re

barrel them and what you're saying. But as far as the the ammunition to like, we had one of the like the top tier twenty two manufacturers up in Kallus Bell I'm not sure if they're still there. Um, but even even those rounds like competitive shooters, we'll go through and look for flaws and deformities and and then go with like the most uniform batches and and set them aside and batches and yeah, there's a big, big deal. Yeah, Barbara was running I think, but pretty much just had

a bull barrel? What else you had done with it? Alright, Brent, you're ready, I'm ready. Okay, Brent West is here from High Peaks Alliance. Tell us what High Peace Alliances and Karrent thinks you might be the first Native maner. What do you guys call each other maners? Not a few of us montane each other by name Mainers. Yeah that's the actual thing, ye mainers. Huh. Okay, High Peaks Alliance, Yeah. High High Peaks Alliance is a conservation and recreational nonprofit

in Franklin County, Maine. So our major goals are to conserve land and access for our communities, and we do that through a number of different projects, whether it's trail projects or land conservation projects. UM. But the real thread is that everyone who grew up here, lives here, visits here, have a lot of things in common. We all have a woodpile, a garden out back, a little buck meat in the freezer. All these things kind of tie us together as people who love to live in rural Maine

and visit rural Maine. It's not enough hassle up there, and it's a really great place to live because you just have this freedom to rome. You want to keep it that way? Yeah, absolutely, tell us what's in that bag right there? I brought you some new Portland wood fired, hand tapped. I used an old hand drill, buckets, spiles, maple sugar, not syrup, mind you. Well, so this got me in some trouble at the airport. UM had a big bag of brown cocaine. I got pulled out a

line and the lady tested it and sniffed it. No, but she was She did stick her pinky out a little bit. She didn't do like in the movies where she rubbed it into her lip. It turned blue. I imagine in class, like when you're training for that job,

they're like, if you come across powder, don't sniff it. Well, I was thinking away, how how we could give you something a piece of maine here that kind of in line with um your values and cal actually has had some of this already, but this is the first time I've ever uh came into physical contact. I think, with plenty of the syrup, which is maple syrup. But tell me how you got it down, Like how do you get down to crystal form and real paint and the ass Well what I what I do is you make

an abundance of this. So like my father boils a lot of it, I tap a lot of the trees. We kind of do that together. He has an old um oil tank cut in half that we put a pan on top, and we burned wood under it to boil it off. So it takes about forty two gallons

of sap to make one gallon of syrup. One gallon of syrup will probably reduce again by or so when you boil it to I forget the temperature, but it's like threefty two degrees or something like that that you have to boil the syrup to and then starts stirring the crap out of it, and it just starts crystallizing and then most of it is fine. But you can run it through a few food processor to break up the big pieces. But you you could put that in water and make it back to syrup if you got

the right amount. But ye, snorting some right now off a key. My. We pretty much only use maple sugar now for we don't really buy any sugar anymore. Do you guys call it? It's really good. You guys call it a up in Maine too, like your little operations. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of people do maple syrup right now. Like literally, my father sent me a picture he's boiling today. Um. So, what what you want is sugar. Maples are the best,

but pretty much any maple species will work. Um. And you want freezing at night and about high thirties low forties during the day. And what that happens is the ends of the branches will freeze and when they thought during the day, they create a vacuum and that's what makes the saffron. That's what's going on in there. Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, and all you have to do is tap. I mean, I knew it ram, but I didn't know it was related to that. SE's probably do that because he's trained

up in forestry. My family's got a little sugar bush back home, cousin Jake. So yeah, Yanni's ordered some of this era. But it's pretty fascinating, that whole whole scene. It's fun. Guys nowadays do it very technically. You know, it's it's reverse osmosis oil fired. We do it pretty old school. So that what we got here is we got a court size ziplock that's good, probably full, and

that's the result of what volume of sap. I'm unshare had a huge, like two gallon bag that I just scooped that out and through it to my carry on, So that I mean, they say it really doesn't reduce that much from liquid because it's already very viscous as syrup, so you're really not taking that much more water out of it. Um, so you could take a quart of maple syrup and maybe get you know of that in volume and sugar. Do you bake with it? I don't do much baking. My wife loves to use it, but

you're married, Um sick going on six years. All right, it's going really good. Now, she's actually I got one. Yeah, well, I think we all need to get get strapped down as good American men. She actually is. Well, if you are into population dynamics, we're going towards a pretty uh crazy cliff of not many young people and a whole lot of old people like main for instance, will have from there will be increase in our population of plus anywhere from an eight to twelve decrease in all of

the age groups. Short term net sounds scary. Long term I like it, yeah, I mean it might be difficult. I'm just in a global sense, like globally, I don't think there's anyone out there thinking that globally we need a higher human population. I don't know. I think a lot of people think, in conservation and land and natural resources that human are the scourge of the earth. I think that's a poor way to look at people. I think I did say that. Well, I think have you

heard anyone on the global level. Have you heard do you know of any global thinker or like on the global level someone saying what this earth needs is more billions of people? Anyone? Jordan Peterson talks about that dynamic of that more people isn't a bad thing. Does he hunt and fish a lot? He doesn't look like, well, that's that's the that's the biggest roblin. When I look at Jordan Pearson, I don't see I'm not like there's

a there's a hard hitting outdoorsman. No. I think he's a you know, questioning change and stuff like that too, So now he's a thinker. Um, I'm coming at this from a hunting and fishing perspective kind of thing. Just global population. Listen, man, you guys are starting to make you act like I'm saying something crazy. I don't think that says what we really need is nine billion human

global citizens. It just like no one is saying this if you relate it to the amount of piles of human feces at a trailhead, like the relationship to the population to the relationship of human piles of feces at a popular trailhead. Yeah, I mean less people is just from a poop perspective. Well, that's a conund vest. When you're losing more access by default, you're going to get more of those piles at your public access points. Yeah, that's true. So if I don't. I don't want to

dwell in this bonus case. Like if I if someone said to you, you can, you can. You're you're not causing any pain and suffering. But someone said to you, you can choose that in a decade the earth. What are you right now? Seven billion, seven something billion? Okay, someone says you you can choose there's no you're not making pain and suffering. You can choose it. In a decade, there's six billion global citizens, or there's eight billion global citizens.

Up to you, no pain and suffering. But what do you choose? What would you choose? I I think I get your point. The point I'm trying to look at So you have a number of kids too, right, three of them? Three of them. So in the last twenty so years, though, we've had a big decline in families having four kids, three kids and to deal with well.

But it's also you know, all these guys are getting married later and they're having kids later, and that also affects you know, more people getting into the outdoors liking these things. So it's just, uh, the original point I'm trying to make is you shouldn't look at people as necessarily the problem because there's a lot of good that comes with people having kids, having families. Uh, you know, having those relationships in your community. You know, I think

those things lead to better outcomes for the land in general. Uh, you're allring new guy who has three kids. Yeah, you're part of the problem. And it's a new guy who I think the dudes should be married. Yeah, exactly, because I think it allows them to focus on a was in the focus on productivity, well house chores. Yeah, for sure. Before I was married, I focus a lot of time. I'm just drinking alcohol. That was my focus and shooting pool. Really,

Oh dude. When I was a graduate school man, we'd sometimes finish up and if like whatever, I got good at it, we'd sometimes go down there to get we'd like finish up doing something or another and go down like at noon or one down to the Dinosaur Cafe to get like a poll boy. Then the the next thing, you he was last call. But man ship, it's like we just shot poop for twelve hours. Well, I think that's the attraction of going so long. You know, all

your twenties being free, hunting fish, do whatever. All right, Uh, Chrins said you had some some main factoris who generated these factoids? They're facts? Did you generate them? I reached out to many. Actually we enlisted a Jeopardy champion to come up with some of these. Are you playing tribute with us later? I would love to. Are you intimidated? Do you think you're gonna do what? I'm not scared a bit. See Kela tell me you were like a contraryan in uh, like a real fact based contrarian. Well,

I am from New England. You know, we we liked it. That's one thing I noticed in the Westerners. You guys take offense fairly quickly. What do you think of that? Ye from Michigan? You know you notice where we're just out and about, you know, just like a level of play. You gotta talk to Cal because Kell's from the area. Brent Canvas, the town yesterday talking with that. Everybody talked to you was offended. There must be the town. Yeah, But nobody that lives here is from here. You know,

everyone's really nice. I actually got a pretty good low down on what's happening on the Madison River. The damn blowout. I hear that's fairly contained. Contentious round here, just gonna make bigger trout listen. Okay, we covered that, Okay, but him here some main factories. We gotta get the show rolling here. Well, I would just want to tell you more about, you know, Maine as a place that kind

of steeped in sporting heritage. Seven Henry David Throw you know, wrote his book on the main Woods, went up to He's a candy. He did inspire Teddy Roosevelt falls. Well, he's like obsessed with his mom. Even when he was doing that stuff about living in that cab, he's still walking home to his mos every other day. Well, I mean he had it a little harder than you and us, right like hour he didn't help. I think he was. I think he Wasn't he like running off someone else's

money and stuff. Well, probably he was dabbling. He's a dabbler. You go on though. Well, anyways, my point was that kind of started Maine as a tourist, uh do nation um, and I went to the woods to live deliberately kind of at my mom's though I actually haven't read The main Woods. It's a fact toy that was brought up to me that they thought would be important to say. He was a missing thrope. What a missing thrope? What's that hated people like Steve Well and you're like pro people,

go on pro people is good man. Yeah, we're to showdown now. But I was gonna reach its climax during this. I noticed in the trivia he's very competitive, and I like that about someone. So, um, he's already playing hardball. I see. But anyways, I brought you a book to peruse. It's called Becoming Teddy Rosevelt. I thought you'd like this, Um, and that's just buying bookmark. It's not. That's gonna be the only Teddy Roosevelt photo I've never seen. There you go.

Have you seen that picture before? Yeah? I own the book. Besides his book, look at that and let me see it. Talk about having a weird relationship with your mom, this guy and running off of somebody else's money. That's true. But I still like something well that books about his time in the main Woods and how Bill Sewell in Wilmo. Now two main guides kind of had a big impact on his life. Um, so he went up in Hyke

Todd and and Moccasins. He did all sorts of crazy stuff. Um. Is a great book because it gives you, at the time a lot of people are going to main because it was so accessible to New York and Boston, and it was a wild country. Get some wild ass wilderness on a train, Yeah, exactly, And that's what kind of drove a lot of things, Like in our neck of the woods. The train came through late eighteen hundreds. Um, same time. Fly Rod Crosby was the first ever main

guy I licensed, and she was pretty interesting. Lady fly Rod Crosby was a woman. Correct not her birth name Cornelia Thursda Crosby. And um, this is what she said about herself. I am a plain woman of uncertain age, standing six ft tall in my stockings. I scribble a bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish any day than go to heaven. You have took me with her? Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. She's passed way now. I was like, I'll find a feller for it, but

she would. She went to like the first Sportsman's expositions in New York, and she brought like a whole log cabin down there, and it was the main Woods, and she wore a scantily short doe skin skirt which showed her calf. Um. That was scandalous. Back then friends with Annie Oakley and yeah, so very interesting. She catched a ton of this is the same area. Um, I don't know if anyone's fly fisherman, but really a lot of

history there. You have, um Kerry Stevens inventing a ton of different flies, four of these people in his room or fly fishing guides. Good. Well do you guys know, uh great ghost, the old black black Ghost. Those are all invented in high peaks of main. Well, so that was that was like what like in the twenties ten Well, so what was interesting The rail companies hired fly rod in these people, and uh they said, don't talk about how good our trains are, talking about how good the

fishing is. And so people be by default taking the main Central Railway up to range le and and catch these huge brook trout. Um. The railroads used to host like big fish competitions too, right, so they'd like give away cash to whoever gets the biggest fish. But it was based off of like these gotta get on the train, go a long way to go fish. And there you know, there's a lot of history out west of like people

going out to Alaska catching big salmon. But you couldn't get there back then in a reasonable amount of time. So you even have accounts of some of the ponds in this neck of the the woods getting stocked with like soaki salmon and stuff like that, Like just really bizarre histories of uh sporting camps. America's longest running sporting camp

ever is in this Franklin County Tympon Camps. But there's a bunch of old logging camps that turn sporting camps, and so there's a big tradition of that in this neck of the woods where people would come up from the smog of the city to get some fresh air and stay for two weeks a month. Are you gonna hit on how fly Rod Crosby ended up being the last person to legally harvest the Caribean Maine. What year was at that was? I think it was around um but I think that also that was I I couldn't

drill down on exactly what year that happened. I know, like was like the last time they saw them up in northern Maine, like so it was in that time period where she had shot the last legally one, so I think the population was declining. They probably stopped hunting him Yeah, is there ever any that that you've been privy to, Like we just in our own lifetimes watched caribou blink out in Idaho and Washington. Um, is there any serious conversation ever in Maine about trying to uh

restore caribou herds in Maine? Or is that just ships sailed? They did that, They tried hard for a number of years and it didn't didn't work out as well. I think there's probably too many land changes in northern main forestry wise too to support them. And I think you're already coming in on a radically receding environment anyways. I mean, if you go back to like the tail end of the place of scene they were down in Ohio and Indiana,

you know what I mean. I think you're sort of like we kind of arrived in time to watch them blink out. Anyway. Well, I think like they have records of the red paint people in our neck was twelve thirteen thousand years ago, and so I'm guessing that's when it would have been more tundra. Like that's probably you know, more when a lot of those were running around. Tell me about how Eisenhower, Um, I I understand that Eisenhower

Dwight Eisenhower. He there's a famous picture of him like holding up his hand two paratroopers on D Day, and they've used this picture a lot. But apparently the backstory is that he found out some of the troopers there were fly fishermen, so they all just started talking about their favorite fly fish. And that's what he's doing his hand. Yeah,

he's hold the fly. Really. I heard a story I've heard us a couple of times that after he addressed the airborne that he went and he gave him like a rousing speech, but went and wept because he knew it was a death sentence. Yeah. I couldn't imagine all the guys coming on gliders. He knew that I'll be down in the morning and so many more imagine that. No, I can't imagine anything like that. And they had like

all these calculations like they're all gone. Well, you can imagine why he needed to go do some fly fishing. His favorite fly was old dry fly called the H and L variant House and lot. The hell of a flytor? You ever fished that one? Yeah, it's crazy how you're still like flies invented so long ago are like still some of the best fliers today. Uh, federal ammunition. This is interesting because it's just interesting for a bunch of reasons.

Federal ammunition so like a part of a publicly traded company. Vist outdoors on federal ammunition. It's a publicly traded company. Federal ammunition is itself sending um a million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine? Like the president was offered the President of Ukraine. It's it's weird, like speaking of this, how do you Zelenski is how he pronounced his name. This guy used to be a comedian. He's like a commentator,

would be like a John Stewart. I mean, I don't know if it'd be like that, but he used to be like a like an entertainer or comedian. The President of Ukraine he's emerging as this kind of Churchill figure. Yeah, we're freusing to leave the capitol um rousing speeches, which is like total defiance. He's been putting out all these offers, like uh, not offers. He's putting out like requests. We

need this, we need that, we need this. Yeah. When the US offered to get him out of there, he replied with, I don't know what he doesn't need a ride, he needs ammunition. Um, that's a hell of a line. I need an I need ammunition, not a ride. Hell of a leader. Uh. Federal Premium's parent company, vist Outdoor, has committed to donating one million rounds of ammunition to Ukrainian forces. They're also launching a fundraiser to raise money

to help Ukrainian refugees. When on a spokesman, I want to say, there are some callings in life we just have to answer. This is one of those callings. We think it's the right call to help our allies defend themselves. That's bold. But I wonder if I just don want to know, I would be curious how all this I need to We have an article about this on the meat eater dot com um with a bunch of quotes and people and kind of give some of the background.

But it's just not something I would have thought. What I got to read about how uh something I would have thought would be possible. Well, they already have contracts with military people all across the world. That's what I think. It's easy and quick to do it. Well, yeah, and you know, obviously, like the announcement of the amount, like the sheer amount dollar amount of aid that the um beds have authorized, right, Like, I imagine this has to

stand aside from contracts. If you're gonna say we're gonna send out a million rounds, right, otherwise the press release would be like, hey, we just got paid our normal rate to send out a bunch of rounds. So I did see that the lotbying government issued um a statement saying like, you know, because there's that call for aid that Zelensky set out for a foreign legion, uh and and uh, you know, different countries are saying, yeah, like if you go, don't fight, you know, there's lots of

ways to help or stay here. There's lots of way ways to help. But I saw the lobbying government issued a statement saying like, if you feel like it's your duty, go for it, and they're gonna let people cross. What was that saying? Honest, that Latvian saying that you said is getting revived these days, not uh yet yet Soviet. Oh yeah, it's just what used to be on T shirts and placards and everything when we were kids going to protests, when we when Latin was still in too

the USSR. We used to walk around. Now they're using it again. Get yet, Sylviet that mean it's just mean. It's in Russian it just means no, no yet does know? And in Russian here's one great I got with America. This thing that like people now complain about turkeys. Do you know what I'm saying. It's like just like municipalities that are like at war with turkeys because the turkeys are two mean. So there's a there's like this this huge dispute in Sacramento between mail carriers and wild turkeys.

Like it's come to blows. There's an article out in the l A Times mail carrier accused of killing aggressive wild turkey. This guy Sacramento County, UM. The mail carriers have been quote terrorized by wild turkeys, at times disrupting deliveries. This week, tensions between the foul and one US Postal Service worker reach a violent climax. Do they use the joke? Went postal in here when the carrier killed a turkey while on duty, prompting an investigation by the California Department

of Fishing Wildlife. The mail carrier was carrying a stick of some kind quote a some kind of a stick unquote in his mail carrier vehicle. Im an aggressive male turkey attacked him. He retaliated and killed it with a stick, which is no small feat. Yeah, like, you don't unless you got a full on baseball bat and really cocked back and had that turkey stand still. It ain't a one strike, No, it's it's not a swing and beyond

your way scenario. Yeah, they don't. There was. It wouldn't be like whacking a grouse like they fall over death. Oh but I do you think if you like had the right velocity and the right stick, you could wind up on him. I don't even know how much. I mean, yeah, just like a you in the head, Yeah, in the head or in the neck and you break it, snack or smash his brain with the whack he's gonna go. The best thing about this is the This is the

actual headline, Steve. A feud between mail carriers wild turkeys comes to a deadly climax near Sacramento. I was like a turkey killed him. Yeah, there's these turkeys are getting serious. It's gonna be on the serial podcast. I'll be like a couple episodes of like the Turkey's Life prior to How I grew up. Other turkeys when he was a little kid. That Jake's the other Jake's always beat him

up and it like really impacted him psychologically. So they don't know if they're gonna press charges on the dude. A guy from Fishing Game was like, our job is to determine what exactly happened, and then we fill out of report. We might send it to the district attorney, and the district attorney decides whether or not a crime

has been committed. The Postal Service that is an investigating the incident, noting in a statement that employees quote have had several altercations with aggressive turkeys in the area, including

a recent attack on a letter carrier. Then they go on to say, however, this allegation is alarming and if true, is inexcusable and does not reflect the efforts of our more than six hundred and fifty thousand employees who faithfully serve and deliver for America every day, so pointing out that all six hundred and fifty thousand employees of the

Postal Service are not stick wielding turkey killers. Lest one start stereotyping, what would be their response if it was a domestic dog, an unchained, unfenced domestic dog and he whacked it with a stick. Well, and they don't stand with their employees and defend themselves. Well, the plot thick it self defense the illegal means of take Well. Attention

is turning to area residents as the plot thickens here. Uh. So far, the Department of Fishing Wildlife's investigation into the incident has revealed strange details about the area's turkeys and their behavior and treat it. Investigators found that some residents had been feeding the turkeys quote copious quantities of food unquote. I thought you were gonna go math. Turkeys on us had pen feeding turkeys math. They're saying it probably contributed

to the massive size of the turkey in question. This is a quote, because it was eating just an unlimited amount of food every day from this particular household. The turkeys seem to have been targeting delivery workers. Really, the attacks had also disrupted deliveries. They're indiscriminate in their delivery attacks. These turkeys had also disrupted deliveries from FedEx and ups, So the private sector, I ain't there's something to that. Do you ever remember Popeye and Jimmy Miller's house, The

one eyed turkey. Well that's own bitch, was not. This can be for years to me. Come up strut for you, you can, Millwood, No Popeye has one eyed turkey, Like I know you guys had something like that going on. Okay, go on, now we're still cool and uh never was aggressive. Then one day I roll over get out of my truck and I can see him coming for him and I could see the look in his one eye. I'm like, something has changed, and like I'm just foolishly, I'm I'm hanging out just like to see and I mean it

didn't really have time to think about it. And he was on me like the full on, like breasts kind of pointed towards the sky, feet coming at me and wings trying to beat you. Oh yeah, And uh so I run around the truck. I'm like, really, what's up, pop out, you know, and I look around the corner He's coming against I quickly boog it into the house. Well lo and behold, someone else very similar in stature to me had recently been a finale Popeye and kicking

him and booting him and whatever. Since then whatever, that person just like wasn't into having like farm pets, be like pets, right, so he's he's like probably just shooting it off, but like in in a more aggressive way than I ever had. And from that moment on, it didn't matter if you were roughly a two pounds six ft plus dude. Popeye was coming after you. Yeah, and the kids would get out of the car. Nobody would bother them. M Uh. They've been suggesting that these mail

carriers start holding these turkeys with pepper spray. They're allowed to carry pepper spray, but they've been to finish my point. I thought that I thought you wrapped it up nicely. No. The point is I think that the turkeys can can if that had happened from one delivery driver like some aggressive they see a truck roll up and they're like yeah, yeah, anybody that rolls out of a truck that's not normally around her and it's wearing a uniform like hitting boys,

I got what. Yeah, you didn't bring it full circle. Yeah, they learned to be like watch out for that. They're they've been telling them to shoot him with pepper spray, and they've been also beating them with their mail bags. Brent here has sixteen turkeys on order, and uh, he happens to know what the maximum butterball turkey waste. We grew turkeys for the first time a few years ago, and we didn't know how many weeks to let them grow.

So when we slaughtered them ourselves, we weighed them and we had pound to two pound dressed turkeys, dressed tressed. These were big because I was gonna I thought I was gonna be I was gonna one up you. What what what branded turkey did you get? They were? I think the broad breasted. I was gonna one up. But I can't one up that. Well, that's a big turkey, steve. Um. So anyways, I we didn't know how to cook these turkeys.

We gave him out his presence due to like all the in laws like for their thanksgivings, like turkey for you, turkey for you. How long did it take for him to get to forty pounds? Uh, twenty two weeks something like that. Maybe maybe a few more weeks. Yeah, um, but they had open they could eat as much as they want. Um. But anyways, I call a butter ball has a hotline and you can call this and get any turkey question answered that. Yeah, And so I was like, why, Well,

why not. They well, I gonna have We're gonna call we should get a do a live called butter Ball. I heard about it because on the radio they were talking about all the funny calls they've had, Like does bar and chain oil? Is that okay to cook your turkey with barn chain oil? Because like obviously someone people deep frying them in barn. No, they like cut the turkey in half with their chainsaw. But anyway, so I call him up because this is a big bird. I

didn't want to dry it out. I wanted he's gonna fry it barn chain. I think they just got a little bit on it. But um, anyways, I call him up and I said, you know, is there any recommendations for a thirty eight pound turkey? And she said, well, sir, that's not a butterball turkey. We only grew up to thirty pound turkeys. And so they told me just based it in twenty minutes pound. They helped me out anyways,

even though they called me out. And I can't want up you with this, but I can back you up good. That's that's the relationship on my boys. My boy's body raised turkeys and we went over there and we took a twenty two over there to get our two, and my kids shot it with a twenty two just in a little pen there, you know, and I'm like, grab it, grab it because it's jumping all over place. And he couldn't get ahold of its neck. They're very strong. Yeah,

I couldn't get ahold of his his neck. I took that turkey on a on an actual like like digital luggage scale, and the turkey was fifty pounds on the hoof. I didn't know they guy like that. Well, have you huge presidential pardon turkey every year? They're like a fifty pound bird. It's incredible. Yeah, they're big. One of our guys, Garrett Long, he claims to have raised the seventy five pound turkey. I believe that because these things quably kept growing, these

for stale juveniles. I caught it. I had to cut the ones I had in half. You couldn't even like, you couldn't have put that some bitch in your oven, No way did Yeah, just barely had about a half inch touch on the roof. I did some butcher twine, for sure. Yeah. I want to give one last quote, my favorite quote from this article about these man eating turkeys. One of these guys says, I've been around about only five years, so I kind of know what turkeys. And I just looked at it and I'm like, oh, this

is the biggest turkey I've ever seen. All right, seth, tell the give us, tell us your your bear story. Don't name names, just tell your bear story. All right? So was it gone wrong? It was at least three, three or four years ago. Chat was with me when I killed the bear. I killed a bear hunt. It sat in my freeze. The hide sat in my freezer for a year because I didn't know what to do with it. We all shot a turkey right before you

shot your bear. Yeah, it was a great spot. Um. So fast forward a year after I killed the bear, I got talking with Steve and uh, he recommended really well, was that really the deciding factor? Oh? He just told you to take it to this guy. I don't know. I asked around. I asked around. I don't know if it's a recommendation, but you said there there's someone that Yeah, yeah, I know you didn't want to take ownership to. You would have known if I hadn't sent you there. Yeah,

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just this is just part of the story. UM, take my meet up. So this guy actually sent someone that was working for him at the time to pick up my bear here in the parking lot at work, and I wrote a check in full for this guy to um paying the hide for me. Um. So this was two years ago when that exchange happened, and I waited roughly I don't probably tendered tanned a year. So he was just tanning it, just just flashing it

and having it sent off to get tanned. Yeah. I waited probably about a year before I started bugging him, um, wondering where my bear is. And you probably didn't even bug him originally. You probably just like, hey man, Yeah, originally it was just questioning when it might be done.

And I think this this was like right around the time when COVID hit, So I got like the COVID excuse, like tanneries are backed up because of COVID or whatever, so, you know, thinking nothing of it, just let it go and then waited roughly another year and then I started bugging him. Like for a while, there was like once a week, um or no, it was like once every other week, once every three weeks. Something like that, and

then it got to like once a week. Finally, Um, you know, there was a lot of like, um, like I'd say, hey, man, like can I get my bear this week? And He'll be like yeah. He'd be like, yeah, let's meet whatever day and I'll hand it off to you. And then that day would calm, I text him, be like we're still good to meet up and get you know, I can get my bear, and it would there would always be some excuse um to why he couldn't meet. Um. Finally the day comes where he can actually meet up

with me to give me my bear. So we meet at a local gas station here. He pulls in hops out of his truck and hands me a black bear. Hi, black face black bear. Um. And the bear that I had shot was not black. It was a chocolate face black bear. So I told him that that's not my bear, and he gave me like, oh I was in a rush, must have just grabbed the wrong bear. Um, my bad. I'll go grab I'll go grab your bear and meet

you back here. I had to go to a meeting network here, so I was like, let's meet back up later in the day. So what was going through your mind? Yeah, I want to know too. Were you excited? You're like sweet? Tried to get he tried to get Chester to go to the meet up, and Chester chickened out, would go, mat Seth go alone. I went. I went the second time, second time because because of the brow beating I gave you. Did you think there was gonna be something gonna go

down or well? I just kind of just seems like, I don't know Chester should have been there. Old fishing buddies go on, um So, and I should say there's been lots of rumors going around town about this particular text them. He tried to give a he tried. My buddy had a black Phase full amount, paid full price for a full amount black bear, and he tried to give him a blond Phase, a small blond Phase full amount. So I kind of went into this meet up knowing that I most likely wasn't going to get the bear

that I had given him two years prior. Um So he tries to give me the black bear. I tell him it's not mine. He leaves. UM meet back with him a couple hours later and he pulls out of the out of his truck chocolate phase bear and I take one look at it and immediately, no, it's not my bear. But I'm thinking to myself in my head, I am never getting my bear, and like, I'm just gonna take this one so I have something to show

for it. Because I could have been like, listen, this is not my bear, um, and it wouldn't like who knows what had happened. He probably would have gone back to his shop and grabbed a different bear, or I never seen him again. Yeah. So, and I know this is not my bear because my bear when I um skinned in the field, I didn't take the time to like skin the palls out. I just cut the palls. Just wanted to Yeah, I just wanted to hide it. I wasn't I don't need all shriveled up Paul's hanging

off my my bear hide. It wasn't interested. And this bear he gave me has paws on it. I went him man. Yeah. Another indicator was when you know, for people that have gotten stuff tanned before, when you get something back from the tannery, it has like that nice soft white, white leathery. Yeah, this thing was like yellow, dirty,

like something that had obviously been sitting around for many years. Um. So he handed to me like thinking that I know that you're thinking that he you know, he thinks that I think it's my bear. I just said to him, like, you know that'll do and grab it and top my vehicle. And but what about the person whose bear? It was so old? It's like, do you think that that would have wound up in the right guy's hands? No, but

it's just something he had laying around. Yeah, asked for cash, be like, all right, let's just follow you to the bank and you can pull out a couple hundred bucks that I already paid. Yet did that hide have like did you see like the stamp they gotta put on it or like any you know there was there is some sort of stamping on it. Um, I didn't really look into it. And they yeah, they hit him with those little turn or stamp. I'd literally just bowlted up.

And do you have any advice for people for people that might in the future be look going to get a deposits and right, man, I guess just do your research, don't listen to Steve or um. But if the guy is such a mess too, like I mean, we know from our previous podcast gas like good record keeping. Yeah, I guess just do your research on your taking your

stuff to. Um, if you're in Montana, take your stuff in John Hayes because he's, yeah, go to like an established that's some dude that's working out of his garage. If you're going to someone that's like if you hear through the Greek grapevine that like, oh, this dude's cheaper than everyone else, Like that's that should be a red flag. I'm biting my tongue so bad on a contract or just be I feel like piling on. Not about that, but I feel like being like, oh, man, I got

a story for you. I'm not gonna tell it right now, but you know what I'm talking about. Um, not you, but uh yeah, so yeah. And then I I ended up texting them later, UM, just to let him know that he didn't pull the wool over my eyes. UM. I just wanted to make sure you knew that I knew it's not my bear. No reply, no reply. UM. I sent you a text on this last week. Brent.

I'm sure you can. You can weigh in on this this too, but um, and so, the Wyoming legislature just past a bill that would extend the ability for people to raise this very controversial sage grouse program. Right, that starts with people going out and stealing the eggs from free ranging, live huntable populations of sage grouse, so game birds, taking those eggs, rearing them to adult sizes. Um, you know there's a lot of a lot of eggs don't make it, and then taking those birds and releasing them

back out onto uh the landscape. And you know, for folks who don't know, like birds that are raised in captivity don't have any sort of awareness of predators. Um, the studies that exist are pretty hand in hand and they're pretty much for pheasants, um, chucker quail, you know, birds that are are very commonly raised in captivity for putting. And it used to be um, I thought that that these pen raised populations would like help build wild populations.

But if you believe in math, there's like a mortality typically within the first twenty four hours. Um. Yeah, they're just standing there like the yeah, kell, do do you think these people, these folks know when they're raising them that they're going to basically release these birds and they're gonna die. Do you think they're releasing them for their

own personal hunting? Like he's for the Yeah, there's a huge like bird dog training type of deal around this, and there's there's lots of like our three stuff around this, but not for sage grouse. Um. And what this is, this is like this test period that was suggested that said, hey, let's let's try this avenue that would allow um, folks who are buying up this prime habitat, this keystone habitat for this species in order to develop it and maybe

we'll get lucky. And instead of them having to purchase other habitat that would replace this habitat that they destroyed, they could instead invest in this rearing population and just replace, like physically replace the birds. So there would be you know, a study that goes out and says, okay, well, the amount of habitat that you guys destroyed, uh, would have produced x amount of birds, so you guys need to replace x amount of birds elsewhere. Um. However, it just doesn't.

You're not replacing any birds. You're just net net losing birds. And on top of that, you're stealing birds that could grow up to make more birds at the egg stage. And that's what's going on wyoming right now. Um. The governor over there has already said that he's in support of this. Prior to the state legislature UM voting yes to extend the it was supposed to sunset. I mean, it was supposed to stop this year, but they voted

to extend it. And there's no good science supporting this. So, UM, if you don't like your game birds to be stolen and you'd like responsible development to go out and be responsible with our wildlife as well, Uh, let's make sure they do so. Call the governor a whyleming and tell them to uh, not only not signed this bill, but veto if you were, you're a dumb this down as much as possible. Let me let me say a statement asked,

this is a fair statement. Um. The greater stage grouse has been flirting with Endangered Species Act protection, like there's a case be made that it should be listed. Yes, a listed. UM years ago, they struck a deal that people thought was gonna be very impactful on stage grouse recovery. A lot of that stuff wasn't implemented. It became highly politicized.

That's failing. And so they're suggesting that to hit the numbers they need to hit it, they just pen raise them and then periodically release pen raised birds, count them up and be like, oh, see it does enough. Is it not as simple as that? Well, I mean that's that Yeah we could say sure, yeah, yeah, I mean they're they're saying, nope, we in theory destroyed this amount of land which would have produced this amount of birds.

Here are the birds without a place for them to be. Um, well, they would they would then be released into a into suitable habitat. However, they're they're just not built at that stage to survive in anything outside of a cage. For is the rationale viable period they'll get like, they'll get them because there there's like a lot of attrition and you know, a wild brood like maybe survives or something like that. They're getting them like passed the vulnerable stage

and then letting them go. And yeah, with the with the idea that then they're gonna run around to eat a bunch of food, bump into another sage grouse and mate and make more sage grouse um. And and there's a great study out of South Dakota again on pheasants um where they took a couple of different release points and did like severe predator suppression um and they were able to get some hen pheasants two survive long enough to mate and nest, and but you know, like their

nesting ability was low. However, when they were able to breed, they could have the same like a viable, competitively viable amount of eggs as a wild as an actually wild hen pheasant salvaging is a real long term practice. So like when I was banning ducks and uh um San Francisco area, Fairfield area, California, with California waterfowl, they had a practice of egg salvage with ducks and so out there. I think it was partially trying to get more opportunity UM.

I guess because because it's pretty contentious as far as a lot of people believe if that egg didn't hatch, maybe there was a genetic defect that you would not want to introduce into the population. The other side of it is that it's such a difficult thing hatch eggs out in the wild. You know, you water conditions, predation, that egg salvaging takes away a lot of those variables.

I think that's the case for it UM, and I think in when they've tried to re establish populations of game birds elsewhere, more successful model is to go where they have a lot of um and take some of those and put them in another place, versus this sounds more like I don't know this situation at all. But this sounds more like there's no previous knowledge of life. They're just throwing them out there. So I don't know

if that would be successful. If there was, if this was a tool in the toolbox, right, I wouldn't instinctively be against it. I mean, if we're doing everything we can to preserve habitat right, and that wasn't even on the table, like we're preserving habitat doing all things we need to do, and then someone proposed it like, in addition to doing all the right things, uh, we're gonna attempt to do some of this to see what the

efficacy is. I wouldn't be like no. But if you're taking and saying like, oh, no, we're gonna allow people to develop sage gross habitat, we're excusing them from from mitigation. As long as they can turn out x number of chicks on the ground somewhere which will have no long term they won't solve the problem. The problem is habitat loss in a handful of other factors. Um, it just

seems like a bunch of mental masturbation. Yeah, it's it's a It's just it's a waste of time when we know what the answer is, and you know, it's like gas prices are climbing up. I get it, But I think responsible energy is something that like everybody can get behind. It doesn't matter if it's a wind farm, a solar farmer pumping crewed out of the ground. Right, It's like if those companies do it in a responsible way, then

you know people will buy responsibly. Even more so, Like I don't understand why it's like necessary to give them this end around situation, like a workaround. Yeah, to reach around with a work around isn't part of the issue with the e s A listening that, um, the states haven't listed it yet, Like is that a state managed species? No, the listing is federal, The listings federal, but these are being managed state by state? Correct correct right now? And

that almost changed. It almost changed during UM, I guess I was during the Obama administration. They were very considered it and decided not to based on this like deal that have been put together by Matt Mead and govern Hicke Looper and the interior, and it's a big deal, like you doing the work on the front end instead of being like we Brent and I just talked about this last night, Right, It's like nobody wants to fight

unless something's getting taken away from him. Right, So our ability to be proactive on this stuff and prevent the bird from going on the list is severely diminished by people who were like, well, let's just see how it works out. Yeah, And once they go on the list, then these people are immediately going to have to do some Oh all these cattlemen out there and in Wyoming with public land grazing a lotments and stuff, It's like, that's that's gonna hurt. Yeah, it's like, oh, there's an

endangered species out there. Yeah. That was when we had got Wyoming's Governor Matt Meat on the show to talk about stage grouse before he at that time felt that the energy companies saw the writing on the wall and knew they needed to get with it, because he because their ability to operate on the landscape was gonna be

dependent on their ability to recover that bird. I don't know if that's I don't know if he'd tell you the same thing right now, that was many years ago that he he was feeling optimistic about that that like they were going to be that he felt that they were taking the driver's seat on it because they wanted to stay in business and they knew that when that bird hit, the endangered species listing business is going to be crippled. You know, Brody makes every mad all time

about dogs. I'm at it. What's what's the breed of the week. I'm at at him? Now? Why what did I do? First? Tell what happened Brody to this R one oh nine? Oh? Yeah, while back we talked about O. R the one that the one what the wolf that wandered from Oregon way down in the southern California corne and got hit by a car is a collared wolf. Another collared wolf in Oregon just got killed. But it wasn't an accident. Um this this wolf O R one oh nine, a collared female was shot and killed the

morning of February. And there's been a series of killings of wolves in the state. Legally, no, they're they're federally protected and shooting him and shooting him and leaving him land. Yeah, Brody's condemnation is very weak. What you're like, you do that little thing people do where you're like, no, of course we know that no one should. This just a

note to myself. Like here I'm saying, if you're the kind of person that like hates wolves and you're gonna go out and kill a federally protected wolf with a collar, like you're shooting yourself in the foot. So okay, so you're offering advice, Yeah, don't do it. So you're you're

offering advice to the kind of paters. Okay, so this is Brody's advice to shooting yourself in the foot, because this is the kind of thing that like just draws more attentions to keep keeping wolves protected, like in the long run, It's like, that's what you're saying. Yeah, I thought you were doing. I thought you were had a tip pretty tepid. No, no, no, At the end of the day, it's a wildlife violation. It's yeah, broke off federal wildlife and I thought you were being a little tepid.

No no, no, whatever that word on this ship. It's like's gonna backfire on you in the long run, is what I'm saying. Do you have a lot of other advice for wolf haters not really smoke a pack a day. That that was your second. This just in from the wolf desk. Um. This one. This one's great because it's a it's a great example of a bipartisan you know, reaching across the aisle for the greater good. Um. In Wisconsin.

Who knows if it will result in anything, but in Wisconsin, Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin introduced a bill to remove protections for the wolf in the state of Wyoming. I misspoke in the state of Wisconsin. Correct. Um. They were backed up by some some Republicans and uh and uh Wyoming. Um. Johnson said that Wisconsin resident should have a say in wolf management. Baldwin issued a statement saying she believes the wolf population is strong and federal officials

should let the state manage wolves. Um. And this is the reason they're doing this is is a federal judge in California last month ordered federal protections to be restored for wolves after they were lifted. What just last year they were the wolves were delisted, now they're listed again. Um. This keeps going on like constantly. Um, you know the

wolves here up and down. Oh God, yes. Since the crazy thing is that the wolves in the Upper Great Lakes, the Western Great Lakes, they've been met recovery goals for I think over twenty years. Um, there's over four thousand of them up there. Now, Yeah, that's what that's the thing people lose sight of. There's more wolves in the Northern Great Lakes then in the Northern Rockies right and here the state's Wyoming, Montana, Idaho. They all have state

management of these wolves. If these wolf protectionists would stop spend all this money on lawyers and making fishing, game agencies and other people spend all this money on lawyers, imagine what you could do with take all that money you put into stage grouse. Yeah, or when one's gonna fight over sage grouse, yeah exactly. Um. You know it's been on again, off again, like they were. You were able to the states had management in Minnesota for like a year, maybe you could hunt them, and the same

thing happened in Wisconsin recently. Um, but now they're back to being that that whole Upper Great Lakes population is back to being federally protected. Well it's funny too, because it's like, if you're really into wolves, why don't you leave these ones alone and talk about the Mexican wolf or the red wolf, the ones that are really hurting. Yeah, or are the wolves that used to be running around

in Kentucky. Yeah. I mean if you use Montana, Idaho, Wyoming as an example, like, it's a great example of state management of wolves, right, Like why can't Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota manage them the same way? Well? It's it's interesting here too because like some of the language is if you break it down, is like very it does make sense, it's agreeable. It's like you're you're talking about populations that

don't see individual state borders. Right, So it's like, Okay, well, if we are concerned with the overall population, isn't right to segment off these populations making it out a Wisconsin population, let's say, like a Michigan population. Can we do that and then still take into context the overall population recovery goals um and thinking about it that way, It's like, yeah, I do get that, But everything we've done that with elk are only recovered across of their historic range. Yeah,

big horn sheet. So black bears a fraction of the historic range. Yet in states they have a bunch of a loud of hunt them. No one says like, well we can't. You shouldn't hunt elk in Utah, because what does that mean for outcovery in Illinois. No one makes

that case. That's very true, that's very true. Um. The difference being though, right is elk in Illinois aren't on the endangered species list, right because all that stuff predated the endangered Species list, And we're dealing with the Endangered Species Act and this is the language that we're miring through. And yeah, it is just like this horrid, crappy political football that goes back and forth. I want to give people a little context here. It's the thing we've talked about.

I was going to retalk about it real quick. There's a thing and anytime you hear about wolves, anytime you hearing about grizzly bears, you're gonna hear a thing called dps um. You take something like like so people know, like everything in the lower forty like everything was wolf habitat. There are wolves all over the damn place. When wolves got listed by the the endangers under the Endangerous b Sect, they got listed across the Lower forty eight. Later, someone said,

that's not a very good management decision. Um, like, we're not gonna recover wolves, uh in downtown Nashville. Okay, I'm just pointing that out because people wouldn't be surprised when you read about the market hunters like Daniel Boone and his cronies, I mean when they're running around Kentucky, Tennessee either interacting wolves all time. Right. So some of the later said, you're not gonna recover wolves in downtown Nashville.

So let's do this thing where we look at like where could you actually have them and create these things called distinct population segments, and let's manage these distinct population segments. And everybody thought this was a good idea at the time, right, So we made how many other for grizzy bears six seven, five or six? Northern Cascades, Northern Continental Divide stone cabinet yack um would be Alaska, right, No, that's lower forty eight dps. So they made a bunch of these dps

is um with wolves. Okay, Northern Great Lakes. They made these like and they're like, let's manage this. So the cruxities arguments keeps coming down to you could point and say the Northern Great Lakes. Distinct population segment of wolves looks strong, it looks great. But someone who wants to block any kind of state management wolves is always gonna go like, yeah, but what about the neighboring area and and so they're sort of rehashing this thing that everybody

agreed on is to manage these distinct population segments. Um, like you're never gonna recover the grizzly bear in Golden Gate Park. You're not gonna recover the grizzy bear and Golden Gate Parks, which it's part of its historic range

parvasy storage range. Absolutely, So let's stop talking about areas that aren't gonna have them, and let's start talking about these areas that have the possibility of having a population, have a population, had that do or could possibly again like your your point of like all this crap and the billboards and the pr firms and the legal firms, like had that money been put uh into like a big wildlife easements on the Rocky Mountain Front, what that

would do for grizzly bears and wolves would would outweigh all the back and forth bowl crap that they're going through right now, like like prevent this stuff from turning into condos. You're gonna you're gonna do more for wildlife than than all your back padding enriching lawyers. Um, you know, I don't want to hit in this real quick. It's kind of this just came home for us in Montana. Get rid of tag man, Like remember the old days you had to have a back You had to wear

a back tag on your back. And there's a couple of states still gotta do that. Like you're hunting, you have to wear like a thing on your back with your license in it. Col you ever had to do that out west here? Not ever a thing Wisconsin. Ship man. If you don't anymore, you only recently didn't need to when we started uh kicking around like our tree gear or you know like tree stand ar tree gear. At first light, Um, they had the back tag hangers probably

like eleven, yeah, two thousand and eleven, two twelve. He was like, it's gotta have this, you know, a couple of little metal groments that you can stick this giant safety pan crew for your for your and the last time I hunted deer in Wisconsin you still had to have that sun bitch and thing. How many years ago was that the last time I hunt a deer there, I don't know, five six years ago. Yeah, I think

I don't think you have to wear him anymore. Yeah yeah, And you had like you couldn't obscure it, like I had a backpack on. And so all the armchair experts are writing in like he's actually a violation because his back tags obscured by his backpack. Can you know what I was? It dougs too. He still he was telling me about those regulation changes, and he he said that the regulations read that if you choose to wear a hat, it has to be orange or just go nothing. Right.

It was like, so, my bald, highly reflective head. The way these apps so are are here in Montana, they just went to an app it's called the e tag. In your future, you're not going to carry a tag around anymore. You might still, you might be in a state where you still do, but just gonna be all app based. Now here's the weird thing about the apps.

I heard through the grape vine. A little birdie was telling me that in designing the app, they were wondering about the ability that when you were when you were tagged, when you were E tagging, So you're using an app that works offline, you don't need to have a cell signal, and you fill out information mail right, right, date of kill, method of kill, male, female, how many times on each side, right, whatever, biometric information thereafter. You just do this all on your

app and it files it um. There was talk about why not have it also pulled a location since if you read your rag any Reagan the Planet, a game warden can ask you take me to the kill site, and you have to take them to the kill site. It's just a thing. Any warden, anytime can make you take them to the kill side of where he killed an animal. Also, when you do your surveys, like if you trap and you trap h Martin's otters, you hunt black bears, you hunt wolves, there's a part and the

thing where you say where it was right. They had this chance where you could have captured that for every tagged animal in the state and you would not need to do surveys right, just be that, you know, imagine like the detailed look you'd have on harvest. But they felt that it was a privacy issue. When you download the app, it asks you if you want to have location services turned on while you're using that app, and it'll take when you don't know the app. I didn't

notice that I ask you the question. And also you can opt in. You can opt in, and when you validate that tag, it's gonna record right where you're staying. I didn't know you could opt in. Yeah, I didn't know, because it's like, like I said, they can go they have. It just is weird because they have the right to make you take them there anyways, but that doesn't violent privacy. Yeah,

that's just like a given. But they like, I think a lot of people are going to be leery of saying, yeah, go ahead and track me while I'm oh, yeah, no one was. Um, but what's so funny is everybody's like, you know, open arms about being tracked. But like, dude, what do you think your phone is doing? I thought your phone monitors when you talk about and serves you ads about it an articles. Yeah, but I posted about how much I like the idea of not carrying around

ten pages of paper in my backpack. Um, and a game warden sent me a message and he said that these apps, you know, they sound great, but there are like cons to them too. Um, there's like he believes there's gonna be issues with officers inspecting people's phones, perhaps like privacy batteries. Yeah, yeah, and it'd be like I left it at home, I forgot it. Yeah, I don't know how to do it, but I get his concerns. It's just that ain't gonna stop anything. This is gonna

be how it's gonna be in ten years. I don't know. Five years, you're gonna be like, remember tags. I bet you I already feel that way now, remember tags, because they've gotten this chantzier and like it used to be, like a substantial tag was printed on fancy papers like indestructible, and now for years, like you know, Montana, you just print him at home, Nebraska for probably fifteen years, and when it gets wet, you watched it dissolved. Yeah, exactly. And um, I kind of like the heavy duty tags.

It's kind of like a little collectible thing at the end of Oh yeah. I have a folder that's you know, two inches thick now of you know, twenty years plus of tags. And when I started doing a while back, I just take a sharpie and after a hunt, I just make a few notes on it. With Chester, we hunted Link Creek didn't get nothing. You know, never punched this one. But if I did, you know who may be helping? You know? I figured, as an old manuals will be nice memories to flip through. Yep, enough enough

unpunched tags to stuff a pillow case. Kind of what I'm working on right now. Does anybody understand this conservation easement tax for AU deal? I don't understand it well enough. It's pretty confusing because it's eloquently. Can you speak to it? I can bring up some questions about it? Tell me how do you use? How do people? How would people use something where they hear like conservation easements? Like? Who would be opposed to that? That sounds fantastic. So what

you're referring to is syndicate conservation easements. I don't know what that is. So there's two types of transactions when you talk to conservation easement. Can you go real high level? Can you back up one step and tell people what the hell conservation easement is? You hear about it a lot in some areas, and like, growing up, I've never heard anybody talking about a conservation easement into West Michigan. Well, they've been pioneered last thirty plus years that explain that

wouldn't um. The land trust movement has really caught a lot of excitement last thirty years, like the main For instance, we have eighty land trusts because we don't have much public land. So it's been responsive to that. And so when you can serve a land, there's fee simple, which is you're buying all of the land. I own all this land, it's my land. And then a conservation easement is a type of easeman that restricts um certain uses

of the property. So most of it is development rights, and so like a land trust would buy the development rights on this piece of property because you want to stay wild. There can be a bunch of other prescriptions in an Eastman like no two easements are the same. Some allow public access, a lot of them don't. UM. That's one big misconception as you see, conservations meant does

not imply access no now. And there's actually you know, with federal funds like Force Legacy other things like that they've actually required that to happen as part of that program is that that Eastman has to have public access. And public access isn't necessarily vehicular acts this or anything like that. It's foot access, like just the legal terminology of public access UM. So the thing corencent um is less interesting from a conservation and our standpoint and more

interesting from tax law I guess. And so when you donate a conservation easeman, there's in tax code UM if you're donating it to a charitable organization, the value. Like let's say you donate a chunk of swamp two ducks unlimited. I don't know, is that a good example. Well, let's say you you in Maine. This is this happens. You've owned a hundred acres for your whole life, and you want to donate that hundred acres of woodland um to a university or a land trust, and you want them

to keep it for the public good. And the public good can be defined through scenic resources, natural resources, a public access. A bunch of different metrics apply under that public good. Even a certain amount of income, like you can have it defined as needs to be managed in

a certain way. So if it's an active wood lot, right, well, like forever wild easements are very popular now, which means like you can't do anything to it, let nature take its course um and working forest easements or another example where they allow for that commercial use like you can log it, you can have roads anything associated with that use. Um. But when there's a donation of fee land or easement land, there's a value associated with that, so you can get

an appraisal for just like a fee land. So the total land donation, how much does this land worth? That's what the person could deduct as a tax right off, like a charitable donation tax. Yeah, and there's a number of ways they can do that. And that's like literally as a land trust, you say, we can't you could qualify for this, but we can't give you advice on

this um. So they have to do all this so they have to go give me Like you know what's so confused about land, Like a land trust has always mean like a plethora of organizations in this country that by help preserve land. There's now an airbnb for hunting called land trust, which is like kind of made it. It's like makes a lot of name confusion because it's like, well, there's also a community land trust where for affordable housing.

That's a big terminology issue too, So there is a lot of it like that you have to like go think of another term now. Yeah, so I'm a land trust so conservancy you know, UM, these are mostly not what that article is talking about. But when you say that, when you talk about the tax right off part, like let's say I don'tate my hunter acres and I say to you, hey, man, I need to know the value so I can do a tax right off, you're saying that you don't. You You're like figure that out on

your own. Like, I'm not going to give you what we would have to say, give you an acknowledgement. We'd have to substantiate that it is a charitable um within that our mission, you know, and it falls within those values that we're protecting, and we have to substantiate those values.

And most reputable land trusts either go by the standards and practices or are accredited by the Land Trust Alliance UM and they have, you know, very long list of standards and practices UM, like getting an appraisal before you buy any land UM. And for conservation easements, this is kind of a sub sect. These have come in favor because the private landowner can continue to own the land,

but their development rights are restricted. So this is very popular main forest land because the forest owners can get income from the Eastman purchase us. It's not really in conflict with their current use i e. Forestry and um, you know they can continue to cut the forest after that in place, but they're ruling out that it will be turned into a subdivision. Yeah, exactly, we can't subdivide it. You can't. There's limits on structures and commercial use and

those are all defined differently. Um. But what's happening in that syndicate conservation ease meant there's a loophole where um, as a business you can buy land and in this situation, UM, simply put, you get investors to invest. Let's say you're buying a two d dollar piece of property. Um, you get everyone four guys to invest. The issue is you can, through in agreement, say any charitable donation by donating an

Eastman can go to those people in this agreement. So at that point they found a lot of people in violation of this where they go get an appraisal that's inflated. So say you get your body Jim, you pay him on the side to say, hey, can you do an appraisal. Can you make this praisal come out to be food dollars? And then you donate the value and so all those guys who are part of the syndicate get a hundred

thousand dollars each UM tax deduction. So it's that it's to me that's the crime at place, Well, it's there's a legal way to do it now as a tax shelter, but most likely UM. A lot of these these deals, which I'm not an expert on UM, are taking advantage by getting inflated estimates of value and stuff like that UM and put it in perspect active. I think the article cre incident was nine billion dollars a year in

the syndicate. Organizations are getting UM put in for tax write offs, whereas the Land Trust Alliance says out of all the ones just within their organizations that they deal with is one billion. So it's being used pretty much. Well.

At the center of all these deals is usually a law firm, so they're kind of figuring out, you know, when you do a development, when you do land purchases, asset transfers, this could be a tool in their toolbox where they can give people higher value tax deductions than the investment they're putting in. That's the kind of the basic of two cents of it. I'm not familiar with it because literally, anyone with a logo that says land trust or anything like that is not a party to

these deals at all. Like, that's not that's the confusing part about this. Well, that's why you were trying to create a distance between yourself and these fraudulent activities because you're just not involved in it. There's not there's no

one who really does these. Back in the day, there were some of the bigger organizations that before the Land Trust Alliance started, did stuff like conservation easements on golf courses um and you know, obviously that's kind of outside the point of a conservation easemen, but golf course could have a tremendous value, so you would get that donation receipt. And so that's like the Land Trust Alliance came came around because there's a lot of us that are very

passionate and integrity. Like it says trust right in the name, right, so, like, you know, your integrity is very important, and so to have companies lobbying for this tax shelter, uh, it's kind of adverse to what we want to do, which is build trust and not undermined it through you know, just doing backdoor deals. And that's A big misconception when you're doing land trust work is that everyone's doing it for

a charitable deduction. And in my experience working with a couple of different land trust most, I would say a majority of the people who donate the properties do not take that deduction. That's a shrewd trick. You can imagine the golf course or a ski hill or something being like, we're gonna come in, we're gonna develop the piss out

of it. Then we're gonna take the parts that are meant to be skied on and say that they'll never be used for anything but skiing, and get a tax deduction off it and hand it back to people as a conservation easement. Well, and there's two two issues. Is that they can create charitable nonprofits that may not be that um true blue, so they that's a legal process to create that, and so they can create a fake

nonprofit so to speak to act is that conservation. He's been holder man, so that you know that's where I don't you know, I think it's an issue that the Lantrust Alliance is right now they're lobbying to try to close that going. So that's the point you were saying earlier, you're saying that they're showing these like nine billion dollars of land trust conservations some activity. But then when you go and ask the actual groups they're doing like legitimate

land trust work, they can only show a billion bucks. No, specifically, that nine billion is syndicate conservation easements where it's a company who's passing the charitable gift down to investors, so versus a nonprofit who may be getting a donation from a individual or you know, even a business, but not in that situation where they're passing on the charitable gift

through some investor agreement. And and these are it's important to make the distinction because these are incredible tools for you know, mon paw rancher out there who uh want to stay on the way and they want to be able to pass it down and they need to like be competitive right with like rising tax costs like Gallatin Valley is a great example, right, Like you have property tax values that are are outweighing um the value of

farming of agriculture here. But you could work with a number of trusts and the UH federal government to figure out ways to put wildlife ease months on that property that that do pay something. Um Wells Main Farmland Trust has a program called by restrict and resell and agriculture is a charitable um use of the land public good and so you don't necessarily have to link it to

other wildlife resources. Um SO their easements are quite different than the ones we've worked with because there sole goal is to keep farmland at a price point that farmers could have um buy them at. So they'll buy the property, they'll put a conservation easement on it, which reduces the value of the property because you're taking away those development rights and when you appraise land, mostly you're appraising on development rights, unless you're talking about large swaths of like

forest land. They would then you know, value those based on like timber receipts and stuff like that. But um SO that their hope is that will allow farmers to stay on these properties productive farm soils. Um So that's the easement is to me for public access an imperfect

tool because you still have that private landowner issue. So like if you want to build trails and stuff like that, you have to be very explicit with what you're trying to preserve with an easement because you still have the burden of going to court if that said landowner or even a third party violates your easement terms, you have to be ready to then go defend that in the courtroom,

which can be extremely expensive. Um So because of that, most land trusts have legal endowments, that's one of the standards and practices stuff like that to help ensure against those inevitable costs. I want it get a little bit into your organization, High Peaks Alliance. Can you tell the story of just we can be talking about like how

people sort of abuse the system. Can you tell can we talk about the Shiloh Pond project, you guys ran, can you talk about can you explain to people how your organization and what you did and how that worked out to demonstrate sort of like what we're talking about

when we talk about like these sort of access projects. Well, so Shilo was interesting because High Peaks Alliance has been board driven for the past ten fifteen years, and so we finally got to a point, uh, through the good work of our board, to be able to hire me full time. So when we started the Shiloh Pond project, it literally started with a Facebook post from a god whose local lady, she's a teacher too, who said, how do we preserve our you know, redneck yacht club. Here

are a small pond the place we love. I had grown up fishing this pond because I grew up in this area. I pretty much fished any pond up there at fish, so it kind of doesn't limit it. But um, you know, it's this small pond and it does have some natural occurrence trout and some stock trout. But it's close to town and it's completely undeveloped, which is rare. Who owned it. So that's what's kind of really gets my passion going because Maine in general has switched from

forest landowners to investment owners. And so the Winter family own this and they also ran the H. G Win Your Mill in Kingfield, Maine. So they had owned a

lot of a lot of land across the landscape. And so when you know exactly saw mill, they ran a sawmill um And this story could replay a million times over Maine where it's a pulp and paper sawmill company owns the large tracts of land um and through technology advances and changes in markets and uh, you know this Wall Street asking these companies to divest these properties, meaning they used to run these as zero assets on their balance sheet to say, wait, there has a lot of money.

Let's bring back more money to our shareholders. Let's sell this. So we've gone from I think from two thousand five of mains forest land change hands. Um, I'll give me that figure again. If from and this has happened before, if you, if you took a bigger window would be even larger. But for to mid two thousand, two thousand five of mains forest lands change hands. So not just land mass, but forest lands. You know ac count like every house that's sold and stuff like that. Now we're

talking about the twelve million acres of northern Maine. Huh So and these I mean these have but huge tracks probably well some of them can be really massive. Um, you know, hundreds of thousands acres. I mean John Malone, he's the number one landowner in the US, owns over a million acres in our neck of the woods as one individual. Um, he's the guy bartender that cheers you remember that. No, but did he pass up? He passed up ted turner No, yeah, left him in the dust. Yeah.

It was mean, Well it's got a hurt. Peter back. Big Owners was like a subway founder. You know Apple, like main Forest. I mean there's foreign ownerships, there's Yale's en Dowmond owns a big portion of the main woods. Um. You know, these these are all investment owners. So they're

looking to extract as much value for their purposes investments. UM. And all of us are semi um responsible if you think about like we all have four one ks and stuff like that, and in those you will have a line called natural resources, and so you know their forest lands of one of the mechanisms that would go into that. UM. So getting back on topic, UM, this parcel of land was the last piece this family owned. There's five siblings. They had always let people use the property. That's kind

of the tradition because everyone worked. There was a social contract that like you worked at the mill, you knew the landowner. It was that um. You know, you got power. The forest companies got a lot of influence at the Statehouse and otherwise in the communities, and they got employees. And in exchange for that, you know, we got access to the land, We got good relationships. And so that that culture has evaporated in Maine to where the best you can do now is work with a local forrester

of said investment group. UM, So that that social contracts kind of evaporating. That's what High Peaks Alliance is kind of focused on creating, so that much access is evaporated. Well, some of the access, Like let's take Warehouser for example, in Maine. UM, they have all their land open. You can camp on their land. Heck, I even got a

Christmas tree permit from them this year. UM. But if you look at their practices and other states, I don't think they've allowed that much access like that West stuff like that. So there's still some of that goodwill by some of the companies in Maine because of our landowner liability protections and such like that. UM, but you know, there has been a lot of trail closures, like we don't want four wheelers on our land, we don't want you to camp on our land. And because of the

reduction and staffing, you're getting more gates. So they start out at seasonal gates like let's protect our road during mud season. That's a reasonable thing to do, but you're not going to spend the staff time or build a relationship locally to give anyone access to open those gates. Back up, and so you know, for instance, an area I used to go swimming in as a kid, brook

Trout Fish. Um, I wanted to bring my whole wedding party there and uh like have a wedding picture of us jumping off the cliffs, and just thought it'd be a cool picture. Had everyone from Maryland, Florida, all these family friends got them back of the trucks. We had our beers in hand, we roll up the dirt road.

Within a week of my wife and I scouting this and bringing up my entire wedding party, there was a gate and people it was a real bummer because it's like a mile from where the swimming hole was that we went and did something else. But it kind of underscores how it's just this slow erosion of loss of access. You couldn't point to one thing. So Shilo Pawn, you know,

people love it. People tend to love the ideas of landscapes, but specifically gems on the landscape, like this is the viewpoint I love the most, this pond I love the most. And so this is one of those places that a lot of people loved. Um. We wanted to get the town to own it because I was still part time at the time. Um. And so we talked to them, would this be something you would own if we could figure out how to fundraise for it? They said, yeah, people,

see you have to go to a town boat. You know, there's some interests. So we asked the Trust republic Land, who explicitly just does transactions um in our neck of the woods. They don't hold any land. So they said they would come on and help us because I laid out, here's the property, here's some potential funding sources we could apply for. This is my case. Can you guys help us? And so I put Betsy Cook, she's the state director

there in a boat in Shiloh, like. I convinced her to come up to Shilo Pond and uh, it wouldn't let her out until she said yes. Um. But yeah, So then we a very Kennedy move. Yeah. Well you know, I mean you get to this pond and it's completely undeveloped, and I hope you never visit it to all your listeners. Um. But you know, because this is a community project, right, and so the idea is people like, where the money come from? How do we do this? This is impossible? Um?

And so that's one of our goals, high peaks, a lines, just showing our communities that things are possible. So we we have to get the landowners on board. You have to sign a purchase and sale agreement, you have to get an appraisal, you have to do due diligence hazards assessments, surveys, look at land access rights like going over the right

of ways into the road. So it's not simple. We I got Betsy out there to talk about when it was listed in two thousand eighteen, we closed on the property in So it's a saga sometimes to conserve land. Like the quickest you ever do land conservation would be like six months, and that's if you have the money

right like so you it's a slow process. So the landowner has to be okay with um that fundraising period and you have to have an agreement to that with my with my minimal involvement to watching these transactions occur here again and again of conservation groups, they just can't conservation groups or federal agencies, state agencies, they can't move

quick enough. No, it's and like a sweet property will come up and it's like people want to do it as a habitat thing, but for the owner the owners like I could sell the thing to borrow for cash, Like I can't sit around a way for you guys that pull all this ship together, especially now with the market as we locked out in that I think the family had some sentimental care that this could be a conservation property, so they're willing to work with you over

the course of three years. But we well, I mean it was more more like late to very early a couple of years. But um, and that's about as long as you ever want to draw one of these things out. It's just, um, you know, you have fundraising hiccups. We had a right It turns out there was a gap in the right of way because these owners had sold a piece of property but didn't retain a right away on it. So we I had to go get five

different landowners on a zoom call. I read Chris Boss Never Split the Difference FBI Tactics to negotiation, like like the day before, because I'm like, not screwing this up. I mean like we already were in bed with you guys, you had already sent you Chris Boss Never Split the Difference. It's one of the best books you can read. FBI negotiate or I mean, his point is you really got to understand your counterpart to then have them care about what you care about. He said, the guy that did

that master class on negotiation. I haven't taken that in there, but he's really good. Lost interest. Did you take the class? No? But I was kind of interested in master class, just like I don't want to explain why I was interested in that whole world. And I happen to watch this one and I thought it was like, uh, that was pointless. It was he had good tips on small How to small talk is we got five We got five landowners to sign the conservation, the right away access deal, so

you've got to have something working right for him. But yeah, well no, I just want to just for listeners, I want to just digress real quick. So let's say you got a small talk with someone but you don't feel like it, but your whatever, your wife makes you go to something. UM say something to me, calic, just say whatever. Say I got a new laptop. Hey, it's good to see you here. I don't know. UM say let me let me adad Let me show you a picture of a buck I killed. A book you killed? Yeah, a

nice one a nice one. Yeah. Here it is just whatever they say, you just say it back to him with an inquisitive tone. And like people that just want to talk about themselves, it will go for hours. So Cay'll be like say, yeah, I got a new laptop. Hey, I got a new laptop. A new laptop. Yep, it's silver and uh big screen, big screen. Now you like that? What if? What if you? What if you come across someone that wants to talk more about you than themselves,

that's usually not a problem. Go on, Well, I think the intent is to actually try to understand the person. I read the book. Yeah you should. I'm telling you, I'm sold on just for this one. TRANSI you got the deal done. I got the deal done well. And we had to raise funds for road maintenance fun because they had been maintaining all the road for all these years. So it's just complex and so anyways, um, you know what was cool. We had a town boat on this

to see if they would accept the property. And that was really heartening because you can't get town boats that are landslides usually, but this was two to one in favor. Uh. You know, I couldn't imagine there'd be anyone against it. But that ship blows my mind to call you remember when they did that, they did the Savanosa and they're like, no, no, we're gonna we're trying to give you the ranch. I want to give you the ranch, and like, well, I

don't know if you take that ranch. Yeah exactly. There's even like people in the political sphere like to make a point, we're saying like nope, I'm not gonna take it. Come again now what like why and de elaborate on this. The sabinos So Wilderness area was our I think our only at the time completely landlocked, inaccessible other than through permission crossing private land. So it was a wilderness area you couldn't get to. Yeah, seventeen thousand acres I think, um.

I think it grew to twenty three thousand acres with um. Shoot, I can't remember that. Anyway, these folks had put together this ranch that bordered the wilderness their kids. Unfortunately for them, like, let's let it be known that they had intended to sell the ranch when mom and Pap passed away, and uh mon, Paul were like, we're not seeing this thing gets sold off to whoever, and so they kind of

deal with the wilderness LAMB wilderness trust. Yeah, and remember being a sticking point where they the BLM right had to accept it. The BLM we're not in the public land business anymore and we won't accept I mean they did, but it was like, how could people not want it? I think it's like to prove a point. Well, I mean there's also small towns you have, like the worry of long term maintenance and you know, fixing up the road and you know you're talking about it's like, what's

it gonna do the tax bases. Well, yeah, exactly, it costs land. Yeah, and I mean that's all dependent on the level of investment in development you want on your recreation lands like ball fields obviously or not cost a lot more than undeveloped force land, you know, so I don't think there'll be a tremendous cost. And you know, when you're thinking about these projects, you always want to think about those costs when you're fundraising. So like we have a fund to help them with some of their

startup costs. Oh that's good idea. Well, like you know, the bridge needs to be redact, the road needs a little fixing up, and and yes, so you're not handing them a total pile of headache without some way to mitigate it. Well, not only that is we've helped them develop a town committee and they actually uh we tapped it in I members. There was more applicants than available slots, and so this like board actually had to interview some

of these people. So we got a really good mix of passionate people and most of them all had some personal connection to them loving Shiloa Pond. So that's one of the big benefits I find of local conservation is you're building some of that self governance across the landscape. Is like you have a say in the land. So

that's important. You guys. What was interesting, um, you know, part of the part of the fundraising was your help, you know with the land Access initiative and that was really um fun grant so to speak for me, because it was so different than everything else we do. What was the normal way you were getting the money? Well, like you a lot of these deals, you try to structure it around. One had large grant so far as

was this main natural resource conservation program. It's a mitigation fund um and then you have trust for public lands costs. The survey costs, other land costs, all these deals and um, you know, so you have a number of private philanthropies that solicit grants and individuals and so you you know, you guys were a little different on that. I saw the the posting and I said, well, what what the heck all put in something? I don't know? Why not? I do a lot of these, So it's not like,

explain the cal explain the posting. So yeah, it's our our the meat Eater Land Access initiative, which started around the Ronnella Who tell Us campaign merchandise that we built

up and then we got it. We're like, oh, we should do something good with this money, and it became like the campaign promise, which was provide more hunting and fishing like and so we decided to fun to raise fundraise through merch fundraise through some auctions and uh even got a couple of direct donations that that we were able to funnel to Brent the High Peaks Alliance there at the end, but our ask was for anyone who listens to our shows, goes to our website, watches our

stuff on on Netflix, if you know of a place that could use more access, ideally, like you know, granny's passing away and doesn't want to see the farm go to just anybody. So you guys can buy it. And it provides like a a pathway to a hundred thousand acres of landlocked public land, the only way to get down the river, or the only way to get on the river, or an easement that we could help pay for that goes through a new subdivision into the National Forest.

There's a bunch of different things that we'd be interested. And so he kind of put out that call to action a couple of times, and we have a If you go underneath the conservation tab at the meteor dot com, you will see our land Access Initiative. Through there, you can go in there and click the button that uh says you submit submit a property. We have it on there twice just in case you miss it the first

time and you just found it like that. I saw the um runella tell us and I gotta kick out of that, and I said, I'll go look at it by campaign. Hat are you guys running in? We gotta wait and see, wait and see how how the field shakes out. Um Yeah, no, So I checked out. Most programs from companies are really horribly executed in that they're normally worried about how it's going to look for them.

And when I saw your program the questions you're asking, I could tell you actually wanted to do a project and help a project. So most of these things I just cut off, like I don't attempt them, because you can when their first question is what's your social media following? You know you know that their intent is not the project. Their intent is to do cause marketing, which can be a benefit. But it's hard for me to put in a lot of effort into a grand application when you

know it's just going to be an extractive process. Because these these are pretty difficult, and you have to respect the donors and respect the granters, but you know you want to work with people who want to do the work. And so the questions we just used cause what cause? Cause marketing? That's interesting, Uh, it's been a lot. It's been uh an exciting term for nonprofits, I guess um.

But also you think of like tom Shoes, that would be an example of cause market It wouldn't be like that, we're gonna name the sports arena Kinko's stadium well cause marketing that you know that I wouldn't call that cause marketing. I call it like, these companies are showing as part of their business model. Um, it's not about profits, it's about like mission, and so a lot of times they use a nonprofit to align that way. Um, Whereas like I keep thinking of tom shoes, like you buy a

shoe and they don'tate a shoe how to go? But homet But I don't get where where? Why is that bad? It's not bad. It's that when I am a nonprofit

trying to get this project done, it's expensive money. I see where you might be in a situation where like that's all good and fun, but I gotta move and I don't want to bog this down with well, how you know, it's more like a job, right, So I would call that fee for service, like sometimes we do work for other organizations like writing management plan stuff like that.

But I would consider that a fee for service or a sponsorship versus a grant or yeah, just how it will it's and it's there's legal terminology obviously, but then there's just the reality of limited capacity to work and please a business to the fullest extent that they want because they have an outcome in their head versus Um, you know, we're trying to get this this deal done?

What so how do how do we do be? I mean, be honest, it was our first year, so well, I I think we can do a crass course on conservation just because um, you know, like the examples you're using of like hopefully your grandmother has access to this. It simplifies a pretty complex process of finding opportunities, vetting opportunities, vetting funding sources. You know. So I think with us

it's worked. We had a benefit because most conservation organizations are so put together in their approach to projects that something like this might have been hard to fit in. I don't know what you've got for applications, Um, how many applications? How many things did you get? Caliber? Serious? Oh?

I think we ended up with close to like four hundred and fifty submissions, and of those I would I would only consider like a hundred and fifty to be like worth a second look, and of that one fifty, uh, twenty three, and then got down to eight where you're like, oh, yeah,

this is real, real deal stuff. Yeah, you know, And that's I mean, when you're working with reputable organizations, we're doing the research to highlight through our strategies, what are the best opportunities, what what are the most bang for your buck? Because there's not a single nonprofit that's not working under restricted funds, and so you know, there's a

lot of effort going into looking across the landscape. What are the landowner willingness, what are the ecological values, what are the constituents values that want to donate to such things? And so you get to a point of a lot of people who call you up and say, hey, you want to conserve my land. Uh, there's this idea that there's this endless amount of money and conservation because there's some people that donate lots of money, but it's not

like compared to what land costs. It's a difficult thing. Um. So when I applied, the questions were pretty straightforward, you know, like what's the opportunity, Uh, what do you guys need help with? How do you see meat eat or helping There's a few others, um. And what was exciting to me is, you know, I've really enjoyed the Mediator series on Netflix. I have not consumed as much on everything

else just because of time. Um, But your ability to describe what hunting is beyond the kill is you know what I've reflected with, and so that's like why I'm in conservation is that you get uh to see people's love of the land and you get to describe that in different ways. And so you know, in real terms, everyone in Kingfield loved that piece of property for a different reason. Like one guy talked about ice skating there

as a kid. You know, Um, you know trout fishing, caught my first trout there, used to camp there, used to throw parties there, you know. Like so people have different ways to relate to the land. So we used to burn tires and have keggers out there. Yeah they're still letting high school kids have keggers. No, No, while it's not kids these days don't have the same fire in their guts. So yeah, I don't want to pack tractor tires a mile back in the woods. I think

that died my generation maybe when that died. Um, but yeah, so we applied cal reached out. Um. That's that was refreshing to me because usually as these things unroll, your first few opportunities or your best opportunities, and then people encumber these things with process and make them more cumbersome. It's just the way you apply um. Because you get more committees involved, you get more people involved and becomes more difficult to you know, grants in general are like

those foundations in general are like this. Um. But I think I don't know if Cal remembers the email, but I got an email from Ryan Cal Calhan. I got a big kick out of that, and um, I woke up four thirty in the morning because you have to get in your tree stand early. And uh, I think I wrote that in the email, Like I'm writing this in the golden hours, so I'm most focused, meaning like if I was to be hunting, this would be the best time to hunt. And that's why I'm writing you

back at this time, so I'm like super focused. Um. So your goal is just to present the best case possible. And Cal did a great job. He flew out very soon after to make sure I wasn't full crap. Got a famous red main hot dog great like a lot of extra phost fates. Well, I don't know what makes it red, but makes it taste better. If you read so much about dog, have you ever had a red hot? You don't have to read about it. I'm talking to the listener, took a paddle around, took a paddle around

the lake, checked out the waterfall. So did cal seem like a shrewd negotiator when he came out. I think he just wanted to find out if what I was saying was the truth, and that you know, it was easy too. UM. I was excited to show him around the area because the the area in this area of Maine, it's we call it the High Peaks, which is puny compared to your mountains, but it's the ten of the

fourteen tallest peaks Maine. And it's that aggregation. UM, it's headwaters, a lot of the river's main and so you know, there's a lot of big landscape conservation happening now to UM. You know, Boston University put out a study of looking at Biden's thirty by thirty goals and if you look at like species diversity, carbon storage, ability to protect large landscapes, UM, all those things on their own. UM have different areas of the US that those could be the highest values.

But like Maine really lights up when you start laying all those value was on top of each other. People that talk about you know, people on talking about thirty by thirty by thirty for a while, and uh, and they point out the necessity to sort of like uncoupled that with the Biden administration. Yeah, you know, we because now you're going to fall into this thing where the next administration they'll jett is in it because it was the Biden thing, or vice versa would be like, you know,

throwing out whatever anybody had the head you did. Do you know, I think it out of like E O. Wilson, is that okay called the Wilson thirty thirty. Yeah, and uh, I think he wanted fifty by fifty exactly to your point, is that the landscape by two thousand fifty that I think E O. Wilson that was what he wanted. The Arizona legislature, you had a bill um that I can't I don't know if it passed or not, but said it was just a flat out no to the thirty

by thirty plan, which isn't actually a plan yet. It's just like it's a concept right now. But no, you can't hold that concept in your head exactly. Yeah, that's a little polar as Yeah, and I guess the they just latched onto it as like a good marketing piece. A lot of people have pointed that out, um where you put those lands, Like, for instance, I think Montana is something like thirty seven percent um publicly owned state and federal something. I had thirty to thirty. I got

two different numbers. One's thirty. I think that was the federal land. So it's like maybe Montana already has their job done right, But Maine mains conservation land is um easman and otherwise it's land, whereas all of other all the other New England states combined is twenty seven percent land. So that's four point two million acres of conserved land and Maine versus five point eight in the rest of New England. So like Maine has cheaper, cheaper land which

is changing rapidly in large landscape. So it's like a place where you have a lot of opportunity that is us more easily executed on because it's all privately owned already. Did kel Uh ever make a suggestion that you change the pond to okale OCALI pon. Yeah, Well there is the sulation here. I forgot to mention, yeah, your checks are spent um. There was a debate and I have never solved it, but on the older maps it's called

Dutton Pond, and sometime it was renamed Shiloh. And I've debated whether this was because of the biblical references that sounds very old Testament or was it like Battle of Shiloh, like did they change it after you know those wars this so you know, I don't know. I haven't been able to find it. I did find a cool Forest and Stream article, which is um the precursor to Field and Stream, and they talked about how they brought up a guided group to the three ponds up there and

they caught five hundred trout over the three days. And they're not start bringing up more and more people. They had them all stinger. So since the since the you guys finished the pond deal, done got all the money I bought the thing. Um, has there been any uh, have there been any cons to come out of the whole thing. It's been interesting, has been heavily visited. There's been increased visitation for sure. Um mostly non. I don't

think it's hunting fishing crowd really. I think a lot of the local press brought some of the resort people down to check it out. Um, there's definitely an interesting um study we could do on canoe storage. So we've been debating because in Maine there's a tradition that you dragon old canoe uh to a body water and you just leave it there for any one to you case you ever need again. It's the way to get a canoe out of your yard exactly. And the problem was

people sometime in my lifetime started locking their canoes. They put nicer canoes out there and locked them, and so that's led to like way too many canoes. When everyone just used some old, beat up, you know, aluminum canoe, it was fine. You know, you got wet, but that was the deal is, like there was a canoe there, you didn't need to bring another one. But what was interesting is we've had old canoes leave a new canoes

show up, but it's uh net negative. So we've set a policy of thresholds of canoes that if it reaches this specific threshold, that will consider it an issue. But for now we're gonna keep it as is like traditional main like you leave your canoe because we're gonna keep the parking lot out where it is. And yeah, it's on to be a walk in pond um So that's the idea. Is what we've heard from everyone on the committee is that they want to keep it primitive. They

don't want to build it up too much. They want to do more traditional signage um and have it because it's just so rare to have something with that feeling of wilderness be so close to you know town. Yeah, I know a spot that the people's stage boats and there's they've brought three up over the years. Two of them are unusable now. One of them is huge and bright blue. It's hard to get him in there. Well,

you're not bringing them out, are you? Just? I want you so bad though, because it's so beautiful to give the like, oh there's that stupid things. Well, like in Northern Maine Major Conservancy MC, they do programs, they have volunteers, they go out and drag out these broken up let's call those guys, you know, see what the budget is. It's pretty funny though, like the you get underneath, like the canopy of the trees right on the pond shore Molo and it's just like a long hist of paddling

on that lake laid out right there. It's like and that those people on the end or debt, well we joked that, like is there are some of these boats here like past their owner's demise, Like you know, we I don't know if we'll ever find out. You need to do like you gotta do when you leave an ice shaney um out on the lake. If you leave

it there, you gotta put your name in address on it. Well, there's been debates about the boat registry, and that doesn't sit well with some people, imagine, but I'm just trying to get rid of this whole boat. Well while you're registering your guns and oh yeah, I firmly I stay in firmly against canoe register exactly. But I can see in the case of something like that, it might be that if you're gonna ditch your canoe at this pond, since we own the pond, we would like you to

leave your name on it. That's not big government telling you to register your canoe. Well, so we have a system worked out. There's one boat that's irritating me. They most everyone's respectful, bring us to back up into the forest, like in this area that's been culturally appropriated here, just uh, there's one guy that keeps leaving it on the sand gravel bank, and you know, it's just being lazy. And

so I've dragged this canoe three times. Now my new approach is going to be dragged back to the parking lot with the note. So like every time they want to leave it on the shore, they have to bring it all the way back into the ponds. Big Woods Canoe politics. I was gonna ask Brent if he would be excited to know how much funding we have in the land of Access right now? Yeah, you gotta that's what.

That's what now. You gotta lay it out with cal So year one when we I don't even know what we really started with like five grand or something after our initial kind of push, and then we started forming this thing up and eventually, um, we cut you guys at chet for like thirty five grand, is that right? Uh? Well, with the donors you helped link us up with, it was all said and done and then um yeah, so that was like cash on hand fund raising and then

uh some some last minute donors. I want to thank you guys, because I was pretty blown away with like the doss boat and um, your rifle. You know, I've never considered ever putting my rifle up for anything, so I thought that was I got a bunch more up fixed. So we auctioned off the original Doss Boat from our series Doss Boat, Lefty rifle from Steve Janice through in at least backpack and some things. I think we had

some really good donations. I got a steel chainsaw on the mix and some some good conservation books and UM and that. That was a fun, fun thing and we are obviously it's live on the website right now. The Land Access Initiative lives again. We're taking um both donations if you make a purchase at the store and and round up you can choose to round up into the

Land Access Initiative. Uh. The Auction House of Oddities is going to come back in mid April that soon with a bunch of awesome stuff, uh in including we're working on the makeo the Doss Boat three, which I honestly want a bid on, so you got some competition if you see that boat three. Boat will be an auction item, not a raffle item because it's some legal thing. You can't paying the butt and we're trying to do good stuff with it. Like is somebody really gonna get you

guys like that? It's so cliche, like dog on lawyers. But holy cow, those guys up just make stuff just so complicated. So yeah, you can you can contribute that way, or we would ab slutely love And I know Brent has a bunch of good ideas. He's going to be one of your competitors. Suggest a property, Submit a property that we can explore and hopefully help fundraise and and

secure to provide more access to hunting and fishing. You'll know you're getting close with Callahan shows up and paddles around. That's right, no water, water whatever, He's still kind of paddle. Yeah, that was the tip off. And they're not they're not sent him out here on a flight. Right, if you're not interested, how do people like like give it a give a snapshot of what kind of stuff people should be keeping their eyes out for. Well, you know, Brent

had something that really was like a beautiful situation. Right, They've done a lot of the legwork. The property that they wanted to secure was going to be held in perpetuity for public access, two things that we hold near and dear, which is just like going out and experiencing and enjoying nature plus fishing. Um, I think if you if you drew a moose tag, you might be able to get a moose out there. Yeah, we have some pictures. Um. And again they had like a goal line like we

got to have these funds by this closing date. Here we go come in and help. And so that that was a great one. But funds for let's say, phishing access sites, funds for uh public ease months through private ground. Um is something as simple as you know, canoe or kayak launches into rivers. There's anything that provides more access

to a place that doesn't have it. Yeah, I think the best case scenario, like if you imagine, if you want to imagine, like the extreme good one, it would be let's say there's some five section I'm stowing the number out. There's five sections of landlocked public land. There's no legal access to it, but all of a sudden they knew about their granny had an acre of land, and if someone owned that acre land and made it a trailhead, people would be able to screw around on

all that landlocked land. That would be well, sweet deal. I would say some practical tips people suppressed, so I do a lot of what's wrong with that? Well that, I mean, there's a few good things there. If someone finds that piece of properis that is granny owned it well perfect, then that guy one has to figure out if Granny is willing to sell. But that that a lot of times would be your best bet is to

get a group organization in your area involved. So like let's say you find that one acre piece you've been cruising on X, you've been on your tax rolls, which most towns have public tax roles. You can find pretty much where a one you know, any piece of property exists on earth. Uh, you can find who owns that. You can start compiling that information um and then figure

out who are the players in your area. So state states usually have boat launch um, you know departments, and there's I F and W there, which is inland Fisheries

wild Life Maine, there's federals. So you would look at in your area who has done work before and reach out to them with this opportunity to say, not only do I think this would be awesome for all these reasons, like it connects to your conservation land, it protects this stream, blah blah blah blah blah, um that there's also this group that I think would help fund it, there's this opportunity through the Land Access Initiative that we could suggest

this because it would be right up their alley. And so your goal is always to link good projects with donor interests. So your donor interests here as I would describe it as like it has to be something to do with hunting, fishing. I know you you casted a wider net as far as other access. But my understanding of you guys, which you lay it out there fairly obviously, is the project probably should have some fishing and hunting

values added. Yeah. I mean if there's a river, assuming there's a fish in that river, which is the safest thing, but not uh you know, a mild multi use trail or something like that. Um so yeah, that that is the big thing. Go to the Meteor dot com you'll see our land Access initiative and this this is our big conservation push. So we've raised and you're gonna assess the stuff that comes in. Yep, assess stuff that comes in. Ideally, we're gonna have so much good stuff that I'll need

some help to and we got that lined up. So and when when we fire up the auction house of odities, how long we gonna run it for this time. I think we're gonna run it for two weeks only, so lots of good stuff, high turnover. Uh, you know, this is your chance to make a big impact to access and get something awesome. So that's great. And then Brent, are you gonna send in some submissions to OCALE. Yeah,

oh yeah, we got we have one right now. The Nature Conservancy is trying to purchase seven thousand acres for the state, and our role into it is to try to keep the road open that for a length to be determined because this area, like the book I gave you, that moose hunting book, the Great Main Moose Hunt. Um, you know, a lot of those balls in there were shot up in that land and so you know a lot of that lands on going to a forever while

management scenario. And uh, it's good. We wanted to be conserved, but we want to keep road access into this area, so we have to raise some money to help out with that. I see, you know, it's a good one. That's a great example. But then we have two in Maine in a row. Yeah, but this is landscape. You can show the progression Steve, a small project leading to

larger project right, send your thing and keep that in mind. Folks, send your thing, and everybody send your pitching and also do stuff like well, we'll have various ways coming up or you can support the Land Access Initiative, and people done a lot of support already. But just like you know auction house roundups when you go on to meetia dot com and you buy something to the roundup, we're gonna have some round up matching stuff coming into play.

So stay tuned and all that send ideas. We're trying to find a really cool freaking project. Man. Absolutely, and if you're in Maine, you can always reach out to Brent West the High Peaks Alliance. Talk to him about, you know, being our first ever recipient of the Land Access Initiative grant. Let's call it and see where you

can help out in your home state of Maine. If you're listening at home and you've been meaning to go get that old canoe you got tied to a tree up at Shiloh Pond, look forward to the parking lot Brent West, High Peaks Alliance find them if you're If you're a maner, that's maners. If you're a mainer um, jump on and do support there because they're obviously doing real work on the ground to give people places the recreate outside, including but not limited to hunting and fishing.

Fair Yeah, definitely, And I would say, you know, anyone who visits or loves this neck of wood should reach out because we have a a tremendous seasonal population. You know, in this area is the recreation basket for the Northeast. You know, there's sixty million people within a twelve hour drive, and you know this might be our last opportunity to keep an area that you can drive to with your family, for your kids, that's within striking distance of those big

Eastern cities. Keep this big landscape intact before it's all bought up, locked up exactly, all right, man, Thanks a lot, stay too for trivia. Got trivia coming up? I know smoke brnt West, bring it. Thanks Brett,