If this is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast, you can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt, first Light, Go farther, stay longer. All right, we're in our brand new studio. It's like Phil died. I couldn't I When I got in, I was so it was like I was sad and I realized that it's like Phil died.
I'm still here, I promise, Yeah, but I wouldn't know that that's true.
Yeah, you can't see him behind all taking.
From beyond the veil.
He's like, yeah, it's like a ghost.
Yeah, he's got like a little command and control center where it was like purposefully set up to not like you could. You wouldn't even know. Even right now, sitting here looking for him, I wouldn't know he's in here.
It's like it's like the Wizard of Oz.
Just pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Cal suggested we get like a heart rate monitor up on the wall above Phil so we could at least see his vitals.
I think Steve would have some fun games with that that would be very confusing to the listener, trying to see how he can spike poor Phil's heart rate.
Back there, Man, one time I had I was doing this uh this life insurance policy where I had to lamp. Some dude came over and I had to lamb my couch and he hooked me up to a bunch and put a bunch of those little stickies on me to monitor your heart rate, you know. And I'm laying on my couch and periodically you could hear I could hear my kids fight upstairs, you know, and you here like Matthew, stop it right. And I had and I'm and I had to be on this thing for twenty minutes. And
I asked the guy, can you see that? He goes, Oh yeah, he goes every time that like when those kids make that stomach noise.
Nice.
It takes a toll on you, man, slowly kills you. But back to Phil, He Phil, why you got it wrapped up in black blankets and stuff? Back there?
It's another temporary solution, Steve. It's a there's a lot of cables. I was trying to make it less of an isore. I think it might have had the opposite effect.
He's waiting on a little coffin. He's waiting on a little coffin. Or he'll hide back there. Yeah, we've been talking about Phil is going to get a DJ deal, like a platform Yeah, because picture well, no, DJs don't use screens.
Though, no, they don't. Put they're on platforms. You should, like, you should take a picture of him and and be like, where's Phil? Post it and just see if anyone can can really see that he's back there.
It's killing me. Join Today by author and Forrester, Michael Schneider. Do you go like a Snyder?
It's Snyder like Schneider, not like Schneider.
Not like Krin.
It's it's been anglicized from the Yeah.
Uh man. When I got your book woods Wise, I'm trying, sad to say, this is the nicest way possible. I was initially dismissive because I've never read a forestry book in my life.
And you're in a big club.
Yeah, like most Yeah, like most Americans, like an overwhelming majority of Americas. I never read a forestry book. And the minute I it's sat on my desk and sad, my desk, and one day I opened it and realized how it was structured. It's it's structured in like questions, many of which are great questions, and it's like it poses a question and answers the question.
Addresses the question.
Addresses the questions, and some of them are unanswerable.
I'm big on that.
The minute I opened it up and saw that there's a thing why are conifers shaped like cones? I was like, shod ever thought about that? Why are they shaped like cones?
Awesome?
No, that's when I wanted. That's why I told Krim we should have this guy on to talk about all the like, because this is great for people's barroom banter capabilities. To imagine some single fella, maagine some single fella down in the bar. Everyone go get Michael's book.
It sounds like my past.
Yeah, down the bar. It's a lovely young lady next to you, and you're like, shit, man, I can't think of a good icebreaker. You know, I can't be like you sure are pretty, because that don't fly. He'd be like, hey, man, do you ever wonder why uh you know pine trees are cone shaped? That's good, dude, that's rock. So solid.
Put that one in your and your pick up.
That's real audience specific. I just came back from a wedding in La and I don't think that would have got you anywhere. And like, let me tell you why your lips look like that.
No, so we're gonna we're gonna dig in. But tell about your job, because you know the comedy Parks and w Reck. You were actually at a place called Parks and Reck.
Yeah, Forest Parks and w Reck.
Do you guys love that show?
Yeah?
And I got a lot of that over the years. And I'm like, oh, okay, sure. But and so I was the commissioner. So that's also fun because you get to be the commission.
Yeah, you were a high level individual.
Well yeah, in a you know, big fish in a small pond kind of way. But you know, so I am I am as of January first, I am no longer the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation. But that's what you're referring to, and that's what I was for twelve years.
This was sad about this.
It was my choice. There's stuff I missed, the good people, the good stuff. The mission is amazing, credible, staff of professional foresters, biologists, you know, recreation specialists, parks people. But it's heavy to politics and bureaucracy and that that gets old and uh and I did it for an inordinate amount of time. Uh historically speaking that you know, I served through two government It's an appointed position by the governor.
You lead a department that has the it is well named with a statutory mission for forest force, health, forestry, the state park system, which is really quite excellent in Vermont, and then sort of broadly speaking, outdoor recreation. And we're a sister department to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and so our our our forests are their habitat right, and so we we managed public lands cooperatively together. It's a really cool tradition of kind of inter departmental work
and uh so it it It was amazing. I worked for fourteen years prior to that within the department as a forester and as what we call a service forester. Most states have in a Department of Forestry an arm that includes people who give technical assistance to private landowners municipalities, and that's what I did. That is like the best job you can have. It's so cool. You're just out with interesting people, walking interesting pieces of land and helping them.
You don't have to drum up business. You're not really much of a regulator. You're just a facilitating conservation on private lands, which is you know in the East, is like it's the majority of the lands. And so that's what I did, and that's where the book really came from, was just being with people and their fascinations with the woods, their ignorance with the woods, their love of the woods.
And then you know, collecting questions and realizing that I answer a lot of questions and I'm kind of a geek coming from a background in forest science in particular, thing about I grew disillusioned with we produced, you know, published peer reviewed papers that didn't really go anywhere except other scientists citing them and their proposals and their their work.
And so I'd left wanting to get I took a chance at being one of these county foresters with a county as a geography of an area of jurisdiction, to give that kind of technical assistance with a hope that you know, maybe I can help bring the science to the management and stewardship of private woodlands. And did that for fourteen years, and then out of nowhere, an incoming governor. The transition team contacted me and said, hey, we're hearing things.
We wonder if you'd like to be the governor's you know, commissioner for the governor. Then Peter Shumlin, a Democrat who who had been in this state Senate and was Senate pro Tem, ran first statewide office, won that election and was putting a team together, and they reached out to me. I said, no, you kidding me. I mean maybe when I'm old then you know, my knees go and I can't roam the woods anymore, and maybe I'll be like,
whys and then I'll be commissioner. And they're like, we're asking you now, and I went to I said no, I don't really am not interested. And then some I would call them elders and people in my life that you know, we're trust and and have some wisdom.
Uh.
They were like, you got to do it, and so I took a chance. I said okay, and I lasted three terms with him. He decided to not run again, and the new governor, governor elected Scott, came in. He notified all the appointees, which is very typical. You know, you know, please send in your resignation letters. If you want to work in our administration, you're free to. But you can apply just like everybody else, through the web portal, which is what I did.
And uh kind of really okay, that was that a different political party?
Yes? I should have mentioned that. Yeah, totally, he's a Republican.
Oh yeah, that's why the assumption was you're out.
Yeah, it's pretty pretty traditional. And uh so you know I did, and uh, I'm pretty sure I was the last kid picked. You know. Uh, they announced all these new appointees and new secretaries of this and commissioners of that, and it was stressful because I'm into it.
I'm like super So you went to the web portal, I went filling out. Yeah, what it says like current job would be like this job.
Well, it's a little surreal, and I feel like I.
Have very relevant work experiences since I have this job.
Exactly. Uh, I'd like to say to his everlasting credit he uh, Now, they brought me in and and you know, it was, uh, it was pretty intense. I had some very tough questions and some concerns, uh, because I you know, into it and had kind of a big mouth and
was pushing for some certain things. Actually, to be honest, it was uh Karint and I talked about a little bit like forest fragmentation, the breaking of forest into smaller and smaller pieces to the point where they become non functional as forest and habitat and connected lands, you know. And so in our state wide land use plans and regulation,
there's no lens for forests. It's a lot of other criteria they have to consider when when proposing some development, Are you going to have an adverse impact on the environment in these various ways. Forest wasn't in there. And I was saying, you know, they're so important, they confer so much power and strength to our state. We should have that as one of the checkboxes. No undue adverse impact, or you avoid it, you minimize it, or you mitigate that.
And they were really concerned because they thought that was only the only solution would be regulation, which this governor was very against taking property rights away from people. These are things that matter to me too, And I was like, no, actually,
there's an economic way through this. Let's reinvest in the loggers, the workforce, the mills that are dying and eroding, let's rebuild the culture of forestry in our state as our last best hope to keep forest forest and to keep all of the many benefits that accrue to all of
us from these private lands flowing. And they were like, oh okay, and he reappointed me, and I had another three year term with Governor Scott, which I'm for which I'm extremely grateful, And had to navigate all that, you know, being kind of a tree freak, not kind of certifiable.
And a tree hug or tree freak hug some trees.
But sometimes when you you need to.
Slap, don't.
Yeah, you know, but you know, sometimes oddly when you're you know, you're gonna you know, boor cut into one to fell it, you get to wrap your arms around a little bit sometimes. So it's a mixed bag, right, But.
Yeah, so you know how to borer cut?
Oh absolutely.
I recently learned that, Yeah, you need you.
Need to control, you need control.
Yeah, I was not cut sure where I come from.
You're in control a huge piece of.
Pie out of one side. Then you're coming from the air side.
Well, you come from a long tradition there, so yeah, directional felling, bar cutting, the hinge control. It's really cool when when you get it and it works, it's a I've had so many loggers. I was like, you should go to the Game of logging training and like, no, no, you know, I had to do this, you know, pencil Nick Forester, geek over theresiness. And then then then a couple of them did it and they were like, wow, you know what, I gotta admit, this is pretty cool.
So much more control, you know, chasing the tree down, you're you're you're you're holding that wood together until it's safe and ready and then flip it off.
And when we were when we were learning it, it was explained to me we were cutting down a big walnut. Okay, yeah, and these these these were like walnut specialists. These guys I was with their wallet specialists, and they're saying, on a veneer log I mean, these guys are cutting like they're down in the dirt, man, They're like, cut it down like in the roots. Yeah, and they're saying, no, you're not gonna come in here. And that cut a big you know, eight hundred dollars wedge exactly knee high
and then whatever. You know, they're like very precise about they wanted zero waste way down low. I mean it was that thing was ready for the stump grinder when they cut that thing down, and they were showing me that little that cut, which I was like, that can't work, but that'll slick.
Yeah.
I went out with steel power equipment right and worked on a forestry project example that they had going in Oregon in conjunction with some tribal management, and they were doing this really technical felling of they wanted to drop these trees and they wanted them to overhang ever so slightly into the river in order to provide overhead cover for spawning rainbow trout nice. And so they're like, yeah, you can drop them kind of in the water, but not all the way right, And it was like it
was a it was a big deal. And these two fellers that they had come out that work with steel all the time. The most painful part of the process for them was doing it slow enough so everybody else, all the state foresters and everybody could learn from it. And it was just so day to day for these folks. But they're like, yeah, we're gonna put like these six limbs over the river. The rest of that tree is
going to lay right here. And by right here, we mean and they walk out and they put a little flag right there and they walk back and it's like okay, and then this happens and you could just tell they're like, let us get on with this, jeez. But it was amazing, Like every tree was just like that, and these are huge.
And it's a thing. It is impressive because it's not sort of by chance or they get lucky when someone like they have control, and it's impressive, especially with leaning trees, trees with defects, decay inside. They're not structurally sound. They're really unpredictable, and yet people that really know what they're doing approach it with a plan that is real and it works.
And I was staying with like the you know, kids with soft hands on the other side of the river, and when that tree hit the ground, it was like it went through you, you know, and you're like, wow, that is a substantial chunk.
Of what Yeah, no doubt, dude. I was.
I don't want to say where I was. I was at an event recently where I shook dozens of these softest hands I've ever touched, like more like real nice, to the point where I started to like anticipate it if it made it. It's like it's kind of like the noise when you shook the hands. Oh so weird. How are you doing back there, Phil?
You good, I'm doing great. I uh I take offense to these soft hands. Please continue.
Uh.
We got to touch on a couple of things, but I want to get when we come back. I want to I got two things I want. I want to ask you about your disappointment about no one getting the Vermont honey thing or not not honey. I got my honey and syrup from Vermont. I'll point out right on. Yeah, but I got a friend that does both. But the sugar business maple syrup business, and two sugaring we call it sugaring. And two I want to tell you about one time I put a chainsaw into an oak tree
and the gallons and gallons and gallons of water. It was like slicing into an old tractor tire. How much water come out of that tree? Uh, we'll get that in the first cow lay out the corner layout the current.
I think I think you got to explain your tractor tire.
Oh, in the old days, maybe they still do cethel No, they still do Oh.
Well, I thought they use that sodium whatever.
Yeah, it's just whatever. It doesn't freeze filled with water or just freeze in the winter.
Yeah. We're doing a project one time where we had to cut Me and my brother had to cut one hundred of these little jackpines out and limb them and cut them to length and put them on stickers out in the feet and we were cutting to get in there and left some little pungee sticks and put one through a tractor tire. And I didn't know. I was young. I didn't know, and I didn't know that. I think it was full of Brian not air.
Yeah, I think they used to do a lot more with before a tractors were four wheel drive.
This was a two wheel drive forward. It was a forward detractor.
Yeah, what was it like an AD smaller?
I remember man had tires bass tall as me.
Yeah. Anyway, the.
Guys, the guys that I knew, had two wheel drive tractors, they put them in the rear tires.
It added weight to the tractor. That's exactly what this situation was.
More give you more attraction, and I think it also.
Factories over it. Yeah, it lowers your center of gravity. Ballaced keeps you from tipping over.
So you know, like that come.
Out of this oak tree.
And it wasn't flying squirrels, because that's another thing.
Well, listen, man, the house I grew up in had a flying squirrel infestation, but I never had flying squirrels come out of a tree, had them come out of my house bad especially one time we came up and got on an extension ladder and started dropping mothballs down into a hole in the ceedar siding. Twenty four Flying squirrels.
I one time was sitting in a tree stand in New Jersey and I'm sitting there dark, waiting for the sun to come up, and it just gets like that gray light, and all of a sudden, like called the cold gray light, something like whizz passed my head and smacks the tree and runs up and it's like one of those deals.
You're like, holy shit, like what was that?
And then like a couple of seconds later another one what And I'm like what the hell is going on here? It was flying squirrels like soaring into the tree that I was sitting on, and it was they were like landing on the tree and then running up the tree. Yeah, there was I don't know, probably a dozen that did that, and he like hit the tree that I was sitting on and ran up to the dop.
They don't get enough credit for how cool they are, right, Yeah. You when I was a kid, you could turn We had a bird feeder outside the kitchen window, like on the sill of the kitchen window, and sometimes you turn the light on at night in the kitchen and it'll illuminate that thing, and like the last thing you're expecting is a bunch of little squirrels sitting there eating fucking squirrels.
That's an interesting waterfowl kind of comparison that you had there. Like you can start a new little uh hunting club right where you like identify the masked tree that those flying squirrels are going to in the morning. Oh and you go on set up.
Yeah, wait all.
Right, corner cross it. We've covered it to the dickens. Yeah, it might not. It's just a long story. It's like like, let's say you're the news. You don't apologize every time you cover the president. You'll be like, oh my god, here we are talking about the president again.
And that's a big deal.
It just it never ends. It just can is run. So the corner crossing deal and I don't even know, Like what if you're the news and you report on the president every day, you don't need to give back. You don't need to go like So, there's this country, the US, and they have executively, they have they have a triumph triumvirate what's the word executive judicially Like this
is the United States of America. They have a judicial system, they have a congressional system and an executive leadership system and it's a triumvirate check system of checks and balances and so that fella yesterday, right, you don't need to do all that. So the wyoming corner crossing case. If you're not familiar, I don't know what to tell you. Just go back and listen to go back and listen. Go back and listen to All Up in your Airspace. That was an episode. Go back and listen to Busted
for Touching It. Yes, listen to that.
Or read all the articles on the website, or.
Read all the articles at the media dot com. And and Cal's gonna take it away.
Thank you, Steve. You Cal, I want to uh, we're gonna go off of this assumption that everybody knows what we're talking about for the most part. And then I just want to hit on a couple of parts that I think people need to focus on and pay attention to because this is what is going to be brought up again and be central to the case going forward.
Yes, you know we're having a forest round right now.
Yes.
Can you imagine the tension that Doug durn is feeling right now. He's holding his phone. He doesn't know what he's gonna write in about, but as soon as that's some bit what he's going to complain about to me yet, but he's ready or what he's going to fact check. He's ready.
That's not what we call that.
He probably got off his tractor and he's ready for something to be like, well quite hard put it. But anyways, go on col A.
Lot of woodlot managers out there.
You said private would private forest? I think he like just whatever he is doing, he's not doing, and I have he's poised and ready.
Long time ago, chased a lady out to Vermont and did like a eight month stint in Vermont. And there's a lot of foresters doing non forestry jobs in Vermont. They came out of forestry school and just couldn't couldn't find a forestry paycheck.
You know.
So there are a lot of experts out there.
Oh yeah, lots of experts.
Yeah, yeah, so, and there's a lot.
I'm good friends with one of them.
There are a lot of experts on this case. And it's really interesting, right because it has to do, of course, with public and private interface here. So in this case corner crossing, which of course is stepping from one piece of public land to an adjoining corner of public land at the intersection of four parcels.
I like the old checkerboard analogy.
It is a checkerboard.
Yes, so your public is black, say, private is red? Sure, and you're yeah, stepping from red to red, stepping from.
On the diagonal black to black. Sure. Yeah. So four hunters from Missouri use this method to access pieces of blm land that are and of course the other adjoining corners are private land. In this case that we're speaking of, this fellow Fred Eshlman's private oasis in Wyoming called the Elk Mountain Ranch, and Eshelman decide to soothe these folk for criminal trespass. And I believe this is the the civil case.
Yeah, they got acquitted for the on the criminal criminal.
This is the civil case that the idea was. It was going to be tried in a civil court in Wyoming, but it was picked up by the Supreme Court.
The juice got off on criminal and they stuck it to him in civil.
Was that on TV too?
And these guys criminal the criminal courts like, nah, you need to break a law.
Because and this will give you like the reason as to why. Right Judge Scovdall, who is the the federal justice here writes in his opinion, the court finds that there that where a person corn crosses on foot within the checkerboard from public land to public land, without touching the surface of private land and without damaging private property, there is no liability for trespass. Very convenient that this line is in the opinion, because this is kind of
where it stands in court. Is, Oh, really you want to sue? Where are the damages? How do we prove that there are damages to private land?
Now?
Didn't didn't Just a little bit earlier in another wrinkle
in this the landowner had said. The landowner comes and says, uh, because my because I used to have exclusive access to this public land and I now, don't I feel that I've lost seven and a half million dollars in land value of land because I understood my ranch to sort of have to come with exclusive BLM access, and now that it's not my ranch feels to me seven hundred or seven and a half million dollars less valuable and didn't like in some prior thing the judge bring up,
I'm not buying that that that's these guys problem, or that that's that that that I think you're mixing up like that that how are how did these guys cost you seven and a half million dollars when we.
There's a a good chance there is a probable chance that we can't determine those damages because it's not illegal.
Yeah, right, it's because it hinges on it being illegal.
Yes, And it's like you bought a ranch that has this type of land configuration, this checkerboard land configuration on part of it. That's that's your private dealing and you should should have been aware of the risks.
Yeah. I always felt that his gripe was should to be with the realtors and the lawyers that did the deal when he bought the ranch, because he bought the ranch under the under the someone gave him the impression that he had exclusive access to this and it and that idea hadn't been tested in the courts, and he should have and someone maybe falsely advertised this.
But you understand you you've listened to my strip club analogy, right, no please? So I bought a.
Heart rate meter. Just heart meter, spike, We're.
Gonna have some good background music. Yeah. So I bought a condo and here in in Bozeman, Okay, it's in a commercial area of town. It butts up to commercial property. It is at least a partially commercial property in itself right put in the strip club and the property behind that directly a butt's up to My property was for sale at the time. It's it's been rented in long term leases for five years now. It just was up
for sale again and sold again. And speaking about the future of this property, right because you're investing in the property, I was like, so, the big risk here is this, because of the nature, this changing face of this commercial property that is directly out my back window. If they were to put in some sort of like, oh, I don't know, like Bozeman thing these days of like a wine bar and tasting room or yes with yeah, and
who knows, Like, my property value could very well go up. However, if it were to turn into like an ultimately like super sedy like liquor store slash strip club situation, my
property values would very much likely go down. And this is me a non uh mogul of any sorts by anyone's standards, right, So I find it absolutely ridiculous that this particular fellow, with his long list of financial accomplishments could turn around and be like, yeah, well the real estate agent censol, I mean, was the victim here, you know what I mean. It's like that is part of what you do in your due diligence as an adult purchasing anything caveat emptor yes, sir, buyer beware.
So hmmm, so you're pointing to the no liability Yeah.
No, no, yeah, somebody forced him to purchase this before he was of legal age and he didn't quite understand the Yeah, you'd have to tell me quite quite the story of there. So anyway, and there's been these previous instances, the blue sky scenario here for this whole situation is this guy Eshelman would have been like, all right, don't just don't tell anybody that you guys are doing this. I don't want to see a bunch of cars parked here. It's a pain in the butt. There's going to be trash.
There's reasons that we don't want people corner crossing in here because they're gonna spread weeds around, there's always a risk of fire. We just want good neighbors, right, you guys be good neighbors, will be good neighbors.
Nobody ever that that might have been the strategic approach. Now, in hindsight, that might have been the strategic, the strategically sound approach.
Yes, Now however, holy moly, yeah.
You have to wait in line to jump that corner.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely. It's an easy to get tagged because it's all private land with very little access. So you know, now that corner crossing is highly publicized. I guarantee there's going to be more traffic.
Yeah, if you're just playing, If if the landowners just playing for himself and isn't interested in policy, which is probably true, you're right. He should have said, boys, you got me. But here's the deal.
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna build a quantt hut over here, and you guys can park in it, and then you come back out to the county road and you corner cross You let me know when you're gonna be out there.
I'll let you know when I'm gonna be out there. And this is just gonna be our little thing.
Exactly exactly.
That's the long game.
So that's good. That's some good insight. Cal I should have brought that up a long time ago.
On facebook interesting points of this, and I'm very much burying the lead here. So obviously we got a great opinion from this judge, and that opinion stands, and these guys aren't going to get dinged with anything in this particular civil suit, which is great. However, it does not mean that, Okay, now corner crossing's totally legal. There still
exists some gray area. But this opinion says based off of several cases, and I found it very interesting that he also looked at cases within the state of Wyoming and he didn't cite the Unlawful Enclosures Act, which is a federal act, and I thought, this is exactly what this is going to be totally based off of. But this judge, which says that you cannot create an obstruction
that limits the public's ability to access public land. So at this corner, this common corner, an agent of Eshelman put to t posts and I think a little length to chain right at the corner that was supposed to be enough of an obstacle to where these gentlemen would have had to come into contact with private property in
order to get over private property. So they went through the I would say, a very ceremonial effort of creating a ladder to go over to tea posts that don't connect to anything, right, Like a lot of folks could have jumped it. But they did this in order to signal to the land agents that hey, we're here to do this and we're going to do this ridiculous thing to show you that our intent is such and it's not to mess with your private property in any way.
People are really getting hung up on this ladder thing, like that's what you have to do.
Yeah, oh yeah, he's a defense maker professional.
Yeah, so he's like, it wasn't hard, but people are really getting hung up on this ladder. And a ladder, like I said, it's a symbol. It's not necessary to corner cross.
Was he talking about let us have the ladder. Do we follow up with him on that?
Yeah, yeah, I'm in touch, but I think that we should sell some ladders on the website.
Well no, but can't he I want that ladder. Yeah, I mean we have the we got weights and fish.
Yeah, I know.
We're adding to our you know, we're going to amass so many things. Facts are going to be incredibly valuable at a Sotheby's auction for our own auction.
So another case known as the McKay the you went to development company case back in nineteen fourteen, is ruling that Justice fourteen, nineteen fourteen. What was going on back then, Well, it is. It's just an extension of what was going on when this checkerboard system of land was laid out.
It was probably not a hunting thing. It was probably whatever else.
Crazing. This is grazing, right, but just as it is now. It's you know, the landscape changes with new ownership coming in. People put up signs or three strand barber fence where it used to be open range. And I think that's what the case was here. So a guy was just moving his sheep to his historic grazing area on public land. The new landowner came in and took issue with that, and somehow, some way I should really read up on this. McKay took his right to access his public grazing allotment
to the court and won. So that's another case. And then there's a nineteen seventy four case from the Tenth Circuit Court that was cited as well. And again these come down to damages right to access the public's right
to access public ground. And a new case that just passed here, not case, but a new law in Wyoming that clarified some trustpass language without it was kind of an interesting thing because it didn't directly name corner crossing, but it absolutely pertains to corner crossing and proof in the pudding here is justice Goobdall used it. Where the Wyoming legislature passed law actually passed this year traveling through
private property to access public land. This clarified what traveling through required physically touching or driving on the surface of private property, which would not apply to the hunters in this case. And so all these little building blocks kind of build up right now because of the This is a relatively narrow opinion. According to a mutual friend of ours who used to be with the BLM is now
at the National Wildlife Federation. But because it does lay out like trespassing or walking from corner to corner in the checkerboard fashion versus a corner that's not in the checkerboard fashion, which is kind of confusing to me. But anyway, that's where we're at right now. It's I think a very positive thing. And everyone's pretty much in agreement that this landowner is going to appeal the case and try to take it to a higher court. So it's not over yet. If it's this is a you know, these
are like federal actions. These are cases that would very well be cited by somebody else who is in this legal position, even if it is not in the state of Wyoming, which makes it a national thing. So tons of checkerboard here in Montana, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming.
So I got a handful of thoughts that I'm going to given no particular order about on this issue. There was a little detail merged recently where the the misso corner crossers who've been who were in our I was gonna say, who've been here? They've been in our old studio. So we had we had a couple of the Missouri Corner Crossers on the podcast, they had their on X account subpoenaed, okay, which is is very common. So like game wardens people, you know, they can they can subpoena
that kind of information. And there emerged is it being called waypoint number six? Yes, yeah, So when they had their on X account subpoenaed, here's this waypoint that was made very definitely, well not made. A pin was dropped very definitely on private property.
Yeah, And these pins when you drop them are are dated and everything, so you.
Could drop it from your house.
Well that's that's the rub is they can't you know, you can't say for certain that the pin was created. There was also a lot of like apparently a lot of deleting of waypoints. But there was a pin that was made very much on private property, and that's been brought up and brought up and brought up, but it can't definitively be said. Was that pin made by someone who who hit mark my location? Or was that pin moved or just dropped for whatever reason, dropped a pin
overround the guy's place? Hard to say. So that was like an interesting little wrinkle that I was watching and I think it might be it's like, you know, like the Grassy Knoll. I think it's like waypoint six.
It was like, we don't I guess I don't know if we need to go in it. But like I'm cleaning up waypoints and trying to use folders mainly, so when I'm like showing off stuff on my computer, I'm not showing people all the other places I go.
Where if I look at this computer's like awesome spot, awesome spot.
Right exactly like you're sitting down Spencer Newhart and he's like, yeah, but what about this Turkey waypoint? And we're not talking about that, And I'm like, I can't hide half my computer anyway. So you know, there's a lot of general waypoints out there, and I'm like looking, I'm like, oh, it's totally landlocked, like totally landlocked. There's no way to get in there. Or now I've been there and that's
not actually a county road, it's a private road. Or there's all these things where it's like I don't know, we're gonna head this way. Here's the waypoint, Steve, you'll figure it out type of thing right where you're and then there's other ways to do it too where you're like zoomed out far enough to where you're like fat fingering, or.
You could say like, hey, I saw a strutter right here if you get on like but you can get on public and just try to get as close to where I saw this strutter from my car, so then you might have a way.
I don't know there was a ton of that this spring just from me.
Yeah, I'm just saying it's like a I have a bunch of white points like that where they're on private, but it's like I see a turkey here on private, sure, but I'm on public.
Well, if your stuff, if your account ever gets subpoened, someone might say, what were you doing all over this guy's place?
Well, they can clarify this.
You can refer interesting wrinkle number one number two. People keep sitting back waiting for precedent setting or waiting for it to be to DA here's clarification. But the fact that that that like the rules aren't being rewritten yet, right, it's just a matter of It's just a matter of even if the law isn't clarified, if it's not publicly clarified, you know, in in the statutes, it is. It increasingly is what prosecutor is going to want to take this on, and it might be.
Better have nothing going on in your county aside from this.
It might be that when you go look at the statutes, it might still be confusing, but you would then look at the prosecution history and say the legal language is confusing. Yet no one and they've sure tried, No one has been successfully prosecuted. So it's like looking for this to all of a sudden where looking for the issue to get legally clarified might not happen to anybody's satisfaction, and it might just be inference. When someone says, can I because I don't understand when I read the law, I
can't tell if it's okay not okay? Or why does the state recommend against it? What the hell does that mean? And they need point. One might point and say, well, here's the history of people trying to prosecute this, up to you if you really feel like going through all that, But generally you're like, so far to date, no one's been no one's been hung for it.
I like to point out also that right now it's very much a motivated foot access only situation, and I think the longer this goes on, the door gets whiter and whiter to like, well, I have a high step in quarter horse, I'll guarantee I can put all four feet from public to public on my quarter horse as we walk across this pan oh right, or you know the means of transportation, because if you go through the threads and all the talking online about this, it's like, well,
let's just make an easement on everyone, right, Well, was it a five foot wide easement? Is it forty inch easement enough for you know, a small trail side by side? Like what you know, where do we go from here?
And you know, again, if I was a big land owner with the public interest in mind, and also you know all those things that I mentioned of, like wanting to protect like good grass stock, or be free from worrying about fire danger all those things, I'd just be like, let's just let's just not let's just just keep it how it is. The folks that want to figure it out, they can figure it out, and that's just gonna be the best thing for everybody.
Uh Uh. Number three of my five wrinkles or things that I've occur to me as I think about this, accuracy fences aren't on surveyed lines for the most part. A lot of times fences are a guess, it's a matter of convenience. This is where we always understood it to be. You cannot go out. Let's say, all of a sudden, the law was clarified, very definitely. Corner crossing is legal law as you don't step foot on private land. Dude. This corner we're talking about Wyoming was a surveyed corner
that had a marker on it. You cannot go out and use mapping apps fence placement and be that you're right on the money. I picture a future in which access proponents are spending money surveying corners, and even that is gonna get touchy because those corners are not gonna be where these fences that have been there for one hundred years stand. They're just not They're just not.
I wanted one time was curious about a corner in eastern Montana and went to that corner because.
Was it like, we're so close to the road.
Is man, it's close to a road.
You can either go around and it takes a lot of miles and a lot of time to get into this area, or it's like you can hop a corner close to a road, and I was just like curious about it. So I went to that corner and I found a corner pin looked at my on X and the corner pin was not like on X in the corner pin were off slightly.
Yeah, but I mean, yeah, they don't advertise as being like it's like that. You don't like settle. You don't pull up an app on your phone and settle like legal disputes about property lines. I know, cause like mine, if that's the case, my driveway is a little bit out in the road. But I don't think it is. Yeah, right, Well, when you're hunting on a grand scale, you're not like, you know, they're not saying like, oh yeah, accurate to
point to a quarter inch. Yeah, it's just not what it's it's not it's not its intention for people to think that you're just gonna run around willy nilly jumping fences. If this really becomes like a contentious thing and you're just gonna really nearly run around jumping fences thinking you're never to step and foot, it's like I wouldn't trust anything. Yeah, but a corner and that in this case, that had
a corner mark number four. I like to point out these boys, these Missouri guys, this is like a detail that matters a lot to me. Asked and asked about, uh, can we do this? Can we do this? And we're told most and came out and said they're not doing anything wrong. Another officer came out from a different enforcement agency said they're not doing anything wrong. So they were doing like they did more due diligence on the issue than I've probably ever done on any access issue in
my entire life and got completely mixed messaging. So in some ways, when they were talking about these guys being owing someone damages, I couldn't escape the feeling that there's a system that that that that failed them and being able to get a straight answer when you're really trying to go out and be like, well what about blank, everybody's like, oh, yeah, you can do that. I'm calling the cops. Cop comes out they can do that. Well, I'm gonna call a different cop that comes out and says, eh,
let's try to arrest them. It's like, you can't do that to people. What was my last one? Oh, they weren't activists. They definitely your point about in hindsight to strike a deal with them. Like, I've always felt like I'm in dangerous waters when I try to bring up rolls of parks in relation to this situation. But like, they were not activists. They weren't trying to set precedent. They weren't trying to challenge precedent. They were legit Like, and I've met him, and I didn't think this is
true until I met him. When I met him and heard the whole story from their mouths, I was like, these dudes were legitimately just going hunting and they probably would have never said a word to anybody. Yeah, we found a sweet spot. I'm not gonna tell anybody about it. They were not activists. No, people think they were activists. I assumed they were activists. They're not activists.
Yeah, they basically had an over the counter tag opportunity as a non resident in an area that had good game populations. They have to drive all the way from Missouri. Like, these guys were not gonna all of a sudden to have twenty trucks at camp.
Right, they're a bunch of middle ages love to hunt.
Not activists, you.
Know, but you could picture it being activist though, right, you can picture someone saying we're gonna push this to the Supreme Court and I'm gonna call the police and tell them to be there at eight am. When I jumped the corner and I'm gonna drive this home. By god, they were like, yeah, man, I think he's probably some good help back there if we like call around and clarify that what we think is true is true when going to hunt and holy cow, has it become talk
about department of like unintended consequences? My god?
Yeah, absolutely, that's my final point. But also, I mean, hats off to them too, because they weren't going to just like swallow a bad pill, right. They're like, well, no, that we are right.
Yeah, they weren't activists, but they weren't suckers. Yeah, so when someone tried to stick it to them, they're like, Okay, I'm not. I mean, I'm confident in what I I'm confident that what I found out is true. I'm confident about the research. I'm confident about the informed assumptions I made, and to the to date they've been born out legally.
Yeah, yeah, we do have to have to. I mean, Wyoming Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers for their expediency and back in these boys and oh and making sure that we're going to figure it out. I mean, that's that's amazing. I do have to say, I think this, this little story that I've told before is like really paints an interesting picture when we talk about because it's just so easy to simplify things into like land owner
public land opposite sides of things. Right. Well, his buddy of mine, Leo, I used to guide on his place. He had an enormous chunk of Petroleum County, sweetheart of a human being, awesome, awesome guy, and I used to ride around with him all the time. He'd come down to our camp. We outfitted our base was on his place, and just to like nothing's black and white, right, he is a huge private landowner. He's got a bunch of his property in our private land public access program, which
you know he can't outfit on. But we had our camp on a chunk of private that wasn't in his block management chunk. So you know, we had a sweet spot right there. So he had private, private access, he had private access open to the public. Truth be known, if he ever knocked on his door, he was just gonna say yes anyway, access. But he'd come down, he'd pick me up in the truck and we'd go just he'd want to stuff and I'd open gates for him, right, like very normal deal out there. And and I was
always interested in learning more of the country. And I finally got a GPS and we came up to It's interesting because it's a state section aground, but the new lease on that state section was the first person to fence it, and the fence was ended up taking about a quarter mile of my buddy's private property. Like you could stand on the corner post and you're like, man, this,
I'm like, hey, you look at this. I mean, look how far the fence is on to your place right on me're like GPS plat map the whole nine yards right because I was like doing my homework driving around with him, and he goes, huh. He goes, well, Ryan can on the whole damn world. And just like away we went and nothing was said. You know, it's like, well can the can on at all? You know, it's just like, oh my.
God, Krinda's deleted on me the thing that I'm most dying to talk about, but we're short on time. Well, no, let me just hit it real quick, because this is the most interesting you want to talk about legal wrinkles. It's the weirdest thing when you go for if to say went out, there's never went and bought a gun. When you go buy a gun from an f FL a federal Firearms licensee, you come in and do a question a questionnaire, ten questions, eleven questions, stuff such as
are there any restraining orders against you? Have you ever renounced your citizenship? Are you a fugitive from justice? Are you a felon? Are you addicted to drugs?
Okay, there's like child support questions on there or something.
I don't believe. I don't I can't think of a child support question.
There may there may be like are you owing?
I don't remember that? Not look him up? Well hunter Biden, dude, I'd never thought in a millionaires I would say that name in public because I like write, I don't like to go near politics that doesn't intersect with our areas of focus. However, he just intersected a thing that I'm interested in. He bought a gun in twenty eighteen, Okay, where a time when he has openly admitted he was
a crack addict. Soften. When he filled out his FFL form, he said that he's not addicted to drugs, but then clarified that he is addicted to drugs in his book, in his book which puts him that he lied on the FFL form. So now his many enemies are coming after him to be like, dude, you lied on the
gun control form. And his legal representatives are saying that if this becomes a legal exposure to him, he's gonna sue on behalf of his Second Amendment rights that a crack addict should certainly well be able to get a gun. Talk about like landing in a landing in a very unexpected spot, almost as almost as bewildering as I was when I saw it into that white oak and all that water came out, A lot of water came out of that tree. What was happening there?
Harlow tree? Uh huh, big cavity in the middle. A lot of times the pith, the heartwood, the tree will decompose over time. And you know that's important for all kinds of critters that use those cavities, and the space inside as habitat is foldable water and everything not to me, no, uh, And so you know stem flow water runs down through the you know, up lands on the canopy, runs down the branches and finds its way into that.
So you think it was it was rain water hiding in there. Yeah, filled up a hollow.
Why are just trying to push your buddy's buttons now, Steve.
Oh, you haven't done anything yet. He's gonna be this next one is not gonna rile them up. Okay, explain how why Like when you go look at a spruce tree, fir tree, okay, Christmas trees. Yeah, why are they shaped like a cone?
Yeah? There, it's uh, it's a story of dominance and control and uh.
This ties back to what I was just talking about transitions.
I'm listening. I'm listening now. It's uh, it really begins with that. And you know, the imperative of the tree to grow up towards what the sun right, and so there's it's like hormones that control that are activated in the in the top of the tree, the growing tip, the leader, right. Uh, there's a leader at the top on the spruce and firs in particular, they all have them.
But at the top and at the ends of each branch there is a bud that's enclosed next year's leaves and shoot growth that is controlled the opening and the extension of which is controlled by the Each of those leaders exerts control over all the other buds below and behind it. And so the leader at the top of the tree is exerting control over the ones just below.
You look at the leader growth this u this summer on any of these trees, and you'll note an incredible pattern is that the top has that that noble length with the shoot length is longer on the top than it is on any of the subordinate branches. And that's because the leader is saying, I'm the leader, and I'm going up, and it exerts this hormonal control over the It sort of regulates the growth of the others to keep them from growing out sideways and trying to get
up above it. Right, So it's it's this.
But it's competing against its own self. Yeah, you can see it competing like it is, right, it's an organism. It's like a single individual. Sure you can see it competing against its neighbors time, but just a weird way to express at the top of the tree. But I guess it's like an ordered exactly it's ordered because it would be for one of the other branches to get uppity would be damaging to the whole tree.
Right, because it's not really going in the right direction we need to get above. It's in fact, a way of ensuring or maximizing competitive edge over its neighbors is by making sure this the shoot, the leader is the leader and can really climb and get up above the competing plants around it, right, And so that's really what it is. It's just this pattern of control that, based on the way those conifer species are built, results in this sort of conical form. And then we can get
into well what good is that? And that's a fun question in all these tree questions, is like any given trait, why does people are Why is it this way? Why is it that way? Well do basic answers. One is it happened sort of a mutation genetically. It just sort of occurred, and there's no good reason for it to be eliminated through selection. It doesn't harm the tree though,
it sort of sticks around. The other answer is because it confers some advantage to the tree, right, And so in this case you're growing up and having this form, it's easy to imagine, well, where do these grow and montane environments heavy snow loads, and it's really good for shedding snow mm as opposed to that shape all out here bushy, and then you get branch breakage and snow loading. So it's it's a means.
That's a good point, man. They do slough snow real effectively.
Wicked.
Yeah, yeah, like when you get it, when you get like a June snowstorm, and all the deciduous trees are like snapping and limbs falling off from those things to shake it off.
And so you know, it sort of starts with this hormonal control as sort of a growth regulation in the shape, and we can all imagine it confers some ability in their environments to kind of outcompete others and and actually just survive. First of all. Yep, it's the first order of business.
I have a Colorado blue spruce that the top got busted out of it. It's chaos up there, exactly. And I've gotten up there and tried to tie a new dude in there to see if he could, Like, I tied him with a rope. See if you would like assume the dude it's chaos on the top of that tree I've given up on.
That was the next point would exactly that, And you've experien inst it is that when something does in pines is a a weavil that often goes for the terminal shoot the leader. That's what did it, and they it kills it, and then it's chaos. As you describe it.
They it looks like a crow, not a crowls. That's like on a sailboat. It looks like I mean like literally which is broom.
And so what we do, uh in that circumstance in your yard or Christmas tree growers do it all the time is you share. And so when you have one that the leader that's broken off, you can get up in there and and just trim back that chaos a little bit and choose one. That's what I've advised countless landowners is, Oh, you know, it's not the end of the world. You can just choose that next best one that turns the secondary branch that was not the leader, but who has done pretty well and seems to be
in a favorable position. Clip the other ones around it, take a third of their shoot elongation, clip it off, pruning chairs, and then that one that you left now has this advantage and it will what we call apical dominance and become the one the boss.
Shoot, it's a great name for the episode. Yeah, apical dominance. Look for that new podcast feed Nice Joe Seth, here's a forester.
We we discussed that already and I immediately knew I liked him for a reason. And now I know.
Why did he tell you about the tests he had to take? Tellim about the.
Test we had a I think it was it was it was dendro dendrology. The we had a twig test where yeah, like an I D test where they gave you a section of of twig from the leaves. Leaves are yeah, said for sockers, yead identify. I forget how many different species. Well it was a lot you had.
I thought you said, it's like seventy or something like that.
Yeah, it's something high like that. Yeah. Yeah, we had it just by the bud, just by the bud.
It's classic. We had our dendro final at the University of Vermont when I back in another century.
Uh.
It was one hundred uh samples and so it was mostly buds, twigs, leaf scars, fruits, you know, like all different kinds and uh it was sort of legendary as this like real ball busting exam but a lot of pride in in like smoking it and getting it for sure.
Yeah, yeah, I got a question for you. It's not in your book. How dumb are you if you say acorn?
I'm just for a friend.
Yeah, you know, I like, I gotta say, and I'm hip to this, I'm not. Well, I'm I'm from from I will just say that, Steve. I really like hearing people who sound like they're from someplace, you know what I mean, America And I can't even say it is it akorn? When I hear some yeah, some tree love and nuts say acorn, I'm like, all right, he's from somewhere.
I'm not.
That's all.
There's a I don't know if we have him on the website anymore. Of apparently there's some kind of patch or something with an acorn that says ache a e R n acren.
I think just that that well, I think Paul Lewis made clay some of those patches.
Uh, speaking of acorns, you know, my friend and I said, it's gonna be like fact checking everything you say. Yeah, me and him had a bet one time man, and I can't remember the details of the bet. I remember I won it. It's gonna get into a question that you had. There are a question you deal in woods wise, but how many pounds? What's the most pounds of acorns that an oak tree might throw off?
Yeah, I don't know in a given amount of time, Like.
I think Bubbly Dog might have said something like hundreds of pounds, and I was like, that can't be true. I can't remember the details of the bet.
I don't know that that's crazy. I'm mean, it's you've walked around out there in a big year. It's like marbles underfoot, you know, you know it beg a lot of branches, a lot of leaves they put them out, Uh, one tree, I mean hundreds of pounds seems maybe it's a little steep.
That that probably was that. I'm sure that wasn't what it was, But I just didn't know if you if you happened and.
I could, I could that's actually find a bowl, I'm sure, yeah.
And acorns are nothing when like that's like a piddly ass little fruit compared to like a horse chestnut or black walnut. And you like there's some trees out there that produce some hefty, hefty fruits.
That'd be an interesting you know, like, how is it caribou that have the highest ratio of horn weight per body antler weight per body weight maybe or something like that. It'd be interesting. The what tree? Damn apple tree?
Maybe citrus high weight, perinean highest weight per weight you know.
Racial. But here's what okay, So on the acorn subject, you're going acorn? Oh, yeah, big time, now that he knows it's not stupid. Does the bumper crop of acorns predict a harsh winter? That's the thing I've heard my whole life. Of course, you have the trees made a lot of acorns. The thinking goes, trees produce a lot
of acorns this year. Uh, they're and the logic is they're very nice, they're very kind, and they are wanting to help their animal brethren get through this severe knowing it's going to be such a bad winter and all the animals are going to be hard up. They have magnanimously thrown off a hellacious crop of acorns.
Right, it's like the amount of black and a holy bugger?
Right?
Did you ever hear that?
On though?
Like a wooly bugger back east, like it's brown and black, and sometimes you see something that have a little bit of brown something.
I've seen them all black before.
And what's that.
I've heard that the more black on the wooly bugger, the harsher the winter is going to be.
And there's that the animals have a particularly thick fur this fall. It's gonna be a hellacious winner.
Yeah. Yeah, So like those subjects you don't like to go near, this is these ky who am I to interrupt generations of folklore? You know that you know it's coming from a good place, But no, they're wrong. It's uh. In the case of masting, this sort of synchronous bulk production of seed or fruits within a species across quite
a range. Explain synchronous all at the same time one year, where all the trees are are the oak trees in a given valley or whatever are all putting out a lot of acorns every year that year, so in synchrony with each other. Right, So that's masting in general. So this idea is that when that happens, it's any production of fruit really is more a reflection of past environmental conditions in particular and energetic conditions of the tree. It's
sort of status health status. It's way more about what it has experienced in the last few years than what it is thinking the next year is going to be. So it's more a prediction of what has happened than a reflection of what has happened than a prediction of what is about to happen. It's not a good predictor of the future. It's telling you that did pretty well the last couple of years growing seasons in terms of moisture,
nutrient uptake, solar gain. It takes a lot of energy to produce all of those fruits, and it's at the expense of root growth, diameter growth, shoot growth, height growth, right, But it's the biological imperative past those genes on and so they're built to do this. And what's really cool when you look across a range of species over a long march of time and geeky for scientists kind of tracking and then hypothesizing and testing, is what has emerged
is this predator. It's a seed predator satiation hypothesis. That is, it's a strategy, a reproductive strategy to bulk up your energy story, your energy reserves and then put out a bunch of acorns in this case this year, everybody doing it kind of together to overwhelm all the seed predators think squirrels.
Are you familiar with the term predator swamping? And with birds and animals, I mean like when you get these huge aggregations of nesting birds for it, like geese, like snow geese in the Arctic, huge aggregations synchronized egg laying, and they're getting hammered by predators. But it happens so fast that even with all the Arctic foxes, all the red foxes, everything, eating all those eggs, they can't get
to them all in time. This is the same thing had you spread it out over the whole summer, they probably would have gotten every last one. But also it's like wham, we're gonna lose fifty fifty percent. They won't get to exactly, and then those ones will be able to fly by the time they get to them, you.
Know, very similar. I think sort of idea here is that, yeah, in those big years you put out so many that some acorns are going to become oak trees, you know, they just and then the lean years where you don't put it out, that's actually keeping those squirrel populations somewhat in check. It's limiting them by by limiting their availability of food resources, right, So it's kind of both. And the idea is somebody gets a little wacky and start
an oak tree, starts putting out in an off year. Well, they're going to lose all their acorns because the predators are kind of hungry for it. Right, So it's the same idea of like doing it at the same time and doing it over every few years instead of every year to build. So it's also allows you to then kind of rebuild your reserves, your energy and nutrient reserves so as to be able to make flowers and then fruits in the case of acorns, make sense.
Yeah, you were pointing out in your book, you're pointing out an interesting thing as well, that a lot of oak trees are the same age, same same birth date because that system is effective. Like that, meaning on these years where they got like a piss poor amount of acorns, they're just getting eaten because there's not that many around and there's so many animals that they're going to find them.
But then on those bumper crop years, you find that when you go into a stand, right, you'll find that those bumper crop years being actually reflected in any generation in recruitment, meaning like whatever twenty twenty two had a big bumper crop, you might find that down the road when you like age a bunch of trees, you age them back to that that that worked, like that big year was a made oak trees.
Sort of cost benefit analysis, if you will. I mean, we're dangerously close to wild anthropomorphisms here all over the place, but it's helpful for the conversation, you know, to think of it this way. Yeah, and it stands to reason.
And you brought up a thing that I've tried to explain in the past. Stephen Gould, Stephen J. Stephen J. Gould, He'd like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna butcher this this thought.
He had such great stuff.
But he was like, we're always looking at when we look at nature, we're always saying, well, why is that that way?
Right?
And nowadays, like at a time you would have looked and everything would have you know, everything would have been explained as something divine or hidden. Right. And then we fell in love with rational thought, and and and how we defined scientific rational thought. We fell in love with with natural selection evolution, and so we came this idea that, like everything you see must be advantageous exactly Okay, So why is that tree's bark grayish brown? What is the
advantage of its bark being grayish brown? And Stephen J. Goolle, I can't remember why he wrote this, is he was saying, maybe just because exactly me, maybe really thick bark is advantageous to that tree because it's fire resistant. And for whatever reason that really thick bark is grayish brown. It doesn't hurt the tree, doesn't help the tree. It's just gray as brown. There's no why. And I think a lot of times we like to say animals do this.
Because, yeah, what's its job.
Yeah, they like to do that because and I'm like, I agree that they sure seem to like to do that. The because part man, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
It's rampants, they say. And you know, God bless some forestry students, natural history students. They were asking these questions, why why why is it doing this? And it's really I've found that it really bums people out when I say there may not be a good reason. The reason may be that there's no reason for it to go away. However it emerged genetic mutation or what have you. It's here now. It's not conferring an advantage. It's just not
a disadvantage. There's no selection pressure against it to remove it from the population, so it kind of perpetuates.
A salmon's egg might just be orange, yeah, exactly, And if they were blue, there might be just as many salmon. Yeah, there might be just as many salmon around or not.
And that gets fun too, just like what's going on here.
That's why I'm always advocated for parallel universes in which we could run one with blue salmon eggs, one run with orange salmon eggs, and check in with each other now and then and see, like, you know, no one's taken me up on this.
I have a feeling that when when you're doing research, if you were doing field science and research, you know, I have your control group, you know you don't. I have a strong feeling that you'd always want to be in the out of control group.
Mm m sure, Yeah, to keep an eye on that one. Yeah, Uh, here's the one you had in your book that we've talked about one hundred times. In context of property taxes, does a hilly acre contain more land than a flat one.
I've always wondered this, like if you own deeply in sized like like a certain however, we define an acre of land okay, and it's deeply in sized or it's mountainous like that person is getting a screaming deal on property taxes over the guy that owns the flat land because the person with the super steep ground has to own more square footage of surface area. The then the person in western Kansas paying taxes on acre ground.
You got it.
I mean it's like, how wildly off can it be? Like how much square footage of land can you own that's still being called an acre?
Well, funny you asked, because I did push the pencil around a.
Little biting significant if.
On a large enough area, yes, but in most ownership sort of size ranges, yeah, it's some but not huge. So the deal is, you're right, the thinking is sound. With all this hilly terrain, there's more surface area and you nailed that, but.
Really explain what an acre is to.
So an acre by definition is forty three, five hundred and sixty square feet.
Of that number was drilled into my head.
Oh yeah, it's.
Over and over and over.
It explains where it came four three six, It's like it's there, yeah, never leave.
Yeah, So originally I mean so that's a two dimensional that right, And this comes back we'll get back to the question. That's that's the issue. It's a two dimensional measure. Uh, an acre it's square be two hundred and eight point seven feet on a side, it's forty three thousand, five hundred and sixty square feet. And that, as I understand, came originally from a furrow, which became a furlong, which became the acre. So this will all be all started
from the length. The distance an oxen could plow before needing a break was the length, and then yeah, you gotta love it, right, and then that turned into a team in a certain period of time, that was the acre.
Do you think an oxen standard existed somewhere like, oh, that is measured off of that oxen? Yeah right, that we keep here.
Badass oxen. I'm doing way more than that, right.
Like I've all four measured the ground, but who's picking the ox.
Excellent point. So with that prehistory there, an acre is a fixed square footage of area. And where it comes back to this question of hilly acre have more land than a flat acre is well of a hilly acre has more surface area. And that's what you said, Steve, and that's right. But real estate back to the corner crossing, I don't know if we're allowed to go back there. But these these lots are laid out not on surface area but as horizontal distance sort of floating above the ground.
This is known as plane surveying p L A n E. It's a plane. And so the concept is the acre is like sort of hovering above the ground in this two dimensional thing. Now, so if you go out and measure from one corner pin to another, down a steep into a canyon or whatever, pulling a tape to measure the distance that that slope distance, the ground distance would be more simple geometry then the horizontal distance vating above those two points. And so by convention, that's all by
convention it has. That's surveying is based on plane surveying. Now there is at large, like big ass scales they're surveying that takes into account the curvature of the earth there is. Yeah, but that's not how property is measured and transacted, right, But that's a whole other kind of surveying.
So in the best case scenario, you might have a one point what acres of surface area per you.
Know, maybe zero point one point five you might get on this sort of garden variety. So people are getting a real scream a real screaming deal. But the bigger it gets, the steeper, the more of these folds that you have, Yeah, I mean you take takes a lot more to cover it if you are covering the surface.
And that does translate and a touch on this in the book to growing conditions, opportunity sites for trees to exist, you know, on the slopes, and probably more important though where productivity of trees, timber, acorns deer because of their relationship with those trees and the fruits. It's more it's it's probably more about aspect the direction that slope faces where you we'll have a greater influence on what's growing
there or the habitat conditions there. But anyway, the big version here is that the hilly acre has more surface area, but not more acres because acres are measured. As this plane hovering above about acorns.
I still do a whole lot of looking out the airplane window every time I fly, and I honestly think about this a lot. Like us folks love to talk about like the grandeur of the landscape, right, and you're looking at all this amazing stuff, but you know, damn good and well there's somebody who's like, yeah, but wouldn't it just be nice if it was all flat?
Oh?
Right? So we really knew how much we had and how who owned what? Right, Like it just just make either.
When I see people.
When I see someone building the big like a new, big mansion on a steep hill, I'm al was like, yeah, he's got no flag ground that he was gonna put a garden, no tillable. Here's one of the answer really surprised me. I'm gonna spoil it by giving the answer. It's your show and then you do what you want with it. What did New England's forests look like prior to European settlement? When I dug into that one in the book, I was prepared to be depressed and was
shocked to see that. You're like, you're The answer was probably about like they do now, there's some differences, but no, yeah, I was for some reason that I was like, uh, I felt good about it.
Well, because the question is very specific to the forests, not the landscape, right, like like now we have less forest, yeah, sure, more egotoriums. Right. Uh So the forests though in sort of the composition structure, a species composition, the arrangement of the trees, that is surprisingly I would agree with you, evidently because remember nobody really remembers, uh, surprisingly similar in
terms of species composition, with some changes, with some notable exceptions. Uh, in the northeast, we have more aspen, more cherry, more birch, and more red maple than it was believed to be the case per your European contact. Okay, so the expense of what those what do they all have in common? They're more early successional sort of, they have poor shade tolerance. That these are fast growing pioneer type species you know,
live fast, die young. So at the expense of the other the late successional, the hemlock, sugar maple, beach, that yellow birch that live hundreds of years. So we we've so the records indicate oak has, particularly in southern New England, has gone down in preponderance. You know. To me, the interesting thing about all that work is it's I guess it's surprising you would thought, oh, man, radically different.
Oh yeah, I thought it'd be like, oh, beech trees that were twenty feet across at the stone.
Well, so so there's two things. One is the other piece is that the species mix that largely looks very much the same evidently is one. But I think it's really important to quickly move to.
That.
But the forest is very different. There are fewer lunkers, big ass giant trees, big old trees. There's way fewer down dead trees in a variety of sizes. Of course, woody material that we know now is plays this really important habitat and nutrients, cycling and water roll. Way less of that now than in the presettlement force.
So when I said I was going to answer the question, I didn't do a very good job of answering it. Okay, well no, when I felt like you said, like, but like it would now yeah, so in species you got to cat Well.
It's just that what do we mean by different? So the species mix is surprisingly similar, you were right about, And that's where you were going. I'm saying, there's more to a forest than the names of the trees out there. It's what sizes what ages, what physical spacing and arrangement there were, So old forests, which those primarily were, are exceedingly rare everywhere now, particularly in the northeast. One percent of the landscape is in what we would call actually
old forest. Yeah, and so old forests are more than just the species that are there. It's it's so in other words, the species haven't changed all that much, with some notable exceptions. It's the composition, what we call the structure, the three dimensionality of the forest has changed a lot, a lot. And also I think there's reason to think that.
I mean, these woods have been worked hard, right, they were cut repeatedly, and then they were it was sheep pasture, then it was cows, and so there's been an export of wool, milk wood, and let's not forget soil from these places, you know, over a few centuries. So they're much depleted. And I think it stands to reason that they're probably not they're different in other ways that maybe we're not able to see quite yet in terms of their what other organisms have gone missing, right that we
don't pay attention to, not the charismatic megafauna. Right, they're largely the same with some we had elk, they're not there anymore. I mean, there's some big differences, but this makes sense like they're.
Sort of like is it a fecundity type of question?
Well, I'm sure the basic productivity of the sites I shouldn't say. I'm sure. I suspect strongly with reason that they're much depleted. The other piece I would think i'd say about this piece is that really floored me and I thought was really fun was how do I know this?
Well?
I know it from some published papers peer reviewed. How did they know it? This description of the change from the presettlement forest today? As I start the thing with
kind of a wise ass remark, well nobody remembers. But fortunately the surveyors that were laying out the King's lots and original kind of doing doing these surveying in the north, in the northeast where they first landed, those first woodsmen going through the woods and surveying and laying out lots, and they were making notes of witness trees right on
every corner, what are the trees around this? And so these researchers went and poured over, you know, hundreds and thousands of these old surveyor records and then kind of you know, kind of summarized and computerized them and kind of analyzed them. And that's the basis of this, Like what's the the occurrence of species then versus now? And that that's it. I just find that to be a really cool little bit of science to somebody where kind of creatively found a way to get at an answer.
Maybe like accidental accidental citizen science.
Yeah, really cool and right that these guys then cultivated and sort of un earth and sort of an archaeological kind of approach to those records and then rebuilt a picture of the species mix, but not the the as I say that, the structure and other forms of composition of the forest that are really important.
Uh.
Me and me and my colleague doctor Randall, we're discussing something like this recently where we're working on it.
Sounds so official when you put it in those terms.
We've made up a song about him. It's like what good is being a doctor when you can't prescribe no drug? It's like, how could there actually be a doctor of history. I gotta work on the tune, the melody, the melody and the lyrics is suffering. But doctor Randall, now we're observing. We're working on these audio We're working on these audio
books about long hunters and mountain men. Okay, and rather than focusing on all the geopolitics and world events and stuff, focusing very heavily on the day to day nuts and bolts of how they did what they did. Maining. We know that Daniel Boone spent most of his career hunting deer hides. Okay, how how did he hunt deer? When he got up to a dead deer, what did he do? How did he prepare the hides for the market? How were they handled in camp? Why didn't they all rot
when it rained? Who did he sell them to and where? And for how much? Who wanted that leather in for what purpose? Okay? So many of these questions are exceedingly difficult to find out. Other things that chroniclers of the time were fixated on are of low relevance to us, Meaning how an area was watered and what grew on it was of great importance to chroniclers. I went to the head of this creek. It was well watered here, here, here, and here with springs. There was a salt source here.
This is what the timber array looked like. Uh, why in the hell would I write down how he skins deer? Who cares you skin deer? Like? You skin deer like?
No?
Like like write down what we ate? Whoever want to know that? What they want to know is is it well watered? And how right? And it's like it's in that way. And again there was always like the blazing of tree. It was they were going about what they were doing for money, and they were two steps ahead
to describing land for other people. And I bring that up only because one it's a frustration that we're dealing with, and two, like those people did in New England, that might be an interesting that might be an interesting thing for for forresters trying to understand that middle ground that area of like Kentucky at that time. Because their descriptions do not conform at all to what the amount of American cane, right, Yeah, the amount of time they spend
hiding in, living in, storing things in hollow trees. It's like, go find me some hollow trees now that a couple guys are going to sleep in. It's like what are they even talking about?
Right?
That stuff is just not He Boon lost one of his hunting buddies who got wounded hit by a musket ball and was high benchal blood to death in there, but went and hid himself in a hollow tree, gun and everything. It's like, where the hell's that tree?
Yeah, few and far out there anymore.
But in reading this stuff, it seems like it was like every time you turn around, there's a hollow tree big enough for you and your Boddy to like acts a hole into encamp in.
Yep, yeah, no doubt. And that to me it raised a really important point that like these old forests that I would suggest are like that the best the best expression of a forest like it is, that's what they're supposed to be, right, So you look at those as the archetype of what a forest can be is like these old forests. A real common misconception is that it was this open. It's just this unbroken expanse of bomber trees, you know, huge trees from from Maine to Missouri, that
whole bit. Now, even in these old forests, the evidence indicates and stands to reason that there's trees are under
all kinds of daily, seasonal, yearly, long term assault. Right their branches break, there's insect outbreaks, wind, throw, ice, ice, storms, fire, and they occur and various return cycles and in various intensities, and that results over the long time in this kind of mixed mosaic of so you have even in these The point is, even in big, old, awesome, perfect if you will, old forests, there's baby trees, they're little trees.
There's broken trees, there's ugly trees, there's patches of open there's wetland complaice beaver associated areas that with early successional habitats, that the matrix, if you will, was big bomber trees, old and long lasting, but interrupted here and there with all every conceivable stage of growth and type. Right, So that's what makes them powerful is they have all these different substrates, all these different surfaces, all these different possibilities
for everything else associated to make a living. And that's what's really lacking now almost everywhere, you know, is.
There an oh, sorry, is there an age an age kind of definition for the cutoff of you know, old of old.
Yeah, growth, it depends by species. So like in the northeast, so eastern hemlock will go for maybe five hundred years, balsam fur not so much. You know, so an old balsam fir stand might be, you know, one hundred and fifty be wicked old for a bunch of balsam fur, but mid adolescents laid adolescents for hemlock stand, if you will, right, And so we define it less. I think ecologists define it less by just age and more by age and
other evidence of having escaped human disturbance. Stumps, fences, you know, barbed wire, buried in trees, stone piles, all of it. Right, So we have a definition for our tax abatement program for forest landowners that you can qualify for you know, sort of different treatment, different management requirements for old forest if you can demonstrate yes and you meet this certain threshold of age for the appropriate to the forest type.
But you also have to show that is not just a couple of big old trees that just escaped harvest or other disturbance, but that there's been no human disturbance for that long period of time. And then you look for other things like the presence of down trees in all diameter classes, not just little twigs on the ground, but big trees, you know, in various stages of decay.
So you know it's all the parts and pieces that are considered when and I think most I think it's fair to say that's the a conventional approach to kind of defining or creating a threshold for what is or isn't an old forest.
Had a couple real interesting days of hiking in northwest Montana here last week, and it was really gorgeous. But it all changed for me once I kind of realized what was happening is I was looking for this roost tree, like I knew these turkeys were in this area, and you know, typically a lot of landscapes is not that hard, like if you have a general area where the gobbles are coming from early in the morning.
Oh to be like, yeah, I bet they're hanging out on that tree.
Exactly like that one right. Well, because all of a sudden, I'm looking through this new lens, I started looking around this forest that was previously like very pretty and pleasant, and I'm like, there is not a tree here that is a different age class. Every single tree, you know, it was like the same. And it just it just like totally changed my experience because of that. Yeah, because it was just like it whoever was doing the forest try in that area, Like I mean, it was amazing,
It was beautiful, it was wonderful. But there was no mistaking that everything had been touched by the hand of man, right.
I was just like, oh, yeah.
I am in like a city park almost, you know what I mean?
Yeah, it was just big silver culture. Yes, let's get to the one everybody here wants to talk about. What's the difference between sat wood and heartwood.
I can't go anywhere without people asking me that one. Steve, Uh, it's all wood.
And you're gonna tie this into making light lighter material?
Sure, okay, Uh, sat you know what I'm talking about, pine knots and whatnot.
Is that tie into this or not?
No? Not? Those are nots u and all like.
The stuff that's got all the resident What the hell were Yeah?
You had?
Yeah, fat fat wood.
I want to do satwood, heartwood.
And Okay, so sapwood.
Let's start with fat wood story where it makes most.
Okay, we started with heartwood and sapwood. So I go there. And heartwood is is the wood in the inside of the tree, the oldest all of the oldest, the oldest wood within a tree. And the sapwood is the outermost ring of wood inside the bark. So we got to go anatomy one oh one here, and you've got xylum is the word that's just it's just a fancy name for wood. And you know, the cambium is this thin layer, a veil of living cells really near the just under
the bark that divides and multiplies. It's it's really where tree growth happens. In diameter shoot growth is different. That's that apical bud that's extending the length of the tree. But diameter growth of the stem and the twigs that all comes from the cambium producing woods cells to the inside of itself and bark cells to the outside of itself. Go ya okay, And so as the tree and think of.
The action is all happening at that layer, at.
That layer exactly, and every year the tree puts on a layer. And you best way I think to think about this is like highway pylons, you know, traffic cones, like you stack them on top of each other. That's how the cone of growth is formed on a tree as well. So that why when you imagine cutting stacking up ten twelve highway cones on each other and then sawing through it transversely, you know, horizonally through. What would you have countain rings? You'd have rings. And that's how
it works with trees. They lay down a layer of growth every year, and it's wood on the inside, bark on the outside. Well wait a minute, wait, how come there isn't this whole chunk of bark out there? Right? You got wood adding on every year. The quick answer there is that the bark sluffs off, it's exposed, and it it you know, So you have this relatively relatively thin layer of bark on the outside even though it's been created, just like the wood gets created on the inside people usually.
So, yeah, so let's say you're talking about a four hundred year old tree. Yeah, okay, the oldest part presumably is like down at the bottom of the tree, dead center. Yes, okay, that's the oldest part, right, So on a four hundred year old tree, how old do you think.
The bark is? That's you know, the bark that's there is only it depends on species and where so it will range. But it's way less than four hundred huh right, way like like more like tens I would think. Yeah, so you got wood on the inside, bark on the outside, and then the wood on the inside keeps adding, and so the innermost portion, which is the pith, the first formed wood on the center of the tree that usually
gets crushed and kind of dissolves or whatever. The rest of those wood layers, they just become kind of their structural It's like it's the structure for the photosynthetic apparatus up top.
They're live in some way. They're not like hair, like human hair.
This is what's great. Most of a tree is dead, really, yeah, so including most of the.
Wood, nothing's going on in there.
Now I didn't say that it's but it's it's dead. And so that's that heartwood, which is the dead wood on the inside, is still a place where the growing points on the outside they send through. So if you if you look at a stump, sometimes you can see like a like spokes almost like they're called rays, and those are they allow this transport of stuff from the near the bark side of the tree to the center. That's kind of like the dumping ground for waste products.
And that's why in your walnut you're speaking of earlier, the prized wood is the dark wood, right, that's a product of phenols, terpenes, other kind of secondary compounds and products, chemicals that get sort of sent there and they discolor the wood. They place some t microbial kind of role, I think anti fungal roll, but they they discolor the wood. And and that's why the value in black walnut is all heartwood, because it has this thin band of relatively white,
light colored wood around the outside. That's the most recently laid down, last few years worth of wood. That's still most of the cells there are dead, but there have some live cells within them, and that's the plumbing system, the vascular system of the tree that pumps water from and nutrients from the from the ground up and takes carbohydrates formed by the leaves and sends it to the
roots and storage and through the stamato growing points. So that's mostly all happening just inside the bark, just inside the cambium, those the last several years, and it varies widely by species, so I'm generalizing, but it's the last it's the most recent wood near the outside of the tree, but still on the inside of the cambium that is sapwood, and it tends to be light colored, and where all this translocation is going on, and it's the center wood
is the heartwood, which is kind of mostly structural. It's just allowing. It's like the telephone poll on which all the living cells just continue to elevate and try to access sunlight and outcompete their neighbors. It has some other stuff going on, as I mentioned, the storage, the discoloration, et cetera. So that's heartwood on the inside, sapwood on the outside of the inside, and then cambium and then bark outside that fat wood is it's not I should
just you know, this is a Southern thing. Not my expertise, but my understanding is this is from softwoods, Southern yellow pines, pitch pine, lob lolly shortly, if I think, in particular, which are very big on resins, and in soft woods that's often inside that you know, in these these rays and other places where you have resin ducts that are kind of used to stop infection, keep insects at bay, et cetera, you have these deposits of that stuff which
is really combustible, and so you split that kind of softwood, those those those pines that have that are high in those pitch compounds and they become just great kindling. It's dry and it has this extra flammable stuff in it.
Where'd you get that big ol'pile that you had.
I was suspecting it was from a fur. Well, just gives the shape of the base.
So it's interesting about fur. Now, Doug fur is not a true fur. So if it was Douglas in my world, Doug fur is a fury because yeah, right, so it's called pseudo suga menziesia I is the Latin name because it's it's a it's that would be false. Yeah, well there's we could do a whole podcast on really fun names. Latin names they often mean something, right, But anyway, No, Douglas fur is not a true fur. It's not a fur. It's just that's why it's Douglas dash fur. It's a well,
it's a false hemlock. It's uh, it's in its own kind of category. And so but all of those so it would have resins in pitch, whereas what do you have white fur, white bark? What's the white white fur?
White?
That's a pine. So the furs you have like you you have pines. Yeah, those wouldn't have the stuff. They're just owing to the peculiarities of of true fur wood.
And then uh, where's where's like Tamarak fall.
Another awesome species. Uh, and uh Western larch hyeah another name, it's its own genus. And uh, you know we have an Eastern tamarack, Eastern larch, there's Japanese larch. They're commonly planted, but they all have they're different because they're they're built differently, and they largely the exonomic differentiations based on reproductive parts, and they differ, but does also to translate they bring along other anatomical and physiological differences as well, so they're
all kind of different in there grouped. So spruces are different from pines, are different from furs, are different from false furs are different from larches and tamaracks, and the way they it's usually it's for those to tell them apart by the cones that's and then you go from there to other characteristics that we kind of correlate with those differences too, so they all translate into different wood properties that end up being different for structural use, for
for visual appeal, and for these ecological differences.
For this fat would high of us that we're talking about, because you can light anything on fire with it, right, it's crazy, crazy, flammable. In my experience, it is a tree. Not that I've been around for this entire story, mind you, but it's what I've what I've put together from what I've discovered on the ground, right, is it's a tree that stood for a long time, dead, dead standing tree.
All that resin has migrated down and super condensed at the base at the base, and then eventually that tree tips over and then those shards are super easy to harvest in sometimes very large chunks. But they are very, very dance, super heavy, right, And that's that's like if they're it's almost fossilized, like to me, like the really good stuff is it's got almost like a plastic sheen to it. Yes, very dance, very heavy.
Yes, you should ask him, Calves all over this? Did I mention I don't know a lot about this?
You did a little bit, Yeah, because you put it to another people, you put it to the acre and people.
Yeah, exactly. But I and I don't mean to suggest that it doesn't exist in your western conifers. And it sounds like you've experienced that here, cal And that's that's all stands to reason to me, And I can't refute it.
My my identification is piss poor like western large.
No problem, right, yeah, you probably you've probably got.
Cedars, yeah, no problem. Yeah, but I gotta get I gotta get better, gotta spend more time with seth.
We can, we can help you with that. Yeah, it's knowable and it's good to know those difference, yes, yeah, for sure, quick side you know. And back in dendro uh, dendrology study of trees. The naming thing, it's kind of basic in a forestry course of study. Right. I was lucky to have a couple of really great professors. Uh. One of them hinto thing. It stuck with me forever. He said, when we go out and lab you know, you do with the lectures, but then you go out
and you look at stuff. And he'd said, the last thing I'm going to tell you about this tree is what its name is. I'm going to tell you what it's doing here, how it got here, what it relates to everything else around it, the critters, et cetera. Because you know, that's what matters. And then we give it a name, and that's the handle and the way we
speak about it. And I think that was a really important lesson for me and countless others, it's like, this is why I've said similarly, we like to say that, you know, we talk about forest ecology and people kind of well immediately start to get nervous, like that sounds hard or that's going to hurt. I think it's really helpful to think of forests more as a verb than a noun, like forest is like not forested or foresting, but like a forest because it's it's they're just defined
by function and we're really connected to it. Even though we've lost that connection in a big way, which is a whole other topic. Maybe we can get to it, but I think it's really helpful to start with what are they doing? And that's what you're all about. You're noticing that out there, and you're probably more tuned into that than the names. You're like, oh, I'm bad at that.
But my guess is because of what you do and your passion for spending time out there, you've got all kinds of knowledge about function that you don't even know about that you're just putting together. And that's what's really cool. I think about the woods, there's a lot of that going on.
Yeah, what's eating that?
Yeah?
Exactly, what's whatever?
Reason something likes to sleep there.
Yeah, what sort of dude with the musket is camped out inside there? But I just I offer that as kind of a helpful kind of premises. Think about them more as functional and connected. And when we the more and better we do that, the more and better pretty much everything else will be about our relationship with for us.
Oh, it's so yeah, you're you're so spot on, because like you know, I can run through like a field of wild flowers and name a handful, but when whoever I'm hiking with, when I'm like and that's larkspur poisonous to cattle, They're like, holy shit, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
You remember how we had that conversation about how some stuff just is. Yeah, right, I think that maybe Ghoul or one of those guys even called with that just stuff that is it seems like paper birches being white maybe isn't just is?
You're right, what's with that? I mean, they so stand out and everything's kind of green and brown, and then they're there, they are being all super white, and uh, where do they get off? Yeah? So, uh, the thinking here is that this one may maybe just no reason for it to go away.
But there's a compelling case.
There's a really compelling case that has been made that this is about where they live. Think about paper birch. It's transcontinental, it's circumpolar. It's one of those tree species that exists all around the North Country.
Yeah, there's a band of latitudes, and no matter where you go on the planet, at that band of latitudes, you'll find that tree.
Yes, and that latitude tends to be what in a general way.
Around the fifties, well cold, Okay.
Let's about the latitude, but the condition's there, right and uh, And so the short answer here is it's been positive that that. And it's true for other associates. You caught your asss here at higher elevations. They're kind of light barked, too, thin and light barked. Is uh suggested to be a mechanism to reflect solar radiation? Why would a tree ever want to push away? You say, it's thin and white, and this is to keep them from heating up in winter with solar radiation.
It's like the opposite of what you think, right, But you.
Know, I was just recently saw a piece of a black piece of paper on a wall and a white piece of paper next to it and said, you know, on a sunny day, go ahead and touch it. And you put your hand on the black, it's hot. Put your hand on the white, it's cool. And so like it really makes a difference. Why does this matter to the paper birch tree? Uh? In the winter in those cold climates, you don't want to they have there's green living cells tissue underneath that bark, and they're ready to
rip if if the conditions are right. You don't want to warm up and then be like, oh, let's let's start some cellular activity here and then have right and then have a cloud move over and then it's back
to you know, fifteen degrees and those cells die. So this is presumed to have evolved as a mechanism to allow them to live in these super cold environments and not turn on growth when it gets a little warm on the stem because the sun is hitting it for a while, which happens, so it's reflecting away that incoming solar radiation in the winter to avoid that damage that would ensue if they tried to get going.
And what backs it up is you look at other northern deciduous trees and you start seeing that yeah, like they all get a little lighter.
Yeah, they tend to exactly like.
You get alders that have You get alders that are like not quite as dark aspens a northerly tree not white, but definitely not dark.
Lighter exactly, whereas lower latitudes the propondence or trees have dark bark. Because maybe just the opposite. It's kind of good to get to stay warm when it's kind of cool out. You can heat it, you can warm up and you know, optimize your sort of metabolism and other physiological activity in in one a cool day because you're you're actually able to absorb a little warmth more warmth from the sun.
Got one more for it, And I think Crane might have one. You know how old guns like you know, Clay was just Clay has got to see speaking acorns. Clay has got to see davy crockets, actual gun Betsy, Uh, what's that where some family owns it? Okay, you're talking about curly maple? Is curly and birds eye maple the same thing?
Or no? No, not not as I understand that it's very similar as this, you know, particular grain pattern in the wood of particularly maples, sugar maple, hard maple where you get this tiger curly. Uh, is this wavelike pattern in certain views of the wood. That's just you know, it's just cool. It's favored, it's highly prized, and.
It doesn't they'd like it for guns because it doesn't split.
It's dense. It's right, it's not uniform in the direction of the grain. It's not all like, and so that would make it much harder to split. It's like a burrel that's kind of like almost like cells growing out of control.
His references are genuine buck bowed and burl.
Exactly, uh, which is beautiful and uh, that's that's like.
He'll spot those from his airplane now and then nice, he'll spot a good one of them's airplane. You can go find it later.
But it's important for your listeners to know the bulls don't grow on those trees. The burls doing there. So uh, you know that's so that's this you know, atypical Uh, cellular division in growth atypical with particular respect to direction
of how it grows. And you get these funky growth patterns that are beautiful and they're really hard to split because it's kind of it's denser, probably, right, and so I write about here bird's eye, which is a particular type yet again of figure you might even say disfigure in maple wood.
That's not a kind of maple, Like it's not a kind of maple in any maple or no, it tends to be.
I think it's really limited to sugar maple. Let see, I don't know that I've ever seen or heard of it in a red maple or a silver maple. For But so it's this odd growth in terms of wood development, uh that it results in these little that little figures that look like bird's eyes. That's why it's called bird's eye. And when you have like a like a spray of
them across a surface, it's quite beautiful and striking. And there's legend about you know which trees have the bird's eye in it, because you know it commands a premium price. When you sell a tree, a log that has bird's eye, you're gonna pull that and put in a different pile. And you know you're gonna put your veneer sort, your bird's eye sort, your firewood sort, your regular so sort,
you know, and you're gonna market those differently. And this is the highest And there's little of it, so that accordingly there was this this this great you know, there's traditions of you know, I knew one landowner once he was convinced Canadians from Quebec were coming down marauding and stealing his his his uh with machetes were hacking away to look at the base of trees to look for evidence of bird's eye.
Canadians.
That's the Canadians, you know.
Yeah, yeah, it'll surprising one bit.
No, everybody knows a Canadian and a hand.
I mean, I don't think George was really accurate on that one. But you know, this is the kind of lure and the.
Things that that till tale hack mark.
I had one forester who helped me. We were looking and and he he's convinced that there's this like coke bottle, the old fashioned coke bottom coke bottle that at the bottom it's one diameter, but then it tapers and then it comes back up again. And then he would see that in certain sugar maple stems near the base and he'd say, oh, let's look at that, and he he has a correlation there, and yeah, and he's looking for
bird's eye. Yeah, and everyone's got their way of doing it, you know, and it's a really low percentage of the trees that have it. It is it's not really well understood why, but it basically comes from any kind of a ding in the tree that can it's an injury.
It could be could be a bird pack, it could be somebody getting crazy with their lawnmower, you know, whacking it, uh uh, or any number of things that go wrong out there that can in the young life of a tree can ding it and then that little the wound response that trees have can result in this in this particular case of like this this odd, gross pattern that then results in you know, ironically enough, highly valuable wood that was from damage.
When that when that term first caught my interest, I was reading something in the Great Lakes region about what was floated down a river and it named species of trees, but then included in the list was that they would float birds, eye maple down the river, and I thought it was peculiar that they were like grading it, right, And then someone took note of that that that specifically is what they're sending down the river, right, because it's no you know, maybe maybe it was what maybe that's
too dense to float, and they wouldn't send it down the river, but they were like sledging it out whatever the hell it was. It was like it was like white pine or whatever, white pine, oak, birds eye, maple, right, you.
Know, and that's to be you know, that's reflecting. It's its economic value. That's like way more than your garden variety saw timber.
I got a real broad question for it, and we can skip it if you don't want to tackle it. But do you have anything you want to say about fire? Like I'm just interested in regards like how we do with fire in the US right now, in regards to our forests.
Yeah, there's a lot here and I'm happy to speak to it. Recognizing as a caveat right, I'm from the northeast said to be the asbestos forest. I'll quickly point out that, like I think asbestos burns, it just burns at really particular conditions. So we have in from Moht we had like we have like four hundred acres of like wildfire a year, mostly brush burners getting out of control at the wrong time. Yere, it's after snow melt, before leaf out. So the point is we don't have
these days great incidents of wildland fire. We had a history of it. There's whole paper bird stands in the Green Mountains that were originated in the early nineteen hundreds with railroads and lack of spark arrestors and a different forest type without a lot of spruce slash on the ground and how they found it. So we have a history of fire, but it's really been very wet relatively speaking, and it's known as the asbestos force, whereas out here it's a big deal and it has been for some time.
And I think it was kind of well said that somebody I heard say, like smoky light a little bit, you know, like fire is a part of these ecosystems. There are certain species that what we call serotinous cones. They need the heat of fire to open as an adaptive strategy to shoot their seeds out and land in that seed bed that's been prepared by fire. You mentioned the thick bark, say a giant sequoia. It's fire adapted,
and so fire is part of the ecosystem. We've done an incredibly good job of eliminating it to the detriment of the ecological kind of functioning. And now we have monocultures and we have the clear cut and plant and keep fire out. And this is just a recipe for disaster and you're seeing it now and now it's exacerbated by climate change. Mountain pine bead and this is this perfect storm. And again I should say, you know, remember I'm from the Northeast. Uh, you know, I don't. I
don't live it. And there's a lot here, as you're all well aware, and it's very intense. But I think for me, I'm willing to say we have a problem in having excluded fire for so long that now we have a whole new approaches to fuels management, fuel load reduction that's going to require, you know, people getting involved and actually doing stuff and thinking differently about fire. We do use controlled burn prescribe fire in certain natural community
types in the Northeast because they've evolved with it. Pitch pine sandplane communities for example, need that fire. And we go out and set fires and it's really not popular with the neighbors, you know, with smoke and everything else is dangerous and it's really carefully controlled. So there needs to there's a role for fire naturally and now because everything's so unnatural over you know, decades, centuries really or
at least a century. We're we're in a position where we're vulnerable and it's kind of meeting up with these other forces climate change, drought, et cetera that are exacerbating it. And it means intervention is called for and new approaches to forest management that think differently about wildland fire. And now we have more and more people living in that urban wildland fire interface, right and you know, fire wise communities, like we've we've had to shift a lot of things
because of it. I don't know, there's there's a lot here. Oh yeah, and uh and I think it's easy to say, you know, kind of like we need more fire, but not if you live there. I mean, it's people's homes, livelihoods. It's it's a it's a hot mess really in a lot of ways. But even ecologically, I think there's a case it's made that we got to get this right, and we were a long way from being right there.
Now you ever feel bad for a tree sawing into it?
No, you know, honestly, And I'm really glad you asked, because all these things are balance and balance is a poor word. It's it's no balance when humans are involved. We have a incredible footprint on this planet. We ask a lot of these forests. And that's that's a big thing for me, is just that we are so disconnected generally as a as a culture from our daily consumption
of wood products. You know, we're really into things like the burrow bowl and that don't hurt tree, you know, but but we use an awful lot of woods, do I get? I will tell you that when I when I, you know, cut a tree and you put a saw into a tree, I think about it. I'm like, and when I'm out there with the paint gun marking trees for harvest, I'm like, really, what am I going to make this place better?
Really?
And then so I think the premise for me is forests don't need us, but we really need them. In the in the history of people, there's never been a time when people weren't utterly dependent on wood for shelter, fuel, tools. You know, where's the evidence that it's ever going to change. In fact, we're moving back to wood from plastics and all kinds of cellulostic applications that basically anything made from plastic was once or could be made from wood, which
is renewable if you do it right. It's not automatic. So we have to look at our just acknowledge our consumption of wood, and then we have to probably dial it back a little bit, and then we need to think about a new relationship with the land and how we obtain our wood and do it differently so that
it and I think it's really possible. And that's what really excites me and keeps me going is and to somewhat to some extent a proselytizer, I suppose about an ecological forestry that is available to us now, and that can that's honest in that it meets our needs. And so every article I've read, we discussed this a bit, Kren. They go on about, well we need trees and the biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis. It's all true, but
every one of them, I don't know that. I don't know that I've ever seen one that that that didn't stop short of saying, yeah, it's because of us, like we So I'm seeing documentaries that say it's because we're we're cutting these trees down and turning them into two by fours, and they stopped there, as if we're just doing that for a joy ride. We're putting them into two by fours because people are we need human habitat too, right, And so what's the deal here? We got to get
past this very convenient Uh. The answer trees are we've we've The pandemic showed us how important it is for people to get outside historic spikes in outdoor recreation. That's really good. It puts pressure on certain places, but it's really good. It also showed us that is the pandemic showed us this how vulnerable we are in this global
supply chain of wood products. In Vermont, in the immediate shutdown, forestry, logging and manufacturing wood products was not considered essential, and as Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner and I our phones were ringing off the hook for about a twenty four hour periocing, you gotta be kidney. We have hospitals that are heated with wood. A third of from our school
children go to schools heated by wood. All the Amazon packaging it comes from trees, man tongue depressors, it swabs, and all this medical supplies that were made from wood that were needed now in a big way in the pandemic. And yet we weren't be so two things, the pandemic for its shining a light on the importance of people
getting outside and connecting with nature. And it's shone a light on our vulnerability and our dependence on wood, and our vulnerability and a global supply chain that we don't control everything. That combined with climate change, which has put a bright light on the importance of forests as our last best hope at mitigating atmospheric CO two and conferring
enormous landscape resilience in a changing climate. You'd think that those two things putting all this new light, they'd be being like these forestry people were right all along.
We really give them more money.
Yeah, and you know, and now it didn't. In turn, what it turned out is we gotta stop logging upub I got sued as a commissioner I've personally named in a lawsuit saying we're illegally logging, which is just the science, the settled law of the land, and the you know, economic realities, don't they all say something different. But the reaction to these things is let's trees are good, let's leave them alone. And that's fine if you don't have any need for them. So I'm back to Forrest's met
forest don't need us, we need them. With one exception, forests do need us when we've commed them up significantly, invasive species, all the fire thing. So we do have to kind of get back in there. But generally it begins with and we need them. And until we confront that massive need and consumption, we're not gonna get anywhere in policy. And we need a culture that is of
the land from the land. And I feel like this is a real strong parallel with your conservation work and the mission at the Meat Eater for being realistic about food and about where it comes from and and honest league acquiring it and in a way that's you know, the North American model, and like it's a way of conservation and it's it's this is a very parallel story real Finally, I'll tell you what the Commissioner of Fishing Wildlife previously when I was there, he was getting a
lot of flak from Protect our Wildlife bills to you've written about them, anti trapping, anti hounding, a lot of anti hunting, fishing stuff going on right now in the Northeast, and he was saying, you know, we'd go out and co miserate and have dinner a beer or something, and he'd say, you know, it's over and I'm like, yeah, it's a drag man, it's over for you. And he's like, well, won't Joe, it'd be too comfortable. They're coming your way. And I was like, no, No, people get trees and
wood and we use it. And you know what, I think he was right. It's like it's like, it feels like it's kind of over, and maybe we just have to go this really dark period of disconnection from the land before things are going to really go bad, and then maybe someday we'll get hip to it and come back around.
I think that there's a there's a little bit of a mental trap into and I'm guilty of it too, where I'm comfortable looking at a piece of wildlife habitat. I'm going to use a tree analogy, which is going to confuse things, But I'm comfortable looking at a piece of wildlife habitat as an apple tree, an ache, an oak, okay. And when you kill a bear, kill a deer, you're picking up acorns, meaning you maintain the integrity of the tree.
The tree is going to continue to drop acorns. You can use these acorns in a measured way and the tree stays there. So it's the thing I try to explain to people often about why hunters spend so much time talking about the well being of habitat. Conservation minded individuals spend a lot of time talking about the well being of habitat, but they don't spend a lot of time talking about the well being of an individual deer. Right, the fewd is expendable, a product of the bigger thing.
But man, like I have a play that's it's old growth coastal rainforest. Okay, in my yard, so to speak, we have cedars that are what are they said, six seven feet I don't know, yeah, or diameters bigger. I'll shoot all of deer in the world, not all dew in the world, but at a measured pace, with giving them time to replace. I'd be comfortable with getting deer the rest of my life. I could not. I could not, And it's just me. I'm not condemning someone that does.
I personally would not be able to stick.
A song onto that tree, right, and I wouldn't.
I don't know why, Like I don't, but I don't know why it's like because that thing's been there since before the country was a country.
And that's it. That's the answer. And they're damn few of those, and especially in association with others in this functional unit, like that's special. And so, don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that we need to just mow down every acre hilly or fly. I get what I'm saying we need to have, but where you're going to need to meet it, and it's possible. There's this sort of triad model that's been put out there this years ago.
It's actually a professor of wildlife biology at the Universe Humane coined this idea of the triad approach to kind of land use. That there's intensively managed areas with maybe even clear cutting plant in his day, and then there's wildland reserves they need to be part of the mix.
And then the vast space in between is an ecological forestry that's you don't cut all those, maybe you don't cut any of those, and it's the site dependent and and it's about natural regeneration and retaining you know, the great Alder Leopold, he said, right, the first precaution of intelligent tinkering is to keep every cog and wheel. Doesn't mean keep all the trees, but keep all the representatives of the different types and like keep the function alive.
So that's what modern forestry is in my mind. It's beautiful and it's needed.
Yeah, just I don't like. I don't like where I left my comment because I failed to acknowledge like another part of the being that that as a hunter, I can look at the habitat and be the integrity of the habitat will be able to put off game. But I like what you're proposing that the integrity, If the forest's integrity is kept intact, it'll continue to put off
forestry products, meaning the same way that a deer. You'll be like, well, no, that deer is expendable as long as the big broad mechanism is capable of making more of them in perpetuity. So like, yeah, but like what you're what you're looking at with forest cares is the tree. That tree, it's older than a deer significantly, but those trees can come out and that forest can maintain its integrity and make more. The time scale is very different.
Work here is done the time scale, it won't be ready for harvest in a year, but it'll be ready for hart.
It's great stuff and there's a lot here. Uh.
The book we've been talking about is Woodwise, woods Wise, Wo's wise. I looked at that title for a couple minutes trying to figure out it should have been punctuated differently or anything. But I think you nailed it all right. Man hardly wanted to put like a an apostrophe, but it would have been an impostor yeah, it would have been an impost apostrophe. Woods Wise, an Exploration of Forests and Forestry by Michael Snyder. Can you buy us on Amazon and all that kind of place?
You sure can. We like to support local bookstores, but you know, just.
Be listen, me too, me too. If I know that some people you don't have access to it, and they're not you know what I mean?
And I hope people will look.
We got people to listen to the show an Interior Alaska. It's like, this is not it's just an option for him.
God bless him. And yes it is available on Amazon and by all.
Means, if you if you got a way to do it, if you've got a way to do it, UH, help out local bookstores because you can go down there and find books you know about and it's great. But I'm like I said, yeah, I also want people just to read.
Exactly what it takes. Remember I used to say, like you got to think out of the box. I think we need to lower like I think we just need to think where you're thinking. Like let's not get like, let's we'll get to that, like where are you thinking? So can we get some thinking going on?
Uh, it's a lot of fun. Woods Wise and Expiration of Forrest and Forest Street. Michael Snyder, Michael, thanks for coming on the show man my pleasure, Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Thanks Michael, Seal Gray shine like silver in the sun.
Right right, Oh my.
Life, sweetheart, We're done, beat this damp horse to death, taking a new one and ride away. We're done, beat this damn horse to death, so take a new one and ride on.