Ep. 496: A Game Warden on Otter Attacks and Being Your Referee

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't predict anything.

The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for el, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I T E dot com.

Oh you know what I would wish I could make you know? At the where the where Matthew plays soccer. Yeah, they have these bathrooms in there. They're like the most indestructible.

Like made out of some synthetic material.

Yeah, like welded stainless urinals and like like just like cacking.

I mean you could go near the pressure washer.

Yeah, that is a bathroom.

Man, here's a quick journal story for you.

Love it.

Have you ever fished anyone out of a vault?

This sounds like we should be recording you are we are?

We are.

Can you turn the machine.

On machines on so that it fails first?

Can you make a point to start it with this urinal sort?

We will do so. The computers we use at work. Are tough books, so they're big tanks. They're ten pounds there.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a game Montana game warden and Adam pancrats telling you this story. We're introduce some more thoroughly in a minute.

So these computers are they're tough books. You can supposedly drive a tank over them, shoot them whatever. They're there. They're laptops that are meant to be used in the field. So if you drop your laptop, more than likely the

Brought to book.

That's a good twist.

That's great.

So then I had to go explain to the host, the person who runs the facility, thank you for letting us use your facility for our training meeting. However, we destroyed one of your journals with our computer.

Laptop destroyed your Jurnal.

The laptop was fine, but urinal completely. We've never used that that building since then. We I'm sure we're welcome back.

But the problem you have that you might not realize is there's no way that they believe you that that's what happened.

No wet some banned.

Yeah, then they kind of tried tell me it was a laptop.

Well, it's in the town of West Yellowstone. I think they're kind of used to it. If you've ever been down there and you see some of the signs in the public bathrooms directing people like not to stand on toilets down there and stuff because the cultural differences and how they use toilets, and so they are constantly having toilets broken down there based on just people misusing or not using toilets.

Yeah, my culture is like that old sn L commercial where they're all disposable, So every time I use one, I then break it.

Join today by Adam Pancrats, Montana game Warden. Give your specific do you guys call it rank? What do you guys call it.

Yeah, we have ranks or title give me So I'm a game warden captain for Southwest Montana. There's eight captains that run different parts of the agency or different areas. So Southwest Montana's mine. We have game wardens, we have regional investigators, sergeants, captains, assistant chief chief Those are kind of all of our ranks spread out through the state.

If there's seven regions, why is there eight?

The eighth one is our investigative unit. I see, So there's a captain who kind of runs our investigative unit. So there's regional investigators, which are kind of like detectives that work in the region, and then we have an investigative squad up in Helen.

And those detectives are playing some kind of like playing closed detective correct and they work on more longer term yep.

So so longer term wildlife cases, commercial cases, those type of things. So we have field wardens are out there in the field in uniform, and then a plane closed kind of unit that helps out with stuff long term, takes over cases when they go multi county, multi district, across the state, maybe multi state, all those type of things.

You know, you know what I wish we would have done know how to do this next time, we should do a thing. We've always talked about having call in capabilities. We should do a thing, ask a game work, we just have the line.

I was thinking, we should have just solicited the whole office for questions and just did nothing but questions.

Bunch, Yeah, like we keep joing like a bunch of people. Be like, so a friend of mine, hypothetically a friend of mine, yeah, you know, pulling into the parking lot seeing that game boarding truck, I bout backed out. I was like, oh that's right.

Well how about how about how about our buddy, uh Stewart down there at Crooked Sky, remember who lives across the street.

Yeah, oh, we haven't talked about this. We did need to talk about this.

About that, and then the other thing, which is our big trip.

Yeah.

The main thing is he's an outfitter. He's an outfitter and he literally is across the street.

Did he choose that? Did he move the.

Board and moved in? Yeah?

So he says there's two ways looking at him.

One you gotta keep on the up and or you're just hiding and playing sight and they'll just assume, Well, that guy over.

There's no way so you guys could prescribe to keep your enemies close. Is that what you're telling me.

When this but this happened to him, he did not pick the spot.

We had a good laugh about it.

When I was doing deal with Idaho fishing game a couple of years ago, they had a case study on using like over the counter trackers GPS trackers for the first time, and the these research things out on the prairie kept disappearing very expensive. Plus they were there doing I think sage grouse research maybe, and they put you know, like an Apple tracking device or you know, one of the over the counter little trackers that you can keep

Sure years ago, I was working on a story about livestock theft, a magazine feature about livestock theft, and I was with these wural crime investigators and when remember when scrap got super high, Like one of the times scrap met was super high.

It was so bad.

He said they would just go and throw tracking devices into irrigation pipe. Then just wait, because you just knew if you told a guy like, oh yeah, just stack a bunch of irrigation pipe by the road and we'll throw a sensor in there. Sure enough, it was because when it was hot, it was hot. On on. Then the Real Crime Task Force, Uh oh, another that we covered this years ago. Do you remember the guy that

His own place.

Yeah, it was on his place and he got scared and buried in an under a pile of fire would like that would like disturb the transmission of the signal or something. And there was another guy that rode in at the same time. I think they would have been the same turkey study. They found one of their turkeys. They tracked it to a hotel, and it was with a gentleman in a hotel.

Uh, picked it up on fire like Craig's book or Craigslist.

No, he had brought the turkey.

No, you know how hotel?

Oh yeah, yeah.

That's how conspiracy theories about. Like people that are like, oh, they got trackers and the animals all over the place. You hear like weird conspiracy theories about when people poach deer, like they know where you know.

Oh, do you know there's a new one floating around out there right now that someone has asked me about. This is the best one. Yeah, that they're given. Uh. They're in order to get conservative rural people to take the vaccine. They're actually getting there putting the vaccine into deer and then you eat the deer meat.

I'm like, that's mighty efficient.

Get your protein in your vaccine.

At the same it's a very efficient way to administer this. Buddy of mine text me like, hey, man, do you think this is true?

Uh?

Denver, Colorado Media your live tour, some of this is gonna be sold out by now, I think.

Media Your live tour starts December six.

Hold on, before you start this, do you have all your notes?

This is gonna be the best one I do. Yeah, I got it pulled up in front of you. This is gonna be a rousing one. What is meet that your live I'd ask, well, it's a bunch of things. One thing it is it starts out as a concert. So you go down and our very own Chester Floyd Chester, the Midwester, who has opened now for Trampled by Turtles. He's he's a famous musician. H Chester the Midwestern is gonna do a song and kick things off like he did at our. The last live show he did was

But so hopefully they're listening.

Kevin Murphy's gonna.

Be joining us on some of the nights. Giannis You tell Us is there every night. Ryan Callahan's there, some of the Knights, Clay Newcome's there some of the night. We got some one off people. We got Darren Wolf, Jason Fisher, the you know, I talked to him. We haven't formalized it, but uh, we got weights and Fish Walleye tournament administrator. He's gonna join us in Cleveland, all kinds of stuff. I got buddies from back home. They're gonna join us on some of the our Michigan shows.

Yeah, not everyone can do all those spinning rod.

No, No, you can take your pick accuracy contest. So you're gonna have a spinning rod. There'll be a light action spinning rod with a three eighths casting plug in.

A galvanized washtub.

Nice.

The victor in.

That will compete in trivia and they can use and you're gonna win stuff.

It's gonna be a great night. All the VIP stuff is all gone.

I believe.

All the VIP tickets are all gone. But so it's gonna be a ton of fun.

Denver, Colorado, on December sixth, Mission Ballroom. Have we done the Michigan ball Mission Ballroom?

Yannie, Nothing I know.

Of Folly Theater in Kansas City Capital Theater, and I say it so. Kansas City is December seventh, Capital Theater December nine. That means we need to find something entertaining somewhere between Kansas City and Davenport. On December eighth, e.

Stillant season.

I say, pheasants.

Probably something entertaining. You know that our our most I don't want to say the names. I don't want everybody to go be talking to her. We have a recent hire here who's from a farm in Iowa. What goes on at that farm? Like shockingly unaware of what goes on out at the farm In terms of hunting.

She was surprised.

Some guys used to come from far away to hunt turks, but they haven't been there in years, but there's dudes that hunt pheasants out there. But she said her parents said, I don't care if you want to come out. Wait, who's I'm not telling it's gonna take it too long to figure it out, though.

Yeah, because it's just a quick zip on over to Iowa.

Well, they're like.

The office, the no, the ranch, the property to hunt.

Oh well, no, you have to talk to her yees. Yeah, yeah, well I just gave the gender away. You're narrow. You're narrow right now, You're narrow this right down December did I Davenport, Iowa, December ninth, Kalamazoo, Michigan December tenth.

Which is Dangaire sold out.

To Detroit, Michigan, Royal Oak Music Theater December eleventh. That's gonna be a fun one. Cleveland, Ohio, Agora Theater December thirteenth. Means I'm gonna go visit my mom on December twelfth. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall December fourteenth.

Oh, can we maybe sneak in a little ice fishing? Or that be too early?

That's it really depends on the climate, which doesn't It's not an ice angler's friend these days.

He's a little too far south.

Philadelphia, December fifteenth, Keswick Theater. Get your tickets to come on out. It'll be a very good time. Okay, I do that.

Hang tight, they're gonna struggle to find something cool to do in Philadelphia. Why come on, there's just not a whole lot going on there.

The other we'll do it in the other direction because Levi Morgan, the world's greatest archer, Like, categorically the world's best archer.

Is joining us for the Pittsburgh Show.

That's during Pennsylvania's rifle season. I'll let you know.

Yeah, but he's a big bow hunter, so maybe we can squirrel hunt his place.

Squirrel won't be open because it's rifle season. What small game is not open in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania needs a new.

I'm just letting you know. It's not like, don't yell at me.

How could Pennsylvania justify that.

They're like they're horrible, improving but horrible history on Sunday hunting and then you can't hunt squirrels during deer season.

Dude, there's a lot of hunters in pennsil Yeah.

I think it's just the amount of hunters in on game lands and public land at that point in time, just like people also out there squirrel hunting.

It's just it muddies the waters, I think.

Then it opens back up after Christmas.

We get stories now and then of bow hunters who will have the audacity to come in.

A cost.

It might be a strong word. Does that imply something physical happened.

Verbally cost to verbally a cost?

I should look a look that up real quick.

No, No, I'm I'm with Brody. I'm one hundred percent sure that you can just verb It does not have to be physical.

Verbal to verbally a cost. Verbally a cost. Squirrel hunters as though their right and they have a greater right to be in the woods. Sure in this Philadelphia or Pennsylvania deal lends credence to that.

No, No, Pennsylvania's got a real short rifle season.

It's like two weeks anyways.

Okay, who's smarter than me can tell me how to spell a cost? Accost to approach and speak to someone in an often challenging or aggressive way, is what Mariam said?

Does that a lot steep a cost people a lot?

Oh?

Sure? But not scrollings man, they should that's a great definition. It is because it conforms the what.

I thought it was, which makes it good.

The meet at Or calendar. This year's calendar is out. It's called the Dirty Dozen. Go and check that out. We put a lot of work into that calendar. Not as much as normal, but a lot.

Yeah, it's nice to change it up too.

We'll go back to the old style next year. But like I said, this year's dirty doesen't. It's twelve months, so there's twelve seasons of meat Eater. It's twelve months in a year. Each month is a season.

And guess what we did. January is the first season.

A lot of cess pictures in there, a lot.

Of Seth Morris photography in there. Check that out. The trivia board game is out. The only board game where conservation always wins. A dollar from every board game sold goes to conservation organizations. It's a great trivia board game. It's meant to be highly mobile. We kicked around different things with stupid boards and whatnot, but it's just the same setup we have. It comes with hundreds of question cards, comes a little mini dry erase boards, dry race markers.

It's travel friendly.

It's a great gift I have had and we still have one on our fishack. I have owned over the years the stupidest worst outdoor trivia games where they don't that the makers wouldn't understand the difference between objectivity and subjectivity and questions, meaning a question would be.

Like what's the best deer cartridge?

That's not trivia, that's like, that's an opinion game, which if there was a way to have an opinion game, I would be all in.

Well, there's an opinion game on cartridges on the website.

Right, but everybody knows it's a three to eight win.

I'll give I want to.

I think that we're going to see a lot get a lot. People said, should send us pictures of playing the new board game at deer Camp.

Well, I was just going to ask if there's any prototypes around that we could take on the youth hunt.

There are.

I gave one away. I gave away a random I came on away to a random person. I said, don't show anybody that, but no one that works here because they'll get mad.

That'd be fun with the kids.

And then the guy probably runs and shows everybody, and then five people are going, did you get one of the board games? Waited like some guy out the parking lot.

We were like, describe some guy more specific.

Do you know Brody? I met at Brody last night? That beat your butt.

Bad.

I don't doubt it. He probably outweighed me by one hundred and fifty pounds more than that.

No, he was two fifty, he said, it's one hundred.

Last night we went down and we cooked dinner for the local football team, the ms U bobcast House.

One two hundred and fifty hot dogs.

Yeah, a lot of hot dogs.

Thirty six gallons game chill, enough.

For a court each, a big gulp of chili each, what each.

Had a big gold is A good reminder is uh, they're kids. Oh, huge disparity, the disparity right between Like you're talking to one kid who just happens to be built like livestock animal. Uh, peach fuzz, peach fuzz, kind

This time in this time right, No, they're still like and they're developing, and they're still playing at a very highly competitive level.

And then right next to him, you're like, oh no, that is a fully developed human.

Yeah, and cats are one of the best Division one Double A teams in the country.

I was impressed by the poise and politeness. Yeah, and I'll point I think that you think he like, yeah, disciplines on that level. We talked about like the little kids, but like just like very like just poised, and.

I got the impression they got a respect for their coach and.

And each other. I mean, they were all real. I was kind of mixing it up back in there, and they all seem to be real nice to each other too, and not like real cliquish, which is zero impressive to me.

I was the only one that won.

Uh. We each had me and Yanni and Calich had to do a compete in a physical feat not you know, not surprisingly, not surprisingly, I was the only one that was able to best my opponent.

Did you compete against him? I have a lot of water the water guy or something.

I'm not gonna acknowledge some details, but I have a lot of respect for Giannis's physical capabilities.

But when the kid stood up to go against Giannis, it was just very clear that it was not gonna.

That was a dude named Brody. This guy floats, yeah, floats through the air. The vertical jump unbelievable.

Well, but I would expect that from like a skinnier wide receiver type, you know where you're like, oh, you might have played basketball too, but this dude is a defensive end. You know, our our two hundred and fifty pounds and yeah, like my my jump to get on that box has a lot to do with how high I can get my feet up, right, Like I got to get up in the air and just lift my feet up.

In the same possible He took off exactly when you.

Jump, there's like the jump and then you actually watch the actual part of I guess the vertical propulsion. Just floated six inches.

It was funny too, is even like I'm not dogging at you because you did good, but when you maxed out, he was still like coming down on the match. He was approaching the mat from he was approaching the platform from above, like as.

The dropped yeah, he had an easy six to ten inches to go until he was gonna max. It was funny because every we want to push him to the max, but the coach is, like.

I did that.

We don't need to get anybody injured today. This is fun enough.

That was neat though.

What I what I did for my tournament is I did a lot of pre research and I asked around what position is least likely to be able to do a lot of pull ups? And I kept getting the same answer, no.

Like nose, like the guys that.

Offensive line defense.

And everybody said, I wouldn't talk to the to the guys that are you know, the three hundred plus guys.

So I took on one of them and pull.

Ups, and honestly, you only invested him by one. And I was surprised. I mean that kild put up almost ten pull ups with I mean, think about it, you only got to pull up one hundred and forty pounds. He's pulling up three hundred pounds. Yeah.

Uh, But did I did best him? He used a different grip. I noticed I did the traditional he did the like. I don't know.

I think it's because he had so much bulk in his arms. And shoulders. He was pretty limited to where he could grab the bar Steve.

I don't know. I wonder if I could do more or less of that.

Great well, so probably averages out he did like he did, like shooting, like he was shooting pistols.

Shooting two pistols straight users at home.

Yeah, which is the thing we do a lot is two pistols straight up in the sky.

I start my morning.

Okay, got handed over to Brody for a newsflash. This is Brody's favorite subject. Back to Colorado, Brody's favorite subject, his favorite two subjects come together.

Yeah, Colorado and wolves.

Yep.

Oh, I'm waiting.

Well on the second one.

On the wolves, I don't know.

We got a.

Gaither way.

We touched on this.

A Colorado.

It's a Colorado two for Colorado.

A couple of years ago or whenever, had a ballot initiative to reintroduce wolves that it passed, and the Governor of Colorado kind of mandated that they would have wolves on the ground in Colorado by December of twenty three.

No, you're aware that it's Colorado.

It's Colorado Wrecking Mountain, So Colorado. A month from when this podcast airs, like there were supposed to have been wolves on the ground in Colorado. The problem is they can't get wolves anywhere.

Can we can? We introduced the other wrinkle. But there are wolves, Yeah.

There exactly.

Yeah, not only are there wolves, but there's wolves that are reproducing within the state of Colorado, which Colorada.

Yeah that's not true, that's not certain.

Well, some of them got killed because they were wandering back and forth from Colorado to Wyoming.

Got killed in Wyoming.

Yeah, as soon as they crossed the border capal.

By Colorado's with out of state.

I don't know, I don't know, but yeah, there are wolves that made their way in naturally.

But doesn't matter.

They're still going to reintroduce them, but they just don't have any Montana, Wyoming, Idahol, we're all like a hard no, They're like, we're not going to help you put more wolves on the ground because of what I mean, it could be a political thing, like like demographically politically, those three states are much different from Colorado's and.

Minst Wyoming saying no and Oregon saying no. Field very different to me.

Sure, I like the Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, like I think are just like we're just not interested not participating. Yes, Oregon hasn't really given a reason why. Washington is like, man, we're kind of interested, but it's just not the right time because the best time to trap wolves is later in the winter. So if we're going to help you, you're not getting these wolves until later, and then you'll

Let me crystal ball this for you. This is not an issue.

What do you mean it's not an issue though, them.

Not getting wolves is not like actually a long term problem.

No, No, they'll get know what I'm talking about.

I just know.

I think they'll get them from Washington eventually, but it's just not going to happen on the timeline they want.

It's an interesting wrinkle, yeah, but this is not like this is.

You don't think it's mildly interesting that for months they haven't been like they're like, we want wolves and nobody's given them to them.

It would become more interesting to me if someone from each of these states who made that decision would say why I made that decision.

I mean from MFWP just said, we are not interested in participating in this process cause I don't know, you'll have to infer. I think it's because they don't want to be held responsible for putting more wolves on the ground. Like when Colorado's wolf population explodes five years from now and they're like, where did these wolves come from? And they're like, why the hell did you get those.

Super wolves from Montana?

Yeah, and Canada is not even on the It was never even an option.

Why is Canada not an option?

I don't know. Maybe they don't want those big bad super wolves.

Well about an option to who to Colorado?

They haven't even like Canada is not playing ball in Colorado, hasn't.

Went Minnesota, Wisconsin, in Michigan.

Because of the far maybe because of the different type what type of wolf?

You know?

Those wolves don't know what elk are, don't know what mountains are. Maybe it's like got something to do with that.

I don't know.

I feel like they'd figured it out pretty quick.

Here's my take. It's unchanging.

Uh.

I like I think that all the animals.

That are from somewhere should be able to be there, but they should be I just really lean towards state management.

Yeah, well, we'll see what happens eventually, maybe they will be managed by the state. Okay, guys, we just wanted to give you a quick update since there was a lag time between when this podcast was recorded and when it's going to air, and in that time, it turns out that Colorado found a source for wolves, which is a state of Oregon which has agreed to supply ten wolves to Colorado that will then be reintroduced in Colorado.

Moving on, This one's serious.

This one is serious. It's the reason we're talking about it because it's another kind of ballot box example of wildlife management.

I think this one's more This in my mind, is more serious than the other issues.

Oh for sure, especially if if you're a hunter. The kind of the same group of people that probably may have been involved in getting wolves back in Colorado or who knows, maybe I'm maybe that's not correct.

Anyway, it's the people from the Whole Foods parking lot.

Yes, and they tend to travel these they travel around the West.

That's where these signatures get collected.

Yes, they travel around the West a.

Lot, farmers markets, Whole Foods parking lots.

There's now a proposal, well it's not a proposal, it's it's in the works. They're they're getting signatures and they're hoping to get enough signatures to get a ban of mountain lion and bobcat hunting. Get that on the ballot in Colorado and they'll get I think they need like roughly one hundred and twenty four thousand signatures. Yeah, which is like not a problem.

It's going on. Listen, it's gonna be on unless there's some issue. It's going to be on the ballot.

It will be And Colorado is now like the kind of place where people got to pay attention because it could like it could get banned in Colorado.

Like these ballad initias. I mean, ballad initiais cut both ways right, like right to hunt and fish stuff. I don't know, I don't know if one of those. Yeah, those have come to ballad initis and baald initias don't always win. Like when they try to do a ballad, what it is is basically like it's special interest groups. They don't even mean that in a negative way, because you have special interest groups on both sides.

A special interest.

Group will want to bypass the normal channels of lawmaking, in this case, bypass how wildlife gets normally managed.

Often probably because they've already tried numerous times to go through the legislative process and it hasn't.

Worked, And they go, well, I'm going to take it to the voters yep. And then you in order to get it on the ballot, has to enjoy a certain level of popular support. So you write a really cock eyed because you can't write the ballot cock eyed, but you can write the petition cock eye. Sure, so you write a cock eyed petition with all kinds of like trigger words and stuff like that.

Signs or in a case like this, it's just gonna be too fuzzy slightly spotted kittens, doowe eyed mountain lion kittens?

Yeah?

Sure, saying do you think people can kill me?

They've gone, So are you going to go as far as to say, like what they're how they're actually the trophy and then the animals that are included under this trophy hunting ban, you can go ahead, Well, they're they're they've listed in they're going to try to ban all trophy hunting. And then they're what they're what they're doing with their messaging is they're defining what trophy hunting is

Right.

But again, like what you're saying is in this initial messaging, the petition, the propaganda, they don't you don't have to talk in fast.

Yeah.

They did the same thing in Arizona with jaguars, Like they added jaguars onto the list.

Yeah, because it tricks people.

Yeah, that way, some dude going in there to get some dude going in there to get his uh, you know, his his hamburger and his Sabbi P's and his hamburger at whole foods. I imagine you probably get a lot of you know, what's the place that does like the old timey posters, they sell a lot of junk food.

Trader Joe's.

You probably get a lot of signatures outside of Trader Joe's. So anyways, you're going there and someone's like, oh my, you know, goodness, good lord, they're gonna hunt jaguars. I better sign this petition, not knowing that that's an impossibility. Yeah.

Yeah, And and there the trophy huntings are saying, well, you got You're only out there killing it for its hide or for its head, or for this trophy, so you can you.

Know, get what about cash money?

I don't.

I don't know if that's in the in the wording, but uh again that's illegal, like in the state of Colorado that meat has to be processed for human consumption on what on a mountain lion?

Yeah it does.

Yeah, so they got a salvage requirement.

I don't think I'm bobcast, but lions for sure.

I like that.

I like those I like those rules.

But yeah, Colorado like has a history of this, like going back to the nineties. That's how they lost trapping trapping leg holding killed spring bear spring bear hound bear like and now it was eighty years ago. Like, the demographics in that state have changed a lot in thirty years. So you know, it doesn't take a whole lot of voters in Denver and Boulder and Fort Collins to kind of skew how the vote goes statewide. You know, like if if this was proposed in Wyoming, would be dead on arrival.

I remember someone with the trapping thing.

Someone remember someone saying the minute the population of the greater Denver area surpassed the population of the state, trapping was gone. Yeah, yeah, I know that wouldn't surprise city slickers. Yep.

So they're back at it again in Colorado.

But you guys can beat if you're in Colorado, you can beat this. They beat it in Maine. They beat the bear band in band in Maine. In Montana, we soundly beated a public land trapping band on the ballot seventy percent.

The same thing in Arizona got beat. Yeah, within the last couple of years.

But in the end, when when in the future, in one hundred years, when hunting is largely done in California, not even one hundred years, twenty five years, when hunting is done in California, done in Washington, done in Colorado. It'll be because of the it'll because of ballots, and then you'll have then it'll it'll be like a different land will be completely different vigilanti landscape. Can we talk about this with the game warden?

Do we talk? Can we talk a little bit about like what what we can do about this?

Yeah? But can I first tell you, well, yeah, you talk about that. Then I want to talk about a correlation I've found with the.

Let's soon throw this out there.

I have found it's your podcast, Go ahead, there's a correlation between the state's readiness to embrace legal weed. There we discussed show a state's readiness to embrace legal weed and its readiness to ban hunting practices.

It is not true.

We need to We need a very strong correlation. We need to ask of the Mississippi.

You know that weeds legal in Montana, right, but it was slow to embrace it state.

It's quick, No, Steve, you've time in Alaska, right, That's what I told.

That's because that's where I grew up.

And you know, my parents had a greenhouse for vegetablesuse for other.

Vative get a list of the states and make a real comparison.

Of Spencer's statistics. People that help them out with the stats for the trivia. Well, I'm hoping right now they're already working on this to to come back and make not to show you correlation.

You want to know two things I was wrong about that I was convinced I was right about I was wrong only two, So there I was. I thought that conservatives were less likely to believe in ghosts. In fact, they're more likely to believe in ghosts. I thought that conservatives were less likely to have gluten intolerance, but in fact it's like a statistical walk.

That one is strange to me, very the gluten thing.

And I think that people because here's my theory, hunters don't mind hiding the book. It's a big part of hunt it, so they don't mind sneaking off in the bushes to to you know, indulge, moving on.

Go on, it's a half baked know what you can do?

Part is is the takeaway here Gang pasion.

Probably cut all that out because the more I think about it, I might not be right.

Okay, looking at that point, uh yeah, and this, uh, there's a lot to be to be said here, but it I think if it's left only up to the people that participate in hound hunting in Colorado, uh, it's it's a lost battle now, right, Like everybody's gonna have to chip in. And to me, I think the best way that we can do it is we you can't shrug off or or be flippant in conversations with non hunters.

I mean, she just.

She'll rather pot person. She's not a pot smoker, but she would rather escort ants out of her kitchen then stomp on them.

Right.

She's really like one with with all living things. She was not into hunting and not a supporter of hunting, maybe even anti hunter until I became of the age and old enough to and she knew that I got that far into it, and we would have conversations and I would explain to her what hunting was to me, how I did it, how I went about it, and

So I think you gotta like have that same conversation around like hound hunting and lines with some hunters too, because they're hunters who are like, well, it's not really fair, you know. You see that a lot yep.

From Yeah, and I remember what the public land trapping thing here. I heard from multiple people who were upland bird hunters right who were pro trap band. They thought it was beneficial to them, and uh, and just not seeing the big picture about like do you honestly think you're you're immune from this if you dogs? Yeah, chase down birds.

Yeah it's weird.

Yeah, right, what does that sound familiar too?

Yeah? It's like yeah, and it and it's funny because people love dogs most of the time, right, Like everybody loves dogs. But I spoke with a game warn yesterday from Colorado off the record, and he's like, look, even in our agency, there's people that you know in their game warns and you'll be able to speak to this to how it is set up here. But there's they really they split it up between I think like education, research, and law enforcement, their game warns do all three that

Is the right thing to do.

It is a tool in the game management officers or warden's toolbox, and when you take it away, it limits how they can you know, manage it, right, And I mean it just compounds because now that they don't have that tool, those animals still have to be managed. They're still going to have to be dealt with. And he's like, you know what's worse getting you know, killed by a person out there hunting, or when you get caught in a live trap and then some person walks up to

There's still gonna be a bunch of lethal control, more onlines than bobcasts. But for sure, the thing I would point out is we're talking about stable We're talking about stable, regulated wildlife populations.

And It's definitely true. Agencies use hunting as a management tool, so whether the harvest is trapping or hunting, it's a huge part of the management tool to manage the population, to deal with conflicts and things. And if, as as Yanni said, if you take that tool away, then that burden usually goes onto the agency, and so a lot more you'll see a lot more agency removals if hunting isn't an option.

Now, how do you feel qualified to weigh in on something like that, Adam.

Well, I've been a game warden for a while, a dozen years or so, and in charge of a lot of management decisions in southwest Montana.

So let's back up to how you got in the biz, How I got.

In the business? How far back you want to go?

Born in Fairbanks, correct.

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, So you know, you know, as a kid, scale is different than an adult. And so we lived on what my dad called a homestead outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, no running water, no electricity for a good part of my life, and I felt I was way back in the bush. And we went into town once once a week for church, laundry, groceries, maybe the Sizzler or something like that, you know, in town, go out to the restaurant. But since going back there, it's not as far out as I remember.

It may be a way out there just I remember, well, town might have crept up on it a little bit.

It's very true, you know, in the you know, roads in Alaska have varying degrees of reliability or condition. And Dad drove an old nineteen fifties pickup and I just remember always falling asleep on the way into town and just thinking that town is brutal. But being back up there recently, it's a pretty quick drive into town. So, yeah, I grew up in rural Alaska, in the heart of the state.

Was it something that your dad your dad trap but wouldn't didn't eat game or something.

He did do some trapping. He was huge into furs and just making things out of first. He just just loved doing stuff with his hands and being able to make things from scratch. You know, he definitely viewed that man was he was here to kind of be the shepherd of wildlife or the shepherd of the natural world and resources. You know, we had fur hats and all sorts of stuff that he'd make. But he was a

You know.

One of our most common protein sources was a was a soy based hot dog called a linket. I don't know if you've ever seen those. Most stores have them. It's in the canned food section. I mean, just it. I don't I don't know how he ate him now. I don't really care for him, but as a kid, just just just absolutely loved him, and that was a common snack or protein.

So did he trap the stuff that he used to make the.

It's it's a mix, yeah, yeah, something, But he never would consume no, the meat from what he trapped. Nope, didn't consume any meat. You know, just hated go into restaurants with them because there was always some sort of battle with the server over them not having good vegetarian dish options. Is this my meat or my meal going to be cooked on the same pan that you know that guy's getting a steak one. My mom would later tell me stories of her sneaking off to McDonald's in

So yeah, So at what ages you go in the law enforcement direction?

Uh so, early twenties. So mom remarried. She married a guy worked on the pipeline up there, my stepdad who I called my dad, who really had a huge hand in raising me. He's a big game hunter in Alaska. We relocated later on to the midwest of Minnesota in my teenage years and because the pipeline work or what he was up in Alaska for pipeline whe He's from the midwest, North Dakota, Minnesota, ranching family and such. Moved up there with his brother for pipeline work and such,

And uh.

Came out to Bozeman or West Yellowstone actually for snowmobill vacation with my with my dad and grandpa and a few other friends in high school. And I remember seeing a Snowollville drive by that said law enforcement on it, and that was like.

Way to go to crab.

I could get paid to Snowmoville, know, and so I started thinking about it, but it took me a while to achieve that goal. Went to college, struggled, changed majors multiple times.

You know.

My first semester at MSU, I think I had a point seventy five GPA because I was skiing and fishing too much and just doing other things that that's like you think there was a w.

W D and an F.

Maybe that's hard to recover from.

You want to start good and then then it's harder to knock it down.

Yeah, so and uh, you know, like I said, change majors a bunch, And eventually I took a justice studies class in college and I got an A. I went to class, I was engaged. I got an A and I thought, maybe there's something to this. Maybe that because I'm into this, you know subject, maybe this is a good profession for me. And that's some advice I give everybody who's struggling with with what what to pursue as

That was my plan, and you signed it, witnessed it.

Oh yeah, So moved to Montana. The first law enforcement job I got was in a detention center. So worked as a detention officer there for just under a year.

Oh was that tough man.

It was different, pretty eye opening to societal problems and just people in general. You know, a wide variety of people that get arrested. You know, people make mistakes and people have bad intentions. So I was young, I was twenty one years old, you know, pretty green to the world and experience. It was eye opening, but it did further my interest in law enforcement. So a year into that,

So it was nice to have that safety net.

And yeah, then I worked as a wetland specialist for the NRCS delineating and classifying wetlands in South Dakota and just kept wanting to get back to Montana.

That had to have been a semi contentious gig.

It was, so you know, the wetland job you're talking.

About, Yeah, I mean when you got to go out and break the news definitely to someone who's like, well, I'm going to drain all that.

That's exactly was my role. So so you had agriculture producers at a time when corn and soybean prices were really high, but it was also wet, and so they're looking at putting more acreage into production. So they want to tile everything, tile, drain, and so there's an application process of regulatory process, and so myself and others would go out and we'd we'd classify the wetlands by looking at historical data, aerial photography. We'd determine the hydrology, the soil type.

We would uh the vegetation regime too, right.

Yep, catalog the hydrophobic and hydrophilic plants, the invertebrates, and then there's a whole process that kind of take in all those circumstances into it gives you a determination of what kind of wetland it is. And then it then whatever rules or what they may be allowed to do with it, drain it, til it or maybe leave it alone. They can't touch it.

I was on a property recently and they had that work had just been done. Yeah, and I'm surprised how like NAT's ass it was. I mean they had things size at his table, like contours, not things. It's not individuals, but the contour of the wetland was very precise.

Oh yeah, yeah. We used trimbles and rchis to go out there by hand when we do the inspection.

And because you want to get like a cross section strata layer and then you can see like how long this has been a wetland yep, and the changes that it's gone through.

And well imagine people want to argue about it too, and they're gonna be like shit, right yesterday when I was a kid, that was a you know, dry as a desert.

Well, and that's why the historical stuff came into effect. You know, you'll go back through decades of aerial photography and compare that to weather data to see, you know, if it was wet, you know, if it was still wet and dry years.

And such like. Oh that's good.

Yeah, it was a really interesting job. Really loved it.

And then uh am I overblowing the contentious aspect of it was more Was it more cooperative?

It was more cooperative for sure. I mean there was definitely instances where disagreements occurred, you know, where where a producer might uh challenge the determination. You know, sometimes it got overturned, sometimes it didn't. But it was a collaborative effort between us and the producer.

We hunted on it. We had hunting permission in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in a guy's place. Man, he got a bunch of trouble for draining and something he wasn't supposed to drain once and his name was Herb for something. We always called him Herb beside. But it wasn't even nervous that he just drained it. Yeah.

Yeah, well, and you know, so that was that job led to the job I have now. So I started to miss law enforcement. You know, you guys were talking about the respectful, tight knit group of the football team you were interacting with last night. You know, I missed that brotherhood that law enforcement had, that group of people who are literally willing to sacrifice themselves for each other and and experience a lot of uh stress together. And

Is that pretty competitive at the time?

It is? It still is?

Yeah, you know, we we definitely get a decent amount of applicants, but we have vacancies every year, so we're always hiring. From what I've seen, people stay longer in this profession than maybe some other law enforcement profession.

So is the flow does the flow normally go that people are in police work and go into game warden or is it like a two way two way door or I've seen it go way you like, it's a goal from game warning to be like, man, I'm just going back and straight up, like highway patrol or whatever.

Yeah, part of law enforcement is it's really hard to do to understand what it is until you're in it.

And you know.

Another piece of advice I give for people trying to figure out their career and they come to me and say, I want to be a game warden. I tell them we'll get a degree and whatever. Your second choice is, get a degree in in don't get degree in criminal justice. You know, maybe get a degree in wildlife management. You're

That's interesting. Is that how a lot of people see it? Or is that Adam Pankraft's original.

You know, my kids play a lot of high school sports, and I have a lot of empathy for the referees out there because I see connections for what they do to me. You're in the public eye, you're correcting people's fun and sometimes the correction and message you have.

And rules you're deliver, you're a buzzkiller exactly, you know.

So I have a lot of empathy for them, And I've asked a lot of people come to me who know sports, like, have you ever looked at a refereen and thought that looks like a cool job. If they say no, maybe my job isn't the right one for you. It depends.

You know.

That's not all we do, but it's a part. And you have to have that ability to be able to go into a group of people at a phishing access site and tell them what you're doing is illegal.

You have to stop.

And you might get oh, it's not being a buzzkiller. You know, you're ruining our fund. But the rules are there for a reason for safety or for conservation and protection of habitat.

So this is a tricky one. This is gonna be a tricky for you to answer. You don't need to spend too much time on it. But uh, We've got a lot of ton of things I want to ask you about. There has been how do you handle when there's rules Like, there's certain rules, imagine they're just like seems so concrete and if that rule wasn't in place,

Yeah what I'm up against here?

No, I know what you're talking about. I mean there's rules that are pretty black and white. I mean, anybody who's grown up around fishing knows you have to have affiicient license. It's just it's just a general rule. It doesn't matter what state you go to, and so I have little patience for people's excuse of I didn't know I need a fishing license. There's just nowhere in the

Oh, because you just keep running into trouble every time you go to prosc someone tries to prosecute and they run into trouble.

A loophole is found, or it's ambiguous. You know, if we run into issues where the general public just is confused or our own staff, you know, that's a good feedback. If our own staff game wardens are confused what the role is in this, that's a good sign the public is too, and we'll try and fix that, you know, as soon as we can. Sometimes the government process is slow, but we have a lot of other tools and enforcement ticket is the last thing we want to do or take someone to jail.

You know.

Officers have discretion, and the way we look at discretion is what kind of action do we need to take to change behavior? If me just walking up to you and reminding you, hey, put your dog on a leash in a state park is good enough, and you do it, and you comply and we never have to talk again. Then there's no reason for a ticket. But if I tell you that and then you give me the finger and walk up off and start, you know, play and catch with your dog. Now we're gonna have to step

To do the right thing. You get in the time i've known you, you get I don't want to say, wrangled. And this part of your job, you get involved in animal tax Yeah, and here because of the nature where you are, you get involved in like serious animal tacks.

Get involved from a law enforcement point of view, not like you step out of the office.

Oh now you're getting attacked by animals. The owner's an animal tag, it's it's under your purview.

Sure, I've been charged by a few things, but I've never been injured by an animal yet. But yeah, so you know wildlife human attacks. Every state has some sort of process or role to play in that when it comes to wildlife management. And in Montana, you know, say a grizzly bear gets into a conflict and causes an injury or death of a human, local law enforcement is there and responsible to so the local sheriff's department, maybe

Well, I want to back itself as people will understand that. So let's say that a let's say that a hunter National Forest Land YEP in the state of Montana gets killed by a grizzly bear. Correct, walk through how that pie is divided up.

Yeah, it's there's a lot going up there is. There's a lot of agencies with a lot of responsibility. So for one, the most important thing for us is human safe public safety. So when there is an incident like that, we're going to respond with an effort to stop whatever danger is happening and make sure no one, you know, anybody injured gets the medical attention they need and then

Yeh in this case meaning like assessed whether this is correct going to happen like a second time someone walks into this area, Yeah, exactly, So that could.

Be closing an area until we figure out what happens. So that could be a management action on the animal, all those type of things. And so the jurisdictions, you know, if it happened on US four Service land, their law enforcement divisions jurisdiction over their property rules and regulations. The state of Montana has jurisdiction over wild animals in Montana,

So they basically sign off managing that situation to you. They're not like wait till we get there.

Yeah.

So over some overarching decisions would would be handled by the US Fish Wildlife Service. Let's say we capture a live grizzly bear that maybe we're suspected to be responsible for the incident. The US Fish Wildlife Service would be heavily involved in the decision making on.

That the what to do with that bear and that barrel exactly exactly.

So so like if you if a bear kills someone, you determined like you need to you need to kill that bear, you have to run that past Fish and Wildlife first, correct, Yeah, it can't make that decision.

It depends on the situation there. There could be an instance right on the ground where a person could well.

You've had that happy where you went to an attack site and the bear is still hanging out, correct, yep, Yeah, so then you don't need to like call someone.

No, no, there's you know, any person you know, which includes law enforcement, has the right to defend themselves. I see, And there's decision making on the ground that can occur where this animal is still a threat, its behavior is predatory, or someone's in danger and we have to make a management decision or defend life, you know right there in there.

I got, Yeah, that's that's like you said, Like any person right you're in a situation then which would be.

Correct applicable to anyone correct. Anybody has the right to defend themselves from danger. And then the other big part of the jurisdictional thing is is when you have a human that's injured or deceased, the sheriff's department or the corner has jurisdiction over that investigation the unintended death of

Also, I don't have an opinion on as meaning I see both sides of it. But it surprises me that you could have a It surprises me that you could have a grizzly kill a person, and the decision might be made to let the bear walk or is that not really the right way of expressing it.

And that's yeah. If there's a lot of factors in that, and like I said, remoteness and behavior one of them. There's also whether or not we think we can get the right bear.

Yeah, that I imagine is a big issue, right, Like, Yeah, time has gone by in move in our experience.

You know, I don't know what the percentage is, but ninety plus percentage of these incidents that we have with predatory animals that attack a human, it's defensive in nature. The animal is scared to death, hits the person in a defensive modus. I don't know what this is. It's a threat to me. I'm gonna smack it around and let it know I'm tougher than it, and then it runs for the hills. It's really rare that we go into one of these attack singes and the bear or

And but rolling through the helicopter and going into a bunch of bears down isn't like you're.

No, we don't want to and we don't we wouldn't want to euthanize you know, ten bears trying to get one.

That's that's that's how like as far as for the amount of months grizzlies are out walking around whatever, April to December, say, like, is there just a huge I imagine when September hits, it's just like not many incidents and then spike and then it falls off, like yeah in November or something.

Definitely, the fall seems to be the highest density of attacks. And a lot of that has to do with just hunters being in the field, being in places that there isn't a lot of people.

You know, and fresh meat laying around.

That's part of it too. But you know, people displace wild animals. So you know, in our area, go to any trail that is really popular, Lava Lake, Highlight, all those places, not a whole lot of wildlife around. That's because the amount of people. Mountain bikers, dog walkers, cars, all those things displace animals, and so where do hunters go. They go where the higher density of animals are going to be. Higher density of ungulates means higher density of predators.

You make a noise like a cow exactly.

And you try to keep the wind to your face.

And so, I mean, it just makes sense that you increase that type of human behavior out in the field, you're going to increase the interactions with wildlife.

So you know, we in terms of wildlife, that's the objective. Well, like you're trying to increase the interactions with the wildlife.

Bozeman Montana is prime grizzybear habitat. But how many grizzlebear attacks do we have on mainstream Boson none? Because of the high insity of humans that are displacing grizzly bears. They just aren't around this area because we get in their way. They're afraid of us in a way, and it's just just not a good place for them to be.

And even if they even if they did want to be the likelihood that they're going to get in trouble and die from getting hit by a car, from getting in trouble, from getting into garbage, whatever. It's like if they wanted to be, it's still tough for them. Yeah.

Absolutely, But we have some that I don't know if they live full time, but they certainly skirt with with town boundaries.

And particularly as this town grows, you know that that urban to wild land's interface grows or gets more complicated.

Yeah. Do there's a house. It's like they backpack the parts that house that you can see from anywhere in town, halfway up the bridgers.

Is that the one that reflects the sun off?

Oh no, he's man, He said to his realer, Like, I want you to find the most conspicuous spot you can find in all of town. Then I'd like you to find the most conspicuous material, and I want you to backpack all that material up to that spot.

Helicopter so I can build a radars and the builders like you.

Looking at a lot of people, and you're gonna have a good view of the airfield.

Is that all right?

What is the perfect Is it a house?

We heard three forks and the sun's hitting something. Yeah, something, what you're talking about, there's something halfway up the bridges.

It's like glowing. It's not a rapt.

Along with people displacing wildlife, there's plenty of folks that are moving into that urban wildlife interface too, that make an effort to attract wildlife.

Sure, uh, you know, wildlife is one of Montana's greatest resources. So a lot of people visit here and move here because of those wild resources. I did, Yeah, exactly exactly.

You know, it's something.

Lazy about it, just lazy about it.

And so the I can understand the appeal of the thought of buying a little mountain place and being able to look out your window and see bears and elk frolicking in your yard. And to Yanni's point, there's there there's still plenty of wildlife around this town and the towns that are closer to higher animal density. So think about towns closer to Yellowstone National Park West Yellowstone Gardener. They deal with grizz of bears going down main Street

Like you said, you've been a game more than for twelve years and you hear all the time like, oh, every year it's more grizzly attacks. Like is do you feel that's the case or is it just like there's more exposure to the attacks and the media, or is it like actually an increasing number of attacks?

You know.

So my understanding from talking to our bear specialists and seeing their data is that the attack rate, if you compare it to population at the same time of the animal and population of humans, it's remaining steady. So the frequency is going up, but so is the bear population and human population. So it's not like it's just spiking.

Crazy as have changed their habits. No, it's just that there's more of them and there's more people for them to attack.

Correct, And why do people move to this area.

Get attacked by a bear?

Well to go outside, you know, I mean it's crazy the amount of people that are citizens of this state that either hunt and fish or just recorate period out in the woods. I mean, we see it around this area. Explosion is huge. People typically vacation here, not for the cultural amenities of the town, which has amazing ones, but it's because they want to see the outdoors and the wild resources we have.

So let's move to Ottery.

Wow.

Oh, come on, while we're on that's what I want to hear. It's going to be good, I promise. But this follow up question I think is good to While we're on grizzly bears, there seems to be in our community in attitude. Every time you see a post about another grizzly bear attack, it's like, it's because we need a gold day grizzly bear season, and if we start shooting the bears, it'll cure all of our grizzly bear problems. Your attitude opinion about.

That, you're asking me?

Uh?

Yeah, I mean Montana has a plan where we would like to retain or take back grizzly bear management kind of. Yeah, go for it.

The FEDS would like you to do it.

Oh, there's there's an agreement there for sure.

No, I'm just wanting people to this I'm not.

I'm not speaking as I'm not speaking as anam pancrats. I'm not speaking as warden pancrats. This is the point I like to clarify to people. All the time, the the federal agency that is in charge of taking care of grizzly bears, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, they are the ones. They are the ones that propose delisting. This gets lost all the time. They say, of all the danger species they administer, they say, when it's time.

They have said.

Multiple times for thirteen years or it's been, they've been, they hit, they have said, hey, heads up, it's time. It's it's them saying this, So go on. I just want to make sure that listeners at home understand this isn't someone going and being like, give me that, give me that. It's like the US Fish and Wildlife Service has said it is time now for us to hand over management of the grizzly bear. Yeah, in this and then outside litigants block them from doing what they're trying

Well.

Thinking about Yanni's question. You know, fish, Wildlife and parks and other state agencies utilize hunting as a management tool. That's real critical to the North American model and to the way that we manage populations here, and so not having that tool for grizzy bear, it's just one less option for us to use. The future is going to be really slow on any grizzly bear state managed grizzly bear.

Anytime, I mean less like also, and everybody dies. That's so most people die.

Maybe you know, if a season ever occurred, it's going to be extremely limited. And and for those who are saying, you know, we need to put the fear of man back into these bears, that's very unlikely that that is going to result from one to three super tags out there.

It just just isn't you know, can you explain, like people may not know what super tags are and the fact that if there was a hunting season, there's only ever going to be a few bears.

That would yeah, more than likely. You know, if the state gains back management, it's gonna be limited. Any sort of hunt isn't gonna happen right away, and if it, if and when it ever does, it's gonna be very limited to a handful of tags, one or two statewide.

Might guess, Yeah, I'd like to remind people what we kind of got a glimpse of how it would go some years ago when delisting came close. Wyoming was gonna do twenty. They were going to issue twenty tags, and they have the bulk of the you know the way it's cut up, They have the bulk of the bears in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem, which was gonna get delisted. Had they done the Northern Continental divide, it might have

I applied for that because I was I was a resident. It was only open to residents in the state Idaho.

Yeah, Montana abstained.

Montana was gonna sit it out. Wyoming was gonna do twenty. So on in Wyholming one in Idaho zero. Now that wasn't northern kindall like it might have played out differently because northern continentill divide. They're the states sitting on over one thousand there. But just to give you a sense of how limited it was going to be, it was going to be so limited that it was going to be none. Yeah that was just first year. Yeah, that was first year, and that was at that time, not

You know, I'm not part of writing the plan. I'll help implement it and such, but it's going to be very limited. The big thing is making sure the state and the citizens of the state have tools to deal

Well, I think, you know, it's very interesting and I haven't looked at the exact numbers in a while, but if you look at like the black bear population and we have a black bear season and the increase year over year of conflict black bears that are are killed by not hunters, right by state or federal employees at one agency or another, that's a very telling trend, very telling number to me. Right.

It's like I meaning, here, you have spring season, fall season.

You can run them with dogs.

It still got bears coming through the green door.

Yep.

It's a primary tool for us. So when our game wardens are responding or our bear specialists responding to a black bear conflict, for instance, around this area and it's you know, out of city limits in an area that hunting is currently open or will be soon or something in the future, and and it's safe, that's one of the first options or first solutions they present to the homeownered landowners, Can we get a bear hunter out here, because we would much rather a hunter harvest that than

And as for a lot of different reasons, right.

Many different reasons. Yeah, absolutely, I never get any phone calls.

Well that I spoke to yesterday said the absolute worst part of his job, and he believes many of his colleagues feel the same way, is to have to euthanize animals.

Absolutely. You know.

The first time I killed an animal on duty, and the first actual time was accidental. So I was doing wetland work over in Minnesota, and I was driving a side by side across the prairie to do some some

Yeah, when I was working with the Grizzly team in Idaho, which is like one of the coolest things I've ever done and will probably ever do. To Yanni's point, like he had this story about there's a bear getting very familiar with the particular campground. They had gone in into the campground, very popular one outside of Island Park, Idaho, and which is part of the g YE and had gone to every single campsite, said hey, there's a grizzly bear.

These two.

Folks, who are absolute grizzly bear professionals and very invested in in grizzly bears, like, we had to shoot that grizzly bear. And when I took it upon myself to then inform the campers at that campsite that the reason that we had to shoot that grizzly bear was because they couldn't bring it upon themselves to take their watermelon thirty five yards to the garbage and put it away.

Good.

And I'm like, we're you know, but there's plenty of people who don't think that way too. So that's why we were talking about displacing animals. Like a lot more people recreate in in bear territory, but.

Let's move to dotter tags. So have an otter tack and You're like, this isn't going to become a normal problem, but it gets a lot of public attention.

It does, and it's it's rare but more common than you think, right in a way. You know, the statistics change every year. But when I look at the reports of human animal attacks, the top three species in southwest Montana for just incidents reported to my staff, grizzly bears number one. What's number two?

Black bears?

Black bears, moose most is number two. Typically in most years, otters is number three. It doesn't mean there's dozens or hundreds of them, but just on average, there's a handful a couple every year. You know, usually usually we run into around ten grizzly incidents in this area. Depends changes every year that causes some sort of human injury or

I know Anchorage has some had some real odd conflict, like some ters.

Took over at park.

Yeah, you know, and there was those hoters that were taking over that surf break somewhere on the West coast California.

Sorry.

Yeah, so they're getting they're like getting up on people's surfboards and.

Oh yeah, man, hotter gang violence these days.

Just yeah, So you did a lot of interviews about then.

Oh that's all that happened.

Yeah, the emergency alert systems.

Of course it happened.

Hey, I left my cell phone in the truck and it was going to be a distraction in here.

Well they really did that.

I remember reading that being that seems like a weird idea.

It works, Yeah, that should be the noise when an otter's coming out.

So there was an otter attack, and you got it was became a national news story, the last one, did you know, Uh, that's the first time I've seen an otter attack for US come national news.

Yeah, I mean interviews with the Washington Post, La Times, It did an interview with Fox News Live and such. It was a pretty severe one.

So what caught hold?

Why did that grab the national attention the way it did?

I think because of what you what you were kind of getting at is is the perceived rarity of the event and then the severity of the injuries. And you know, so I have an aunt who believes it's a conspiracy against otters. She believes that that we're making up all these otter attacks because how could such a cute, cuddly animal do such.

She thinks you're trying to villainize.

Oh yeah, for sure. And when I send her articles or a time we post a warning at a phishing exisite about an aggressive hotter, she just thinks it's all alive, because there's no way that Honors could ever do such.

Well, what do you have to gain from villainizings is what I'm trying to figure out.

Well, this is how I would do it. Okay, it is so dangerous that you can't have people floating and inner tubes or doing non angling activities like that. In fact, they can't use the boat ramps. They can't stand in the middle of the boat ramp while you're trying to back raft in.

He's going to scare everybody away and then have the river all to himself.

So, like we talked about humans displaced wildlife, and you know, we have a section of a river, the Lower Madison here that has a tuber hatch every every every summer when.

Somewhere because that was not even sort of a thing.

It word of mouth, you know, companies coming in and cater into it, big business or like that was.

I mean, I always try to tell my kids when I'm driving along, I'm like, this just was not a thing.

I don't but didn't you do that growing up in Michigan.

Explain it?

It's big in the East. So yeah, so I was recent.

I just had this conversation my kids. I'm like, there's certain things that like when I moved to Montana nineteen ninety six, there.

Were certain things that were not part of the culture ice fishing.

They were woefully behind in ice fishing technology from a Midwest perspective, was like, they just don't know about it, and they did not know about tubin. They did not know. It had not occurred to Montanans that you would float down a river in a tube.

But where I grew up, you'd skip school to do that. I mean it was baked into the culture.

Tube yep. And you could rig your.

Cooler in.

The rivers, like a lot of the rivers kind of off limits to tubin, right, You'd just be doing pinball down.

White water, drag your ass done and ever and.

Do you get to ten miles and never hit a rock.

Or the water temperatures really cold makes it uncomfortable exactly too.

And where I grew up, I mean in August, and it's just like being in your bathtub.

Well, the reason I bring it up as high concentration of tubers on that section of the river, which means low density of river otters, which means very few incidents of attacks. And where we see the attacks happen is when tubers decide the Lower Madison's too full and they go to other remote strections of rivers to get away from people. Less density of humans, higher chance that they that they might have an encounter with with an hoter.

What do you think the otter's deal is again, I think.

It's very similar to what we talked about before. Human and wildlife occupy trying to occupy the same space.

Is there always pops involved?

There can be, but it could be a food source, it could be you know, a den, it could be just a territorial attack. But it's it's humans and wildlife occupying the same space and the wildlife is saying this is my this is my area, Get out of it.

And what moves does an otter use? What are they doing when they're.

You know, when they're attacking.

Yeah, like what is their sort of attack pattern?

Well, I've never seen one happen myself. I've only helped clean up the mess afterwards. And thinking of otters are their predators? You know they got sharp claws, sharp teeth.

Of the river.

Well absolutely, listen.

I would never ever.

I was like, I believe that you don't want to fight any animal that has no legs, Like, you're not gonna grab grab my leg? Now, are you're doing any good? Like yeah, he's like no leg, holding him by the leg and lifting him up, he's just gonna be like mauling your arm and face.

And how vulnerable are we in the water. That's not what our bodies.

Someone's sitting in is not impressive. And someone like standing up walking down the trail, you know.

I mean, do you remember when we saw the to see otters mating in Southeast Alaska on that trip? Oh never mind, you saw them just doing their thing. You definitely don't want to get in a scrap with them, right because they're.

Just the agility.

Yeah, yeah, oh we saw this year we saw like thirty sea otters all together. It's like just just thinking about it's like if those things want to come over here and tussle, like thirty.

Of them them.

No, but they're primarily biting, correct.

So the last one, you know, it just chance encounter. The ladies that were floating down the river weren't doing anything wrong. They're just floating down the river. They occupied the outer space. They you know from their description one to two otters. They're not sure, but the way they were attacking multiple people that made them think there was more than one otter. Typically they're attacking the tube itself, or legs and buttocks that are suspended in the water

And uh, while swimming.

Yeah, and she she got to the other side of the river. Her two friends got to the she she went to the remote side of the river where the two friends went to the highwayside. They called nine one one. A highway patrolman showed up first. Uh, this highway patrolman jumped in the river, swam the length of the river with aggressive otters in the river, and provided first aid to the severely injured gallon the other side while the helicopter was called. And we you know, we were the

Was there any concern with rabies?

There there can be depending on the behavior. You know, there has been incidents where we've attempted to trap and test them.

We did not in this one.

I was going to ask, is there an expectation to treat that aggressive river otter like you would aggressive grizzly bear? I want that trapped or.

Well, again, it depends on behavior. If we if it's you know, if it's abnormal behavior, then yes we're gonna we're gonna probably take a hands on management action against it. But if it's normal behavior, which wild animals like otters protecting their territory is normal, we may not.

So did you guys pull a DNA sample off that otter? No, we did not on that one, So you can't even compare them in the lineup later.

There are so many good T shirt designs going through my head right now.

Already sent an email to hunt I'm ahead of you.

Can we move on from otters?

You go for it?

Tell me about uh, tell me about when when when you catch?

When that wild game meet has made its way into the commercial market. Sure, what walk me through how you see that and what how does that happen and what's that wind up looking like?

I think it's important to talk about why that's illegal first, or a little bit about the history. You know, you guys have talked a lot about market hunting and the history of that and what it did to wildlife in North America. I think that's one piece of the puzzle,

Interesting irony is a I pointed this out on this project we're working on about commercial hunters, is that the Boone and Crocket Club takes its name from two commercial hunters. Yeah, but the first order of business for the Boon and Crockett Club was going after the commercial sale of gaminget Sure.

It's like a weird, absolutely sort.

Of conflict built within the name.

I imagine two commercial hunters had a good perspective. I mean they saw that their industry or livelihood was dying, you know, as just game became more scarce.

Well, it's definitely like the story for commercial waterfowl hunters were the ones who were like, do you know that there's no birds left?

Oh?

They pointed that out right.

Yeah.

But I think also it is a livelihood lifestyle thing too, where it's like we've been living this life for so long, you know, it's like we got to figure out how to make sure that it sticks around, because I can't imagine, you know, going back to school and getting a desk job after running my punt gun every night for the last five years.

Do you think about the the first Western settlers to come to Montana and just the abundance that was here,

Can sell wild mushrooms, you can sell elk antlers, you can sell kiowa.

Hid There still is a role firehood. Yeah, exactly, exactly. There's there's all sorts of public resources that still can be extracted commercially and sold commercially. But there's there's resources that we've identified that can't sustain a commercial market, and large wildlife ungulates and such as one of them that

When I've tried to express this to people, like as many deer as we seem to have, but then you try to express like the frailty of deer would be that if every American put a deer in their freezer tomorrow, we'd have a a two hundred and sixty million deer deficit. Yeah.

Yeah, it's just it's not They're not there.

I think something really important to remember is is the green revolution in agriculture has helped save wildlife in a way because we've found other food sources. You know, one hundred and fifty years ago, when in Montana the primary food source for protein at least was wild life with a population, a human population, you know, a tenth or less of what it is now, it wasn't sustainable, totally white.

They ate them. Yeah, you're right, they ate them into oblivion. I mean, even just having like the gold mining towns.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, you know, and obviously there was there's other things. They were harvested for fur and things like that. There was predators killed just because they were viewed as pets. There's you know, and there's lots of other things that occurred from the use of pesticides, the habitat fragmentation, all those type of things to you know, the extraction of resources and the way it was done that changed habitats

Value to it.

They like the idea that it exists, just to know that this wild animal exists in this wild, amazing place, and that's something new in society that I don't think has really been here for a while. That's that's really led to a lot of the foundation of where we are in the success of wildlife conservation. But yeah, so getting back to commercial markets. So in Montana is in most states it's illegal to sell game meat. There are certain parts of animal that you can you can sell

Would be legal.

Is it ever as overt as that.

It depends, it can be. We've seen some restaurants that have public menus, so if the group of us went in there, they'd give us the menu that's on their website. And then we've seen restaurants that have a private menu.

Is that right.

We have restaurants that sometimes have contracted with tour companies and such, and they may shut down for the day. Maybe you go there and they're closed, but it's filled with a lot of people, looks like a private party and there's a tour bus outside. They may be eating on a different menu. It depends on the restaurant. Every restaurant's different. But we've investigated restaurant.

Slip me one of those menus.

I mean, I just I just like to see like written down.

Sure you've seen it written down, there's give me an example of what you've seen. I just want to know, Like you don't need exact word, but give me example of what you've seen, like actually written down on the menu.

Wildfish is a really popular one. So wild trout.

Yep, Wild trout yep, Local River yep.

Exactly exactly. And we have had cases where we have where where we have you know, it's a it's a mix and how we get and start our investigations on these restaurants. Some of them is somebody sees that menu or has offered it and reports it to us. Some of it's written down, some of it's verbal, you know, but someone gets offered a dish they know or thinks is illegal and they call us. We've also run into instances where we catch people fishing or hunting out there

Got it. Uh, this is a long time.

Ago, hypothetically, since passed.

Seven years ago.

I had a friend that was approached about a was approached about bear, a bear paw, and they misunderstood and they thought they wanted so they went and had a old they had an old bear rug and they brought them a claw off an old bear rug. And the restaurant tour was like, no, no, no, no.

No, that's not what I meant.

That's like, oh my goodness, that's what I mean.

Bear pas soup is popular and a lot of Asian cultures. Yeah, you know, same with gold dishes or powders or ointments made with gold bladders. Those are probably the two most popular trafficked items for bears. There's also a market for bear meat for sure, and there's legitimate places you can get bear meat you know a recent case we had there are well, yeah, in some states you can you can legitimately raise raise bears. So one case we had in a local restaurant.

Again and someone's commercially raising bears in the US as.

Far as I know, I don't remember what state this one was from, but we had a case that was referred to US where a USDA inspector or it was a Health and Human Services inspector went to do their inspection of the kitchen and found packaged meat that was labeled bear and reported to US. And as we digged around that bear meat had come from a legitimate source, which kind of shocked us at the time too. You know,

Yeah, my kids told me about that and showed me a thing about it. Where does it stand right now? This is one of the more confusing things I found in terms of trying to stop the commercial market. Is for a while it was you'll know this better than me. But for a while it was that that you if you killed a black bear, so you legally kill black bear and you basically you have this like contract where you tag it. It's it becomes your property and it's

Is that correct?

Not in Montana? So you can possess it, you just can't commercially sell it.

So you haven't heard it, like I feel like there's someplace you like you Okay, so you could you could have your own and do with it what you will. Correct, And I could give it to a buddy of mine if he wanted it. Okay, you cannot cannot sell it? Yeah? Yeah?

And then I got a Montana question. It's not about bears, since rabbits and squirrels aren't game animals. Could I set up a rabbit and squirrel taco stand and not be breaking the whole?

Yes, so.

I would not have any regulatory authority over it. You would not from But there I imagine there are other agencies that do you.

I think I think that that's when it becomes the USDA's big Oh yeah, because they got USDs. Is not because you're selling uninspected meat?

Gotcha?

Good idea though, what if you do get inspected?

What will they?

So, so let me tell you this.

Years ago, I was going through a fact checking process with a magazine and I pointed out that it's illegal to it's illegal to sell dog meat in America. The fact checkers like, show me where how that where? That's true? And the want of beings it's only illegal in two states. It was illegal at that time. It was illegal to sell dog meat by state law in New York, and it was illegal to sell dog meat in California. So they're like, well, why isn't it for sale everywhere? They won't.

What are they even looking for?

So if you somehow petitioned the USDA successfully to establish dog inspection criteria and at that time in forty eight states, no one would be breaking a law. And and and I and I even looked at this, it'd be like that you could feasibly somehow you got it inspected. You could walk into a grocery store and ever be a pack of ground dog beat and it's not like actually breaking a law, and.

Then the next legislative session it'll.

Be yeah, that's yeah, well that's what. That's what in my in my research spots is the reason it had turned up in New York California is because it had become an issue, and it had become an issue and someone had overcome whatever like inspection hurdles. So it might be that you you know, and I don't know at what point and uh production, I don't know what point in industry. I know that I remember ten years ago

Like Texas is they're inspecting animals, yep.

But a lot of that stuff can't leave Texas, okay, you know, so they'll have there's certain commercial there's certain legitimately wild game resources like hogs nil guy that can be inspected in Texas, but they're not suitable for interstate gotcha. So they're they're all consumed in state and and there the state has done like what we're talking about, the state has built up capability and complied with demand of an industry that's like, hey, we have this resource, we'd

I'm just trying to think about my retirement.

So you let's say, let's say Brody starts his squirrel and rabbit place up and all of a sudden, he's down there at there, what's that place?

That gravel parking lot.

Brody's down there's like Brody's Wild Squirrel Tacos. And you're driving by and you see that. You think to yourself, that's not my problem, but.

It could become. So, you know, it depends on how successful his business is and what impact they would have to the squirrel and rabbit population. So right now those species are unregulated. You know, you can hunt them twenty four seven three sixty five without a license with no bag limit right now because demand is so low, exactly, But.

If you that's the reason.

I thought.

The reason is because they were non natives and they're classified.

Kind squirrels, oh, cottontail, rabbits, badgers, there's non nature fox.

Okay, now I didn't You didn't mention.

All those you could be thought pine squirrels or not.

Now no, I thought that fox squirrel. So think about Oh he's.

Having a pine squirrel.

Oh, fox squirrels too.

So so to your point, like, we may have a fishing regulation on a body of water where unlimited take of say northerns or something like that, that doesn't mean they're there and there's a huge population. That's what sometimes the public thinks. That's because we don't want them there. And so yeah, harvest as many as you want. The non regulation, it just kind of depends, Uh, it's whether or not the public value is it and what the interest is you guys keep pushing squirrel hunting here is

And so someone pointed out to be the inherent lag.

Oh, there is, for sure, there's a problematic lag where especially with technological issues. Some almost pointed out that like technologies are adopted quicker than the legislation can address them, which creates conflicts.

Sometimes they try and get ahead, but it's I think it's hard to justify or garner support for a law that is addressing a problem that isn't there or isn't you know, as prolificit as we as we think it is. So government definitely in that way is slow to respond. And there's a process. Our legislature only meets every two years, you know, it takes building support and and how it kind of works is typically the legislature makes a law, but it's not it's not very descriptive or it's not

Yeah, and there's like a fine tuning and it gets frustrated people. I remember the first time it was long long ago, the first time two way communications, it was very blanket and it would have basically been that. I remember one of the arguments was I could be hunting with my eighty year old father and I can't put him in his blind and give him a walkie talkie to let me know if he's having a heart attack.

And we don't want to change the rules every year. I mean, I, as a recreations hunter, don't want the rules to change every because I get confused and it takes time to get updated on those and educated. And so those decisions where regulations are changed or tweaked, there's a lot of discussion and planning that involves attorneys, game managers, wildlife commission, legislatures, all those you know involved in the decision making process, and there's a lot of feedback loop.

Do you not?

Should we tweak it? That's a huge part of the process also, But like I said, our jobs to implement it, enforce it, and sometimes the feedback we get or the implementation goes sideways or it needs some tweaking, we send that back up and then and then laws can be changed or adjusted based on that.

You know, it bummed me out to see I'm curious how had implications for you out in the field. The state relaxed its salvage requirements, its game meet salvage requirements on what well they went from. So it used to be like bird a mallard size or bigger, you had to retain legs and wings, teal whatever however they spelled it out, but basically, if you killed a canon the goose at a time a few years ago, you had

I thought it was just a leg and thigh.

Leg and thigh. If it was a duck size or bigger, it was skeel size or bigger. I think it was.

It was like I kind of liked the precision of it.

Was that a thing.

And specified like rib meat and neck meat?

Yep.

And that was an interesting one too, because I was living in Idaho at the time, and they all of a sudden you weren't required to keep rib meat or neck meat. And then I started on a deer.

Yeah me, neck met duck be tough.

Yeah, there's some salvage requirements like there there was there was hunting units in Alaska. There's a salvage requirement on the liver, and there's a salvage requirement on you couldn't bone your meat in the field. Well, remember you just did something to destroy your microphone. He broke it.

I remember when we were in Alaska one time, because you have to salvage rib me on caribou. Whatever you said, they'll often fly. When they're flying, they'll look down at the carcass to see if that rib meat has been stripped.

Well, I this is a long time ago, hypothetically. I used to hunt with the dude named Chuck. And Chuck had once had a job out on the Alaska Peninsula, just a young kid. He didn't know what the hell was going on, and he encountered folk whose practice was to make it the carcass look good from the air, right, because that bomb the top side real good, so that from the air it looked like they had been cleaned up,

I worked under an outfitter in New Mexico who one time showed up to help pack an elk out, which he was not happy about, and I had to ask him to just stop trying to bone the elk. And he explained to me two or three times the exact AH cuts that need to be taken in order to make it legal, like, no, you need to take the loin that, like basically, why are you taking all of this ship? Yeah, and was very frustrated that he thought at some point that would end up on his back. It was not.

It was horrible.

Did that did that rule change? Have any real im vacations? Like was that a thing you would encounter a lot in the field arguing with people about well you're supposed to take the leg on that one, but not the leg on that one? Or was it kind of a non point for you?

I mean, it wasn't a huge issue, but definitely cases where we'd find, you know, dozens of of whatever bird dumped in in a dumpster and only breasted out. It's really common, you know, and thighs not being taken or something.

And at a point in time that would have been been your problem.

Sure, absolutely, you know, yeah, I want to talk about in for a minute. Uh, this isn't even entrapment. We had a guy right in. So do you think about a game warden in Arkansas as your colleague or is that too far away?

Oh?

Sure, okay, sure, yeah, I mean we got a guy right And this is just his version of the story.

Everyone has a story like this.

Of his version of the story is here he is. This isn't entrapment. I don't know what it is. Here's his version of story. I don't know who the hell this guy is. He's cleaning a duck talking to a

So the warden watches him.

Remove the wing and head and then says, ha, gotcha, Now, how would you handle a situation like that?

Would you have said do you feel personally? You would have said, you know, the minute you do.

That, it's hard to Monday morning quarterback in a situation like this, I'm not well, so.

You don't want to sell this game warning you don't even know.

Well, there's a lot of thoughts. One. Every situation has a lot of nuance in detail and every what happened? Well, how long?

How much you told him what this guy said?

Did he grab that burden just snap it right in front of him?

Or was he being meticulous and careful in the morning, was watching him for twenty minutes clean this thing like now I'm going to.

Remove that exactly?

What was he watching the prior hour or two hours or days about the group of hunters?

You know?

So it makes me I have had a conversation with my son a lot lately as he complains about referees in football or teachers that now don't allow him to eat in class when he always used to be able to And and I tell him, which I tell is, don't take my inaction or the person of authorities in

I have question, but it's not like I just have a philosophical question.

There's there's you know, I I have walked up on plenty of people that are gutting animals or tagging in the middle of tagging animals. The last thing I do is check someone's license while they're just getting ready to shoot. Like I f Yannis sitting in the bushes. I drive by, he's ready to shoot a mule deer. I'm not going to run out there and wave my hands say stop before you shoot that, show me your license. I want to make sure you're legal. Sit there, I'm going to

That's way more valuable than ticketing, and then he never would have hunted again.

Right, But it depends on the situation. I mean, if if your caller is a seasoned veteran who's been hunting for twenty years and he knows the rules, he shouldn't have to be reminded. He shouldn't need that education from the warden. He should just be able to do the right thing. Especially when the warden's standing right in front of him. His brain should click and should go, man, warden's right here, I should probably do this right, you know.

Yeah, and that.

Build arkansons he had.

He just hold out the hibachi and said, sir, you're ready for me, all right?

So if he was going to cook it right in that instance, yeah.

It just says this guy's right in the ticket He's like, well, I got a little something for you.

He just raw right now.

So I think favorite when I was all of them city police officer, I wrote hundreds of tickets a year. I mean absolutely hundreds, And the average game warning in Montana writes fifty to one hundred tickets.

So I mean time it's used to it used to be good for fifteen hundred tickets a year.

Yeah, you could easily as a traffic meant traffic right, because that's all you're doing. You're out of the call rotation. Your job is to write traffic tickets and force traffic law. And so you know, I had average ten twelve tickets a shift, a ten hour shift. You multiply it out. There's some vacations and training in there, but could easily go over a thousand tickets a year, Game Waring, I think the most I've ever written is around one hundred.

They're going far out as long as there.

Then I want to, Okay, one more thing I want to ask about.

It's a.

College year's named Eric Crawford. We discussed this one time.

Idaho warden we were talking about we spent a lot of time talking about the robo deer, and he's got all these hilarious stories about robo deer. Sure, you know, including people who even when the warden shows up, he's still in disbelief that this is not an actual deer. But he had pointed out that they deliberately don't use They literally don't use trophy correct class animals.

Yeah, it's the same for us.

I disagree.

Why in the world is it okay for guy? Like, why not have it be a two hundred inch milder because then you really finding out what people are made of, true, because if not, you're just selecting meat hunters. You're just getting meat hunters in trouble.

I mean, it's the idea everyone's going to be like.

Nah, this is that's his thing was that everybody's gonna shoot at it if it's a two hundred in fielder, Come on, that's like you can't give up like that.

Definitely, Usually we're targeting a specific violation, so it typically doesn't have to do with trophy harvest. It typically has to do with shooting from the road. Trespassing, shooting an animal that uh, the season may be closed. Maybe you know there's no cow hard anything convincing to me yet,

You know that is just not that do what a giant bucket there and see what have does?

Montana have a version of the thing. It's called the Samson law, like where if you poach an animal of a certain size, the consequences are great.

Yep, absolutely absolutely so yeah, so there's trophy restitution built into our statute. You know, if you kill a trophy bull elk, it's eight thousand dollars and that's excluding the cost of whatever violation the ticket you wrote.

So the state like where they're like, we got eight thousand bucks into that thing.

Yep, that's kind of you know, when the legislature passed that, they looked at basically what it costs to replace the animal, what's the value to society, what it costs if we were to try and replace it. You know, the smallest thing would be like a fish ten dollars, and the highest is a big horn sheep was thirty thousand. Those amounts aren't automatic. The court would have to award it, and we rarely see those top dollars.

But really, but I want to get back to this, Steve, I got to help me understand why not a huge buck?

Just real quick. Way back when I was working construction in Missoula, my buddy and I go out hunting for the weekend. We'd already killed smelk during archery season, but we're driving out of this area and it's like, you know, kind of that November time frame where there's just there's a lot of people road hunting and we look up on the hillside and there's a spike bull spike bull elk sitting there like, oh, look at that, and barely

And swear she shout out a cow.

Off the road out the window, and it was it was not as it seemed.

No kid, Oh yeah, Steve, you've never gotten horn fever.

But that's I'm saying, like, let's say I get horn fever, stick it to me.

But then we're starting to target people who normally would do the right thing, and just in the moment you need, they make a bad decision. We're out there to get true poachers. We're not out there to make poachers out of people, or people into poachers.

But in the New Testament about like Judas and stuff, Man, you gotta test like the true belie.

All the time.

You know, Steve, maybe they do use them, they're just not.

He's being coy.

Think you how many two hundred inch mule deer racks you'd have to replace every year people shooting? Have you have you tackled the open fields doctrine? I think that would be a great one.

No, go ahead. I don't even know enough about it to ask.

Oh yeah, And then I got a final thing I want.

To do that.

The grand scope of things, right is wildlife belongs to all of us, right, and it's managed by the states in like a trust fashion for the public. Wildlife spends a lot of time on public ground. It spends a lot of time on private ground, it does not recognize the existence of a three strand barboy or fence that separates private from public. However, on private property, private property rights are such that the Montana is a different state.

But the way.

The law is interpreted in many areas is law enforcement can enter onto private property without the express permission of the landowner or the landowner's agent if they see illegal behavior or suspicious behavior in the open fields, okay, meaning something visible versus something they can't just like walk into your barn or your home without a warrant to do so signed by a judge.

I mean he's driving down the road, he looks out in a in a picked cornfield and there's some guys with decoys set up, uh, and like they're blasting way before legal shoot light or after legal shooting light. You have you can go out there. You guys can't say, hey, your trespass and go get a search warrant? Right or whatever? Yes?

Is that is?

That?

Was that close enough?

Kind of So Montana still has plane view basically plane view, so as if something illegal is in plane view, we're in a place that we're allowed to be a public space, and we can plainly see without any search or manipulation.

Like a county road yep.

So think of you know, a traffic stop or something like that that a police officer does and they see contraband in the backseat of the car. They're in a public space. They have the authority to be there and stop that vehicle, and there's something in the car that's totally illegal, maybe a big kilo of cocaine. They could seize that in most areas without a search warrant. More than likely they're going to get a search warrant to protect them. And it's the same way with hunting and

You cannot, No, I would, because I would clearly see anything.

I would have to see a violation or have permission to be on that.

But if it was an analope season correct, a clear articulate violation, I could you know, an evolution like we're talking about, evolution of laws is is across the United States, game wardens in many states were giving basically an exigency clause to search and seizure.

Think about the first eight game wardens in the state of Montana. Again, they lived up in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Transportation was was you know, uh not not very efficient at the time or whatever they had, so their access to the courts was pretty limited.

It's a theme though that always comes up, right, it's does the regulation of a public resource wildlife stop at the private property boundary? And the answer is no, But how do you regulate that resource and then still respect all the other laws that are in place regarding private property and everything else.

And we run into that, take enforcement out of it and talk about just general management, you know, to be able to do surveys or go and respond to issues on private property where wildlife exists, there can be contention there if the proper private property landowner is not going to allow permission. But for the most part, we work with landowners. We get that permission, you know, we let them know the work we're going to do, the legitimacy

I want to close with a game and I'll go, and you go, and then anybody else wants to go and go. I'm gonna do a thing where I give you a tip as a game warden, and you give me a tip as a hunter angler. Okay, you already do this tip. So I'm speaking in broadly to the profession.

Uh.

I feel that you one of the reasons, like, like one of the things I appreciate about you as a person. I feel like you are a sort of like rooting for the people that you kind of you know that you're kind of rooting for people hunting and fishing. You're hoping they're having a good time, right, Yeah. And I feel that you are open to helping people interpret things, trying to help them be on the right side, right. I have had encounters where I just haven't felt that

Right.

And like, I think that those.

Exchanges are really valuable for people where you sort of get like, oh, these guys are not like trying to you know, trying to throw me in jail man. They're trying to be like a good referee, you know. So now you give me a tip, not me personally, but give hunters a tip. Like when you're walking up, how do you know when you're gonna have a good interaction, and how do you know when it's just not going to go good.

Well, a good place to start is golden rule. Okay, you know, treat others if you want to be treated, you know, and that goes for us and the hunters. So we should walk up and treat people with respect,

And personal safety factors.

Well absolutely, Oh hey here's six guys. They all got guns.

See they're doing so.

I just hey, we're all human. Treat each other with respect. That's that's huge, you know. Yeah, that's that's one tip.

Uh yeah, Zimby got any more tips for him?

I think he does a pretty good job.

Sure, tell me, tell me what I'm doing wrong and nothing.

Nothing. I just really, like I said, I love those h and I'm not you know, it's not it's not a leniency thing. It's just I guess I'm maybe more than some. I like the I like the feedback and the If Steve was.

A game Ward, he would be a hard he would just be like I just man, I'm like, how old are you again?

Sure you're not thirteen?

Well, And as we talked about, there's been an evolution. You know, there's a starting of our profession to be very based on rules and enforcement. That's the way you know, wildlife conservation started. And now it's more on management. And there's also a huge education and mentorship part of it.

Right. Well, my mess is to all the listeners out there is one man, there's a lot of information available. It's good to find out ahead of time information. When I was a kid, we did not do much of it. I remember being periodically shocked when someone says, you know, that's actually illegal, right all the time? Man? Yeah, So I think finding stuff out and not being afraid to ask que I don't think you should call them up personally, but just ask questions.

Yeah. You know, the last big thing that I wanted to mention here is a plug for public participation in the enforcement of wildlife laws. So you know, every state has some sort of crime stoppers program where basically there's hotlines.

Is that a pretty valuable tool for you guys?

Absolutely absolutely. It's not a as you just mentioned, call and ask a question on a regulation line. It's not aligned to call and get your your bobcat tagged. But it's aligned to report tips that can be anonymous if you want on wildlife poaching, wildlife crimes that are current. It could be the restaurants, commercialization, could be someone taking a trophy animal at a district, all sorts of things

Way to get a tag that's going to perk the people up.

Man. Wow, it doesn't exist in Montana right now, but we have cash rewards. And two again, it's just it's doing the right thing.

That kind of brings up like, is it entrapment if it's all civilians? Well, you know, to put that big buck out in Steve's yard, So.

I think about I don't have the exact quote in my head, but Aldo Leopold wrote about how you know, hunting and fishing is a sport in a way where you are your own referee. You know, when you're playing football or basketball, there's a referee walking around following you, calling a penalty on you every time you do it. We don't have that in hunting and fishing. We have to hold ourselves accountable and those around us to do it the right way, to protect it for the long term,

Gotcha, don't push everything to this.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, just do it the right way. Help us out. But give us a call if you know some poaching that's a current in the area. Please, We really need those tips and we make some amazing cases based on citizen evolvement.

Well, thanks for coming on, man.

Absolutely, we are going to start that ask game warding up.

It's people live, call in see how it goes.

Well, I'm sure I could get western. Thank you very much, Thank you, Thanks Adam.

This appt outro song was sent in by podcast listener Peter Block.

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