This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast.
You can't predict any of this. 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. Dude, I'm up to my neck and nostalgia right now being here Cal you're feeling it?
Oh yeah, Missoula, Missoula guy for sure.
Is the reason you can't put that on your head?
Well, because I'm supposed to bequeued up to record Clay on the guitar.
Oh well, putting it on for a second.
Well, who's doing the runner show?
How long is it gonna take you to put on? There we go.
I'm just trying to be very respectful to our guys who are editing these things. We're like, don't touch the idem microphone.
Oh yeah, well I can tell you that that guys is me. Yes, and this is a special special case, go ahead and touch the mic I.
Spent I mean I lived here for almost a decade.
Oh yeah, just just this building alone, the Wilma a lot of We could do an entire podcast based off of experiences had in and around the Wilma Theater.
I have spent nights in this building, as have I. Yeah, I had an older girlfriend that lived above us. Ye right now, she doesn't know that right now, but she did live there right now. And back in those days they didn't have a regular elevator. There was an elevator man. This is in the late nineties. There was an elevator man that had to operate the elevator with a throw switch. His name was Scoot and Newton. And anytime if you came in at two in the morning, after the bars closed,
you'd knock on Scoot and Newton's door. He slept in his Chuck Taylor's. He would come out and do the out deliver you to your floor. And the hydraulics were a little weird in the elevator, so it'd always settle and Scoot and Newton would like he'd overshoot the room. He'd play the settle, he'd overshoot the room, throw the switch, and he'd always be looking at that crack.
A man who knows his equipment.
Yeah, he'd always be looking at that crack, and you could tell that he'd like to just layer in there, right flush, That's right.
It wasn't about customer satisfaction. It was just about him being pro at his game.
Yep. I'm sure there's probably like weather changes would throw that thing off, you know.
Yeah, but an old building.
Yeah, And then I saw Steve Earle here. Oh cool. In my Buffalo book, I talk about a guy a very pinnacle like a like a a major player, kind of a major player in Buffalo restoration. The animal Recovery of the species drank himself to death under the bridge that we're under right now. When I was working on my first book, Scavenger's Gude to Oak Cuisine, the pigeons
I was raising I caught under this bridge. We'd come down here with a extension ladder at night, hoping not get trouble with the cops, and catch pigeons and collect eggs under here and raise them. Not far from here, the crayfish in that book came from under this bridge. One time I was walking over this bridge and saw a bike in the river and rode that bike for years until someone stole it. Get this at this building. Yeah, I found it one hundred yards from here and lost
it twenty yards from here. I had two.
Buddies that decided it would be a great idea, like the best idea ever to have rooms in this building, and then like very quickly decided that being in such tight proximity to all the bars and stuff was actually in fact a bad idea to live in this building. So they vacated pretty quick, but they lived here. And then my high school, Hellgate High School, we used to do like cleanups for you know civil service type of days that were always right down here, cleaning up you know,
trash and all that stuff. The playground. I got some dirty stories about that playground, but the clean ones, it was like we came down and helped, like it was like a habitat for humanity project or something that we chipped in and built part of that playground through the high school and then yeah, bartended it at Red's and Missoula Club, which is you know, stone's throw from here Cow.
The first night I ever spent in Montana, I came in from the way, like my brother Danny was doing a job working on a salmon project on a walla wall of Washington. He was working on like a snake river.
The city is so nice?
Is that what it is?
They named it twice?
Yeah, oh, okay, is it what river's right there? Is that the same? Yea, no, no, no, it's the salmon Anyways, he was working on a salmon project there. I was still finishing up regular college in Michigan. I flew out here, me and him went fishing all over Hell. We fished the Saint Joe's. Uh fished. We fished the court Lane. We fishing Courtlane around there and went we fished the Saint Joe's. Came in a ninety from the west, Okay, And I just remember like kind of like entering this town.
And we decided to stop here for the night. And we first thing we did was we went to this place that later became like appears like a bar pizza joint. Well, we found a hotel and we got a steep discount because some dudes had changed the oil of their motorcycle. In the hotel. There was a motel and there was a there was an oil stain the size of a bushel basket that sounds like the thunderbird and they gave us like they let us have it for next to nothing.
They're like, well, we have a room, but we're not letting it out because these assholes were changing their motorcycles oil in the room and spilled it over. But you guys could take the room and got for next to nothing. Went down to that like pizza joint bar. I can't, oh, Rhino?
Did the Rhino have pizza?
I don't remember. Maybe later became Pete, went to the Rhino, went to Charlie Bees, where I wound up spending like years of my life. Went to Charlie Be's. I remember seeing like there was a lot of girls there that had like h like scabs on their elbows and knees, like hard hitting rafting guides right, And I thought, man, I'm gonna come to school here. And I'm not kidding you because I was fixing to go to graduate school. Went down to the university this is like in the summer,
walked all around and got a pamphlet. I mean I got a pamphlet simpler times. Yeah, I got a pamphlet from the school in a building that I later got a job scrubbing the toilets in. When I first got into school and at that point forward pretty much had my mind fixed on moving to this town and all those adventures, right, like this is all happening like right here.
Yeah, just just something clicked with you.
It's like one last thing.
Missoula was way different.
Way different. It was crazy.
Yeah. Well, when the town changed a bunch as like the mills shut down because there was actually like shift work going on. And this isn't like a point of pride or anything. But you know, people would probably think I'm lying if I was like, well, yeah, there was a strip club on main Street, like the main strip of downtown stores.
Yeah, delt Poker, right, Brains and Eggs.
Yeah, people would be like, no, that doesn't know, No, next to the wine bar. Yeah, you know, yeah, it's just weird, weird.
Yeah. What was that place called? I've been in there.
The Oxford is still there.
No, they had the club, the Gentleman's Club.
Yeah, and I can't remember the name of it at this point either. But Von Richter, my old manager at Red's Bar, uh, that's where he started bartending, was down there.
One of my one of my pinnacle moments as a writer. I was living I was living on the other side of the river more towards the university from here, and I had just done this deal where I'd been up bear hunting up on the north fork of the Flathead, and we're coming back, and like it was so weird. There'd been a big burn, it was called the Moose Fire, and there's just trucks lined up and down the road, trucks and campers and stuff. There's a lot of glacier traffic, right, Okay,
what's going on? I remember guys like me mells shiploads, and it was just like unlike one of those burn sprouts or just you couldn't even comprehend the amount of morals. I remember there was a moose track, like a moose had come through that burn after and when it was kind of wet and sooty, and a moose had come through that burn and whatever his tracks had like done something magical to the ash and compressed it in some way. Yeah,
and track full of morels, Yeah, morels everywhere. And so I came home and there was a very influential it's still around, but at the time, the New Yorker magazine was like a super influential magazine, and I had like I knew some guys that I met through school that wrote there, and one of Ian Fraser was like, you should do a talk of the town. These things, these like little news bits in the front of the New Yorker which were prestigious. Then it's like, you should do
a talk of the town on fires and morals. And I couldn't. And I knew I had a deadline, like it had to be immediate, right, And I dropped everything and I worked on that thing like no one had It's at talk of the Town is eight hundred words. I worked on that all like like twelve hours a day, sixteen hours a day, whatever it was. It took me three.
Weeks because I knew I had a chance, and I knew they were interested in seeing it. It took me three weeks crippling anxiety or and the only break I would take, I'm not kidding you, is we would go in. We would go in and we could.
Walk down kind of like go on one angle from our house and jump into the Clark Fork River with an inner tube. It was hot that summer, and you could float through town and cool off and swim and whatnot and get out and walk at a different angle back to the house. Yeah, remember one time coming down and hitting.
This pointing because you floated down you.
Kind of like float past your house and you know you're coming like like you're like, let's say your house is at the hub of a wheel. You follow one spoke out at a forty five, it in and come back at another spoke out of forty five. Super hot day.
I remember coming down there, like trying somehow to get my article and getting out at the bridge, like getting out right where we're at and walking up Higgins and getting a smoothie and having a laugh because coming back I could still see my wet footprints coming up out of the river. Got back in river and eventually got that thing done and they published it, and it was like something mentally, like something happened to me mentally, And
then I was do you know what I mean? Oh, that's like something mentally happened to me after having accomplished that.
That's amazing. It's just like, how much just straight up dicking around you did in this town. That was wasted so much time unproductive compared to that wasted so much time.
What have you two crossed pens at anytime?
Oh? I'm sure, Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.
For a while, I thought Steve was a teacher of mine. Like when we were first starting to get to know each other. I had this class, you know, it was all taught by grad students, and it was a writing class, and I was like, when we first started getting to know each other, I was like, oh my god, this is just like we're going to see each other eye to die and make this connection of immediately disliking each other because I had a big blow up. We were
like setting trustes or something. At the job site. I had an A in the class, and the thing that was, I had an A in everything curriculum based. I had an F in attendance. And I was always like trying to make the case of like, well, I actually am working versus you the graduate student who just sit here and do nothing. Graduate students love that when they're in a teaching position.
That was mean. I'll tell you how I know it wasn't me when I applied to come here. There's a whole long story. It even involves when OJ was running away in his Tronto and his Bronco. I'm not kidding you.
I can still see my grandma just plugged in to that every day.
Yeah, this is how I came to be here, plays into OJ's truck chase. It's so weird. I can't get you all the details. I applied for a like a fellowship where you get a tuition waiver, didn't get it. They kind of like the program I was in was like a lot of like Ivy League kids, kids from real high flute in school, not from a ski gun, but would roll the dice on like like now and then like roll the dice on an unexpected candidate, and like I later learned, I was like the dice roll Okay.
So I tried to get a fellowship and I didn't get a fellowship, so I had to come anyway and pay tuition. So I couldn't afford the tuition, so I had to come and take a light course load and to get residency.
Yep.
Later as I came to establish myself within the program, they offered me a fellowship, but out of pride, because they didn't give it to me when I wanted it. I wouldn't take it just by that. I was doing tree work anyways. But the first when I came, I had to get like while I was trying to find a regular job. I had to get a part time job, and so you could get a part time job through the school, and they gave me a job. My classes were all in the LA building. They gave me a job.
I'm not kidding you. They gave me a job scrubbing toilets in the building where all my classes were. And it would put these Ivy League kids in this super weird situation. They'd come in to take a piss and there I am their classmates scrubbing the toilet, and I remember one of them was so like kind of like taking it back they put they put out the at least it must be convenient, because you're right here.
You're like, yeah, yeah, I'm glad we have that.
That's why I took the job. Yeah, dude, it was a wild, wild time in my life. Man. Oh I so later tonight you're gonna hear uh, we're gonna do a show up here. I saw Steve Earl. I can't even think of who.
I say, you need to get Steve Earl on the podcast. He's he's a public Lands dude, loves to fish.
The reason I haven't is we just totally disagree on capital punishment. But I just don't see that coming up.
I would love to have a feeling it could be a freewheeling conversation.
I would love to have him on. I don't want to talk about Capitol Punt. There's plenty of places we lined. I saw him in Bozeman, I saw him in Missoula. Our playlist that we play before the live shows, so when we turn our playlists on tonight has Steve Earl tunes on it. Huge.
Steve Earl ticks me off about uh folks who like don't listen to Steve Earl and they're like, yeah, I'm going to Steve Earl concert. They'll be like, oh, is he gonna play? And they'll rattle off like one of his.
Hits, Copperhead Rode I hope so like copper Yeah exactly, And you're like, sure, hope, so is.
What I want? Or is he gonna do? I feel all right, Oh that's good, that's my too.
Yeah. Galway girl's great man.
I'd love he's a fisherman.
Yeah.
Yeah. I just feel so strongly about capital punishment.
In favor of lightening our tax load.
No, just something and I don't think of it as like I don't think of it as deterrent. I just think there's some things that are so heinous. I just think of it like a revenge.
It's on brand that you supported the gravel pit dog killing then of Christin Yes, okay, they did brand.
In the Guardian article they did use the word execution, which I go back and forth with, like using that type of language, which I feel is like typically reserved for humans.
Well you remember when Pebble's the bear was killed, he was assassinated?
Yeah, well that, uh, what I feel like is a grossly out of taste, out of touch those billboards that are around Bozeman, which is like stop the bison genocide.
Oh yeah, sense yeah, Like.
Like let's just round up a handful of tribes in Montana and see what their association to genocide is.
That it's pretty out of touch. It's misleading word choice, which is something I never engage in. We're gonna do a show tonight here in the Wilmot, which is which is uh, like I said, heat with nostalgia. And one thing we're gonna hear tonight is we're gonna hear Clay and Phil perform and Phil, do you have a mic on Phil?
I do? Yeah?
Phil has been playing at all of our live shows. Phil has been playing his harmonica, which you're not a historic harmonica player.
No, I Uh, I heard Clay was playing playing the show, and I kind of wanted to just make myself more useful on this tour. Is honestly, when I've decided when I was asked to come, I didn't know what I was going to be doing.
Is that right?
Yeah?
So I was like, oh, I don't I don't just want to be uh dead weight. So I asked Clay, like, hey, would you want some accompaniment? And he was super generous and said said yes. So I was like, man, I should I got to learn an instrument. I can play with Clay, but I've played music all throughout my childhood in high school. So it's like I think I told you, I'm like master of none and jack of all trade, Like I can I can learn something quickly. I'm not, by any means a.
Great harmonica player, but I get it. I get the job done.
Did you choose the harmonica for the ease of transport?
That was definitely a factor.
Well, he blew went out on the tour.
Really, yeah, I didn't know you could blow out hard, you know, I did play it so hot it only lasted him three nights.
We need the fortnight show. We need to get him one of those vests so he can have several harps.
Well, yes, and a.
Bob Dylan holder.
Oh yeah, I love it.
So his hands are free.
Yep.
I think you should do both the songs. You get well of them. Well, you don't want to do both your No, I mean yeah, I can't.
I'd say it's a lot of live music for a podcast. Okay, let's just cut to the one where your podcast. Yeah, let's cut to the more Phil places his harmonica. Alrighty, Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of the show stopper, you know, yep, the show starter.
Yeah, it's a show. We need to show stopper. Don't stop the show with it.
Now, we need to We need to get down.
I got you.
We need to sit down, Phil.
Yeah, we do.
Otherwise I gotta make some camera adjustments.
And that's just his foot tambourine.
Is this a foot stomper? Are we supposed to the audience. It's just one thing I've learned from musicians. They don't like because the audience gets going and they're they're not on.
They started clapping h a few days ago during the the Your First, Your First song, and I was I was really worried.
Then it kind of died off.
You know, when you're on stage, it's so loud you can only hear yourself.
Yeah, they got a big monitors, so they're throwing you off.
They probably would if they if all of them got to do in it.
But most humans aren't good at keeping a tempo, especially when you got like five hundred of them all trying at the same time.
This is a little bit harder because I can't I can't really hear my guitar.
But it's okay. We got it.
Me and Phil Man I've said it a couple of times, like I feel like Merle Haggard. I feel like I've been on the tour of my whole life. All I think about is the music.
Like Phil said last night, when when you get home, the rest of the world wi I've moved on, And.
Yeah you're still there at the same Yes, all right, can you quick give a little background on old slew foot? So this is just an old folk song?
Does that? Does it known? Who is does it? I don't even know.
I don't even know who originally wrote it. I don't know, but all the all the folk bands sing it.
You know, it's your traditional song.
It's a traditional song and it's about a bear hunt with dogs, which is pretty cool.
Have you listened to The Grateful Dead's album Reckoning, It's like traditional songs I have none.
You might like some of those, Yeah, I bet I would. All right, you're ready, Phil, Let's do it all right. This is old slew Foot. It's a great song.
You're gonna beller it right.
I'm gonna do my best. It's a little bit harder sitting.
Down high on the mountain top. Tell me what you see?
Bear tracks, bear tracks looking back at me.
You better get your ripples bus before it's too late.
Bear's got a little pig and he's headed.
For the Gameoh he's big around the middle, and he's brought across the front, running tiny miles an hour.
We're taking thirty feet of jump.
He had never been caught, He hain't never been treated.
Some bull say he's a love like me.
Here you go, po tambourine.
I saved up my money and I bought.
Me some bees, started making honey way up in the trees.
I cut down that tree.
But my honey is all golf old sloop.
Foot done made himself at home.
Oh.
He's big around the middle, and he's broad across the front, running ninety miles an hour, taking thirty feet of jump. He had never been come he hain't never been treated.
Some don't say he's like me Bill.
Taylor on the Harmonica.
That's right, last word. Winners are coming and it's twenty oh rivers rose over, So where can he go? We'll chase him up.
The haller and we'll.
Put him in well, shoot him in.
The bottom, just to listen to himy ill.
He's big around the middle, and he's broad across the front, running ninety miles an hour.
Taking thirty feet of jumping. He had never been caught. He hain't never been treated.
Some folks say.
He's a lot like me, Bill Tyler of the Harmonica, timboury Phil.
Does like Bill, just a quiet man of talent. Yes, yeah, thank you Phil, Oh, thank you Clay. Okay, handful things to talk about. How you wanna kick off with the with the with the brew Han Wisconsin.
Oh sorry, it's like regulation season setting for a lot of different states, is it. Yeah, yeah, like we we're going through season setting processes in Montana and so one of the things that and I know we're going to talk about Washington this podcast too, right, So yeah, that's another example. But so state of Wisconsin. Uh, somebody wrote in for the Game Commission to consider a proposal that would ban side imaging sonar and like three sixty view so sonar.
Which is in Chester.
Yeah, which is you know, like crazy awesome technology that's becoming more and more available because the the longer it's out, the prices come down, so more folks can afford it. And it allows anglers to target individual fish, identify species, identify fish in conditions that they typically would have to you know, just blind cast or sit with a worm on the bottom and hope for the best type of thing.
Inane effective. I fished it. Yeah, you fished it.
And like, you know, one of my gripes with this technology is that, like we did that Ducks Unlimited Perch fishing tournament on Canyon Ferry a few years ago, which is super fun, but as the day progressed, I had like nobody to talk to because you guys were all huddled around that screen and it was like it you may as I was a lonely man out there on the ice without couldn't couldn't join in on the fun. Not enough holes and so and iron stuff to go around.
And it's like this is yeah, it's just kind of taking the a big part of the fishing camarade, camaraderie out of it. And it's like another excuse to watch TV. That's one reason.
It is no reason it's yeah. And I even with so I had a camera for a while for ice fishing. Yeah, kept breaking. I had a camera. You lower the wire down the hole and you can hook fish. It don't hit like I think you don't realize in your ice fishing when fisher turned off is they mouth it. They'll mouth it in a way that usually got a spring bobber. You don't register the hit. But on camera you can be like, oh it's in their mouth. You can zip fit. You can hook a fish that would not register on
a spring bobber. Yeah, because you go like, oh shit.
So this guy's argument is that the effectiveness of this sonar is going to increase the catch rate and more than likely the take home rate of fish. You know, probably like walleye, crappie, bluegill, is what this person is probably real concerned about. That impact is going to decrease the creole limits your take home, how many fish you
can take home. Yeah, when that happens, the ripple effect is going to be fewer people buying your fishing license because they don't find it worth their while because they can't take home as many fish. So it's going to hurt the whole system because fish are too easy to catch right now with this technology, it's so easy, it's going to hurt the population. The hurt in the population is going to lead to a decrease in fishing licenses sold.
Do you think that's that's true?
It's extrapolated out pretty far. Listen to this.
I think that guys that grew up traditional fishing that really value being able to catch a big crappy, you know, a two and a half pound crop. It's like that is like a gold bar to them. When that guy gets the technology, he loves it because he's catching this thing that's been so difficult to catch his whole life, and he just goes nuts over it.
And has to that it can still be difficult even though you've identified the fish in the spot.
But what happens to the to the generation down the line that grows up with this technology that catching a two and a half pound crap is just.
Like, they'll do it every day. They'll get old and they'll get mad about the next technology. Yeah, and they'll they'll reminisce back when it was just the simple times of having lives.
So onar Yeah, I mean you have a strong point there, but we've never dealt with this level of technology before fish. Yeah, I mean, going from to.
Rifles, monofilament. Come on, what's wrong with braiding some roots? What's wrong with braiding some horse hair? Now the fish can't even see the line.
Yeah, but at some point all technology isn't the same though.
Right understood.
And I'm gonna give a big I'm gonna give a big spiel in a second.
So uh.
Yeah, but wait, the reward of pounding a shoreline with the spinner, which has probably caught more records than anything regardless, Uh, the.
Jig has caught the most records cal not the popper.
Not the popper, but but popper fishing is a great example too, Like the effort that you got to put in to get that super rewarding strike throwing big streamers all that stuff because you're doing your best to do the mental gymnastics of covering the water column, uh, doing different presentations, and then you get a fish, and that a fish is is a huge reward because you've had to figure all this stuff out, you know, that accelerated
learning curve of being like, oh, don't even toucher rod. Yep, we're just gonna go until the we can see the fish on the screen. We're gonna get everything right, and then you can cast to it.
Yeah, because it's it's fifty six inches off starboard stern yep.
Yeah, you see where the stick's pointing, like right there, ten feet.
No.
I think it would be super telling if Wisconsin were the state to do this. It'd be like if Texas outlawed cellular trail cameras or something like you're, oh, yeah, per capita, there's got to be more live scopes in Wisconsin or like at least top five.
Yeah, that's why it's top of mind.
I just whenever there's a change proposed like this, I wonder if there's the it's all based on a hypothetical, like if there is a measurable impact from this technology, then you get into what.
The years years demonstrating.
And I understand that you don't want to let these things get out of control, right or have a population level impact. But there's a lot of ifs and thens and.
The and we talk about science based management, right, It's like you get to this frustrating thing with biologists who are like, well, show me the science.
Oh there's no science yet, right, And.
There's no science yet, so you can't be proactive.
You can't go look, here's a chart. Here's increase in usage of live sonar. Here's depletion of resource. Yeah, no, it's it's you're you're enforcing.
Here's the creole surveys. Here's the time on the water surveys.
Here's the Yeah, that's why anytime the whole follow the science thing and trust the science, follow the science, people use that opportunistically when it benefits what they're saying. This is not. This is about managing, managing, enforcing, trying to find some kind of definition of like fair chase, fair play, fair share.
Yep.
Right, here's the spiel. Though, kind of given my spiel on this.
I think you should throw it in also, like, you know, because I think this ties in with what Clay was kind of getting at and how you've talked about like raising your kids right, like getting them to play out in the rain so they're not like, oh it's raining, we can't go do anything like I think there's doing things the hard way can benefit our system.
But well, yeah, I never finished my point earlier about that camera. When that camera broke. I'm not kidding. When that camera broke. My boy, my older boy, he didn't want to go ice fishing because the camera's broke. I'm not kidding you. Yeah, yeah, because it was why would you, you.
Know, did you want to go ice fishing? Oh yeah, It's like who cares? He's like, wow, we don't have the camera though.
Well, Jay Siemens and Mandy when we were fishing with them, I tried to sit next to Mandy without She had a screen going in her hole and there was just an open hole next to her and I sat there and was just jigging off the bottom. Imagine that, no flash or no nothing, and she could not stand it. She was like, no, no, no, what are you doing. I'm like, I'm fishing. She's like, no, you're not. And she had to go get at least a flasher.
Put something in front of you.
Yeah, and then we're talking with Jay. I was like, okay, this side imaging live scope deal. If you forgot it, how far away? Like if you were heading to a tournament someplace or just going to fish, what would be your point of going, Oh my god, I forgot the live scope. I got to turn around and go back. He said, more to five hours if he was, if he was within four or five hours of home, he would turn around and go back and get.
The thing, because yeahs feels good. Success is a drug, dude. The other night, I did. I'm kind of nervous about it.
I did. I did an interview with a I did an interview with a journalist who normally covers She covers like an Olympics sports scheme.
Oh, that's appropriate. So far a lot of athletes in this room.
So And the interview was set up around the publication of our new cookbooks. I thought we're gonna talk about that. But she comes in and we sit down and she wants she has like six the six most controversial things in hunting, Like I'm not telling you, Like she wanted to talk about, uh, regulatory structures around hunting mountain lions. What do I think like public lands, divestiture, uh, hounds for bears okay, mm hmm. I was like, yeah, surprising.
I don't know what she's gonna do it, Like, I was just like, she caught me in the chatty mood. Did she ask you about the cookbook? No, not a single time. Caught me in the chatty mood too. So now I'm nervous about what all I said. But I want to explain thing to her. And I've talked about before here. But it's like I was avoiding conversations about specific state by state issues, okay, And I was saying, like,
here's the here's my general perspective. My general perspective is that I tend to look favorably upon traditional use practices where it's been demonstrated that that traditional use practice is compatible with sustainable wildlife management. Okay, meaning of a state has always had hound hunting for bears, and that practice hound hunting for bears has proven to be compatible with responsible management of black bears as a renewable resource.
Meaning a stable or growing population.
Yeah, so you've always hound hundred bears, you have good bear numbers on the on the landscape, they're not in decline. I would say that that that traditional use practic this is warranted. Now the States never had hound hunting for bears and they go to institute hound hunting for bears, And I wouldn't look at it like a defending a traditional use practice where let's say for the last one hundred years you haven't been able to You're introducing a
new thing into the mix which requires special consideration. And I was trying to explain to her as well, like where this becomes relevant is we always have been and always will be faced with new practices, and we need to assess what we're gonna do about new practices. Enter like the drone. Okay, years ago, like when drones became just a whisper, a whisper, I remember it was like in one year, thirteen Western states and one year came out and just washed their hands of it. They immediately like,
I don't know where this is going. I'm not gonna let it go anywhere. Yes, drones and hunting are out.
Well, I think bha RF, a bunch of conservation groups immediately came out with policy statements like restricting technology yep, but they were addressing drones specifically.
Exactly, and it was quick. Yeah, it was quick. Would drones.
Could you make a comparison between using drones and livescoping for fishing.
Well, I could tell you this, Like there was a rumor like here, I could tell you one place that drones would be like incredibly effective. And there was a rumor of being used this way hunting moose. Putting up a drone in a willow flat.
Yeah, giant black blob that's six feet tall and a bunch of willows that are eight feet tall, and it's like, oh there, he is right, And there was a rumor of that being a coming a thing immediately.
Okay. So here you took an emerging technology that you knew was going to be impactful on the resource, and before it even had a user group, there was no one to even bitch. There was no one to bitch because no one was you know what I mean, if you went if you had just held off and tried it now, you'd already have resistance. Yeah.
Yeah, So like and look at what is happening right now, because I mean that's a great like the in other aspects game retrieval, some of like the big evil drone technology things.
Have are true, ye day not true.
Oh, they're using, so like using thermal imaging to detect game for hunting purposes.
The other day I was in the room. I was in the room in Mississippi and there was a conversation. There was a guy that got the thermal drone thing for recovery, and his buddies were saying, Now, what he does is he flies to find where bucks that he knows about are bedded so he can set up on the exit trail that he knows that he wants to set up on because he knows that bucks bed in these certain areas and he knows where they been and
where they're gonna leave. So he finds the buck and then makes his stand selection based on where he knows the buck is bedded. Right, which does how is that not illegal? Because every state didn't ban drones and hunting? M right, Yeah, And.
It's drones and scouting. Is it drones in hunting? Right? Well, it's like all the things.
It also raised the question like if you're using the thermal for the thermal drone for recovery, if you don't, if you find that you didn't hit that deer and then all of a sudden you see another deer, do you just have to cover your eyes and walk out of the woods. That's why certain states and there's a real fuzzy gray area there, but some states and it's not the softy states. That's the thing with drones, is it was like not not like that, not animal rights states.
You know, it's like Montana, Alaska, like not animal rights states that got out ahead of drones.
And it's not animal right states. They're getting out ahead of thermal Arizona, Utah, Arizona recently trail cams on public land. That's not coming from antis.
Nope, nope, not at all.
This is forty five states have laws restricting the use of drones for hunting. The only states that don't have specific laws banning drone recovery or Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
So I think it does paint the picture. Though, to go back to the side imaging thing and the fear is the technology is going to affect a population or spike a harvest rate in such a way that it's going to impact the length of a season or means of take or one of these things that we hold in higher regard than being able to use the technology. Does that make sense.
Yeah, And it's like the conversation isn't just about live scope. It's like, do we we're in like an unprecedented a period of like unprecedented technological advancement? Right? You go back to the forties and it'd be like the you know, atomic and nuclear like just changed everything. The Internet age changed everything, like unprecedented technological advancement. Who knows what's coming. There's guys that are messing with it. This is not
related to fishies. There's people that are messing with this that you'd be able to take a scoop of water out of a river and measure marine isotopes in the water and tabulate that to how many salmon ran up that river?
Amazing?
Okay, so it's like there's crazy stuff is on the horizon. Yeah, So never mind live scope, But how are we going to respond to unforeseen technologies in the future that are going to completely rewrite hunting and fish and how are we going to preserve traditional use? You could take two ways. I feel like you either be.
Like I'm gonna I'm gonna preserve traditional use, or you're gonna be like I'm gonna preserve technological advancement.
You can't like you have to be in one of those camps. There's not gonna be room to not pick one of those camps.
And the I think you had that example of a laser range finder the other day, and it's pretty perfect. It'd be harder, it'd be hard to come up with something as a better example because it was like this thing the military had. So I would say technological advancement and availability right have to be tied together. So the longer the technology is on the market, the more available it becomes because it gets more prolific and more available because of a lower and lower price points.
Yeah, it could have been I don't know how many years ago it would have been like and I'm going to clarify, I use cellular cameras, I use a laser rangefinder, Okay, I use I have. I just shot two turkeys of spring with the red dot scope. Okay, I use technology. So I'm not talking about I'm not coming from a purist perspective. There's probably things that if it wasn't illegal, maybe I would use it. I don't know, but picture that whatever it was twenty years ago with laser range finders,
I don't even remember. Picture that someone had said the minute the technology emerged and was finding military application or whoever the hell started it out picture the game agencies and said this is going to really revolutionize shooting. It's going to change take. Uh, let's get away with it. And you would just imagine this alternate reality where there
had been no one to resist it. Because if you went in now and said, oh, you know, we're gonna back, We're going to back, We're going to do a time machine and back it up and no laser range finders. Dude, right like our cade civil there be a civil war, is it not? Is it not?
Like if you looked at the at the arc of technology and hunting even in this country, I mean, maybe we're this is like much ado about nothing, because there's always increase of technology, always, and there's always a reduction, a self imposed reduction on the amount of take. I mean, because there was a time when you know, they were using addleaddles, and I mean they could kill all they
wanted with an addle addle. Then we had bows and arrows, and then we had muskets, and then we had repeating rifles, and it got to the point where you know, they were they killed them all. You know, the extirpation, and then now the technology is so efficient that is it not just going to a place where where season dates are shorter? Sure, I mean, it's just it's just like, Okay, if you want to play this game, we're going to have to do it. Well, I mean, that's what you're saying.
But is that not just like what happens?
The answer to what happened when I was saying of this journal sounds kind of like the second part of what I explained is, let's just say you have a unit. Let's say there's there's an area of space, an area a landscape area, and it has and you determine that there's one hundred deer that live in this area of space, and you determine that there's a harvestable surplus of ten annually. Okay, and you know that it's about a ten percent success rate.
Hunters of hunt that landscape have a ten percent success rate. That creates opportunity. Okay, that creates opportunity for one hundred people. Might do my math right, YEA hunter that creates opportunity for one hundred people to pursue the resource, there's one in ten chance they'll be successful. One hundred people take a crack at it. Now you introduce a bunch of tools where all of a sudden, now there's a fifty percent success rate. Okay, what does that do to the opportunity.
Opportunity plummets. Yeah, you can only now I got twenty guys, We're gonna have twenty guys hunt because half of them are gonna bag out. Yeah, and that and like really abbreviated form like that is one of the things you're battling against. Like there's something more nostalgic too that you're fighting against. Is you're fighting against like there is among
the sporting community. There's a reverence for woodsmanship, right and learned like learned skill that time spent pays off that learning about the resource, you know.
Learning about I mean, this is a weird thing to say used to be because there's still nothing that can
replace like ground truthing something meaning walking it. But the people who are really good at e scouting, looking at satellite imagery, knowing the variety of maps and applications that are available online Google Earth, cross referencing all of it to get a better mental image and plan, and then using software like on x, they can do so much more that used to be only available to people who have been like I have spent a decade in this drainage, and I know the spot that you have to hike
to in order to actually be able to see this stuff, right, like all that barren stuff. Actually, when you get up there, the tree line's so high that you can't actually see. So you have to be over here in this screen patch. And I know that because I actually walked up there and did it. Yep, right, it was like that stuff's to a large degree has gone away if you are effective at using all the tools that you're.
To a large extent, Yes, but you still like you still need to ground check. You know, there's But you're right.
So at what point do we fought the technology? I mean, that's the question that you're trying to answer.
Man, I'll tell you I don't.
When it becomes self aware, that comes after us.
Yeah, it's like early, Yeah, early is the simple answer. You got to make managers in the public. You gotta why was it so clear with drones? I don't know why were drones so clear?
And it's funny because like something like a laser rangefinder or GPS, like a laser range finder makes people more effective and maybe encourages I don't know if it encourages the right word, but has led people to shoot longer
and longer distances and become have greater efficacy. But it's also made people more effective within traditional ranges, right, And so it has like an obvious benefit to the resource in that sense, and that there's less perhaps what less wounding loss and GPS like it, and it enables people to go further and further into the back country and have the impact on the resource over a wider area.
But it also has like an obvious safety use. And I don't know what the redeeming quality of the drone is, you know, like there's those other ones sort of have you can make an argument for them in terms of like the the benefit to the hunter outside of simply killing more stuff.
Yeah, people like with laser range finders, people like the folk people like the focus on people making shots they shouldn't take, right, But you also can prevent you from making shots you shouldn't take because it puts a number to it, Yeah, to the gut check.
Yeah, it's not like, oh, it's probably three hundred yards yep, you know, and then you're.
You know, with a drone, you could you could make an argument that would help you with selection, you know, like like if you were hyper managing a place, like we're only taking this type of animal. I mean, I'm not like you said, those drones help me to pick the animal for conservation that needs to be taken out.
So what would hunting be though? Okay, like we ran things to the extreme because that's where we what we do with these conversations, right, So we we we're in agreement that increased technology can lead to increased harvest, which leads to shortened seasons. So what happens if two hunting in general? If yeah, you can use everything at your disposal, you name it, technology wise, weapon wise, whatever. Uh, but the season for that is one.
Day, right, Yeah?
I mean it changes the whole game, right, It changes the lifestyle.
Changes I think, Yeah, I.
Mean it really does, because there's no Yeah, it changes everything. But would they be and I mean this goes back to Steve's point, like, is that not what Daniel Boone and these long hunters would say about us? Would they be like you guys, oh of course, and and but then we're sitting here and we're like, man, we're we're really, we're woodsman. We we've experienced the wild. We're doing it the right.
It's like it's hate, you know, I hate when people say it it's all relative. Yeah, and it's there's a change. It's just like do you do spikes? Because if we're gonna go back, historically we would say, Okay, the vehicle, I mean the vehicles huge impact on hunting. Yeah, as Randall pointed out, and way long ago podcasts, the advent of the freezer that used to not used to not have a freezer. Freezer's changed how people hunting fish.
The other the other one that I just thinking back on some of the research that I did. I remember looking at a field and stream from like the seventies and there was an article sort of touting this new product which is a poison arrow Mississippi. Yeah and so and.
So it was like pods yeah, and.
So it was just like uh and and this article talked about how some fish and game agencies were getting ahead of it and banning poison arrow. But the advocates are saying, well this this means if you just hit an animal, it's gonna die, and you won't wound a deer and have it run off, So why wouldn't you poison?
I was with these guys in Mississippi and they use them with their kids. They say, if that kid gets a piece of that deer anywhere, that deer is dead or a door naill, ye I wonder anywhere.
But it's like something that's so foreign to most people today. But in that article, it was sort of like, what do we do with this technology?
You know?
And it's it is context.
And there's a traditional use practice because they used to use Strict nine. Even fur hunters used to use Strict nine. So what does it It was a technology being able to develop and deliver poison wasn't emerging technology. It became a traditional use practice. And now everyone in the room would agree you shouldn't be able to poison for bearing animals for the fur market. Everyone agrees. Well, Texas and Oklahoma have both now certified a hog poison, A wild hog poison, yeah, made by.
Caput Caput Industries.
It's Tennessee bear houndsman one time, and they take a lot of criticism for running bears with hounds and all this, and he said, he said, he said, yeah, I used hounds to hunt bears here. And he was talking about criticism from inside the hunting community. But he's like, you'll get in your truck and drive twenty five hundred miles in a pickup truck to go hunt an elk with a bow or you know, with a rifle.
And he's like, really good point. It was like, Okay, so.
You're mad at me for using this ancient practice.
Why don't you point out the guy that flies across the country to hunt for the weekend. Yeah, talk about technology. Yeah, I do want to an emails with his buddy about what weekend he should go.
Yeah, if I should use carrier pigeons for all hunting correspondence, that's what me and Randall do.
Oh frequently, could like magically transport Daniel Boone here for like, do you think he'd even give a crap about like the hunting side of things or you think he'd just be like, so you're telling me, you guys are all sitting here. You've never survived a typhus outbreak, never survived yellow fever.
But you guys doing the Willman night.
He'd be horrified by the witchcraft we have wrapped around our heads right now.
Yeah, it's just or would he care or he'd be right in the middle of it. But I want to move on to another subject.
But this is another subject we've discussed on the podcast.
But I don't okay, we don't need to move on. Sorry, But it's like it's when looking at this kind of stuff you can get you can wind up throwing your hands in the air. You'd be like, well, what about
Daniel Boone and they used to use black powder? Now we've got airplanes, and throw your hands in the air and just say whatever, okay, whatever, it's all changed anyway, or you can say, yes, I recognize that we've come a long long way in a couple hundred years, and we've had all these emerging technologies that have all rewritten stuff and we've had to adapt along the way. I
get all that. I get all that that when you look at it in a fine with like under a fine you know, like a certain lens, you look at it all, it all seems ridiculous after all of this. Who cares about that? Right? Well? I care about that, like, like, I get it. But we're still here in the present day, and we still have a changing landscape and we still have to make decisions. And I don't think that looking at all the things that we didn't do and all
the inevitability. There still are some things like drones, like poison and I'm in no way bucketing live scope. I don't really have a formed opinion about this yet. I'm just saying we will have to deal with this and a lifetime worth of other things, some things that just might seem from sitting here today, it might seem fantastical. It might come up and it be that it takes a lifetime to learn a lake, okay, and now you can learn well side view and all that. Maybe it doesn't.
Maybe in an afternoon you can grid a lake and be like, I'll tell you how many fish are there, I'll tell you where they're at. Right? Is that.
About this?
What if think about like what the Boone and Crockett Club did in eighteen eighty seven when they kind of reformulated the way that our culture looked at and managed wildlife, you know, the simple version being going from market hunting to the sport hunting, Which, like, what if there's a time some decades from now when there requires that kind of paradigm shift.
Sure, did you see what I'm saying?
Like this paradigm shift that was and yeah, yeah, like there's there was a paradigm shift that had to take place, honestly because of technology and markets and increase of people and all this stuff. Like it's hard to foresee what that would be, but what if the take and there was so much pressure on the resource and there was this group of people that were like, hey, you know, like what that shift would be.
Yeah, it's funny because this is the thing I like to point out to people how celebrated Teddy Roosevelt is today. Okay, the carvers facing Rushmore, Right, any politician would appreciate a favorable comparison to Teddy Roosevelt. There's no politician that would turn down. I take that back now, because there's certain most Okay, most politicians would welcome a favorable comparison to the conservation record of Theodore Roosevelt. But let's take a
look at the time. Here's a guy saying he proposed this whole paradigm shift. He's like, you know what, let's not use wildlife for making money. Let's use wildlife as a recreational resource. Not only that, let's take huge chunks of the landscape and set it aside from industrial development. An industrial exploitation and take it off the record. He would have been he would have been a tree hugging libtard, right, yeah, he would have sat somewhere below Gavin Newsome to propose that stuff today.
He's locking it all.
They would have crucified him today. But now there's a conservation seconds.
And when we talk about the guy that wanted to end market hunting and close off.
All the land, that's a good point.
Would we talk about And that's why this is not simple in any way. But when we talk about regulating a technology for wildlife, we're also talking about regulating an industry.
Right, yeah, right, And because you know the live scope sonar boys aren't like a live scope band.
Right, or just bikes.
The archery industry is like no more boats, guys, the twenty twenty five line of bows?
Is it? Well? This journalists want to talk about e bikes too?
Oh really awesome? Let off for compound bows. He can't be over a percentage, you got. You know, there's all sorts of things that regulating technology would regulate industry, which is you know, not something that we really want to do in America in general.
Right, here's one for you. How did it come to be. Maybe one of you guys knows. The answer is, how did it come to be that you can't use a laser, you can't use something to project light?
Oh yeah, I don't know that. Why did no one get there? Why did no one get worked up about that?
I don't know. Boy, you talk to pilots, they're sure serious about because people with lasers, Like.
People saw it in the movies when the red dot appears and they're like, that.
Looks pretty pretty easy. Yeah, no one raised a fuss when state said you can't use anything to project the light.
And this is the technology discussion happens with like every hobby that you could think of. Really yeah, like right now, in golfing, they recently determined last golf balls have gotten too good and they're doing a rollback. By twenty twenty eight, professional golfers have to use like a more archaic golf ball than by twenty thirty. If you're a recreational golfer, you need to start using a more archaic golf.
That makes sense because otherwise they have to redo golf courses.
Yeah, they appreciate listen, but it's every hobby, think about it the whole But that thing the whole structures make believe.
Well, there's like there's like all believe and you know this is like real, like that this is so our wildlife.
Yeah, I appreciate the effort.
It's it's like maybe country.
Is huge laser range finder.
Yeah, Marschnelle like created that about to make songs or or country music artist Clay Nukom. Maybe he doesn't like auto tune, he says, no more auto tune, got to tune it by ear.
Yeah. I like that little sports to a bit. There. Here's a lot that's funny. Here's what it's funny. We had a podcast guest online.
All right, if you're in Wisconsin, know that this is something that's coming up and it's just attention to.
Okay, Yeah, so if you want to go back and time and not listen to that whole thing, there's your wrap up. That's up Wisconsin.
They're coming for your Walleye acquisition tools.
Uh.
Here's a funny one. And I'm surprised that this guy liked it. So in the past we had on Bob Reid, who's a Python expert. Bob Reid, I later learned. I don't know if you know the story, doctor Bob the real doctor. He's a real doctor, nice doctor, Bob Reid. He's he's like a herpetologist or something. Right, Yeah, he works on he's with the USGS.
He's working on birds now though.
Oh at the time he was put on that he was doing a bunch of work around pythons in Florida. We hunted with a guy in Florida. And the guy in Florida's talking about his hunting mentor just hates me because I didn't push back on Bob Reid when Bob Reid explained to all this python catching, Python rodeos, python catchable, python has zero impact that there's like when you look at the numbers like python. Go back and listen to the podcast.
So the guy who hates you is mad that you didn't make that point or diet.
Apparently he's maybe a Python catcher. I don't know if it's funny that he was so mad that I didn't push back on the guy who models Python populations.
He didn't like to suggest that he wasn't making.
A difference for pointing out that mechanically removing pythons has and and go back and listen to the episode. Not my you know, follow the science like not my science. Bob Reid, a guy that models Burmese python populations in Florida, pointing out that that is all just whistling Dixie has no implications. Driving up on those levees picking up snakes doesn't mean anything, just like anyone would admit shooting carp
don't matter. Shooting carp don't matter anyhow. That guy, Bob Reid, who gave me sitting in my office is a one court jar of genuine snake oil. He gave me a jar of genuine snake oil rendered off of Burmese python. I'm surprised, Bob, that this article tickled you the way that it did.
Have you used that oil for anything, yet no saving it for toothaches, bad fowls, rheumatism, stuff like that. When I was in Guyana, it was frowned upon to kill a it's frowned upon to kill an anaconda.
But they said that two things they told me that was interesting. Old people can kill them to get the fat for arthritis. And he said that touching an anaconda with a bow is lethal to the anaconda, but it's a painful death and it takes a long time. But touching it with a different kind of stick will not kill it. But if you were to touch it with the limb of a bow, it will die later.
Do you think you're gonna die with that quart of snake oil? Still? They're not unused, Like it's gonna kill me?
No?
No, Like are you going.
To be able to pull the trigger?
Well? I think about putting it in the auction House of Oddities, and I think about, I don't know, I haven't said what I'm gonna do it yet, probably gonna at some point it's gonna go bad on me. You just need to leave it in a jar.
You can split it in two, you know, have like two small jars and put it in the windows like decoration. It'll last the rest of your life.
Uh.
Clay pointed out earlier that yeah, you should be rubbing that stuff in your hair.
Yeah, okay, faking it up.
I mean cures balding obviously.
Well look at yeah I believe that was your head. Yeah, my goodness, Okay, Bob Reid, like this this is like, listen, God bless these researchers just seems so silly. So some researchers did a thing where they in California they put GPS. Okay, our friend, this is Carean writing our friend Bobber. He'd sent this to us. It's very interesting, he says, I've never seen habitat selection methods applied to people, but it's a cool concept. Kind of a bummer that road hunters
appear to have higher success rates. So these people did a study as though they needed to figure this out, like you know how you look at you put radio collars on links, like for instance, we've had a researcher on the podcast and they're wondering, how do links use burned over territory, meaning when you when there's a big giant forest fire in the Northern Cascades and you knuke the place creators leave. Uh, let's take so that's narrowing
it look like, okay, take let's take links. At what point in succession does a link say I'm going to move back in. It's now gotten to a point where I like it again, right, And they find that that as it grows, it gets to a point where they weave in and out and they start utilizing it, but they don't want to stand it. And then it gets to a point where they're like, I'm moving back in and they move back in Okay, So that's like habitat us.
It's super interesting research, especially in the era of megafiers. Right, so how will megafiers like what does it do for wildlife? And we all everyone watches that you place will burn and we'll say, man, that's gonna be sweet. DRNL hunting insert time period, right, and then it usually gets to a point where it sucks. It gets like it's it's it's nuked, it gets really good, it gets no good,
and then eventually returns just being normal. You know. Well, they're looking at how to hunters use habitat and I just don't think they needed to go through all the hass So they did to do it, but they put GPS monitors on hunters. They found the hunters hunt. They found that hunters hunt three ways. Where is this They hunt one second, coursing, stalking, sit and wait. They determined that hunters course around, they still hunt, hunters will stalk stuff,
and hunters will sit and watch. Now and here's the breaking news. It kind of depends where you're at.
I've never heard of it referred to as coursing.
I think it's a biological concept. When they study like how predators find prey.
What does that mean? You're just wandering around.
Coursely moving hoping to come across something.
What I want to know is is is there some selection bias for the hunter that would volunteer to do this? Well, yeah, maybe, or think about like.
I better keep moving and realize I'm lazy.
He's like circles.
No, the best hunters, you know, are they going to put a GPS in their bag.
Without incentive?
We all do well phone yeah, like you know, no, but yeah.
Maybe some good hunters would be like, yeah, I'll be a part of your study.
I'm not down on GPS on hunters for starties because, like you talk about Mike Chamberlain's work now here, you got turkeys with tracking devices, and then you put a hunter on the turkey with a tracking device, and in some instances you tell the hunter where that bird is, so he's like, he's roosted here. I'll give you that. And then they watch what happens, and they found birds that can't be killed. They just navigated. They found anyone wants to hear, Like, go way back to Mike Chamberlain
being on the podcast. They had a bird that couldn't get killed, and eventually a guy killed. It is a guy got a fight with his wife and gets all pissed off. It drives down to the state game area, just drives right past the sign, walks over a little hill, sits down and kills the bird that camp be killed. And they had been sicken hunters on that bird and people couldn't kill that bird.
Well, hey, that reminds me of Barry Newcomb's hunt the other day that he had on public land. He had him for four days. Super short story. The morning that he killed his gobbler, he had four different guys he could.
He was sitting across this big, big ravine and he saw headlamps coming down to this goblin turkey like before daylight, and he and and he heard a guy above him, Allan, and he hears this one turkey and all these guys hear it, and he knew what that turkey had done the day before, and so he took off up the mountain and he got pretty lucky. But it was also informed luck. Ye, And I mean basically bushwhacked that turkey.
Sure, yeah, yeah, it wasn't it.
I mean that turkey heard those box calls going off at daylight and was just like out.
Of here too much. Don't sound right. He's like a lot more hens in here than there was.
Yes, yeah, yeah, and they're carrying headlamps.
Pat Dirkin just wrote an article, So here's the background and the report published April third in the peer reviewed journal Frontiers and Conservation Science. Not familiar, you're familiar.
I've heard of it.
Research was from Cornell in University of Wisconsin at Madison. Came out to say, the states have flubbed deer management. States have blown it to me deer. They're managing deer for the benefit of too few people. Too may deer run around getting too many car crashes. Now we've got disease issues. We should bring in the FEDS and hand deer management in the United States of America over to a federal agency. That's one of those just shot in the dark academic papers. That's a news that's like kind
of be provocative. That's poking the who do you poke? Poking the bear bears, not dragons. That's a poking the bear.
Poking the dragon. That's a good one though, because like you know, darn getting well, our buddy Doug Duran would be like, you know, his very informed argument, right, is like look at the brows, look at the forestry correlation to deer populations. It's like these are unhealthy for us, caused by unhealthy deer numbers.
Do you think he would argue on behalf of the FEDS managing deer.
Is that what you're saying.
I think he would if it. If it's saying it's going to be a stronger deer management, it's more of a holistic landscape management, then yeah, he would be persuaded that way.
They say that, they that, they say that current management agencies have allowed deer impacts to grow into nationwide into a nationwide conservation and human health crisis.
Come on, I mean, I mean a little a little bit like come on.
My knee jerk reaction. I'm I'm typically always in favor of consolidating power at a higher level.
Really, I was trying to I was like, what, sorry, sorry, Arkansas, Yeah, my bad.
Go Yeah.
I mean I feel like calling I feel like that sort of reflexively just goes against everybody's instinct, especially when it comes to wildlife management. It's like, we should just take this all away from the states in the way that things have been going on, and just centralize decision making.
If I was at the state level on this, I would point out I would say that the states, they're there, the state, the state's management policies are suffering from social issues, meaning they're saying please kill dose kill white tail? Does please please please? Reported on it last year the head of the Michigan State Agency came out and said, I don't know what to do. We can't get people to kill. Does right? People aren't killing dose hunters. I would almost
look at like a wake up call. So unless the Feds are gonna come in, and the Feds are gonna they're gonna have to do one of two things. The Feds are gonna come in, They're gonna.
Have to make it that people have to kill deer, which is gonna go over well, like like you get a letter in the man Well, it's like jury dude, Like it's like a jury duty summons saying you gotta go kill those quota Like what really are they gonna do? Or this guy is or these researchers saying we're gonna bring in the Feds and we're gonna bring in We're gonna you know, remember all the black helicopters when.
They're gonna pose the New World Order.
They're gonna get those black helicopters fueled up, and the feds are gonna start to deer eradication program.
Well maybe what are they gonna do.
Maybe they're gonna bring in drones. Yeah, just drones. I mean, I do wonder if the argument is the arguments that the federal government wouldn't be as constrained by social.
The social but they're not constrained. The states are saying, please kill those please, what's gonna take? What's gonna take? How about we do this? How about we make it that you can't kill a book until you to kill those. Well, those programs don't work. Yeah, how about we give you all the dough tags you want. Tried that? How about we let you hunt pretty much seven months out of the year. Tried that. How About we make it.
Where you can and donate even an ungutted dough to a food bank and they do all the work for you. I mean, I think it's all a lot of it's about work. It's like you're out there home and it's like, do I want to shoot this dough?
Time?
When I shoot this animal? This this starts a pretty big process.
How About we let you use kind of a gun during deer archery season. It's like there's nothing. There's nothing that they're trying everywhere that has uh that has a I don't know, like an over objective deer herd. They're trying, so bringing the feds, but until they're going to bring in like a punishment mechanism, Like I don't really know. I haven't read the stupid article either.
I know researchers literally wrote this, but it feels like a straw man argument, like there are very very few researchers, biologists, federal or state level that would make the same argument.
It's a bear poke. Yeah, Like it's it's just uh poke.
There's no folks that agree.
What would be your letter to the judge be like I got to get out of dough duty, you know, the boss, or travel a lot for work. I'm not going to be there.
I'd be like, man, hey, I got a huge buck on camera. He's coming into the corn like every afternoon.
I don't get by dose. I really I can't do this right.
Uh.
Last, what we're gonna get into this is a touchy one. B l M is going to deny the permit for the Ambler Road project. Yeah, yep, b the bl Bureau Land Manager. Well, first off, here's the sorry.
Not deny, right, they're they're just they're doing a no decision, no action, no action.
Not issue. Yeah, Ambler Road was there's an Ambler mining there. There's a what's the word for a whole bunch.
Just like a pot of gold, Yeah, like untold billions, but estimated in the many, many billions of dollars worth of wealth in various ores.
High end minerals, stuff that be used for cell phones, stuff to be used gold as in the Ambler Mining district. What's preventing extraction of those resources is they would need to build a two hundred and fifty mile industrial corridor cutting through the southern face of the cutting across the
southern face of the Brooks Range. It would have what would it would cross thousands of streams and rivers in an area that right now is an unroaded you know, it's it's kind of like the biggest chunk of non developed landscape we have on the continent.
People would use the word pristine, yeah, right, well, like it's not developed.
It would be baseline pristine, right. It would be like you know, people love to.
Argue about pristine versus Daniel Boonez.
When people love to argue about, you know, definitions of wilderness and all that, like, you know, it's a human it's a made up concept, and to Native Americans it was home and it's not all that aside that would be if you're going to fine wilderness, I'd be like, well, let's start with that. Okay, two hundred and fifty mile corridor that would have been not open for public use.
That was part of the deal they were brokering. It's like, so people like, what about all this penetration of all this vehicular traffic, Well, we wouldn't use it for that. It will only be used for mining. There's a lot of people that wanted it, the political you know, like a lot of the political establishment in Alaska wanted it. There were Native villages that were in support of it, and a lot of people didn't want it. I I took like a very he like, my look on it
is real simple. My look on it was I worry more about running out of wilderness than I worry about running out of roads, and I didn't want to see it happened. And that's how that trivialize the arguments that our people have about job creation and economics, and like, you know, the national security concerns about where we get
your minerals from. I look at it like in like three hundred years down the road, not even one hundred years down the road, whatever it is, I think that most people would be glad we didn't do it, just like now, it was controversial. It was. It was as we talked about, when Theodore Roosevelt made the National Forest System, people were pissed. They made legislation to prevent him from keep doing it. Now we're like, thank god he did that. Let's carve him in a big mountain next to George Washington.
You know, sure, glad he thought to do that. Let's call you know, a bunch of conservation groups Theodore Roosevelt this and that. Uh, no one is gonna I don't think anyone down the road would have been glad we've done that. They were gonna put a big mine, they were gonna put a big dam in Livingstone at a time, in flood that valley. Do you think anyone right now as pissed as they were when they couldn't do it, is anyone right now saying God, I really wish we'd damned that whole damn thing up.
The jet ski industry, the jets industry, the jes ski.
Industry is bummed. There's just certain conservation moves that later people will look and be like, wow, glad we didn't do that.
I mean, it's the same thing, not the same thing, but it's it parallels in some way as the conversation we had about technology, where it's like your frame of reference. If something happens fifty years ago, you're like, man, obviously they made the right cross, they made the right call then, and now there's a similar question. And it's not all the same. But in hindsight, some of these things look like common sense, but in the moment they're highly controversial.
Yep. And I could see like who know, Like geopolitically, you know, who knows? Who knows in the future what situation the nation might be in. And there could be a situation in the future where the nation's in a situation where we revisit it and we're like, no, for real now, Like in terms of like real right now here and now national security issues, we have a serious problem. I think it's gonna be different conversation. Well, but the shit ain't going anywhere.
That goes back to the idea that that wilderness is a luxury of the culture that has has a lot of strength and monetary value. There's a lot of in the wilderness argument about you know, part of the reason we've been able to preserve so much wilderness is because we didn't have to exploit every square inch of ground.
You know.
There's some great quotes from some guys you know about like, yeah, we're a great nation because we didn't have to take every last stick of lumber and every last mineral out of the ground.
Yeah.
There, it could be different. I mean if we were the if the if the socioeconomic things flipped one hundred years from now, seventy five years from now, fifteen years from now, it's like.
We're in some like prolonged global war or some prolonged global standoff. We might look and be like, you know what, maybe the maybe we should drill the NPR, maybe we should mine the Ambler Mining District, Maybe we need to move into the.
And war.
But like right now, look at I don't.
In times they're great. In times of great conflict and necessity, Congress can make a decision, right like we have that in our history. That's an established ability that we have, right Like Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Yep, we made a decision as a nation real fast.
No one could buy silk anymore. All the silk goes to parachutes.
Yeah.
Now, if you've done that before or the war, people been like what or like there's food like whatever, like in extraordinary circumstances. So I don't really buy the I don't like, I don't buy that argument right off the bat because I think that the whole conversation would change in a crisis. It's not a crisis right now. Yeah, we can, we can still afford to have wild places.
Yeah, how much would you care about this topic if it was like in Canada or Russia?
Very little? Well, it'd be less because I'd feel like it was I would care, but it.
But it's a little bit not your business.
It would be not even not my business. I wouldn't have like a I wouldn't feel that I had a voice that need to be heard. But when it comes to federal lands, it's it's as a United States citizen, you have a vested interest, so a dog, you have a right to speak about it. I mean do I am I bummed that the Amazon has disappear at the rate that it is. Of course, do I feel like I have a move to make not as readily as
I have a move to make there. Yeah, I'm like a I don't know, I'm like an environmental nationalist.
Right, tell people not to buy Argentine beef by made in America beef, and you can help the Amazon that's about.
And help the American rancher that's right, win win, yep.
But yeah, I mean it is like, I love Canada, love my time spent there. They have some amazing wildlife opportunities and programs, and I would be able to speak on the fact that, like, boy, I hope they don't mess this up just just because of whatever policy, But then I would only be able to fall back on the fact like I don't know the whole picture because I'm not as invested, but doesn't seem like a good idea.
Whereas with this particular thing, I'm like, oh my god, migratory birds, fish, it's a porkypine, porcupine, caribou herd.
Right on the other Yeah, no, it's western, it's central or western.
But you know, like we know these Caribou herds are in decline. We know that they.
Add porcupine to the east.
Do not deal with change well, like to the point where it's such a hard concept for people to grasp when you talk about it, like, well, what do you mean they just can't walk over a road? I'm like, well they can, but to them, like you know, it's like it's a bizarre concept. But yeah, I think like we're all very much in a position to weigh in and should weigh in on these things if they're important to us.
I'll tell you, Seth Canton's real happy right now. All right, we're gonna wrap up. Thanks y'all.
Hey, Steve, I've got one thing. I'm gonna go back to the beginning. May seem a little out of place. I think you need to talk about your old girlfriends. Less I didn't say, what are you talking about?
You?
You're gonna hate the next podcast.
The first you're opening line on this podcast, you were talking about some old girlfriend you had, And I'm just saying, I think you need to dial a quarter century ago. I think you need to before. I think you need to let the past die. We all think it, we all know it. We love you. You need to You need to do all that back a quarter century ago, long before I knew my wife the one to hear about this.
Though she's grown up, she's not, She's a woman. Let's let's ask her together.
Okay, I think i'd like you to talk about him more. Yeah, I have to, like, I'd like to further the conversation around and I don't.
I think i'd like more.
Do you guys agree?
Though?
Come on, col I disagree?
Is that me and my wife that like we're comfortable with the fact that we were alive a long time before we met each other.
Okay, can I ask you an ex girlfriend questions?
Like what you do? He just did the barber.
You once talked about how somehow we were talking about corn smut on trivia. Well, let me tell the story, and you know you're okay? An ex girlfriend you.
Said's got to turn their dose.
I have a lot of tech problems. It's like, I can't begin to tell you.
That an ex girlfriend once threw your keys into a cornfield. Yes, and what was the argument? That's what that's the detail. I was really I've been hung up on that for a year.
I have no recollection, but it was on Katie Road, not far down from Ronnie Bab's house. Uh, and just took my car never found him. This is evil and bombed him out into a corn field. That's a good trip to walk to walk a few miles. Did like did you become?
Was she an ex girlfriend at that moment?
I don't even remember, dude, I don't know. It was like something just got mad about something. I was like, I don't think she really thought of how hard it be to find him out there a standing cornfield.
And walked you walked upon some corns.
And I don't take it can be confused with like wistfully looking back on a time spent in another relationship.
Clay, I'll tell you I've taken it makes sense every time I give my wife a tour where I grew up and she's sick. She's like, how could someone as old as you be so surprised that things have changed since you were a little kid. Usually this is part of my tour tour. I'm like, somewhere out there, seventy chevy, I'll.
Be having a conversation with her about it.
Yeah, okay with this, all right? Thanks so.
Yo.
I'm a backwoods game for real.
Job.
He stay sharp because I know murderers looking behind them.
Tray bus and caps and me both booths.
Couldn't get a barn with my pears like a gold chant steffany cots like there's cocaine, got a sexy ass water on my neck, got six inchers and don't disrespect.
Ain't high in my bost all night spitting that hands, getting in fights camp when we went to white.
Cast calls real brun.
It's like truck and needs It's like base balls, Scot. I'm a bus tom, badass, certified, moss back Bluna, tic long beard, thunder chicken, himmer head king because I got a white crown watching homies getting murdered dead on the ground at scared of a now more crow.
Go wait, I'm gonna shock bumble bro walk into the party. Four strut from my studs, still the brood knocking in the club.
Dot Beef with the homie name Jake for shore so as Jenny took her home.
Then I made a purr, don't talk for read, you care for me? Came a wearing airshres. I makes you see go damage you.
Ll forss.
Go shout out to my marry up with the four lawsuits, shoo.
My rods down in a boom, A fiolas over in my head, Boom to my eastern and then long boom course three o' runner, the light.
Stop and I stopped in the border hobies the also ladies boom along as job.
You want your job to stop stop by amut