This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't predict any ofthing. 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. Hey Steve, calling in from Alaska. I'm here to announce that the latest
volume of me Eaters Campfire Stories is available now. This volume is called Discoveries, Revelations and Near Misses. So the volume is a little twist on our normal format, like it includes all of those uh your death escapes in the wild that really define our for other two volumes of Meat Eaters Campfire Stories, but this includes something added and special, which is a few stories about life changing
discoveries and revelations in the wild. The one you're gonna hear at the end of this podcast involves a guy whose friends refer to him as black Cloud Bob because this guy has a cloud of bad luck that follows him. And this story you're gonna hear is like a terrible near death experience that kind of bleeds into another terrible near death experience to make sort of like a duplex of near death experiences. It's a horrendous story and it's at the end of the podcast. You'll listen to that.
If you enjoy, you can go anywhere audio books are sold and get your latest volume of Meat Eaters Campfire Stories. I hope you enjoy. All right. We're recording from the Meat Eater Flagship store in downtown bos Of, Montana, and I am right below the Buffalo skull that now has its sign stick finger here. People have been sticking their finger in that hole mark have you I have not yet.
You're worried it's gonna get all greasy and dirty there, No.
What I would like to do is make like a I'd like to well, I don't even want to tell you what I'd like to do. I'd like to build in a little surprise, but stick your finger in that hole. People come by, they send pictures of themselves with their finger in that hole. Uh. That and all kinds of other oddities and great products down here at the Meat Eater Flagship Store downtown bows Of Montana where we are
recording right now, come on down and say hi. Also major importance, if you like to watch podcasts from our podcast network on YouTube, you have to do something. We're moving all of these all of our podcast videos are moving to a new YouTube channel which is called very simple me eater Podcast Network. So if you subscribe to the me eater YouTube channel, you will no longer be seeing our podcast videos popping up. You got to go to this new channel which is all podcast video going
forward on the new channel. So just take a second right now, go to YouTube search me Eater Podcast Network, click subscribe and you will then be served all of our podcast videos there and you won't miss anything. You know, we're so late on discussing well, first off, I'm joined by Brody cal Mark Kenyon and doctor Randall Crinz here, but she doesn't say much. We're so late on talking about it because I meant to talk about it, that we got to talk about it now for a minute.
That we're so late on talking about it. All the flurry, the flurry of news about the Colorado deer hunters. Two old timers that two old timers that died of Creussfield Jacobs yes, and some researcher who it turns out, it was not really pointed out that these two guys hunted deer together were consumers of deer in Colorado, and then happened to developed yak of kreutz Felt and he was saying, hey, heads up, it's they deer hunted. There was the possibility
that they got this disease from eating deer. I want to being that was quite irresponsible thing to pump out there. You got how much you guys know about this. I'm the only one knows about that about it?
No, no, no, yeah, I think totally tracking. You're just on a roll. You haven't messed anything up too bad.
Well, now I gotta jump into I gotta jump in and find some stuff. Well, I'll say that the one building the thing that happened here was that he made this little bit of conjecture which then got picked up as a sound bite across the media outlets.
Which turned into a headline to get a headline.
And blew up into hysteria. And they looked past the point that this was not stemming from some peer reviewed study, but this was just a piece of again conjecture. There was a question, yeah, yeah, it wasn't a study.
And the implication is that they got chrotsfield Jacob from or Yakub.
From eating deer deer. Yes, from the.
Implication is that CWD is crossing the species barrier.
Yeah. Now, there was a version of this years ago, equally irresponsible, where they had a guy that had Yakub kreutz Felt and in his personal history had eaten a squirrel brain. What was the headline everywhere? Man got it from eating a squirrel brain, when in fact it was simply that in his personal history he'd eat a squirrel brain.
Jim Heffelfinger when this came out, this is a long time ago now, when this came out from Jim Heffelfinger, he said, in talking about this little flurry of news activity, he pointed out that he doesn't even want to post a link because he doesn't want to perpetuate a spread, the spread of this misinformation or information. He said, this is not a study, and this is not a scientific paper.
The whole thing is three hundred and forty four words and is simply a mention about two hunters that died of CJD and both of them ate deer from the same deer population. There is no evidence of CWD infecting hunters. There are clusters of CJD throughout the country, some in CWD areas and some outside CWD areas. With the spread of CWD nationwide, it is not very noteworthy, meaning that now I don't know thirty states thirty some states have CWD.
With the spread of CWD nationwide, it is not very noteworthy that two CJD victims in the same rural area may have both eaten venison. He points out, we have to be vigilant about the possible jump of a pry on disease from deer to hunter. I couldn't agree more. This is the thing, much to Doug Durn's annoyance, This is I don't want to say, the only thing, it's the primary thing that worries me about CWD is the possibility that it would jump the species barrier and go
to humans. If I knew, if God came down and said, Steve, there is no chance CWD can jump to humans, I would care. This is going to really piss off Doug eighty five percent less about CWD.
I think that like the human jump is like a step too far. Really, I think people should be way more concerned deer hunters should be way more concerned with CWD jumping to any sort of domestic livestock.
Yeah. That's what blows my mind, is why the USDA isn't more worried. Yeah, I could weigh. I mean, like, I don't know if you guys know, I'm no infectious disease specialists, but I'm worried as a person. How are they not worried about cattle?
Oh?
Yeah, I mean he look a hell a lot more like a deer than I do.
The USDA response to domestic livestock with these types of diseases is is severe and final. It's full eradication. So yeah, which is what.
Makes it so scary if ever, if ever does jump to humans, it's going to be the end of our lifestyle, or that beginning of that end.
Yeah right now.
But it's not going to be as simple as turning a fan off in a chicken.
House, because the fuel in the fire now drunkard to boil out, boiled out. Now. Here is from a peer reviewed paper. This is from a peer reviewed paper in Colorado. I want to point out to people Colorado. I'm very reluctant to get into this right now. Because I wanted this to be mistake. I don't want this to be taken wrong. I am an individual who is concerned about CWD. I think that we should be testing robustly. I think we should be investing a lot of money into researching CWD.
I think we should find out everything we can find out about CWD, and I think we should be taking reasonable steps to slow the spread of CWD. ME saying me jumping on someone for claiming that CWD has jumped into the human population is not because I'm trying to think that CWD is gonna go away or I'm trying
to whitewash the risk of CWD. It's because I don't think that you should go around saying crazy shit to really upset people based off no evidence, like let's have good clean material, good clean science around CWD, and not hysterical hogwash around CWD. A problem is I'm still I'm still ahead of what I'm going to read you next. A problem I have found even within the CWD spectrum, the CWD spectrum being CWD deniers, who once upon a time, a CWD denier was someone who said there's no such
sing as CWD. The same way early on a COVID denier was someone who said there's no such thing as COVID. Eventually a COVID denier became someone who said, sure, there's COVID, I just don't think it's that alarming, which puts me in COVID denier, which COVID deniers have caught up to where I'm at, where it's like, sure it's there, I just don't think it's enough. I don't think it warrant shutting people's businesses down. A cwd D denier at a time said there's no such thing. It's all a lie.
Now they say, oh, yeah, it's real. I'm just not alarmed. Well it's real. I'm alarmed, but don't go running around saying crazy shit that's not.
True, especially knowing what's going to happen in the media.
As and they planned that. And there are people the spectrum I was trying to get into the spectrum, on the spectrum of CWD believers whatever, you have deniers who at this current stage are like, yes, it's real, but it doesn't matter. Two people saying if you so much as put a piece of deer meat on a stainless steel table, you could then drop a nuclear bomb on that steel table, and that steel table is still gonna give you jakub the kreutz Felt disease. Like there's this spectrum.
The people on the far end, the super alarmists, also need to chill out. And I've told some of them face to face, please chill out with the zombie deer disease. The all that garbage from a peer reviewed paper. Okay, here's this passage from a peer reviewed paper. And oh, I also got a back up a lot of background here. People.
I'm sorry. Colorado was where CWD is first identified. Cwd's first identified in Colorado at a deer and elt breeding facility, a research facility that's ground zero for CWD in terms of identification. That they identified it there does not mean that it emerged there. It was identified there, all right. The date they identified it in the seventies does not mean it was born that day. The more you look
for it, the more you find it. As we're seeing, meaning as more and more states find CWD, it's often that more and more states are looking for CWD. We don't know where it came from, we don't know when it first emerged. It was the first identified in Colorado, back to this peer review paper. In seven Colorado counties with high CWD prevalence, seventy five percent of state hunting licenses are issued locally, which suggests that residents consume most
regionally harvested game. So here, all they're trying to establish is that if you're looking at CWD prevalence and who's eating CWD infected meat, let's look locally. Okay, we'll go to these counties in Colorado with a lot of CWD, and we're going to look at locals, making the assumption that locals are eating most of the local deer meat. Goes on to say, we used Colorado death certificate data from nineteen seventy nine through two thousand and one to
evaluate rates of death from the human prion disease. Kreutz felt YAKUB disease. Am I saying that right, I'm gonna say CJD so I don't have to feel like I'm messing it up every time. The relative risk of CJD for c WD endemic county residents was not significantly increased, and the rate of CJD did not increase over time in Colorado. Human prion disease resulting from CWD exposure is rare or non existent. The reason they're saying is rare
non existent is because they haven't found it. Then it goes down to say, however, there's a lot we don't know. The other piece of this is even after this news came out implying a correlation between consumption and in these two cases, after this news came out, statistically, those two cases happening to come from that area was not an outlier. You have about a dozen cases a year that we found. It was like a giant nothing and like everything, like
the guy that got it from eating squirrel brains. You wind up being that when a news story like that comes out, got so worked up, we gotta take my glasses off. When a news story like that comes out, the retraction never gets the retraction never gets the traction you found. This repeated use of the retraction never gets the traction. I wish I could keep it.
Going that the initial action.
The retraction never gets the traction. That the initial action that it just doesn't c WD scares the shit out of me. So don't be doing stuff like that because I'm already scared. Is it worth talking about the Oklahoma thing?
Then?
Yes, would you like to.
I know Steve wanted to leave that off or not. Can we get into it in a minute. Yeah, I'm here to talk about that that I think like that. God bless them for trying to find a thing. You listeners have no idea what we're talking about. God bless them.
But come on, We've covered this heavily on the Week in Review, because again, when I first saw it as a as a little blurb, I was kind of like.
Ha ha, it can't be little. Did you know maybe we don't even get into Randall Hoff? Well, damn it. I want to get into it a couple of things real quick. I put this in the notes, and everybody got mad. I wrote in the notes Trump is right about voter fraud. Hear me out hear me out here.
I didn't hear a single person in this room get mad.
Not mad. We mostly no, not mad.
I just wanted to tell you brief in general.
I check them out there. I'm on date night. I'm on date night, not on dateline. I'm on date night with my wife, and I'm trying to listen to what she's telling me.
But there's something way more interesting.
Something way more interesting going on coming to a restaurant and there's a big group of people, look like a qu for funny looking people, look like a corporate function, And I said, that's weird. What what are these guys doing in town? Just didn't something didn't fit. Turns out, I don't want to trivialize they're from World Wildlife Fund.
I don't want to trivialize World Wildlife Fund. But they of the many things they do, one of the things they do is they are a thorn in the side of hunters, so that they do a lot of things for wildlife, positive things for wildlife. But anytime, they're always litigating against hunters in cases where I don't think it has anything to do with preserving bio diversity. It's just they got a is this my fair, totally overlyfair center
for biological diversity. World Wildlife Fund are always going to litigate against hunters, and they're always going to sort of even with stable wildlife populations, they're gonna kind of come and act like hunting is somehow imperiling stable wildlife populations, and it'll come out. I picked this up. I hear a story about Corey Booker.
Here's a senator.
Yeah, and someone's telling the story as a way to demonstrate how nice Corey Booker is. And I'll point out Corey Booker's a vegan telling how nice Corey Booker is. Yeah, by recounting an interaction to Corey Booker is having with a flight attendant, I'm hearing it, and I'm like, that's him scamming on a flight attendant. This is just my like the story I hear, I'm like, that's not nice, that's scamming. Not to say he scammed on a flight attendant,
but just that caught That's what caught my attention. Okay, I'm not coming here and saying you did. I'm saying individuals telling the story. And then the individual tells a story about fixing to commit voter fraud.
And the whole time, your dear, beautiful, telling sweet wife is talking and you're going, uh huh.
Well, I'm with my left ear, I'm listening to her with my right ear. I'm listening to this voter fraud plan. There's an individual in Chicago, and you're pretty deaf in that left ear. I'd love to hear Katie's perspective. I should I cut all this off for legal reasons? How bad. Is it that I that I overheard something in a restaurant? Are you allowed to do this the right? Well, I mean right. The individual's talking lives in Chicago. He lives
in Chicago. Now. He did not say who he's planning on voting for this fall, but he's explaining to everyone that he knows how Illinois is going to go on this fall's presidential election. Okay, he owns a cabin in Michigan. He wants to be able to vote in a battleground state this November, so he went and got a Michigan
driver's license. When he asked about the legality of what he's doing, he was told, you're supposed to spend a majority of your time in the state where you're registered to vote, but they said they only really care about that with rich people, and since he works for an NG, oh, he felt that this did not apply to him. Wow, just overheard how many how do you do the right caveat? Overheard in the restaurant? Yeah, I thought the overheard.
I thought the whole crazy disquisition about the CWD Colorado Hunters scare, but you need evidence.
I thought that was all.
A setup for this anecdote.
No, No, it's just something I overheard. Yeah, Now, I think if you, if you were to say, believe.
That whole thing because overheard at a restaurant, right, like we have been the town approached by a police officer in my younger years, because during our late night dinner, we thoroughly ran through all the ways we could have dined and dashed right, eaten and eaten and left without man. Right as just a fun way to have the time where you're having dinner.
Right, So you're at dinner, you're discussing ways in which you could get out of paying for said dinner, right, which.
At that point in our lives was the perfect crime.
Right, that's how you would really stick it to the man.
Probably the first people to ever pull that off at an.
I know why I brought this up because cow was laying out for me, someone laying out for him away in which you could get a non a way in which you could get a resident hunting license that you weren't allowed to get. Yes, they're sort of saying a fella could, yeah, and Cal was saying, or a fella could just buy the non resident hunting license, yes.
Instead of setting purchasing a piece of land getting a po box setting up an LLC. I'm like, boy, that sounds like.
Dude, we used to see like very well off second homeowners in Colorado. Dude like try to bend over backwards to get a resident fishing license instead of a non resident, which is like.
Yeah, but you know what they're doing though, they're chasing the high right.
Of sticking it to the man.
Well, it's not necessarily sticking it to the man, right, It's like, oh, I'm saving money and that's what really gets them, get them going. Well, that's your heritage.
We should start, you know, Krin. This is Kris like this because Kritin doesn't like when we think of ways in which Krink could get more email. But if you want to send it in an email saying here's a wild ass idea in the subject line, and you got a wild ass idea, go ahead and throw it in sent to Krin. Here's a guy wrote in a wild ass idea and talking about live sonar and the controversy
surrounding live sonar. He's saying, well, think about Dingle Johnson, some old timer who's digging worms out of his garden and using the same bag of evil claw hooks. He bought twenty years ago, fishing on a resident license. Yeah, fishing on a resident lifetime license that he bought. They bought sixty years ago, digging worms out of his garden. Bought a bag, bought a bag of three hundred eagle claw hooks at a sportsman show two decades ago out of some old ass rowboat that he bought at the
yard sale. Right, what is he doing for Dingle Johnson?
He's taken not give it.
There's your enemy. That guy. He's saying a live sonar guy is not the enemy because this guy. Think about the amount of money this guy's pumping into conservation through excise taxes on fishing equipment. Yeah, yes, I added all the stuff about the old.
To this guy's credit, he didn't call anyone the enemy.
Yeah, but he was kind of filling out. I was filling out his argument.
Growing up, Like how long you would have a box of large caliber ammunition, right, I mean.
Like the box would corrode.
Yes and yellow.
Yeah, the folds on the box would give out and you'd have to tape them back together before it was gone, right.
And there's all kinds of corrosion on the cart just themselves exactly.
When my dad died and I was able to raid his Ammo ben I thought at that time that I would never buy Ammo again. I was like, well, shit, here's forty Remington Court. That's like, you know, twenty deer and then twenty shots to make sure I'm still on. Yeah, still good. Yeah. It would be.
Really interesting though, to try to run the numbers on the increased funds that we're getting in from, you know, increased purchase and and you know, folks becoming more and more fervent about this pursuit, right, if you were to compare that to the negative pressure outcomes of it and try to see, like, how does that.
You know, yeah, is there a balance?
Here's a four thousand dollars purchase with excise taxes at eleven. That makes you feel bad for yelling at my kid about buying worms.
Got a whole garden out there.
He could have dug out, Oh, I'm not gonna do one, because we haven't found out if people like him or not. Play the drop fill.
I liked the previous one. It just went on too long, a little too long.
I didn't get to happen.
But I think I bet I kind of liked that because it's awkwardly long.
That was kind of what made it so great. Play the drop fill ready for this.
One, but I think this should be an alternating host deal to Yeah, so you ain't got to okay.
This is a teaser for a future installment. Alaska tracks life stories from hunters, fishermen, and trappers of Alaska. This is there's a Randy Zarnky Zarnk. He's a president of Alaska Trappers Association. He's doing an oral history talking to old timers. I was gonna share two quick ones for you from the from my damn glasses back on. I'd never started making a podcast, but I knew I was gonna lose my reading vision. Listen to this very quick.
From the time I was about ten years old, I had to make a living for the whole family, his dad. His dad got to where he couldn't work anymore during the Spanish flu pandemic of nineteen eighteen, which hit Alaska hard. From the time I was about ten years old, I had to make a living for the whole family. The Smithsonian had been paying my brother forty five dollars a piece for black bear skulls and seventy five dollars for grizzlies. If I could get one bear a month, that was
pretty good money. I'd sell the feet to the Chinese. You're listening to Krim. Yeah, I've perked right up.
I still have never eaten a barefoot, though I'm looking forward to the time I can.
And I got seven dollars a piece for the galls, so if you add it all up, one bear would bring in quite a bit of money. Jumping ahead, this is from a different fellow, Duke Short out of Cake, Alaska. I hunted eagles for bounty. If you tell people that, now they think you're a really bad person. We got two bucks apiece for eagles. The biggest day I had was doing a herring run. The eagles were eating the
herring and I killed thirty three cow. The only reason I didn't get more was I ran out of bullets, Ladies and gentlemen us Today's installment of Steve Reid's books. So you ain't got to.
Now something you didn't do in the first one. But I wanted to know. It was just do you recommend the book? Like is this something other folks should even.
Though they don't. It ain't got to read it, but they could, well, let me put the to you this way. Mark, guess how I had to read for those tidbits? Not very far? Page fourteen is all. I didn't even read all the good stuff.
Steve reads the first fifteen pages of a book.
Well, no, no, I'm going to do a full report. And Cal just announced that he's gonna do it full for sure.
Tidbits.
Yeah, I think we might. We should buy a timer, maybe krinn figure out that the section what what's the reasonable length for Let's say Cal reads books that you ain't got to I mean a couple of minutes, No, a couple of minutes, and I think.
I think it should with a couple of minutes, like buy it or note, buy it or don't.
Yeah, Like there's gotta be an assessment, but there should.
We should work in bang for your bucks so we can have a sound.
I think of a solid twenty five minutes.
Past I was taking fifteen. We get a timer, and when you present a great book, you got fifteen minutes. I like it? Yeah, new pot. Can we get that machine back out? Used to like stop to rate how much you like something?
Yeah, that's that's yeah, we.
Need to so I don't know you tell me mark fourteen pages and I found that. No, that seems like a hell of in our And I fell asleep last night perfect. I mean not because the book was no good. You know, you get to a point where you're gonna get a bet. Yeah, I'm shooting eagles three bucks apiece? Random? Can you talk about the breeding mule here in Mexico? We keep wanting to get into this. Did you get boned up or not boned up? I mean I I've.
I familiarized myself with the case a little.
Bit, but then you know about it prior to this. No, I didn't. I just knock off nikes because the thing's backwards.
No, they're real nikes. These are oh there's limited. These are the Yannis Antokumpo Immortality threes. Gotta met uh famous footwear for forty nine ninety nine because I think they're a few generations old.
But sorry, it's got distracted. This seems so just unlike you.
I mean, you put a pair of shoes in front of me, a new pair of shoes for forty nine ninety nine. I'm gonna have hard time walking away.
Okay, someone walked me through the breeding milder in Mexico because I used to like to say, I think I mentioned sport. I used to like to say the thing I love about mulders you can't buy a big one, which is not true.
Yeah, and this I mean my understanding of the case was that it's an American citizen and he's he's in business with two Mexican citizens who own a ranch in Mexico, and he'd been working with them to improve mule deer genetics. And uh, he grew the business and then got the first permit to bring those genetics across the border, and then in and in the form of semen, in the
form of semens draws. There was a note in here about how many semens fourteen hundred and sixty semens draws, and those are coming from more than I've ever seen.
Those are coming from like a captive breeding facility.
Yeah, and two hundred and sixty nine embryos. Mueled your embryos.
Wow.
And essentially the case is that the guy, the guy's partners in Mexico, he claims, became jealous of how successful this guy had become as a result of their joint business, and he says that they they started threatening his life and tried to take some of this stuff back and have engaged in defamation against him. And so he's he's trying to get some of that genetic material back from them because it's a partnership gone wrong.
Got it. Yeah? Uh, this I don't I don't really care about all that. I didn't care about them fighting about whatever. It's just what. Yeah, I don't mean to be callous, no, but I guess this guy got What was interesting to me was that this is going on in the first and.
Well, he got the first ever permit to move as I understand, he got the first ever permit to move meal deer DNA genetics embryos across the border in.
Yeah, and what's like, what's happened to that stuffs border?
Yeah, it's in a it's I think it was in a lab in in uh in Texas or at a breeding facility in Texas, the facility that does both livestock and apparently meal deer.
Yeah. That was the part that was surprising me because I have been noticing on social media accounts of these some of these ranches in Mexico they're offering these really high dollar mildeer hunts. The staggering numbers of two hundred in just one year after the other after the other, and I'm like, how could this be true? But it's that they're getting really good. And I'm not saying that I'm not pointing, I'm not saying that there's something like
nothing criminal. They're getting really good at producing giant mule deer out in the desert by using tricks of the trade developed through white tail management, meaning bringing in food, water development, it's all that, and they're kind of like creating a they're kind of creating a resource of giant box that just wasn't there before by employing strategies developed by you know, the Texas white tail community. So now
they've kind of created like the new mule deer. It's like Utah and the seventies down there, What.
Is it happening behind fences?
It's got it a lot of it. It's because when you see one of these social media pages I follow, when I've seen enough guys standing there with like a beer in each hand in a golf cart. There you go, in a two and twenty inch merely laying there and sixteen other guys standing back behind him, I'm like, there's something just like, yeah, there's something that does not make sense. Worked our tails off.
Well, Yet you can take the best areas in the in the the the North. Yeah really, I mean really in North America, and to have like a success rate of like three weeks in a row, six people go and all six get thirty inch wide bucks, Like it just doesn't even it just doesn't happen. No, it just does not happen.
It's it's so weird looking. And part of the problem, it's a minor problem, but part of the problem with it is it's gotten to the point with white tails where when you if you walk into someone's house and you there's certain white tails you'll see and you'll just know it's not a wild white tail. Yeah right, you look and you don't even ask the guy, oh sweet, where'd you get that? Because you just know, like that's
a high fense white tail. You just know the second he walk in the door, and it why wasn't being it like it kind of a little I don't want to say ruins looking at deer, but it with meal deer walked in and I've always been like, damn yeah, because.
They were like they were unsullied by that.
It was like holy.
Yeah, so does this hurt a little bit more to see this with your beloved mule deer and know that Yeah yeah, I mean.
White tail has been turnished for so long, right.
Yeah, because those big giants are now now knowing that when you see a big giant now in the back of your head, you gotta be war you gotta be warm about that. The other thing you can just you just know is when some guy comes back from New Zealand, right and he's got a four hundred inch red stag. Yeah, you're like, didn't shoot that? No, right? Right? Yeah?
But with with mule deer, you're talking like, I don't know what the numbers would be in in the United States, but like it's almost like a handful of two hundred inches get shot in the whole country every year.
Yeah, right, handful. I don't know what. It's not more than fifty.
Right, so now when fifty are coming back every year, it's not.
More than twenty yeh shit, I don't know, I don't know.
It's not a lot. But now they're just like all coming north from Mexico. It's like you got it.
Ruins really wrong. When the con when I'm more apt to ask how was the chef right then about your hunt?
Uh yeah, though I have been looking see I gotta admit though, man, looking at those Mexico nil deer, I was licking my lips.
Mm hmmm, Oh for sure, because you don't see those wide ones.
You know, I was licking my lips. I still kind of am.
I mean.
The other thing to think about rad is like through all the conversations we've had, right, like that desert environment for big animals, there's just not a.
Lot of them mm hmm.
But somehow there's a lot of them, right.
Uh.
Okay, I'm just gonna sit back in my chair and someone's gonna explain everyone but besides me, and then I'm gonna tell you what I think. It's gonna talk about the that this idea that you're gonna breed you're gonna breed c w D resistance into wild deer. I could take a first step at it, Okay, can I can I give you my comment now and you can weave that in or give you my comment later.
I want to see you squirm in your chair for a while, wanting to say it it happened to wait, you should.
Just interject naturally, sit back I'm to take my watch, I'm taking my mouth talker.
Okay, oh, this is the type of juicy stuff people can see up the new YouTube channel.
Mediator podcast network does off.
So so the cliff notes here is that a peer review peer review study came out in twenty twenty or twenty one out of Texas A and M where they had identified genetic markers that can point to the susceptibility of a deer to CWD. I basically say, hey, these two, we'll tell you whether I think it was eighty one percent rate of accuracy, how susceptible this individual whitetail will
be to contracting chronic wasting disease. So, with that information until then, the next thought that some folks had was, well, if we can identify if a deer is susceptible or not, that means we should be able to selectively breed for those more resistant traits.
So Oklahoma.
Propose a law recently in which they would develop a program to do just that. So this proposal came out that first said, all right, we want to start this program which will involve number one, establishing a genetic baseline of what the wild deer population looks like. As far as this resistance. Number two, they would then start a captive breeding, selective breeding program in which they would try
to breed for this. And then number three and number three is the real big, really big concern, is that starting in twenty twenty six, they may create and open up the ability for private individuals to purchase these supposedly CWD resistant deer and release them, and not just on high fence ranches, but low fence.
So any Tom.
Dick or Harry could hypothetically purchase start buying these captive red deer and start releasing them into the wild.
But only in Oklahoma.
Only in Oklahoma. But to my knowledge, there's no other state in which you had to put my thing back just to say, and those deer will know they got to stay in Oklahoma, right yeahs. And so this is like a Pandora's box.
There's all sorts of ways this could go wrong that we can get into.
They're trying. What they're trying to do, right, is uh like speed up natural selection if it even exists.
I got it? Could I do my thing now? I put my thing back? Sure? My talkers back in position presumably if it's in captive deer there's no reason to think that this disposition, this resistance, this natural resistance is also in wild deer. Just believe that it is. Why would it just be there when you have millions of
wild deer. How in the world do you think that turning out some small handful of deer with a certain genetic characteristic that already exists in wild deer is going to accelerate the natural selection that, if you're right, is already occurring right now. Like, if you're right that there's a resistance and that that resistance is going to win out through natural selection, then it already is you putting
one loose? Yeah, I mean, like, I'm not even I'm not even against the like, I'm not even going down the path of being against the idea because let's say there's a version like this, let's say you had some way well.
Sorry, the version that this idea is based off of, right is, uh, the near eradication of scrapie and in chigia. So that's kind of like what they point to.
But that's all domestic, yes, where you control all breeding.
Well, here's the thing, We've already basically tested this idea in wild populations of deer and that is through the act of trying to cull for genetics. Right, So, there's been all sorts of people in Texas and other parts of the country where they have, you know, very fervently studied the idea of whether or not you can influence genetics within a deer population through culling.
You know, yeah, he's got a wonky right side. Kill him. For a long time, that was that was yeah, he looked at me. Funny.
Yeah, So long story short on that, a slew of studies have come out over recent years that have completely disproven that as an effective approach at all. You just can't do it because of the very things you're saying. In a wild population, it's just impossible to actually influence it enough with our degree of effect. So if that can't work in impacting genetics of white tail deer antler quality, same thing's gonna.
Be the truth the case of this. But I don't Here's why I don't want to come out and just say I condemned the whole idea of Pandora's box and all that, because think about this scenario. Let's say, for some somehow I don't understand how, but somehow you're able to sample a deer. You're be able to shoot it with one of those darts out of a pneumatic gun that they use to shoot tranquisers. You're able to shoot
a deer and pull a genetic sample from it. A little plug right hits, the deer falls off, It's got a little chunk of hair on it, and you're able to determ and Okay, that deer has a genetic resistance to CWD. Maybe it's you know, maybe you realize that that deer is eleven years old in a area that has high prevalence of CWD. So you're like, Wow, that deer, for whatever reason, survived. You test it. It doesn't have CWD,
even though you got to test them now dead. Let's just say scientifically, you know that you can test a deer alive see that it does not have CWD. Also, you can make the determination that it carries this gene that gives it a level of CWD resistance. And then someone proposed, well, let's catch that deer and let's pull all of her eggs and go make twenty more and then turn that group of twenty deer back out on the same landscape where the dough came from. Are you
do you oppose that much less? So okay, So I'm saying I'm not all the way thinking that this is the worst idea in the world, because there's different ways that it might be approached. I just think it sounds silly because there's no reason to think that this resistance is only in captive deer. All captive deer came from wild deer. They're not from another continent. The captive deer industry its birth was just catching wild deer from North America.
So whatever you're seeing represented in that genetic pool of captive deer is going to be represented in the wild. I would just guess that the same percentage of resistance is out there in the wild if this whole thing would work, that it's already working or not, and you putting a couple more out there ain't gonna make shit for deerfs.
Gonna cost a lot of money.
I mean, well, and it's gonna make someone a lot of money. That was the other part of that article is that captive deer interests are involved in this plan.
In the in the in the legislature, and on the Fishing Game Commission. There are interests that.
Yeah, it almost seems like an underhanded way of being able to move.
Deer around exactly.
And that's where you get into some real sticky worries here is that Number one, you can't like, a CWD can lie dormant. It can be positive in a deer for several years before we might ever be able to identify that. So you can get many false negatives. So they're gonna let's type of hypothetically say that a deer tests negative. There are live tests, but they're not terribly accurate. But you could do a test and say, okay, well this deer supposedly is resistant, and we tested it before
release and it came back negative. Two years later, that deer could then end up testing positive and it was positive at that moment, but now we've already released it and transported across the state all over the place.
But I have to assume they're only going to cut these loose in areas of high prevalence anyway. Maybe, So if someone was going to do it prophylactically, I think that that would be hugely problematic, right. I think the propylactics are always.
Oh, my Robberts, my father, my father in law, or not my father in law prophilactically, number of content toothbrush is a prophylactic.
To do it prophylactically. No one is going to get into that. No one is gonna before that.
Well right now, I think a huge thing to keep in mind is there's no consensus on what resistance is.
Mmmm.
So is the deer that dies a day after the other group of deer more resistant?
Oh? Like yeah, some people lived a year longer.
Yeah. So that's another huge question mark as to why people who are conservatively approaching this topic are like, well, this step is putting the cart way before the horse because we don't even know what resistance is at this release program.
But give me, give me the Pandora's box. I'm failing to see it. I can see it as a waste of effort because of because like I said, it's like you're trying to go into a population is that have tens of thousands of animals and you're trying You're thinking you're going to influence it with some small number of released animals. But give me the Pandora's box, because these aren't GMOs. These are just deer that you've just These are just white tail deer.
Are Virginia oticle Leonis Virginia virginianus.
They're white tail deer from the continent. They're not genetically modified. You're not doing gene insertion. They're not robo deer. They are a deer that you have identified having some disease potential disease resistance.
I'll give you mind and you.
Let it run out, like give me the negative.
Yeah, I mean the simple one right now is I know we we covered like the first known w CWD hotspot, but we have a lot of other known CWD hotspots. They for the most part, all tend to be at or very near close proximity to captive servid facilities. Correct, So haven't we already seen the Pandora's box, Like we have captive servant facilities. Just so happens like a new K shows up and five miles away. So now we're thinking we're gonna throw it back into the court of
the captive service facility. Let's see what you guys come up with next. I'm sure it's got to be better, right then current CWD.
And then one of the chances something like that it happened again. Right, Yes, hey, I got you, And we're creating a.
This hypothetically would create a private market for individuals to purchase captively bred deer and release them into the wild, which we've never done before. And I just can't I can't imagine the future in which, Okay, if we start, if captive breeding facilities can start breeding these animals and marketing them to the general public, right, trying to convince folks to buy, right, buy these deer and release the
CWD resistant deer. You can't tell me that ten twenty years down the road, not only will they market them as CWD resistant, but also this came from one hundred eighty inch genetics. So you can start releasing your selectively bred mega antler deer.
All of a sudden.
Now that's not just a high fence thing, but any guy could go and start releasing these on their Yeah, that's pandorian.
And it's not the it's not the same as like introduced. I mean, obviously it's it's the same species. It's a native species, but it has like this bucket biology kind of feel to it.
Yeah, it's like.
It's just a very slippery slope moving moving wild animals around.
It's just I like what I think that you you, Yeah, that that was very pandorian of Hey, now that I can start buying deer and cutting them loose. H, I want that CWD thing you're talking about, But like, can you send a picture of the buck? Yeah? Yeah, exactly for sure. Well, but you just pointed out that that's not actually true. What do you mean?
Oh?
Well, right, but that doesn't mean people will try Yeah, I get it, I get it.
Here's the biggest thing I can see, uh, not the big I shouldn't say that. Here's the thing I think that's that's noteworthy about this issue. Here you have the captive servid industry has been has been villainized for years around CWD. And imagine how and how uh, when you're looking at this as a pr problem, that you'd be able to come back around and turn this whole thing on its head and emerge as the savior. That's got to be an intriguing that's exactly what's happening. That's got to feel good.
Well, I think too. One of the issues with the law that just passed, at least from what I've seen pointed out, is that it's not just like looking at this idea, but it's laying out it's not only putting the cart before the horse. It's like paving that road. And there's like a timeline for this to happen, and and before it's it's like determine whether or not this is really feasible.
There's like a target a target date.
Yeah, like a year and a half out. And we didn't we didn't mention at the beginning when I led this off, I said, this law was proposed. This isn't just a proposed law. Now, this is a past and sign in the law.
Yeah, happening. Do you think they could work up with skunk that don't smell and cut him loose.
He wouldn't be a skunk anymore. Yeah, but yeah they could, like when they're marketing their their big giant bucks, they can be like disease free two hundred and fifty incher you know, selt that way all right?
Sk that just shoots out fabreeze?
Uh?
All right? You want to hear a guy's suggestion to the Michigan DNR while run the subject deer?
Sure do I've heard a few of my day.
My family owns a farm, and this is not me. We don't know a farman southern Michigan. This is someone that wrote in My family owns a farm in southern Michigan. Every year, we require everyone who hunts with us to kill does on our property. For at least the last decade, there have been multiple processors in our area that would accept cleaned deer as donations free of charge. I would regularly drop off donations throughout the season. I have always
made it a habit of regularly calling processors. I should preface this by saying this. The head of Michigan's DNR was it last year. Last fall the year before, basically wrote a public letter the Dear Biologist of Michiganists Michigan saying we need to kill more does and we can't get people to kill does. We reported on that, and I got a call from Doug Duran reminding me that I have often said, when someone tells you there's too many blank, there's too many deer, there's too many whatever,
there's too many bears, always ask by whose measure? Because I like to point out I don't know elk hunters. I never hear an elk hunter telling me there's too many elk. Right, people go out, they want to see elk. People go out deer hunt and they want to see deer, so when they hear there's too many deer, it puzzles them. They didn't feel like they saw too many deer. They want to see more deer, but they feel they have too many deer and they can't get people to kill does And Chad did it.
He did a good job in that email and that note articulating the why. I do think he did a good job of trying to explain to the general hunting public of Michigan that you addressing that question like, hey, I understand you want to see a lot of deer, but here are the possible negative outcomes of this the situation.
He goes on to say, this year, none of our processors accept the donations at all. It was explained to me by the processors that the state of Michigan now requires that each donation must be CWD screened, which takes two to three weeks. Then a random meat sample from every donated deer needed to be state evaluated for metal from bullet fragments. That translates into deer hanging in processors
or being stored in their freezers for weeks. Therefore, because of that storage problem, they're not willing or able to participate in the program. He said, I can kill twenty to twenty five dos a year, but without being able to donate the meat, it's almost impossible for him to kill that many does. He also goes on to say, why are they charging twenty bucks for an antler this deer tag? You should price them to sell and sell them at five dollars. He also says Michigan ends their
deer season in January. Why don't they let it run into the spring. If they really want to get killed those, I'll say, too bad, you can't donate your deer. Have you tried this? Have you tried putting up a sign just like how normal people put up no trespassing signs? Have you put up tried putting up signs that say please do you hunt my place? You will get a lot of does killed? Or say put up signs that say, if you're interested in harvesting whitetail, does, contact me at blank.
Put an add the local paper, add the local paper.
If you're looking for a place to hunt does with your kids, please contact me at blank. I think you will get a lot of does killed.
Even at twenty bucks apiece.
Although I know that Sorry, it's a problem where he's writing in about it.
I think what we found though, is that you almost I can't remember who if I spoke to, if this was Russ Mason with the DNR at one point or fist Chad, But someone I spoke to basically said, no matter how they liberalize the regulations with dill harvest, no matter how many tags they give out, no lever they can push has been able to significantly increase dill harvest.
Me.
Okay, let's let's keep it up until early February. Yeah, you know I could kill any more dogs. There's just yeah, people have a certain number they're willing to and but if this guy wants to kill does, and now he can't shoot them because they don't want to accept them at the donation place. I have a feeling in Michigan hunters would be really helpful, good old hunters.
I don't think that it's a bad idea though, to consider new ideas, like like having a free done tag with every buck hunters come.
If he if he opened up dog durn wants to shoot. Does you know how Doug Duran gets forty does removed off his place.
I had a back, got a line out the door.
Come shoot the dose please, and what happens people show start shooting those forty a year.
I had an exchange with this gentleman because the first thing I did was recommend checking out Doug's.
Organization sharing the land.
I was gonna say, saving the land, and that's not sharing sharing the land, and he he he's going to look into that. But in the past he shared with me that he has opened up the land to hunters and uh, it's just caused some problems.
Well, not with Dougs program that Doug vets all the That's exactly you have to go through the application process to participate that what I.
Said, I thought that the bar would maybe be much higher.
So one of the funniest conversations I had around this issue is Cal and I. This is Cal's I'm gonna steal Cal's joke. Cal and I were hunting on a place in Hawaii, a coffee plantation Hawaii where they have a lot of problem with pigs rooting everything up. I saw, I'll tell you one way to get rid of these pigs. Put up a sign that says come hunt picks. And he said, do you know what kind of people we would get if we put up a sign like that, Cal said barbecuers.
I am so funny.
I can see the problem this guys have and becoming more common though with donation programs.
Oh yeah, well, and then I mean, I guess the to the point made by the Michigan dn R, if he opens up his place net, there's probably no increased dough harvest in that county.
Right.
It's like the people that are going to come shoot a dough and his place aren't going to go shoot one somewhere else. I'm just basing.
Okay, there's a person I was just talking with at my mom's where I grew up. Okay, this individual his grandfather hunted, His father hunted. He just didn't get into it. Now he has a boy, and it skipped the generation with him, just it was never interested in it. His boy is dying to go deer hunting. But here he's sort of missed this whole thing, of like he doesn't know how the whole thing works. That guy and that
kid go shoot a shitload of those doughs. In his mind, he's like, the more I think about it, I would just eat that deer meat.
Yeah, I'm just saying the macro I don't know if it would have the sort of macro effect, then.
Are you thinking like local huntered local hunters equate to doe harvest versus the further away you get from the hunting spot, people are less interested in traveling to shoot a dough.
No, I'm just thinking about the I mean the idea that liberalizing doe harvest or liberalizing hunting seasons doesn't seem to generate more dead does.
I think if you give, if you people who will shoot dose more places to shoot dose, more will get if you.
Went, if you went, if you went to make I didn't say this is like I'm fully convinced of it.
I just threw that out as like a as a Michigander. Yeah, Mark's a Michigander. I'm telling you this. If everyone in Michigan that wanted to shoot a doe this year had a place to shoot a dough, there wouldn't be no does so so just there would Yeah.
I gotta I gotta tell you about a pretty cool idea. An interesting example of this problem.
Uh.
I've been pretty involved with the field to Ford program in Michigan and on the back forty and UH, a couple of the new hunters that have gone through that program. Uh, are are similar to the type of person you're describing, somebody who wants more meat.
They're getting into hunting.
They're trying to find ways to you know, fill the freezer, and the biggest problem they've had is found finding places to do it. And so at first, you know, they started trying to hunt public land, and then they've tried to get private access and they continue to struggle, like go to a lot of places and there's guys that are already hunting it, or there's people that will let them hunt, but they're really just focused on bucks that they don't want them in there hunting for does when
they're guys that there hunting for bucks. But they bumped into a farmer, and this farmer brought the fact that he gets these depredation permits and he has twenty five or fifty dough tags a year and can never get enough people to use them really m hm, And he would love these deer get shot, but can't get anyone to do it.
Really.
So my two friends said, well, hey, that's all we want. We want to shoot does, and hey we don't mind doing it in the summer. That's great, We'll do it, and so they have started and I'm jumping the gun for them here, but they are going to pilot a program this year in which they try to connect new hunters looking for access, trying to find ways to kill deer with farmers with depredation permits who want does killed.
So get a bunch of new hunters who want to have an opportunity to do this out there in the summer when nobody else wants to do it. But they don't care they can't shoot bucks because they don't know about shooting a buck.
They just want to shooting dose.
So this year they're going to be doing that and uh, we'll see how it goes.
Heck, yeah, the summer.
How low do they want? Dear? Like I always get, I get a little as soon as people come up with like great deer extermination ideas, I always get like a little nervous. Sure, we've been through this before. Remember I just read a minute ago, I killed thirty three bald eagles in one day.
Right, all of a sudden, you're like, boy, there's not a lot of bald eagles.
And then they got to a point where they had to put him on the ESA, right.
So what Uh, Doug always brings up earn a buck, but it's everybody got pissed. Everybody it was that was it effective though? Yeah, well other than making people pissed.
I don't know he he had. I wish Doug was here to explain it. But I'm sure this wasn't so widespread in the gate of the program, but it spawned this whole industry of can I borrow your dough? But what I do not follow your dough?
As I understand it, though, the rate of CWD spread during that time period was significantly lower as compared to when they removed that. It's like this kind of trend dramatically increased because they were able to slow down. They were able to increase harvest and slow that spread. And when they removed that tool from the toolbox, it changed things.
And it also from the folks that I know in Wisconsin who were interested in having a more natural deer herd and balanced age structure, balanced buck todal ratio, things were a lot better.
During that time period. On that book. We should clarify just in case someone's new to wildlife politics and all that. When we're talking about wanting to reduce deer numbers, want of the lower deer numbers. There's historically been a single driver. The single driver's been agricultu damage.
Right, yep, Well you're saying white people would want to historically, and insurance company.
Just heard it. That's kind of like I used to cite that, and then I've read in places where people have tried to go in and search like sort of the powerful car insurance lobby moving to lower deer numbers. I think it's kind of a thing that's not I could be wrong. Someone could write in if they found otherwise. That's been kind of proven as a thing that's like not true.
Yeah, the farm lobby has a lot of.
Pool with that. The I always thought that the auto insurres. Someone's like, that's that's like an urban legend. The auto insurers were leaning on state game agencies to lower deer populations to lower claims. If someone can contradict that, I don't really know. I always cited that, and then I can't even remember who told me that. It's kind of horseshit. I don't know.
Just on the on the dough harvest side of things, you know, I got to go hang out with Doug for opening weekend and days after. I was shocked at the just general buck activity despite what to my you know, tender Montana ears sounded like an absolute battle going on for three days straight. More shots opening morning that I would hear walking around in Western Hills in a whole season, and.
That's the big hunt for you, Oh dude, it's still seeing bucks run around.
And still seeing bucks running around. I shot a really cool, bigger buck and went to drag it out to the closest like four wheeler track road and kind of came into this opening where one of Doug's buddies had been shooting all morning. Shooting would be the accurate, accurate description, And there's it looked like a scene from like The
Walking Dead. There were dose legs up everywhere you looked in this field, to the degree that I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna fade back into the canopy and wait until it's dark dark before I go walking out into this field.
Huh.
And but the proximity kind of going back to this guy right and end to a processor is really close. You know, you start stacking up all those does it's a lot of work. But like there's a big part of me that wants to go back, just shoot dose, take them to that processor because the broughtwurst was so good, unbelievable.
Cal's Brod's holy shit.
It's nuts. And I liked making sausage. But that's a lot of work too.
Uh. Back to this thought for a second. Historically, too many deer meant too much agricultural damage. That's still is. I'm just trying to explain that where are people getting the idea of too many deer? Where's it coming from? Now? It's that that remains constant agricultural damage. And there's this other idea laid on that that too many deer two dens of populations of deer facilitates an accelerated disease transmission.
And two other things. Oh please, you've got herd health things, and you have habitat health as well. So when you have, like you know in Dug's area, so many deer, here's
a really hard time, you know, seeing okra generation. There's many many states across the country where you have these browse lines where it's nothing five feet down, and then you see leaf structure again, So we see all sorts of cascading biodiversity effects by these exorbitantly high white tailed deer populations, which then and this is I think where
the standard deer hunter becomes interested. When you have a unnaturally high deer population, your deer hunting experience this might be different than you would imagine, but it's not going to be as great because you're going to see a whole lot of deer, but you're not going to see a lot of natural deer behavior that you would in a more balanced, healthy deer herd. When you have a relatively balanced dough to buck ratio, you are going to see a much more exciting rut. Bucks are actually going
to do running things. They're going to be chasing, they're gonna be fighting, they're gonna be doing all that kind of stuff you're going to have. When you have way too many doughs compared to bucks, it's going to stagger and mess up. The breeding and the fawn drop and things like that all get out of whack, and so you have this kind of cascade of different effects when you do not have the natural balance that you achieve when you have some level of you know, it's like
thirty dos to one buck is just not natural. We get that in some of these states and these very very very high deer populations. It messes a lot of stuff up that impacts not only the habitat but our experience as hunters too.
Okay, so egg disease and Mark Kenyon, Man, we're gonna get all into Governor's Tags. Sh'd save that krin, you think so?
I mean saving that one for a while.
Yeah, I think if we do it, it's gonna risk we're gonna generate a longer format conversation in the future. So I'd say we just talk about it because we can do it quick.
What's that? Okay? Tell me? Uh, let me tee it up.
Are we gonna give our own like thumbs up thumbs down on our thoughts?
How many times have I told the story about the GMO guy that came on?
Four?
Four times? Here's the fifth. I'm not gonna do it. It's my favorite quote of all time. Actually, my favorite quote of all time was from Ike Turner. But I'm not going to tell that quote Governor's Tags. All right, sure, picture you have a wildlife resource. Don't really have to do this. Picture. You have a wildlife resource where the demand exceeds the supply wildly exceeds, where the demand wildly exceeds the supply. In this case, we'll talk about bighorn sheep.
You have thousands and thousands of people in every western state want to draw a bighorn sheep tag, but there's only one hundred or two hundred or fifty available, or in the case of Texas, one available. How do you allocate those tags? Generally, historically in this country we have given them out in a democratic fashion, which is consistent with our wildlife management values, where we have lotteries. You send in a few bucks, your name, you know, as we say, your name goes into a hat, and there
is a lottery drawing and you pull them out. At some point in time, I was hoping to get a governor's tag expert on to talk about the inception of governor's tags. At some point in time, I don't know when someone had the bright idea to say, man, why don't we do that, like give them out to all the little people through lottery. But let's just sell one and see how much it goes for, and then we'll
take all that money. Because that's gonna look horrible, but we'll take all that money and use it for sheep habitat.
And they said let's just see what happen. Well, it turns out that what happens is this, people are willing to pay one hundred thousand dollars, two hundred thousand dollars, three hundred thousand dollars, four hundred thousand dollars, and now close to five hundred thousand dollars to jump in line a line that you might not ever get to the front of if you're a Joe blow most people will never get They'll never get to the front of the line.
And it turns out that getting to the front of the line on a big horn sheep tag is worth regularly hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it's not.
And the idea is so successful in raising money that it spread out to a bunch of other species too.
Yep. Then they're like, well, shit, let's try that with deer. Let's try it out, try anelo anything where the demand exceeds the supply. With that said, take it away.
Well, there's only a finite number of tags, right, I just said that. So when when someone with the money can go in there and win that auction, that tag is coming from a pool of tags.
I don't agree with that that I don't think it comes from the pool. I think they made an extra okay, because you just said there's like I have laugh. Well, because think of how they did it. Think of how Arizona did Arizona spawned this whole conversation because I'll point out just a spoiler alert, Arizona's Game Commission voted to get rid of governor tags in Arizona. When you get a governor's tag, your tag, Like if you draw a big horn tag in Arizona, you have a season in
a unit when you buy the governor's tag. To sweeten the deal, this is insane. Seeming to sweeten the deal, they said, oh, in your season, Bud, three hundred and sixty five days is your hunting season, and you can hunt any unit that is open to sheep hunting. That tag did not come out of the pool.
Even if it didn't, that guy goes let's say you're the one dude who draws the big horn tag and a unit. Yep, the governor's guy goes in there and shoots the.
Big ram in there. Oh yeah, and he's got months right, he can do it. When you find out if your season opens like September fifteenth, that's some bitch as all summer to hunt.
So I will I will say, like in the state of Idaho, there's a Governor's tag for the the numbers increased, but Hell's Canyon, the Hell's Canyon tag, arguably the best big horn sheep tag in the state of Idaho, is at one. There's one tag. This is I get. I don't know what it's at right now, but at the time,
one tag. And they factored in that there's a ninety chance that if the Governor's tag or whoever gets the Governor's tag is gonna hunt that unit, gonna hunt that unit, which is why there's one tag.
Oh, because it would have been too because it would have been okay, So there's one extra.
Yes, there's it's not necessarily taking a tag out of the pool, but there's gonna be one more dead ram.
Yep. Now, I gotta before what we even get into some listener feedback on this, I gotta say I am so torn on the issue that is the It is one of the very few areas of wildlife politics where I do not have an opinion.
Bullshit.
Yeah, you can think of a lot of stuff that I don't have an opinion.
Done this is the one area. One of the area Stephen Ranella tattooed on his gravestone.
I can't think anything good or bad to say about it.
No, no, I can think of all kinds of good and bad. I think, no, not that I don't know. I didn't mean that. I have conflicting opinions, meaning okay, you're right, cal I'll phrase it differently. If I was emperor of the country and they said, oh, yeah, one last thing, what about governor's tags, I'd be like, I still haven't decided, Okay, I got to think about it longer. Yeah, that's what I.
Just when I think about it, I go back to what, Yeah, what's better for the resource in the end, and in then the government a million dollars in habitat respiration the resource.
It's better for the resource. What's better for us emotionally.
Better for the resource.
But it's not.
It doesn't American mode.
If you have ten governors tags, right, if it's simply about maximizing the slippers of the market value for the economic value of those wildlife resources, you'd auction all the tags.
I think there is.
I was gonna say that the Arizona the guy the email from the guy in Arizona, I think, pointed out something that's relevant to us here in Montana, and that is that there are other ways of of allocating these special opportunities, in one of which is because he I believe he pointed out that in Arizona they're not doing away with.
Well, i'll tell you what he said, unless you'd like to read it.
No, no, go ahead.
It was so well worded, I think it. Yeah. This this gentleman describes himself as someone who has been intimately involved in the commission appointments and Arizona wildlife policy. He wrote in a bullet pointed email. He goes on to say the rhetoric that Arizona votes to eliminate governor's tags
is wrong. Okay, how are that'd be true? Well, he says this, Arizona has quote special big game tags which are administered by the Game and Fish Department along with other tags, rather than the more political administration of governor's tags and other states. Okay, so he's saying they don't actually have a thing. They don't have a pool called governor's tags. They have special big game tags. He's getting
a little bit into semantics here, but that's fine. The Arizona Game and Fish Commission did not eliminate special big game tags. They voted to phase out the practice of allocating these tags through an auction process in order to rely more on raffles. So he is making a semantic argument. They don't call them governor's tags, but in defense of our language, they are functional Colloquially, they are colloquially functionally govern tags. Well, it's not the governor.
When you think of a governor's tag, that's what it looks like.
It's an auction.
Now is the will the raffle? Do they believe the raffle will bring in equivalent funds?
What did the Montana to be determined?
I don't think so, But let me go on, since two thousand and nine. This is the same individual since two thousand and nine. Auction tags. Okay, so what we've been calling governor's tags. Auction tags have accounted for seventy percent of the thirty two point four million dollars raised by special tags, with raffle tags raising thirty percent, or nearly ten million dollars.
What my question would be how many tags were auctioned and how many were raffled?
I was wondering the same thing. I wish this email got into that, But he gives information where you would go find it, because he sends in a whole slide presentation on the subject. Now he goes on to say, while the sheep and meal deer tags have generated eye popping headlines, the department's data shows that for other species, including turkey, bison, coosier, black bear, mountain lion, have Alina pronghorn raffle tags generate more than auction tags. Okay, so
it's species dependent. He has another thing, the notion that Arizona and now I don't think he got this from us, but the notion that Arizona is becoming purple and therefore the Commission's being influenced by anti hunting interests is flat out wrong. Oh I know where this came from. There's a guy that's coming on the podcast, and I'm gonna let him put this in his own phrasing. We have a guest in the future coming on the podcast who felt that the move against governor's tags was a anti
hunting thing. Okay, and I might have quoted him on that anti like that. It's anti hunters arguing against governor's tags. How dare they auction off the life of an animal. Oh but this individual who will be coming on the podcast expressed to me, I don't want to say his name because it was a private conversation and I don't want to quote him on it, expressed to me that he felt like it was a loss to the anti hunters. Hmmm, interesting, this guy says that's flat out wrong. The commissioners very
very clearly articulated their reasons for taking this step. Retired US Army Lieutenant General Jeff Buchanan said he understood the argument that the ends justify the means, meaning he understands the argument that, hey, it's a lot of money, but it's not democratic. And he says, we cannot compromise our values to make money, meaning it might be ugly to auction off hunting opportunities when you have people that in ways in which it excludes the general population. Sure, but
that's true, but it's a compromise of our values. Therefore the money shouldn't matter. He also cited founding principles of this nation and inserting that we should not be setting aside a special privilege for the rich and elite. He spent thirty seven years in the military. That's not what he was there defending. Okay, he was not there to
defend special privileges for the rich and elite. He was there to defend all Americans, which influenced his decision that governor tags are on American Former chair James Sorry, I'm gonna mutilate this name. James Goner was cited, among other concerns, the concentration of these tags in just a few hands, meaning check this out. Thirty six governor's tags have fallen into the hands of three individuals. Wow, which is also in the slide. He goes on to say these individuals
are not sympathetic to anti hunting advocates. Should I keep going about this guy? This guy's good.
Yeah, no, I mean it's all I'll get info.
I served as a policy advisor to the previous Arizona governor and was personally involved in the selection of several of these commissioners. I am intimately familiar with the process for the appointment of the others and can state confidently confident. Yeah, I can state confidently. Why am I saying I can say confident, But he's saying he can state with confidence. There you go that the wishes of anti hunters played
no role in these appointments. I was similarly, similarly, very closely involved in the banning of trail cameras in the state for taking of wildlife. As we're a number of these commissioners, I can tell you personally that the decision was driven by hunters for the benefit of hunters and our model of wildlife conservation. To see either of these actions as being motivated by anti hunting forces is just flat out wrong. Yeah shuck, I like that guy. Yep,
it's good. Email Okay, who wants to do? Email number two?
I can read it. I haven't read it before.
Who I'm looking forward to? Email number three?
This is from Mark, not the guy that's sitting next to me, but he describes himself as a spare time economist and a spare time hunter. The idea that governor's tags or any other market mechanisms to manage scarce wildlife resources counter the democratic allocation pillar of the North American model of wildlife conservation is a misconception held by many
conservationists and hunters. When discussing a scarce resource like a big horn, cheap tag, a random draw isn't democratic in the same way electing a president is everyone doesn't vote for who gets the tag. John Stikovich of Cleveland, Ohio isn't the favorite to win because he saved an eleven month old baby from a burning building and deserves that the most parentheses. True stories, random draws are just one
imperfect way to allocate resources when demand exceed supply. It just so happens that that it is an indisputably suboptimal way to do so.
No, he's contradicting himself. A merit based system is not democratic in this case. That's merit based. Does he ever think we're going to hold an election to see who gets the governor's day.
Everybody's essays need to be to do it now. The debate's going to be held halfway through.
It's democratic in the sense of everyone's equal before the law, like democratic culture voting one.
If the governor was given the tag and the governor could honor a person who deserved it on merit, it would open up big problems with cronyism.
Wouldn't raise money either.
But get.
He's saying the market will decide who's right or wrong. You shouldn't take seriously state game agencies complaining about managing white tailed dough populations while still charging for licenses to hunt them. If they were really felt that there were too many deer on the landscape, they would reimburse hunters for shooting. Does not charge them?
All right, I'm done. In general, there was zeno state agency.
In general, game agencies unwillingness to manage.
That they had to run out of deficit. Not that state agencies can get revenue to fund biologists. How about the state agency with now that we've stripped its funding source anyways, now needs to pay people to hunt? Does yeah?
Oh, I am as Steve put it a way ass pro governor's tag person who wants to read that one I can jump the brod well.
It may be true that people used to have a we're all in it together attitude, and that years ago one was not able to pay extra to skip lines at Disneyland or bored an airplane faster. This tear system is most certainly not new. An argument could be made that the average American today is is today more aware of the financial tier systems that inherently exists in a capital society than they were thirty, forty or fifty years ago.
But the fact that rich people are able to buy things that are either coveted or rare and thus expensive, while poor middle class people are unable to buy such things. Is in no way a surprise to anyone, nor has it ever been a surprise to anyone. The foundation of this argument is what exact is exactly equal opportunity means, and where it exists in our North American model of
wildlife conservation. I'm not following that regarding the draw system, which is integral to our conservation model, equal opportunity means that every American has an equal right to apply. It does not mean that every American has an equal ability to apply. Someone who asks the financial means to apply across multiple states of which they are not a resident stands a much greater chance of being successful in a
draw by virtue of having entered more draws. In the opposite, someone who does not have the financial means has a significantly lower probability of successfully drawing a tag. There's inherent inequality in this, but it is in financial ability, not opportunity to apply. In the very same vein he's gonna.
Get to this, he's gonna get to And since anyone can bid on a governor's.
Sag right in the very same vein. Everyone has afforded the equal opportunity to write of bidding on a governor's tag. Yet not everyone is afforded an equal financial ability. The person with a greater financial means will be more successful in terms of attaining a tag. The buck stops here there.
I think you know what? Can you read his last sentence?
Uh?
There's a litany of other pro governor's tag arguments, but I believe this to be the most compelling. Sincerely, Sexton.
Now when I hear a name like Saxton, you're immediately suspicious. He's got grease, he's got jingle. Of course, Saxton name Saxons because rich people know how to name their kids to sound rich.
Right, you don't get that like this is this is a better argument.
It is a better argument, but the whole like where it exists in our North American model, Like, you know, it's not the King's deer, so I'm not sure what he's getting.
Well, yeah, I mean this, right, is an argument that you could apply to anything. Right, It's like, well, the systems messed up, Yeah, so why pick on this part of the system, cherry pick this when this is our messed up over here too. If you're really invested in making it equitable and democratic, then you need to tear down this part of the system.
I'm gonna sum up email for yep. I was gonna sum it up. Y'all's jealous. People jealous about all kinds of stuff. They don't realize they're jealous. Y'all's jealous of people who can buy governor's tags. That's what this is all about, yep.
I mean, I think the one of the things that the argument about, if you can't afford it, you're just why is that we own the wildlife right, and so it's not the same as like going to Disneyland and paying to cut in line. It's a public resource and everybody has a right to say how they think it should be managed.
This guy goes on here's email number five. He's like, hey, man, I'm torn. Here's a couple of questions. Why is there only one tag? If one tag is worth six hundred, then why not sell two tags for one point two million? Two?
His second question is the amount raised? Truly the thing that allows this to be considered If the tag went for twenty thousand dollars one year rather than six hundred dollars six hundred thousand, would it still be worth violating the North American conservation model or is it the amount of money?
Yeah?
What what?
There's definitely a threshold. Yeah, definitely threshold. All good questions, he believed.
Here's another question he's got. I believe asking our governor's tag's good hides behind words the truth. The true question, then, is are our ethical beliefs for sale? In pointing out this threshold. We'll do it for six, we'll do it lest it, not do extremes. We'll do it for two hundred, not gonna do that for ten? Okay, uh yeah, At what point do we go, like, well, for that amount of money? I think there's a movie about this one.
Oh yeah, Demi Moore, some guy. Yeah, they're like a loyal couple, but she could get a bunch of grease, which is slang for jingle, which is slang for night with everyone has a price.
Leaving Las Vegas. Not leaving Las Vegas was the.
You know that one movie that Nick Cage did, Raising Arizona.
I think you can just the opposite though. If it was only twenty thousand, people be like, oh that's cool, But it would they wouldn't get so pissed.
Because of because of email number four, because y'all's jealous and you're and you're more jealous of a dude with massive grease.
Totally, because you're like, I know that seven hundred thousand for that antelope island mule deer tag, Like it's like a drop in the bucket for that guy. He didn't give a shit.
What if it went the opposite way though?
What if what if I told you that such and such a Saxon guy was going to put in thirty million dollars enough to pay double the entire Saxon bombuler the seven Yeah, what if it was such an astronomical amount that it could change everything that state was able to do? Is there is there a tier where it's like undeniably useful we have right?
I mean, if someone said, hey, man, I'm going to give you a billion dollar and you can take that billion dollars and spend it on wildlife habitat. But here's the rub, I'm gonna shoot one of them.
She's and that she would have died that winter anyway.
Yeah, we're giving musks and my das here.
Would you just said no, no, no, no, we should introduce into evidence the Montana Bha experiment this year.
Yeah, then we're gonna finish Krinn wrote end.
Which is which is raffle the auction, right, And and I think there's a bunch of ways that I find to be like irrefutable that this should If we're gonna do fundraising this way, it should be through raffle, not through auction.
And like.
The wild cheap situation is the best example that we have, right, Like, there's no data out there that says, you know, a hell of a lot more people would be invested in big horn cheap conservation if they had some way to access bighorn sheep or even the opportunity at big horns.
There's no data supporting that.
Right, But you're like, Okay, you could have your name in the hat for a big horn sheep tag for five bucks, but that chance doesn't really exist, right. But at the same time, like once a year, we all gather in a room and we pat each other on the backs by being like that dude is getting his third World Slam of sheep. What a conservationist, right, And he'd I mean six hundred and fifty thousand dollars ah
what a conservationist. Right, That same conservationist can buy six hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of raffle tickets, right and be like, what a great conservationist. He's just not guaranteed the sheep hunt to go with it.
Yeah. Well, here's the thing though, My wife recently bid on a thing where you get to go get donuts with the school resource officer and a fundraiser for the school. Yep, it's like donuts with Tom the cop. Uh. She could have just given that money, not gone to donuts with that cop.
But he's super good looking, but he listens to her dropping on the neighboring tables one thousand attention.
It was actually, Uh, the intention was that our kids would get to go get donuts with the cops. I don't like this. I don't like this.
It seems like.
Is to go to donuts with the cops in order to be heard.
Okay. So the Montana example that that Randall brought up, Montana BHA gets the statewide mule deer tag this year and and typically the state will give it to different conservation groups as that fundraising mechanism the very typical way of fundraising with the tag, right, the conservation group doesn't get the money from the tag. The conservation group gets to use that tag as kind of like the carrot to bait folks into a fancy banquet where that tag gets auctioned off.
Oh that's how that works.
Yeah, and then they's like.
Raff off a bunch of other things, and then they raffle off a bunch of other things.
To make their money.
But this it's a decoy, yes, really, yeah, yep, because you know, I don't.
Know how I thought it worked, but I didn't know that well.
Because arguments like this, right, these states that have those those tags, that money has got to go back to the conservation of that species, for the habitat of that species, for the benefit of bighorn cheap or moose or goats or mule.
Yeah right, yeah, everything you're saying makes sense as their thought.
I think they get a cut, or they can take a cut.
I think, yeah, there's like the but it's outlined in here, right, you're.
Right, it doesn't go into their general fund, right, the.
Handling fee, so you know, yep, it's twenty bucks a chance, but your card gets danged for twenty two fifty type of thing. So anyway, what was interesting here is like we talked about like you put in six hundred thousand dollars at auction, but you could put six hundred thousand dollars into the raffle if you really wanted to do that. Nobody did that. So historically the highest price the Montanas, the statewide Montana mule deer tag has ever gone for,
was forty one thousand dollars. A lot of money for mule deer tag. Nowhere nearer the amount of money that mule deer tags and other states go for it to.
We don't have that kind of mild are yeah, because we get to hunt them all through the front.
Well, the raffle version raised fifty six swenty dollars, a thirty eight percent increase from the all time high. And what's interesting is the the mean purchase price was forty three dollars, so kind of on average, two chances to name in the hat per participant, yep, right, so you know, very equitable. It was spread really evenly amongst the people who chose to participate.
Tank of gas ranging to two tanks of gas, and the guys, the guy.
Who actually won, The guy who actually won spent like under one hundred dollars or something. He spent one hundred bucks on tickets.
Yeah, he spent one hundred bucks through the winner.
I think that that could be the start of the arms, right, I think that in that case, you made more off a mule around raffle in Montana. I don't think that you would that that's that's not going to hold true in big horns.
Yeah, but like I would love to see that. So if the marketing mechanism were to change from curating individual donors with super deep pockets, right, like you don't hold a raffle or an auction like that and being like, oh my god, a totally random person off the street walked in here and bought that thing. Can you believe that?
Yeah?
Is not done right?
You know the.
Person or the top two people who are going to end up with.
They're in communication with the people that are going to buy it.
Yes, yep. So if you took that level of effort and did a nationwide.
Ideally what's five hundred thousand at fifty bucks an entry.
Yeah, that's just a matter of removing some number of zeros.
And like, would you get that many people to do it? I bet you would.
Well, but and you advertise to these areas that are like, I am so detached from big horn sheep, I don't even participate, right, And I'm just saying, like, anecdotally, in the state of Montana, as we increased the bar price wise for these speed that are very very limited, right, the supply demand that we already talked about. I had people within my personal circle that there was never ever a question, nor would there ever be a question of
how serious a hunter they are. But they were just like unpriced out of the game, and they just made that decision early on. I can't float two hundred and fifty bucks out there for a chance. I'm just going to concentrate on other things. So I mean, whether you think that's a significant number or not, that is happening.
So I want to know if we said, here's the places that don't participate in the conservation of this species, and we put our efforts into saying like, okay, here's a way, would that then lead to greater participation in the conservation of that species in general?
Right?
Because well, I had threw five dollars in and then I read some stuff on big horn sheep, and boy, I like that idea. Now I'm just a little more invested than I was.
You know that.
You know that sheep day we went to at the Hunt Expo where we put in our raffle tickets and sat there. I've never thought about and cared about sheep so much as I did for that hour.
I think it's safe to say this on the raffle front, even if you do a big horned sheep, it's not a question of It's definitely not a question of do we want four hundred thousand dollars or zero? Yeah, it's probably some question of do we want four hundred or two fifty or four hundred or two or whatever the hell it is. It's not like you're giving to move to a raffle or you're not giving up the whole thing. You're giving up probably something, but you're not losing the
whole thing. Well, I mean, you're gaining a public participation.
I believe that Idaho Wild Sheep Foundation for that state wide tag they switch every other year. I believe so they one year they auction it, than the next year they raffle it.
Yep. I how you put that Wall Street Main Street?
There you go brand, but there's no there's just like I feel like, by I mean, look at look at the state of skiing in the United States right these major veil Oh, there's only.
Two ski companies left in the whole country.
And they have made a very public decision to raise prices cater to fewer customers year over year, at at a higher price to that customer. And that's just the way skiing is going to be, right, I mean, I think that that is a very good example of where hunting, at least right now for certain species already is. And
it went that way a long time ago. Right, It's like I always remind people when I'm in that cheap auction, I'm like, what's fun here is the percentage of people who have ever actually had a sheep tag that are in this room right now? This whole industry is here, but relative like the amount of actual sheep hunters very very.
Few, yep. But see that guy back there, he got six yeah.
Yeah, And we're like and you know, and it's this thing that we're expected to celebrate, and like, are we just so far down the road that we can't go back and be like, man, we got to try something else, because it turns out relatively very few people actually give a shit about sheep because they just will never get one. And we talk about so I have a lifetime license in Idaho, which gives me the privilege of having my name in the sheep draw as a resident, which is
I believe. Still, if you're applying as a resident in the state of Idaho for bighorn sheep, that is the best odds of drawing bighorn sheep in the US. Still, I think, depending on your unit. Every year I talk about how stupid I am. I should be applying for badass mule deer tags in Idaho every year because mathematically I will not draw that tag. But I know people who have right and they're at this point like huge
chip on my shoulder. I'd much rather draw or a bighorn sheep tag than buy one, because it's like that's where the hunt is.
It's more fun.
Oh, it's more fun. Yeah, for sure. So I don't know.
I think.
This is a legitimate issue with the hunting system in America, Like we've already made the decision to just reserve elite opportunities for folks with elite bank accounts, and I don't believe that's right. In any way, shape or form, and we're not exploring ways to change that system. And I think it's going to be at the detriment of hunting because it's like, well, why would I give a shit about that. It's like I'm not I lost that game
a long time ago. Ladies, Joan Ryan Kell and Amen Cal thank you for joining.
We'll find you out to the uh the hell's it called? Mediator podcast network, YouTube, good Night uncompahgre or the other Robert W service by Bob Servis. This next story came to us through Keith and Spot, the manager of the First Light store in Haley, Idaho. Keith received a call from a customer one day who phoned in to tell him about an experience he'd had while wearing a piece
of First Light gear, the Uncompagreate Puffy. While I'd argue that the jacket is certainly not the star of the story, this gentleman had gotten into a very sticky situation in the mountains of northwest Montana. He felt that his survival was due in part to the quality of the jacket he was wearing. As you'll hear, there are a few other pieces of gear that would have served him well, and he readily admits that he should have been carrying them.
To be honest, though, what caught my eye about this story wasn't the coat, which is a damn good puffy, but rather the narrator's name, Robert W. Service. As everyone knows, or at least they better know, Robert Service is the name of the greatest poet of all time, if he asks me, better than Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman all put together, known as the Bard of the Yukon, Service was born in eighteen seventy four and is the author of the greatest poem ever written, The Cremation of
Sam McGee. It's the story of a pair of gold miners during the Yukon gold Rush, one of whom Sam McGee, is from Tennessee. He hates the cold of the North, hates it severely, and it's not until his death that he finally gets so much needed relief. The poem begins, there are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trail have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.
The northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee. You'll have to read it to see how it ends, and then you might want to follow up by reading the second greatest poem of all time, also written by Service, called the Shooting of Dan McGrew. Now what binds these two Robert W. Services, one a dead Scottish Canadian poet and the other living commercial fishermen from Oregon. Isn't just their name or the
fact that they are actually related. They are bound also by experiences with extreme cold. Only one of them, however, lived through two experiences so harrowing that they would earn him the nickname black Cloud Bob.
My name's Bob Service. I'm from the Pacific Northwest. I live in a small coastal town in Oregon. The story I'm going to tell you took place on November fifteenth, twenty twenty three, in Sanders County, Montana. I've lived here in Astoi, Oregon, my whole entire life to make a living a commercial fish and also a member of an operating engineer's trade. It's a pretty economically depressed place, so
growing up in a small coastal community. Even though my parents weren't really hardcore, we spent a lot of time outside and we ate a lot of the fish, crab, deer, elk. It just became a way of life. We lived off the land here and it just kind of morphed into my adulthood and it became what I'm all about. I started hunting when I was twelve. I've had horrible luck at it, but it's part of who I am and
I love it. People approached me and you're like, man, if you didn't have bad luck, you wouldn't have any luck. I've been labeled black cloud, bob or I've also been told I'm lucky. I don't know what it is to be honest with you, but I mean I was on a crab boat one time that was sinking and we got rescued off that. I've been hit by an Amtrak train. I've had some pretty impressive things happen to me. So I'm still here and there must be some kind of a reason for the story that I'm about to tell you,
which took place in November of twenty twenty three. I need to go back to twenty ten. I had been in a relationship for four or five years. I met this gal and she was like twenty and I was thirty three, and she came over to my house and she never left. She had mentioned that, you know, she had an interest in wanting to go deer hunting, and I'm like, well, let's fulfill your interest.
Let's go.
So I bought her a deer tag. I took her out to a gun. I let her handle a rifle. Everything in my mind that you would do to fulfill somebody that hadn't spent much time around guns. You showed them how it works, let him handle the firearm, you let him shoot. So I did all these things, and I take my ex girlfriend hunting about five hours south of where I live, so it was a camping hunting destination trip. Took her out hunting and I found a buck and I said, hey, would you like to shoot
this buck? She said yes. And when I first spotted this thing, it was probably like almost a thousand yards away, so we closed the distance to about three hundred yards. I set her up and I'm like, well, here's the deer, find it in the scope, and when you're ready, shoot it. The funny thing about this story is I don't normally bring a dog with me hunting, but I had this little spring or Spaniel. She was about a thirty five
pound dog, and she went with me everywhere. She was in the back seat right when all this stuff happened, she started barking and freaking out. Looking back, I still think that that dog was trying to tell me that she just had maybe like a premonition that something was gonna go wrong that day. And I scolded her for it, and I feel horrible about that because I think that dog just had maybe had a hunch. She shoots this deer, the deer falls down. I rig her up and I
put the firearm on her back on a sling. I empty it. I put a pack frame on bags on my back, and I'm going to bone this deer out. We're going to hike down to it. And I'm side hill. I'm trying to find it, and we make our way over to the animal. The deer was about twenty five feet to my immediate right. The animal is mortally wounded, but it's still alive. She was up on the hill from the steep bank and I'm directly across from this animal, and I said, why don't you go ahead and chamber
around up and dispatch this deer. So she started to cycle around with this rifle. It was my rifle, and it had a detachable magazine. The spring had a little bit of slack, so when you put a round into the magazine and you went to chamber it, to get that bullet to feed into the chamber, sometimes you kind of had to put your hand on the bottom of the clip to raise that spring up. In that action, she was trying to fight it. It was foreign to
her and she didn't know her way around it. Unknowingly, that muzzle was coming towards my direction to my right, and about the time I'm like, oh, that muzzle's way in the danger zone and my safe. The gun went off and I felt the bullet go through my thigh, and immediately I remember saying to her, Oh my god, you just shot me in the leg. And it wasn't like the movies where you fly or fall. I just I stood there and I'm like, oh my god. I'm like, oh, I got to get out of here, and I took
a step and down I went. Just by the pain and the shock and everything that I was going into, I pretty much figured that was time I was going to say goodbye right there. She called nine one one, and for about an hour and a half or two hours, she had first responders, firefighters EMTs searching this mountain for us. I had told secondhand, you know, the dispatcher that we're on this road. We're at the three and a half mile marker. It was a one ton dodged diesel crew
cab truck. And it's super crazy because the dispatcher at the time had enough common sense to reach out to a local there, and this man was like eighty years old at the time. She called him up and she said, hey, I think there's a hunter behind your house. He's been shot, he's wounded. And this old timer got in his pickup just based off the description and drove up there and found me. I'm sitting there, I'm laying on my back, and I'm things are starting to get slowed down, and
I'm actually playing like highlight reels of my life. I had all this real, super vivid memories of things that happened forty years ago that were as vivid as something that happened ten minutes ago. That's when I knew I was probably getting ready to say goodbye. But shortly after that old man found me. He had a bunch of EMTs right directly behind him, and they packed me down to a landing and I was life flighted to Eugene, Oregon.
I woke up two weeks later and my dad was there and he's like, do you know what day it is? And I'm like no, and he's like, you've been asleep for ten days. I spent almost fifty consecutive days in the hospital and almost a year of recovery before I was able to walk. But that hunting accident, what I had to go through has been over the last fourteen years as a result of that event, quite an experience. What I bow and what I went through trying to
rehabilitate myself and get myself back to work. Like I said, I work as a commercial fisherman and being a guy in a trade, I worked on a lot of heavy duty construction that required pile driving, dredging, dock wharf construction, that kind of stuff that having some debilitating injury creates a little bit of resentment. We stayed together for five or six years, but I just couldn't get over the fact that she shot me, even though it was an accident.
I tried to put myself in her shoes, think about what she was going through and the trauma that she went through shooting me. But I just couldn't. I just couldn't get over it. I had times where I'd get these staff infections and it would make me just horribly sick. I got osteo melitis, which is a bone infection. I had to have my metatarsal bone cut off, and the second toe I think they called the second gist all. They had to clip that one off because I wore the end of it off. I learned a lot about
it infect and how sick it can make you. I was sitting there stressing, and I was watching the money leave my bank account. I'd go for a couple months where I'd be able to work, and then I was plagued with an infection. I wouldn't be able to work for months, even though it was debilitating. Once I was upright,
there was no slowing me down. I pedaled in ten miles to kill a bull elk on a logging road on a bicycle the next year, so I definitely got right back on the bike and ripped the training wheels off, and I tried to be as headstrong as I could be. I actually think it made me work harder than most people because I had this weight of this debilitating leg
or this slowed down leg. November of twenty twenty three, I had just spent several months fishing every day on a commercial fishing boat out of Astoria, so I was really looking forward to the fall. And the year prior I didn't really get much hunting time in, so after going for a couple of years, I wanted to set myself up where I had some time. Our Oregon elk season, which takes place in Middle Oregon, is a big part of my life. Elk season is traditional to us as
Christmas Morning is for some people. There's a lot of families involved, and we rely heavily on eating elk meat. I wanted to go hunting in Montana before our elk season started, and I had this idea in my head that I wanted to go and try and hunt for mule deer. Oregon has horrible mule deer hunting, and I wanted to shoot a nice mature mule deer bug. And I cut some corners, and that's probably another reason why
I got in the trouble. I got into. It was a Sunday, and I had told my wife, I'm like, dear, I'm gonna go hunting. Wanted to utilize some hunting tags in Montana. The person that I was supposed to go with didn't draw. She's a busy woman, hard working gal, and she's like, well, I can't go, I can't leave. And I'm like, I'll just go over for a couple days and I'll come back. So that's what I did. I threw my stuff in my pickup. I was just gonna kind of cruise around and go hunting. It wasn't
my first time hunting in Montana. I've probably been there five or six times prior. I went to the area that I knew first, and I spent half a morning there kind of cruising around and decided that I wanted to actually go out and just hunt and explore, spend a couple of days messing around in country that I
hadn't really been to before. I went south, about two and a half hours from where i'd normally go hunting, and I drove up this ridge and I had got up to this point where I was overlooking this reservoir and mountains. It was beautiful vast, big country, and I'm like, oh, put a rifle on my shoulder and my little daypack on and I'll just go for a little drawn up this ridge. It's awful weather, raining, sideways, nasty. I'm going
up this ridge. And I guess it was probably around one or two in the afternoon over there in that time of the year. I think it gets dark around four thirty or a quarter after four. It was starting to be that time where the lights were starting to go out, and I'm like, well, I better turn around and make my way back down to the pickup and have some dinner and call my wife and figure out where I'm at to stay tonight. As I did that, I was coming back down the hill and everything just
went black. I don't know what happened. I know I fell. All I remember is my legs being above my head and then everything went black. I wake up and it's dark, and I kind of panicked because it's pitch black, and I don't know how long I'd been out, and my leg is really really messed up, I mean messed up, bad, hurt and bad, and I could tell my ankle was all cocked over, and I thought I would expedite things, and I would go down this ridge and get down to the road that I had driven my truck up
to where I was well. When I bailed off the ridge, I kept on taking it down, thinking I was going to cut this road, and I never cut it. I was wearing a Boa type ratcheting hunting boot. This particular hunting boot had a sole on it that was super hard and slick. I'd walk over the blowdown limbs and it was like walking on a sheet of ice. Everything was just slick and slimy and wet and saturated. And if it wasn't rain and sideways, it was snowing. I would just be walking along and all of a sudden,
I'd be right on my back smack. And I don't know how many times I fell because of that. With my experience in twenty ten, you'd think I'd be pretty set up as far as having some kind of GPS or some kind of transponder type apparatus. My phone battery was dead. I couldn't access any maps, ONYX maps or anything, and I just completely put myself into a situation where I got bit. I had taken compass readings, and I knew before I had left where I needed to go
to get back to my pickup. However, I just couldn't achieve that it was very humbling to be a mile or two away from your vehicle and have a broken leg that you can barely stand on, and some injuries that you knew that you might not walk away from. I kept taking this ridge down, and I got down in this creek bottom and I'm like, well, I can
take a crick to somewhere. The very first night I went through this country where it was hands and knees crawling through and over, and I remember getting to this point. The whole night had been up trying to get out, and I was so freaking exhausted. I remember reaching in my pocket, I pulled out my keys, and I hit my teeth off to see if I was close to my truck. I remember hearing my horn and I'm like, I'm okay, I can just fall asleep. I was so exhausted.
I just fell asleep on this hillside. And I wake up to this mule deer dough blowing and hissing at me and stomping at me, and it's sunny. I'm looking at her, and this deer is just completely agitated that I'm around. She's hissing, and then finally I kind of
shoot her away. And I had this little rim rock thing that I was laying next to on this hillside and the sun was beaten on me, and I was warming up, drying out and kind of trying to wake up, and I could hear that dough, that mule deer dough up there, still blowing, and I could hear hooves hitting the ground, and the next thing I know, she kicked
up this boulder directly above me. In this rock that was the size of a basketball or a cantalope comes hurling down over this hillside, and I felt the wind of that rock go by my head, and I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, geez, the deer even trying to get me well her tracks, I kind of noticed that was kind of the direction I needed to go.
Well.
I ended up running into this deer a couple more times. It was really strange because when I caught up to her, she had a nice, mature mule deer with her, like a four point that was just a beautiful buck. At that point, hunting was the last thing on my agenda. There could have been a world record deer there, and I wouldn't have shot it. I needed to get out
of there. I didn't even know if my gun was operable because it had fallen twenty feet and taken a pretty hard hit and a whole muzzle was fouled, so I couldn't even shoot the gun safely. And I end up running into these deer, and now there's four. There's a mule deer dough, a mule deer buck, and a white tail buck and a white tail dough and they're all hanging out together, and I'm like, man, that is
really weird. That is really bizarre. Well, they ended up taking off, and I ended up making my way down to this road and I'm like, oh, this must be the road where I drove up with my truck. And so I'm down there all night, piecing around looking for my tracks on this road and I literally am just going over the same country over and over again. And I look up this road and I see three kids. And I look over to my right and there's a gate, a farmer gate type thing, and behind is this massive
white tail buck. I still can't believe how big it was. But I saw these what I thought were three kids trying to yell at them and get their attention, and they're not yelling back at me. Well the whole time, what I'm thinking are kids is a hallucination. I'm hallucinating. I spent four whole nights out in the woods with no food, and the only water I was drinking was drinking from you know, springs in the ground. I was weak, I was tired, I was hurt, havn't eaten, haven't drank,
and I was so freaking exhausted. I'd be walking along and I would just pass out and fall down on the ground. I was in trouble. All I could think about in my head was God, I missed the check in last night. But what is my wife thinking? What is my poor wife going through right now?
You know?
And I'm just trying to beat my way back. Every step I took was like taking five back. Nothing was working out. I was just terrified and worried about my daughter. I knew my wife would be okay, but I just couldn't stomach my daughter not having a dad. So it was it was a hell the time. I mean, just
the fear and being hurt and the helplessness. I don't have any idea how much country I traversed when your legs broke, trying to use your gun as a crutch, and just trying to transit through that country with all the elevation and it being covered in snow and slick and overblowdown trees. You can only get around so much. But I just never would stop. I just kept on trying to beat my way ahead and through and trying
to get out of this situation. This ridge that I was on, it was open on the east facing slope, and then on the west facing slope it was timbered terrain and country. I got into these bluffs and I could see a trail below me, and it was so steep and it was so sketchy. It was like being placed on a rock wall where you're looking down where you have twelve or fourteen feet where you're going to hit bottom. The very last night, it would have been
like the fourth night I was out there. I'm laying under this fir tree on the side of this mountain and I found myself over into these bluffs and I'm kind of covered up, and I'm soaking wet, I'm cold, and I've got one of the first light puffy coats on the down coats, and I couldn't believe how tough that was, because I thought I would absolutely shred it. I tore it in one spot. But the amount of brutality that I put on that coat was incredible. There
was one night where it rained almost two inches. I encountered snow, rain, sleet, just about everything you can encounter. But it kept me warm and kept me dry. But I was wearing like danhim jeans. At my bottom half was soaked and it was just a miserable time to never really warm up or dry out. But I had a space blanket, and if I would say to have anything in a hunting pack, have a space blanket, because if you can insulate yourself even after getting wet, it'll
be all right. People ask me if you build a fire, and I'm like, how do you build a fire in country and ground that's completely saturated. You're so critical that you're now thinking about yourself like your cell phone. It's like I only have thirty six percent life left. I need to protect that thirty six percent. That's kind of how I viewed my leg and my body in that situation.
So I was warm enough with the space blanket, and I didn't see where I was going to benefit from having a fire that I couldn't even hardly start to begin with. Everything was just wet, saturated. It was more important to keep the energy. And that last night, I'm curled up in a ball under that tree and I hear a siren middle of the night. I have no idea what time it is. I hear this just siren, and I'm looking down this ridge and I see what
I think is somebody who shining the spotlight. But they're probably over a mile away, and I'm like, well, that's where my pickup is, but I can't get there. I was blowing on a whistle trying to get their attention. I had a headlamp on. This guy that found me later on told me he saw my sos strobe. So they had me located and they knew where I was at because they were at my pickup, and because I was in such a rough spot, they were going to
go up there and extract me with a helicopter. The weather had changed and it was just pea soup fog and they couldn't fly. They figured that I obviously was injured, and that's why I was hung up where I was hung up, but they didn't know how they were going to get me out of there, and I don't think
they were expecting what I did. I'm up on this cliff and I'm looking at the shale, and it's probably a quarter mile down to this trail head, and I'm thinking I can't climb thirty feet up a vertical rock face to get over these bluffs, so I guess at this point my only option is to slide down this mountain. I just got on my butt and I slid.
Down the hill.
There wasn't really much left in my jeans, but at that point I didn't care. I just took it slow and rode her all the way to the bottom of the trail, and I got down to this trail head and pretty much drugged myself out. I didn't know where the trail was going to pop out at, but I ended up encountering this kiosk where this fire had occurred in four or five wild land firefighters had lost their life at this particular spot, and I'm like, well, I must be getting close to some kind of parking lot
or something. I went maybe one hundred or two hundred yards further, and I heard people talking and that's when Mason, who was head of the search and rescue where I was at, He's like, we've been looking for you for a couple of days. They actually had an ambulance there, and I got up and crawled me back to the ambulance and they started evaluating me, and they're like, you're going to the hospital. Your bitals are pretty dangerous, my kidney functions that things were getting ready to shut down.
So I was one more day and I probably wouldn't be here anymore telling you his story, but it was kind of comical. He just couldn't over the fact that I just went there by myself. He was certain that somebody had dropped me some info or a coordinance or a pan or something, and I'm like, nope, I just came here on my own. One of the things that is just everlasting in my head is when my wife got to the hospital. Obviously it was a little bit
of an emotional thing. So heard my father in law, are there living in a small town when you know everybody. When we got married was a big event. We had a lot of people there and stuff, and she said something to me that will always stick. She goes, I didn't know if it would be morbid to have your funeral the same place we got married. I didn't know.
What to say.
Pretty emotional. My whole ankle was cocked ninety degrees off my right leg. It was completely dislocated from where it was supposed to be. I also had frostbite, hypothermia, and all the emotion being in a hospital, the hospital visits, even getting home and transitioning to home. My leg was already damaged before from the bullet going through my thigh, but when I got out of the woods in Montana, I had just worn my right leg down to a
there was just nothing left. I mean, I was down to bones, just trying to beat my way out of there, and I just did irreplaceable damage to it and finished it off. I had this horrible infection in my leg, and I went to multiple doctor visits, vascular physicians and whatnot, and they did all this stuff, and they're like, we can preserve your leg, that it'll be a fused joint. You'll have a very noticeable limp the rest of your life.
That just did.
I didn't really fit into my schedule when they told me that I was going to be close to fourteen months with non weight bearing and pins. I just elected to have my leg amputated. So I had a below the knee amputation done on February fourteenth, and I'm going to be receiving a prosthetic on the seventeenth of April. Losing this leg is actually a good thing. It's a
positive thing. Because my leg was so damaged from my hunting accident, my leg would swell up and sometimes it would be near impossible to get a shoe on or a boot on or anything because my ankle was so swollen. I don't have to deal with that anymore, so I'm actually just grateful to not live in chronic pain anymore. I can go down to the beach and dig a limited razor clams, or drive out to the creek and drift a little salmon egg through a hole hitch steel head.
I mean, I did that the other day on crutches. It's just it's part of who I am. But it's still a big wild place, and we just don't want to lose touch of how quick things can go bad. And that's why I wanted to tell this story. What happened to me shouldn't have happened. I should have had everything on me that I needed. That's what I can't stress enough is if you leave the road, you better
be prepared to leave the road. What happened to me is just due to my personality and my ignorance and trying to be in a hurry and cutting corners and just trying to fit too much into one small bag, got me hurt and could have got me killed, and has now put a real big skew in my life at this age. Last night, it was my daughter's birth and we're singing her Happy Birthday, and I'm looking in that little girl's eyes and i just glad to be here.
You know, you just don't know when you're gonna meet your maker, So maybe just kind of give everything a second thought. Go Is that a good idea? You can go out there and have a good time, but make sure you have your keys crossed and your eyes dotted.