This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listeningcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for ELK. 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. All right, everybody, we're joined today by John Stallone and Charles Whitman from Howell for Wildlife, which is an organization you hear more and more about as they have been heavily involved in some of the fights to preserve our hunting rights around the country.
Welcome guys, Thank you for having us.
Thanks, yeah, thank you.
I know that. I think my first introduction to you guys was was uh. Jannis was one of the first people I heard mentioned in it, and he would maybe I had heard of you, but doing trivia a long time ago. I think Gianni's made a donation the Hole for Wildlife and uh, and so he brought you guys onto our radar. Then increasingly you guys have come up in conversations and stuff you're working on around the Colorado
Hunting Band vote, coming up with some other issues. So I'm looking forward to spend some time with you guys talking about uh, some things that have happened, some things that might happened in the efforts to preserve everyone's hunting rights. So we will get to that shortly. Thanks for coming. Meet it or TV YouTube channel now, not to be confused with the YouTube channel where you watch our podcast network, which now has its own channel. Tell him Krinn.
All right, So we've got a new podcast network, Meet Eater podcast Network YouTube channel, which is distinct from the Meet Eater TV YouTube channel and the mediat podcast network channel on YouTube is going to be the place where you can listen to and importantly watch all of our all of the network podcasts. And if you are watching us right now, that means you're already on that channel.
But please make sure you give it yeah welcome. Please make sure you give a subscribe as well so that when these pop up, you'll you'll get those alerts.
If on the regular channel, on the regular Mediator TV YouTube channel, go right now and check out white tail edu. So in this world you got ed not great, which gets a lot at You got eed C, which is your pocket night. I remember when that didn't exist. Yeah, that would just it was a pocket knife. Now it's an e DC. And then you got EDU meaning white tail Edu on the Media to YouTube channel. It's with Mark Kenyon Tony Peterson. It's a short video series running
through September. UH to get you in the mindset for the fall hunting season and provide all kind of tips and tricks for uh getting after white tails.
Man.
Those guys are great too. On the way on the white tail front, I grew up hunting white tails. We would just kind of put a tree in the same put a tree stand in the same stuff. Yeah, out on the point. So you just watched deer that were five hundred. No, you couldn't see that.
Far, Tony was telling me.
And they left before I ever got it really figured out. But these guys got it figured out.
Their number one request is people will send them on X pins and say where would you kill a due?
Where should I?
Where should I set up?
Do?
They reply?
Their reply is listen and figure it out for yourself. Yes, the whole teach man to fish.
Dude after hunting after Tony and I went down and last fall and hunt some public land down in Oklahoma, and watching that dude like uh, kind of put that whole thing together, like just basically scouting on the fly and then making determinations.
He's taken in all kinds of information you might know.
It's like six cents stuff, dude, it's sixth sense stuff.
Like you didn't sit there and be like, oh I could do this.
No, it probably becomes six cents if you're constantly doing doing something in a certain way and like keeping track of certain things. It probably becomes like an instinct.
After what white tails are doing. When they're doing you know, like you can take someone and show them, but you know you might not notice, but look that's a deer trail, right, and they'll eventually figure that out. But sort of his his like I don't know, I think around four o'clock he's gonna come down there, stand right there and eat an acorn. It's it's incredible, man, he's good on those dudes are good on white tails. It's fun to see. We also have a new live streaming podcast called me
Eater Radio. Live starts in a few days, so you want to check that out. It's the Field Report all from around the country. Live correspondence from around the country telling you what they're up to, what's going on, what's the news in the area, what's the hot bite in the area, what kind of tattoos did they get they might later regret whatever. Field Reports from around the country, Alaska to Florida, New York to Hawaii and all points
in between. You'll be hearing from some of the hardest hitting outdoorsmen out there as they give you live reports on what's going on in their area and in their lives.
But also co anchored by a combination of you Cal Brody, Randall, Spencer, Yanni yep uh so nice peppering of different personalities from across our network. And you will be able to watch it live on the podcast.
But then you watch it later too. You want to watch it live, watch it live, yea. Turks and Caicos repeals the law that has all the Americans locked up. They walked the law back a little bit that has all the Americans locked up. If you hadn't heard about this, We've covered this and interviewed some of the people and
covered it on our website, covered it on podcasts. Turks and Caicos passes really strict uh gun law which which had a minimum uh was it twelve I think twelve years minimum jail time for gun, Yeah, for for possession firearm possession. And the way they wrote it, we roll up even if you had a shell and no gun
to shoot it from. And they caught. Once this law was passed and started being strictly enforced, they caught five American tourists summer, all of them coming out of the country leaving Turks and Caicos with a stray round or a stray few rounds of AMMO left over from hunting season in their backpack. Jailed all these guys. A congressional delegation went down there. There's a guy from Pennsylvania, so
I know, like fetterman from Pennsylvania went down there. There's a guy from Oklahoma, so a congressman from Oklahoma, on and on. Congressman from all these different states went down there to try to put some heat on Turks and Caicos to give the guys back, because clearly in this situation, it's like, first they don't have a firearm to match the ammo. Second they've already gotten somehow they got into the country like.
Favor by taking Ammo out of the country.
Yeah, and it'd be, you know, it'd be like some some honey Ammo. They got into the country, stayed the whole time, and now they're leaving and you catch them on the way out the door with a bullet or two in their bag. And so this US congressional delegation goes down there and says, come on, I mean, come on right. And I had earlier I had wondered, like, what would be the leverage that the US would apply to Turks and Caicos. The one thing that that I
realized in some reading I did this morning. Leverage they could apply is a state department issues of warning like don't go to you know, warning businesses don't do business in Turks and Caicos because they're a little over zealous, and warn US citizens, hey be careful going to Turks and Caicos, which can really when when you have a country whose economy is based on tourism. So apparently that's the pressure they put on. And meanwhile they've been slowly
letting these guys out. They held one guy in jail for one hundred days, he got out on time, served another guy came home because he's got bad health problems. One of the two guys we interviewed his home. Another one's gonna find out today or tomorrow. And meanwhile, they walked back the wording on the they walked back the wording on the legislation. Still still check your bags, dude. I'm like, I'm always yelling at my little boy because
he's super careless of twenty two shells. Put the things back in the box.
I got detained for a little while in Anchorage.
I got I got rolled up in Mexico.
Yeah, Mexico. I'd rather get detained an anchored.
I was scary because you were in what happened there. So again, I was coming back across the border and I had shotgun shells underneath the back seat of my truck because I had gotten coyote hunting, like like a week before we went there.
Well, it's also just where shotgun shells.
Live, exactly, And you know they were just you want a routine inspection, checking for if I was bringing fruit or whatever. And they've found these two shells, and they pulled me and my family the US side of the Mexico side and Mexico side.
Okay, I got it.
Yeah, So I was kind of, you know, crap in my pants a little bit because I didn't know. I was there with my kids and my wife.
Luckily I had my whole fit.
My parents were with us, my uncles were with us. We were like down there for a whole thing. So eventually they just took the shells, throw them out and let us go. But it was a little harry for a little bit there.
I want to I want to know, like what percentage of government spending goes into stuff like this when we all bitch about government overspending, Like, well, we had to send a congressional delegation because some folks on vacation had a couple of shells in their pocket. I'd just like to know. But I could guarantee the like, thank God for the US government.
They probably worked in a little vacation while they were down there.
Yeah, you know, it's totally hilarious. I don't want to say the name. But there's a subject we've been wanting to have h we wanting to do another episode on
wild horses, wildhorse, the wildhorse wild Borough subject. So I was telling Krin, was like, I really want to find like a guest who's got deep, deep history, deep personal on the ground history with the issue of wild horses, the wild Horse and Burrough Protection Act, unintended consequences of the wild Horse and Burrough Protection Act, the kind of insanity of shipping these horses to Oklahoma and paying farmers to raise them until they die of old age because
there's no other outlet for them. All that, and I start eyeballing this guy that seems great on the subject. And I said to Krint, once you find this guy and see if you'll come on the show. And last night Krinn sends me a article and like we'll share articles all the time. And I'm reading the article thinking that there's like a hunting and fishing angle to it.
And it's an article about this guy who's embezzling money from a university by just weird little petty things, like he would like expense report, he would take a company car but then fill out an expense report as though
he took his own car, right. Or he would have his daughters getting married somewhere, so he would book a big house for the family to be at the wedding, but then he would schedule a meeting and then white out the details and submit the white out certain details on the invoice, and submit the invoice for reimbursement.
He's got a shitload of markers and staples at his house.
Yeah, And I'm reading the article thinking that I'm going to get to a part where he's using a company truck for hunting and fishing, Like, I don't know, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for the hunting and fishing angle. And I text her him like I don't see the relevance of what you just sent me, and she goes, that's the guy that you've been telling me to.
Get out of.
So I'm like, oh, I guess we're back to the drawing board.
I think we know some people. We know some people.
We talked about it later.
We've done some actions on wild.
Horses, fair horses and all that in Arizona specific.
Yeah, exactly. So if you are a here's the catch. You can't you cannot be God bless you. This is not like a this is not not, this is not meaning any disrespect, not. You can't be an agency person. You can be a former agency person, but you can't be a current agency person because it's the kind of issue where if you if you're an agency person, you're going to be restricted on what you can say, and you're gonna be reluctant to share your own opinions because
of retribution. Former agency person or other professional ten yared a person who's tenured somewhere and can just talk about the issue, and they and you could be free to say, you know, I'll tell you the crazy part about this, or here's the part that everybody thinks is crazy, but it's not so crazy, and just a real someone who really sees all sides of it, understands arguments on both ends. Cal's looking at me like he wants the job.
At the same time, I want somebody from the horse sausage industry.
Come down from the glue factory.
Yeah, no agency people, and you know, we're open to a glue factory person, but he's gotta you gotta be a well rounded glue factory person. Uh So there's a call to action. The the the pronunciation on the Roosevelt Roosevelt family deepens. Do you ready for this?
Guy?
Wrote in who's this person's name?
Her?
Michelle? Michelle? What's dBm and MS mean that?
Oh?
That wrote in.
They're getting paid for this somehow?
I actually need to call her about this pigeons.
It's a little.
Late now, but I want to know.
That I did.
Well, that's who we called, but we didn't call her. We called her. We kind of jumped the gun and already burned some, burned some, you know, we call it Goodwill called her a couple of times about non issues, and then when we had an issue, I was like, are we really going to call her again about these pigeons?
She might appreciate it.
I think a little bit I gathered from her tonality was a little bit of like, why did you go get them right?
Why?
This all seems very preventable.
I do need to talk to this person though, Veterinary microbiology Snort's got some gut health issues that we need to figure out.
Call her up.
Here's what she has to say right Here's what she had to say right now, Michelle. She says some interesting history surrounding the Roosevelt family in pronuncie of the name I have period. I've always jumped back and forth and had been intellectually too lazy to figure out what it actually was, so I would sometimes do ruse and sometimes do rose. And I was corrected that when speaking of Theodore. It's Roosevelt, and he spelled, he articulated very clearly in letters,
and that's how he likes it to be. But hear this. My husband got on a presidential biography kick, and around the time our son was born, he was working through Edmund Morris's three part biography of Theodore Roosevelt. This became my son's first bedtime story, as he loved to read aloud for him every night, and even threw in an attempt at an old timey accent, Phil do your old timey accent from people in movies from the early movie days?
Well, hey, there, Chap, how you doing. You've got a nice looking mouth, like to kiss it?
And then do the what's the big idea? Here? And so you want to be a star? Hey, what's the big idea?
You want to be a star?
Don't you.
Still? Specially last name? Yeah? Where was that?
Oh?
Somewhere In this trilogy was an explanation of the history of the family, which was intertwined with the differences in pronunciation. There are historically two different groups of Roosevelts, the Hyde Park clan and the Oyster Bay Clan, who are each based from two different sons of the hell's that name? Klaus Martins, marts and Von.
I think it's Marten.
That sounds like a name you'd have.
The important Rosenbelt.
But I like that whole name because it makes you. It makes it's like, you know, so there's the thing I've become interested in. It's like there's certain names you'll see and you know they're rich.
Yeah, we hit on that the other day. What is that guy's name?
I can't remember.
Braxton, Braxton, Saxon Axton. Yeah, yeah, it's like they know, like rich. I wonder if it works as if I name my kid a rich name. If I was like, I'm gonna name him Thurston so.
He become rich.
Yeah, well, will money just flow his way because you named your kid Dave? I mean, who knows, could go anywhay. But if I named him Thurston von Renel in the ninth, does money just show up?
Likely he's gonna be getting calls for sure.
Klaus Martins and von Roosevelt, who arrived in New Amsterdam around sixteen forty, meaning that family showed up in Manhattan and sixteen forty. That's a good way to make money. Actually, I think the money followed the name Theodore Roosevelt was part of the Oyster Bay branch who pronounced the name Roosevelt. Franklin D. Roosevelt was part of the Hyde Park clan who pronounced the name Roosevelt. So technically the pronunciation indicates
which branch of the family you are referring to. That's great, So that confuses things even more so. Now when you're talking about the Great Depression and you're going to talk about Franklin delan No, you need to go like, Okay, what was it again? That's right Roosevelt. And if you're talking about the trustbusters in the early conservation movement and Theodore, you gotta go, what was it again?
That's right Roosevelt? Elt though, well, I don't know right.
I think we should say cows deer are our deer that reside in Arizona, New Mexico, whereas cou's deer are the ones we hunt in Mexico.
I would I would beg to argue with that.
Are you are you a cole's or a cousman?
I'm a cousman, and everybody that I know sayscus and I live in Arizona.
So when I wanted to know, I checked with Chris Denim, who's written said it more than anybody on the planet, and he said, till the day I die exactly.
There's nobody that says cows deer unless.
There's one. We're just one non pretentious person that says it, and it's half a finger.
But he's a stickler. He's a stickler.
We had spelled one one of our things online. We had spelled what state we spelled. We spelled Nevada wrong, and Jim texts me. He says, there are two ways to pronounce Nevada, but one way to spell it.
Uh.
This guy wrote in a nuclear and r f K Junior. So we recently re interviewed RFK Jr. And talked about which I remain I'm not. I feel that we need to be leaned. I'll just say I feel that, without really knowing what I'm talking about, I feel that we need to be leaning very heavily that direction, he says. The guy rites in, I am the plant manager of a nuclear plant and need to remain anonymous due to
company policy. I listened to the podcast religiously. In this week's discussion on nuclear power was upsetting our FK made two points on nuclear nuclear that were stated as facts and are both completely false. I'm not looking to force an opinion on anyone, just correct some bad information. Our FK stated nuclear is heavily subsidized. Not true. We do not receive the carbon credits, wind and solar benefit from I had no idea that that was true. If you
get a new a little game, well, who's right. But I'm gonna trust. I'm gonna give this guy that I'm gonna trusted. This guy's craig for this week. He goes on, I think we should because nuclear is carbon free as well, but that's an opinion. We do get some recovery payment from the government for spent fuel storage, but that is not a subsidy. The money is repayment for all the money we spent on the failed Yucca Mountain government project. Without getting into the weeds too much, just for people,
the Yucca Mountain project was there was a plan. We have all kinds of nuclear ways stored in places that are not long term storage, and for a while there was a plan to augur a deep, deep hole in the area that's regarded to be one of the most geologically stable areas in the country and store and then lead seal the stuff into a mountain, which sounds bad until you consider that it's all somewhere already. Anyway, two
primary arguments against it. One, you got to get it there. Okay, so all this stuff woul then need to be transported, which some people argue would be a huge security and environmental risk to transport it. Other people say, well, you got to do something with it because it's not good where it is. The other issue is Native Americans in in was yucka mountain? Nevada or Arizona? Sorry I don't know this Nevada, right, I think, so type it in real quick, please.
There's definitely two in Arizona, Nevada.
And I think it was the Navajo who were of the opinion, don't put that ship here on our land.
Understandable.
So there's that two. It's point two. RFK was empathetic about the lack of insurance for nuclear plants Western Nation.
Okay, there you go, sorry about that.
RFK was emphatic about the lack of insurance for nuclear plants. This is again completely false. Now I got to clarify to the person writing in, he wasn't He wasn't talking about a lack of insurance for nuclear plants. He's talking about the astronomically high cost of insurance for nuclear plants, meaning people think that anti nuclear people are hippies and tie dies. And he said, you also have to blame guys and ties on Wall Street. I don't think they
wear ties on Wall Street anymore. They unbutton Yeah, they unbuttoned the top button.
Uh.
He was saying. The real the problem there is cost of insurance, meaning Wall Street guys don't want to insure. So a little bit of a squabble there on that. But again he says, this is again completely false. Nuclear plants are heavily insured by.
Multiple com companies.
One update, though, because the Senate just passed a bill to support advanced nuclear deployment. So it passed. The Senate passed the bill to accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy capacity, including by speeding, permitting, and creating new incentives for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. And this passed eighty eight to two.
Oh you.
In on this.
The real reason?
Why?
No, no, no, she's uh hedging her bets on on Awama.
I can also see I can also see.
Act manipulate the stock market rolling through the Nasdak during this whole podcast, just got grafts going on.
Me on me, I'm just gonna really manipulate it. And it's going to Joe Biden for signature to become law. I'm not exactly sure when that's gonna be.
But the guy concludes he even gives his first name. I don't even read his damn first name. It's A.
It's A.
I'll I'll give a hint. He has the same first name as a very popular country musician. I could go into a great deal, great detail in each of these points, but in the interest of brevity, I won't. I do sense a sincere curiosity, especially if Steve anytime nuclear comes up on the podcast, it would be great to have an expert on to speak in facts and allow listeners to decide for themselves. I love, I love what you
guys are doing. Keep up the good work. If you're sitting at home or driving in your truck wondering why we're talking about this on a show about wildlife and hunting and fishing and whatnot, I'll lay it out for you very very briefly. As the country moves toward, As the country moves toward renewables, and I think we're going to retract from renewables because I do not think like there's no there's no way Biden's gonna win in November, so we're gonna see it. We're gonna see a retraction
on renewables. But if we do push ahead on renewables, there's this conversation about how much of our public lands do we put over to renewables. And when I look as a as an energy novice, when I look at the the huge movement, I'm struggling forwards. When I look at how heavily we're spending on moving toward renewable energy, I just can't see why we're not moving heavily aggressively into research and deployment of nuclear energy because the footprints so small.
And how hopefully I mean, I guess that's reveals my perspective, but hopefully, And it seems like potentially from certain you know, legislation, that there is momentum behind that. And I think that there are people driving markets, you know, all these AI investors who are actually talking to nuclear so that might become.
Because of the huge power needs of Aially exactly.
It's either it's either we go back and double down on fossil fuels. We plaster our coastlines with wind farms and convert hundreds of thousands of acres of BLM to solar arrays and wind. I'm not trying to make it like like a rock and a hard spot, but it's a little bit of a rock and a hard spot. And I can't get satisfied around the idea. I know that we had these huge crises three Mile Island, Chernoble, what's the Japan. Yeah, the tsunami that wiped out the
Fukushima power plant. Like I understand all of that, but my god, do I feel like we need to be taking that stuff more seriously?
Well, how about this bs on batteries? Like the solution is coming up with bigger batteries, Like that's I do not believe that for a fricking second.
Did you hear Trump lay out his concerns about big batteries.
No, but I just changed batteries and at my house last night, and I'm like, here's this thing. And my place is right next to Pacific Steel and Recycling. Huge shout out to that places, because it's like the most fun place I go. You can recycle anything. And then yeah, and then you get paid for it. It's awesome and there's a bunch of real interesting folks down there. Awesome documentary to be made. I could waste a lot of time at Pacific Steel. Uh you know what, they don't
recycle any type of battery. Why not because it's trash. They're like, you can't recycle that poisons.
But why are they always paying that?
Why are they always Well, there's people who can recycle the lead out of lead core batteries.
Oh they don't want lithiums.
Yep, no alkaline. Uh you know, no double as, triple as.
Oh that kind of battery. Okay, Yeah, when you said batteries, my head immediately went to the fact that you can get money for a car battery. But that's right, that's a fraction of allt.
But like these lithium batteries and stuff like that is like, it's just it's trash, man.
You don't want to get them wet either, or take them on an airplane.
Brody and I were laughing there at Eggs. I was watching this clip. I kept hearing that Trump was talking a lot about shark attacks. I was like, what, So I was watching this clip and he's talking about boats like vessels now with these huge battery powered vessels, and he's laying out a scenario where the vessel is sinking and you have a lot of electricity in the water and you're faced with a do you stay with the boat or risk shark attack by getting away from the boat.
And he really had shark attacks on his mind. He had been a woman had just lost the leg a shark.
Maybe in Florida, and you see.
Yeah, people in the audience were a little confused.
But he was back on the other day.
It's funny that he's Uh, I'd like him to come on.
Did you catch when you talk about sharks that you struggled with the word nuclear always my whole life?
Yeah?
Do you remember the the Bush clips?
No? Do you have a hard time with.
It Bush number two? Yeah, there's a great, great series of nuclear.
That that was a big thing. Is this guy that wrote in you know where he's from, perhaps from Michigan.
On the nuclear part? Oh, he can't say that.
I can't say.
He won't even say I grew up right next to a.
Form nuclear power plant in Michigan.
Was his name? Luke?
I was gonna say?
Luke said the country music.
Has to be kept quiet.
Well, how do you know what his name is? That Whalen?
I know?
Yeah, no Waylon was my second guess, sure, yeah, or George could have been George, or Tana could have been Garth, Garth, Tanya George, Yeah, Tanya be.
Dolly dude. That song Delta don oh dude, I love it. Yeah, she was a teenager.
Yeah.
Oh have you ever looked at the YouTube Grand Old Aubrey.
Good stuff?
Yeah, that's great.
She almost had a big role in Jeremiah Johnson. Did you know that? No, she wout up having a small role in Jeremiah Johnson.
H Oh, she did have one.
Yeah, dude, you could do it. I shouldn't throw this out there because maybe some day, well you could do a whole documentary on Jeremia Johnson. Here's a good one for you guys. It's a chettaquot question. Chettiicut meaning Chester's not even here. It means it's an etequatet question, and we normally defer to Chester, who likes etiquette. He's not even here, so I guess it's more of an etiquette question.
It's a good one. I'm seeking guidance on a recent dilemma I have been troubled with, so it's not so recent anymore. But from the spring, he says, I live in a mid Atlantic state. He's he doesn't want to tell a mid Atlantic state. He doesn't want to get done. He doesn't want people to narrow down to what state he's in. I live in a state with a robust turkey uppercase tea population. This season, I hunted the woods behind my house. You always know where it's going when
someone hunts the woods behind their house. I had several close encounters at the same time and never filled my tag. Three days after the season ended, I woke up to the barks and growls of my Labrador retriever uppercase R. He was right to uppercase the l and wrong to uppercase the R. I looked out my bedroom window to see that the same tom had found itself trapped inside my garden plot, which is surrounded by an eight foot fence.
I watched as the bird retreated, repeatedly, tried to take flight, hit the fence, and run around the garden, tearing up my plants. My immediate thought was to grab my twelve gage and protect my crops. Hear them out. Suddenly, every segment of Chetticut popped in my head. I felt as though I was biased and wanting a turkey in my freezer. Yeah maybe, and that my rationale and protecting my crops may be impaired by the frustration of the prior turkey season.
I don't rely on my garden for survival, but I do appreciate my homegrown veggies. I called my States Game Ward and dispatch several times and was told to leave a message and that someone would get back to me. The Department of Natural Resources website states homeowners are strictly prohibited from trapping and shooting wildlife outside regulated seasons unless the animal has been actively causing property damage or is
an obvious threat to public health and safety. Eventually, I was able to get the garden gate open and scare the bird out, damaging even more plans.
I don't understand the Eventually, I would like the tinges were rusted.
I don't know, he doesn't say. After a closer inspection of the garden, I wish I shot the bird on site because he took out my onion.
Patch that I worked real hard on.
It's been three days and the game war and has it called my buddies will giving a lot of crap for not shooting the bird. My question is what I have been right to shoot the bird? It was actively causing damage.
If you this is where if you're a hunter, you cannot shoot that bird. If you have a hunting license, You're you're not gonna end up on the right side of the story.
And we're I'm too killed.
I have so many questions though, how to get in there in the first.
P Well, I've been waiting to share this. I was in the situation he's in. I didn't have a fence around my garden. When I got a fence around my garden, I mean, it wasn't a day and there was a turkey in there because the dog chased a turkey up on the roof of the house. When the turkey pitched off the roof of the house, he landed in that garden and proceeded to run all over freaking out until we were able to get him out of the fence.
Yeah, they have trouble with fences.
I'll point out to this gentleman. It never the thought never occurred in my mind to kill that turkey.
He was just sorry he didn't get.
I think that if you I think that you that that because you were trying to kill that turkey and got duped. And then if you did kill that turkey, now you would always be suspect. Always, there would always be.
Uh.
I'm not trying to put suspicion.
Yeah, in the neighborhood. I understand the wanting to protect your garden. I was eyeballing a cottontail this morning that was drifting towards my garden.
And Brody's got a domestic cat giving him a lot of good deal. Oh that gross unit. This garden as an outhouse, which infuriates Brody. Oh the cat, it might as well be defecating in Brodie's mouth.
Yes, I tried non lethal deterrence like laying sticks over the garden, but it's not working.
So it might as well defecate in Brodie's mouth for all the internet to bring.
The game on that cat.
Well, your kids get diseased because of that thing, I don't know.
And in the garden they're going to get toxo plasmos yeah, not toxic, and the you know what they're going to do, They're gonna make risky investments. This is all true. I'm not making this up. They're gonna get toxo. They're going to make risky investments. They're going to drive too fast, they're gonna be too hot headed and too prone to fighting.
That cat's gotta go.
Yep.
It's either that or they lose all their money. Do you find them making risky bets with one another already?
I've noticed some weird behavior lately.
It's toxo. Or they become a weird cat lady, which is also linked to toxo.
That's not gonna happen.
Well, No, when you become a weird cat lady, horder.
Toxo.
When you become a guy that drives too fast and tries to evade arrest and makes bad bets and likes going to casinos, toxo.
Gotcha.
I'm gonna have to do some research there.
This guy's describing me to a team.
That's my problem.
Moving on, Maggie Hudlow is joining us from Wyoming. Hello, what's covered up by a tarp in the background. I've been dying to know.
Oh, that's our straw very patch. We've got a little hoop house thing there. We've got another bigger vegetable garden up on the other side of the house.
Are you keeping cold out or pass out?
Uh? Well, the dogs really like to dig around in there, and it's been below freezing the last few nights, so little of both.
Okay, keeping the cat keeping Brody's house cat out of there, So give us give us a dispatch. Oh sorry, go ahead, we have a slight delay.
Oh yeah, sorry about that. The uh don't have too much trouble with cats with all the dogs running around this yard.
Maggie Hudlow is a colleague of ours here meat Eater, a very prolific writer. You can always find her work at the meat eater dot com. And Maggie's gonna give us the whelming dispatch and lay out some of the the aftermath of the incident where individual had struck a wolf with a snowmobile and then taped its mouth shut and paraded it around town in a very distasteful incident that had some far reaching consequences.
Go ahead, Maggie, Yeah, thanks, Steve. I mean when I first heard the news, I had a couple thoughts, and it was like, what a thoughtless dumb ass, Like what a terrible thing to do. And also the second thought was that this is gonna blow up and get just huge, and it did immediately, so kind of local repercussions that have been not necessarily as publicly news. There have been a lot of people you know, connected to Cody through
family I know, that have been getting death threats. The Green River Bar where the incident happened, they've been getting you know, threatened, game wardens, people, small businesses in town have been getting just like hundreds of one star reviews by people they've never met, just angry animal activists, and all that has done like these strangers kind of infiltrating
this really like close knit small town. It's just made people want to side with Cody more than anything because they know him as a person and he's never you know, threatened to kill them or their family or anything. So what's happened is this like massive polarization, and you have these animal rights activists that want something to happen and
are doing it in the worst way possible. And then you have this established culture of hate against predators in Wyoming that is like already existed, but now it's had this international spotlight shown on it, and essentially right now it's like you're either on this side or you're on this side, you're either for animal rights or you're for killing wolves. And I think we need to have more conversations that meet a little bit more in the middle, Like we need predator management in this area is a
huge part of this community. We also are right in the middle of migration corridors for mule deer, for antelope. We have huge elk populations. There's elk feed grounds all around us. I think preitor management is important, but I think it's also really important that we look at creating legislation that makes it ethical.
Right on.
Yeah, do you can you elaborate on that last point a little bit? That was some of the I think some of the frustration that happened on this issue is someone did something that was so egregious, and I'll remind people, I think this gets a little bit lost. This was hitting a wolf of the snowmobil. This is running down an animal hitting with a snowmobil. Yes, the individual hunts does some hunting, but this is a snowbill strike and taking a wounded animal, taping it up and bringing it
to a bar. And I think I sensed early on a lot of frustration from outsiders looking at this issue, being how could you do that in the criminality of it was illegal possession of wildlife, which would be the same thing is if you went and caught a that you went and caught a baby rabbit and raised it as your own, you would be guilty of the same crime, illegal possession of wildlife. So when you talk about legislation,
what I mean, can you comment on that? Am I going in the wrong direction on this and trying to understand what you're saying?
Maggie, No, No, you're good And I think so wolves are you know, considered predators, so they just don't have any sort of protections beyond that. And that's sort of the sticky thing about the situation is that everyone wanted to see Cody prosecuted more than just that small fine, and there is nothing legally set in the state that he technically did that he can be taken to court for or fined for. And that's where the you know, the state legislation itself needs to change.
So, Maggie, are you getting at that?
Like in Wyoming, wolves are not managed as well in most of the state, they're not managed as a game animal, so it's like open season all your long, no bag limits outside of a small area in northwestern Wyoming.
Small Well not when.
I think it's ninety of the state.
Okay, sorry, I thought it was more significent. So but but just like a little background for people listening. When
when wolves were delisted, different states took different approaches. In Wyoming in some respects, the delisting process was delayed by negotiations with Wyoming about how Wyoming what kind of management plan Wyoming wanted to do, and Wyoming like really stuck to its guns and push for a management plan in which they would have a area where wolves would be managed as a game animal, and they would have an area where wolves would be managed as basically the same
way that virtually all states managed.
Coyots as vermin as a.
Non game whatever, the same way for coyotes. You know, most states have I think this is true. Most states have no close seasons on coyotes, right, And if there's a coyote molesting your livestock whatever, you don't even need to tell anybody about it if you were to kill
a coyote. So Wyoming was emphatic about arriving at in that position, and it differs from the management approach taken in Idaho and the management approach taken in Montana where they established quota systems around the state and regulatory measures around those states. So it's just a difference in the approach.
Yeah, and the concept of running down wolves on a snow machine, that's something that's been happening here for a long time. I'm called oh in coyotes for sure. Like I was called a tree hug and hippie growing up. When I tell my classmates I thought that was wrong or a bad thing to do. I was like, if you want to shoot them, why don't you just shoot them? Like, why do you got to run them until they die? I don't think that's right. And because I would say
that I was a tree hugget and hippie. But you know, I think you can be a sportsman and believe in like ethical predator management. And that's what I would like to see if there's any light in this situation that it just brings more of that.
Yeah, because I think amongst the pro predator management crowd, even the pro predator eradication crowd, you would see a division in getting the job done and playing with the animal, right, right.
Even if you're going to run it over, just run it over.
Kill it if you're pro as in a professional, you're doing things quickly and efficiently doing the job.
I don't think any hunter who like says that they're a hunter wants to see a prolonged death on it, right. We like pride ourselves on the fact that one shot, one kill or yeah, you know, in general, I'll.
Just totally honest, like my hunting mentor uh. He was in a time where coyote pelts were worth a ton of money, and he used to tell me stories over and over again about the the success of his coyote season was based on how many snowsuits he had to replace because instead of shooting a coyote, he'd get up alongside of him on a snowmobile and whack him on the head with the club so he didn't have to stitch up a hole.
But that's still just that. But it's a dead coyote, that's dispatching it right away.
I mean, but that that.
Dog watch into the leg on his snow snowsuit and they'd whack it on the head.
Huh.
Yeah, that's one of those things that you hear and you don't immediately think about what uh And I almost hesitate to say this but what a level of.
Uh.
That's a lot of coordination athleticism.
These are old snowmobiles.
Too, Maggie, I want to real quick calendar you can take over. I want to tell you that one of the interesting things about being alive today is it possible to be a tree hugging hippie and a savage redneck all at the same time. It depends on who I feel that, it depends on who's doing the looking. I think that Einstein got into that with theory of relativity and you say like, well, how fast is it going? Well,
it depends on where you're looking at it from. So yeah, you're a you're a like a you're a bloodthirsty redneck in a tree hugging hippie.
Welcome.
Yeah. Never been more clearly designed.
Yeah.
Well, the conversation with a bunch of ranchers over the years who makes some comment about environmentalists and I'm looking at their place and I'm like, well, aren't you a lot of environment I'm like, you seem to be doing a lot of things good for the environment.
Here.
One of my favorite UH stories from this podcast is we had a guy on years ago that that worked on the the nutrient eradication program in Chesapeake Bay, and in order to do the nutrio eradication program, they had to get all private landowners to participate, and they had one big landowner. It was just a holdout, so they couldn't finish killing all the nutrio. And he had a real just kind of anti getting along, yeah, anti. He had an anti government perspective and kind of an anti
environmentalist perspective. And eventually they become friends with them, and he goes out to this guy's place and he realizes the guy just loves loves wildlife, and then walking around his place, he's like, look at that, look at that, look at that tree, look at this, and he looks at the federal guy. He goes, see what I'm talking about. It's a gee damn menagerie. And he realized, like, we're like closer than I thought, you know what I mean? Anyhow, anything else, Maggie, you want to add.
I mean at the moment, no, I'll stick around and chime in when I see fit. But it's I just, uh, I want both sides of situations like this to just think about the the best way to make change. And uh, you know, I just I feel like my mom talking to myself when I'm in like high school, Like, think about your actions, Maggie Rose, think about how your actions
impact other people, you know. And I just wish more people people were told that maybe they needed to be reminded, like don't mess with small businesses that have nothing to do with this situation. Don't give people death threats, Like what do you think that's going to accomplish? So yeah, think about your actions.
You're not dealing with the rational people for the most part in that in that scenario.
So guys, give me the howl perspective on this, because it's a it's you know, it's it's it's a thorny one for everyone.
We got involved are about it. We were at Mile High Expo in Denver. I was at dinner. I almost flipped my table over and I'll explain why. I was just pissed off that this happened, like right now, really, this happened in twenty twenty four in the midst of mountain lion bands, outlying bands and all this stuff that's going on. This is going to blow up, This is going to look bad, this is gonna this is really going to boost the the the anti Hunters in their in their campaign because it's.
He's going to be the poster child.
Code became the poster child for their Yeah what they're trying to push.
Yeah, So we created I guess you can call it an action. It was really a sign on letter to get as many orgs, companies UH to contemn the action. Right. We got about seventy, which was great. I think we were the only ones that really even talk about it, like as far as a national org, which I was disappointed in. You know, we should we should come out in opposition to this.
Yeah, it's read.
Oh man, it's red hot, and and we took some heat. I run the social media, so I was kind of seeing it, you know, from from people that I knew, and I'm like, hey, come on, we're Anni hunters now, I mean, because we're condemning this action, Like that's that's the level it went to. Well, you know, where is this gonna go? You're kind of what do you what are you saying we should change legislation or or whatnot? No,
you shouldn't be able to torture an animal. This This guy could have ran it, over ran the wolf, over tied it to a tree for five days, came back five days later and then killed it. It would have been fine, no penalty because he didn't transport the animal.
Oh, that would have been legally permissible.
In that area. So in the in the vermin area that that Maggie was.
Talking, is it predator managment zone?
Is it called yeah, the predator man The other zone, which is which is funny, is called the trophy zone. So let's keep where there are rules. That's called the trophy zone. It's Wyoming's just a you know, it's a different place. So so we got involved. And then one of the things we do is, you know, we're not we're not from Wyoming. We're not an organization that's based in Wyoming. I reached out to organizations in Wyoming, say hey, who's who's taken care of this? Does anybody? Does anybody care?
Is anybody willing to you know, get involved? And uh, and it was Jess Johnson with Wyoming Wildlife Federation And she's kind of taken the lead on this. We got her back as far as what she's gonna need, podcasts, support from in state or odd of state, support from industry partners that we have who can, who can kind of lend the support that she's gonna need, and and she's working on what's gonna work is is there anything
in legislation? She realizes that's really sticky because this is a this is a situation here where it's not normal, you know what I mean? What happened? So how do you really legislate kind of morality? Really?
And how do you draw legislation around uh, totally individual, once in a lifetime outlandish set of actions on one person's behalf right, you know?
So I don't know if it was. There's some things there's I think it's happened before, maybe not with this guy, but it happens. It has happened before, things like this.
Maybe not as egregious as this particular thing, but things happened that shouldn't happen if you're again an ethical hunter.
But what but what did it? But what did it do? We can we can talk about that. So the action was terrible and what did it do? So he became the guy who did this? I kind of I realized he has a family and all that. I don't like really saying his name. I'm just kind of talking about the incident. But cats aren't trophies. Who is the the anti hunting organization in Colorado that's leading the charge to ban trophy hunting mountain lions, Bobcats. His face is plastered
around their website. His face is plastered around their social media. The guy was also he's hunted lions, so they have pictures of him with lions, and they're like, this is why we need to ban this because we.
Need to protect them.
Yeah, we need to protect them from from these evil hunters. And this is Yeah, everybody becomes this guy automatically by association because we're all hunters, because we're we all engage in hunting. Now we are this bloodthirsty hate animals. We don't, you know, we willy nilly go out there and shoot crap. And you know, that's that's the picture they want to paint. You know, it's part of what they do. They deal in the eye of public perception all the time.
It was a nightmare. It's a nightmare for us. It's a nightmare for the people who are in the trenches fighting, because, man, you get a picture of something, you know how it works. I mean, you can't talk your way out of that. You know, maybe if you have five hours and you really spend it with the person and explain, you know, these things we're talking about, But we don't get that chance, right social media on all the all the anna hunting, you know, websites or whatever. He's the poster boy, and
you can see publicly how much money they're raising. It's in the billions. We talked a little bit earlier about the biker rally and that thing that happened. I think that was one hundred and thirty two thousand dollars or something. It's just it's it's unfortunate that that happened. It's unfortunate that there are some people who aren't aware of themselves their actions. Obviously somebody in Daniel, Wyoming. The video got out somehow. I don't know how it got out. I
don't know who got a hold of it. But those things they don't do us any good. And and you know, both both morally, it was wrong. It was wrong if nobody even knew about it was wrong if you know, if it wasn't on video, but it was on video, and now it's a now it's a completely different, you know, completely different story. But that kind of stuff is a big struggle. It's a big, big struggle it doesn't help
us at all. So so anyway, we don't know what the strategy is going to be, We don't know what the if there is going to be legislation or whatnot. Jess is working on that. We trust her to, uh to get that ironed out. And Maggie, are you do you talk to Jess at all about Yeah? You do?
Okay, Oh, sorry, I was not into my mom in the background, but yeah, I'm actually going to Jess's house this weekend, so I was looking forward to talking to her about this.
Yeah, so we're having a meeting with her next week. Maybe we'll invite you to that on kind of strategy on this whole thing. So well, no, that sounds like you're right, yeah, yeah, cool.
Do you think like addressing it more and bringing it back up has the potential to backfire and just like keeping it like other than condemning it, right, which, what else can you do if you're like, oh, if you keep raising it up to the top of the discussion, is that just helping the other side?
It's a good question. I think it depends on how we how we tackle it, what we say, what the results are going to be, and and honestly, if we market it or not. I think it's a good thing. All right. I'll give you example. We we condemned this, We said a lot about it. I made a few videos on it. People reached out to Howl and said, this is the first time I've ever heard hunters talk like this, first time I've heard hunters say this was a action. Yeah, these are anti hunters. I think that's
kind of how she was describing herself. There's a there's a few people she was impressed. She said, I feel like I could sit at the same table as you and at least have a conversation. The more people we reach like that, the better. Certainly, kind of like what Steve was saying earlier, you finally have a lot, You have a lot more in common with people when you actually sit down and have conversations and learn about their life.
And that's it's interesting because like it's like something that's very obviously immoral and egregious, but when someone poaches an elk, you don't get the same you know what I mean.
But it's illegal and they get fined.
It's like we don't get the same credit for condemning that action.
You know what I mean.
It's it's just that's because we're all poachers. You didn't know that, right.
Well, the the reality is like hunters do have a very long legacy of regulating hunters, right, this would be more of the same.
But it's not talked about enough. That's the problem.
And or is it talked about all the time and it's just white noise.
It's talked about all the time between hunters. It's not great.
I mean, we're not going to we are constantly constantly being like, here's somebody who've screwed up. Here's somebody who purposely and intentionally did something very wrong. This is how you got it, you know.
And I think you have a positive effect. Mediator has a positive effect on the non hunting public. Now, if you hadn't said those things over the years, I don't know where we would be. Where would we be.
We'll look at the first, not the first. One of the biggest hunting celebrity influencers was Theodore Roosevelt, who that's it, right, Here's a big hunting celebrity influencer named Theodore Roosevelt who wrote about hunting, wrote whole books about hunting, celebrated hunting, loved hunting, promoted hunting of people interested in hunting. But what did he do? He would say, how is it that it's legal to go and kill thousands of shore birds to the point where you're eliminating them off of
entire nesting grounds? Right? Did people go, you're just playing into the hands of the anti hunters, probably a couple or was he saying, no, you're you're going to drive you know, you're driving these things to extinction. All hunting is not the same. There's a way to go about it. There's like a responsible way to go about it that has sustainability in mind and in respect for the restours. And there's the way to go about it where you're just going to kind of ruin.
The whole thing. Yeah, conservations from eradication, you know, couldn't serve.
Yeah, you know, so it's not I mean. Leopold, another great hunting influencer, right celebrated hunting, wrote about hunting, got people into it. Also had a lot to say about some things we do that aren't that great, including things that some hunters do that aren't that great.
Sure, sure, ye, Well to that whole point, like my whole thing is, or our whole thing is, really is do you want policy to be put in place by the squeaky wheels of anti hunting, or would you rather the decision makers hear from the hunters and have policy be put in place guided by us.
Yeah, that's one of the things that's come out of That's one of the things that over the years has come out of trapping regulation is you've seen a lot of self policing over the years. Well, I shouldn't just point that one out. I will quickly on move on another one. The amount of self policing you've seen from trappers over the years about best best practices to avoid conflict with dogs, Right, you've seen a lot of self pleasing.
Mean they're saying we could wait, not do anything and have a total trap band yep, or we could find a way that like, how do we look at how do we look at potential areas of conflict and write these rules up in the way that lets us continue to do what we do and eliminate conflict because it's
one of the other. We either do things where there's zero regulations, no setbacks, no set restrictions, and then we wait until you can't do anything, or we find a way to ease the tension by taking some small steps that we can articulate from an educated perspective about how we could go about our business and not cause trouble. You see it in the fishing industry right, self plicing in the fishing industry. And a famous case would be,
uh with mountain lions. You talk to anyone involved in the history of mountain lion, it's like the first people to come forward on mountainland regulations or mountainland hunters yep.
And that's how it should be.
I mean they were smart.
Yeah, yeah, because you want to keep something around to continue to do it. Would you rather go hunting once every three.
Years or never again?
You know, so you think about it, like you know, from that perspective, everybody always cares about what's seemingly important to them. Sure, so you know think about it that that's that's the reality of it. If hundreds of anti hunters get what they want, they're going to wave their magic wand and get rid of hunting completely. You know, they're not just going for one thing, They're going for it all.
Eventually.
If you picture the private conversations I have, the private conversations are, uh, we're going.
To do away with it all.
When this happened, I was like, I saw a guy like this.
Yeah, But the funny thing is maybe they just played right into our The funny thing about the anti hunting angle is they're not using this to get rid of wolf hunting in Wyoming because they know that will never happen. They're using it in places like Colorado.
They have no foothold in Wyoming.
Like yeah, and.
That's why, I mean, it's this thing that has happened is probably not.
Going to change how wolves are managed, and.
Not in Wyoming, you know, no, definitely not in Wyoming.
Good effect everywhere else.
And you know, you're talking about the private conversation last year, two years ago, it came back. Now it's a different initiative. It's not really private anymore. So it was IP three I think in three IP three in Oregon or that one. They kind of did away with that. Now it's going to be IP twenty eight. It's a is that the no it's in everything band, it's it's.
Fishing, Yeah, like nails.
Yeah, that's how bad it is.
Well, that's a publicity play though, I mean.
But there's people signing on. Yeah, so there's obviously a group of people that believe that it's.
The pinnacle of what they want. If they could get what they want, that's it.
Oh, they're like, let's just cut to the instead of nitpick and just let's just gump this over with all one of that.
That is a great public service announcement, though, Like you know, we're heading into elections and a legislative session here in Montana, so you're starting to see a lot more people hounding you on the street for signatures. Yeah, and their job is to get the signature. The last lady who stopped me three times, I had to say, can I see the language of the bill? It's this, I'm like, that's how the bill's written. No, And then finally I had to say, I am an informed voter, show me the
language of the bill so I can read it. And she said, oh, okay, most people don't want that.
Yeah, because you're like, because you're like one in a million.
Who right, So, like what they're boiling down?
What was the bill?
It was on abortion rights? Yeah, yeah, right.
So it's pro life.
Okay, what's that?
You know?
It's like okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can imagine how like the petition's going around Colorado or phrased right, oh sure, right.
Well we we don't have to imagine we know exactly. Uh no one eats mountain lion meat. We're going out there for the head mountains are going to go extinct. That's that's the latest one. What else, hunters, you know, we're all we're all the guy from Daniel, Wyoming. That's who we are. That's why we're out there doing it, and so we can take a picture and put it on social media. That's it. The not eating mountain lion
thing has been really eye opening to me. I've never a I live in California, so the whole mountain line thing.
Yeah, you'll never eat one there.
And even.
I can't even bring it back if I go out of state or you know wherever.
But really, yeah, you hide back commissioner.
Yeah, but I didn't know. I thought that was just that they thought it was hypocritical on his part. I didn't know that there was a band on bringing them back.
Yeah. Yeah, you can have a museum. If I started museum, then I can bring whatever I want back. But yeah, I cannot bring a hide back, even a fully taxidermied yea piece you cannot with fully taxidermy from another state that allows it.
You cannot, Oh, crazy.
Ship man, I don't know how. I didn't know that, but I didn't know that.
So I wanted to know because I've heard from so many people and I knew this, but I wanted to know, you know, kind of publicly on social media, Hey, who eats mountainlin Send me your pictures, send me the send me the recipe, send me the cuisine. Whatever. Flooded with pictures, flooded with the best you know, mountain lion, egg roll mount you know, mountain lion whatever. And you know, so
we created a bunch of videos. I think CRWM just put up one, actually we did on the entire video where it's showing food and kind of talking about what's going on in Colorado. And then, by the way, everything you just saw that was all my on line. You know. So so anyway that cats aren't trophies. They are one hundred percent just relying on lies. That's what they're telling people when they're gathering signatures, you know, where they're getting
paid what was it seven to ten bucks a signature? Yeah, crazy, it's it's a the process of ballot box biology. That's really the issue, right, I think it's better understood. Robbie itt Blood or just did a great video on this today. But it's better understood if you take a different industry. Take I don't know, surgeons or whatnot. You know, in the in the medical field, should we go to the public and say this is how doctors should perform surgery.
Should be override that, you know, by public opinion. And and when we're out there getting those signatures, we can say whatever we want. There's no fact checks, doesn't matter. You can when you're you know, collecting signatures, you can, like I said, you can say, you know, mountain lions aren't eaten, they're going to be extinct. Whatever. You can say whatever you want to get the signatures.
All hunters are like this guy and Cody.
Excuse me, this guy Cody, Yeah, yeah, and Daniel and Daniel and and now doctors have to follow these procedures for brain surgery. We have wildlife professionals who go to school, they have their doctors, they have their PhDs, they have you know whatever, who are managing wildlife and that's their job, that's their profession. I don't think people really understand that. So when you supersede that with going to the public, making up lies and changing what they're able to do
or not able to do. That's the real I mean to me, that's the real danger there. Not that biologists are perfect, not that our state agencies make the most perfect decisions, but I think they are the experts that we have to rely on and that we can you know, kind of hold the we can hold them accountable right for the actions that they that they decide on or that they you know, advise to the commissions to make decides, to make decisions on the real problem here is ballot
box biology. That's what That's what we got to inform the public on it. You know, like what danger? What danger you bringing to the table? When? When when these things are allowed to come to a vote?
Right, That's always been the anti hunting establishment's goal is to win in the area of public perception in public arena.
Yeah, they're not getting what they want. They can't don't they don't get what they want from fishing game agencies, they don't get what they want from get commissions, and so they the idea is you take it to the voters and turn something that you know, you'll take a policy issue that isn't going the way you want through establish channels and try to drive it on public opinion, which I mean to be fair, happens in other areas.
It happens in other areas as well. But people have pointed out the chaos that would ensue if every piece of policy was driven by a a metric of public opinion about it in that.
Moment, So, like you know what Charles was saying, we have professionals and they follow science, and they have data that makes informed decisions, where the anti hunters want us to deal with strictly like on emotion, and they deal with social sciences, and it's the only science that they can manipulate. Like when we first got started, we were dealing with a bill in California that was trying to get rid of bear hunting.
They had did a poll.
And it said, oh, you know, I don't remember what the numbers were, arbitrary number like eighty five percent of the public doesn't want us to bear hunt anymore. And the questions they were asking, there's not a single hunter that I know that would not agree with the question that they were asked. They were asking like, are you opposed to lopping off a bear's head?
And leaving it out in the woods.
No, okay, I'm not. I mean, I mean, yes, I am a post to that. No, I would not like to see that. You know, are do you? Are you okay with you know, shooting cubs and shooting sALS with cubs. No, you know, So, like, of course they're going to come up with eighty five percent, because even hunters are going to say agree with you know, or go along with what they just they.
Just paint a picture that just isn't reality.
But we're living in a society and Steve's pointed this out many many times, where the the structure of regulated hunting is a surprise to a huge portion of the voting population. Right, they're like, oh, oh interesting, there's population studies and this is data driven, and then there's a portion of that and then this is account Well what about roadkill? Is that account Oh it is?
Okay? Well yeah, right, it's.
Like like it or not. There's the burden of education is always going to be on us, right, It's like we're I don't mind taking the high road, but we're constantly forced into the high road side of things, and that takes a lot more time per person.
Right, yep, Yeah, Yeah, when we were in Utah, we were This was really evident to us because we were riding in ubers and stuff like to go to dinner or whatever. And every time we were inn uber, we would engage with the driver and everyone that we talked to didn't know that there was seasons, didn't know.
That we had to go buy tags.
Basically, their idea was that you can go to Walmart, buy a gun, got in a field, and shoot whatever the heck you want, and there's no there was no perception of like well or they would perceive a Even the ones that knew about tags, that a tag meant a dead animal, they didn't know it was, you know, a nine percent chance of you actually killing something, you know, with that or harvesting an elkin or with that tag
or whatever. And there was just all these things that we hunters know about and we take for granted seasons, draws and all these other little things that the general public doesn't know. The non public doesn't, you know, non hunting public doesn't know. So if they don't know that, and the only thing that they're being exposed to on a constant basis is what the anti hunters are feeding. Of course, they're gonna have this preconceived notion of who
the hunter is. They're gonna think you're Elmer Fudd. You know, they're gonna think you're a redneck.
You Elmer Fudd never got anything true.
This is true.
I've found often all throughout my life talking to urban people, to have them be pleasantly surprised, to learn about the regulatory structure, pleasantly surprised. And then you want to go like, oh, those cities slicking idiots, But put yourself in their shoes. Let's say you're talking to someone you know. You go, you're someone from where I grew up and you know, rural West Michigan. Meet someone from Manhattan. You must live
in a war zone. I bet you can't even go outside without getting raped and mugged, you.
Know what I mean.
It's like people just aren't aware of other people's worlds. So it's not to go and look at someone who doesn't hunt, doesn't grow up around hunting, isn't exposed to hunting, that they have a totally different idea about it. Well yeah, right, and you know what too, The people I hang out with a lot of times are idiots about urban life. Right, of course, because okay, tell me a thing or two
about the subway system. You just get robbed, Like, dude, there's people have been riding somebodys fifty years and never seen a robbery, you know what I mean. But you don't know, you jump to conclusions and you have wild ideas. It's like a human it's a it's a human problem
rather than anything else. And then there are people that that in the other direction are educated about it and choose to just manipulate reality, right right, And that's like far less excusable than just being ignorant of a world that you don't have any reason to have ever been educated.
On that world, you know, Yeah, it's it always comes out to education. And I think as a group hunters we do a pretty good job of getting on our soapbox and talking to each other m hm, but we don't ever talk to the non hunting public. We're probably not going to change anti hunter's minds. But okay, let's leave that five percent alone. But that the ninety percent in between us, they're they're willing to listen everyone that we talked to, and like, you know, that's not even
last night. We were at a comedy club here and there were we were we got you. They're all gonna watch, They're all gonna listen to mediator. Yeah, we had the whole crag outing, but you know they're willing to listen if you're giving them. Oh you know, I didn't know that about this. So I didn't know that about that.
And and they.
What we're doing by having those conversations is next time some bill comes up or something comes up, now they'll be like, oh, you know, I remember so and so, or I know so and so from work.
And you know, Steve's a good guy. Steve told me this. I'm not I'm I don't.
Necessarily believe I'm gonna look into this a little bit more before I put my name on it, or I'm not going to vote that way because I know this is BS or whatever.
Yeah, So that's always been an objective of mine. And in imagining that you're having conversations like like through a career and talking about hunting and talking about fishing and natural resources issues, I have this picture that I'm that there's two audiences. One audience is people from completely outside
of that world looking in, maybe just voyeuristically. Maybe they're looking in because they're curious, maybe looking in because they're deeply suspicious, but whatever they're looking in on this world. And there's also a conversation that you're always having with people that are from the world. I much prefer the conversations with people that are from the world. Sure, like that's just more engaging to me. But I'm aware of this other conversation with people that are looking in, and
I imagine some of the time that backfires. But I think a majority of the time, in my experience, which is long now, the majority of time it creates a bit of understanding and some sympathy. Meaning if they go to a Whole Foods and they're presented with the thing that would be stop hunting. Yeah, those who spend time looking in are gonna more be like what cal said, Well, let me see, because I like, I hang out with some of those guys. I know some of those guys.
I've eaten your meat over some of those guys houses, the guys I know that are into that world. No a shitload about wildlife and really love wildlife. Let me take a look. Rather than yeah, I'll sign it hunting, screw that, do you know what I mean? I think you generally like a majority of interactions create a sympathy, understanding empathy of course, or a desire to engage.
You know, that's part of what we're working.
So imagine I live in San Francisco. Well now I'm a few miles outside, but I was there for a while. Imagine you go to San Francisco. Imagine go to Portland, Mangico, the Denver, wherever. Here. You drive down the highway and you see billboards that are framed for the general non hunting public about what hunting is, not to become a hunter, but to understand what hunting is right to tackle. I don't know things that they don't know, conservation, ecological, economical,
the the historical, the cultural aspects, whatever it is. Play on their emotions about people who do hunt and their stories. And wow, women hunt, did you know that?
Yeah?
Women hunt? Black people hunt? Did you know that?
You know?
Like, let's change the narrative a little bit. When you turn on the TV, you see the I don't know if it's on anymore, but Sarah mclachy, you know you got the Humane Society commercials right.
Saramhl glaughlan through with those guys. What was her big.
Hit in the arms of an angel.
You know, she had a lot, so she had a big, big.
Hit, probably in the art.
Yeah, I think it was.
I think there's a few. Big dude.
Phil for a minute, pulled his mic up to his lips, thought better of it and moved it away. What was it, Phil, I'm not it's in the arms of it.
That's that's the big one, and that's the one they played on those.
You can say, ca on Phil, Phil, can you aim the camera at me? It's on you?
Okay?
Filled in one of these.
And you read my mind exactly.
Yes. So imagine if you're on the TVC commercials about this messaging that would be framed for the general public to understand it. Why do we not have this? This is a billion dollar industry. We spend a lot of money on habitat, a lot of money on and a lot of things. A lot of money's coming through Pittman Robertson. What is it now, twenty billion?
It's a lot.
It's a lot since it's since nineteen thirty seven, Oh.
Yeah, all through Yeah, close to a billion bucks a couple of years ago.
Bro On, one point three years ago, just in one year, yeah, in twenty twenty.
Well, yeah, I did the COVID personal Firearm Bump.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, people, I would like to point out that it's told it's so fair and so true that you can't talk about Pittman, Roberts and Fun without pointing out this reality that money. I mean, let's be honest, that money's gun owners.
Oh yeah, a lot like like a lot.
You can break those gun owners out, but that money.
Is well gun owners or hunters though, sure, But I'm not consistent.
Yeah, it's just at a time. I think at a time when you did that excise, when you for that excise tax in nineteen thirty seven, it was viewed as like, well, who's gonna be paying this? Yeah, hunters. It has just come to be that as cultural things have changed and time's going on, that was that was had they at
the time. Let me put it this way, if at the time of the enactment of that act, if they had said you need to check a box about what you're gonna do with that firearm and if if you put down hunting, then it goes to the Pittman robertson fun. If they had done that, that fund would be a would be much much, much much smaller today than it is, just out of fairness, way different.
Yeah. So when you're talking about like promoting, what I'm saying, Yeah, this arbitrary numbers to say seventy million dollars a year that we as an industry spend on a media campaign throughout the United States a Super Bowl commercial, and I'm just saying seventy million. Yeah, but we changed three percent, five percent, six percent. This is a generation. We're basically doing what the anti hunters have done over decades. They have slowly changed the mind. They've they've a sea change
rather and I grew up in Michigan too. There was a time in my life where I thought I didn't know people didn't hunt right. Times have changed.
Yeah. Pat Durkin, speaking of Wisconsin, once said, if you're not a deer hunter, you share bed with one, right, right, or maybe a house with one. But you get talk like that. Yeah, so that's what it's fun Yeah, it's funny to bring up the billboard thing, because anti hunters use the bill board campaigns all the time, very effectively and very in a very manipulative, manipulative way. And caw was pointing out one around here where there's a they're
they're equating that dlisting of grizzlies would mean hunting. And so there's a picture of a saw with cubs and there's a crosshair on the sows on the sow, he'd be like, I can assure you a couple one thing. The last time they moved to d list Montana wasn't
issuing any grizzy tags. Right, I can damn sure tell you that since you can't shoot a sow black bear with cubs, there is no way in the world that they're going to open up and extend any harvest that would happen in the future to sows accompanied by cubs.
Sure, well, those are the lies.
There's there's one right now. There's an organization that has always put pushed for a public land trapping band. The wolverines were recently listed. And this is a whole deep conversation, but wolverine's were recently listed as threatened under the ESA. There's now a billboard in town from Gallaton Valley Wildlife Association. I think it's like a mostly anti hunting group. They have a billboard that says, and these are people that
always wanted to see a trapping band. It now says stop trapping on public land save the endangered wolverine.
Well, that's part of the problems.
It is threatened. You can't trap them anyway.
That's part of the problem with like promoting the positives when you're always forced to be in a reactionary position, and like fighting these kind of things, like the dude in Wyoming is screwed up, Like you're constantly in a position of defending yourself rather than promoting yourself.
And if you do promote it, do you do their playbook and just put up totally outrageous lies.
I don't think we need to be.
Like hunters are one hundred times more likely than anyone else to be great people.
Have you ever been in an accident hitting a deer, Well shoot them all before they kill you.
No.
But the biggest problem is that we live in a world right now that we are dealing with these just memes and little quick right hits, and and the anti hunters have such a easy job of swaying public perception, like it's very easy to post a picture of a guy with a holding a deer with a bloody background and whatever, and very negative thoughts are going to come to your head, Like you know, if yours don't know
what hunting is if you're not exposed to hunting. So we have this like super hard job of like how do we tell people about conservation, about the money, about the caring of the wildlife, about the human intrinsic values and the things that the meals and all, like all these good things that come about with hunting. You know, it's probably it's changed, I know, probably everybody's life in this room, right. How do we have those conversations when
you only have three seconds to do it? You know, if we had the chance to have like a podcast or three hour discussion and nuanced discussion with everybody that you encounter, it'd be a lot easier job.
But we don't. So we have to start coming up with ways.
And I think it's on us to have to start talking to we all, you know, we all know people that don't hunt.
We all interact with people.
At work and you know, at the store or whatever that don't hunt. So let's start giving them positive interactions with us. Let's start communicating these things with us. Because
there's what I don't know. The numbers keep changing. Somewhere between fourteen to sixteen million people that hunt in the United States if one of if we change the mind of one or talk to one person every year, you know, in ten years we might be a lot closer to, you know, having a better understanding with the general public or the non hunting public. I should say, of what hunting is.
I don't personally want to see more hunters. I want that I'd like to see less hunters. I want to see more people accept what hunting is, and not just that, but also understand that hunting is an effective management tool that is used by these agencies that people don't even know exists in the first place. They don't even know these agencies exist. So there's a lot of education that happen there. But what John was saying, you know, we all talked to one person, and we all talked to
two people or whatever. How do you use I mean, I see that as having a positive effect on the perception of what hunting is to the general not ending public. Do you do you feel the same way? I mean, your show's on Netflix. That has to You're not just it's not just hunters watching your show.
Right, Yeah. I find it interesting that the oldest representational art on Earth is people cataloging.
Yeah, the hunts first ever, Yeah.
Yeah, you don't know what's in their mind. I've always written about what I'm interested in and written about my world, and as a writer or a creator of some sort, I'm going to talk about a certain set of ideas, and as time changes and technology changes, I'm going to continue to talk about a set of ideas that I'm interested in and I feel compelled to discuss in whatever way is available for me to talk about them. I think that had Uh to go back to and in
no way would ever equate myself to him. But if you go back to someone like Roosevelt or you know, I mentioned Leopold earlier, I think that they would have taken the ideas that they dealt in and they would have talked about them on podcasts. I think they would have talked about them on social media. They would have not have limited it to books, they would have not
limited it to articles. They were vocal about their enthusiasms and vocal about their love, and they had a big impact, and they would have talked about in any way possible the argument about there's this kind of pervasive argument about I had someone to actually frame it to me one day about like somehow conservation that get you know, introducing people to the idea of hunting, getting people interested in hunting was bad for conservation. Let's take a look at
that for a second. New Mexico is going to issue a certain amount of elk tags. It's capped. Okay, if you're talking about conservation, a bunch of people wanting to apply for elk tags and wanting to go hunting doesn't change the number of people that are out hunting. Right They're confusing, oftentimes conservation with convenience, meaning they're mad that it's not as convenient to get a tag. Don't tangle this up with conservation. The elk carvest is fixed. Let's
talk about conservation for a minute as well. You go to Wisconsin, you go to Michigan, wildlife managers are writing public letters because they cannot get people to harvest enough deer. They're seeing habitat degradation, an unprecedented disease transmission in certain areas because they cannot get the dough harvest up. The people that are hunting now aren't killing. Does not enough
conservation in that area. If you want to talk about conservation, conservation in that area would be encouraging a type of hunter motivated by venison to go out and get does that's conservation. Conservation in that case is not saying sh don't tell anybody about hunting. Another thing is I find it's like, here's something that's incredibly common. You'll have people like me that come from a place like I come from Michigan. I moved out to Montana out of an
interest in hunting and fishing. When I came to Montana, I moved in on other people's hunting spots. You just did. The only person that has any justification to start bitching about losing their spot to incoming people would be Native Americans. And if you're really, really, really deeply concerned about people that had their hunting spots overrun, you should be involved in the land back movement in helping Native Americans. If not, Buddy, you took someone's spot right when you moved out west.
You took someone's spot when you started applying for sheep tags and goat tags and moose tags and drawing those tags. You cut in line from someone that was applying before you were applying. You just did. But people's memories are so short. Whatever they were motivated by to move out west and start hunting. They think that that because it was them that was so pure, everybody else since them is just an asshole. It's like, come on, man, right,
you know what I mean. It's like, come on, and there's this other there's this other funny thing too about this like industry thing. Like let's say you work. Let's say you work in an I was pulling it out of thin air. Let's say you worked at the ars where you draw your money from federal taxpayer dollars that are part of agricultural subsidies. Okay, you know that money's coming because it's pork barrel protected. You know that money's coming. You never have to market anything, and it why is
it being that? It's like so weird to see an industry where people have to are in the are in the open market economy, creating jobs, generating tax revenue. Right, It's just it's like upsetting because you live outside of a world where there's any accountability. You know, what butters your bread? Right, and if it went to a public vote, that bread wouldn't get buttered. It just wouldn't. So this whole conversation, I would read it. Cal was born in Montana.
I'm opening to hear col bitch about stuff from Montana. I'll indulge it all day long. But this whole like, this whole thing is like a ton of guys like me. They moved out here and started finding hunting spots. And let me tell you, man, there was people hunting those spots. Dude, they were you and now you're in that spot. So like this conservation question, give me a break, dude. It's convenience. It's convenience. It's like you took someone's spot. Someone's in
your spot now. And you know, what's a couple of things. If the person in your spot is a veteran, screw you. If the person in your spot's a person with their kids, screw you.
What what? What?
What makes it your spott?
Yeah? Like go ask the Blackfeet about it and see what they think about who's in their spot. Give me a break, man. It's just it's just goes on and on and it's like just.
Sh I think it's I think it's a jealousy thing really, because you you see somebody having success, or you see somebody doing something that you want to do, so automatically somehow they're they're cheating to get that, or they're doing something wrong to get that. So if that's oh, you know, stealing spots or poaching or getting whatever whatever.
I mean, having different factions fighting with each other is never going to help hunting man. It's never.
Never.
I'm sure there's still like getting back to the wolf thing or the bear thing, like.
There's hunters out there that tons don't like that ship.
Yep, you know, there's a really.
There's a really interesting statistic that goes along with that. Every time there is an argument where hunters are on both sides of the fence of an issue, whatever that is, it almost always it's like in the ninety percentile aligns what it what it. When the smoke clears, it ends up aligning with anti hunting movement. So think about that if you're fighting your fellow hunter about something like Okay, this is a simple one trail camban in Arizona.
Okay, I don't think you can say that that's anti hunting thing.
But there was ani hunters on the side of that, So that's what helped tip the scales.
I don't I don't think that's what.
I'm not saying that anti hunters are driving that. I'm saying that if you're this way and this guy's this way.
They're going to be on a side.
They're going to go with the side that goes against that is true, and it's almost always it never works out for hunting. Now, could there can there you know, could we have found a better solution than just hey, let's get rid of I mean, this is just an arbitrary example. But could we have found a better solution.
Could hunters have gotten together and said, Okay, well I agree with you, I don't you know, I don't like this happening, or I don't want guys coming in and checking their trail cameras while I'm sitting on a water hole.
Because that's what started it.
Diverse coalition, right or what wind fights?
Right?
So like when you're like, well the anti hunters jumped in on this, they're able to skew things at the end because they're like, okay, we've heard from this group, oh and then here's this other group, and so yeah, I can see how that would push a thing. But that comes down to why everybody who does anything that you like to do, you need to figure out educate yourself on how to be a better advocate for those
things and be willing to be involved, right. I mean, we're just at a point in time where if you're not going to weigh in on the decision making processes, these burdens some regulatory processes where thank god we live in a place where public comment periods are built into the process, somebody else is going to go in there and do it for you, right. And you know, we really do have a broad, diverse coalition amongst hunters. But you have to say, hey, you know I'm in the
you know, Plumber's Labor Union. This is where I live, this is my family, this is how much money I spend, and we do it hunting right, And people need to go through and we need to make sure that we're checking all those boxes when we're saying, hey, this access issue. And I think access to wildlife is a very smart way of framing this Colorado issue.
Right.
It's like, there is no reasonable science that says we shouldn't be allowed to take advantage of this opportunity. Should you want to take advantage of the opportunity to just
pursue lions. But somebody's like, oh, well, there's not a lot of them, not a lot of hunters doing that, So let's just shut off that little bit of access to that opportunity, right, and so well you need Unfortunately, like the way a lot of politicians work is like, well we've already heard from the hunters, right, but if you can go in and say listen, yeah, I do some hunting, but really I'm a fly fisherman. This is why this issue that doesn't seem to be connected matters
to me. Or you know, dirt bikes ATVs. All the outdoor pursuits. Right, It's like, well, you know, the cat hunting thing matters to me because there's no reason to stop this group of people from doing what they're doing. You're just listening to some other group that says it shouldn't.
Exist and it doesn't stop there.
Yeah, people cycles, I'll getting rid of that too.
Yeah.
Are we just looking at the issue for the issue and not looking at the.
You know, the side effects that happened to it.
Right, And like Steve says, people's memories are very short, right, it's.
Like, oh, yeah, you know there's the thing I want to push back on a little bit. And we discussed this in the past, is uh, there are gonna become times on regulatory issues where the general will of hunters is going to align with anti hunters? Oh sure, I mean you take a look at this. This is the thing I always like to bring up because it was so clean, and it was so clean. An instant was
when the idea of using drones for hunting came in. Okay, right, when drones were hitting and becoming this thing just widely available, inexpensive. I think one year you had thirteen states come out, thirteen Western states come out with drone bands, including Alaska. Right, had you gone to the anti hunting world and said, should you be able to use a drone for hunting? What do you think they're gonna say no? Okay, well
sort of, they'll you know, Alaska's Game commission. Sure, So I don't think like in some of these cases a little more complicated than to say like and then they side with the ani hunters because it's just right. It's it's like you're gonna wind up. I don't even want to use the term strange bedfellows, but you're coming out of question from opposite directions, but you're landing on that question the exact same way. You know, like you can't Yeah,
it's it's it's impossible. I don't want to call it an unfortunate accident, but just sometimes they're your sentiment, A hunter's sentiment is going to align that way.
Well, it's the same saying goes with the you know, the wyoming wolf thing, but it's do you want them driving the policy or do you want the policy to come from us?
Well, in this case, in the drone case, the policy very much came from hunters, right. You know, as we just heard from some people involved in the commission in Arizona on the governor tag issue, like that policy change is coming from people who have untarnished reputations as pro hunters. Right. It's just some things would be that if your knee jerk anti anything having to do with hunting, you're going
to align oftentimes with hunting restrictions. If a state game agency says, do we want to allow nighttime hunting of elk with thermals? Right, hunters are going to say what, no?
No?
And what are anti hunters is going to say? No?
Of course not?
So yeah, we we just what something was it last year with the horses? We actually so.
I was gonna say, yeah, so we have aligned, you know, and I with the Center for Biological Diversity, a couple of times, and it's on it's on wild horses.
I mean, this is not uncommon, right, I mean, yeah, go ahead, well, yeah.
It's it's uncommon in our space. But we basically got pictures and documentation from Robin Silver, who I think is the co founder of CBD. I believe Apache Sickreise National Forest, I think is what it was. They're calling them faral horses because yeah, the evidence points to there was a wildfire, it burnt down fences of native tribes, their horses got out. Now they're living here, so they're not wild horses.
I agree with that. Yeah, dude, I feel like we need you got to provide a little background for people.
Well, there was a wild horse untarnished by the hands of man and manipulation.
You're doing the background right now?
Yeah?
Oh thank you? Yeah?
How far back you going place to see you? Okay?
Yeah, walk us through a quick chronology because these are confusing.
So that horse died off several theories as to how, but they very well could have been hunted and killed by early humans on this continent. By leap forward in time, the Spanish arrive with horses at a couple of different geographic locations.
But those.
Indigenous people to North America, southern North America start stealing those mainly for food, and uh, you know, the horses run away. Even in modern times, horses run away. So this allowed for like another food option out there on the on the prairie because they're out there making more horses. But I mean that's that's where like, that's how a feral population begins. Now we're just like a long road down the way.
So I think what you're getting at is, at this point, all wild horses are faral horses.
There's but there's actually if you went to but there was a bifurcation at a point where they looked at these sort of ancestral Spanish horses they dubbed we Americans whatever, dubbed those wild horses. But if cow's horse ran away, that's a feral horse. Those have different governing rules. But the world has gotten murky in that among those ancestral wild horses. You gotta all kind of runaway feral horses, right, And so they do it by not what is the
animal's history? Where is the animal standing?
Yeah, geography was that nineteen seventy something, they like made boundaries and any horses that were in this I think it's in the seventies something like that. Any horses in this area is a wild horse. Anything outside of that is a federal federal horse.
Where's a wild horse island here in Montana where they're.
Crazy.
But yeah, if you could take you could take your You could take a horse you've owned for twenty years, put it on the right patch of ground, and that horse becomes a wild horse.
Sure they go farrow very quickly, or they go wild.
No, I mean, I'm sorry.
Legally, yes, you're right.
You just got to get rid of any any markings. Make sure the brand inspector isn't isn't around you.
I'm taking something. That's why we need to have the right guest. I'm taking something that's so complicated and trying to compress it. And I'm not a subject matter expert. But anyhow, go ahead. You found yourself on the same side.
Well, they were, Yeah, they were legally classified as as as a feral horses, not not wild. Otherwise I don't think anything could have been done. But uh, for that issue, we were the squeakiest wheel. Which whenever this had come up before.
The what was the issue, like get rid of them.
To remove them from. Yeah, like the landscape there was just getting decimated. It was just dirt left, no no water.
With the water situation was the worst thing. They would like physically see tanks that elk would normally drink at horse, you know, whole brute horses come in.
And and there was endanger.
She's oh, yeah, there was an dangerous feture. That's what.
Else Where the CBD comes in a lot, they're all about habitat or something.
I believe my girlfriends a horse, grew up as a horse person. She gets really annoyed with me when we're driving through parts of Montana and I point to shitty pastures and I'm like, oh, that's a horse property, right.
It's the truth.
So in this case, in the desert southwest areas of Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, you have a impost wild animal out competing true native wildlife for grass and water. And that's the that's the that's the like.
The crux of the issue. And I talked to him two days ago, and this might be the guy I refer to you if you want to talk to him, but he said they've removed five hundred horses now and they are going to there's farms, there's I don't know what they're called.
Some of them.
Yeah, some of them are get relocated. But I think some of them are getting.
People buy them people.
No, they can't.
I thought there were some that they had they were they approved the lethal takes.
Oh maybe they were not true wild horses.
Then they were diseased or cripp the.
Feral because of the whenever that wildfire happened. They were classified as these are feral. These escaped out of the out of the indigenous, you know, out of the reservation.
So they were.
That's what it was. Yeah, So there's an example of alignment.
Like the Center for Biological Diversity wanted them removed wildlife like more hook and Bullet wildlife activists wanted them removed.
Back to the CBD. We are fighting them now on this uh Catalina Island. And you know about the mule deer extermination.
Yeah, we've covered that exhaustively man.
So uh but they backed up on it. No, No, no aerial gunning. That's not going to happen, at least not this year. Two days ago, three days ago, the Commission approved p l M tags on Catalin Island to increase hunting opportunity on the island. That's what we asked for. There's but the Humane Society is on our side. There's others. It's funny. So yeah, so I was just on Catialen Island and.
You guys been on the phone together.
Yeah, no, it's funny.
We did.
We did some podcasts together. I'm like, well, this is this is interesting. I'm here with the Humane Society and and this lady said, hey, I'm all for hunting, I'm all for management.
We were very surprised about that.
Yeah, just not eradication. I'm like, I'm right there with you.
So that's a not US standpoint.
No.
Never, she still worked for them right.
To get you know, on the billboard.
So there is a difference. So hs US is is kind of like the the national brand, right.
And that's the animal rights Oh yeah that this causes huge confusion.
Yeah.
So hs US and your local Humane Society are not the same thing.
Very different, very different.
So this was a local maybe a low this is this is local.
However, the the Humane I believe hs US has come out in opposition of this because they're just against yeah anything.
Right, they don't Yeah, they don't entangle themselves into things from a habitat perspective. They and they are focused on like individual they're focused on welfare of individual animals.
You know.
I've recently looked at some interesting documentation out of California with hs US where hs US had petitioned the state to end California's bear harvest or sorry to to petition the state to end California's bear hunt over concerns that that populations were plummeting, Which were which was the opposite of truth? And then later one of them clarified someone I think it was on a podcast. Someone sent me
a transcript. Someone pressed them, if you're arguing to close the bar season based on a population number that you understand to be true, what is the population number where you would not oppose the bear harvest? And she acknowledged there is no number.
So that was that was actually we actually have our video that was actually in a commission meeting. That was Commissioner Murray pressed Wendy keif Over, she's the Humane Society HSUS representative. She asked her that in a commission meeting, what's the number you're happy with? You know, because they they didn't know at the time when they when they had this petition and we had we had this big meeting. We had one hundred and thirty hunters there. I believe
the Commission was incredible. Gave us the opportunity to talk about, you know, what we do with with bear fat, with bear meat, like like, really, the California Commissions is giving us this incredible opportunity to share our stories, and Humane Society was just going nuts like disrupting the meetings. You guys can't do this, don't let them talk about that. And they're like, wait, it's your petition. You made these claims.
You made these claims that people don't eat bear, that you know they do this and that, and there's only thirteen thousand bear in California. Well, we just proved you wrong. And one of our scientists at that time nobody knew this was coming, stood up, gave a presentation and said, hey, we're working on a bear management plan, which is now
to present they have one. Yeah, the comment period justid he goes, I think we're looking at sixty seventy thousand bear and it just made was like, what you know, did anybody know about this? Because we look like.
They were pushing twelve five. Yeah, and then the new thing is like the most, like the sort of best. It's a range of fifty something to eighty something. So people are probably the probably sixty five thousand bears.
But no hunter stood up and said, now you imagine sixty seventy thousand hungry bears on the edge of your child's playground, right, Okay.
Yeah, that's the other thing you got to resist they made.
Yeah, they find a lot of hunters tiptoeing into this dangerous territory of telling everybody how dangerous wildlife, right, and that they're doing you a great service because wildlife is so dangerous. And that's another real that's a yeah, that's that is a dangerous place to get.
We never want to vilify the lion or the bear whatever. They're just going to do what they do the wolf.
But it's no, we're full support.
We love wolves on the landscape, grizzly bear. They deserve to be there, but they do need to be managed, and I don't know, don't we don't really believe in reintroduction or introduction, so sticky, it's.
Well, cats out of the bag. Yeah, sorry, you're not going to put it back, I should have no. No, I'm just saying this, like we had a conversation a long time ago about with the We had a conversation on the show with the woman that ran the that that ran the wolf program during the wolf reintroduction in the mid nineties in Yellowstone. She looking back, looking back, felt that it was unnecessary even now says it was unnecessary at the time because we would have landed in
the same place coming down. We would have landed in the same position with natural movement of animals coming in, and they were seeing it coming in. While the Colorado reintroduction bill was progressing, wolves were showing up from Wyoming.
Right.
So, whether or not in twenty years, thirty years, however the hell it is, I think you're gonna be stuck with the same set of converce You're gonna be stuck whether or not those things that happened, you probably stuck around the same set of conversations around you are gonna I think this is the reality. You are gonna have
large predators on the landscape. You're gonna have large predators on more of the landscape, and there's gonna become a question of do we do management practices to uh do we tape steps for management practices to reduce conflict and to stay with deer and elk herds that we want to see, that we hunters want to see, and that's gonna be Like it's gonna be somewhere between those two things. They're not gonna be gone, right, They're not gonna be gone. We're not gonna go back.
In time and not re eradicate them or whatever.
It's not gonna happen. It can't happen. There's all kinds of I mean, we have this whole legal framework that they can't allow that to happen.
But this big pop you know what the prey population objectives are going to be. I think you're correct, is like going to be a big conversation because like here in the state of Montana, right we're like, we love elk, we want more elk. A lot of folks in Montana are like, we don't want more elk.
Well, in Colorado, where there there's a new.
Wolf population getting itself established, at some point they're going to have to decide how many will elk are we willing to like give to and how many elk are we saving for hunters?
I think it's the only practical conversation and the same way we debate between different stakeholders, you know, the same way agricultural interests might argue with hunter interests about how many elk is the right number elk? How many deer
is the right number a deer we're gonna have. We're gonna have conversations about how many line is the right number of lions, how many wolves is the right number of wolves, how many grizzly bears is the right number of grizzly bears, how many black bears is the right number of black bears. I don't think that the conversation is never going to return to should we poison them all? Its just right, I mean, be realistic.
But the problem is, like these guys are saying there is no number that's big enough for some people.
Yes, you know, and there's no number of elk it's big enough for some people. Right, I don't know many guys. I don't know many elk hunors the convenience about having I don't know those guys.
There's a big difference between reintroducing and them coming in their own you know, natural attrition.
Yeah, social friction is a big issue, and I think that's part of the To be fair to the woman that said we that she sort of questions the move, she said, the social conversation that we would have eventually got there, the social conversation would have been so different.
Yeah, but even ecologically it's a big difference.
It's been huge different psychologically.
So like you drop one hundred wolves into an area and all the prey they've never seen a wolf before in their life. They don't know how to react towards the wolf. It's just like when you go out in the woods, deep deep bak back and you run into an elkan that's staring at you because he's never seen a human before.
In your backyard. Or on the other he's never seen them or they've never heard them. Right, And they.
Picked the problem wolves. Yeah that's in this case out of Oregon. Yeah, like they picked the wolves they wanted to get rid of.
And from what I'm on them, that's like generally what happens. Okay, Like a state's like, okay, well we need we need to get rid of these problem.
Childs, and yeah, let's ship them off to this state.
So you know, you introduce a wolf that's never been on a landscape or hasn't been on the landscape for one hundred years or whatever. Those animals know how to how to deal with it. Also, those wolves don't know, Hey, where are my boundaries?
What do I need to stay in?
Like they're just going to keep going wherever they want to go, and like it just causes more.
Dan Gates and I were just talking last week about Colorado, specifically on the on the wolves. We changed topics for a minute, and uh, we're just talking about how it is kind of funny where like that celebratory zeal of reintroduction has gone away. Yah, don't hear much of that anymore, but you are hearing from some of those same sources that were so happy about wolves being reintroduced to the state of like, oh boy, you know, this is kind
of hard. This is kind of just because now there's as these wolves are getting into the predicted types of friction.
There's a lot of buyer's remorse.
There's a yeah, there's like, well, I didn't know it would be that, or I didn't know those wolves would be here. I thought, you know, So it's not like this one hundred percent dedication.
It's not.
Yeah, not so much, and It is just interesting because third time, now, like our memories.
Are short, it just proved lethal management for him.
Yeah, oh they did.
Yeah, and there's an official pack now because some of them had a couple.
Oh yeah, I just saw an article came out. Yeah.
That goes back to I think if the vote what was that Prop one one for in Colorado? If the vote was held today, I don't think it would pass. Nope, I really don't. Uh, but it goes back to what you were saying, people didn't know what they were voting for. Oh, I didn't know. It meant that. I didn't know it meant this.
It was worded very weird.
Yeah it was.
It was worded in a way that it was sort of like a mandate that they, I don't know, set into motion a recovery plan or yeah, you know, it was under It was understood, but the wording could have been confusing.
I think the wording is always confusing.
I mean, even people who are trained to be able to read through these things and you readthrow a crapdown of them. I feel like it's always it's always like a word play. There's always like it. So people don't like for the lion thing, who's going to go read through this thing and see that there's you know, this trophy language put in there that could be transposed onto elk and deer and stuff in the future, didn't.
I just see a clip of Cam Haynes. He said, I read it and I didn't know how to vote, like if it was if it was me voting, because I don't know what I was supposed to do.
Yeah, just because the way the whole thing.
Was a word.
On the issues, the broader wolf issue. I'm of the opinion and I think you could you could arrive at this from a religious perspective, You could arrive at this from a secular historical view would be that there are animals, there are wild animals that live on our landscape, okay, that have just been there. They're there because God place them there. They're there because these billions of years of Earth history and all all these evolutions and ecological upheavals
and things a place in there. But there's a there's a static nature to wildlife. And you got and you go look and you go like, Okay, at what point in history do I go and declare it being normal? Okay? Meaning some people would argue, well, the place ischine. That should be normal, and we should bring back mammos and bring back short face bears and turn them all loose, because that's when humans showed up in the New World,
and so normal should be that day. I tend to view normal normal in my mind, just because you have to pick an arbitrary point. Normal in my mind is the distribution of wildlife at the time of European contact. And I don't I don't believe in removing certain turtles from the landscape. I don't believe in removing certain birds from the landscape. I don't believe in removing certain invertebrates from the landscape. I don't like extinction. I don't like
extra patient. I just don't. I don't care what it is. I don't like extinction and extirpation. And here's where it gets like a little bit complicated, because I do think that a right like like animals have a right to be on the landscape. There's a reality that we live in and all of those spieceis are going to be need to be managed from a very human perspective of what are our needs and what are the balancing thing because we're here.
And we're the biggest consumers of everything, and we affect more change. We never even have to leave your living room to affect what happens out.
In the woods.
Yeah, and as we as we discovered, like in certain areas, like with forest management, not doing anything is not the answer in a lot of in a lot of areas, not doing anything, letting it do its own natural thing isn't the answer, right, because we've we're here, Yeah.
We're here.
We've stirred things up so much.
We got LODs everywhere.
We consume all these different you know, things that we take out of wood or fuel and rocks and sand, and sure everything's disrupted by by man. And there's what eight billion of us on the on the planet.
Now.
Yeah, I like grizzly bears. Yeah, I like seeing them. I've never been sad to see a grizzly bear. I love grizzly bears. I don't think grizzly bears should be listed under the.
Es A right, agreed.
It's like both of those things are simultaneously true for me. I love them. It's time to come off the list.
You said a lot right there, So you went, you went back thousands of years for animals and you brought up God or you brought up evolution, whatever it is that that people believe. I think the same idea exists for humans because people say, oh, they were here first or it's their home. Well, where are we from? You know, where exactly are we from? If you believe in the evolutionary process or the creation process, what we still land here on earth?
Like imagine someone in Africa saying, well, they were here first? Yeah, define who's there right right?
And it's always just an interesting It really throws me off when I when I hear that a lot, the whole they were here first thing and you know, basically, but the other thing that you brought up about grizzlies and ESA and you brought it up earlier with some billboards. It wasn't a holl sponsored billboard, but I designed maybe you've seen it. I think it's at the north end of Yellowstone in the South in Wyoming, there's a billboard that says, I think it's like grizzly bear recovery is
a conservation success story. So I designed that or whoever put it up, and that inspired apparently all these other billboards that I think some of the trapping organizations or whoever the ones that you mentioned earlier that they've been putting up, because it wasn't the typical billboard that would come from hunters. Because what I was presented with was, hey, do you have any ideas on this on billboards? I said, well,
what do you got this? And it was like a bunch of furs hanging and something like smoke a pack of day I don't know, something like that.
And I'm like, Okay, where are you putting popular bumper?
Right?
Yes? Where where exactly are you putting this? Well, you know, the entrance to Yellowstone, Like, Okay, who's coming in and out? Tourists? Probably people who don't hunt. I can't believe you're thinking this way, So let me work on it. Let's let's let's take the grizzly bear situation. Let's look at the success story. It is a success story. Let's make it that. Let's challenge the public who's coming in. Let's challenge the the the anna hunters with kind of their own rhetoric
and give the actual success story here. We have so many things and positive things that we can talk about that we've done in the last one hundred years. That's the kind of stuff we need the market. That's the kind of stuff, you know, that that we need to get out there. And apparently apparently that billboard really struck a nerve with with the Anna hunting orgs because they're not they're shoot. We need to we need to combat that a little bit because that's not their usual strategy.
Usually it's easy. Usually it's you know, some organizations got a you know, trailer going down the highway representing the organization. They got a picture of a wolf and a and a scope ratical over the over the wolf. I'm like, is that so that's your one chance to talk to the general public and that's what they see is just kill them all to minds with that, that's what we're putting out. Yeah, you're not winning anything, but it just it made me think of that when you brought that up.
You know, back to the optics thing and back to to to messaging and you know where I think we should be as an as an industry what we should be doing the.
Question with with grizzlies too. That's interesting in how people position it to say that it's hunters that want them off. People lose sight of the fact that you know, who keeps trying to get them off. Is the federal agency that has managed them since the seventies, Yeah, the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Yeah, are the ones moving to
remove them from the list? Ye, they're getting like the management agent, the federal management agency is getting blocked from doing what they think their job is to do, which is removing from the list. You leave you can leave the states out of that for a minute, because it's it's them saying.
It's imagine that job. You know, you got to do this, but I'm not going to give you any tools to do that with.
You know.
It's like, yeah, it's it. That's the thing to get lost here. And it was the same thing with wolves. The US Fish and Wildlife Service moved to remove wolves from the list. They initiate the conversation.
Yeah, I would love to get somebody on that we can talk about like accurate numbers of lethal removal, because like when I went back and did the Idaho bear capture with Idaho Fishing Game, it was I think it was just prior to July fourth weekend and at that point, Montana had killed twenty six grizzly bears that that year. For you know, conflict mitigation basically yeah, and you know, and typically Wyoming's twice what Montana is and you know,
Idaho is a handful. So and that's what I see all the time, is like, well, if you d list hunters are going to kill the it's like, well, somebody's killing him right now.
Yeah.
Right.
California is a great example of that with with the Mountalliance.
And it doesn't it doesn't mean yeah to your point, I asked that question to uh, all right, if grizzly bears are delisted, what's that mean? Maybe twenty hunting tags in Montana.
Well, the first year it was zero. Okay, the first year it was twenty four and Wyoming okay one, and it which was like I love it exauist the classic wholming. Yeah, it's twenty four in Wyoming. Idaho was doing a symbolic one just to exercise the right.
Shirt, which was only open to residents, and I got to apply for that tag.
In Montana on the fish drop, the Fishing Game Agency, Montana's Fishing Game Agency under Martha Williams at the time, decided to sit it out.
Didn't want to deal with the bs.
Probably that just they wanted to see I mean, while they want to and the smart thing, I don't want to put it that way, not smart thing, but I mean, these other states are conducting tag draws.
They went through, you know, they spent some money on that.
They're like they were, they were rolling, and so I I don't I don't want to, you know, I'm not. I was involved in all the conversations, but I could picture. I could picture both ways. I could picture an eagerness to exercise the right. I could also picture saying I'm gonna I have a feeling about where this might go in the courts, and I'm not gonna go start printing tags and whatnot because I don't have.
The whole system to return people's money.
I don't know that this is going through, right.
Yeah, but that brings up a good Wyoming point too, right, because you know, Wyoming's like, yep, we're gonna hunt grizzly bears the twenty tags. And again, I in Idaho at the time, and I was our aready working with Idaho Fishing Game to a degree to figure out how to change the requirements for bear harvest in Idaho because grizzly is such a political football and we're staring at Wyoming, where it's like, you don't legally have to take anything
other than the trophy parts. We're like, well, if this isn't going to blow up in our face, then nothing will right.
And it's like that.
It's another example of hunters probably following in line with some anti hunters. It's like, oh, I bet if you made them take the meat, they wouldn't want to do it, right.
That's one of the Maggie's still there. That's one of the things Maggie that I know American Bear Foundation and Wyoming Wildlife Federation is wanting to get pushed through in Wyoming is it's one of the few states that doesn't have wanton waste laws.
Iaho.
It's you don't have to take it in Idaho.
Now still not on black bear on bear, which was according when I was digging in the weedze on that it was burdensome to the state to uh have to you can just dispose of the carcass and the landfill for problem bears or the state would also have to adhere to the same regulations, was the way it was explained to me. Yeah, as as a hunter, harvest can.
Be true.
If you had if the state has wanton waste laws on ducks, and they got wanton waste laws on elk, and they got wanton waste laws on deer and doves. It would just by a matter of logic extended, they would have wanton waste laws on black bears. Right, I'm gonna share. Let me share you with you. I want
to share with you. Quick quote, uh John Mack the historian John mac farrager who John mac ferriger, a historian who is raised and partly educated in California, and describing the frontier of colonial America, you want to already said? He said, European settlers and Native Americans alike considered bear meat the prime game meat. Venison was inferior eating. So I I don't know why if a state is going to go through the trouble spelling out wanton waste laws,
they wouldn't extend it to Yeah. Why is that the exception? Yea uns because some squeamish people think it's icky.
Maybe the trick and osis thing.
Well, then they should have it. They eat then that they.
Then I'm not you must cook it, Yeah, like.
Your chicken and like your pork, and like your bacon.
You gotta cook it exactly and bear is delicious. How's he going to say? I think that's my favorite game to eat is black bear. I absolutely love it. And I don't know if it's because if it's a it could be a combination.
Are you coming from A I'm coming from definitely.
You don't got to convince us. But like, I went on a bear hunt in Idaho where.
There was a group.
Of hunters and it was hound hunting, and I was the only one it took that bear meat home.
So it's like, yeah, but buck Bowden just told you it's an exception for one of his clients to take.
His moose meat. It's like a convenience thing. It's like I don't want to be bothered with it, which is.
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.
I had a friend that went on a bear hunt in Canada and they were so flabbergas that he wanted to bring his bear home from the bear hunt. They tried to convince him that he couldn't.
He did that to me in Quebec.
Yeah, he had to be like, what do you mean, I can't? He just can't because of this that and their thing. So he started making some calls around and he's like, listen, I can, and I'm gonna.
Yeah.
I had to fight with him about it.
I left two bears in Quebec and this is like twenty years ago now, and the guy's like, no, you can't take them here.
They're riddled with worms.
Oh no, they were giving them like a like a regulation thing the border. Well, he did all of his own homework.
I was going to fly it back because I flew there. I mean I didn't drive. I was living in Arizona, Quebecs, you know, but m Yeah, they wouldn't let me take it back. And then I found out afterwards when I got back that it was bs that I had. You know, I didn't just brought it to a meat process or maybe got a frozen and chipped or whatever.
Yeah.
He didn't even get my heights.
Never got them.
Yeah, it was weird.
If people want to debate the merits of salvage requirements, debate the merits of salvage requirements, But if you're gonna apply salvage requirements to game animals, I mean it just seems like it can just apply if you like, I know what side I would argue on. But if you want a debate, like, can the government tell you to remove certain stuff from the woods. Alaska uses salvage requirements in a way to almost like guide's activities. They have areas where they're like, you have to bring the moose
ribs out on the rack. I think they even had an area where you needed to remove the liver. They got areas where certain permits if you kill a moose, you gotta cut its antler in half, muscos, you gotta destroy its trophy value if you're gonna hunt the area. So they're and this is not a softy state, I'll point out, No, they're guiding. They're directly saying, here's who
we want. These are the people we're looking for. If you're gonna hunt moose in this area, you're gonna be the kind of guy that's gonna bring the ribs out on the bone, or you're gonna be the kind of guy that's willing to cut that antler in half and then bring it out because it's you know, they're they're they're.
Because they want to see you pack out an extra couple hundred pounds.
They're just they're sort of playing there. I mean, I'll put it gently, I mean they're playing favorites with certain user groups.
Can you clue those antlers back together?
No, for sure you can't. Like the state of the State of Montana two years ago they changed the regulations to where you don't have to keep your duck legs yep. And I'm like, I'm the type of person where I'm like, if you don't know how to cook a duck leg and eat it, you shouldn't be hunting ducks.
Sure, pretend your game regulation? Yeah, tell us How? Tell us how people can find out about how and read the what you guys get involved in?
How for wildlife dot org social media, we basically do everything on Instagram. It's just the path we chose. That's how underscore org and uh uh, you can sign up for free alerts so when we do have actions, you get those emails. Those emails are very detailed. We work with a lot of state partners we call them conservation partners, but basically to get on the right track with everything, it's not us and how saying we should do this, we should write it up this way. We're very very
reliant on who we consider the experts. So when you get that information, it's probably going to be the best info you find on that on that issue on you know, here it is broken down and then here's how you get involved.
And you guys covered you got what is your explain to people what your sort of jurisdiction is around the country, Like what states do you follow?
The issues in every everything? It depends on how much time. We're very small. It depends on how much time we have, the how much time we have to act on the issue. Sometimes it's it'll come up and we got to do something in five days. It's it's really how.
It's whether or not we can affect change on it too.
Yeah, And our our system is kind of complex, so it takes some time to build that. But we we meet, you know, with with our group with Everett he Everett had Lee he's a part of hall and and Mike Costello, who's uh, who's a part of holl And. Then it's John and myself and we have a few writers besides that. That's that's it. So we're heavily relying on those. On those partners, we decide is this a good thing for us to get involved in, will it be effective? Does
the bill have legs? There's that too, because I don't want to waste people's time there's thousands of bills.
Yeah, so you mean things that are just gestures.
Yeah, there's so many of those.
We had one the other day.
You actually told me yesterday that it was there was all my care. You take a look at this because we had one of our partners reached out, he's like, hey, can you look into us?
A lot of people reach out, like from all over the world really actually, hey can you help us with this? Can you help us with that? So trying to kind of boil that down and see what's really important, balance it with our time and you know what can be impactful. That's that's definitely a challenge. But again, we really we really rely on our on our partners.
And you guys will often send you guys will often send your audience outside of Howell to where they need where like you'll alert them and send them to other partners who are positioned to take on that.
Yeah. Perfect example. Probably the largest example is is uh crw M Colorado's Responsible Wildlife Management. You've had you've had Dan on here. You know what's going on there. We recognize that they are spearheading that issue in Colorado. They are set up to campaign against it, they are set up to fight it legally. Everything you know, they're they are a C four. So in recognizing that we have made that a national issue, talk to Dan in October
or September. They didn't have Instagram. I don't think he'd ever been on a podcast before. He was going to need a lot of help. Where we came in was all right, we're going to tell everybody about you and make this a national make this a national issue, and through all people John knows and the few people I know and whatnot we reached out to.
I think he's been on seventy five podcasts now.
Yeah, I mean I think it was through through Yannis is what eventually brought him here. But yeah, we are willing to promote other organizations to We certainly tell people who want to donate to us because they don't know any better. They're like, oh, we should donate to you for this Colorado thing. Or I'm like, no, we can't, we can't do anything there. But who you should donate to? And we should talk are these guys?
Why?
Because there's a misconception out there and I think I think that that number actually gets misconstrued a lot, like, oh, I don't want to you know, donate to so and so because they can use eighty percent of their other money to our salaries and blah blah blah blah blah. But the actual number is only twenty percent of your expenditure as a five oh one C three could be used towards lobbying and so everything else has to be either educational or administrative or working on projects and so
on and so forth. So people take that number of the misconstrue it. So we recognized in that situation that Charles has just giving you that, Okay, if one hundred thousand dollars came to us, then we can only spend twenty thousand dollars doing it. It's money not well spent, right. We yes, we could have did a lot of educational things to make it work, but it's the person that's going to be the most effective.
We want to win. Yeah, that's what we are who want We want to win.
Yeah, there are rules basically is there's rules to five and one C threes. But overall, I think you know, as a organizationally, the five and one C threes, the C four is the national brands, the state, the national organizations, the state organizations, they tend to it's it's competitive. It's a little bit competitive, and if one of those orgs kind of takes on an issue, it's hard to get the other orgs to to support these guys over here
who are leading that charge. When but you know, for the results that we want, we should all jump on board. We should all jump on board. Yeah, right, because we want to win this thing, right, I don't I don't care who's who's who's leading the fight or whatever.
We don't need the recognition for it.
Like, yeah, okay, who cares if it's this org or that org that was leading the fight. As long as everybody aligns with the same messaging and the same purpose, let's let's get there. Yeah, let's let's you know, make a difference.
We'd like to actually, you know, if people ask us what our mission is or whatnot, I actually want to go out of business, which would be you know, thirty years from now. We have enough public support to make the ani hunting argument irrelevant. And I really do think that can be done through the right through the right channels. We touched on it earlier, but that can't be done.
But that's our goal, actually go out of business. So because I would much rather go hunting and spend time doing the things I like to do instead of instead of this full time job which has been basically the last yeah, three years since we kind of started working on it.
Or you go hunting, now, what you think about or the issue is not the fun stuff.
It's yeah, I was talking the other day. We're I mean, that's my best hunting buddy right there. We hunted all over the country together. Now when we get together, we talk about how stuff instead of talking about, oh did you see that elk over there? And you know, how should we approach that?
You know?
And we hunt once a year now since we started that's yeah, yeah, so it takes a lot of time, but together.
Once a year we still hunt a lot.
Yeah together, Yeah.
I gotta I gotta give you guys a plug, right, Steve, you I've heard of meat Eater experiences. Oh right, So Cypress Cove, Louisiana, we're going to be down there hosting fishing, doing a bunch of super fun stuff. A bunch of us and Howl for Wildlife is going to be donating to a spot for two people to Cypress Cove with
the Meat Eater crew. Oh all, you got to do is go over to howl for Wildlife dot org and get a membership, right, and then you'll be entered to win the trip for two to Cypress Cove with everybody here at meat Eater. Now, if you want to skip that line or the random draw, you can go to the meat eater dot com forward slash Experiences and use the code howel dash five hundred dash donation and when you buy your spot to Cypress Cove, five hundred bucks
goes back to howe for Wildlife dot org. Oh what do they put in howel dash five hundred dash donation?
Got it?
Thank you, Cal and thank you guys, Thank you, thank you appreciate that coming on the show. And we'll wait a couple of months and the whole landscape will change. You can come back on and talk about it again. Yep, you'd be like we won, all right, guys, thanks for coming on, man, Thank you.
Is They looked out for Bumpey's pillar.
Such abundance and be wooty they saw. But when they looked century later, that value was empty, and the animals where were gone. Now they looked at one another, they said, what will we do now? Well, our livelihoods ending Yeah, but I'll be damn if that's the last one.
That I saw said. Our wildlife must be made team.
M h.
For our lifestyle to still.
Be made.
Conservation it is called mem.
Yeah, this wildlife is worth.
More harvest for the market, owned by the people.
All all the wild things in time held trunced by all.
The agent sees to be managed but not confined by state lines. And later all those sense the problem. After the war was fought and was won. Folks, our food came from the grocery, you know. He comes from chopping and semonid around nothing.
Our wildlife must be maintained.
For our lifestyle to still remain.
Conservation. He is calling me, you have this, wowld it is.
Worth Wildlife is a citizen owned renewable resource held in trust by an agency that assesses and allocates the resource in a democratic fashion, with an eye toward people utilizing it but not damaging it in the long term.
Wolde must be mad to him for our lifestyle to still remain. Conservation is calling me, yeah.
This wildlife is worth living.
Mm hmmm.
Conservation is calling me.
Yea, this wildlife
Is worth living.