Ep 153 / Join the Pack: Howl For Wildlife with John Stallone

Welcome to the Whitetail Advantage podcast with. Your host, Brett Bovin. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the show. There's no. What is going on, everybody? I am at it. You're not Brett Boven. You're. I wanted to make sure everyone knew that we have. We have decided to do away with the ultra long humdrum. Don't make it seem like it's this. Hold on. Exactly what all these girlfriends in the past are saying. It's not that long. Don't make it all drawn out. We're taking over to some.

Yeah, that's right. Welcome to the show. So tonight we have a special guest. He's related to rock. I am Frank and Frank, the singer. Frank was a great singer. That's my dad. Nice. Is it really? Really. That's really Frank. But. Oh, I'm like, holy. That was. I would have lied. No, but we're. We're. We're honored to have our guest, John Stallone on tonight. Who. Yes, somebody on tonight, killer of the. Woods, who likes to do the same stuff we do. So. Yes, I would like to take a second and.

Actually, you know what I just realized? No, this is the first show that we've had everyone that's the host of their show on in a minute. Yeah, it has. Oh, yeah. Well, we discussed earlier that Dave is always off because he's, you know, attempted murder and all that stuff. Trying to push. Hey, man. Fall. Can't prove. Yeah. Out on some hunting trips. And then Squatch is always. He's always on here. Squatch is all reliable. Yeah. Like Squad said on his last show, he doesn't have a life.

I have no life. See, John's hunting trip, though. John's hunting trip, though, was looking for. For dudes out in the woods. That's. That's his hunting trip. No, that was the one. The one before that. No, no, that was the one before that. Yeah, the one before that. This last one I did was that turkey hunt. Yeah, there are so many of those you can't keep up. Yeah. John, can you give a little background? I mean, really, guys, we got a guest. We don't care about it.

Can you guys be professional, please? We are smart enough. Smarten up. Let's go. Let's go. Let's. Let's lock it in now. So, John. Yes. Which John. Yeah, exactly. Right? This is. Yeah, yeah, because I heard.

Welcome to the show, John. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, guys. Really do. All right, so why don't you give the. The viewers here and listeners a little Background story about yourself. Been hunting since I'm five years old. My first trip out and my first trip out with a gun was with my dad and five. At five years old we, we laid a 30. 30. Oh, I should have, sorry. 35 marlin on a, on a fence post.

Well, technically it was on the barbed wire of the fence post because I wasn't that tall, but at a deer. And I shot a deer with him holding me around like this. And I wouldn't recommend that to anybody actually. That almost scarred me for life. But yeah. 35 kicks a little too much for, for a five year old. Man the hell up. I did that with my daughter at. Four with a 870 Wingmaster. Oh no, it was four.

And she lined it up and I took the recoil to the hip, but man, she shot and was out the door to grab that deer in like record time. Nice. That's. I gotta tell you, gotta tell you, John. 35 Marlin is one of my favorite guns. I've killed a lot of deer with that caliber. I was the, that was the east coast deer deer gun, man. It was like that was the thing. It was either that or a.30 30, you know. Yeah, or I, I guess the 30 odd six was, you know, the. Yeah, the, the golden goose. But yeah, my.

I still have that gun that safe behind me right there. I love it, man. Love the 35. Yeah, it's still got the 3 by 3 by 9 red line scope on it, I think. Whatever. Or something like that. Redfield. Redfield scope. Redfield, that's it. Yeah. So. So that was my, you know, my introduction, my uncle's, my dad, everybody, they all hunted. And I'm actually first generation here in the United States. So they were all immigrants that came over and they hunted back in Italy.

And my grandfather was a big wing shooter back in Italy. And you know, they kind of brought that here and you know, one thing led to another and then I picked up bow hunting somewhere around the age of 13. And then I left that for a little bit. I moved out to Arizona and then I started bow hunting again probably two years after I was here. So like 17 or 18 years old, I picked it back up and 2001 I was winning tournaments and killing things. So I got on with the.

I was a pro staff for Matthews and I was in some way shape or form from 2001 till. I mean, I guess technically, even still today I'm was. I've been paid some way shape or form in hunting. So technically I'm a professional Hunter because I get paid to do it. You know, been a guide since early 2000s here in Arizona. I guide for mule deer, coos, deer, sheep, and I guide for muleys back in South Dakota. We, we do like 15 days over there. I, I have a bow fishing charter out here also.

But for the purpose of this podcast, I guess my biggest hat that I'm wearing right now is I'm the vice president and one of the co founders, Charles Whitwam. And I co founded Alpha Wildlife, which is a platform that provides the tools, information and the ability to connect the average hunter with the decision makers on policy that would affect their ability to hunt, fish and recreate the outdoors. I, I first, I have a question before we dive even. Have you hunted back in Italy?

He said that's where you have. What's it like hunting here in the States to Italy? Oh, it's, I mean it's all pay to play out there. I, I got to hunt for one day with a friend who had like what they call Maggie turismos. They're like, it's kind of like a bed and breakfast sort of, but on like a farm, you know, everything, everything for that you're going to eat. Everything that you're going to do has something to do with the farmland. And I got to go hunt pigs, feral hogs.

They call them chignale. They're like, like a Eurasian boar. Yeah. Tusks, big, hairy. That's what they make prosciutto out of. And yeah, yeah. Awesome Italian salami type yells at the good meat. Yeah. One of my favorites. So I'm on the, the website for Hollow for Wildlife and I just want to read off this. On the main page here, it says welcome to how to Hollow for Wildlife. North America's wildlife and fisheries are constantly under threat. These threats are often based on misguided emotions.

Anthropomorph. Anthropomorphosis. There we go. So that's that, that word that you're trying to pronounce. I always stumble on it. My. Yeah. And basically it's like the teddy bear. Okay. Or when you see something on Disney where you, where lions talk and they have personalities and human. You, you're adding human characteristics to an animal that's gotcha. Misunderstandings and lack of scientific evidence.

We aim to protect all wildlife from what could be their destruction if management practices are removed. However, we cannot achieve our goals without the pack coming together as one to howl for wildlife. How for Wildlife works for the conservation and management of fisheries and wildlife through its science Based data with action and engagement actions are powerful, efficient tools for the public to utilize. Join the pack, take action. Make an impact. Hollow for wildlife.

So what, how did this come about? When did you guys create it? Like, why? Kind of start off from the bait. The grass. Yeah. I'll give you the, the abridged origin story. Charles and I, but we're, you know, we're hunting buddies like we where he's probably my best friend in the hunting community. I'd have to think really hard if there is anybody else. And we hunt a lot together.

And I guess I don't remember one exactly what it was, but one morning he calls me up and he's like, hey, they're trying to. They got a bill here in California because he lives in Cali, I live in Arizona. They're trying to get rid of bear hunting. They're trying to ban bear hunting here. And this Senator Wiener of all names, he was sponsoring the bill and he's like, what can we do? You know, what can we do to. Let's beat this. How are we going to do this? What are we going to do?

I don't want to lose bear hunting here. He loves the bear hunt and you know, it actually kind of started before that with him and with the. We had different ideas, we're doing different things, but this was like the catalyst that kind of launched into what became Alpha Wildlife. So I'm like, let's use, you know, change.org and we. I know a bunch of people. I mean, I've been a podcaster since 2004. I, I know a crap ton of people in the industry. I, I own the Honey Channel online.

We didn't talk about that in my bio, but had a TV show, written, books, all that stuff. So very well connected. That sounded very douchebaggy of me, but no, you know, I'm. I knew a lot of people and he knows a lot of people. He's been doing this for a long time. He's got a great YouTube following and so on and so forth. So, you know, we both have the public eye and connections. So he whipped up and it was in the way that he wrote the change.org petition, which was brilliant.

It was all about saving wildlife. So not only hunters that got involved in it, non hunters and even anti hunters actually at the time got involved in it and helped us push it forward. So in a matter of like five days, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was like 22,000, something like that. People signed on that petition and something like $18,000 was donated. Now when you donate using Change.org, you're not really donating. Change.org is a for profit, excuse me, entity.

And all you're doing is paying for it to get to higher levels, you know, to, to see more people, to open the doors with the floodgates a little bit more, which is good. So like we, we needed that $18,000, but it go to Charles or I just clarification on that. But in five days, Senator Wiener's like, oh my God, I gotta back away from this. And the other part of what he did was he made the petition emails go directly to Senator Weiner and the people, the proponents of that bill. Right.

So when they backed away and they dropped it, they were like, whoa, there's. There's way too many people that. Or I, I thought I was going to be popular by putting this. You know, that's how politics works. They want to be popular. They want to, they want their constituency to keep on keeping them in office. And the way they do that is by keeping people happy.

So, you know, if, if their constituency is saying, no, no, no, we don't want this, then that's what they're going to do nine times out of 10, unless they got some kind of, you know, political agenda, which happens. So that dropped. And then we tried it again on a bill in, I think it was Montana. I don't know why I can't remember this, but it was Montana. And I think it was on hounds. And we were able to win that. And I was like, well, man, there's something really powerful about this.

We need to start a change.org basically for hunters and anglers. Like, this is what we need. We need something like this where the money's going to go directly back into funding for this. And it's. We're going to speak directly. It's going to be all about science based wildlife management. So we went down this road. I actually went down a road of trying to build it. I kind of failed.

And that's when Covid hit and Charles kind of picked up the, I guess the, the reins on that and, and he built it into what it is today. Like, he really, he did put a lot of work and a lot of time and effort into getting it to run and operate the way it is. And that's all she wrote. The rest is history. That's pretty interesting. That is awesome, man. One thing I forgot how I phrase this question here. Let me ask this.

What would you say is your biggest, in your mind, your Biggest achievement through starting this. And what would be your biggest downfall? Like one that you're like, damn it, I can't believe we lost it. Or specific, we call them actions. If you're talking about a specific action. Probably the biggest win was, was last year. Sure if you gentlemen heard about it or not, but there was Prop 127 in Colorado. Oh, the mountain lion. Yeah. And they were trying to get rid of mountain lion.

So that was a state level issue and how for wildlife did what we do best and we turned that state level issue into a national issue. So if you heard about it, chances are you heard about it because we did something. We had a hand in getting it to you and we partnered with CRWM and Dan Gates and Dan Gates is, you know, super knowledgeable guy, very attached to the, to the issue at hand, very charismatic guy.

So it was really easy and well spoken, much more well spoken than I am and put him in front of a lot of people. And you know, we kind of acted like cheerleaders in a lot of ways. You know, for that we got, and we got that, that ball rolling and we were able not only to win, but we won by almost 11 points, which is like unheard of. You know, conversely, a lot of people kind of try to compare it to the wolf reintroduction bill that happened there the previous and we weren't around.

That was four years earlier to that. They lost that by less than 1% and had how I feel like had we been around that wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have be having a reintroduction of wolves in Colorado. So from a, from an action standpoint, that was, I think that was our, I don't know if it was necessarily our biggest win, but I think it was our most notable, you know, in the same year. Let's put it this way, like Florida, we got a right to hunt and fish going on there.

You know, we partnered again with, with Travis Thompson which was down there and his organization and so on and so forth and we turned that into national issue and then we were able to push the needle on that. You know, that in itself was great, but it was kind of overshadowed by the fact that we had this, this thing going on as far as losses are concerned. I don't know, I'm like, I'm like a good quarterback man. I navigate it perfectly.

Forget the interception, I just throw them over, move on to the next one. You know, I love that, I love that answer. I can't, I can't tell you what my biggest Loss was. I, I think you know it from. And I'm going to talk about this being like a company, you know, from a company standpoint, even though we're a non profit, I guess I could say organization.

I, I think one of our biggest failures is, is not, not speaking to the public enough in the way to get them to understand how we're all in this together. How everybody on this podcast and everybody listening in is all interconnected. I think that's one of the things that I, me personally, my, my personal mission has been doing that and it's, it's part of one of the hats that I kind of wear in, in half a wildlife is. I'm, I trying to connect all of us.

You know, we got, like you said, you got Sasquatch over here and he's in New York. And, and you know, what did you see from St. Paul area? We're in Michigan. Yeah. Dave, Dave up front top. Okay. And then John, the other John, us three are from Michigan. Watch the this. The Yeti captain is from New York. Got it, got it, got it. So my whole point is to bringing that up is like, and, and I've been trying to connect the dots for people.

Like why does it, why does a guy in New York give a crap about a guy in Arizona? Like a guy that hunts whitetail in New York, why does he care about a guy that hunts, I don't know, mountain lions in Arizona? Like, it's not, it's not his shtick. He doesn't do that. Like he's probably never going to go to Arizona to hunt. And you know, it's like if you feel bad for him, but that's not what you do, so you don't get involved. And we see that so much. There's so much, what's the word I'm looking for?

Like apathy, I guess, you know. Yeah, people don't really care so much. It's not that they don't care. They care. Like you feel bad for me, right? You feel bad for me losing this in Arizona. But it's not directly correlated to your setup personally. Like, damn, that sucks, right? Yeah, sucks for you, dude. But you know, I got my own issues I gotta get, you know. Right. The reality of it is. And you know, I'll do some connecting of the dots for you. It does, it does ultimately affect you guys.

Doesn't matter where you're from. Exactly. If you, if you look at the big picture there we, we call the, the conservation table. Okay. There's seats at the conservation table. There's all the stakeholders, and hunting and fishing occupy the largest voice, not the largest group, but the largest voice at the conservation table. And the reason why we're the largest voice is because we have a pay to play system.

You know, we think about public land hunting and hunting the way we have it as not being pay to play. But think about it. You buy a license, that license goes back into the system. You, you know, you buy goods, it gets back through Pittman, Robertson, sometimes depending on the goods, whatever, but it's, it's all interconnected.

So we facilitate a lot of the funding that comes in or we create a lot of the funding that comes in for other people who don't pay to do things, like the mountain bikers. You could still go down a trail and I'll use Colorado right now because that came to my head. But you can still go down a trail, mountain bike in Colorado without paying a dollar because those funds came from hunting and fishing. Same thing up here. Same thing up here in New York. We get it all the time.

I always say not, not to cut you off. I apologize. Yeah, sure. Like I was. I just wanted to hit this on the head because you got people that ride bicycles, they're on the roads, they're causing a hazard, but they're not insured, they don't have a license. Meanwhile, anything else that you put on the road needs a license, insurance, registration. Sure. And it's the same thing with people riding the rail trails, riding these, these, you know. But why?

Because they all stick together, they cry and they get what they want. Where as hunters, we need to step up and stick together and have that brotherhood and show up to these meetings and everything else like you were getting to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I gotta, I gotta very remember that point because I gotta talk to you guys about that specifically. That's one of the things that we've done really well and I would love to see go get even bigger. But so where, you know, we occupy this voice.

So let's say I lose. We, Lou. I lose mountain lion hunting here in Arizona right now. The several thousand people that only mountain lion hunt here in Arizona no longer hunt. Right. So you physically lost us at that table. So you lost my voice, you lost my funding. So again, the voice is diminished. And now let's say, you know, I don't, I don't have a need for my rifle and my ammo anymore because I only use it for hunting. I don't target shoot. I don't.

You know, me and paper were friends we don't shoot at each other. And you know, so now Pittman Robertson goes down. Let's say in Pittman Robertson. And we give you arbitrary numbers. Let's say it's $1 billion. And because you lost mountain lion hunting in Arizona, now it's, you know, 900, you know, million or whatever. And sorry, those numbers probably don't equate. But now if you know how Pim and Robinson works, there's, It's a big pie.

If, if the pie was a billion dollars and now that pie got shrunk to 900. Now the piece of the pie that just got cut from Michigan and New York just got smaller. Right. So it directly affected you. It's a direct effect on you. Like it. Okay. And then, you know, if that doesn't hit home, like it sets precedence. Okay. Now I know mountain lion hunting in New York's not a big thing, although it might be happening pretty soon in Michigan. I know, I know you guys quite a few lines over there.

But you know, you know, it's like eventually the things that you lose start ending up at your front door. And then, you know, if you think about it too, like they're always going for the low hanging fruit. Once the low hanging fruit's gone, they got to go to the next level. Then it becomes, you know, the whitetail and Michigan turkey and, you know, whatever. So like it directly affects you. We're all in this together and people need to understand that.

Yeah. It's a door for one thing to go out for that. It just opens up for everything. Sure. Well, it's like the domino effect type deal. Yeah. Once one thing starts, like just use a pie, for example, you, one thing falls away and it just keeps chipping away more and more and more and more. And next thing you know, like all everything's gone, all the rights are gone. Just everything's just.

I mean, the fact, I don't know exactly the states, but I know, and I don't remember exactly what year it started, but I know, for instance, I don't believe in the fact that states can dictate what's what, days of the week you can hunt. I think that is wrong, in my opinion. I understand one side of this. I understand both sides of the coin. Yes. Like you can't hunt on Sundays because for certain reasons, I don't know. But those are old blue laws, they call them. Or in my opinion, because of.

Generally because of religion. Yep. More than anything. And there's not that many states that still have that. We actually just Won. Not a couple. Like a year and a half ago, we won something. We got Sunday hunting and maybe Virginia. I don't remember exactly where it was, but we. We work on stuff like that all the time. If it pops up, if they think that they could win, you know, we. We've added turkey season, matter of fact, in Long island, like, you know, there's. There's stuff.

Turkey season eligible in Long Island. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There wasn't spring. Spring season. There was only fall turkey. Now there's spring season, too. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, there's a ton of birds there. I was there last year. There's a lot. I know a lot of guys that hunt turkey. A whole lot of ticks, though. Yeah. But those gobblers don't shut up. Over there. There. That's a pretty good place to go. Honey. Yeah. What was this? I just had the question. Damn it.

I had a question for you now, John, and I just lost it. Damn it. That's all right. I'm sorry. I kind of tend to ramble on and go off on tangents. No, it was a good one, too. Son of a. You had your one good one and you forgot it. I know. It was a really good one, too, and I'm trying to remember it. Yeah. If you mix green and red crayons, what color do you get? I don't know. They all made a brown turd. Wait a minute. Up. Shut the. Up. I remember now. Oh, here we go. What? Damn it. No, you didn't.

You didn't remember. What is. What is a situation out there, like prisons, the one out there in Colorado? Is there a situation out there that more hunters should be known, like, be more aware of and that we, Everyone should be kind of like, quote unquote, dipping their toes in or reading more about. Is there some type of situation out there, like, in general that everyone should know about?

Is there a situation out there where, if this happens, it's going to lead to a bigger problem later down the road? Seems like you. You're going to have your feet more in it compared to what we do. I mean, I. I read articles through the United States Fish and Wildlife, but I. I'm only getting stuff like that. It seems like you kind of got your door, your feet in a lot more. I mean, we do for sure. So, I mean, the first thing I'm going to tell everybody is this. Listen, it's a moving target.

It's constantly something else, you know, and it's always something else. Like, to be honest with you, they they try something, it doesn't work. They try. For another thing, it doesn't work. They try this, it works. So they're. We're constantly. And that's why we're always on the defense.

There is right now a public lands deal that I think everybody should kind of be involved in. And you know, I, I think if it passes and it goes the wrong way, it's going to set a very bad precedence for, for things to go south continually, you know, and it might, it might, it might really set a really ugly stage for a lot of the public land hunting to go away, period. There is on May 6, they introduced like 1133 or something like midnight, something like that.

I don't remember exactly some amendment to a reconciliation bill. And this is what they do. This is what politicians do. They'll try to sneak something in on these giant ass bills that nobody, so nobody will pay attention to it and hopefully it'll get it passed. But like they'll slip it in at the last second type. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So this big thing, and it's pretty like specific nefarious deal here because it was something that was kind of leaked out back in, I think, January or February, something like that. And the proponents of the bill were all like, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And everything that they did because, because the hunting community made a kind of a big stink about it and then it, like it went away and it didn't look like they were going to. It was going to be part of this deal or not.

And then out of nowhere, boom. Like I said, midnight, there it was and there's a lot of moving parts to it. But the biggest things are that they're going to sell off, quote, unquote, underutilized lands, public lands, 500,000 acres in Utah and, and sorry, Nevada. And you know, I'm not against selling off or transferring public lands if it makes sense. And there's a process. But the thing about this, the biggest thing about this amendment is that it foregoes the process.

And it's really, it's, it's, it's kind of, it's illegal, to be honest with you. There's a, an act called Flipma and it's, and I can't remember what that stands for exactly off the top of my head. I don't know. My brain's not working properly here this evening. But FLITMA basically spells out how if the government wanted to transfer public lands or sell off public lands, it spells out what needs to be Done. And part of that process is public comment. So there is no public comment on this at all.

You're selling off public lands, you're selling off the beneficiaries lands without getting their input. That's number one. Number two, normally in this process, so if I sell off this acreage, whatever money comes out of that acreage is supposed to go back, be an infusion back into public lands somehow. So you perform either to buy other lands or improve on the lands that we have. So this doesn't happen.

That money that they're going to sell off this land goes directly into the, the general fund. So that in itself is like, it's, in my opinion, you know, they're saying, I, I don't know exactly, but they're saying there's like something like $18.5 billion that this money is going to, or this land is going to generate.

But in my opinion, and I'm not a economist in any way, shape or form, but just simple cowboy math, it doesn't really equate to me, you know, because you're going to sell off this land and then you have no other means, no other way of making money off that land after it's sold. And 18.5 billion sounds like a lot of money, but really it's a drop in the bucket when it comes to the trillions and trillions of dollars that we're in debt, you know, on a national level. Right.

So but if you look, you look at it from the long terms, there's you know, mineral, mineral royalties, there's the recreation, you know, revenue that comes out of it. And just so you, this is, this is an interesting number. I think it's like almost a trillion dollars a year that is connected to outdoor recreation on public lands in the United States. So I don't know if you told me, even if I was only making, let's say a billion dollars off this land is 500,000 acres. Right.

And it take me 18 years to make that. I would still rather have that in perpetuity than be one and done. And now I don't have it anymore. Yeah, the other really shitty part about it is that they're, they're kind of like selling it underneath the guise of having more affordable public housing. Listen, if you follow the money, if you look at like developers and stuff that are kind of looking at this, there's, there's not gonna be any affordable housing.

This is housing that is, that's going to be on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Those are going to be million dollar Homes, Those aren't going to be freaking affordable housing. You know, who's gonna, there's, there's no affordable housing in that. And like I, I don't know. Again, like, I'm not against selling. You got to track the land. You got 300 acres that's sitting in the middle of a city. Yeah, go ahead and sell that off.

It's not suitable habitat to support wildlife, doesn't have water on it, whatever. You know, those make sense to me. I'm like, I'm not an anti public land guy. I, I, I take showers. I'm not a, you know, granola bar. I don't have, I have ideas that we need, you know, we need to sell off land at times or we need to transfer land at times and pick up other lands that make more sense. Yeah, I'm all about that. I'm also about drilling. You know, I'm not a, I'm not against 100, against drilling.

We're getting, we're, we're a nation that keeps on growing and we need to come up with ways to, you know, to support our, our insatiable consummation. You know, the, the con, the consumers here are just like, you know, all we do is consume and consume and consume and I don't, I don't see that changing.

So we have to come up with ways to, to utilize things, but we have to do it smart and we have to do it in a way that's going to preserve this way of life that we love, you know, what we do, but also to propagate wildlife and keep ecosystems intact and so on and so forth. So you know, there's, there's weight, I think.

Had the proponents of this bill gotten a more well rounded input from and then followed what they're supposed to do from the comments, you know, public comment, if, if they would have gotten that, we probably could have found an a, a win, win for everybody. But right now as it stands, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't equate and it's a, it's like a, a borrowing for Peter to pay Paul situation economically. And I think it, it just, it's going to take away too much.

But, but the biggest thing, the biggest fear for me is that if they get away with what they're doing, they're going to keep on doing that because there's people that just don't care about public lands or recreating out there that will easily sell that off to have their condo on the water. You know what I'm saying. So it just seems like more and more, though, like little pieces of land are being like kind of chipped away. Oh yeah. Here and here. And it's just.

Well, they did it here with those solar panels. Yeah. And I'm not saying like, like, like John was saying, like, I'm okay with like middle of downtown and there's 20 acres with just an open lot sold away. And let's use it for good, good reasons, but to. Yeah, they, they. What they do up in Gaylord. Is it Gaylord where they did that? I think so. It was like 2,000 acres of public hunting land. They turned it, they're. They sold it and turned it into solar panel farm.

I knew I, I know what's up in that region. Yes. Yeah, I, I did hear about that. You know, speaking about like renewables, that's like renewable energy and stuff like that. Again, not something that I'm against, but, you know, I'm not about cutting off my nose to spite my face either. I, I though. I feel like those things, if you're gonna put solar panels, put them on top of rooftops, on top of buildings inside a city already.

Like, why are we taking away public land to have a solar farm when you can have a, you know, equal, equally good, if not better system on top of what's already, you know, developed. And they're not even sustainable. They degrade after 5 years anyways. After 10 years you have to replace them. Yeah, I don't, I don't know the, the ins and outs of like, how long they last and so on and so forth, but I know once they are done, they have a very hard time getting rid of them. And that's like.

Yeah. And I was poisonous and I know like, you know, lithium and, you know. All these, it's got all these toxic metals in it. Yeah. All the bars and all this stuff like that. That's not, it's not the answer, you know, it's like. Well, I know here in Michigan now how true this is. It was just commercials that I was seeing. If you had so and so that they would come and put solar panels on your house for free. Yeah. And I think I'm all about trying to live off the land as best you can.

And that's why as we as hunters, that's what we hunt. That's why we fish. We want to live off the land, stuff like that. Sure. But we already have these structures in place where it's like. And like you said, what's the point of taking all this land, build this giant farm to be more green, if you want to use that term right, use what's already in place and stop chipping away.

I think when people look at hunting and they look at fishing and they look at the outdoors, they don't see the environmental impact that it has on everyone. I have what I'm in my mind, I have one thing and I'm trying to verbat it through, but they, in my mind that most people, they just see it and they just don't give a shit. They just look at it and they see dollar signs. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that. But I think our biggest problem is.

So this is actually a good segue for me to talk about this. There's, there's 5% people that hunt. There's 5% people who are anti hunting, quote unquote. And there's 90% in the middle. So that 90% in the middle is the, is the biggest power, voting power. Right? They have, they hold most of the cards. So there's. For longer than all of us have been alive. They've been. And I say they, the anti hunters have propagated their messaging.

They've infiltrated, you know, the Bambi's and the, and that's where that antipathy morphicized stuff comes like, you know, from Disney and so on and so forth. Where they, they create a picture that is not necessarily represented, represented in the hunting community.

They paint us up this like toothless hillbilly willy nilly out there shooting, lopping off heads, you know, drinking beers and just run around shooting out of the back of pickup trucks that we're this evil, bloodthirsty, you know, guy out there that has no, no love for wildlife and what we do. So I think it's super important for us to actually start portraying the good side about hunting. What actually hunting and fishing means.

Like, I don't mean just the, the, what do you call it, the financial side of it. Like we can't hang our hat on, we can't just go up to everybody and then say like, well you do this because we pay for this. You know, you, you can't stop a mountain biker and say you have access to this because of us. You know, it doesn't.

But if you show them the camaraderie, you show them the meals that you make, the family, the, the, you know, the, the human connection, the human intrinsic values that are associated with what we do and how it helps wildlife and how we propagate ecosystems and so on and so forth. Now they start thinking about, okay, well, what I saw the other day about hunter going out there and lopping off ahead and just taking the trophy, the trophy with them. That's my air quotes.

The, you know, that, that starts fading, that starts going away, and they start looking behind the curtain. You know, you know how things are today, especially today. Today's day and age. You know, we have, we have vines that are seven seconds. Like, if, if something that doesn't catch our attention in the first, like, couple seconds, you know, when and how do you do that in the hunting world? Like, how do you, how do you talk about conservation? How do you talk about human intrinsic value?

How do you talk about camaraderie, meals and all that stuff in a, in a quick format that catches somebody's interest? You don't. But if you put up a, a meme with some guy with a grip and grin and say, this guy killed Bambi, it's, it's gonna catch, like, wildfire. So we need to have a little bit more nuance. We need to be better ourselves and educate ourselves. Like, I'm not a super educated person. I mean, I, I, I, I, I definitely don't have a Ph.D. you know. Well, it's kind of like.

But you, you got to spend some time and educate yourself on these things so you can have conversations with people. Sorry. Go ahead, Brett. No, I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm sorry. There's a glitch. It's kind of like. So I, I have the right to say it because I worked in law enforcement, unlike these two. Army. No, you're welcome. For your freedom, Brett. Yeah, I protect you. Yeah. I got shot in the neck. I don't know what I got to say. I slipped on a donut. That's right. You choked on it.

Let me say my point. Stop being honest. No. So in law enforcement, you always see it on the news, and one bad thing, and it gets blown everywhere out proportion. Sure. It's. You see this one little thing, and it paints cops as a fat picture, whether. I'm not going to get into details of anything about an actual video, but you see one bad little thing, and you paint all cops bad.

It's like you just saw one little glimpse of one little action, and you didn't see, like, the bigger picture or anything else behind it. Right. You see people out there taking bad photos with deer or they're chopping heads off of deers.

And for instance, for me, the one thing I hated the most was seeing the memes out there where people were I think it was like two years ago, two, three years ago where people were on the ground with their deer and they're taking selfies and there's videos out there where they're taking their deer to, oh look where we first met and stuff like that. People see that and you're painting a bad picture. Like you said, Joe, I mean that in my opinion.

I, I hate, I don't want to use the word hate, but I strongly dislike that. I don't believe in that. Are definitely our own worst enemy. Exactly. The majority of the content, and now mind you, a lot of it's taken out of context, but we create a lot of the content that is used by the other side as a weapon towards what we do. That's why there's a lot of people like, oh, don't take any more pictures of grip and grins. Don't do any of this. Don't do any, I'm not of that camp.

You know, in my opinion, we've been, we've been painted on caves about our hunting success since millennia, right? And I, I, I think the instagrams and so on and so forth are our caves. Before that, when we were kids, you know, in the 80s, we used to take the deer into the, the, the city center or the town center, the coffee shop, whatever.

The deer would be laying across the hood of the, of the car, whatever, you know, we shared our, our stories and we, we talked to people and this, we were proud that we were able to take this, you know, So I think that that stuff needs to stay intact. We just need to be mindful that there's always somebody watching. I get, I don't know if you heard about this.

Last year there was a guy in Craig, Wyoming that ran over a wolf with his snowmobile and then, oh, took the injured wolf, taped its mouth shut, took it and paraded it around the local bar, took pictures with it, kissing it on the mouth and doing all kinds of rotten, rotten that nobody else. No, no, most, the majority, the vast majority of hunters would find it repulsive. Did all this stuff. Of course he put it on social media. Now this dum dum became the poster child for every anti hunting.

See, this is what we have to save. We have to save wildlife from the guys like this. This is why we're doing what we're doing. Because the hunters, they're like this guy. So everybody out there, whether you hunt deer with a trad bow or you know, have the utmost respect, do whatever, you know, whatever. Think about the most respectful possible way you can hunt. Whether you're that guy or not, you're still going to be associated with this clown and Craig that did this thing.

And you know, so my point is there's always somebody watching and we're the idiots that keep putting stuff up there. So if you're going to put something up there, if you're going to put something out in social media and in the interwebs, you're going to have to think about what it is that you're doing and you want to be able to share with your following, share with the people that will see that because event first, it's going to start off in your, in your social networks, right?

And then eventually it keeps going and keeps going and it'll get out there. You want to be able to share. Okay. Yes. Oh, I, I shot this beautiful deer, right? And then the next picture you put up this, this is a meal that I made. This is me enjoying being out there with my son. This is, you know, and tell the stories, tell the stories.

You know, it's not going to stop people from taking things out of context because you're never going to be able to be able to, you're never going to be able to do that. Especially now with AI unfortunately, you're going to be able to do a lot of, a lot more than, than not. Right? Really, I'm, I'm fearful of, for my son and my, my, my daughters and that generation, what AI is going to do. Hopefully I'll be long gone before Terminator actually comes on.

But you know, your best, if you're gonna put stuff up, your best option is to always put the story in the comments. Share their human intrinsic values that you have. Try to take quality pictures that are tasteful. Can't always be this just gripping grid, blood hagging out of the mouth, tongue this that, you know, be a little bit more mindful. I'm not saying don't do it, but be more mindful about how you do it.

Because I'm hey at a TV show, podcast, magazines, written on pictures and being in that life and being, putting, promoting hunting has been my life since, like I said, 2001, has been promoting huntings. And how do you promote hunting? By promoting things about hunting. Two hunters. And you have this view that only hunters are going to see what you're putting up there. But the reality of it is that is not true.

You know, and then the other side of it is if you see somebody putting up something distasteful, don't, don't comment, don't Go at them publicly, send them a dm. Hey man, I think you should think about what you just put up there. You're hurting hunting. You're not helping it by doing this. And yada yada yada. He said they, you know, he, she's gonna either tell you to go f yourself or they're going to listen and they're going to take it down. You know, I had, I've told this story several times.

I had a guy several years ago that he was wearing all camouflage, he was on a quad and he runs this hog over. The hog gets up and charges him, runs it over again, goes back and forth three, four times where the hog gets up after he runs it over. And I, I sent them a message and he basically told me to F off. You know, off. Excuse my French.

But, but the thing that propelled it, I looked through the original like first hundred comments were from hunters that were like you're a, why are you doing this? But because that's the way the algorithms work. You put comments up there, whether they, even though they were negative and you were condemning this person for doing stupid stuff, it kept pushing that, that content further and further along.

And the further and further along it went, then it started opening it up to the anti hunters and people that were non hunting and they would see this thing and now they got this visual. They're not reading the comments, they're not reading the caption, they're not reading, you know, and they're just looking at the video and commenting themselves on it. Now it just gets, and that's how it goes viral. And so, you know, that's why it's important.

You know, you got to think there's always somebody watching, there's always somebody looking do something. I, I agree with you. 100 and I just did a video of a really nice turkey hunt with broadside ambush Frank. And it happened so quick. We got a lot of footage of the calling the birds coming in and going away and this and that. But I wasn't going to like, you know, I was thinking maybe I shouldn't publish it because I didn't get the actual kill shot on.

I turned the camera on and the bird just flopping around on its last nerves after I hit it with the mag and, and I said no, you know, I'm going to make this video because it's not about killing the bird. It's not about, you know, making a good shot. It's the time I spent with a brother out hunting and just watch that video. It's really Cool. Because I did it with an Insta360 camera. It's the first time I really made a video with it.

So parts of it are a little sketchy and rough here and there when I tried to edit a lot of it out. But what I learned in the editing program was I have a cameraman inside of that editor, so I can actually pan to us in the blind right after I made the shot, and you see our reaction. Just like there was a cameraman just said, oh, let me get these guys on film. And I mean, I'm literally like, pumped, shaking. Like just, you know, we're hugging each other and, you know, hey, man, I love you.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to come up here. If that doesn't set the precedent of being a respectful, loving, caring person as a hunter, there's something wrong with people out there. And you're not going to have people that agree with this a hundred percent, but I could give a crap less. I am so happy. I was so proud of that moment, you know, getting to share that with people and, and putting that, that moment out there. Because there's guys out there that never hunt with anybody.

They don't know what it's like to experience the, the. The. The harvesting of that animal. And it's, you know, I didn't run out in a blind and go like, jump on it. Like these morons do. Half of them. I mean, the bird was expired right away. I. I made a great shot on them. We walk over to it, I explain the situation, and I thank God every time I kill something or I get the opportunity to be out in the woods. I put God first.

And if that doesn't set a precedent to people out there, how respectful I give. I give. Dear Last rates. I got Indian, American, Indian blood in me. You'll never see anybody do what I do out there, Okay? I have the most respect for animals. When I was a kid, it was different. I was a killer. I was a killer. But as I got older, it was more about the time spent, how you're doing it and enjoying the fruits of your benefits of what you got.

And let me tell you something, you talk about, cook your meal, I'm on there. We got a. We got a good bunch of people that represent us, and flavors of the forest is one of them. And I try to use his products and everything. I cook with my wild game, and I put that out there for people to see that, yes, I am enjoying the bounty of what I killed. And I shared it with my brother. And we Had a great time. And you know what? People need to experience that, especially in the hunting community.

If they don't, they're short changing themselves. Yeah, exactly. No, that's, that's awesome. Like, and you got to have that perspective. Like I said, everybody's always watching. And unfortunately, there is a large sector of the hunting community that's gonna find your video not as cool because it doesn't have a kill shot in it. And, you know, I, I personally have tried to get away from the kill shot thing.

I think, you know, the last several years I haven't, you know, you know, it happens, but you don't actually, you know, and I think that's, that's something we need to do because there's people.

You, you wanna, you're not catering. See a lot of people in the hunting industry, like, oh, you're placating to the snowflakes, you know, but no, what you're doing is you're talking to that middle ground. You're saying, this is what hunting is and I would like you to try it at some point. Not because I want to convert you into a hunter, and I'm not saying we need more hunters in, in the world, but I want you to have an understanding of what I do and how I do it.

I want you to know what goes into it. I want you to know that when I go bow hunting for elk, that I am hiking seven, eight miles a day. I am covering, you know, several thousand feet in elevation. I am busting my butt. I want you to know that there's only a 9% success rate. I want you to know the months of time and practice I put into it in the days in the gym and this and the one, so on and so forth.

And the only way you can do that is to put that information out there and put it in a way that's digestible by these people, that you can understand it. You know, if you're just out there like, I just whacked this thing and I just use this as the best thing since I bread and blah, blah, blah, blah. You're never going to connect with that middle ground.

And we're always going to be just talking, you know, preaching to the choir, talking to ourselves and, you know, hey, we all know, we all know that death is going to happen, right? We'll know that that's a part of hunting. We don't have to celebrate the death. The death is a small second in the whole culmination of the hunt. What you need to do is share everything else that happened leading up to that death and everything else that happens after that death.

Because those are all the things that really matter. I mean, 8 out of 10 hunters you speak to are going to tell you that they're more about the experience of the hunt than the actual kill. Now, you know, for fear of sounding like a D bag again, I'm a pretty successful hunter. I've had my fair share of animals, you know. Yeah. But even I will tell you, like, I'm an adventure hunter. I'm all about the adventure of it. I'm about the experience of it.

I'm about, you know, what goes into it, the whole kitten caboodle. I mean, I'd be lying to you if I told you I wouldn't want to kill something and take something home. I want. You know, everybody wants a big set of antlers on the wall, like in our space. Right. But that's not the reason. That's not my motivation for doing it. I don't wake up going, oh my God, I gotta get this. I gotta get these children. You know, like. Like that's not my. That's not my motivation to enjoy being outdoors and.

Right. Friends and family. I gotta say this to here. Okay, Michael. All right. So we've been with you, dude. We're getting ready to wrap the show up and we made a deal. We were gonna ignore you the entire show because I feel bad now because he's texting me like 10 times and sent me screenshots of all the comments that he's made on this show. It's that new format, Brett. That new format. Mike. Mike must have not got that new format. That was called ignoring you, Mike. Yeah, yeah.

It's called ignore, ignore. No, I'll go through some of your comments. I've been starring in the. Michael, just for you. Just real quick, before wrap it up, he said my birthday is Thursday, so happy pre birthday, Michael. For you. Nine. I think he might be nine. I think he might be nine. He likes nine. I like hunting, fishing stuff and a bunch of other stuff. I like tools. Well, that's because he is a tool. Yeah, he is kind of a tool bag for. He did ask this question. Johnny Squatch.

Dave, didn't Brett say he would give me a whitetail advantage merch for my birthday? I don't know. No, he never did. I don't. I don't think I did. Oh, I never remember him saying that. No, I don't know, Mike, but I. I think you should give him that or something, man. I might, but he's Got. He's running the limit of how many questions he runs a show and he's pushing that limit. I mean, I got some pocket. I got some pocket lint for Mike. I'll send that out to him.

We're your co host and we don't even have anything. We had to buy our own. Yeah, thanks a lot, bro. Yeah, I'm broke. I work the corner. I mean, Johnny. Johnny even sent me some, some, some lipstick, lip. Lip chapstick stuff. And then the, the stuff, the tallow stuff for my wife who sent me. Yeah, yeah. Well, John. Yeah. That's an amazing product. Don't make me buy some then, Johnny. Anyway, I'll send you. I'll send your wife some. Don't worry. Brett. Thank you. I appreciate it. Michael.

We love you. Yes, I get. I guess we'll do something for your birthday, Michael. I guess let's put his phone number in the chat group. Yeah. Post it on the bottom for an episode. We'll do our call in. Sign it. We'll do our call in show. And it's his phone number. That's right. He's like, why is my phone blowing? That's 40 awesome to do, John. Not our regular host John. Our guest. John, I want to say thank you so much, man, for coming on the show and. Yeah, absolutely.

Experience and everything about how for wildlife. Thank you for everything you're doing with it. I do want to say that I do want to try and get more involved with this that we're trying to do here at Whitetail Advantage in our own type of format with this in our own way here with Michigan as well. But more trying to bring these type of situations more to light that need to be discussed more. But I do want to again say.

I want to say thank you so much for coming to show and taking the time out of your day. I know you're a busy guy. You're. You got your hands in a lot of. A lot of bowls out there and you're doing a lot. So I'm very happy for that. For people that want to reach out to you. We'll. We'll end with you, John R. John, how could people reach out to you and follow along your journey? You don't want to. Yeah. I don't blame you. Squatch. How about you? I'll run my usual spiel.

So as you guys know, Sundays and Tuesday nights here at 8 o' clock whitetail advantage. You can also catch me on the boondocks outdoors. Garden State outdoorsman, Mike Nitray, Frank Mystica. Great Bunch of dudes out there. Check my channel out outdoors and more with the squatch on YouTube also, same header under Instagram. Appreciate all your guys support as usual guys. Thanks for tuning in. See I can't do a long intro, but he can go on, on about his. What the hell? What the. Was it on?

It was on. It was right to the point, sir. I'll start muting them, man, don't worry. Oh Jesus, John. Still, how can people reach out to you? Following along your journey and learn more and try and get more involved with Hollow for Wildlife. Yeah, definitely become a member. We've, we've, we've created a free membership even for those people that, you know, want to test the waters out a little bit before they invest. But this is not a, it's not a cheap endeavor.

There's, there's really, essentially there's only five of us, you know, and we're all volunteers. We don't take a dollar from, from Hal for Wildlife. In fact, I've invested tens of thousands of my own money and Charles is even more than that. And time and effort, we all, we all put a bunch of time and effort into this. It takes a lot of money to get things done. So we'd love you to become, you know, a paid member.

But if not, the main thing is we want you to be involved and you can't be involved if you're not signed up to find out what's going on. So at least get on there, become a free member. AlphaWildlife.org and right now that public lands action go. If you go to take action on our website, it's the first action up there.

And what we're doing with that is giving you a platform to record a 60 second video testimony that will go out to you, all your representatives and President Trump and it will say whatever you want to say. Hey, I'm, you know. Oh, here you go. Cool. Oh, nice. Basically, you know, I'm against. There you go. Keep it public. You click on that right there and you'll be able to leave your public comment and that video will go directly to the people that need to hear this.

That's, that's what we specialize in. Your voice gets put out to the decision makers of the policy that's in question. So yeah, get on there. If you want to follow me just John Stallone, you know, at, on Instagram, you can follow me on Instagram or if you wanted to follow Alpha Wildlife, that's where we connect with everybody is mostly on Instagram. And that's how underscore. Org. Yeah, we'd love to you guys get involved.

The more and more people and this is, I'm going to give you a quick, you know, 30,000 foot view of how I look at this how for wildlife we have won the vast majority of stuff that we've gotten involved on. And we've won that with thousands of people. There's like 16 million hunters in the United States. Could you imagine if 5 million, 10 million of those hunters were involved? Like we need them to be involved at how for wildlife. If they got their voices out there, we would be undeniable.

We would not lose thing. We'd be able to start working on more of the things to get things back or include new things like you know, the turkey hunting in, in Long island and so on and so forth. Like that's why we need to be a, we need to be a voice. We need to be on everything. We need to be engaged and dialed in. And the way you do that, it literally doesn't take much at all. It takes about, I would, I would say on a yearly basis probably takes about 15 minutes of your time. Yeah, like does.

We're not asking for a lot. 15 minutes of your time. Okay. And don't give me, I'm super busy BS because you know, I didn't really get into it with you guys. But I really don't know very many people more busy than me. Okay. I run a construction company, Alpha Wildlife. I have a guide service. I have three kids, a wife. I got my hand on so many different things between, you know, promoting social media, all these things. And I still find time to do what I do.

And I'm not saying this to give myself a pat on the back. I'm saying this, don't make excuses, you know, because what happens is people start, you know, crying about things online and typing things and saying all these things like, you know, that time that you spent doing that bs, you could have put into something productive and it could have been, you know, you, you, you could have did more for, for hunting and fishing than, than you ever did in two minutes worth of time.

You know what I'm saying? So I'm sure I alienated a bunch of people on that one. But hey, I'm not pulling punches anymore. You know, I, I, I think we all have the potential to do great things. I think we all have the potential to, to protect and save what it is that we love. You just gotta do it, stop talking. About it and just do the action. Exactly. Basically. Well, Squatch, And John R. John. And our guest, John Stallone. Thank you guys so much for coming on tonight's show. And we will.

I'm gonna. I just. I'm just gonna leave at that. I just want to say thank you guys so much for coming on tonight's show. And I'm gonna actually do an outro just because it's our last show for like a week. So I'm going to just say something. Okay. Oh, God. Here we go. It won't be long, I swear, but I'll let you guys go for the rest of your night. Enjoy your night. Enjoy your quote unquote vacation that you guys have. I will talk to you guys all later.

John, I hope you have a great rest of your night. Enjoy time with your family. I will text and call you tomorrow because I'm looking forward to actually talking to you more in depth about this. And I will let you guys go. You're free. Your vacation's good. Now is approved. All right. Thank you very much. Have a good one. Have a good one, guys. Good night. Oh, man. Thank you, Squatch and Johnny, for coming on for tonight's show. I know it's our last show before we go on to vacation.

And our guest, John, thank you for coming on for tonight. Greatly appreciate it. Just a couple last thing, though, reminders. We aren't doing a live show next week, Sunday or Tuesday, because it is Memorial Day weekend. So we're enjoying our time with our friends and family. If the show made you laugh, made you think, give you a new perspective, please hit that like and subscribe button. If you listen to this on the audio version, please hit that.

5 star rating audio versions of our podcast gets released every Monday and Wednesday at 5am Eastern Time. With that being said, put your core in a slot machine. What the are you doing back here? Well, I just want to say bye now. You're muted. Oh. Oh, okay. I just wanted to say bye. Okay. Bye, John. Have a great rest of your time, guys. We'll see you.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Whitetail Advantage podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show and. We will see you next time.