Ep. 651: How to Raise Hell for Hunting, Fishing, Wildlife, and Wild Places with Ben Long

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the way, I want to tell you a story. So this past weekend, I told my oldest son evert that I was going to take him out on a turkey hung Now, historically, I have taken him on turkey quote unquote hunts many times before. And what that entails when I've taken my young son is that we are just out there in the field trying to call a burden. It's been a lot of fun, but I've not gone out there with a gun. We're not actually hunting. It's just you know, like like a turkey adventure.

just get bigger and bigger and bigger. He had no idea what was going on, but there was some bizarre sound coming from the woods getting closer and closer. And in the years since, you know, he's continued to get exposed to that heading out into the spring woods, and we've had some some really incredible moments. I think I've probably told you guys this story a few years ago about the time when we had it out onto one of the properties at Hunt and ended up calling in

three gobblers. And on this particular day, he brought an umbrella with him and we called the gobblers all the way into you know, their approaching shooting range, and my son was pretending that the umbrella was a gun, and he, you know, he held a gun up and he was whispering to me, Hey, Dad, you know, got take him yet, And I'm whispering back to him, Oh gotta wait, wait till they get closer. They get closer, and so he's got his gun up, he's already, he's breathing heavier. I

can literally see him starting to shake. He's so excited as these three toms coming close. They finally get into shooting range in twenty five thirty yards something like that. I said, all right, Everett, take him, and he says, all right, Dad, I'm ready, and then he takes a deep breath and then he just yells cpo and the turkeys look up and he says copo again and they

go running off. I mean, we just had so many great moments like that in the field and it's never though involved like an actual hunt for turkeys at least, so in this case, I told him, hey, you know, Sunday, we're gonna go out there and see if we call him burn and range and you can bring you know, you can bring your BB gun if you want, and we can you know, hunt for you know, squirrels or something along the way, or you can just kind of pretend holding your gun or whatever it is. And he

just started to cry, and I couldn't understand it. He just started bawling and I was so confused. And you know, after a few minutes and going to his bedroom and kind of trying to pull him out of his bed, he explained that no, he really wanted to be on a real hunt this time. He wanted Dad to have the gun, and we really wanted to get a turkey, and he wanted us so so so badly, and I I, I didn't even have my stuff ready. I didn't have my license yet. I wasn't playing actually turkey hunting un

till next weekend. So we had to kind of explain that and talk through all that, and I was finally able to convince him that we could still have a good time just going out there and trying to call some birds and see what we can see and what kind of adventure we might be able to have. But he was so passionate about it, he was so excited about it. He wanted the real deal. So I convinced him we could still have a good time. We head

out there in the field. We worked our way down this field edge and I was like, all right, buddy, let's do a little uh, let's do a little crow call. And he said, well, day, can I can I do it? So I give him my crow call and he first tries to buzz on it's just kind of like zoo, and I tell him, you got to bite down a little more and push through a little more power from your lungs, and he does it again and gets a good,

you know, good baa. And then from the other side of this hill there's a gobble and it's not that far away. So we're both very excited. I'm so all right. Ever, we got to sneak to the tree line, and so

we go. We just turn and we've only got twenty yards maybe to get to the edge of these trees, and there's a hill between me and where I think this turkey is, and so we start cutting to that fence row when all of a sudden, bam, there's the turkey looking right at us, spins, turns away, runs off, and in my head I'm thinking, ah, we just blew it. We just ruined this experience that he was so excited about having. He must be so disappointed. I looked at

him and he's just smiling. He say, Dad, Dad, Dad, look at this. And I'm like, what do you be look at this? Aren't you upset about the turkey? And he points at the ground. He says, turkey poop. And he was so excited we saw turkey poop. He wasn't worried about the fact we just spooked this gobblerway. He was so excited there was some poop on the ground that he correctly, I'll mind you, or remind I'll inform you. Correctly,

he identified turkey poop on the ground. So we looked at the turkey poop, and then like a couple minutes later, we keep walking, say hey, Dad, you gotta look at this, you gotta look at this. I'm stressing about the fact we're not going to see the turkeys. And then there's this purple flower and he's staring at this turkey, this purple flower. And I am slowly as we go throughout this morning, realizing more and more that there's something more

going on here. Even then maybe he understands, or that I understand or expected, because we continue on. We continue our walk, and you know, we're hoping here turkey's gobbling. We're looking for turkeys. And then we see off from the pond and here goes a couple wood ducks flying off, and he can't believe it. There's ducks we just saw two ducks. And he runs over there to the water says,

what about frog's dad, there's probably frogs in here. And he's walking down this way and he's walking down this way and he's looking for frogs here, and he's looking for ducks there, and he's got this huge smile on his face. And then we finally just said, okay, we're gonna sit down and try to focus on turkeys for a minute. At least that's what I was thinking. I guess I'm thinking, Hey, we got to get down to

the job at hand here, so let's sit down. Let's wait for a second, stop scaring everything and try to see a turkey. So we sit down and I'm just kind of getting him settled into a spot on this tree next to me. He kind of leans up against my shoulder and I sit down there and finally take a deep breath, and then ever it looks over me he says, hey, Dad, you know, I really like to sit in one place if there's animals in front of us,

or if we're eating food. And I mean, that's there's something amazing about the the just incredible authentic honesty about a young child. He's five and I mean he's he's spot on that. That sounds about right. That's about the only time he'll sit in one place. Well. Fortunately I did have something I'll pulled out of my pocket too, Reese's eggs, these little chocolate and peanut butter filled half

eggs that you get for Easter. And I hand him one of those to him, and he just turns and he has this look on his face, just the only you know, only only a five year old or a six year old. There's this little kid that you love with all your heart, turns, looks me in the eye and says, thanks Dad, this is the best day ever. And then bam. Turkey gobbled off of the distance back

behind us. That that day, that moment, that morning, The whole thing from from his crying because he was so excited about one expectation to us spook and a bird when we finally went to him, not caring at all because he was so exceed about about the turkey poop from the flowers and the ducks and the frogs and the reeses for all of that. That is why I am raising hell for hunting and fishing and wildlife and wild places. That is why we spent a whole month

talking about this stuff. It's for days like that with my son Everett and his younger brother Colton. That's why I want there to be clean water, healthy wild landscapes. That's why I want there to be well managed public lands and populations of healthy fish and wildlife and birds and bugs and bees, a stable climate, clean air, the continued privilege and the right to hunt and fish and to explore these places. That's what I want for my boys. That's why I'm doing this. That's why we're here. Can

you relate? Do you have a son or a daughter? Do you want one someday? Do you have grandkids? What's the future you imagine for them? What's the future you want for them? Are you willing to fight for it? For the sake of today's episode, I'm going to assume that you are. I'm going to assume that if you are here and listening to this, if you've listened this far, I'm assuming that you are, just like I am, willing

to raise some hell to protect these things. And our guest today is going to help us better understand exactly how we can do that. The guy's name is and Long. He is a journalist and a writer who's appeared everywhere from Outdoor Life magazine to our very own mediator website. He's a professional conservationist and a communications strategist who's contributed to permanent conservation of This is pretty crazy. I need to figure out a way to quantify what I do

the way they've done here. But he has directly contributed to the conservation of more than one point five million acres of land. And he's the author of a terrific new book, The Hunter and Angler Field Guide to Raising Hell. And it's this, this very aptly titled book which we will be discussing today. We are going to dig into the nitty gritty of how we, as hunters and anglers can more effectively raise hell for the things we care

so much about. Now. If you are a part, or a leader, or a founder of a hunting or fishing or conservation organization, you're going to walk away today with some powerful new strategies for building a movement, for influencing change, for fighting for a cause, for rallying people to that cause.

But if you are just an individual out there who cares, who wants to make a difference on your own, you too will be armed with new tools and insights and specific actions you can take that I think will make you a more impactful individual and an advocate for hunting and fishing in wild places. You know, over the course of this whole last month, we've heard about many different

challenges facing all sorts of wildlife across the world. Today, we've learned about, you know, some of the specific things going on with white tails, which is our main focus usually on this podcast, the good and the bad. What's going on? What do we need to be thinking about? Most recently, we dove deep into the nuts and bolts of you know, what's probably going to be the most impactful conservation related piece of legislation to hit this entire year.

We've learned a lot, but learning something, hearing something, thinking about something, that's just a first step. It's all just happening up between our ears. It's nothing if it never ends up out of our heads and leading to something real in the world. And that real thing that you know, I think we got to hope that all this leads to that real thing is action, action, action, action action. We need to take action if we want to keep

our hunting traditions alive. We need to take action if we want them to be fish for our kids or grandkids to pull up out of the river of the lake someday. If we want our kids to be able to, you know, fall down crying because they want to go chase turkeys for real, we need to take action if we want to keep our forests and grasslands and swamps and mountains and all these places around for us to go hiker crossed or camp on or bike through, whatever it might be. Action is the name of the game.

It's the necessary final thing that has to come to life, and it can come to life in so many different forms. There are many many different ways we can take action and make a difference for all of these things we've talked about, but it requires a first step. Any kind of real change requires taking that first step. Any little thing does help, Every little thing does get that ball rolling. And I was just actually this past weekend with some folks who were doing that very thing. They were getting

the ball rolling. We are up north northern Michigan at an event that was a part of my working for Wildlife Tour. This is the second event of our series. This was in partnership with mucc A Terrific Michigan conservation organization, and there were dozens of people there, dozens and dozens and dozens of folks. I think it was their biggest volunteer habitat day ever, full of folks who love hunting and fishing and the outdoors, who were doing something good

with their hands right then and there. They were working for wildlife. We were building, in this case small game habitat. There were some cuttings going on to create new wildlife openings and maintain the edges, the kinds like edge feathering. There was a whole bunch of creating brush piles and rabbit habitat, small mammal habitat. This was great stuff for all sorts of critters, not just rabbits and squirrels and

shoot snakes, grouse, birds, deer, you name it. But more than just the actual on the ground impact we were making on that I don't know, twenty acres, thirty acres, fifty acres, whatever, that ripple effect is out from those actual places. I think what was extra exciting was this sense of building momentum. You could feel literally tangibly feel it when you talk to folks there, and I felt it myself when we were engaging with each other out

there doing something. You could feel this energy, You could feel the good vibes coming from taking some action. We were actually doing something that was helping. Who weren't just listening to somebody talk about how some critters disappearing or how there's this threat to our hunting rights in this state or that state. We weren't just hearing it and worrying about it. We were doing something that in some

small way was helping move the needle. And that that like switches some it moves some wires around in your head and it reconfigures what seems possible. And I think that action volunteering, you know, this past week, and I think that can lead to the next thing. It can kind of build you up, fortify you, refuel the tank for the next thing and the next thing where you know, maybe it's not building small inhabitat. Maybe that's just hate.

Some calls have got to be made. Or maybe the next time it is, hey, we need people to show up at this place and hold some signs, Or maybe the next time is you know what, I really got to tell all your friends and family that we got to get out and support x or y or Z. I really do see feel and believe in the power of taking that first step of action and then letting

it snowball on down the hill. That's why I hope you know more than anything else that after our chat today you will feel armed and ready and willing to do that, to take some kind of action, to start raising some hell. Because I love this stuff. I bet you do too. I bet you have not listened to me rant for seventeen minutes unless you love this stuff.

enjoying them. Let's just do the damn thing and keep the good times rolling, because that's our torch to bear.

we've got a pretty darn good because of them. So, but I all said, let's get to my chat with mister Ben Long, who is going to give us the knowledge and the tools necessary to do it. Here we go, all right here with me now on the show for the finale of Conservation Month is Ben Long. Ben, thank you so much for doing this.

and now Ben beat me to it. And then number two, I'm so glad that you Ben beat me to it because someone had to cover this topic in a book in a packaged way that someone could pick up and get a good idea from beginning to end of how to deal with these kinds of things, and I was too slow to move on it. So so thank you Ben for writing this book, The Field Guide to Raising Hell for Hunters and Anglers. It's a great read, so kudos.

So I've I think I have never added them up, but I've been involved in you know, had a front row CD and about twenty million acres of conservation and you know, and you know, don't mean to brag. I was just part of the campaign. You know, it's not like I did that all by myself. It's parts of ucky to be parts of those campaigns and have a view of how things worked and learned a lot along the way and learned about a lot of things that didn't work along the way. So I just wanted to

share that. So that's that's how I put it in the pages.

permanently fund the land of Water Conservation Fund. And I worked with a bunch of leaders in Washington, d C. A bunch of leaders from around the country from BHA, and you know, did my usual routine of teaching people how to create a message, how to speak to legislators, lawmakers, and one of the you know, I had a little one page handout and unbeknownst to me, one of the one of the leaders went back to Pennsylvania and used the same handout for convincing the legislator in Pennsylvania to

loosen up on the blue laws and to increase you know, hunting access now hunting opportunities by ending the Sunday Van on hunting and incrementally but made progress on that. And it, you know, it brought to mind that the fundamentals of this, the fundamentals of a good campaign work no matter what

you're trying to do. No matter whether you're trying to influence a local county commission or a local hunting and fishing or fishwats and parks commission, or whether you're trying to get a built through Congress, you know, the basics are just the same. And so I thought, well, let's just capture that and something that that people can can put in their pocket and and you know, you can read it on an airplane when you're flying someplace, you can read it on a commute, you can read it

in an evening, you can refresh it. It's just supposed to be accessible, and you know, just the fundamentals.

and C? Are you hoping that this becomes field guide for organizations to do a B or C. What what is it specifically that you're hoping comes out of this or what does that success look like?

and gun club or Ducks on Limit or whatever. And then there are people who do the people who like actually go to the meetings, who knock on the doors, who raise the money, who do that. And so I'm hoping that this book Field guid They're raising Hell speaks to all those people and like get more people inspired to join organizations. You get the watchers to join, gets the joiners to do, and gets the doers to be more effective and to win. And so it's definitely you

know that's kind of the niche. You know, it's definitely a niche audience, but it's this important one and I've seen over the years how you know, the hundred angler conservation voice is really what tips the scales in so many policy issues. I've just seen that happen so many times that you know, I'm a I'm a true believer that this star voice needs to be heard because we

have a lot of common sense. We have a lot of you know, boots in the mud kind of experiences that people, you know, the people in power trust and the people who want to make good decisions want to hear from. So just trying to make people, you know, spend less time crying in their beer and more time making real positive change.

But then another thing, I think and you tell me if you think this is true or not as well, but it seems like, you know, the other folks that might be trying to raise hell about the environment or a habitat issue or an animal wildlife issue, they might be folks who traditionally fall into that environmentalist camp that might be a little bit more left leaning, and so certainly those appeals would be heard by the left side of the aisle, but I think a lot of times

the right side of the aisle might ignore those folks completely. And on the flip side though, traditionally, and I'm overgeneralizing here, but traditionally the hunting and england community has that right side of the aisle ear has their ear a little

bit more. And if all of a sudden, folks are advocating for these environmental or habitat or wildlife related issues to folks in the left from the traditional environmental community, but then uniquely on the right from the hunting and fishing community, that becomes something you can't ignore any longer, I think, And that doesn't happen without us, would you? Is that is that a fair assessment?

We live in a time of history when when you know, everybody seems to be each other's throats, and everybody wants to say, oh, you know that those guys over there are wrong, they're bad from America and that's not going to go way but they But still even so, like seventy percent of the legislation that passes even these this day and age, has to have by parsonan support, I mean just just in the short term, just to get it over the just to get it done, and in

the long term, it's absolutely critical to have broad public support for any kind of conservation measure to be durable, to last over time. Right that this the social buy in, the social support. This is like hunting and fishing laws, right, the idea that the chance of you and I getting caught by game board it's a pretty slim. I can't remember the last time I saw a game warden in

the woods, you know, away from the truck. But we believe we have followed those laws basically because we understand them. We understand why they're good for us, we understand why you know that when people cheat on them, it hurts us. And so that kind of broad social understanding, the social buy in, in my opinion, is just as important as as you know, winning at the end of the day, because we happen to get more votes. But you have to,

you know, to create these policies. We do have to get the votes, and it's not going to be a good future if the things we care about are only the you know, the venue of one or the other political party. We have to you know, and then keeep, there are people on both sides of the party, in both sides of the aisle who are doing good conservation work today and they all need to be supported for that work. You know. A couple sessions are a couple

of episodes ago. You you interviewed my friend Doug Chadwick, and you know, Doug Shawk talked a lot about you know, kind of the big pictures and how a lot of these you know, around the world. You know, there's a lot of you know, the biodiversity crisis, and a lot of nature's in a lot of trouble getting crowded off the planet in a lot of places. But you'll look at America and you look at like, Okay, so across the across North America. A lot of bird species are

in a deep trouble. Grassland birds, for example, are in deep, deep trouble. Uh, stage grouse, say, you know, prairie grouse. You know, bubble links exists. All those are like on this steep, steep decline. But you look at what class of birds are doing very very well right now or doing relatively well right now, and it's waterfowl, you know, it's it's ducks and geese. And there's a reason for that, right The reason is hunters and anglers, mostly hunters and

duck hunters. You know, early on recognize the value of regulations, recognized the value of protecting wetlands, restoring wetlands. And you know those wetlands are still facing a lot of challenges, but we have an infrastructure for conserving them. We have things like the North American Wetland Conservation Act, We had the Clean Water Act, and you know, the duck hunters were absolutely critical to getting that happening. And we're seeing the real world effect isn't just like history. This is

like playing out now. This is the bright spot that you know, Doug talked a lot about how worldwide, you know, large carnivores are in dire straits and disappearing across the world. But when you look at the United States, you know, mountain lions are expanding their range, wolves are expanding their range, black bears are expanding their range, wolf rings are expanding the range. Why is that? That's because hunters and anglers set the table with the prey species. Right, you're not

going to have those predators. And maybe some some hunters wish we had fewer of them. But if you if you like you know, large charismatic megafauna like wolves and bears and lions, well you better be grateful that the hunters and anglers have set the table for them so

they can they can thrive. And so I think we do have that superpower you're talking about, and you know, we're seeing in real time the benefits of that, and I think we need to, you know, really celebrate that and tell those success stories because you know, the doom

and gloom does not motivate anybody. The things that motivate people are the idea, the empowerment that yeah, we make a difference and we do good things, and these little things we do like putting up a wood duck box, we do it enough, and we'll bring wood ducks back from extinction and make them. Uh so that's a story we need to tell it owns.

And you bring up a great point that we need to recognize, like what a success we have experienced over the last one hundred years bringing back so many of these animals, and recognize that, you know, right now, we have folks I think there's a lot of folks who are relatively young, you know, let's say, in their forties or younger, who have never known a Michigan or a Montana or a Georgia that wasn't filled to the brim with white tailed deer, that didn't have all sorts of

turkey hunting opportunities, that didn't have you know, great clean waters and terrific fishing opportunities. Like we are living in the golden days for a lot of these critters. And so I think sometimes if you're kind of stuck in your little silo, like if you're just living in Michigan or living in Montana doing your thing, hunting and fishing. You might be feeling like, man, things are great. I don't know why folks are worried. I don't know why

anyone needs to be raised in Hell. Because I'm seeing a ton of deer, I'm having great deer hunting. I've catching a lot of trout. And so there's this worry that if we don't remember the past and the hard work it took to get to where we are now,

we won't keep doing that hard work. But then also on the flip side, it's also easy to get focused on like your you know, you can get stuck in like my favorite species world and yeah, be so focused on how great it is for white tails right now that you completely ignore some of the other things you mentioned, like songbirds, like grassland birds, upland certain upland species. You know,

there are these things going on. So it's this tricky balancing act, it seems like, of appreciating what we have now, remembering how we got here, not being gloom and doom, but also recognizing that none of these things last forever, none of them are guaranteed unless we stay on it and keep raising Hell. Because even with the good work we're doing. We are seeing these problems in this spot, in this spot, in this spot. How do you balance

all that personally? For you, Ben, how do you deal with that kind of phenomena that I'm describing here?

is engagement. I mean, I think that if people get involved at whatever level, and I don't care what level people get involved in the outdoors, you know, it's it's a it's a lifelong process. It's an idea of like oh this, I you know, I enjoy white tail deer. I enjoy hunting white tail deer, enjoy watching white tail deer. I want to learn about white tail deer. Oh I didn't know that one hundred and fifty years ago, they were almost you know, there was they were almost extinct,

but there were very very few of them. Why was that? And then in my in my journey, you know, I educated myself on that, read about that, learned about that. That led me to other writers, That led me to other history books, other you know, that led me to conservation. And so I think that, you know, to me, like the most radical thing you can do, if and the most important thing you can do as a conservation is just get young people engaged. You know, I've volunteered for

the first time this year as a hunter. Education in structure is a great experience, and you know, I want to do that to you know, make sure kids have a safe experience, make sure we hunt on the US on the hunting legacy. But I also do it because

I know it's so important. What's so important for me to have time outdoors as a kid and as an adult, and so to me that the I don't people are going to explore this as their own journey and they're you know, and be interested in what interests them, and you know, if that leads them to you know, a deeper understanding of one species, whether it's ducks or whether it's white tails or whether it's you know, songbirds or whatever,

it leads them to so much the better. I mean, there's plenty of work to be out there for everybody. So I think, you know, to me, it's just like get people started on the right track and good things will happen. But it is, you know, I think if there's a there's a real I believe in like strategic optimism. I think that uh, you know, there's a you know, we're it's a scary time, but it's always been a scary time. Every generation has, you know, something looming over

over that. When I was a kid, you know, everybody is concerned about transcontinental ballistic missiles in nuclear war, you know, and now we have other concerns that are kind of rising to the top. And it's easy to let those things make us pessimistic or like cynical or like just say, oh, how with it? It's unfixable. And maybe it's a personality thing,

but I just can't live like that. I just believe I've seen that's like good people getting together make you know, make a huge difference, and not like heroes, not big rich people, not big powerful people, but just like every day, every day folks.

They are not here by chance. They're here because folks, that's like you or me and a whole bunch of our buddies and a whole about bunch of folks who cared about this stuff did something that's that's very encouraging to me. That's empowering to when I'm feeling ever doom and glow, I remember that.

You got to go and you know, tromp around and you know, smell what's going on and look at the changes. And I think that as soon as you get older, I mean you'll see those changes. And you know we all have. You know, change can be hard for anybody. But there's like changes I see. I mean I can just around here. It's you know, it's it's you know, I can see a lot of things have changed, like you know, like there weren't any wolves in Idaho when I was growing up. Now there's speak of and now

there's lots of them. So there's changes like that. But the habitat has changed so much, you know, so much of the land has been the winter range has been gobbled up with with subdivisions. The the weeds are much different, the forest fires are you know, changed it. And so you know, the changes will be in your face, you know. I think, I don't think just the times we live in, it's just like a very unstable time. So I think there's there's always gonna be things that people can get

engaged about. And some of them are really big and some of them are are not are more really local and you know, different people are different appetites and different levels for for grappling with however it is. But you know, I believe in making it fun. I believe in like, we're not going to do this if it's not rewarding, and winning is a lot more rewarding than losing. And that's that's what the Field Guide a help about it.

of related issues that are important to our community. That's you know, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, But right, we could maybe bucket the types of things we're talking here into something that might influence hunting and fishing opportunity, something that might influence wildlife populations in general, and something that might impact habitat. And so there's a whole bunch of different possible targets out there. You brought

it up. These are unstable times. There are plenty of things if you do them scroll enough, there will be plenty of things you can find to cause you to lay listlessly in bed at night and worry if you let yourself.

salmon in the steelhead that I grew up around. That's you know, that potentially is going to destroy sage grouse for example. You know, isn't that people that they just people care, but most people don't. Most people, you know, don't think about it all, don't know where their electricity comes from. And would rather, you know, save a few bucks at the gas pump or a few bucks on their electric bill, and and would write off a species or an ecosystem because of that and change our hunting

and fishing opportunities forever. It just because they're ignorant or because they just don't care. To me, that's the thing that It's like, I just want to like get people outside. I want to like grab them by the sort of collar, drag them out of their cars, drag them out of the city, and say, look at this, you know, look at this place. You know, how can we squander this freedom?

How can we squander this beauty? And I think most people don't want to, but they just they either feel they're they're overwhelmed with the you know, the basics of life, which I get it. They don't feel they feel like the system is rigged. And I get that too. I feel like that or they've just never been introduced to it. And so that's to me, that's the saddest thing of all, is just like people are just gonna just squander what we have as far as our freedom to to hunt

and fish, as far as the habitat, you know. To me, it's like the habitat is the foundation of it all, just because they'll we stopped to say no, no, we had a better vision.

mounting in defense. Yeah, I'm curious, first clarifying question of sorts would you find that or when you were when you're putting this together and you were developing these steps for success? Is this equally applicable to an individual and an organization?

The Field Guide focuses on, you know, policy, how to change policies, which are powerful, powerful things. But it's it's either,

it's it's both. It's like, we need to act as individuals, but we are social creatures and we are trying to change social structure, social norms, and that requires working with other people, whether you know it's an ad hoc a bunch of friends trying to do something for their local you know, the backyard, or whether it's you know, something larger that's you know, pushing a bigger agenda across with larger geography.

And then the middle of it is this the steps to successes, Like what is like the roadmap, right, like how do we get to where we want to get to and how do we get there? And this steps I mean, I've just like I said, over twenty twenty five years, this has really evolved. It's changed over those times.

But it's like these are the fundamentals. These are a real good way to think about it, and you know, the First, the first thing is is like deciding what you want right, And a lot of campaigns fail because the goal is just too amorphous, people want to do too much, or people don't have agreement of what they want to get done. They don't know what success looks like.

And so you know, dreaming is strategic, right, So like the first thing that any anything is like oftentimes is catalyzed around some a threat or a problem people see. But you know, but the biggest successes are you know, dreaming are like things that we want to see in the future. And so that's you know that. And if you if you haven't done that, if you don't know where you want to go, you're never going to know

when you get there. And so I often tell people like, imagine yourself sitting around a campfire in five years, you know, having beers with your buddies and say, wow, we did that. We really this is different and the world is different, our state is different, our county is different because we you know, because we cheat something and so what would that something be? Yeah, and so uh, you know, you can I guess. One example I'll use is and I touched on it at the beginning of the book it's

a real place here in in northwestern Montana. I call it Hubble Basin. In the book was really called Haskell Basin, and my buddy Steve Thompson and I have have used it for thirty years now. It's kind of mid elevation habitat. It's timberland. It's right next to a booming ski town. It's got you know, because it's you know, fairly early successional, but really well managed. Timberland is good for whitetails, just a really reliable place to find white tails. It's always

been open to hunting and fishing and trapping. It's it's just a it's it's also a habitat for grizzly bears, elk moose, black bear links. It's just it's just a really neat, rich piece of habitat. And it's like I said, it's like it's got the ski town that's just booming with a you know, big trophy homes, big no trespassing signs, big like I said, death by a thousand driveways, strip malls. You know, you can you can see all around what's

going to happen to this land and around here. A lot of the timber companies became real estate trusts and have been selling their land as real estate. And we knew, and Steve knew as a leader in this community, that this this land was going to be on the chopping block soon because everything around it was and it was going to get sold. It's going to get sold for you know, very high sk high scale what's the word. I'm looking for upper scale trophy homes, you know, seasonal

trophy homes. And we're gonna get locked out, and it was gonna lose a lot of havebat value and so you know, so that that came Steve's goal, and it turns out other people in the community had shared similar concerns. But the idea is how do we maintain what we've got. The goal would be we want this piece of ground to stay as you know, roughly as it is. Of course, change happens. You can't stop change. But we wanted to

remain open for hunting and fishing. We wanted to we wanted we wanted we want to be well managed, we want you know, to be to be taken care of. We want to we want to be a forest, not a subdivision. And so so that is the goal, right, That's what the goal wanted. I mean, that's what the what Steve wanted, and that's what his friends and I wanted and so did. So that was the important thing is to have that vision, you know, paint a picture of the world that you want, and then lead to people,

show a path to lead people to that world. That was the path we wanted was Haskell Basement remains in tim in private ownership, but in in production. Yeah, the working landscape. So that was the that's the first step.

you know, that's that's totally right. I mean, it's all the flock shooting, you know, is is is exactly what people tend to do with you know, they are They just have these kind of grandiose if we want to educate the public about the importance of hunting, fishing, or we want to you know, protect habitat and pass on our legacies, like Okay, that's all great, those are all great visions, but like, what does that look like in

the real world? Yeah, and people, you know, that's the number one reason all these campaigns, a lot of campaigns fail is because yeah, you know they they people don't know what they want.

your end goal? So you need that compass to always make sure you're pointed in the right direction. But then you also need a map, and the map gives you the actual step by step directions of how do you get to this place you're trying to go, Because if all you do is follow true North, you're gonna hit the canyon at one point and you're not gonna be

able to get across it. Or you're gonna hit a river and you're not going to realize there's actually a spot you could forward that river, you know, half a mile down. So the map is like, okay, what do I do next? What do I do next? Because I know this absolute destination and here's the right way to get to that destination. So you need these two things

and you need them to be explicit. And I think for any kind of campaign like this, any kind of whether it's a local you know, fishing hole that you're worried is going to get bought up and you know, become a pond of a trophy home, or if it's you know, just trying to participate in some larger issue that an organization is doing. I think thinking about this and helping, you know, talking to leadership or as you the leader, being very clear about defining that goal, defining

those steps. It just seems so so crucial.

one of them destroyed. I went on a I've saved up my money and went on a backcountry elkon, you know, hired out through with horses to go way back deep in the bob something I always wanted to do. And you know, there's Mulder up there too, and I'm like, you should, you know, try to tell my buddies to buy a mule tag. He's like, no, this is an Elkhon. You know, Mulder season will be open, but we are focusing on elk and you know, it's a lot like that.

It's easy to get kind of oh, I'll do this, but they need missed the whole point of the trip.

And so the key is, and it's really key and almost as key as knowing what you want to do, But it's like who matters, Who are the decision makers, Who are the people who have their hands on the levers of power, who have the who are going to make these changes? And that varies compared depending on what

you want. If you want to create a ballot initiative, which we did in one of my first campaigns was a state wide ballot initiative in Montana to reform enforcement for game farm reform, and we try to reform you know, the game farm industry in Montana. You know, we had it. We our goal was to pass a statewide initiative. In order to do that, you have to convince fifty of the voters that year plus one to vote your way, right, So our target audience in that case was everybody who's

going to vote in that election. I mean it's like two thousands and so that's a bit of you know, in the United States, if it's a larger election or a congressional thing, it's an even bigger scope. Right on the other hand, if like other campaigns I've worked on are like trying to get a county. You know, Montana, we have a lot of beautiful trout streams. People like to build their homes right next to the trout streams,

and a lot of counties have created setbacks. So like's created a rule that in this county you have to build your house so much so far away from from the stream. There's a lot of good benefits from that, you know, for trout habitat and all flood control and all sorts of things. But let's let's get a county

county zoning rule to pat to create this this this benefit. Well, in that case, your county commission is who you're trying to convince, and all you need is a majority of county commissions, and much of Montana and much of the country, county commissions are three people, so they have an enormous amount of influence in local communities. All you have to convince is two people that this is a good idea

and they have the power to make it happen. But everything else funneled out of who are we trying to talk to, Who do we need to to, Who do we need to convince? Who is the decider who has the power? Sometimes it's Congress and the President of United States. Sometimes it's you know, two people on the local county commission. But that's that's absolutely critical because then that forms everything else.

It's kind of like our opponents sometimes are the the guy with the laser beam and where the cats chasing them around. You're chasing a little red light around. You know. It is like you waste a ton of energy and a ton of time doing that, and it's just a waste of time to it's and it's disrespectful and it's just it's just it's just not a good idea. It's it's they spend a lot of your time trying to

convince somebody who's already made up their mind. Right. It's like I say, in the field, guys like it's like, you know, I'm not going to convince you to eat a lot of tofu or to give up venison for tofu. I may not convince somebody that, like, you know, it's fun to sit in in a tree, you know, on a cold November morning when nothing's happening. I might not convince them either. But if you're looking for the open minded people, your audience is like this spectrum is like,

you got your base of support. The people who know you, love you, will will follow you where you want to go. The people who are you know, who get it, who are inspired that. Those people are really important because you need those people to to do a lot of the hard work. But you also need the the the open minded people in a political contact often call that the

swing voter. So the people who did it's getting smaller and smaller in politics, but it's different in conservations, like the people who just haven't thought about it yet, who

just who who? Who? Who might be with you? It might be you know, might follow your way, might fall another way, depending on who who, Who's whose argument's best, who they feel most the inspired buyer compelled by and so those two people your base of support, and those kind of open minded people in the middle of the spectrum. Those are the people you need to spend time talking to the the people on you know, your dead set against that's just wasting your time.

find huckleberries in the summertime morel's in spring. But you know, it's a good it's a good close spot where you can go after work and you know, right in the book the but but not everybody cared about that, right, that's just you know, but so okay, So the goal they set was to create They talked to the timber. Timber company wanted to keep that that land in timber

production because they had a saw mill to feed. But they were under a enormous amount of an economic pressure to sell the land because the profits were just that's where the profits were. So they figured out, well, if they got some piece of land, they could keep their board their directors happy, if they got some compensation for it, and then they could put a conservation easement on it. They could own the land but basically sell the development right so it would never be developed to the city

of the local city there. So the goal was to create they have a local option tax, a local sales tax, and the goal was to create a local sales tax where the city would pay you know, everybody who shopped there would pitching a penny for every dollar to help support this conservation easement to basically pay the timber company so they could put it and it could afford to keep it to conservation easement and they could still use it. So that's the goal came about over a lot of time,

a lot of discussions. So what are the different reasons. So if you if you just got the deer hunters to support it, that's not enough to get us to that crisp that threshold of fifty percent plus one. We needed, we needed more people, and so what did other people care about? And that again is like the key of knowing your audience, and then the challenge is to put yourself in the audience's shoes and say, why would they care? So what what's the big deal? And for the timber company,

the big deal was that needed the timber supply. For the people who worked in the sawmill, and the people who sold you know, trucks to the logging companies, and the people who you know, the bankers and all that, they they are very interested in keeping that sawmill going.

The local municipitality was very interested because that watershed, that basin actually was the source of their drinking water for this entire little city which was going under a lot of growth pressure, and they just pure, pure clean water comes out of it. If they had to like create another water filtration system and develop another water source, that would cost taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. So you had these So you had the timber companies, You had

the the hunters and anglers. You had the other recreationists who you'd like to use this land for mountain biking, across country skiing. You had the timber companies, and you had the city and the local taxpayers, and they all had their own reasons for supporting this plan. But they're all different, they're all individual and they don't necessarily have

anything to do with anybody. But they developed the camp pain that wrapped their arms around all of those different viewpoints and they put it to the to the to the local voters, and the local voters support that proposal by like the first time they did it was like seventy percent, and then the second time they did it, it was eighty five percent of the voters supported to

tax themselves penny a dollar to protect this watershed. So that was a pretty cool example of like, you know, knowing what you want, knowing who has the power to make the decision, and then understanding how those people are thinking.

just need you. Just there's no other way that we have to to build alliances.

or to that commissioner, or to whatever. But if all of a sudden, you are hearing the same thing from this group, and then this different kind of group, and then this surprisingly new perspective of you know, from a different group of people. If all of a sudden, you're hearing from here, here, here, and here, it becomes really hard to ignore because one of those groups or some of those will be in one way or another influential to you. And what your personal goals are as this

decision to maker or whatever it might be. And I feel like this side, this coalition building step to success ties in really closely to the next one on your list, which is building and maintaining trust. I think those two things have to happen hand in hand to make it work.

Can you expand on that next one and how it kind of pairs with this, because if we're trying to build a group of people to address you know, this this issue, this challenge, whatever it is, you know, we have to build some cohesion within the group and then ultimately with that target audience too.

of He never underestimates the power Hunter's anglers. That is the side story we we worked in the Montana legislature this year, there were some some bills that would have handcuffed the local Fishing Game Agency, Fishwife and Parks from owning conservation eastmans, some you know, kind of small government Republicans thought, you know, physical conservatives that was like, why are we putting money into this? And so there there's the bills that were gonna gonna you know, really cripple

our ability to protect access through conservations. And the legislator who well, my local legislator said, you know, he voted for the he voted against the bill. Is bad bill. He voted against the bill, and he said, you know I would it was just up to me. I would support this bill, but the hunters and anglers, the hunters are against it, and I am too old about run

the hunters, so I got to vote with them. And so it was like, you know, he they had credible that he cared about about that constituency enough on its own. But in that case, we you know, again we like these conservation diseasements are hugely important. They're huge important, hugely important for for for ranchers, for who you know, and family farms and ranches are under a lot of stress in a lot of places. They're extremely important for the

timber industry. If the timberan trees can survive in Montana, these these easements are are key. And so we built this coalition of of you know, the people who came a support on our side on this was you know, Montana Docroad Association, Montena Woodroduct Association, Montena Logging Association, Rocking A Mount Elk Foundation, back countree hunters and anglers along with you know environmental groups like the Wild Montana, Montana Conservation Voters. All those kind of groups try to limit it,

you know. So we brought all these different groups together and that together they had the credibility. And it's like I couldn't say as a as a a conservationist, writer, hunter, and you know, I can't say, oh, this is important for the timber industry. You need the timber industry guy to say. They're the guy with the sawdust and and his you know on his shoulders, who like works in the woods and as you know, makes a payroll because he's cut in two by four us. We need that

guy to make that case. Nobody else can make that case for him, for her, And so you know, and and then and you have to have your facts right. We had that, We did the research. We we knew, you know, the how many acres, how many individual operators, whether there you know, AG operators or timber operators support these things. We knew how how many hunter angler days are used on these lands. You know, you get your facts right, but couch them in a larger story with compelling characters.

So we have credibility, but we don't want to blow it. And people do trust us, but but they don't you know, But we need.

that is dependent on what your communication strategy is. How you're going to speak to people about this, how you're going to reach them, how you're going to educate them or inspire them or activate them. There's there's so much.

course that mass media is changing all the time. You know, everything from email change to social media platforms to you know, old old school media media like newspapers and opas and letters of the editor. Does are all have a have a role, But it all comes back to where do where do my where do my deciders? Where's my audience? Where did they get their information? And so like I try to understand that, try to understand like where, so who do these people trust and where do that? What

what sources of information do they trust? And then go there and and you know, so that's the first thing is like personal communication is best. Meet people where they are, you know, don't try to meet them halfway. Understand their language, understand their their values, understands their hopes and fears, understand where they're coming from, and go there, you know, don't try to you know, if if people don't understand why this is so important, we have to explain why it's important.

Don't assume that they know what we're talking about. You know, use the kind of language that they can understand, and try to avoid you know, the kind of jargon, the kind of stuff that we can fall into.

It's so easy to not do this. Like I think it's very easy when you have an issue you care about and you're trying to advocate on behalf of it's so easy to want to like bulldoze everyone with your perspective and be like, here's this thing, and this is why it's so important to me, and this is how it's going to mess up my life, or this is how you can fix this thing in my life, and and and the person on the other side of that feel, you know, like you're running him over and why does

this matter to him or her? And I think one example where this probably plays out, and I think something that is really important for folks listening who want to try to start taking action, like this is like what we do and what we say when we talk to a congressman or woman, when we talk to one of our representatives, and we're if we're worried about an issue, we want to reach out and share our perspective. I think it's tempting to just be like, hey, Senator Danes,

I think that you are doing this thing wrong. Or this thing or this thing, and I think that you should do X, Y and Z because this matters to me, and that making that phone call or sending that email is better than nothing. But there might be a better way to do that, which is meeting this person where they are and recognizing what shared common values they have with you. So maybe thinking about is you just described like, Okay, what does Senator Danes say he cares about or what

does Senator Stabanaw say she cares about? And maybe let's say, well with Senator Stabanaw here in Michigan, let's say, all right, Debbie Stabinow, you have talked so much about how you support agricultural interests, and you talk about the importance of you know, helping folks on the ground, you know, with private land conservation and this thing and that thing. I've

heard you talk about this, it's in your platform. Well, let me tell you about this issue that directly impacts the well being of the farming and agricultural community and also supports private land conservation of wildlife in our state. And this is why the farm bill might be something that you know, you should be looking at. A B and C. You're speaking to speaking to someone about the

things they've already said they cared about. You're talking to them in their language, and all of a sudden, on the other end, they might be all to say, well to shoot, you know how, yeah, he or she's right, this does matter to me. And if that's a thing that matters to this other value I have, then I need to take this seriously and look at this. It just seems like a much more effective way to reach people, not pounding them over the head with what we think, but discussing about what.

bring me? And we hadn't we didn't have an answer to that question, like maybe a couple of I don't know, you know, And it was just like this and this conversation guy walked away and talk to somebody else. I mean, he was, he was just they are that they want to know how this represents, how this benefits their constituency. How can they bring this home and say, this is one thing I did for my constituency. My voters, you know, are concerned about the plight of family farms and ranches

in Montana. So by god, we got this provision in the farm bill that is going to or you know, this is going to help that, or they you know, got rid of this bad thing, you know whatever. They you got to be able to translate it back to their constituency. And so that's that's that's exactly right. Like think about It's like back at Haskell Basin again. You know, if we went to the city council and said, hey,

we need you to put millions of dollars. We're gonna tax a bunch of people because we really want our white tail to your spot protected, we would have gotten laughed out of the room who had never gotten in the room. But when we could go, hey, do you know where your water comes from? Do you knowed to how much that would cost to replace if you have

to replace that watershed? Have we got a parade for you to get ahead of you know, we got to you know, make it look like this is going to be a winner for you guys, you know, not like this is going to be something we want you to do, something so onerous for us. But this is going to make you popular. This is going to solve problems for you and your constituents. That's that's how you get people engaged, like so what you have to answer that question, so what?

And when the other thing is it's not all. The other thing people tend to do is dump a bunch of facts on people's heads, right. I remember the first came pain I go game farm reform campaign. I was, you know, I had been a journalist before that, and I got hired onto that campaign. And the first thing I did is write, we'll started writing white papers. You know, I like wrote white papers on game farms and chronic wasting disease. And like I had white paper. I had

a stack of white papers that like thoroughly research. And the guy who was the leader of the campaign, Doug Mitchell I learned a lot from you know, took them all and said thank you very much for this hard work, and like put them on the corner of the desk. They stayed there. He says, Remember, he's got to speak to the heart first, it's the head second. And a

lot of us are like trained a certain way. You know, we're trained to produce an essay and layout facts and here's the here's the data, here's the counter data, here's the conclusion. You know, we're taught to think that way. And you know, but that's not how people generally think. That's not what people People are motivated by their hearts by.

I'm not just talking about like, you know, exploitably, you know, pushing hot emotional hotbuns, but by understanding that people want to engage from uh, from the place of their values, from the place of their emotions, and that's where that's where, you know, you have to get people to open the door for the even will consider the facts. And that's just that's just human psychology. We need to know as part of meeting people where they are.

And and there's a lot of truth to that. Now, you can you can use facts and threats and tactics and different things to build that story. But if there's not a narrative, if there's not the connective tissue of emotion that tie or values that tie into that, it's really hard to get someone to actually care and do something.

them stories. And it always follows that same arc, you know, like here's a problem, here's the rising, you know, the plot, the rising, drama, the characters, the setting, all that there. And you know, not every culture has you know, peer reviewed our journals. Not every culture has bar charts or

Iambic Pintamodra. But every single culture has stories. So we you know, that's part of a good campaign has a good story, and you let your audience become part of that story, invite them to be a hero in that story, and that's that's a hugely powerful thing.

you're trying to get your friends and family to rally around this thing. Can you walk me through your your formula for that message.

And you need to hear that all the time. And political walky talk it's like you know, are they on message or off message? And the idea is like you have something used to say and you want to get it across and you need to repeat it over and over again. And so basically the components you have to answer the question of so what why does this matter? And that's that's that's like the opening, like the bridge

to you to this person. I mean, I I like the example I use is like, uh, somebody came and knocked on my door the other day because this is a long time ago now, but knocked on my door, opened the door and they said, hello, you have did

you have? You look like you have kids and there's toys all over the front or yes I And he said and it looks like that do your Uh did you know that the kids in the neighborhood walking to school like because of this new subdivision, we have so much more traffic on the street, and then that the kid and the kids are almost getting hit on their way to school. So no, I didn't know that. I said, well, we want to have a crossing guard at this intersection.

So that sounds like a good idea, And will you please call the school board and call the city council to make sure we get that crossing guard. Here's the number to call. Absolutely happy to do it. Thank you, goodbye. That kind of exchanged. Okay, that message had that all the elements. It started out speaking to heart first, to core values. That is, you know, my family, right, what what we the week? That's something we will go to

the wall force and thing we care deeply about. You know, there are things like that freedom, our community, our family, o, our prosperity. You know, those are the kind of like what's the what, what's what matters here? Right? Opening with that, the second thing is what's the problem we're trying to solve. What's the threat? It has to be clear, it has to be understandable, and a certainly I could understand more traffic going down the street, and so you know that's

the that's the problem I can relate to. I've seen it. I not I have thought about it, but it's something that makes sense to me. Then it's like okay, so what do we do about it? Well, we have a solution again, a common sense solution that's easy to understand. We're gonna put across the guard. It works, works all over the town. We just need one here. And then what are we going? Okay, great idea, what do you

want me to do about it? We want you to call the city council, call the school board and make sure it happens, which are easy for me to do. Happy, happy to help. So had all those four components of the values, the problem or the threat to those values, the solutions, how we're going to fix the problem, and then the the ask, the empowerment, like what what can I do about it? And if you don't have all

those four components, you don't have a message. And you need to go back to the drawing board and think it through. And it just again take it through from the perspective of your audience and that that's that's the those that's the component of a message. It's and you know, so do anyway that's that's that that works. And if you don't have them all, it doesn't work.

calling out each one of those things is powerful. Like that little formula right there, I might get it tattooed on my arm, ben because because it's so important.

tailor it for the audience. A lot of groups in a particularly kind of waste, these classic environmental groups, you know, have a have a habit of over emphasizing the threat of like pounding the drama of like, you know, and it kind of becomes the sky is falling kind of thing. It's like, yeah, yeah, people just tune it out. Yeah yeah, we know there's those sorts of bad things in the world. But what do you want me to do it. It's like, so you have this, people over emphasize the threat and

underemphasize the solution. It's like, no, we have you know, and we don't have to solve the whole problem all at once. We're not going to solve all of the biodiversity crisis at once, but by god, we can protect this habitat, and that habitat is important. You know. We may not clean up the entire Mississippi River of uh, you know, runoff and pollution, but we can protect this stream, we can protect this this headwater, we can connect this stream to that stream, and so you know, make it,

make it less overwhelming, make it, make it solvable. So that solution. I I really think it's important that we spend more time emphasizing solutions in less time, you know, drumming bad news into people's heads.

to get war out by these things. But it's funny you mentioned the same thing, and Jim Poswitz mentions the same thing, and you cite one of his essays in your book. And I talked to Randy Newberg about this recently. He mentioned the same thing, and and it's this importance of of hope. You cannot effectively advocate or communicate about any of these things unless you also can can bring hope to the table.

But that again, that gets back to the superpower of hunters and angles is you know we've done this ship, you know, we were in the you know, the bottom of the ninth on so many species and we you know, and we lost some, but we have showed how, you know, if you protect habitat, if you you know, get some manners about how you treat these creatures, we can win. And that is you know, that that was you know, poss I don't know if you never knew pause, but

you know that's just his personality too. He was just a glowing, optimistic person and he just it was just a jolly fight for him every time. I'm sure in private moments that wasn't the case, but that's he just ex he just he just kind of bubbled with like, yeah, we can, We've done it, people have done it. Here's a story. I'll tell you how somebody did it. Here. You know, this is what really matters.

hunt and fish and ignore everyone around me. And unfortunately that might be therapeutic to ignore everything that's going on around and not do anything about it, but it's it's not going to lead to a practical outcome that's going to be good for in the future either.

an opt out. This is like I don't have to work hard, I don't have to think about it because this is you know, and we all you know, we're all born to our point in history. We have no control over that. But I do believe the best is yet to come.

one hundred, one hundred and thirty years ago. And now it's it's our turn, you know, we I think I think there's something powerful in your identity and as a hunter and angler, we can proudly point back to our

history of doing these things. People just like us, our grandparents, the folks who lived in our community ten years ago, fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, the people that did this kind of stuff, cared about these kinds of things, stood up, they raised hell, they acted, they did something about it. And we have these amazing wild places and wild critters and hunting and fishing opportunities today only because of that, And we are the same people. We've got

that same DNA, we've got that same culture. We are those people now that I really hope fifty years from now people will be telling stories about us. And I think it's true. I think it can happen.

Robbie Roosevelt was. Yeah, you've heard the story about rob Roosevelt. Right, It's like Teddy's uncle who was kind of a philanderer and kind of a playboy and not really very well respected, but he took Teddy fishing, and he took Teddy birdwatching. When Teddy Roosevelt was a little boy and got Teddy Roosevelt interested in the outdoors and went on to become this,

you know whatever. It was, conservation giant, President, Meglo Mayac, all those things that Teddy Roosevelt was, But none of it would happen if if Uncle Robbie hadn't taken him out fishing. And so it's not always the big it's not always the the big powerful people who are important. I mean, they are important, we need them, but it's you never know, you never know how these things we do are going to play out and how they can

like have huge benefits for for generations to come. You know, that's just that's just beyond our ability to conceive sometimes, and to me, that's a hopeful thing. Yeah.

There's a certain amount of work to it, there's a certain amount of drudgery to it, but my gosh, when it works and you can sit back and say, hey, you know, this place would be totally different, this little piece of nature, this mountain range. And I've worked on like six million acre projects up in the High Arctic.

I've worked on one square mile projects in the outskirts of Los Angeles, and you know, it's you're making a difference for people in the long run, no matter where you are, what scale you're working on, and it's a damn cool.

of any kind. It's going to require more than just being good at shooting stuff or scouting or casting a line or set in the hook. That's all great and good, and it's fun, and it's what gets us fired up and out there. But none of it, none of these six hundred and fifty some podcasts I've done in here, none of it's possible unless we have the resource, the places, the deer, the creatures, the opportunities, the privileges, And none of that is guaranteed. We are owed none of it.

We've got to fight for it. So let's raise some hell, let's do some good work. Let's have a good time until next time. Let's stay wired to hunt.