Bear Grease - Ep. 220: Render - Dan Gates and Existential Threats on Hunting

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Today on the Bear Grease Render, Clay Newcomb is joined by Da n Gates from Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management as they discuss the proposed state Mountain Lion Hunting Ban and the implications for hunters and wildlife management far beyond the state of Colorado. savethehuntcolorado.com Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. So we've got Dan Gates with us from the group Coloradoans for responsible wildlife management.

You bet. Good to have you, Dan. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it very much. Man, this is going to be a unique episode. Yes, it is. Render crew is slim. Dan, we usually have seven or eight.

Not you, Josh. I was going to say, I haven't eaten today. We usually have five or six people and kind of shoot the bull, but, but, uh, You came down from Colorado, which I really appreciated. So I wanted to dedicate a lot of space for you to talk about what we're going to talk about. Appreciate it. But I want to give you a little, or I just want to tell a little bit about my story with coming into an understanding of the anti-hunting movement and just the general trend of the culture. that kind of was a shell shock for me.

So in 2013, I acquired Bear Honey magazine. I had done some regional stuff in Arkansas with bears and was just kind of tiptoeing around in the space. But in Arkansas, there was like zero pushback in any way. I had heard about anti-hunting stuff just in magazines or wherever, and it just felt like something that wasn't real. And it almost felt like fear mongering, you know, just like, oh, that's never going to happen here. And again, I had this very regional mentality.

There's a lot of people like that. Yeah, and this would have been 15 years ago. And when I got Bear Honey magazine and was all of a sudden exposed to the broader issues that the different states have with Bear Hunting, it was just, just like, bam, it just came down all at once. And I realized that there's a massive amount of opposition to bear hunting in this country, to mountain line hunting, predator hunting, hunting in general, but specifically predators. You know, that seems to be the point of the spear. Yep. And it was, it really was a life-changing deal for me because this thing, it was just this like naivety of something that I was so passionate about and loved and just, you know, a part of

my culture. I knew the science behind it, the conservation, the North American model story. It's like, it made sense. It was as if I thought everybody on planet Earth was looking through the same lenses that I was to view this thing that I loved. And then all of a sudden it's like, now this thing that you loved is really in jeopardy. Yeah. And it really did change.

the course of my world in that through Bear Honey magazine we started really started talking about bear honey really started trying to build the doctrines that could stand against opposition and one thing that we did was I wanted to and it was relevant at the time and still would be relevant but given people really the ammunition and words to combat and the and not that we're in like a physical combat or even even a verbal combat but just giving people the doctrine to understand the justification in the rationale behind why we do what we do and in 10 years ago it was much less than it is now I think in the hunting space today people are more aware but I say all that to say I love what you're doing and I'm very glad that there's people like you

that are for a living, doing what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Why don't you just give us an update about what's going on in Colorado, just a general elevator pitch of what's going on? Well, Colorado's been under such turmoil and an attack and assault since the current governor has taken office in 2018. And I'm not saying we didn't have our problems before. We have. But since 2018, he and his husband have, have, you know, set the tone and narrative for

animal rights extremism. And they're getting to a point to where they've been catapulted to another level because they've been able to appoint people and other people been elected. And they've been able to set the tone and narrative for their agenda. And their agenda, in my mind, is to alter wildlife management in the sense and the such that hunters and anglers and trappers are not the primary funding source and that they become less and less relevant when it comes to science-based wildlife management. And it's obvious by the appointments that they've made, the strategies that they've employed and looking at the things that we're dealing with right now, while they weren't necessarily,

at least on the forefront, avid supporter. of this Mountain Lion, Bobcat, and Links ballot initiative this week, as we speak, matter of fact, I think it's this evening on June 4th. And so if people want to go back and look at it, there's a webinar that will be online that the first gentleman, Marlon Reese, will be on along with the supporters of the initiative, 91, to ban the harvest of mountain lions and bobcats and links, along with Carol Baskins for the Tiger King,

along with Wayne Puselli, the former CEO of, of HSUS, who's now running the Animal Welfare Institute for a Humane Economy, along with Pat Craig, the Wildlife Sanctuary owner there in Denver, and along with Samantha Brueger, who is the campaign manager for Cats Aren't Trophies. They're on a webinar tonight to turn around and do a fundraising deal. And so now that the first gentleman has stepped into this specific arena, he's always sat on the periphery, but you can see that political aspirations of individuals jump into a mode of we are going to take it and we're going to take it all no matter what. And it has to do with Mount Lions and Bobcats right now.

And it has to do with links and language. But for anybody that doesn't know, I mean, links are federally protected in the lower 48. They can't be harvested. But we're going to make it doubly illegal to harvest one just because it'll be written in statute if this passes. So they're in the process of gathering signatures. They got until July 5th to be able to do so. we have fought diligently to the tune of multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to this specific position that we're at. And we're kind of in a holding pattern and have been for about the last 135 days or so of them gathering signatures and us doing a decline to sign campaign, raising funds, raising awareness, and trying to defeat what we consider to be the evil that, you know, I mean, their goal is to stop, not just lions and bobcats.

their goal is to stop wildlife management as we know it. And I say this, and we can get into this, Clay, but the statutory definition of what they're trying to impose, if people read it, if they read the language, yeah, it'll get rid of harvest the mountain lions and bobcats. But the statutory definition will change and alter the way wildlife has managed in Colorado in the West and potentially in the United States

because of what the statutory definition of their trophy hunting will be and it is actually the definition of hunting. What's their definition of trophy hunting? To intentionally kill, wounds, stalk, pursuit, and trap a mountain liner bobcat. To intentionally kill, I don't know anybody that intentionally wounds anything, but to intentionally kill, stalk, and pursue, that's their definition of trophy hunting. And people need to really pay attention. I don't care if you want to talk about squirrels in Arkansas or turkeys in Minnesota or big horn sheep in Montana.

if you put a statutory definition of trophy hunting, which is not set anywhere in the United States, the statutory definition of trophy hunting is intentionally killing, stalking, or pursuing? Well, you tell me where they're not going to be able to go with that because it's not regulatory, it's statutory, and it's easy for other states. What does that where it mean?

Well, the statutory side of it means that it's done by the people or done by a governing body like the legislature, as opposed to a regulatory side of things where it's done with the Parks and Wildlife Commission in our instance. Yeah. So you and I would get a chance to go talk to the commission and present our case. On the legislative side, you would be able to do that as well, but not in the same form or fashion. On the ballot side of it, it's up to the people to decide.

And if the people decide, it's a lot harder to turn around and try to reverse or alter or modify it or adapt to it in any way, shape, or form. I've got to say something about the phrase trophy hunting and people people that have listened to this podcast have heard me talk about this and I'm not telling you this Dan you know what I'm about saying but if somebody if somebody talks to you about trophy hunting the truth of it is the deep history in North America and this is a statement that could be controversial and cause a big question mark to the average person, but we'll walk through it because we can. Because you can. The trophy hunting saved North American wildlife, you know, and it, it took us away from a market hunting mentality and escorted us into a sport hunting mentality and assigned value to older age males, took the emphasis off the females and the young, and put it on older age males that had already contributed to the gene pool. And the Boone and Crocket Club in 1889 when they were formed and created a scoring system

that gave value to older age male animals, which is the prime animal to take out of a population. They're an indicator animal. If you have older age males, it means your populations are strong, typically. And so we transitioned from this market hunting culture, which was detrimental. Like, I mean, you know, 150 years ago, the market hunters and the market hunters and the, North America were doing stuff that was completely unsustainable and not something that we get behind. At a rapid pace.

I mean, yeah, like North American Wildlife was in range of being extinct. It needs to be emphasized that that was primarily done for a food source for Western expansion on a large scale. And that's the argument that the opposition doesn't throw in there. They act like that we were willy-nilly out there shooting stuff for the hell of it. No, there was a food source that they were providing to Western expansion. Right. I mean, it just, it's not even, it's not even comparing apples to apples. No.

It's, it's comparing, you know, a TV dinner to, to an apple. How do you like that analogy, Josh? Yeah, that's not. I was just trying to think of something completely different. But, but if you, if, if me or you, or if anybody were standing in a court of law, and there was a judge from another planet who was righteous and just, and you brought up trophy hunting, we would win the argument. Every time. I mean, we would win.

Like, if the, if the playing fields were equal and there was the right amount of time, and we could talk about the whole model and the success of these animals and how targeting a very, really a very small number. I mean, like, how many mountain lines are being legally harvested in Colorado? Well, that's the interesting thing is, for instance, last year there was over 2,500 mountain lion licenses that were sold, which there's a testing process to be able to acquire that. there was 486 lions that were harvested during the actual harvestable season. That's not human health and safety or conflict resolution and stuff. That's just the hunting part of it.

That's a 19% success. 486 lions were harvested through a regulated management system in the state of Colorado last year. Yeah. And that number is probably the number that they would need to be. This is just a guess. Tell me if this is about right, probably. Kind of like in California when they ban mountain. line hunting now the state is euthanizing

basically as many lines as they were taken out for sport hunting. And I mean, do you think that would happen? I think it might not happen immediately, but it would become more and more of a regular occurrence for federal or state wildlife officers to be able to take things out of the food chain, out of the, out of the, off the landscape. Now, the kicker is, and I want to emphasize,

from our argument that that's not harvest. That's conflict resolution. Harvest goes along with science-based wildlife management. Those other numbers that have to do with human health and safety and depredation and protection of livestock and private property and stuff, whether it's bears, lions, or even wolves that we're discussing in Colorado as we speak, those don't have anything to do with the harvest objectives, the models, the data, the statistics. Yeah.

And so what they've done in California is they've pedestalized mountain lions and then turn around and bastardize the people that go in there that are on a government paycheck to be able to harvest, you know, kill those lions and take them off the landscape. And so I think in Colorado, that's probably the thing that would happen. The bad thing in Colorado is you would see the deer and elk population start to deplete in some capacity. It would decrease in certain areas more than other areas. And now that we've got wolves on the ground. Oh, because of wolves. And you got wolves, do you got bears and you got lions? More lions are going to eat more deer and elk.

Yeah. And so then my opinion is, a lot of our opinion, is that the less ungulates that you have, the less hunters that you need, we all talk about this in our podcast and everything else we do. The less hunters that you need, the less dollars that you need, the less dollars that you need, I mean, it's a trickle-down effect. And lions become pedestalized, wolves become pedestalized, black bears become pedestalized. and I think that we could all agree from our side of the fence that nothing should be more pedestalized than any one of the other game species or any other species of wildlife. But if they ban the harvest of Mount Lions,

and they ban the harvest of bobcats, the species that they depend on are going to see ill effects in some capacity, which then you look at the hunting side of it from a from a consumptive use side i'm part of the ecosystem you're part of the ecosystem they the opposition doesn't consider us to be part of the ecosystem you and i are we've paid in to turn around and make sure that we have what we have so they the antis can have that as well the only reason they've got something to bick about is because we're out there being able to do it and fund it if we weren't there they wouldn't have anything to b'b about the deer and elk side of it

the studies that have been done in the western United States over the course of the last 30 years when it comes to Mount Lions have proven the fact that lions can be detrimental to deer and elk populations. I'm a conservationist, a huntervationist, and I believe that what the science shows, especially with 5.9 million people on the ground in Colorado and 84 million visitors, I believe that there needs to be a sustainable offtake based upon the science. And I think that the antis don't give a rat's butt about the science. They don't care about the facts, the data, the statistics, except for their statistic is zero on everything. They don't want anything to be harvested for any reason. And I think that that's where we're going to get into an argument over the course of the next five months in this is what we say is right. What they say is wrong. Hopefully the general public is smart enough to realize that the facts or the facts, and they're proven by the science-based experts with any agency there.

Man, this is also, I think the biggest message that we can send out to people, and this is what we started talking about 10 years ago in just our little magazine, was that your problem in Colorado is my problem in Alabama or in New York, or if you're a hunter. and it seems like it's not. That's the tricky part of this is it seems like mountain lines aren't that big a deal to me. I've never mountain line hunted in Colorado.

But it is an existential threat. It is. It really is. You see this painting up here? I'm pointing up on my ceiling. Yeah. So, Dad, that is a painting of an English fox.

hunt. So like there's about 20 running walkers and there's these men on horseback and there's kids and they're in this little, you know, beautiful little village. And when I saw that in an antique store I envisioned

like what a painting might look like that was about my life and my time a hundred years from now. You know, like, and maybe we had our squirrel dogs and mules and our shotguns and our kids and our wives

and this is like this beautiful scene that is like perfect. And then 100 years later, that painting of me on my mules is in an antique store because it doesn't exist anymore. And so I put that painting on the ceiling because that scene in Europe is basically gone. Now, I've said this before, and I had some people that rode in and were like,

hey, there are fox hunts, and there's a little bit of it going on in Europe today. But a wild fox hunt is basically non-existent. It's extinct. And again, the existential threat of this, and it's not just this. I mean, we're focusing on Colorado, but it's everywhere. It's happened everywhere. You guys have just been like a great voice, and you're a great spokesman. And so, I mean, like, we're focusing on Colorado, and it's no doubt major.

But there's all kind of major stuff going on. But, I mean, if we don't do something different, my kids, our kids will live in a very different world. And I think we're at a, as critical a time as Roosevelt was back in the late 1800s, when the market hunters were about to cause the extinction of North-Mond. American wildlife. We're at as critical a time. And I, man, I think about it. I pray about it. I truly like, it's like what mentality shift, what insight, what thing has the shift in the hunting community for us to be able to withstand this cultural movement? Because it's, you know, I'm just externalizing what I'm thinking, Dan,

and I'm looking for your feedback. But the political, the typical, the typical political weapons today, which this is a political fight, but it's also an ideological fight, is this like fist fight that you see on like mainstream media news. And I don't think we're going to win in a political fist fight, but we've got, that's where we're at. it feels like there needs to be like this broader shift in the hunting community that ultimately unifies the small number of people that we really are compared to other big groups and just if we

just were able to truly unify every rabbit hunter, squirrel hunter, deer hunter, turkey hunter, quail hunter to be interested in all the components of the North American system and mobilize us. And I'm talking to myself too because, I mean, you know, like being memberships into these organizations that protect hunting and being charitable, giving money, given time, you know, being willing to stand up for stuff. It's hard to get people to do stuff. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine. because it's easy to use. I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut.

I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts. at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers

who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. It's hard to get people to be motivated about something that they don't feel that is a significant threat. And until the devil's at the doorstep, and I did a Go Hunt podcast with those guys out there. my wife and I on our anniversary a couple weeks ago,

and I made a comment, and it's gotten a lot of, you know, buy-in online. But I said, I said that when you get kicked between the legs, you know, you should have gotten a jockstrap and a cup before then,

not afterwards. And that's what we've done from the sportsman society. I mean, the organizations that we are all members of, and I've said this a hundred times, I've done, this is my 66 podcast since January 1st. Wow.

And we're riding the coattails of all you guys to be able to turn around a half. help get the message out because we have the opportunity to set the tone in the narrative community-wise in the United States. It just so happens that Colorado has become the epicenter because of the gubernatorial administration that we've got. But, you know, California has already fallen off the face of the earth. Washington and Oregon under such assault, but our director for Colorado Parks and Wildlife came from Washington. The gal who's run of the Cats aren't trophies campaign to ban the harvest of Mount Lines and Bob Gets came from

Washington. What they do is they plant their seed, they get what they want, they build an organized effort, and then they move into another location. I'm the president for the Colorado Trappers and Predator Hunters Association as well, and have been for the last 12 years, and I was vice president before that. We lost trapping by ballot initiative on a constitutional amendment in 1996. So we could use cages, or we could use a 30-day exemption permit and utilize foothold traps, body gripping devices or cable restraint devices with a permit on private. property only for protection of private property or livestock depredation, period. The wildlife control business that I have, I can utilize those tools.

But you as an individual, you can't. You can't do that, even on your own private property there. It's a constitutional amendment. 1992, they banned the harvest of bears in the spring with baits. Cut the spring hunt out. Yeah, no baits, no hounds. So they did that in 92, 96, they did the trapping deal with the constitutional. constitutional amendment. In 2020, they brought wolves in through public opinion, which they just

put them on the ground in December of 23. Our concern is not just legislative, but the ballot box biology mentality that's starting to take effect. And how they're doing that is they're stacking the deck on game commissions throughout the country by appointments, which most of them are. If they can't get what they want done there, then they move to the General Assembly, to the legislature. And if they can't do that, then they go to the ballot. We've beaten these guys back in 2019, 20, 21, and 22, four consecutive years at the Game Commission, Parks and Wildlife Commission, and the General Assembly. We beat them back with this governor's particular appointments and the election process that we've got. The only option they had was to turn around and go to the ballot. People that I know in Idaho,

15 years ago, when I was vice president of the Colorado Trappers and Predator Hunters, said, well, we don't have to worry about that in Idaho. We don't have to worry about any of that. COVID hit, and people started mass exodus out of California, Washington, and Oregon moving into Idaho. And I got guys in Idaho going, boy, sure it changed awful quick. I mean, holy crap. There's a lot of things that didn't happen here.

New Mexico, for instance, who would have thought that the General Assembly in New Mexico would have banned trapping on public land unless you're Native American? They did that last year. New Mexico told me for 15 years out. We're oblivious to that. We're impervious to that. We don't have to worry about any of that. No matter what they did,

and the National Trappers Association, furtakers of America, all came out in force. You look at the states that are losing little chinks in the armor in some capacity over the course of the last 10 years and how that has grown so exponentially, to the point to where now people that didn't do what we're doing now

are starting to wonder how they do it to prop up something. in some capacity that is relevant when the time comes that they have to. If they haven't lost anything, they've seen the attempts to try to lose anything. Nebraska's got issues going on. North Dakota's got issues going on. Utah's going to have some really big issues going on. Arizona's got issues.

We've got people that are reaching out to us at all levels throughout the United States. And I do want to give kudos to people because we've taken contributions in for this effort from all 50 states, individuals, entities, businesses, organizations from all 50 states, six Canadian provinces for foreign countries that see how important it is that if we lose this because of the statutory definition, some of them aren't even concerned about Mount Lions and Bobcats. They're smart enough to realize that you can take Mount Lions and Bobcats out and put Big Horn Sheeper Squirrels in there if you want to, or if the opposition wants to. They see the value, so they're trying to figure out a way

to set up and prop up an organization like what we've created, a 501c4. All the groups that we've got are C3s. We have some C6s and C7s, but they can't do what a C4 can. Rocky Mountain Elk, Rocky Mountain Big Horn, wild sheep, unless they have a C4 arm of what they've got, what they, what does that allow you to do? So the C4 allows you to turn around and do political advocacy and education. If you do a C3, you're limited on what you can contribute, and you're B. B. Shere limited on what you can turn around and engage in. That's a tax issue that's way above my pay grade. Yeah. So Rocky Mountain Elk, for instance, has contributed to our efforts in this case from the education side. But they can't do it on their own as a C3 because they can only do a certain

percentage, like I think it's up to 10% of what their gross expenditures would be for political advocacy. We stop a thing. An organization that's got 200,000 plus members that operates in 48 or 50 states that has federal representation with the American Wildlife Conservation Partnership, they can't do any more than 10%. Well, that sounds like a lot until you divvy it up between 50 states and 100 different issues. So there's not much that can turn around and go to each one of those general causes. If we got attacked in 12 states consecutively, at the same time, there's no way, shape, or form that we could defend any of that nationally. I'm not talking to our organization. I'm talking about all of us collectively because of the C3 status. We are all members

of those organizations. We all pay our dues. We all get our magazines. We all turn around and do banquets and fundraisers. But that does not go to the fight of where we constantly look back and we need a jockstrap and a cup because they are going to continually come at us at every level that they possibly can. When we started this organization seven years ago, we knew that we were going to have to deal with something politically with this gubernatorial administration if they got elected because of their animal rights extremist background and mentality. Our current governor was a federal congressman. In 2020, there was a book that started the playbook.

The book was written and it's called The Blueprint. They planned their action in Colorado 24 years ago. And it has built up to this culmination in 2018 when they took office and where we're it's at now and they've got two more years in. Animal rights extremism is not the only thing on the agenda, but everything from a conservative, consumptive use, resourceful, logistical component of what we do for science-based wildlife management is under attack. And every other liberally-minded individual in this country is watching what has happened in Colorado to see where they can turn around on pounce and what they can do to strive to get, accomplish what they're trying to do. And our community

needs to wake up wholeheartedly, whether they're a lion hunter or whether they're a turkey hunter, whether they're a tarpun fisherman, or whether they turn around and harvest crabs on the East Coast, like Luke McFadden that you did read last week, every single aspect of what we do is under attack. And while somebody doesn't think it is, while they're turn around and nitpicking and grabbing this and that and everything else,

they start to take away things that is low-hanging fruit, when they get done with the low-hanging fruit, they just don't move to something else. They go to the next level of low-hanging fruit. That's another level higher in the tree. And I've said this often. They've said this. The opposition has said this.

The reason they went after Bobcats and Mountainlands is because it was the low-hanging fruit. Yeah. They wanted to cut the branch off. They want to cut the tree down. Then they want to go into the forest. Period. We just happen to be the lowest-hanging fruit right now.

But there's a lot of things out there that are a lot lower. If you look at numbers of species, you look at numbers of participants. I mentioned this at the Rocky Mountain Big Horn Society Banquet in early May. There's less mountain goat, big horn sheep, and moose hunters in the state of Colorado than there is mountain lion hunters. And the antisar consider us to be the low-hanging fruit.

They get rid of Mount Lion hunters, who's they going to go after? Yeah. That's a good point. They can easily say, you know what, big horn sheep are sure majestic and beautiful? That's our state animal. Why are we killing our state animal?

Tris Zornio in the Colorado Sun. last year said, why are we killing our state animal? Why are big horn sheep any different than Mount lions? Wow. That sets the tone and narrative. Man, as soon as this gets to an ungulate, it's going to really blow some people's minds because it feels like, it feels like the low-hanging fruit right now is predators. Yeah, because it's easy. As soon as it goes to an elk somewhere or, you know, a sheep or a goat, then it's going to be like, wait a minute, you can't take that from us, but they could. They could. And in theory,

you know, that, I forget who said it or, or what the exact terminology of verbiage was, but, you know, when they came, when they came to get the Coon hunters, for instance, you know, I sat idle. When they came to get the bear hunters, I sat idle. And when they came to get the bow hunters, I sat idle.

And now that they're coming to me, there's nobody turn around and help me. It's because everybody else was already done. Yeah. And I think that we are in a, we are in a tipping point in national wildlife conservation that our community is starting to see what is going on. I mean, I just did an event on Sunday or Saturday in Colorado Springs, and it was for the Western Hunt Fest,

and a guide to plants here was running the thing. I don't know, 150 bohuners. Young big strapping, I never been running into so many big guys in my life. I mean, you know, big tattoos and tan bodies and, you know, wearing every flipping brand of, you know, Khafaru and Sitka and Stone Glacier and Kew, clothing you could get. And I'm thinking, I wouldn't want to armlessly any of these guys, let alone have them turn around and track me out.

But these guys are starting to see because they didn't think it was part of their fight. They're starting to see. Well, they keep talking about archery. They keep talking about moose. They keep talking about predators. How's that going to affect me or my kid? Because those guys are coming up and they have young kids that they're wanting to engage in the outdoors.

you have to have some buy-in to be able to turn around and defend what you strive to adhere to. And I think that we're starting to see, look, I'm the old guy in the bunch. I'm 60 years old for Crown Out Loud. I've gone through all these trials and tribulations. I don't want to see them take anything else away. But we have to have some buy-in from our community to say, hey, I live in New Hampshire. I'm willing to support you guys in Colorado. And then when the time comes and we're victorious there, the guys in Kansas and Colorado say,

hey, we need to be able to support the guys in Arizona. You know, I'm going to tie something back to something we talked about a couple of weeks ago. We did a podcast on, it was on the Coon Supper, the Gillette Coon Supper. And it's a long story, but the... I saw that. Well, it was... But the point of the podcast, we talked about this unique Wild Game Supper. That's a big political event.

But the real story was about how it brings this community together. And I interviewed this author, Tim P. Carney, who's an expert on social capital. And social capital being basically our investment in the relationships around us, from like civic engagement to neighbors and family and all this. And basically, America's been on a decline since the 1960s and so in civic engagement. Like in the 1960s was the peak of American civic engagement. people wanting to be members of organizations, people willing to serve inside of volunteer activities. And since then, it has been on a decline. And it's at the lowest it's ever been.

And I thought that was, that's relevant. And I made the statement in my podcast that my dad, who's 75, he was kind of coming into his own in the 1960s. And he was involved in everything. He was in the Kwanis Club, a deacon at the church. He was just super involved in the community. I came around and I was much less in like I didn't want to join stuff. I was just less interested in that. And Tim Carney was basically like, I mean, he's like, you were a product of your generation,

which I thought was something I just came up with on my own. Like I didn't want to be a member of something. Well, it's coming back to Biden. now in that we're trying to get the hunting community basically civically engaged you know interested in the wider community bigger than their own little world and so we're we're fighting against the trend of the culture in a way because we're trying I'm thinking about action steps like what do we need people to do

and the answer feels like at least in part is we need people we need every last one of us to have their finger on this thing in involvement, which typically involves giving money. It involves being a knowledgeable spokesman in the circles that you have. I mean, when you think about it, there's only so much we can do. Like, and I think of it in like different segments, but I want to ask you, like, what do we do? You know, like in a broader scale, like, how do we stop, not just in Colorado, but what we do. But here's some things we do, is that in our sphere of influence, our relational sphere of influence is the main place that we have access to people that we could actually change

their minds. And I mean, we've got to be evangelists. And I think people are way better at that than they used to be. But people have got to have the knowledge base of the North American model. knowledge of the actual assault that's going on. And I mean, just be willing to talk about it, share it. You know where we lost ground, though, is, and I get into this conversation a lot because people are asking us, well, I live in Arkansas, what can I do?

Well, outside of educating your peers and your congregation and your coworkers and stuff, not just about what's going on in Colorado, because there's a lot of razorbacks that turn around and go to Colorado and hunt. You know, they have interest. That was a good local touchpoint thing. We'll pull that out. Well, you know, I could talk to talk. Sometimes I can't walk the walk.

But I told the kid the other day, I said, well, if you ever decided to start an organization called the Washingtonians for Colorado for responsible wildlife management? And he goes, what the a was a Washingtonian? I'm like, I think that's you. And he goes, but we have the opportunity to communicate on a broader scale. what we've ever had in history. However, the average person that I deal with on a regular basis says, I don't have the time. And so there was a couple of individuals that I went back,

and it took a little bit of time to figure this out. And when I hit him up, this is an extenuating circumstance, but when I hit him up and I said, you know, about a month ago, you told me you didn't have the time. I went back and looked at your one post deal that you do on one, on one forum. You did 1,300 posts last year on one forum. 1,300 posts, that's over, that's over four a day. And you don't have a time to write to your legislator or to go to a commission meeting or to do a three-minute testimony.

You sat online at one day. I don't know how many other forums you got. Maybe there's dozens. I don't know. But when you have time to do 1,300 posts because you can do it off your phone, if you don't turn around and have the time to talk to your legislator or your commissioner or to show up to a rally at the Capitol for Sportsman's Day when we have three or four or five hundred people, or to go to a commission meeting when they're voting on to take away or alter exactly what you do. If you don't have the time to do that, what difference does it make what you do online?

Because those people aren't making the decisions. We need to get engaged with the decision makers that are doing all the things on behalf of somebody. But more oftenly, they're turning around and effect in our lifestyle and our personal perspectives on what we do for natural resource, management, stewardship, and consumptive use. if I didn't elect somebody, I need them to know more. If I didn't vote for them, I need them to know more about why they should vote a specific way, that I'm a business person, I'm a constituent in their district. I need them to understand what I do, who I am, and why I do it.

If I didn't elect them, they need to know more. If I elected them, then they probably know in some capacity that I'm for them one way or another. But, you know, we're so divided country-wise, you know, most of the things that we look at. If you get into blue states, like Colorado, for instance, there's a lot of 50-50s that go on there. You know, 51 to 49, 53 to 47. I mean, it's hardly ever 80 to 20. Yeah. You get into a solid blue county or maybe a solid red city or whatever. Maybe it'll be higher or lower on one side or the other. But we're pretty much 50-50. I mean, look what our presidential election this year is going to be. You know, it's not going to be 73 to 27. It's probably

going to be somewhere. It was good math. I couldn't have done that in my head. I'd have picked an even number. I'd have picked a even number. It's pretty sharp. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. because out here there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We have the ability to change and alter the course of decisions. and making processes if we show up. Just because it's these small margins. Yeah. We just need a few more people to show up. People are griping and complaining in Colorado, but well, we lost wolves. We're going to lose mountain lions. We lost 51.9% to 41.9% voted against.

Yes. That's it. 51.9%. That's a slim margin. I mean, that means you only have to turn around and change one and a half percent. And you would have won. That's what we're. banking on here. If they do get signatures to get this on the ballot, we're hoping that the

buyer's remorse of the Wolf issue of 2020 will come around, plus the education campaign that we're doing, which is four to six times the amount of what the anti-wolf campaign did, we've raised more money, we've got more boots on the ground, we've got more outreach, community-wide, nationwide, more support, more people. Getting the message out to the non-hunter is the most important thing that we could possibly do, outside of getting the message out to elected officials when it's appropriate to do that. Elected officials, people tell me all the time, I'm going to write my congressman, I'm going to write my legislator. Good, you should, but it's not going to affect this because we've already gotten through those stages that we were successful

on. You know, write them, but they can't make the decision up on this because this is going to have to do with the general public, the ballot. We need to do every single step that we could possibly do all through the process. We wanted the commission. We wanted the general assembly through the legislature. This is their only other option is to go. to the ballot we need to win here. How can anybody do that? If you don't live there, donate. Help us fund the effort to talk to that middle of the road, non-hunting public.

That way we can set the tone of narrative. If we beat them legislatively and we already beat them at the commission and we beat them at this ballot, where else do they go? They have to start off from scratch somewhere. They're going to go to New Mexico. They're going to come to Arkansas because they're not going to want to do it in Colorado again because they got beaten. Every single level.

So what's the strategy in the next, let's see, the timeline is in July, you will know if they got enough votes or enough signatures to get it on the ballot. And now, to clarify, not every state has a ballot initiative process. 26 states do. Okay, this is important. So 26 states, a citizen group could get enough signatures to get some. something before. The general public. Yeah.

And some of that, depending on what state it is, like this in here, this will be a statutory initiative. So we could go back and attempt to try to reverse it. But if we can't stop it, how the . . . you're going to go back and reverse it? I mean, the millions of dollars that are having to be needed to go into this campaign to stop it, we'd need three times out of money to go back and try to reverse it. Then you have the constitutional amendment side, which is what they did on trapping in 96. higher threshold, much higher bar for them to be able to cross, but they did it then because of the

smoke and mirrors campaign that they were able to turn around and impose on the general public. And we had 2.9 million people in the state at that time. Wow. Now we got 5.9 million people. So what's the play? Like what's the strategy now if it's already, yeah, it's beyond, I mean, it's it's come down to them getting signatures, which do we think they're going to get them? Well, that's interesting because, and not to give a longer explanation, but they were doing volunteer signatures until about three weeks ago. And then they went to a paid campaign.

And that doesn't mean that they're paying you for a signature. That means they have a firm going out standing in front of Whole Foods and Walmart paying to hit people up and get signatures from them. So they went from volunteer, which they found to be somewhat ineffective, to a paid campaign. Now they've got two firms that they hired. And as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, tonight, they're having the big rally to turn around and try to get the enthusiasm built up, the optimism built up to say, we can get this across the finish line. We just need some more money and we need some more support so we can hire some more groups to be able to turn around and go out and get more signatures. So they're needing more signatures as of right now. As of right now, they need more signatures.

Now, I'll say that they need 124,238 signatures to get it on the ballot. Where does that number come from? That's from 2% of each one of the districts of the last election for the Secretary of State. So it might be different next year for $126,500, or might be less dependent. But what they need is probably $170,000 to be able to turn around and have qualified signatures to get to that $124. Because you're going to have ineligible, you're going to have unlegible, you're going to have people that signed it that weren't registered voters, just wanted to get the way from the signature circulator or that they put the wrong information down

or they put county as opposed to country or country as opposed to county so those don't qualify so they need about 170 180 to get to the qualified number they put out an email here last night or the night before which would have been a second or third of june and they said they needed around 40 000 signatures we don't know if that's 40 000 to get to the 170 or 80 or the 40 000 to get to the 124. But they are doing a last minute push. Right. Because they know that if they don't give the signatures now, they can't run a ballot next year in 25 because we can only do taxes on 25. They could do it in 26, but that wouldn't be a good year to do it because Governor Polis has term limited and you'll have two new gubernatorial candidates coming out. They're not

going to want to turn around and start dealing with wildlife ballot initiatives then. And it wouldn't be favorable to the opposition. So there's this chess match that's being played at multiple levels. but to your point, Clay, the states that have these things available to them, the organizations on our side of the fence need to take the appropriate measures and have provisions to be preemptive. Because just because somebody didn't turn around and try to ban squirrel hunting, or better yet, the use of dogs for squirrel hunting. Yeah, that's what they would do. Because they're utilizing that now. They don't want us to use dogs in the harvest and the mountain lines of bobcats. if you read the statutory definition because of the measure,

they'll take dogs out, but they take electronic collars and training and tracking devices out. Where does that stop on waterfowl, upland bird, stock dogs, coon dogs, rabbit dogs, coyote dogs, whatever. Doesn't matter because of the statutory precedent. It's easy to say Colorado did this, or in Colorado, it's easy to say, well, we did it on Mount Lines and Bobcats, let's take pheasant dogs away. Let's take waterfowl dogs away.

those are the stepping stones that they get to and that's where I talk about preemptive strike on our side our groups better figure out a way holistically straight across the board throughout the United States prepare your defense for the inevitable is that two years from now or five years from now or ten years from now but you better build an armament up because they're coming to your state I'm going to start an organization national organization called

you can pry my hunting dogs out of my cold dead hands. That's going to be the name of it. And it be an acronym. Why you can't, Y, C. I tell you, you know,

you mentioned about as soon as they get in ungulates, there's a legislator that is in Colorado that is kicking around running legislation. And this is, this is conversation on the landscape. That if this passes, it'll set the tone and narrative that they say the people have spoken. Well, that's what they've been saying since the wolves have been put back in the state.

The people have spoken. They want to run a bill. And the language that I've seen floated is eat it or leave it. They want you to be able to force you to eat whatever you harvest or you don't turn around and harvest it. Coyotes, bobcats, prairie dogs, whatever. Okay. Okay, okay. That will turn around and decide who's the big boys and who's sitting on the porch with the dogs.

Because I think the archers would have a conibption fit. I think the sheep hunters would have a conipion fit. I think the moose hunters would have a conemption fit. Yeah, they eat what they harvest, but there's a lot of guys out there that you want to turn around and talk about a lot of the other stuff that we harvest, fur-bearing animals, for instance. Some of that gets salvage for consumption. A lot of it doesn't. I mean, I don't want to eat a fox.

I don't want to eat a coyote. I'm not on the alone show. I mean, I'd eat it if I had to. But, hey, I harvested 400 coyotes last year on damage permits. I'm not going to eat 400 coyotes. I mean, the mentality is whatever they can throw across the finish line to get their point across, as long as it resonates with the general public to get it passed, as long as it resonates with other legislators to get it past,

they don't care what the repercussions or amifications are. It seems like it has nothing to do with management or conservation. It has to do almost like with feelings. Exactly. It's emotion. Yeah, it's an emotional response to wildlife. Darren, how did you, this is kind of a personal question. How did you get into all this?

You're such a good communicator when you're on podcast. We always want to just talk to you about, the, you know, like all the stuff, you know, that we're talking about. But I hadn't heard anything much about you. What's been your journey to get where you're at? Well, if you go back from the beginning, I mean, I recently, it's interesting because a few guys are starting to ask that question now. And Brady Miller with Go Hunt, I was, you know, I told you we were on there.

And my wife got a chance. And I would encourage people to listen to that because my wife was on that podcast with Oh, that's cool. And she got to explain a little bit about our background and our existence together. We've been married 36 years and we've been together with 38. I've transformed her into our lifestyle that she's been a very intimate and integral part of. And so when I was a kid, I grew up in a taxidermy shop. I started working in the taxidermy shop when I was 12 years old.

I grew up around hunting guides and trappers. Where'd you grow up? Colorado Springs. I was born in Missouri, the show me state, but we moved. We moved out to Colorado to the Centennial State in 1975. Okay. And I started working to the taxidermy shop in 76. But I grew up around game wardens, old school guys, hunting guides, houndsmen, taxidermists, and fur buyers and trappers and Western artists.

And it kind of set, it kind of set this aura around what I wanted to be and how I wanted to do it. Sure. And I listen to a listen to that podcast with Luke that you did. And he read a book when he was a kid about this kid with a boat and his dad built him a boat or whatever. Yeah. Well, it's funny because if we all go back to our history in some capacity, what sparked us? Was it a person? Was it an event?

Was it an interaction or something? And I read this book called Give Your Heart to the Hawks by Winford Blevins. And it was about mountain men. It was about the expansion of the West and the fur trappers and the beaver trade. and these individualism, you know, individual guys that were out there living off the land and, you know, fighting for survival every single day. Well, I didn't have that sort of upbringing, but I was skinning raccoons in a welding booth and shop class in high school, and I was building cannons and muzzleloaders. And, you know, I started guiding hunts, started doing Mountain Man rendezvouses,

and I was doing Indian markets and selling hides and furs and sort of. skulls and when my wife and I got together, you know, we started a wildlife control business that we still run today. We operated a trade and post for mere 30 years. And it was a trading post. You brought your hides and furs in and traded for goods just like the olden days. Yeah. And the wildlife control business took this to the level that we're at now. We do, when I say wildlife control, people said, well, you trap raccoons and skunks? We do, but we do a lot of commercial stuff, a lot of industrial stuff, Department of Defense, public utilities and infrastructure, school districts, water treatment facilities, and some dam mitigation, some bird strike

programs at small airports. And it's human animal conflict resolution is what it is. It started out where you went out and put a cage trap and catch somebody, you know, skunk underneath their ports. And it grew, you know, it's hard to quantify to people that when you're in a state with 3 million people that grows to 6 million people, but the habitat doesn't get any bigger. It actually gets smaller. And the wildlife resources that are there have more interaction with people. And yeah, it's not all lethal. Yeah, it's not all lethal.

Some of it's had habitat modification and exclusion and prevention, some of its translocation. But a lot of it is lethal because you just can't take something out of somewhere and put it in some foreign place. I had a discussion with a gal one time, and she says, well, I just don't understand why you just can't take it somewhere. I said, ma'am, you've been griping about this for the last five months. Now it's December, and now you're having this Christmas gathering, and you want me to take this family of squirrels and put them where in the middle of December? Their food storage is here, their house is here. Everything they know is in your attic, and you live in a subdivision. If I take them and put them somewhere, they're going to starve to death.

They're going to die. It'd be like me grabbing you in the middle of the night in your nightgown and taking you to East Chicago. Chicago and put you down there and say, yeah, I didn't want you where you're at. Yeah, good luck. And she looked at me and she says, I just don't like talking to you, but do what you have to do. I mean, we got to where we're at by human interaction. We are in their houses. We're in their businesses.

We understand the concept of conflict resolution, which then in turn plays into wildlife management. And I'll be point blank. I mean, I'm a sportsman. I'm a trapper. And I do kill a lot of stuff. And I do help in management of wildlife. And I believe that where we are at now, to your point, Clay, is similar to where Roosevelt was 125 years ago. Only this time, instead of more individualism, it needs to be more community-based.

It needs to be more centric to what are values and ethics and more. morals are like. I think that we owe it to those individuals like Roosevelt and to the Audubon's and the Hornadais and the Pinchos and all these other guys. I think we owe it to them to turn around and stand up and prop up the North American model of wildlife conservation. I think we owe it to guys of our time like Shane Mahoney and Valerius Geist that have gone out on a wing with, you know, things like the Wild Harvest Initiative and conservation visions.

if they don't know if anybody doesn't know that you ought to look it up and find out what it is because the world is changing and it's changing faster than we as a community changes and we either have to adapt and i'm not saying negotiate or compromise but we better figure out a way to take the time that is necessary that if we have that much time to put that many post out about what we do online we better figure out about a way to get engaged where the action happens with the people that make the decisions just like they did 125 years ago. And I think there's an opportunity for us to do this. And I think that if we're victorious in Colorado

with this and the other ballot measures that we have going this year that we haven't discussed yet, I think if we're victorious, we will set the tone and narrative for success and victory and making sure that we plant our flag in the sand. It's good. I like it. Now you want to talk about the other ballot initiatives real quick?

Man, that's good. That's good. Because we've got a fur ban that's in Denver. It's a city and county of Denver fur ban ballot initiative. There's a slaughterhouse ban. There's an excise tax on firearms and ammunition on top of the federal side for Pittman Robertson. The fur ban, if I said fur ban, you think, well, they're going to ban the sale of fur. It's cowboy hats, fishing lures, Native American crafts, anything with wild fur.

Oh, wow. The National Western Stock Show would be under attack and assault. You wouldn't be able to buy a cowboy hat in the city and county of Denver. Because a beaver felt. Because a beaver felt. You wouldn't be able to buy fishing lures or fly lures

at Baspro or any one of the fly fishing shops in the city or county of Denver because it's used with wild fur. The Denver March Powwow, the Denver Indian market where 300 different nations of Indians that come together would not be able to sell unless they sell it to a Native American

for spiritual reasons, but they wouldn't be able to sell to you or I or anybody else that wasn't of indigenous background. Wow. The mentality of Colorado has changed to the point to where the slaughterhouse deal, they're trying to get rid of our food with the fur and the cowboy hats are trying to get rid of the fiber and the utilization and natural resources. Then you look at the wildlife side of things,

the hunting and consumptive use management side, Mount Mines and Bobcats. That sort of thing at all three levels is not just centric to Colorado. It's happening in every state in some. capacity, whether it's in a municipality, throughout the state, throughout different species, methods of take or season structures, people need to wake up and smell the roses. Just because it doesn't affect you doesn't mean it's not going to affect you. It's depressing, isn't it?

You want me to leave now? You know, it is, and when you kind of, we live in so many ways in the golden era. a pretty golden era of hunting. I mean, we've got more white-tailed deer than we've ever had. Turkeys are kind of on a decline, but really, turkey hunting is pretty darn good in a lot of places. Black bears, there's more black bears than North America today than there's been in the last hundred years.

I mean, you can just go through it, and there's so much that's going on that's good. It's easy for us to get locked into. that and not see you know not generations ahead but like very near i mean it's kind of weird we're in a weird time because there's there's so much good but there's also so much existential threat at the door and yeah we've just got to have this fundamental change in the hunting community where we're just all very active where the where the world just knows i mean really honestly kind of like the like the Like the way the NRA and the gun world has done, I mean, like politically, it's like, man, you better be careful if you start messing with guns.

Because you are going to get hit hard. We need that with hunting. Well, and the lies and deceit from the opposition are so easily spread toward the unknowing public, including the sportsman side. You know, if I never hunt a mountain lion, what do I know about Mount lions? But as an example, when they talk about trying to ban the harvest of mountain lions because they're going to become extinct, in 1965, mountain lions in the state of Colorado were a nuisance. They were a pest. There was no management. You could shoot at will.

1965, they became a big game animal. Since 1965 to now, through regulated hunting, through studies and harvest and objectives and models and data, we've got over 5,000 mountain lions. People want 10 or 20 or 30,000. well, I don't know how you're going to continually feed that stuff when you've got wolves and bears on the landscape. Because I still consider myself to be part of the ecosystem. But when you go from 200, from an unregulated species to a big game species that sportsmen said that we should do. And 55 years later, you're at 5,000. And then the antis are saying that they're going to take it away because you're going to create extinction or extirpation.

How do those numbers line up? It's us given the facts. Okay. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has the facts and has the data and it's on their website. But they're not allowed to convey that because the governor says don't because they work for the governor. You get a new governor, maybe that'll change. But the facts don't change. The statistics don't change. The data doesn't change. We have to figure out a way that our organizations, community-wide, need to be the voice of reason. Our organizations need to be talking to the general public.

All the acronym groups that I mention that I'm a member of, some of them are partners in this fight, but they can all be partners in the overall fight of messaging to the general public. They don't have to keep talking to us as members. We know. We shouldn't have to be talking to the sportsmen and women except for the fundraising side. But we need to be talking to the general public. Because as we are on this side for 10 or 15% of the sportsmen community and the anti's or 5 or 10 or 15% on the other side, there's roughly 70% in the middle that they're not hunter or anti-hunter.

But they could be one or the other, depending on who gets to them. You see what they do on the opposite side. They're talking to them through the ASPCA and the Humane Society commercials and all the stuff around Christmas and Thanksgiving and send $19 a month. Why don't we do that? We can turn around and do the same thing and have that money organized in a central effort to advertise and educate and inform the general public about science-based. wildlife management and conservation and the success story of the last 125 years.

We don't. We haven't. And I think that that's one of our downfalls. And if we don't figure out a way to fix it in the next three to five years, we're going to see that 20 years from now, probably when I'm dead and gone, but you guys will still have to deal with it. But 20 years from now, you're going to see a change in of mentality because we didn't talk to that middle 70%.

We didn't talk about who funds it, who supplies the conservation side of it, and they benefit off of it whether they get involved or not. The non-hunter does. They benefit of every dollar that spent conservation-wise whether they hunt fish or not, just knowing that the fact that it's regulated, the species are abundant, they're appropriately taken care of, that habitat is enhanced. We need to tell our story. We don't need to tell our story to each other. We do a really good job of that. We need to talk to that middle of the road. And that's why we're in the position we're at in Colorado is because we haven't been doing that for the last 30 years since we started losing trap in bear hunting. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails

premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do we do that? Because as somebody in the outdoor space, you know, I often think that talking to those middle people, the people, the undecided people,

really just kind of like analyze all the media that's going on. And I'm not just saying this because it's the company I work for, but I do work for them. I feel like Meat Eater has bridged the gap to non-hunters really well in the messaging. But I don't know. How do we do that? I mean, how do we, because, yeah, so much of the output in terms of media,

which is the way primarily people are going to end the non-hunting public because they're non-hunters because they don't have a connection to a hunter. Their dad wasn't a hunter. Their grandpa wasn't. They don't know. So they're connecting with this media. And much of our media is built for hunters. So, you know, that's a whole other story.

But, like, I guess that's my biggest question is how do we influence the culture? Well, of course, they're, yeah, I'm older. So when I was a kid, we had four channels on television. And every Sunday night, mutual at Omaha's Wild Kingdom. You watched it because that was there. Now you got 1,900 channels and 75 different networks and you can do Hulu and Netflix and you can skip over commercials and do whatever. You can do whatever you want to at any single level. And I think that we probably have gotten to a point to where we have so much information available to us.

We don't utilize it to the best benefit that we possibly have because the choices are so broad. and our attention span is so minuscule. I think you have to force feed what people benefit off of to them. You have to show them just how significantly important what you do is in their behalf. How do you do that? I think that we could collectively, organizationally, I don't care what species. I'm talking about conservation as a whole. Whether that's 30-second spots, 15-second social media spots,

or maybe it's just buying 22 minutes of television time at different locations and different reasons collectively, organizationally, uniformly throughout the country to turn around and say we're going to specifically target sectors of the community of the population for the message of conservation and responsible wildlife management. We don't do that. We don't talk to any of them. We expect that we're going to have a banquet or a fundraiser or a convention. And those non-hunters miraculously are just going to show up and become intimately

knowledgeable and informed about what we do. No, we talk to the choir. I mean, I've been invited through the course of the last five months now over this stuff. You know, wild sheep, safari club, shot show, Western Hunt Expo, different banquets and get-togethers and fundraisers. I don't think there's any non-hunters there. So my message is not going to the non-hunter. That's what we'll end up doing with the money that we get from the hunters to be able to talk to the non-hunters. to be able to talk to the non-hunter once this ballot initiative really takes off if they get the signatures. And once we start kicking butt in August, September, October, up until the November 5th election date.

But when I'm talking to people, I'm talking to all of us. Yeah. But every organization that is working with us is talking to all of us, too. And I think that how we get and bridge that gap, I'm not a social media guru, and I'm not a road scholar when it comes to network television and advertising and stuff. That's what's so hard because it's, I mean, to make compelling media is incredibly difficult. I mean, and... But everybody wants wildlife.

Everybody wants wildlife. Non-hunter, hunter, anti-hunter. They all want the same thing. It's just how do they get to it? The non-hunter doesn't know. The hunter knows, but doesn't tell it. The anti-hunter doesn't care what the story is. They just turn around and want to fluff it up with a bunch of bad stuff.

You know, our story, when you think about the components and the architecture of a good story, that anybody would be interested in, the story of the North American model of wildlife conservation and the success of wildlife and the preservation of wildlife habitat on this continent, is it astonishing story? Oh, God. I mean, because the best stories, like,

even if you had no interest in wildlife or hunting, I mean, the best stories are ones that start you off this direction and then flip the script and just bring you to a place you never thought you were going to be. And I mean, it's like our story is wild in that, in that, you know, this continent full of wildlife and then market hunting and then how actually opening up access to the average individual person giving, giving incentive for the common person to be able to buy license and hunt and then, you know, turning it into an emphasis on.

on older age males and regulation and how that translated into this success. It'd be a wild story. It'd be a wild movie. You know, and because it's your neck of the woods, a lot closer than my neck of the woods, the wonders of wildlife museum. Oh.

In Springfield, yeah. I mean, you know, Johnny Morris did such a phenomenal job in his people, in my mind. But it'd be curious to see how many people go through that that don't hunt or fish. Yeah. I mean, they're at Bass Pro. You know.

True. But I mean, how many don't? Is it 20% or is it 65%? Because there's an opportunity there that educate in that one setting the non-hunter. But if they're overwhelming 77% hunters and 23% non-hunters, what would it do? There is with that math again. Yeah, I know. You know, I bet there's more non-hunters than you think going through there because imagine a family and, you know, the dad's a hunter and he's got his cousin with him or this or this.

Yeah, I bet there's a lot of knowledge. Yeah. But what I'm getting at is how do we magnify that component, that tool exponentially, whether it's social media-wise, or to draw that interest in of the conservation success story? You know, I look at how simplistic life was, even though I wasn't there. I mean, 125 years ago during the Roosevelt era, you know, the making of the West of the, of the, the end of the last century. Yeah.

How hard was it for them to get the message across? I mean, it's not like they had telephone communication. They didn't have internet. They weren't watching Netflix or Hulu. You couldn't turn around and find, you know, information spontaneously or instantaneously. I mean, it took three, four, or five weeks to get something accomplished and get, now we do it in seconds. I mean, something happens in Ukraine. You know about it, you know, in rapid speed.

If the stock market crashes or it goes up, you know about it as it does it. We didn't know any of that stuff. We have the ability, in my mind, to communicate real time of success of what is going on in conservation. And we're talking about how to try to get the information out about a 125-year success story when people have attention span of like 0.7 seconds online. And I think you find what interests them. I remember going up in school. We taught about conservation in some capacity in school.

there was the mutual Omaha stuff. You know, National Geographic was an entire show. It wasn't a network. Now you go look at it and there's everything on there that I look at and go, well, that's not really about conservation. It's just more about maybe kind of even anti-conservation. And I think that the tools are there, but the organizations have the ability to make sure that they help carry that message for us on our behalf. but they got to do it collectively. I mean, just like me talking about the guy that does 1,300 post on a forum.

That guy's got some time. Yeah, no doubt. You give me his number afterwards? He won't have a social media guy. But, you know, I think that the story is there to tell. We just have to figure out a way to turn around and you don't have to browbeat it. You know, the current setup for the way that people intake... information in today's age, we are natively, we're prone to being susceptible to propaganda.

Because going back to your statement about it's a one-step cell to tell someone who has no context, no historical connection to hunting to say, these hillbillies are trying to kill mountain lines for their hides. One-step cell. It's like bad. Yep. It's about a five-step minimum process to go. Actually, hunting mountain lines with dogs in Colorado is really beneficial to them and to everything else. Let me tell you, if you've got a minute for a little PowerPoint I have here.

You know, it's a one-step cell. So we are, we're up against a big mountain that does require us to be at a higher level. of communication, a higher level of strategy, a higher level of understanding. I mean, it's like this thing ought to make us all better if we can figure out how to do it. I mean, because it's, again, it's easy. You could be pretty sloppy and be able to convince the general public that killing a lion is bad. You have to be pretty tight, pretty, pretty dedicated, pretty honest. point to be able to convince a general public of, you know, this, this bigger story, which is

way more compelling. But isn't that the trend of society is that oftentimes the stuff that's trash gets glorified in the stuff that's actually... Oh, yeah, it sensationalizes it. And the stuff that's actually really good, really a wise way to live, all of a sudden becomes not hard of itself. I won't give an individual the credit. or the blame. But when a bad thing happens on conservation, hunting as a whole becomes under complete

attack by one individual, whether he poaches, whether he's abusive, whether he's cruel, whether he's inhumane, whether he does all the stuff, and I say he, but it could be he or she or whomever. They do all the stuff that is against all the morals, values, and ethics of what we adhere to, but we are all cast into that by one individual. That's true. Somebody's speeds and kill somebody down the road, they don't turn around and chastise every single driver in the United States. But when it comes to hunting, they do. When it comes to conservation, they do. When it comes to cruelty, they do. One person does something bad and the rest of the entire person, whoever bought a hunting license in their life is now part of that cruel and inhumane category. And that's the thing

that we need to figure out a way to separate ourselves and educate about the positivity, because we're all good except for the bad apples. There's bad cops, there's bad priests, there's bad doctors, there's bad attorneys, there's bad politicians, but there's a lot of good people out there there for all of the stuff that they do. And I think that if we capitalize on and pedestalize our successes, as opposed to marginalize and ignore and letting the anti's bastardize what we've done, we can set that flag up that I repeatedly talk about. We have the opportunity with a help and support financially and otherwise from sportsmen and women around the country

to do what's necessary in the state of Colorado. And if they've got skin in the game, if they ever want to hunt there, if they've got preference points, if they've hunted there, maybe they've got relatives there, maybe they strive to retire there. If you care about wildlife management and resources

and hunting and fishing and wildlife consumptive use, then you need to support us in Colorado because we need the help from every single one. Why? Because the anti- from around the country are dedicating their efforts to Colorado, this go around, and small groups and individuals can't turn around and fight a juggernaut without the help

and support of the army, of the village. And I think that that's what's coming together and that's what we've seen so far and I think will be victorious. But this is not it. This is the stomping grounds, but this does not mean it's the Super Bowl for us. It is if we win. But if we lose, who's going to be there to turn around and do that? offend the other stuff.

Everybody has to turn around and help support our cause because our cause is the most important cause at this point in time. How can, what's the action step for people to help you guys, give money to you guys? Where do they go? So two things. They can go to save the hunt, Colorado.com. You can get the language and the information off of the website of this particular message. I'm going to check it out right now.

Yeah. Save thehuntcoloradro.com. You can donate there. and up until June 13th, because I think this is Mike going to come out before them, up until June 13th, they can buy raffle tickets

that SCI, Safari Club International is doing on our behalf with the Whitaker Brothers outfitting lion hunt. Oh, yeah. And a lion mount by Ovis Wildlife Taxidermy and Doug Barnes just won a great big award on taxidermy.

So, I mean, they've really bellied up to the bar. SCI is bellied up to the bar. guys bellied up to the bar. There's raffle tickets that are available up until June 13th. And there's another raffle on our site that GunWorks. Gun Works with a scope package. Yeah. And Salida Gun Shop have supplied a Gunworks 7mm PRC. Two raffles. You don't want to contribute, then buy a raffle ticket. If you don't want to buy a raffle ticket, then go on the shop page and turn around and buy something off of that thing. Every single dollar that is generated through that website goes to this fight. Every single dollar goes to the fight. I want to mention the market shop

page that we've got on there. We don't pay anything for that. That's a guy out of North Dakota that turned around and did that on his behalf. It didn't cost us anything to set it up. Doesn't cost anything for product. All the proceeds go right to this fight because he sees enough value into this. And he said, something's got to be done, not just for Colorado, but it helps us build a roadmap. It helps us build a playbook for what we can do for Colorado and other states. and you guys are a great supporter of that, you know, meat eater, Randy Newberg. Like I said, I've been on the 66 podcast. Yeah.

This is part of the playbook. We have to continually talk about this. And while this is the most boring thing that people will listen to when it comes to hunting and fishing shows, if we don't talk about it pretty soon, 25, 30, 40 years down the road, you won't have hunting and fishing shows because we won't have hunting and fishing left. That sounds like a call to action and a fearmongering that you mentioned at the beginning, it's not. It's realization. Try being in it in the states that have to live it, breathe it, sleep it, eat it. It's at our doorstep. Go to save the hunt,

Colorado.com, help us out before June 13th. Help us out after that. And hopefully, if they don't get signatures, then we're going preemptive. We're going proactive. We're going offensive. And we'll need just as much support then, because we will define the next level of the way hunting and fishing and trapping is defined in the state of Colorado. And broadly, because of the statutory language that they're trying to impose, that's likely something that we're going to try to set in stone on our end. That's good. Man, I just personally, I'm just really grateful for guys like you, Dan,

that are dedicating big parts of your life and your career to defending this stuff. There's a lot of great people that are in different regional roles, you know, doing stuff like what you're doing. But, man, I think it's just so critical. And we just got to continue to work to get people engaged. And, yeah, it's an exciting time to be a hunter, and it's also a trying time to be a hunter. But, you know, I think we've all just got a...

There's no room for being sloppy anymore, if you really care about hunting and fishing in the future. Sloppy being just to be a partaker but not an active member, you know, fighting for this thing. Because it really is a way of life. I mean, this is not a hobby. No. This is not just something we enjoy doing.

It's a way of life, you know. It's why we take our breath. It's why we live the way we live. It's why we do what we do with our families. It's why we care about the outdoors. It's why we care about the wildlife and resources. You know, just because you have open space doesn't mean it's wildlife habitat if there's no wildlife on it. And I think that those are things that I've learned from what we do in Colorado.

People say, well, we've got open space. Look at all the trails and everything. That's great, but it's not wildlife habitat. There might be some wildlife there. But there's more people there than there is wildlife. And it's hard for people to understand when you have a state like Colorado. Most of the western states where you just came from in Montana. just because it's open space doesn't mean that something is always there.

You've got high elevation, you got low elevation, you've got agriculture, you've got, you know, arid country, you've got high mountain peaks. It's not always as pristine as what it is when you're there for 12 months out of the year because the landscape changes, the wildlife changes. It's different than it is in Arkansas or Louisiana or whatever. I mean, I know guys that turn around to raise 40 cows on an acre in the eastern part of the country because the grass is, that doesn't happen in the West. I've got 90 acres. You can't put two cows on it because they'll eat it barren down. We have something that is so important to fight for in its conservation and wildlife. And I just see that our community can probably come together holistically, uniformly, financially, emotionally, and emotionally, and say, if they're coming to take my buck,

buddy stuff, I'm going to turn around and go help my buddy out. I mean, you and I think could become friends if we didn't live so far apart. But if you called me in the middle of the night and say, hey, they're really coming down here and they're going to turn around and take hog hunting away, or they're going to turn around and take, you know, beaver trapping away, or they're going to take turkey hunting away. I'd be the first to say, what do we got to do to prop up exactly what we were successful in in Colorado? And I think that that's the mentality we need to take nationwide. And without that mentality, what are we going to do five or 10 or 15 years down the road? Excellent, man.

I've been dying to ask you, closing question. Tell me about this gris claw on your neck. That's a big gris claw. That's a big gris. It's a Russian brown bear, and I harvested that bear in 1998. Oh, really? Yeah. I went to Kamchatka.

Okay. And harvested it about nine years after they opened it up. With Denny Grink? No, I actually went with Safari Outfitters with out of Cody, Wyoming, and I hunted on the peninsula north of Petropovlusk, and I was there 14 days and harvested a big bear that is mounted in the house. And there's a bigger backstory behind it. But, I mean, that was my first big overseas trip that I did.

Yeah. And there's a lot of memories to go along with that. And it's a good conversation piece. When I go to the Colorado capital, if somebody doesn't know my name, they say, that big bearded guy with that big claw and that big belt buckle, pretty soon they know our. name because we've got lobbying representation at the capital but that that's the backstory of it it was my first overseas trip and back then you could fly from uh probably anchorage anchorage right into russia and now if you go there you have to fly all the way around the world yeah it was it was easy

transport then i've seen online some pictures of some guys this year oh they still do it yeah they still hunt there it was when i was there it was i'm not and i'm not trying to pedestalize that but when I was there, it was a little more antiquated, I think. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was a weird deal. You said it was 98. 98. Yeah, that was. It was, it was, it was, it wasn't as, it wasn't as antiquated.

It wasn't 92 or 93, but, but it wasn't perfect. I mean, when you, when we were in country, it was, there was a lot of things that people told us that we should be aware of. And there was, there wasn't an exaggeration. It was, it was a lot of stuff that we did back then that, uh, I don't think they have to put up with the, as now. Now the guys that were there this year, maybe a little different because Russia's at war with Ukraine and, you know, the guys were still hunting. It's a different deal. Different deal. But Clinton was president here. Boris Yelson was president there. We had money problems. We had transportation problems. We had a lot of things that went on that made the story and made the experience. But you often wondered, the hell am I going to get out of here? What's it going to cost me to get out of here? Am I going to take anything that I came with? Yeah. Yeah. Good story and backdrop to go with it, though.

Yeah. Cool. I like it. Appreciate it. Thanks, Dan. Thank you for coming, man. Appreciate your help. Appreciate it. And look forward to working with you guys and anything we can do in the future. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road.

I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God. He doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving. the evidence is scarce and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions,

from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back. together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.