The Joe Rogan Experience - #2350 - Ryan Callaghan

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Ryan “Cal” Callaghan is MeatEater’s Director of Conservation, a national board member of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, and the host of the “Cal’s Week in Review” podcast.www.themeateater.com/people/ryan-callaghan Get anything delivered on Uber Eats. https://UberEats.com This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/JRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Right, right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right.

Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. big beautiful bill. Yeah, we did it. We did before we even got you in here Well, I mean we're not out of the woods yet. Yeah is the reality. Yeah, I mean we're I was hoping that you and I were gonna we're gonna team up and tee off on these sons of bitches and

Watch it die together That would've been ideal. I think it's dead. It's it is dead together that would have been ideal. I think it's dead. It is dead. It is dead, but we're a long way from this stuff being- Dead ever. Dead ever. Yeah.

Right. Exactly. It's got to be dead forever. It's not theirs to sell. It's very unique to the United States. It's an amazing thing that we have. I don't think people in other countries understand this. I don't think people in America even understand how unique it is. Like our public lands, what they

did when they set that up, not just national parks but all the public lands, we created this insane resource, this beautiful resource where we can go into the mountains, into the woods and enjoy nature and it's ours. It's all of ours. And I get, I mean, the amount of response from listeners that live outside the country and to a person, they're like, are you guys really going to screw this up? They're like, how do people not know? How do people not appreciate what you guys have? Don't turn into this country or this country or this country, basically any other country outside of Canada and the US.

I think the real issue is the people in America that don't experience it and don't go there and don't know how insanely unique this situation is. Like I don't know how to say Chamath's last name, Polyhoptia, is that how you say it? Even he was tweeting, this is a great deal, sell the land and, you know, we'll make some money like, what the fuck are you talking about, man? Like, you know, you don't understand, like, this was an incredible gift that they gave us when they set America up this way. Oh, yeah.

And it's not that they need to go out and experience. They can also understand just where food comes from, right? How we get cold water and fresh water in our taps. That public resource is working on our behalf 24-7, 365, always has been and always will be as long as we don't screw it up, right? So it's not just the recreational part of it, it is, I mean it is no different than if you want to think of it in these terms than some, you know, one-armed jacked pumping oil out of the ground. Like it is constantly working on our behalf and it being

public land needs to be intact, an intact ecosystem to do its job and there's less and less of it every year. So like for instance, right, like America's grasslands, we're losing two million acres and grasslands are kind of like a catch-all phrase a little bit, but it'd be like sagebrush ecosystem, short grass prairie, mixed grass prairie, but we're losing two million acres a year. It's the most threatened ecosystem, not just in the US, but in the entire planet. And people are like, oh, it's just grass. Not doing grass. How are we losing that? Development. Really? Well there's development but also encroachment of tree species. So cedars, junipers, stuff like that

working their way back out on to the prairie, to the plain, and we used to have all these natural deforesters out there, bison, that wouldn't allow those trees to grow because they like rubbing up on stuff and they'll destroy them. So you know millions of bison out there physically removing or preventing that tree encroachment onto the plain. Those trees are sucking water out of the ground, making it more arid, more dry. Water table goes down. You lose a lot of species diversification and people just do not know, Joe. They just don't know. And they look at it and they're like, it's just grass. Yeah, I never knew that it was 2 million acres a year. How many acres in the United States?

about two point two three billion acres in the US so That that's a lot like two million acres a year is a lot Two million acres a year is a lot and like I was hacking on Jamie for his golf swing, right? He's got a solid golf swing Leave him alone he can he could swing Jamie what's the longest drive you've ever had it over? I mean 310 whatever 305 that's legit as fuck, but I've done it. That's legit right now I don't play golf, but I think that's pretty legit. What's like not in my head cuz I'm like yeah

I have no idea 300 that's set someone up to hit over 600 yards before but wow like with the wind and the Elevation and elevation helps a lot right like Montana Yeah, you can I could hit it 400 yards in Montana really I have on the simulator. Oh, that's interesting All right simulator. Oh the simulator accounts for that. Yeah, but you don't have to dodge bears on the simulator Two million acres of golf courses in the u.s. Is there two million acres? Okay? So that's a good way to look at it like right all the golf courses in the United States get lost every year in grassland Exactly Wow yeah, wow that's a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah

And so we talk in as far as like the public estate, right? We have 640 million acres is the number that you hear all the time. 83 million of those are national parks. But thanks to the great state of Alaska, you can hunt inside the boundary of some national parks up there to the tune of about like 43 million acres, big, big chunks. And then you remove a little for structures, roads. We have over 400,000 miles of road on Forest Service and BLM ground.

Wow. I mean, it's a lot, a lot. And then when we get into talking about the budgeting of things, like BLM Forest Service, they're maintaining a lot of stuff that people take for granted. And then, you know, so we're down to like 580 million acres of what I would consider like usable. And then you consider what those acres can actually produce, right?

Which, you know, if you go to a super arid state, you need a lot more land to support like mammal, ungulate type life than you do in a state that's got a lot more water. Yeah, that's growing a lot of food in a smaller amount of space, right? So to make things palatable for people, we're always doing the work of like dumbing things down,

dumbing down the messaging. And yeah, you're right, like people don't know. They don't know because we try to distill things into like all public land, right? But it is so diverse, which is what makes it amazing, and that diversity provides all this opportunity. And one of the things that people need to keep in mind is we have nothing but bad examples. All these other countries have gone the complete opposite way of what we have

now. And one of America's largest exports is hunters. Like we send hunters all over the world to support these other economies. And what we have here at home is insanely valuable, and it just becomes more and more valuable because we have large intact ecosystems that you just more and more cannot find anywhere else, right? Yeah, and I just I wish more people appreciated it. I wish more people experienced it. There's just too many people that just are landlocked. And when I mean by landlocked, I mean in cities. Urban locked is probably the best term for it. There's just too many people that just don't go out. They don't know how amazing it is. It's like, I always say that it's like a vitamin

that you didn't know you needed. You know? You get out into the real wild, the real woods, it's some kind of a nutrient that you didn't know you needed. Oh, man, I was just up on, went up to the Arctic, went up to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to check that place out. And 24 hours of sun, right? Land in the midnight sun, never gets dark. And I was the only person

on that trip who didn't bring like some sort of an eye cover to sleep with. And I just can't tell you like how hard and good I slept up there. Like, Really? Even without an eye cover? Drew it all over myself, and it's just clean air and lots of space man. It's magical, magical. How do you sleep with no eye cover? I swear to God Joe, man, when it was time to go to bed and it started out like Bed was at 1030 and then bed was at 230 in the morning and then bed was 3 a.m. Because you would get as that sun's kind of like making this low orbit

Because you would get, as that sun's kind of like making this low orbit, I'm sure you seen like the time lapses of the sun like kind of does a little dip. You get this like hazy gorgeous light that you just wanted to stay up and see. But I'd close my eyes and I could see like the sun going down to darkness and in my brain because it was just time to go to bed it was really bizarre and then if I had to wake up for something it was bright light and I couldn't figure out why yeah but I mean it was so cathartic man like we've been running so hard and because of this public lands battle that we've been in. I think most people are like, oh yeah, it just popped up last week and then we crushed it and big win. And a little larger group of people or a smaller

group of people is like, oh it started in the house about six weeks ago. And then there's a real small group of people who are like, August 24th, the state of Utah submitted a lawsuit for the United States Supreme Court to take 18.5 million acres of BLM land in Utah. August 2024 is when we were like, oh my god, we got to be on top of this, this is what's coming, Trump's gonna win the election, it's gonna set all these things up, and we're gonna be in this fight. Yeah. And people were like, I don't even know why you're talking about this, this isn't a big deal. I'm like, oh it is a big deal, this is happening. Well it is a big deal. This is happening

Well, it's such a slippery slope too This is what people don't know or don't appreciate if you say oh, it's only like 1 million acres We'll sell off 1 million acres. It'll help fix the debt. No, it's not the debts 37 trillion dollars It's not you're not gonna fix the debt by selling off public land And if you open up that slippery slope to these fucking vampire developers They're gonna keep doing it. They're gonna keep sucking on that blood until there's nothing left until it's just the national parks Oh, we preserved Yellowstone. Oh great and in that Quite literally it you know like Mike Lee is like the figurehead of this yeah right now

He's on the record saying we're gonna sell everything. We need to sell everything. That's the plan. We're gonna retain the national parks and maybe a couple other things. Like and he's been on the record for damn near 20 years saying this stuff. What is it? Who's paying him? There's a lot. There's a lot there right like where he grew up in, Utah. There's a lot of like Well, that's where it's a lap at this from right? Yeah, and he was the he was the guy We were fighting a few years ago exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's exactly why I dug this shirt out Joe I got one of those somewhere. Yeah, I wore this shirt on your show

the last time this shit was happening. Oh yeah. Right? That's right, it was happening back then. That was like, what, five years ago? Oh, I mean, you were still in California, and then it was- Five years ago I moved here,

so it had to be six or seven years ago. Yeah, exactly, right? And it's just, it's cyclical. Yeah. And I swear to God, people didn't pay attention to this Utah lawsuit. We were, I went back to DC for, you know, Steve's on the board for Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, TRCP. They have a policy meeting that I tried to go to twice, two or three times a year. And I was in there with all these people that are super smart and went to school for all this stuff. And

a couple of us were like, why is nobody talking about this? Why is nobody concerned about this? And then this idea of selling public lands got really conflated with like, oh my God, if you talk about anything that's going on with the federal government, you're anti-Trump. And it was just this ultra politicized hot potato. We're like, no, no, no, public lands, they're for everybody. Like this is a nonpartisan thing. We've been talking about it since August. Here's this lawsuit. Like they're selling land that belongs to everybody, doesn't matter what

state you're in. And then like the next domino fell and a bunch of states and counties signed on an amicus brief for that Utah lawsuit, which is like a friend of the court filing, because they wanted to get in, like, stuff's going up for free or cheap fire sale. They wanted to be in on it. And then the next domino fell, which was, oh, Mike Leesgeth pulled into the White House and he's cutting deals and we know exactly what's on his mind. And it was literally just like this opening in the world where nobody's talking about 18 and a half million acres.

So what if we started talking about 200 million acres, or 500 million acres, and it just like totally kicked the door open to this whole enchilada fire sale, and had the dude not been as greedy, people may not have gotten as fired up about it, but you know, kind of thank God he did. So who's paying him? Man, I think, and I'm not an expert on this, there's some like real ideology here, like Mormon church ideology. You know, there's like a billion people in the Mormon church, so not everybody thinks like this.

There's a billion? I don't know what that number is. There's a billion? I don't know what that number is. There's a lot. It's, wasn't it like the the most fastest growing religion there for a while? Is it because you get extra chicks? What is the deal? There's a lot of pretty people. There's a lot of pretty people, man. That's a hook for sure. Well, I have a friend who lives in Salt Lake and he said that like they'll literally send hot girls to try to recruit people Yeah, like they knock on your door and they're hot. I Mean I can't blame him for going with what works right? I mean also it's in terms of like

it's a weird religion right because What's the number here 17 million? Global members global members a global 17 million. So you were off by a few hundred. Yeah a few hundred million. Global membership. Global membership. So global 17 million. So you were off by a few hundred million. Yeah, a few hundred million. Yeah. In 2024, they reached a 27-year high. Wow. Significant surge in convert baptisms in 2024. I wonder what those hot girls going door to door. But there's this idea. They are the fucking nicest. Mormons are the nicest. I had a few neighbors that were Mormons when I lived in California.

They're my favorite people. I got all the people in a weirdo religion. Absolutely. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. Summer is here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost? get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do I mean by almost?

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For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly product availability varies by region see app for details I got Asked I was fishing down in Louisiana was super grumpy old fishing guide and he's like, hey cowhan What do you think about Muslims and I kind of put the fly rod down for a second and I was like where we going Where we go with this? I was like like all of them. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of Muslims bud like all of them I'm like, what do you think about Louisiana's? Like all of them, right? Right. I'm like, come on. How you gonna do that? Yeah

What I'm sure there's some really good ones and I'm like, come on, how you gonna do that? Yeah I'm sure there's some really good ones and I'm sure there's some real bad ones and everything in between like all humans Yeah, kind of like all humans. So on the the Mormon Church side of things there's You know, there's some doctrine some church doctrine that says That the land is put here for the benefit of the people, and you're basically, and I'm very much paraphrasing here, you're spiting God if you're not developing that land for profit, like for the profit of the people. And so there is a strong theory that Mike Lee is... Is he Mormon?

Yes. Is so indoctrinated into this part of the church that this is like his divine mission. Oh, that's a problem. Right? And so, yeah, I mean, it's religious zealotry, right? Yeah. I was not aware of that. And so, but again, like, that doesn't have to be representative of the entire religion, and to the people that I hang

out with that are Mormon, it's absolutely not, right? They're like public lands that are set aside for multiple use, don't get locked up, don't get developed in certain ways, are the best thing, right? But, and this is something that just like has got to get talked about, Mike Lee is like very much in power. He is the chair, he's a senior senator, he is the chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee in the Senate, and like I said, he starts getting drug into the White House, he starts consolidating power, and he starts telling everybody, hey, I'm gonna put this amendment in, and you better not go against it or else for the next six years,

which is technical, as long as Republicans stay in power, he's not going to lose his chairmanship of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. As long as he's there, none of their stuff is going to be read because it's the chair that decides what they're gonna review, what they're gonna look at, and what they're gonna pass. So, here's this dude who is leveraging everything for his personal thing, and he had his shot, and he took it, and fortunately people started cluing in and

There was enough of an on-ramp that There was a blowback literally in every every state all 50 states people wrote in to first their representatives then their senators and It created enough of a oh my god this is going to set back the entire big beautiful bill this is only one part of the dumpster fire that is the big beautiful bill but it's gonna take this whole thing off the tracks and that's that's why it's killed now Now, Lee issued a statement, which is like a gut shot,

if you're in my position, who've been like tracking this thing, you know, since August, and, you know, it said, oh, I listened to the American people, right? Well, he rewrote the language, he and his team, his staff, rewrote the language, he and his team, his staff rewrote the language four different

times to get it passed the Senate parliamentarian. It did pass. And you don't do that if you're listening to the American people, right? The American people, by the end of this, were very united in saying, not one acre. It started as not one acre in the budget reconciliation process, which is, you know, part of what they're doing here in the big beautiful bill, or is what they're doing. And the the phrasing there really matters, right? Like, we have systems in place for land sales, legal framework, those both of those, you know, it's acronyms, government acronyms,

FLITMA, FLITMA, and the revenues from land sales go back into acquiring land of greater value. There's all these acts since 1781, all of these acts for the disposal of federally managed land, and those two that I named are the most recent, and they're designed to maybe not retain the same acreage, but provide the most value to the American people. And what Lee was doing in this reconciliation process was completely circumventing that. And as you mentioned, like, nobody, no citizen in the United States is going to feel any change from dumping $100 million into the federal treasury right now. And that's where the money was going. Wow. Hmm.

So going forward in the future, how do we make sure that this never happens again? Do we have to just keep doing this every few years when it comes up? Well, yeah. I mean, and that's the, like, the best thing that could have come out of this. Like, we are going to make, we made this huge stink, right, from all the different buckets that politicians pay attention to, right? All the different user groups, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, everybody came together and more than likely a shitload of people, the 36% of Americans who didn't vote in the last

election, probably chose to speak up, some large percentage of them, and said no public land sales. Hopefully that created enough of, you know, what they call in Washington is like a third rail issue. It's like, doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on, you can't have this as part of your agenda because you're gonna get shot down, right? That's like the near term win because that feeling won't last forever.

There's a piece of legislation out of Ryan Zinke's office, who's our Montana congressman, and he was actually started as Secretary of the Interior under Trump in his first term. Zinke has this Public Lands and Public Hands Act, and it would not have prevented what just happened, this budget reconciliation thing, but it does put some more guard rails around the sale of federally managed land. And that would be like a really positive thing. However, just like I explained, like Mike Lee's position in the Senate, it would have to get through him. Like, he's got to be circumvented. There's no way he's gonna vote for something like this. And it's got to go through the House and everything I've heard about in on the

House committees is there some people there that don't want to see this thing happen. So more people are signing on to the Public Lands and Public Hands Act which is awesome show of support. Senator Heinrich out of New Mexico's got it written for the Senate. No Republican co-sponsors. He needs Republican co-sponsors in the Senate just to get the ball rolling there. But we still have like these knuckleheads that are saying if you didn't vote for my thing I won't let a single good thing happen for the next six years. It goes, you know, provided they don't get removed somehow,

somewhere. Yeah, it's really interesting when you see these bills, because these bills are like, I think they read the entire bill on the floor and it took 14 hours and no one was there. They just read it to an empty audience because nobody sat around for 14 hours. So what was it? 900 pages? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just like, how are you signing off on things that I know you're not reading? Like how crazy is that? This is a part of our process of government is that they pass these bills that have all sorts of weird shit piled into them. Yeah. Good things and bad things altogether. that have all sorts of weird shit piled into them. Good things and bad things all together. And you have to figure out, like, how much of the bad stuff do you allow

because you want the good stuff? And they all have to make these weird, shady fucking deals. Yeah. I mean, I got that text, the official text, you know, essentially as soon as it came out, and public land sales were page 202. So I just went straight to page 202 and read through the new language to see what, because it was another revision by Mike Lee to see if he could get that thing passed. It was just typical crap.

Like he's not listening to anybody. He's still pushing his agenda. So when he revised it, what were the revisions and why did he put those revisions in? So he started at US Forest Service land and BLM land. Which would be how many acres all told? Well, it would have been a possible like 500 million acres area in 11 Western states. And I want to say it would have been two to three million acres actually sold within five years. So you're identifying out of 500 million. Then you're narrowing it down to two to three million acres

of Forest Service and BLM land. And then he says it's for housing. It's for housing. But a lot of that is nowhere near development. A lot of it's nowhere near development and the language of the text, even on the very last revision where you're supposed to be listening to American peoples. And he did throw in the word hunters there. Hunters, I'm listening to you.

It, it says like bullet point one must be near existing infrastructure. And then bullet point number seven, I think it was, was like, or very hard, far away and hard to manage. Right? Which is all the rest. Yeah. So like somewhere in between here. That's so crazy. That's such a crazy piece of language. Or far away and hard to manage. So all of it. Yeah, exactly. Like it just it's so vague. He wants to get it through. And then there's super fun language in there too. Or it's like, okay, right. If your first refusal is going to be state,

then local government, through tribes in there. And then the only other group would have been landowners within the checkerboard pattern, how we have like that, you know, grid system of federal land ownership and private land ownership. Those landowners could also purchase more than anybody else would have been allowed to purchase. So state, local, then your tribes and local landowners. So basically like a huge handout to you know like you know the corner crossing case that we've been talking about right? Iron bar holdings. They would have just purchased all those checkerboard pieces and would have been legally allowed

to do that. Let's explain corner crossing to people. So what corner crossing is, is like, say if there's an enormous piece of public land, but the only way you can get to it is to cross over a very small corner of private land for the longest time that was prohibited and you would get arrested. So you could get arrested for trespassing. And we're talking about like a couple of feet.

Oh, I mean, we're talking about something so small you can't even possibly see it, right? That's why it's been, it's like a theory, right? It's like for all the physics majors out there, right? It's like that game of like, well, how do you get someplace if you only go 50% of the way, right? You keep going 50% and 50% and 50%.

It's like a theory. Whereas in reality, like all it is is a footstep. Yeah. Like you're gonna cross that corner in a footstep and We know where corners come together because it's right here But that theory thing is like well the and then the airspace All the way down to the center of the earth and to the heavens is how it's written The crazy thing is like you could legitimately do it in a hop So you would never have stepped foot at all.

Dude, my 97 year old grandma who's hooked up to an oxygen tank could have stepped across. Like, I mean, it's, we're not talking about a feet of any sort. We're not talking about like a football field that you have to cross. No. No, we're talking about like a couple inches. Yep. So just like... Which is so nuts.

Oh, it's infuriating is what it is. So just like on your checkerboard at home, pick any four corners that come together where the two reds, imagine those are public and the two blacks are private. So here it is. There you go, beautiful. I'll explain it right there. So those little tiny spots in the corner you were not supposed to cross. Right.

Which is so crazy. That is so bananas that that was a real issue. Exactly. And look at this, no trespassing. Yeah. And so that's really interesting. That's the corner right there. Yeah.

Isn't that nuts? Like that little spot, no trespassing. That little tiny gate is all you need. Those two posts that are in the ground, those two signs to prevent people from accessing land that's theirs. So that is where the corner is. Yep. So if you go through that little thing, that little area right there, you're breaking the law, which is fucking insane. And now, currently in the state of Wyoming, and I gotta give a shout out to Wyoming back country hunters and anglers for having the spine, the backbone to bring this, help bring

the people who were caught and prosecuted for corner crossing, you know, and support them financially. We did a ton at MeatEater too to help that legal case. It went to the state court, then the Supreme Court, and then the 9th District Court, and the last I heard is Iron Bar now wants to take it to, you know, the Supreme Court of the United States, SCOTUS, and have, which is ultimately really good. We always joke that we're gonna send ol' Fred Eshelman, the owner of Iron Bar, like a public landowner t-shirt, because he's gonna make this stuff public for everybody,

shirt because he's gonna make this stuff public for everybody because it's gonna be right now there's only two federal cases that have defined corner crossing they're both in favor of the people of the United States so you can legally step across shocking I know from one piece of public to the next piece of public and then if and when this thing makes it to the Supreme Court, the only reason he hasn't filed is because of this stuff with Mike Lee, right? It would have solved all of his problems. He would have just purchased those checkerboard pieces of BLM land within his ranch boundaries and just been done with it.

Yeah. Right. and just been done with it. Yeah, right. And that's really, there's a lot of those pieces in a lot of states, and states actually fund the ability to trespass for hunting on a lot of those landlocked pieces. To create easements? Yep, exactly. Yep. But it's typically done through the state wildlife agencies where you get an easement so people can go out there. If you've got a conservation license, you can go hunt out there.

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Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash JRE. That's better H-E-L-P dot com slash JRE Well, it's it's also today. I could imagine how a long time ago You would get a lot of confusion and it would lead to people trespassing Accidentally on public land or on private land rather because we're looking at maps You know and people would be you know, a hundred yards to the left a hundred yards to the right and maybe not good navigators Yeah, but now when you have things like like on a go hunt on X Spartan Forge all these apps that hunters use now that use GPS, you're 100% accurate.

Yeah. Like 100% accurate. And a lot of the law enforcement agencies are using those same things. So they can be on the same page as the hunter or access seeker or whatever you want to say. Super easy to follow. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no worries at all about encroaching on private land.

Yeah. And also it's like what's the harm? Right like when you sue somebody you have to establish what what the impact is what the harm is and In in these cases that went to the Supreme Court They're like well what? What are the damages right explain to me what the damages are right right and what they really can't right? There's no damages. They just don't want hunters on their property people that have a lot of land for whatever reason I guess it's how they acquire a lot of land the first place a lot of more fucking greedy Well, there's some degree in a weird way right yeah, yeah

But that's a greedy thing like I you know you have eight hundred acres and there's this like little sliver You know like no can't have that mine. I know mine and and then I mean there's absolutely Wonderful humans on the spectrum. Oh, yeah this dude that I grew up with we guided guided on parts of his place growing up. Right when I got my first ever GPS and the Onyx was a card that you inserted into your GPS, he used to come pick me up so I could open the gates for him and then he'd just BS and it was amazing. And we'd drive all over eastern Montana, all on his property, and his name was Leo Salf, Leo Salf. And we came up to this fence line and I was like, I was like, Leo, did you know that this brand new fence is 100 feet on your side of the

property line? And this was a whole section right so it ran for a mile and and he goes Ryan can't own the whole world and just didn't say another thing about it like not worth me worrying about yeah well how many acres did he have like 30,000 probably that's a rational gentleman yeah exactly right exactly somebody fucked up but there's people on the Like 30,000 present that's a rational gentleman. Yeah Exactly somebody fucked up, but there's people there's people on the other side, too You know and that's like that old rancher mentality of like, you know what? There's gonna be a fire and we're all gonna need to get together and help each other out and maybe I'll talk to him then about it or

You know whatever calving season harvest season all the things that bring those communities together, these very independent people, they got to work together at different times of the year. And that's like kind of a beautiful thing. You can only be so much of a dick. Right. Right? Right. But then there's that other side now where it's like, I'm gonna patrol my property from Florida Via drone. Oh, and I'm gonna hot dial the sheriff's department Anytime I see anything that looks like stepping over that property line, right?

Whether it's to fix a fence that I'm not there to fix or get your cattle off of my property. I'm calling the sheriff And that that exists who sure right? Yeah, Yeah. And it's that community breakdown, which is horrifying to me. But also, man, like, people don't understand the jobs that these lands do, right? And like you're saying, like the urban folks, where that state comes from, where their groceries come from, it's not the grocery store. Like there should be an instructional video before you can enter the supermarket, you know? Because it takes space, it takes this land, and we think, people think in terms of like,

oh, a million's a big number. Let's say we do have 640 million acres of public land, right? Well, there's like 1.2 billion acres of land in the U.S. set aside specifically for agriculture, and I think some like private timberland falls in that too, right? So that's private land, 1.2 billion, where the bulk of our food's coming off, ideally. On the public land side of the fence we have grazing leases, so you can run cattle and sheep on public ground. You pay a minimal, I would say a very minimal fee for that, right? And it's based out off of an animal on that ground for a month, animal unit month AUM. And on our public

ground that's like a dollar, I want to say it's a dollar 35 per animal unit month. And just in the state of Montana, it just got dropped again, but it hit as high as $24 animal unit month. So if you're at have those federal leases, it's a big thing that you want to protect too, right? So you have to, in theory, show that stewardship aspect out there on the on the public land because everybody can come check it out to retain your ability to keep running

cattle out there, sheep, or whatever it is. What is going on with that American? Prairie Savannah. Yeah, the American Prairie thing. Yeah, so that's in the home state of Montana Hey, you know, I wish explain that to people. Yeah. Yeah. So Basically the fear is it's gonna be a privatized National Park That people aren't gonna be able to go out on well I don't think that's true. It might be, but I don't think it is. Explain what it is. It is a bunch of private philanthropic dollars, a lot of which is coming from overseas. I think the Dutch have somehow, someway dumped a bunch of cash in there. And it is to connect a bunch of Private land and

Bureau of Land Management land out there BLM Into one contiguous chunk Remove as many fences as you can and allowed that chunk of prairie to basically revert back to Its natural state with natural species the American buffalo being Like they're they're they're big goal species

right They're raising They've done an incredible job raising cash to get this done. They're purchasing these places. They would say at fair market value, there's a big argument there because they have so much money, they're gonna win a bidding process, so is it really fair? Is what the local ranchers would say. But right now, and knock on wood, for as long as they exist, they're gonna keep providing public access, and they have a really

good public access program. So they can work with the state of Montana for our private land public access program where you know you can sign up either at just like a kiosk type deal sign in box and walk out on their place. But then they have like yurts that you can rent and they... So the kiosk is just set up as you get there and you just put in your name and what time you go in there and do you have to have any kind of ID that you put in there? Nothing? No, no. I mean the state of Montana won't ask for your license plate number and your home address and phone number and that's it. So and then it's I mean they have a lot of gorgeous ground.

Honestly, you know, when we did our big float in Montana, they own some of that property now that runs right up to the Missouri, right there around Cow Island is kind of where we took out real close to there. And they own, I mean, they own some of the stuff that we hiked around on. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Yeah. But their vision is to have this big contiguous chunk and have it run like, you know, pre-European civilization here on the North American continent. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And it's, I mean, it's gorgeous stuff and they provide for some buffalo hunts out there. So you can draw a tag and go out and shoot a yearling or an old bull and they give you a, it's not like a handhold thing. When they say an

old bull how do you determine? Just by sheer size. Just size. Yeah. So you have to be experienced you have to know what you're doing. Yeah and they'll give you some some classes and some pointers but they don't hold your hand and say hey come shoot this one. It's like here's this information Mm-hmm return it when you're done Rules the ranch all that stuff Go through this gate Enjoy it leave it. How's how you found it type of thing? So and I've I've never done it myself, but people have had really fantastic experiences out there doing that and obviously that's an absolute

Shit load of meat right? Oh yeah. And if they do that widespread like what is the ultimate goal? Like how much land are we talking about and like are they bringing animals in or are they allowing the existing animals to breed and like how are they doing it? So yes to allowing the existing animals to breed, and yes to bringing the animals in. So they're coming out of the, I think, the Yellowstone population more than anything. And then they work with the local tribes up there

to kind of bring those animals in, and some go to the tribe, and then some go stay on the prairie, I think is how it goes. And then the reason that they're allowing for these old bulls to be shot is because they're no longer breeding. Right. Yeah. It's interesting. Have you ever read Dan Flores' piece on American Buffalo? Yeah. Buffalo Diplomacy. What was it?

Buffalo Ecology, Buffalo Diplomacy? Oh, I read the American Serengeti. That one. Yeah, that's great, too. What his theory is, and I think it's valid, that the time where they saw millions of buffalo was because the Native Americans had been wiped out by disease. This is the idea, is that there was never a time where there were that many bison.

And the reason why there were that many bison was because the Native Americans weren't hunting them anymore because 90% of them were wiped out by disease. That's why when they made their way across and I guess it was like the early 1800s. Oh, like Lewis and Clark. Yeah, when they saw millions and millions of bison, the reason for that was that human predator population was in a trough. Yeah, exactly. And it allowed the bison to be in a spike. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, because we- Which completely makes sense to be in a spike. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cuz we all really make sense Oh, it totally makes sense. Yeah, cuz yeah, we always have those conversations about like when would be the best time to go back if you could right and and also How could it be that that? big total Buffalo population number that always gets thrown out there

was really on the landscape. Right, like why wasn't there a balance of predator and prey where there always is? If it was really natural, right? It does make sense. Oh, it totally, I mean, humans have been stirring the pot forever, that's why it drives me insane when people are like well before people yeah

One that doesn't get us anywhere right now right before people's the dumbest fucking argument ever they were here first Well, this is the argument they use with wolves You know if they were here first like shut the fuck up just shut the fuck up stop stop. No they weren't First of all I I love people, okay? I'm only concerned with when people were around So before people fuck off you want to kill all the people off so the wolves can run things like what are you even saying? Right, what are we gonna learn from a pre-human time? Doesn't make any sense and there was obviously some sort of an imbalance that led to these Enormous populations of bison and I think Dan Flores is an incredibly brilliant

guy. I think he makes a really compelling argument because we do know that the Native Americans were wiped out, that 90% of them were killed off by disease. We know that. We're talking about millions of people. And if millions of people were subsistence hunters and they were riding around, living off the buffalo, following them around, which we know they did, completely make sense. Especially when you take into account the long gestation period, that bison, I think they have to be pregnant for a long time, right?

Boy, I don't know about that one, but. The woolly mammoth I know is a long time. I'm sure it was, because yeah, that was African elephants. Yeah. I wonder what is a buffalo gestation period? Nine months. was like African elephants. Yeah, I Wonder what is a for a long time? What is a buffalo gestation period nine months? So like a person? Yeah Yeah, very different than like a deer very different than a lot of other animals Yeah, I mean It's badass seeing those things out there like I mean it it really

Really is because there's some party like you're whatever people call it these days your lizard brain or whatever Yeah, we're like you know that That's their home right, and then you see that thing on that landscape and something just clicks, and you're like Holy shit, man Pretty cool. Oh, it's it's amazing. It really is cool. Just to see him in Yellowstone. Yeah, which is kind of weird But yeah, the Yellowstone thing is weird I went there a few years back with my family and it's really beautiful and I enjoyed it But I did not like the fact that all the elk were hanging out at the visitor station

You're right because they know they can't be hunted there and they know the wolves won't go there. It was real weird They're like so domesticated. They're just like 30 yards away from a fucking vending machine Yeah See this big herd of elk just laying down on the ground staring at people and people taking selfies with the yeah animals like I don't know about this. I know I know yeah habituated to shit. Yeah, a lot of my biologist friends would say Yeah, habituated to shit. Yeah, a lot of my biologist friends would say mm-hmm Yeah, it's The National Park system right is like it's a absolute wonderful thing I know there's lots of dedicated civil servants within the National Park system that bust their asses

Educating folks, but they just can't keep up. Have you ever seen the Instagram page, Torons of Yellowstone? Yeah. Yeah, doing God's work right there. Yeah. Darwin in action. If you go to it, it's like people are just getting launched through the air by bison. And God, how do they not know by now?

I mean, how do you not know that you can't get because of the exact? Exact thing you're describing they're like, oh It's on the tour. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's like it's Fortunately, they've trained the bison to stand right next to the visitor information sign or the bull elk or whatever, right? It's like this just is the way it's supposed to be and then they'll walk right up to it to try to get a selfie Yeah, it's fucking there's one. Oh wow Fucking way that guy should be standing there If I was that guy I would be in that car as fast as I could I'll climb into the passenger side like fuck this

because Danger do not approach wildlife. I went up to watch the the bison hunting season there in Yellowstone and the Gardner entrance south engine or north entrance to the park and a bunch of the tribes were down doing their harvest and I was riding with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Got to do a little ride along and it was the most successful hunt they've ever had. So this was three years ago now. Tons of snow in the park. Some old cow bison decided to just lead everybody out. And there's like hunt rosters. So you draw your bison tag, but then you can also be on a list in case those tags get filled,

which they never do. But this year it did happen. And then all the tribes came up for their harvest and it was amazing. Like there were people knocking Buffalo down everywhere and in fact so many that they had to come up with a system to where they'd be like okay between daylight and like 9 a.m. nobody's gonna walk beyond this line. Let every, cause let everybody shoot, and then we'll all go out together and start cutting up bison and get them out of there. And then the next round of hunters can have at it.

It was like a safety issue. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Is this actually on the park? No. So this is, it's called the zone of tolerance, which is a creepy Creepy name if you're asking me zone of tolerance, so All the states Idaho, Montana, Wyoming that's around Yellowstone National Park they

Have the cattle producers have real fears of brucellosis Which is a disease that that bison and elk pack around And it causes domestic cattle to abort calves. So hurts them in the pocketbook bad deal. Well They want slash need to reduce bison populations within the park Can't hunt inside the park, but at the same time all the cattlemen associations, they don't want those bison coming out of the park. So what do you do? Well, they came up with this zone of tolerance idea,

which is a hunting perimeter around the park. They remove all the domestic cattle from within that zone and then the bison, if they come out of the park into that zone, they're fair game for hunters. If they make it beyond that zone somehow, some way, then anybody can shoot one and But but typically there's like a brand inspector There to take care of any bison that make it beyond the border of the zone of tolerance even by brand inspector What does that mean cattle brand? Yep, yep, so how does that work? Well, so he's an agent of the state and he is there to, in this particular case, protect the interest of the cattlemen's associations, cattle ranchers. And so, yeah, somehow, some way he's authorized to whack those bison as if they make it beyond.

But really what... And what do they do with the meat? It gets donated to any one of those tribal members that's there. Probably has right of first refusal at least. If not, it would go straight to the food pantry. Yeah, I mean, no waste. And in years past, there's been groups that go up there just to go pull all anything that's left in the field,

the bones, stuff like that for making stock. There's groups that go up there and literally take the carcasses off the ground because it is highly sought after food stuff right it's a lot of bone broth you can make with the 2,000 pound critter mmm yeah wow yeah but that was an amazing experience and and like the each tribe brings their own tribal game warden with them they're kind of like in charge of their people, they're coordinating to maximize the harvest, and so they're helping, very willing to help people, like coordinate to get their animal

and get out of the field so they can get the next person in there. And that's part of the system outside of trapping. So they trap inside the park, and then they'll take those animals, move them to a separate facility where they go through, I can't remember how long of a period of monitoring for brucellosis, and then once that herd is, the trapped herd is considered brucellosis free, then they can be given to the tribes or sold. Interesting.

So that's how, when people have bison on private land, that's how they get them there? I mean, there's a couple other populations, but yeah. Yep, that's one of them. And what's the population of bison in the United States now? I don't know. I mean, I think they're gunning for 6,000 just inside the park What do they have now? Oh, I don't know Jamie you'd have to look that up Smaller portion 31,000, and then like sixth grand

in Yellowstone. Yeah. There it is. Very varying numbers though. Boy, they came so close to being wiped out. Oh, it's so wild. It's so... Really is crazy.

So wild. I was staring at... I was like, Jeff, what's the deal with this skull? Your bison antiqua skull that you have out there that thing is amazing that's from my friend John Reeves in Alaska yeah I was wondering yeah I was wondering about the boneyard yeah oh yeah that place is nuts for dude who likes to pick stuff off the ground that's that's like a porn page oh yeah it's a it's a crazy

place and there's no real explanation to why there's such a population of dead animals in this one spot You know and he thinks it's connected to the younger dries impact theory because there's a very clear distinct line of carbon in his ground like that, you know when you go deep deep deep into the ground which Represents where these like a lot of these things that he's pulling, they're plus 10,000 years old. That's that bison head. We didn't get it checked. We didn't have it sent off. But a lot of stuff he has dated older than 10,000 years.

And so what he thinks is that this is one of the areas where there was an impact. This younger dry ice impact theory, there's two time periods. One is around 11,800 years ago, and then there's another one somewhere around 10,000 plus years ago. And he thinks one of those areas is where he was or where his spot in Alaska is. And this deep, rich layer of carbon seems to indicate some massive burn that happened through that area. And it coincides with this immense pile of bones and ivory and mammoth skeletons and cave bears and all this shit. It's a small area. His area is only like, the area where they're pulling these bones from is only a few acres.

No way. Yeah. He thinks it was a wash. So with the impact came this immediate melting of a lot of the ice caps. And this is what they think happened that ended the ice age in North America. 10,000 plus years ago, you're looking

at more than a mile high ice in a giant chunk of North America. And then almost instantaneously that stuff gets melted. And this coincides with Randall Carlson's theories about this too, which also was unsubstantiated until they came up with the core samples for the Younger Dry Ice Impact Theory. They go, no, this happened. There was a fucking massive impact somewhere around 30 percent of the entire world was hit by Comets and This area where John has look at this 2.1 to 2.3 acres

So if you look at the amount of stuff that he has made 2.3 acres is like a nice yard, right? It's like a nice a person's really oh, you got a nice piece of land here, nice yard. That's where he's pulling thousands of dead animals. And if you look at his bone yard, if you look at some of the warehouses that he has, this is his Instagram page, Boneyard Alaska is the Instagram page, but he's got enormous warehouses filled with tusks and It's only from a couple acres. Yeah, so they didn't walk to that spot and tip over they got exactly They all got collected there into there. Yeah. Yeah, and very similar time. Look at all this stuff, man Fucking crazy and look back at the other picture when you right before look at that truck filled filled with heads. I mean, this is nuts, man. This is like a day's haul. Oh, this is crazy, man. It's really crazy. Oh, it's really pretty extraordinary. And thankfully, john has both

the resources and the desire to blast the permafrost with these high pressure hoses to get all this stuff out of there. But I mean, he's trying to set up a legitimate research facility out there. You know, these scientists, they want to take the stuff and bring it somewhere. It's like, fuck off. If you want to do it, you're going to do it right here.

This is my land. We're not, he already had a problem with the Museum of Natural History, is that what it was? Yeah, in New York, they dumped tons of his bones into the East River. So the property that he owned before he owned it, someone else owned it, that is his property. They took it and they were supposed to do research on it,

but they had so many bones that they dumped a lot of it in the East River. And the museum denied it, and so he got divers to go look for it, and they found it. Exactly where they said it. Oh, it hurts my for it and they found it exactly where they said And they found step bison bones and all kinds of crazy shit. That's not supposed to be there No in a pile in the East River when we were looking at the the the zone of

tolerance not the zone of tolerance that the range sorry of bison, of buffalo. I was thinking of your skull that you have out there, but I found a gorgeous one in this wash in Alberta. And it would be like the summer range. So north of the Montana border, not all that far, up near the Saskatchewan River breaks. And you get up on these bluffs that overlook the river and you're like, oh, you just feel

like somebody would have been sitting there watching stuff. And then if you look around, there's all, I mean, thousands over a lot of miles, but thousands of teepee rings. So all the tribes would go up there to hunt bison and camp out, a little bit of cooler weather. And that's where I found this bison skull. Did you find the arrowheads up there? There's a ton of them, but you can't take anything up there. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I called Alberta Fish and Game on this thing because I was so stoked about it. And they're like oh we just consider that cattle up here like you can take it okay yeah yeah how old is the skull do you know well it was such a pretty skull people like oh it's got to be bison antiquus but it's just it's nowhere near That's a me is that a fresh II did somebody make that or no no way no, that's a Comanche head from here. That's crazy. Yeah, I showed it to Remy, and he said it's really big so they probably using it for fish Wow, yeah That's amazing. It's interesting that the bigger ones like that is like kind of a normal arrowhead for

elk or deer. Like if in today's standards, you know, that's like, that looks like an iron will. That's basically an iron will wide, right? And they didn't use them that big. They had smaller ones because they didn't have the much that they wanted real penetration. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. They wanted real penetration. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool.

Oh. So cool. So cool. There's a friend of mine has a ranch out here, and they've got thousands of them. You know, like, the Comanche must have used that area, and he has literally thousands and thousands of arrowheads. He's got boxes of them all.

Just all of them are dated and certified like they know like what time period they came from. And yeah so like why was that chunk of ground in use for that long right? Yeah. If he's got that many. Yeah. It's not because one group of people camped there for a couple of days. Those thousands of years probably. And well it's because it's really rich you know it's like it's right off the Colorado River, so yeah a lot of resources, a lot of foliage, a lot of animals there to this day. Yeah, yeah. That's one of the things that you can tell people. It's like do you want, you want to know why public lands matter?

97% of winter vegetables consumed in the US that are from the US are irrigated by the Colorado River. 97% So if your mommies and daddies are out there eating a nice green salad in the winter months All that is fed by water from public land. Like do we want that shit to be privatized? Right. Yeah. Like what happens then? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well Bill Gates already owns more farmland in this country than anybody. You know I keep hearing that is he doing good stuff with it? There's no way. No? No. There's no way. I can't imagine that. Well it's his angle. well, I know he was in the fucking veggie burger business for a while

But that shit went tits up dude. I am so anti anti the lab grown and and Yeah, well that stuff's not even a real burger It's filled with seed oils and all these fucking all this goo that you need to make sure that it connects together and then people would pretend that it's Delicious. Oh delicious. You can't even tell the difference. You can't tell the difference Where are you getting your burgers? Because you're eating cardboard burger. This is bullshit. Well, and it's just bad for you You know that that's where it went tits up when they those studies that came out that said it's given lab rat cancer.

Oh. Yeah. Well, listen, I think it's just bad for all of us because if people think that your food can come from someplace other than the land, then there's no value to that land. Well, it's vegetable-based, right? But then it's highly processed. It's not like, you know, you're eating an eggplant, you know, you're not eating a squash. You're eating something that's gone through this insane process to make pretend that it's

a burger. And, you know, there's a lot of investors who lost a shit ton of money because they were lied to. They were told that this is going to be easy to make and it's going to be really convenient and people are going to love it And people are looking for an alternative to meet. No, they're actually they're not You know, and this is the only thing that was my buddy duncan Uh, he was living in north carolina and when covid came and you know There was a lot of shortages in the supermarkets and the lockdowns and all that jazz

He's like the only shit that's available here is this fucking bullshit fake meat Like the fake meat was the only he took sent a picture It was the only thing left on the shelf was like beyond meat or beyond burger or whatever the fuck it's called impossible burger Yeah, that's a good litmus test right yeah, if the world's gonna end and nobody reaching for people still aren't eating it It's fucking it's actually bad for you seed oils are bad for you And those things are filled with seed oils and there's also filled with a bunch of Process because you can't just it's not you know look if you want to be vegetarian just use vegetables, okay?

Don't don't pretend you're eating some fucking fake burger Oh, yeah You know one of my biggest pet peeves in life, a buddy of mine, was like going down the vegan train and we had to stop in all these towns that had like the best vegan restaurant and I'm like they're stealing our names for food. Right. The meat eaters name for food and Tofurky. My god yeah and be like chicken fingers, Reuben sandwich. Yeah.

You know? And I'm like, can't you just be proud of what you're putting in your body? I don't care if it's just vegetables, but... Just eat Indian food. There's a lot of really great Indian restaurants that are totally vegetarian. I used to eat at one that was in Woodland Hills. It was great. It was really cool because you'd go in there and everyone was speaking Hindi

nobody, you know the all the Like it was like a cafeteria place and all the menus were all in another I had a point at things I didn't know what the fuck it was. I'm like, give me one of those Tastes you great. I was great. Yeah. Yeah, but it was all vegetarian like there's vegetarian food. You can eat. That's really good It doesn't you don't have to pretend that it's a fucking burger It is a Mental exercise right? It's like no no no Love vegetables

Can't eat meat meats evil. I just happen to need all my vegetables to resemble meat Well, and then there's the problem of what actually happens when you have monocrop agriculture Because this is a lot of this stuff is coming from that. And by the way, there's way more death per calorie of food that you get from monocrop agriculture, from growing just one crop in an area than you're ever going to get from meat. There's thousands of animals, millions of animals

have to get killed in order order you to grow this food. That's just a fact of life. Well, you use the word convenience earlier, right? Like convenience is like the killer of conservation because it's hard work, man. It's not convenient. Like these animals on the landscape that have been doing things for ever. Like they just don't adjust to things. that have been doing things forever. Like they just don't adjust to things. You know, I was talking about like the prairie,

how we're losing two million acres of prairie a year. Well, there's this super bad ass little chicken, lesser prairie chicken, super charismatic little dude, dances, puts his tail fan up, big cheek flares, and game bird. Used to be in the possibly into the millions in that that time that you described when Lewis and Clark were coming out onto the prairie. It is a prairie bird to the point where it will not nest within, I want to say, six acres of a vertical structure of any size.

Interesting. Right? So there are no trees on the prairie, no fence posts, and this bird can't nest if it's around any sort of a vertical anything. Because that's just the way its brain is wired. Wow, and that shit is so inconvenient for people that It's just hit the endangered species list. So is that because it has to be Completely away from all predators that it has to know where everything is I think it's got to be it's got to be something like that yeah. So it doesn't fly? It does fly. Does it fly like a chicken does?

Like short periods? No. Or does it fly like a turkey? There's like a colloquial you know hunter name where they just call prairie birds chickens. It's not a chicken at all but it's it's like a little growl species. What does it look like? Do you want to see if you can pull it up? Yeah. But it's a great test case for the greater sage-grouse. Oh, a cool looking little animal.

Which one is it? It's a smaller version of that. It's the greater prairie chicken. We're looking for the lesser prairie chicken So the greater prairie chicken, how big is that? You're looking at like 16 to 18 ounces I bet we got a size on that sucker. That's the big one

So the little ones tiny but 95% of the native habitat left for that bird is on private ground at this point. Oh wow. Yeah and that private ground is used for grazing. So 24 ounces to 42 ounces. Oh that's a big one. Adults. There you go. That's the greater prairie chicken. What a cool looking little bird. Oh, charisma. When I was in... That's got ears. Oh, whoa. That's crazy looking. Rabbit ears. Yeah, how weird. There's this awesome group of ranchers kind of in the Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico zone. And they formed the Lesser Prairie Chicken Landowner Alliance. And what they've been trying to do is get, because there's this huge conservation bill,

biggest conservation package in the world called the Farm Bill. And it has a lot of um, incentive subsidy for uh, farmers. Isn't that thing amazing? I've never seen a bird with ears like that. Like other than like an owl kinda has them but those are so pronounced. How cool is that thing? Is that his actual ears? Or is that just like a weird feather structure? Those are just feathers, yeah. But where's his ears? Behind is that just like a weird feather structure? Those are just feathers, yeah. But where's his ears? Behind that? They're right behind his eyeballs.

So do you think those, that feather structure enhances hearing? I mean it has to, right? No, that feather structure is there to enhance his sex life. Oh, let the ladies know. What's up? Yeah! What's up? Look at my ears, baby. I got it going on over here.

Did they wiggle him or something? Oh, they're, they dance. Yeah, sup look my ears, baby I got it going on over here There they dance Interesting yeah, and so it's almost kind of a grouse so yes, it is a grouse. Yeah. Yeah brown nesting. Yeah Yeah It's probably also one of those animals that feral cats fuck up. Oh For sure for sure. Oh wow look how cool it is. Wow so beautiful looking. Look at his eyebrows. Oh yeah. Let's go get it on. Let's go baby. Yeah look at that guy's cock-blocking. See that? Wow what a cute little animal. Yeah, and this thing is tied to

wide-ass open grass, wide-ass open prairie, right? And so what this group, the Lesser Prairie Chicken Landowner Alliance is doing is, you know, they're trying to get folks in the Department of Ag to set up some funding specifically for grassland ecosystems that are used for grazing. So it's going to be good for the rancher and good for the grouse in this case too, right? And that funding doesn't exist, but there's lots of programs to take like monocrop agriculture and turn it into CRP, which you know mixed grass, basically like rest that ground. That was one of the the programs that came out of the Dust Bowl era. So instead of turning the ground over and all that dirt dries out and can get blown away, we lose

that topsoil. Plant it with grass and let it rest for like a three-year period, a five-year period. Part of our like big ag incentive structures balance out markets and all that fun stuff. Yeah. Monocrop agriculture is such a problem and industrial agriculture in general. I had Will Harrison a couple of times from White Oaks Pastures. And so his family farm was an industrial farm forever. And then when he took it over, it was like a 20-year period of converting it to become

regenerative. And in that process, what's really, if you look outside in our lobby area, we have two jars of soil that were given to us by Will. And one of them is from his neighbor's property. That's an industrial farm. And it's just like this weird pale looking fucking just, you know, it's all industrial fertilizer that they have to use and pesticides and his is like this rich dark soil is like super proud of like what they've turned it and converted it over to you just this natural process that's supposed to exist when animals graze the undulates they

poop and they make manure and then the grasses grow and the animals eat the grass it's all That's how it's supposed to be and we've but you know what else it is Inconvenient yeah, it's hard frickin work. Oh, yeah, right. It's hard work. Well fortunately for him He's got a big name now and so people seek out his food. Yeah, they want to buy from him, but you know these And there's a lot of like bullshitting from supermarkets like he had a real issue with Whole Foods lying and even after he had stopped selling them food they were they're saying that it was coming from

him oh yeah no oh yeah oh yeah even the concept of like grass fed like for how long like and how you feeding them the grass are they in a pen? Are you feeding the grass or they actually wandering around eating grass like they're supposed to yeah There's a lot of that. You know like when you hear about like chickens, you know, they're free-range like what what does that mean? Yeah, how much of a range I just had dinner with our buddy Jesse last night. I mean it was Insane it was so good. Didouille? Oh yeah, that's an amazing restaurant here. Oh, but we were just, I was like, okay, well tell me about this. Tell me about, you know, Longhorn and

what Wagyu means on his menu and and all the the pigs and the things that he's seeking out and like the breed of chicken that they have but like you were saying like it's not just the breed what was that chicken doing right and it's insane it is so freaking cool man like it's a heartwarming place to eat and it was just like knock your freaking socks off yeah Jesse does it the right way and he's such a good chef. He's so amazing. When Steve and I went to Utoria down in South Texas to hunt,

Jesse came, and he cooked for us. It was the most incredible experience, because, and he cooked diver duck, which everybody says is gross. He's like, no, no, no, this is just, you just have to prepare it properly. And it was some of the best duck I've ever had in my life. He just has a marinating process that he does and then he grills it and it was insane It was so good man. It was so good

Yeah, I mean they got nominated for James Beard on his turkey book, which is super awesome The people down there just, his employees stay there. They've been there for, everybody in that house has been there for a decade and they're just loving the stuff that they're doing and putting out and the stories that you can tell on that menu, right?

Like the bread is, he's like, yeah, I went and picked grapes out of the alley across the street which doesn't sound all that great But that's how he like started the yeast for the bread and that's been going for six years They got yogurt that came from a culture. That's been going from For 200 years from one of their employees whose families from India and they brought it over. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, just, I love that stuff.

Yeah. I love that stuff, but it takes like dedication and commitment to know where your food comes from. Right. Right? Yeah. And I swear to God, when I go back to DC and I'm talking to people like they are so disconnected from this stuff and I just often think I'm like God if you guys just knew where the food comes

from what the land actually provides yeah we wouldn't be having these conversations no I mean human beings for the most part in urban areas are completely disconnected if you had a survey of how many people really understand where food comes from in your average city, I would imagine it's less than double digits. Oh yeah. This is probably a small percentage of people really understand. Yeah, man.

I mean, the economics of food I've gotten really into recently because there is a real inability in certain areas of the country where the cost of getting anywhere near an actual grocery store is prohibitive to a lot of people. And so, you know, they're just like they're shit out of luck for for a real food and then it's a cultural thing of Mom didn't know what real food was dad didn't know what real food was So I don't and my kids won't right, you know and and then on the flip side of that It's like food comes from door-dash food comes from, you know, people spending big bucks. And they're just as disconnected as the folks who don't have any bucks to spend.

Now imagine the Younger Dryas impact today. Imagine some kind of impact like that today that forced people to actually find their own food. You know, first of all, you'd be dealing with a small amount of survivors. Let's imagine an apocalyptic scenario where 20% of the population survives, which has probably happened numerous times in human history. If that happened today, how many people are equipped to find food? How many people are equipped to live off the land? It's such a small amount. Such a small amount. I also think about the anthropologists digging through that bone

pile. And they're like, why is it that when we do cross sections of these bones, they're so much more unhealthy than the cross sections of the bones from 4,000 years earlier. I know. They're late, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think that's... Convenience.

Convenience, man. We love our convenience. Convenience is killing us. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a moment here, we had all these different walks of life come together and be like, oh my god Public lands matter. We had all these businesses come together and say public lands matter. I got to tell you when I was

Chatting with our buddy cam hands the other day When I was about to be disconnected for a week, right and I've been like eating and breathing This this fight the stupid lawsuit that came out last year. Then it's in the House. Oh my god. We get it pulled out of the House. Thank God. Then it goes to the Senate. Oh my... Mike Lee introduces the damn thing in the Senate, sneaks his language in, blindsides everybody, and I gotta get on a plane to go to the Arctic. And there's this little, like, bellwether moment where I look at, I make, like, a last Instagram post, last thing I can do, and I see Cameron Haynes is like you guys you got to get

off your asses and and call your senators they're selling our public land and the same day Josh Smith from Montana Knife Company did it too and I bring those two guys up as examples because they were also like Like on the the mega train, right they were like Pro Trump in through the election. They're representing the the right side of the political spectrum and when that moment happened I Did draw like a little little breath of relief right there. I was like, okay. And people that aren't afraid to criticize aspects of the big beautiful bill.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And they're not afraid to say, yeah, we voted for this guy, but this part of the pie sucks. It's super important to us that this gets pulled out of here and we're gonna go to go to the mat for it. And I'm like that is that is the thing, right? We have people who aren't so self-conscious that they're like, oh god I said this thing a month ago. I can't come out and say what I really think right now because that would kind of contradict

what I said a month ago. Right, right. You know? And that gave me like, really, really made me feel good. I'm like, okay, things are starting to go our way now because all the other people who were afraid to say the same thing were like, oh, thank God some other people with a big microphone came out and said it.

So now I feel emboldened to stand up publicly for what I believe in. Yeah, it's such a terrible thing to be so trapped in the ideology of your party that you can't stand up for what's right. That's gross. Yeah, man. And it's being promoted though, too. Like one of the things I feel when I go back to DC is there's a lot of people spending time on making sure not that America is better, but that that system persists. So the next generation of short short little boat shoe no sock wearing people can have jobs. Yeah those boat shoes yeah it's gross it's really gross and it's prevalent you know it's been around for a long time this this weird system that we have there it's

it's not effective it's effective, it's not good, it's not good for anybody. And it's all being fed by lobbyists and special interest groups and they're all just, they want to keep it going. They want to keep the grift going. But there, I mean, there's palpable frustration out there. Like I feel it every day. A long time ago, you told me, you're like, dude, don't read the comment section. And you're a thousand percent right. I can't say how right you are, but during this time of like, why aren't people clicking into this? I was getting real depressed, like shaking past tears at times over feeling

so underrepresented. And then when we started gaining momentum, I was like, okay, what the hell else can I do? I'm calling my senators, I'm calling my representatives, I'm establishing contacts with their staff. I'm talking to them about how important this is. I'm asking them what else we can do. Trying to build these bridges for this goal of protecting my public lands that I love, right? We're working with all these nonprofit groups are coming together, even groups that traditionally don't focus on public land access issues, you know, like your Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, who has done a bunch of stuff for access, but you know, they have an elk on their logo. They're the elk people. And then pheasants and quail forever. They're the pheasants and quail people. National Wild Turkey Federation. They're the turkey people. But they started being like, oh, this is real serious.

They're the turkey people but they started being like, oh, oh, this is real serious. And then We started getting all these people in the same room together sharing information instead of being competitive and then businesses Started coming out and saying well, what what can we do? little little breweries down in Arizona this guy rent a house, called me and he's like, hey, what can I do?

I have a brewery, what can I do? And we came out with a beer that has a QR code on the label and it's just called Rep, because at that time the fight was in the house, so call your representative and you hit the QR code, put in your your zip code and it connects you with your representative mmm right it's like crush beers and crush the phone lines whatever tag you want up to I was on I'm on a steering committee that has REI Patagonia Rivian all like big big companies right that are like we we want

to put some muscle behind this we want public lands to say stay public then we launched a hunt brands for public lands coalition and had a huge name Sig Sauer is on there right they have military contracts and they have the guts to stand up and be like, we don't want to see public lands get sold off. That's awesome. Yeah. Whether it be another firearms manufacturer, you know, first light meteor, obviously, but we started like building all these bridges and unifying groups and people and businesses around this common cause and it's that public persistence that that we the people part that folks kind of tend to forget, that is literally saving public lands. About like being out

there public and loud and it's working but we need to take it to the next step right and maintain the momentum and stay unified. And the thing that was really interesting, right, is like, we're up to the absolute second that language is polled. Before it's officially polled, Mike Lee's team has his statement out on, I listened. I still want to sell public land, but I listened to everybody, so I'm not gonna do it right now, is really what it says. And he's completely fabricating this story. He was told like this is going to get pulled. So you can do it now and save some face or we can pull it and you're gonna look like a loser, right? And unfortunately you got

the option to like fight again another day, which is brutal. But I get that information and I get to announce it to this awesome group of people at this off-road rally trash pickup deal that I'm out at called the Gambler 500, which is super cool. And then I put that online. I'm like, hey, thank you to the Democrats and thank you to the Republicans and thank you for all the voices that came out and the businesses and all this stuff and then I was just like set my clock as to when people were gonna just start tearing

each other apart and it fucking happened right and it's like you guys voted for this you were getting exactly what you deserve right right right I did see a lot of that yeah I mean yeah I did see a lot of that like no we didn't stupid no we voted because we felt like the country is moving in a terrible direction it doesn't mean that they can't also move in a terrible direction once you get a man it's the important thing is people stood up people like you luckily that are very invested in this and used the considerable resources you have access to and got a lot of other people

involved like Cam, Josh Smith, and everybody else and I jumped in too. We're just lucky that a lot of people care and recognize that this is a slippery slope and that if they got through with this and they did this this is just one step and if you let them sell one acre that's why just not one acre was the best motto it really was not one acre was the best motto you can't it's not yours it's ours everyone's and if you sell it what you should make zero profit it should go, literally if you did sell it, it should have to go to every fucking person that lives in the planet, or in this country rather.

Yeah, I mean. And we don't want it. We don't want that money. Keep it the way it is. No, the value of this stuff only goes up. Not only that, again, we're 36 fucking trillion dollars in debt, you're not even gonna put it, if you sold all the public land, all of it that we have, it wouldn't put a dent in it. No, it wouldn't. You could strip all

the timber, sell the land, everything. Minerals, everything. Yeah. Not gonna put a dent in it. No, it's not. So we got to find a better way. And you know what? It's not gonna be convenient. No. It's gonna be hard. And that's like the thing that I keep coming back to. I'm like, all they're doing is being like, oh see we did something. They're not doing the hard work, right? And this particular thing would divest the American people of, in my mind, and we started doing it as a slogan for backcountry hunters and anglers is like public land freedom like you are divesting the American people of the ability to be free like these places represent like a lot of goofballs man

unstructured fun and I feel like there's a lot of people in the lawmaking side of things that get very nervous about American people out there having unstructured fun. Really? Is that really what it is? They're like, what's going on out there on that BLM land? There's somebody riding a motorcycle and there's somebody shooting a gun and there's somebody fly fishing and there's somebody bird watching, there's a family camping.

Can't have that. Do you really think that's it? Do you really think it's like they don't want unstructured fun I I'm coming around to that thought a lot man a lot like Right. They're like why? There's no kiosk Right, nobody's out there charging right for your use of America's public lands You're not signing a liability waiver. Oh my god and

Once you're out there you just kind of make up whatever it is you want to do that day That's freedom buddy, right and I think people are fucking nervous about that That's a weird perspective. It is. Yeah, I don't know if I agree with that. I just think they look at it as an opportunity to cash in. I think they look at it as an opportunity. We have all this land. It's public. Let's sell some of it. I think it's just incredibly short-sighted.

I think they think in terms of, literally in terms of terms where they're elected. And it's not sell some of it, right? They're like, we're going gonna maybe hold on to the national parks But there's a another play there where we're gonna turn those over to the states right or privatize them completely yeah Get full control of like I said like Colorado River right like we're gonna control the the pipes For the watersheds you have heard that language before that water's not a right

Yeah then People are gross man, if you let them be And you let them be though, they'll be gross and yeah, absolutely And some of these people want it purely for the fact that they can't have it right and drives them. There's definitely that yeah, there's definitely a lot of short-sightedness It's a lot of people could use a mushroom trip Well, it's just a lot of people that just you're missing so much of what this life is because you're so Concentrated on your election cycle. You're so concentrated on making more money. You're

so concentrated on things that when you're 90 and you're in your deathbed, it ain't going to mean shit, man. It's not going to mean a damn thing. No, no. You could have been having fun and enjoying life with your neighbors. Yeah. Like, you can't keep it. You're going to die. You can't take it with you. You're going to die. And they don't see that while they're on the hunt while they're in the middle of this process of trying to accumulate zeros and their bank account Yeah, got a little endorphin high. It's on other zero. Yeah, it's all they want They're good and they're competing with other people that are doing the exact same thing

So they're in their little short-sighted echo chambers, you know? Yeah, yeah, but I hope to God people learned, right? Like, there's a lot happening in between elections and you got to know if you weighed in during this, you made a difference. Like, everybody who jumped in and wrote to their representatives and senators and told their buddies about this and asked businesses, why aren't you on that list? Yeah, you can actually make a difference in this country. Absolutely. And it's not just at the election hash marks.

Yeah. Like if people didn't hold our elected accountable, they would have been like, they just want to get this stuff passed. They're like, path of least resistance. There's some really good ass kickers out there on the Democrat and Republican side of things, for sure. But we need to lift those people up in order to get the rest of the coasters involved. Yeah, and we need to also let people know that this is an issue going forward now that

we know. This is an issue that can affect whether or not you get elected. You need to know that. We're going to be on you. You can't do this. Exactly. We're going to be consistent and we're going to be on your ass. Now that this has happened and we've had some success and it worked, now people

know it'll work. And so now all the Randy Newbergs and all the other people that were like really enthusiastic about this that really did their job, you know, they're getting more support now and it's gonna build and then we'll be much more aware of whether one of these things is trying to get snuck through in the future Absolutely, absolutely. I would say the early folks right like Randy I Feel like we were kicking ass at meat eater Katie Hill at outdoor life

Andrew McKean outdoor life Outdoor Life, Andrew McKean, Outdoor Life, Travis Hall, Field and Stream, like those people were on it. And I think all those people have a significant following on social media, you know. And they have a lot to lose too, man. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. National Wildlife Federation, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers were talking about this way early and then a lot of other orgs jumped in and some early, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, they started, they were awesome. I just gotta mention them because they're like, farm bill oriented hook and bullet organizations they do an amazing job but that's largely private side of the fence

and they came out and started talking to their membership about this early and you kind of get punched in the face I got to be honest like we took a lot of shit on the meat eater side of things. Ronella took a ton of shit. How so? Just people being like, well, one, they're like, Steve, aren't you a Trump-er? You can't also support public lands because that's going against Trump. But this is just people in the comments, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who are those people in the comments right? Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah Who are those people? Way too much time. Yeah don't don't read them. You're dealing with such a small population of morons. The problem with comments is especially negative comments it's such a small population and all most all of them are fucking losers. I got sucked in though cuz I'm like I don't know I Was like I was so desperate to make an impact right at the end I'm like, I'm feeling like I've pulled every frickin lever that I can yeah, I'm asking the experts

I'm like could we get and this is a screwed up piece of information. I was like, okay, I Want to do a Freedom of Information Act? request sue for information for all the senators offices and find out how many people called on behalf of public lands and how many people called to sell them off. And I want that information to be public. Well, those offices, they don't have to give over that information. I found out. Oh.

So, like, where the hell's the accountability on the head? Right. Yeah. But anyway, I'm going nuts trying to figure out what other levers I could pull, and I would just sit there and be like, okay, I'm going to find one person on the feed and just understand their side of things and see if I can pull them over to my side of things and maybe that butterfly wing effect will do some sort of good. You're not those people, yeah you voted for this, those people are just trying to win. They're just trying to like get you and they're people that for

whatever reason thought Kamala Harris would be a good president. And then there's also people that I don't even know if they're real humans. I think there's a lot of this stuff that we have to understand about social media is coordinated bot farms. And so anytime you have a hot button topic that could, you know, maybe get a bill rejected or get a bill passed, it's not organic, the comments. There's some organic comments. Some of these people that are negative, you vote for this, they're just a real fucking loser who doesn't like people that have public profiles, doesn't like people that are successful, doesn't like

people and they just want to find some way to call you out. There's a lot of that. But then there's a lot of coordinated artificial interaction. And we've highlighted that and we've been on that for quite a while because we found out through this one former FBI guy that 80% of Twitter is bots. Yeah, 80%. You know people are having their whole life is talking to bots then, if that's the case. Oh it is the case. I know it's the case.

I don't know if it's 80%, but I do know that it's an enormous number because I don't interact and I'm now, I've since separated myself so far that I'm kind of not even on social media anymore. I might check it in the morning. I check Twitter in the morning to see whatever he's mad at. I usually feel bad after I check it. I'm like, why am I even looking at this? Jesus Christ. I just get off.

When you do that, you feel better. You just feel healthier. You feel better. But when I do check and there's any sort of a hot button issue, I'll look at someone as saying something outrageous, then I'll click on their profile. And then I'm like, it's like a bunch of letters and a few numbers. And then I look at their profile, I'm like, oh, you're not even a real fucking person. And then you see, oh, this is like half of the people in this aren't real people.

And it's there's no laws. Like there's no, I'm first of all, let me be real clear. I'm against a law where it says you have to post under your name, your social security number has to be registered to this account so we know you're a real human being. The reason why I'm opposed to that is because I think whistleblowers are essential because I think corruption is real. And I think if you hold someone accountable for everything they post, man, you're going down a dark road. You're going down a dark road where you could possibly get people fired for posts that, you know, like England is out of control right now. Like, I don't know if you know this, but England, I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood.

How many people got arrested for social media posts in England this year? We've looked this up before. I forget the number. It's in the thousands. Arrested for saying immigration is a real problem. We got to stop these grooming gangs. We got to stop these Muslims from illegally immigrating into England. Arrested. Go to jail. Like for real. That's insane. People do time. They're doing time.

Like no bullshit, real time. For saying things that they believe. Like I could kill for a cheeseburger. I always said I killed. Not like that. Yeah. Not like that. But it's mostly about policy issues. And what they're trying to do is make sure that everyone stays in line. And so they're doing this by scaring people away from being critical of the government. And the way to start it is to attack people that say anything bad about immigration, attack people that say anything bad about the government. In fact, they're just doing this in Brazil right now. They just passed this huge fucking law that you can get removed from social media for anything that's critical of the government, anything that's critical of Lula, who's the

president of Brazil right now. You get removed from social media. Like, you can't be critical. Like, they don't have freedom of speech anymore. And this is the slippery road, this is the slippery slope that we were going down with the last administration, what they had done during the pandemic. It's scary stuff, man. And people have to be aware of it. And I think there's a version of that, too, with what we were talking about on like the

hard party politics people, right? It's like the social backlash. Yes of being a critical thinker. Yep Is so much that it then creates a non-thinker or you just totally leave That zone you don't pay attention anymore. You're not gonna talk about it. Yeah. Yeah, it's You you self-censor your self-censor out of survival you know you know this is too dangerous I'm not gonna say anything and that's how they get things passed because then you don't have any criticism and then you don't have any you don't have any people that are opposing you it's very scary because again a lot of this stuff

that you're seeing that's causing people to self-center is not real, self-censor is not real human beings. It's bots. And that's my fear is that when you finally get that person to be like, all right, you know what? I'm gonna leave this part of it behind and step out to advocate for what I believe in and the first response they get is you voted for this you're getting what you deserve yeah right police make

30 rest a day for offensive online's so officers from 37 forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023, the equivalent of about 33 per day marks an almost 58% rise in arrests since before the pandemic in 2019. But still, like 2019, 7000 detentions for online shit. So what we have in America is incredibly unique in that regard. And other countries are setting a standard. And it's a dangerous fucking standard. And we have to really make sure that that doesn't happen here. And we also have to make sure that I

wish there was a way where you could identify bots. And Elon tried to find this out when he bought Twitter. So when he purchased Twitter, they told him that it was less than 5%. And he's like, well, how did you figure that out? And well, they only figured it out. It's not real. It's not a real number.

But they just took a random cross-section of 100 users and found 5% of those people were clearly bots. That doesn't mean anything. Job's done. Yeah. Found it, took care of it. You could also do that, you could take a random section of users that interact with very non-controversial subjects and find a small number of bots.

Let's say you find a bird watching group of people on Instagram or on Twitter. What are the odds that those people are going to be bots? Very small, right? There's no reason. There's no benefit financially or otherwise. Politically. Big bird seed. Yeah. You know, coming in.

Exactly, like so if you go after bird, I use bird watchers, cause I see them all the time. You know, that's like the purest form of just this is what they're into. Great group. Yeah. Great group of people, but there's no financial Incentive to support or deny birdwatching, you know so if you go to the birdwatcher group on Twitter

Yeah, it's probably five percent bots because they're fucking everywhere But if you I guarantee if you go to abortion or if you go to immigration Or if you go to anything that's a hot button contra ice raids, whatever it is any honey anything any hot button controversial subject there is There's a shit ton of a man and it's kind of creepy Because who is paying for it? Who's paying for it? And why do we know how come we don't have any laws to stop that from happening because it's not real You're getting this artificial sense of what the general public wants because they've monetized it and they've

figured out a way to artificially inflate these numbers. Yeah, and I think... It gives this illusion of this consensus amongst people and they can do that even with like ridiculous conclusions. And I think consensus, though, is so dangerous to any political party, right? Like what we just saw, there was an agenda, and everybody had to stand up and say something because of one frickin' person who wanted to make this happen. Right. And I guarantee you, I guarantee you that what they're thinking about right now is holy shit how do we

break up this consensus. Mm-hmm. Like what do we need to do? We can't have bird watchers agreeing with off-road users and bow hunters. Right. That's, that's, we can't win that. Right. We need them to be only bird watchers, only bow hunters. We can't win that. We need them to be only bird watchers, only bow hunters, only off-road users. But what we need to do is be apolitical and I think we were with this. Yes. It's beautiful. So the Democrats, Republicans, and the people like me that are fucking politically homeless, they they all came together on this and said, no, this is stupid. And all these people, oh, you voted for this. Fuck you.

Nobody voted for that. Fuck you. Like this is one guy. And if history, if that didn't work, if we didn't have an impact, and if nobody stepped up and people like you weren't so steadfast, that would be in the history books. That Mike Lee guy would be the guy that you see, you know, your kids see in 40, 50 years and they read the history books that Mike Lee guy would be the guy that you see You know your kids see in 40 50 years and they read the history books. They go that guy that guy did this Yeah, he'd have a proud statue. It's a giant strip mall

Something that used to be public land. Why is that here? Probably wouldn't cuz cuz we gave up Yeah, that's what happened. Well, it depends on who's writing the history books, right? It could be that he would be a hero Yeah, that's what happened. Well, it depends on who's writing the history books, right? It could be that he would be a hero He turned it out. They generated 200 extra billion dollars that did nothing Did no thin for this? I mean this big beautiful bill doesn't it raised the debt by three trillion I think that's what they came down to it started at four and I was at like three point three trillion. Yeah And there's so much to it too. Like I said, this is my own personal dumpster fire. What Trump wants is growth. He wants economic growth and he thinks he can get it out of this and that's the overall net benefit. Oh, and there's

some bending over backwards, right? Like that Arctic trip that we were talking about. We went up to the 10-02 area on the Arctic Plain just add ceiling increase by five trillion. Did that just happen? That did pass this afternoon. Oh, it's when we started. Yeah, okay billion in additional border security well we probably need that 154 billion additional defense spending That's you gotta Gotta feed the demons the Golden Dome thing do which is not what's the Golden Dome? That's you know space base Golden Dome missile defense system. Yeah Trump was enamored with

Israel's missile defense system and wanted one and Most of the experts were like that doesn't really work with our landmass There's also hypersonic missiles, there's a lot of shit doesn't work with there. There's a There's a line item in here for I think is a few billion bucks for our next big birthday America's next big birthday, which I always think of affordable housing when I think of it. I bet the folks like having their own little individual parties and might think it's okay to throw that couple hundred million at an issue versus fireworks and parades, you know, I don't know maybe maybe

But yeah, man We got it. We have got to stay unified Yeah on these things stay unified and avoid the comments folks and don't be scared Don't be scared to speak out against something that you know is wrong and you jackasses if You want something real bad, like I want public lands, public waters, public wildlife for the people real bad, I don't when that shit talker converts and is like yeah public lands are sweet, I called my senator, I don't say fuck you shit talkerer. I say thank you dude really appreciate it

Yeah, well most of those shit talkers don't have good friends The people that are actually are actual human beings that are losers the reason why they're losers is because they're in a bad spot Okay, and any one of us could have been that person any one of us could have been that person that's surrounded by bad people They have a bad job. They got a bad relationship, they live in a bad area. There's not a whole lot of hope, not a whole lot of happiness. So you try to tear down everything around you. Yeah, you put your petty shit over the top of the real shit. Yeah, but my perspective is, look, I can't fix everybody, so I can't help you, but I

don't want to interact with you. So I'm not going to... I don't have the time, I don't fix everybody, so I can't help you, but I don't wanna interact with you. So I'm not gonna, I'm not, I don't have the time, I don't have the resources, it's impossible. And I don't like it. I don't like arguing with people, so I don't wanna do it. If you talk to people one-on-one, most people are pretty fucking reasonable. Pretty amazing, but really.

When they're just shouting out into the void like that, guess what, you don't have to read it. You don't have to listen. You don't have to read it. You don't listen Yeah, you don't have to interact. Yeah, it's fucking bad for you It's bad for your brain everybody that I know that's on social media all the time is super unhealthy every one of them Yeah for good reason. Yeah, it's a it's a trash pit. Yeah it worked really worked really well in this case now because It allowed that community to build fast and be reactive.

But you have to curate your community online the same way you curate your community in the real world, you know, and this is a part of not reading the comments, because the comments is the whole world, you know, or the people that are interacting. It's not really the whole world. But again, it's just it's it's not worth it. It's just not worth it It's not worth going in there and people If you want to win Like identify that freaking goal and and think okay, what's gonna help me achieve that goal? It's not putting your petty shit above The goal right, right?

putting your petty shit above the goal. Right. Right. You bury that stuff deep down inside and you say great thank you. Thanks for hopping on board. Please tell your friends we're gonna get to this goal together. That's awesome. I think that's best done on a group basis. Like just make a post thank you to everybody that did it but don't interact with individuals. This is not worth it. The people that I know that do it, they all get fucked up. Because it's just like, it just takes one comment that gets under your skin,

that carries you around while you're hanging out with, you're at your kid's baseball game and you think that cocksucker on Twitter. You know, there's a lot of people out there that are doing that, man. You're watching your kid hit a home run and you're not even happy. You're mad about some fucking random dude who you don't even know if it's a real person no is the truth I

told that that group I was with up in the Arctic man I'm like I read them because I want to understand the argument and and see if that's really the argument like is this really where people are coming from or is it just an asshole there's mostly just an asshole and even their argument probably sucks but also a lot of it's artificial. You got to think about how much money is involved in selling off this public land and how much of an interest do people have in pushing a narrative that would say that selling this public land is a good thing. Yeah. You know there, there's money involved in this. Whenever there's money involved in this,

there's, you can pay for it. There's services where you can start a campaign, like it's not real. There's services where if you want to push a narrative, you can use their service and they will incorporate this bot farm and they will push it towards whatever you wanna do. And it's legal. That's what's fucked. That's- So fucked. Yeah, it's lying.

It's just lying with computers. Yeah. And then unfortunately, there's still a lot of people out there on the interweb going, well, I read it on the internet. Oh yeah. Oh, there's a whole articles reading. One commenter said, no they didn't.

You know, if that's a fucking robot, are you going to make a retraction? No, you're not. If that's AI, are you going to say something about that? Are you going to say there's a problem? No, you're not going to say that. Because you're a whole business's click bait. And the more you have negative comments

that you could use to start the formulation of an article, OK, that's how you make a living. And so don't read their fucking articles either. This is the key. Just like you have to just interact only with real humans. I got in the practice of just being like okay what I'm about to say is gonna be political, involves scary words, Democrat, Republican, it's gonna make you uncomfortable. Don't believe me. Go to the Federal Register dot gov. That's the source material. Read it for yourself. I'm just gonna tell you what I read in there on these pages. That's the source material. Go read it. Like that's where the land sales are happening. That's where it's outlined. The text text is there it's the Journal of the government printed every day online go read it and you know for the little

stuff on the podcast I don't deal with it's like the Montgomery teller said an alligator came out of I don't say that how's we can review yeah tell everybody your podcasts cows we can. We do news, outdoor news and we cover legislation. It's fun podcast. The legislative desk. Yeah. Yeah. You have a good time with it though. Man, there's some good times, there's some burnout times, right? Yeah. We're all like screaming into the void, like guys this land sale is coming. Yeah. Yeah, hot. Well people listen to you. Fortunately. Oh It kind of feel a little good

Doesn't it feel good that people united and listened. I am trying to make it feel really good I am it's gonna happen again it cuz I know it's gonna happen again. Yeah again. I'm wearing the same shirt It's because I know it's gonna happen again again. I'm wearing the same shirt That I wore on this show talking about this same stuff six years ago or whenever we decided it was right like And I do I feel really really good like we a lot of people came out they threw political baggage aside and They they talked about how important this stuff is and it's incredibly important to me and I thank them all from the bottom of my heart because it is so important and one voice is just not going to do this right? So that that does feel good. That does feel good. I just kind of wanted there to

be a vote on this amendment so all the American people can see exactly who voted for it and exactly who voted against it. Yeah. And just lay it out on the table for everybody. That would be nice. Yeah and it'd be nice to see like what special interests were involved and what money was pushing it in that direction. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, just, we need a higher, and most people won't do this even if we had the ability, but we need more peaks behind the curtain, right? We need more accountability.

Like, so just a great example, I'm up at the state capitol in Montana. We just, our legislative session just up at the state capitol in Montana. Our legislative session just ended at the beginning of the year. And there's some knucklehead brings this judicial amendment up to join, for the state of Montana to join Utah's lawsuit to sell off 18 and a half million acres of public land and 115 people showed up to testify against the state. This is during during work hours in a Montana winter 115 people show up to testify against this. And there's some online too there to be fair.

Originally there were 10 people signed up to testify in favor of joining the lawsuit. All 10 of those people drop off. They only give everybody two minutes to testify in front of committee. Everybody testifies, don't do this, bad for Montana, bad for all these other reasons. Professional people, some lobbyists, nonprofit people, but just a lot of people being like, yeah I'm a dad and this is where I take my kids. Like why would we do this? That committee approves it and sends it through. Wow.

And there's no accountability. You can't say, okay, how many people called your office? How many emails did you get? None. Right. Your representatives just decide against the will of the people. The ones that showed up and were vocal. Right? So how do it work? And

I understand why people do not trust this stuff. Right? Like that's a hard experience to have. It's hidden on purpose, you know? They want to be able to do what they want to do. Yeah, and there's a lot of money that gets them elected and once they get in there they get these phone calls from these folks, hey I need you to do this. Yeah, yeah. Montana is a good example right now. Alright, so John Tester, who was an awesome public lands guy, Democrat, farmer out of Big Sandy, Montana, that's the only political donation I've ever made in my life was to his campaign because he was awesome on public lands. He got, he lost this year but so we have Tim Sheeves, our freshman

senator in Montana. So he's brand new, he won John Tester's seat and then we have Steve Daines who's been in for a long time. He's a senior Republican also on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and Republicans and they said Not in as strong a words as I would want That they're not for the sale of public lands during this fight, during the House and then during the Senate fight again, we're not going to sell public lands. Our Republican Ryan Zinke, also, he's a representative in the House, you know, he said, that's my San Juan Hill. He's like, I'm going to die on San Juan Hill before I vote to sell off America's public lands, right?

So I think for everybody else who's nay saying whether a Republican can do this or is just the Democrats that are willing, I think we have a good example in Montana right now, and I'm not saying give up, I'm going to hold these people accountable and I think everybody else should too, that these Republicans are willing to go to bat for public lands right now and we're making it that like third rail issue where it's like if you want to win in the state of Montana you better be good on public lands. Were there any Democrats that were in favor of selling off public lands? Yeah, yeah one of your California folks came out early in the house. I abandoned those people.

You know, because... I identify as a Texan now. I converted. I transitioned. Yes, I trans... Oh, I support you, Joe. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for seeing my truth. But you know that it's just, it's another easy answer to the very hard question of affordable housing. Right? So I think there's plenty of Democrats out there. I think it's a bullshit answer. Oh, it's a total bullshit answer. I think you just want to sell the land. I don't think that any interest in turning it into public housing.

No. Fuck off. Fuck off is right. Put public housing in the middle of public housing no fuck off fuck off is right Put public housing in the middle of the woods fuck off no, it's not what you're doing No, no, this is one of those things you say to people so oh it would go to the greater good Oh my god We've been talking about urban renewal for how long in this country right like there's a lot of places That are not going to be good for wildlife Not going to be good for the matriculation of clean water. They're not producing clean air. Yeah, that could be great Affordable housing or just housing in general for people. Yeah, but that's hard. It's not convenient exactly. Yeah, not convenient. That's the thing

Well, thank you for doing what you do brother and thank you for being such a vocal Spokesperson during this time because it was really really impactful made a lot made a lot of difference really did Well, I'm gonna be here for the next one. All right. Let's hope we don't have to do this again. I want to change my shirt Let's hope we don't have to do it again, but if we do we'll do it again. All right. Thanks a bunch. Thank you, brother. And Cal's Week in Review, it's available everywhere. Apple, Spotify, all that jazz, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Olcal406 on the Instagram, and if you want to do me a huge favor, I'm the North American board chair for backcountry hunters and anglers and we put in over a hundred and fifty thousand comments phone calls from from real people who used our action alert center during this public lands battle and that's made a big difference because we can go into those offices and say, hey, 2,500 people called your office today. Have you heard about Public Lands?

So become a member. Helps us out, and we'll help you out, and we're not going to give up on this stuff. I'm a lifetime member. Love you, buddy. Love you, too, buddy. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye!