The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 034

Episode Date: April 29, 2016

Missoula, Montana. Recorded live from the 2016 BHA Rendezvous, Steven Rinella and Janis Putelis talk with First Lite's Ryan Callaghan, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers' founder Land Tawney, and Kimber's Vice President of Sales Ryan Busse. Subjects discussed include: Callaghan sneaking out of the BHA conference to go fishing; Steve's invasive species t-shirt idea; judging a wild game cook-off; BHA's work on drones in hunting; texting and using radios while hunting; baiting bears; the death of a thousand cuts; American Exceptionalism; Roosevelt's public land legacy; Steve's fascination with the American buffalo; making roads vs making wilderness; how public lands became a partisan issue; the intrinsic value of wilderness; what's happening in the Badger Two Medicine of Montana; Steve Rinella for President; how to be an advocate; the question of climate change; and being a role model. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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hey everyone this is the meat eater podcast we're in missoula montana celebrating Land Tawny's birthday. Really, we're here for the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers annual rendezvous. And this is number five. Why did it take so long to have one? Just no one ever thought, like, hey, let's have a get together. Because of what it takes to put it on you know and i think uh because the organization's been around how long

uh been around for this is our 12th year but you know that was when we first had staff i think was when we had the first one so you had to have someone to plan it out exactly yeah when i showed up here yesterday i got here and first thing i saw was Callahan sneaking out the door going fishing. What'd you catch? You in a two-hour, a two-hour float? It was a little rushed. A three hour, two hour cruise? A little rushed, yeah. We got one rainbow. You know, um, you know my sister-in-law lives up that river. You run the Blackfoot River. Juanita. You met her met her yeah you caught one fish yep did ken catch one he did not was it a big one that you caught it was a nice fish it wasn't huge you guys did a full-on float yeah my buddy uh uh ryan thompson caitlin two uh husband And Caitlin, Tuig's husband, he... In the name of driving.

They live up there. Sorry. Anyway. Helped me out a ton and basically had the boat on the water. We ran up there, jumped in, floated down to their house. Oh. He continued on to the boat ramp and took care of all the stuff. Really? Yeah, and I came back here in time for the what did you do

with that fish uh released it just like you do i'm thinking about having yanni's t-shirt company make me a t-shirt down the back it's gonna be like kudzu a dandelion spotted napweed leafy spurge in a rainbow it's gonna be like um invasive stop invasives now how about just bonk them on the front and bonk them that's good catch and release into a pan of grease so now how what like what's the goal of a of the uh the whole deal when you guys have a, you know, when an organization has an annual convention? Like, to rally people up? Do you guys actually do business? We do.

We had our only face-to-face board meeting. And then we had chapter leaders that came in from all across the country. I think we had 45 chapter leaders. And so we did some training with them. And then, like like what you talked about rallying the troops, you know, I think a lot of us only see each other one time a year. And so having the ability to like bring everybody together, kind of coalesce, swap stories, just like kind of the traditional, you know, rendezvous where the trappers would come together. Yeah.

And they never rendezvoused in this valley. They never did in this valley. That's weird. It's such a great valley. But then you have, you you know like they go home fired up and i think you know we accomplished that in spades yeah yeah now uh when you say the board meeting the board only gets together once a year face to face face to face yeah how many people are on the board? We have 10 right now. Are you on the board? Nope. The day ain't over. I'm a lifetime member. Yeah.

You saw me trying to take notes on the food judging contest yesterday. Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that. I was going to talk about that. We judged a wild game cook and cook off. Yeah. And five teams had five teams in five different chapters. Why was it only five different chapters?

That's just who signed up. That's who signed up. And it's also, you know, I think logistically, you know, Camp Chef was obviously a great partner in that whole thing. And so just logistically, that's what we could do. And so five chapters stepped up. And unfortunately, I was upstairs. So I would love to hear how it went. No, I was upstairs. So I would love to hear how it went. No, I remember.

So yeah, five teams did it and they all had, we had to rate them on presentation, taste, creativity. They're trying to remember. I also rated them on state. Yeah. Callahan. I looked at Callahan's notes at one point, and he had made another category where he wrote down where they were from, which was like just bringing some weird bias into it, not even being secret.

And then Callahan took all kinds of notes, and then later when we got together with the judge, he didn't even refer to his notes. And every time someone asked him, we were tallying the scores, every time someone asked him, he'd kind of look off in the sky and then give a number without like without referring back to his notes at all pure genius thank you what were you uh what were you like had you memorized your

notes well or were you like just kind of still i it was very hard for me all of a sudden i felt very pressured and everything was really really good and there was no crazy outlier in there yeah i mean everybody put a ton of thought into every dish and it was weighing on me a guy made uh one one of the teams made bibimbap the korean, and they did it with, they had it garnished on top with glacier lily, which is very pretty. That was a pretty dish, vibrant colors. You know, the nettles.

Those are great. Really stood out. Those were great. They had, there was a dish that had fried quail in it and then some sort of hooved animal. I can't remember what the hooved animal in there was. And then they had. Oh, they had elk heart in the greens. Oh.

That was good. No, yeah, that's right. It was like a corned elk heart with greens and fried quail, and there was like a couple, like a honey, because they did like a, not a waffle, but it was sort of a take on fried chicken and waffles. And I got to say, I saw the corn to elk heart. I saw a post

of it or something. I was like, nah, it's not going to work out. Really? Yeah, but it was great. You know what I did the other day? I brined Hey, you were for dinner that night, weren't you? I brined moose heart and just smoked it. How'd it go? Shit was good.

Did you like it, Yanni? Yeah, it was good. good did you like it yanni yanni's keeping yeah it was good you know you didn't like it i said it was good every time i try to do anything other than fry hard or slice it and throw it on the barbecue i'm just not not into me it doesn't work out you know you know so now ryan what do you got to say for yourself? We got another man here. I was going to say, you missed another meal. Callahan was there. Thursday night, we had a big what we called tack barn dinner.

Four of us cooking. Had some good stuff there. What did you guys do with that for food? It was all wild game, hunterer stuff four different courses cooked all camp cook so uh dutch oven grill over we had uh hank shaw did five antelope hind quarters over open flame coals hanging by a big tripod killer good that worked out good killer good yeah we had four dishes i did elk loin montana chickpeas we had uh charl mcguinn did uh dutch oven lasagna made his own cheeses two different cheeses

um first time he'd ever done dutch oven lasagna nailed it of course he's a he's a stud of a chef he didn't make those cheeses out of like uh elk and deer milk did he we we uh hey man check it out i we met a guy you honest we met a guy in texas who one time um because you know the hide hunters the buffalo hide hunters used to cut the mammaries open and suck the milk out of the mammaries when they were butchering animals and we met a guy down texas remember that guy which one the dude that hunts cranes with the zombie cranes. Oh, Mike, yeah. Nasty, panassy. He one time was skinning the dough, and he didn't want to admit it.

Like, he told me the story, and then later we were recording one of these, and I said, hey, man, talk about when you were drinking that milk out of that deer you were cutting up. Didn't want to talk about it. It was a private conversation that he wanted well uh yeah we're a hardcore man but we're not there yet so when the the whole legs how'd you how did it get cooked into the bone or did you have to just

keep cutting away and letting it cook more and keep cutting away and letting it cook it was a challenge on that one because we're cooking in colder conditions than hank usually cooks in so it was a little slower for him but didn't it was rare on the bone um but i'd say we got the we got it oh two-thirds was cooked just right with rare right at the bone so we had variations of doneness through it so it's like something for everybody yeah yeah and he made his own had his own vinegar he had over the top of it uh brought sage wild sage from california cooked in there with it was fantastic it was good that's good where were the antelope from not from there montana okay members donated them yeah they're pretty short on antelope in california yeah they're running low over there yeah um so ryan explain your role at BHA.

Chairman of the... Yeah, I'm chairman of the board of directors now. So what do you do? Well, we're, we're trying to provide some direction and try to bounce ideas off of each other and give land as marching orders and give the staff ideas on where we'd like to see the org go. And we've... So the board is chief over land or land is chief over the board? Honestly, it depends on the day and who you ask.

It's his birthday, so I guess we'll let him be boss today. Land, do me a favor. Run through the buckets again. I know you did this before you were on with us. We spent like an hour on the buckets, but hit me with the buckets, but hit me in like real shorthand. Yeah, yeah. So we've got three buckets.

First one would be- I thought it was five buckets. And we changed it because it was too much. Too many buckets. You still can only carry two at a time. Yeah, I got one in my mouth. I got one in my mouth. So that's good.

No, we got three buckets. First one is access and opportunity. Well, I got to get back to why. How did you lose? Okay, tell me the buckets and explain because I imagine you poured a bucket into another bucket. We did. did yeah and so I'll tell you where that bucket came from so we have uh access and opportunity is the first one that was a regular bucket um that's our public lands work that's our access to public lands as our access to public waters and then the second bucket which got a lot

bigger uh is the backcountry kind of conservation. And so within that, you got special places, which used to be a standalone bucket. And then you have kind of larger, big scale. These are nesting pots. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then after that, you have like larger things like the Clean Water Act, you know, that has implications for everybody. That's a lot bigger than like special places. Yeah. And then our final one is fair chase. And that fair chase bucket, you know, that's a lot bigger than like special places yeah and then our final one is fair chase and that fair chase bucket you know that's where our drone kind of work comes in that's where our high fence work is going to come in and kind of our illegal ohv use is under that bucket as well why do you think that people have been able to well i'm i don't want to stack things on top of

each other yeah so i think you kind of explained where the buckets went it's just like you're but but this is just the way you just think in your own mind, right? I mean, this is kind of the way you guys categorize. Yeah, and we want to make it simple for people to understand what we do, right? Yeah, no. And so when I'm into five buckets, people start going to sleep, right?

And so the three buckets, and the way I just explained them, I think it's pretty succinct. And so people can understand that right away. Yeah. Are you familiar with the comedian Mitch Hedberg? I am not. He died, but... Sorry to understand that right away yeah are you familiar with the comedian mitch hedberg i am not um he died but sorry to hear that probably the greatest american one of the greatest american comedians ever but he had a joke where he was um talking about someone gave him uh what's the drug

you take when you have adhd attention yeah so he would takeitalin, but he's not, but he doesn't suffer from the ailment. He would just take the solution. And he said that, um, whenever someone, someone told him something, he'd be like, there's gotta be more to that story. Fair enough. So now I like the five buckets, man. Cause I like a long story. But, um, why do you think, I want to talk about the drone situation, because you addressed that last night at the dinner. Oh, also, who wound up buying the float trip with you? Was it your mom? No. I don't make my mom pay to go hang out with me.

She did bid him up, though. She wanted to get you alone on a boat and criticize you? No, it was actually actually it was a friend of mine who after he bought it as i'm hugging him he told he whispered to me he said i'm gonna work that shit out of you and so then i told him where i wanted to go and there's a portage and he said he's not going to do the portage and so that means that uh i'll be working and i think we'll be going by holes and then just he will say like make me get out of the boat and like drag it back up the river or row it back up the river so now he told me last night he's gonna put like 40 flies in the willows it might be

an expensive trip so yeah you talked about the drone issue 13 states of ban drones yes now why are people why do you think people are able to coalesce around drones when they'd be reluctant to coalesce around other uh technologies being eliminated from the hunting toolkit is it because it's totally new it's definitely part of it yeah i think you know i mean there's no traditional use once you get something established you know like when you got a lot of money at stake but then you have a lot of people that have already you know like that's the way they do business. Right. And so on the drone thing, we got out in front of that and, um, you know, there isn't like a, a drone hunting association, right? Like, you know what I mean? The drone owners, the drone lobby,

there's a drone lobby, but that's more for Amazon.com. Yeah, exactly. And so, and so, but you know, we wanted to get in front of it, you know, so there's things like live action cameras on trees, right. And we have their band here in Montana, but, you know, we wanted to get in front of it, you know? So there's things like live action cameras on trees, right? And we have their band here in Montana, but in a lot of states, that's okay. And like, to me, that's kind of the same thing. And, you know, that's already been established. And so that's a lot harder to put that back in the box, right? And so with the drone stuff, yeah, people, I mean, I think people, when they hear about that,

they just can't believe that people were starting to do that right so we were in a good place when we did that i think if i don't know how many years you'd have to go back but if you went back to the advent of trail cameras like right now if you said like in a national sense no trail cameras people would have a shit fit oh yeah i mean there's arizona from arizona wisconsin i mean where, you know, here it was weird when they did it that you had to pull them when season started. Right. Which, I mean, that's probably really hard to regulate. Well, I don't know.

If you see one, you see one. True. But I think that's the thing with drones too, right? Like, you know, there's all these laws about flying airplanes, you know, and what you can hunt within like scouting on an airplane. So I think it's 24 hours. And so we, we thought about doing that with drones, but drones are so much less invasive than an airplane. I mean, you can hear an airplane and you know, when you're in the woods from a long ways away for a drone, you gotta be pretty close to it. And so that's why we didn't do the 24 hour rule there. We banned him for the entire season. So some guys, you know, if a law enforcement

officer sees a guy with a drone during hunting season like that's a pretty easy way to do it rather than the 24 yeah like in alaska you got you know there's there's a lot of hunts you can people don't a lot of people don't realize there's a lot of hunts you can fly and hunt on the same day you know for black tail deer and caribou and stuff there's some hunts you can some hunts you cannot but now you can't like if you fly a drone you don't hunt that season right yeah just that's it that's it which is a little bit surprising i mean i'm glad i'd like to see it i think everybody likes to see it but again i think it's because it hadn't been in my mind it just hadn't become entrenched totally like it hadn't become like a traditional use issue totally and traditions happen real quick

they do you know they do and i think a lot of those traditions, though, they come with money too, right? Yeah. I mean, you think you just talked about trail cameras. I mean, think about the, I mean, I don't know what the dollar figure is, but it's got to be in the high millions, right? I mean, that's an industry now that would be taken away. And so it'd be people that would fight it, but it'd be even more, I think the people that are making those things. Yeah. Another thing that's been funny to watch is two-way communications um i hunted with some friends of mine in wisconsin they they spend 75 of their time texting and 25 of their time looking for deer how's that work out for them well they just text you know and in here

in montana at first two-way communications i remember years ago for one year you couldn't use them and people were pissed right because people like hey man I'm out with my kids sure it's safety I want to know what's going on I hunt with my dad he's elderly sure I need to know what's happening with him and so then they clarified the language you can't use it to assist the same thing in Alaska right you can't use it so you can have it you can't use it to assist and to take in a game, which I thought wound up being a pretty reasonable compromise. But I know guys, especially it seems like down in the southwest, if they can't have two-way radios, they ain't going hunting. They get a guy on every point, find an animal, nine guys watching it,

one guy going after it, and they're all on radios. Literally a goddamn SEAL team. What do you think of that? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, personally, you know, you get into this thing all the time. I've had this conversation. I did like a talk two nights ago in Michigan, and a guy asked me, like, what do you think

of baiting? I'm like, I think if baiting's okay where you're at, great. Is it legal? You know, if it's illegal, I think you should probably stop doing it. I grew up first, second, third, fourth, fifth deer I ever killed, I killed over a pile of carrots. Later, I got real curious about what deer are doing when they're not eating my carrots. What I learned about deer from hunting over bait is that deer will like carrots. As you get more experience, I think you start wondering what they're doing when they're not eating them and where are they going and how would you find them if they're going about their natural rhythms.

Sure. You know, and that's just where I'm, what I wound up being more interested in. If I'm out hunting and I'm going after an animal, it's very tempting to have information like, hey man, it left. Or a dude got up and bedded back down again 20 yards over by that rock. It's like tempting to have the information. But in the end, after the fact,

I think that it would diminish your memory of the animal. I that it would diminish your memory of the animal i think it'd diminish your memory of the hunt when uh growing up in montana right no uh communicate or what i don't know how the law says it but can't use communication to target animals or assistant yeah they worded an assistant to taking a game. First time ever hunting out of the state, guiding in Idaho, and you just make some assumptions on some rules. And typically if you assume on the side of the animal you're going to be correct. Yeah. And we're riding up the trail.

I'm just learning. The guide ahead of me, radio cracks, and it's like, hey, you guys just rode past a bull. Oh, jump off. These guys were just riding into camp, you know, the clients. And, you know, 10 minutes later, dead bull. Really? Yep. And I was, oh, my God.

I was just part of something highly illegal what am i gonna do like what are you talking about that's how you kill elk up here like it's totally legal in idaho and i just couldn't totally takes away from it doesn't that prove that uh legality is only part of your ethics yeah well it's that's tricky as hell. Because I brought this point a lot of guys in the southeast run deer with dogs. That's traditional use. They've done it for a long time. If you decided you were going to people in Michigan, when they see a deer chasing dog, they shoot it. I'm saying when they see a dog chasing a deer, you shoot at it. So they would act like if I said, oh, yeah, I'm going up to Michigan, I'm going to be running deer with my dogs.

That'd be illegal, unethical, all that kind of stuff. In the southeast, it's a traditional use practice. You know, I think like I think that that's why the conversation about ethics gets so sticky, because everyone's brought up in their own area and they're brought up to think that that what they do is the right way of going about things. You know, so it is it is tricky. It's hard to draw a definites. I do have some definites, I think, but I think that some stuff that I know so it is it is tricky it's hard to draw a definites but like i do have some definites i think but i think that some stuff that i used to think is definite is tricky like your carrot deer though your ethics you thought more of that deer after you got strictly from past the legality it's legal for you to shoot over carrots but your ethics led

you to something else your deer was worth more yeah i mean yeah yeah it did it means more and in the end oddly they really started to curtail bait use in michigan shortly after i left because of disease transmission because you're bringing animals in rubbing noses and eating dirt that's infected with their own saliva and you know and you wind up having a much higher chance of disease transmission so they started regulating when you put it out how much you out. And that was kind of on the tail end. So then I think in that case, yeah, you do wind up in a thing where someone's like, it's not healthy for the animals, you know? And another thing with technologies, man, Aldo Leopold had that line about, well, first, who is the guy not long ago wrote a piece like, let's stop talking about ethics and fair chase and let's talk about fair use or fair portions.

What was that? You know what I'm talking about? Nope. He was just saying that we're using the wrong language. His point being, you have a well, right? Well, this is how Alvin Leopold put it. You got a well full of water. If you improve the pump and never improve the well, right? The well is not going to hold up as well as it did.

So we're constantly improving the pump with technology, but are we improving the well? So I think an issue like that is if you go like, yes, baiting is in fact hazardous to our herd, depletes the well improves the pump and then through disease transmission depletes the well i think that then you get very firmly into an ethical issue but if you got a state that's got a lot of deer and they found it over the course of many decades they've been able to manage deer at a level they're comfortable with and people are baiting and and it's how people do it i have a hard time condemning it. The first two bears I ever ate were shot off bait from carp, an invasive species, carp that we shot with our bows and

froze them and used them to bait deer, to bait bears when my brothers drew bear tags in Michigan. I have no, like, it's just not that exciting to me to think, I've never shot a bear over bait. I've been invited to it. I have no desire to do it just because it's just bears eating bait isn't interesting but i have a hard time like acting like oh i'm going to translate that into an ethical conundrum you know it's hard for people hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the canadians whenever we do a raffle a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join

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What do you think about all that, Land? You can't. You got to walk a fine line, dude, because you're like a orc. I always like to clarify when I'm talking to Land that I'm not speaking for us.

I don't speak for Land. Which I'm glad, though you are much more eloquent than I am. Well, no, but I don't want people to confuse what I think was when I hear about baiting it's especially around bears it's like we have better jelly donuts than they did and that's why that bear came in and that to me is not a skill that I want to acquire is knowing which like donuts bring in the bears that's just me you know and um but when you hear you know like that I think it was in Maine right I think they were talking about the banning of baiting yeah in maine and they talk i mean they have a large population of black bears there and they need to manage them and when you talk to the fish and game that was a tool that they were using

well there's no other way to hunt them right well i shouldn't say there's no other way to hunt them but effectively it's like when you ban dogs for lions you're kind of banning lion hunting yes right in the east like for instance where i grew up or where we first familiarized ourselves with like any kind of hunting bears i talk about my brothers drawing those bear tags yeah it's flat swamp it's hemlock and just like alder swamp you can't see your hand in front of your face right there are bears around i think in all my time running around there i saw one bear across the road meanwhile it's got extremely high densities of bears sure you just don't see them right so to talk about oh we're going to ban bait

for bears in michigan it's like okay but let's just be honest what you're doing you're banning you're banning bear hunting effectively yeah i mean so i i advocated against the main i mean not that i had any real saying it but i advocated against the main i mean not that i had any real saying it but i advocated against the thing in maine because i thought that that's what it was doing i always think about what are the private conversations that people have right some guy recently came to me and he's like oh yeah we're got we're doing a thing where we want to ban trapping on public land in montana i'm like that doesn't interest me and they're like oh yeah but we got a lot of hunters or with us.

And I remember thinking, like, what is the private conversation of the person? What are they, when they're sitting around drinking in their house with their buddies, what are they talking about? They're talking about how they want to, like, cut away. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think on the ban on public lands, I mean, we do not want to do things like that on a referendum like it's up to in my opinion it's up to the people who have the knowledge our fish and game agencies on how like we regulate you know in our fish and game commissions we start doing that through a ballot initiative and that's where we lose at some point right and i think what you're talking about this

chipping away the woman that runs uh trap free montana um i think she came actually to that uh thing that we had at the uh roxy and i don't remember that um when you were talking about uh i think you were doing a book signing or something there and she came and she stood up and like she was talking about it and she was starting with uh with trapping but really it was about hunting and she was nervous about being in the woods during the fall, right? Yeah. And to me, so it's just, it's like for her, it's just the tip of the iceberg

when you talk about trapping. There's more that she's going after. Yeah, I believe in incrementalism, man. Yeah. I think that everything moves in incrementalism. Death of a thousand cuts, right? Yeah. I mean, in a positive and in a negative way.

Sure. I think that the gay rights movement has been like a very incremental victory, a very incremental civil rights victory. Yes. You know? And I think that like the civil rights movement, a very incremental thing. I think that hunting can go in the opposite direction of being just a very incremental death.

Sure. I would say, though, on like the trapping side in particular, I think sometimes trappers are our own worst enemy. And so here in Montana, we've been trying to get some mandatory trapper education. Like dude's setting too close to trails. Just having the knowledge about it, right? If anybody can go out to Bob Ward's tomorrow and buy a trap and has no knowledge besides they just bought a trap.

And so if bow hunting has mandatory education, why shouldn't trapping have that, you know? And so they've, you know, they've fought that every single time at the state legislature. And I think that means that they're on their own worst enemy, right? And so that gives people more credence to talk about this banning trapping on public land, which I totally disagree with. We can see how that path gets there. I had a good friend here, you know, I think he he said it well he was at bha and he said we'll continue to be able to do this as long as we behave in a way that's defensible to the public you know and so part of this it's on our shoulders to do it whether it's take bow hunter safety or hunter safety or maybe a trapping safety class definitely don't

want to see it go away but we have to behave in a way that's defensible to the public when they came out with hunter's safety do people bitch about it uh you're 41 yeah i don't i don't think i i i i don't know that because yeah it's always been part of it had you been contentious maybe yeah probably because it was like at that point probably it was i think it was contentious when they came out with driver's ed yeah someone's probably what you know callahan talk about you know we're talking about someone saying that they were afraid to be out in the woods during hunting season talk about if you're comfortable what you were telling me about remember we had a big email chain debating with you me and doug duran and my brother arguing about uh hunter recruitment yeah and you bringing up a point about the way skiing is perceived in your town

and the way hunting is perceived in your town relative to hazardous risk. Do you remember this? Yes. Talk about that. Speak to that. Yeah. Ketchum, Idaho. Skiing is the end all, be all.

It is why you're there. Everybody's a skier. Idaho, skiing is the end all be all. It is why you're there. Everybody's a skier. That's how people love to identify themselves, even if it's not true. It is the only, it is like the only truly acceptable form of recreation I've found out there. And hunting hunters get a bad rap.

We're in the paper there all the time. Not ever hunters speaking out because for some reason it doesn't make the paper, but people speaking out against hunters. And I just started thinking of how interesting it was that skiing you have you know multiple just I mean just between Montana and Idaho and and Wyoming you have multiple deaths a year and people are oh that's just skiing yeah but also when dudes kick down an avalanche on other dudes, you're not even killing yourself.

Exactly. Now imagine that happening in the hunting community. It would be in a major, major fight. Well, yeah, if every year you had two or three gunshot deaths during hunting season. Yeah, and some of these avalanche fatalities they're people doing just minding their own business and uh an avalanche comes down and wipes them out that'd be like a hunter you know picking off a hiker yeah but it's not perceived that way not perceived that way and i just why is that it's all recreation i'm. Not perceived that way. And I just, why is that? It's all recreation.

I'm afraid to be out in the woods. Yeah. Come on. Thanks, Cal. No problem. Let's go back to bucket number one. Access. Yep.

Yeah. Give me the lowdown on that so i mean i think the biggest thing under access and opportunity is this uh this whole public lands kind of divest your movement that uh seems to be um very prevalent right now and you know those folks that that want to steal our heritage and take it for their own i think that is like that is the issue we can't talk about any other things if we get that one wrong. Well, tell me this, because this I find is helpful. Put yourself in the place of a very smart person.

That's going to be hard. Hear me out. Try, man. Put yourself in the place of a very smart person who's explaining to me why we should divest federal lands. What would they tell me don't spin it i think they would tell you that uh that local control is better because why i say i would then say why because it's their backyard and they know it's best uh for that land okay that's what i think that's what they would say I think definitely

you would get though I mean I don't know anything in this movement that's not based on extractive resources and I think the core of it would be and the argument would be our communities exist because we can extract resources from these federal properties the federal government is inefficient at allowing us to us to extract resources from these properties in the way that we think we should extract resources. And we want to be able to more efficiently take the resources out to make more money on them. Because by proximity, we have more of a right to that than other owners who are not living in close proximity? I think there's two issues. They believe that proximity allows them more rights to those resources,

and they also believe that distance, meaning federal lands managers who are distanced geographically from their lands, don't know best how to take which tree or which mine or which gas well or whatever it is. And so, yes, it's more theirs because they're closer to it. But also just generally speaking, federal government, you know, isn't perceived as the most efficient extractor of those resources. And the laws that are adhered to by the feds, that have to be adhered to by the feds, tend to slow down those sorts of decisions with good reason. You know, federal land management is complex. I think a big part of this problem is that 60-character Twitter thing

where it's like, well, who can manage it best, somebody in D.C. or somebody locally? It's not like... Yeah, you'd be like, I'd have to know more. Yeah, it's not like the office there in D.C. flies somebody out for one day and says, hey, can we cut down this timber? Well, I don't know. Better fly back to D.C. and talk it over with the boys.

Yeah. You know, there's regional offices everywhere. District offices, the close ones. I mean, it's it's crazy. crazy they're the people they're operating under a mandate to do a lot more than make they're operating under a mandate to do a lot more than make a temporary amount of money for a said individual well that i think you hit on it and the 160 characters that we live in a bumper sticker world you know if you can't boil it down to something that can fit on a bumper sticker and piss somebody off that's just not cool and so these these things that are complex um like federal lands management, it's a complex thing.

You have to satisfy all these constituencies. Nobody's going to get their way 100%. Well, there are people now who want their way 100% and don't understand the complexities of it. My brother just made a bumper sticker that says, I heart gluten. He just feels bad for gluten. I can totally see Matt doing that. But yeah, I think, yeah, there is, I don't know why, where did it come from, the reluctance to grapple with complex issues? We used, I mean, I really believe the internet and frankly,, the 24-hour news cycle plays into this. We used to sit around, frankly, people used to sit around with beers and coffee and do what we're doing.

Now you get on your computer and send a flamer to somebody. You get on Facebook and piss somebody off. There's no appreciation or there's insignificant appreciation for the complexities and other people's outlooks and working together. So now go back into yourselves now you don't have to play the role the really smart guy who wants thank goodness who wants to privatize federal lands or privatize public lands or whatever have unhead on uh what's the word unfettered who wants unfettered access with no what i would oftentimes see as unfettered access with no real eye toward long term future and you can kind of see that at play when you watch energy prices when like mineral or

energy prices go up people get real interested in something they go down their interest seems to fade and so you're like so you were kind of looking at this as a very temporary thing you know it couldn't even hold up through a market cycle. But go back to your regular self. That's me not land talking. And tell me, sell me against divestiture of public lands. I think the, I mean, divestiture, I mean, this is like our- Divestiture.

I always add a syllable for some reason. This is what is uniquely american right i mean it's what separates us from the entire world that these lands belong to the people instead of the short-term use that we have this conservation ethic which is for future generations and so it doesn't mean no use doesn't mean no extractiveness but it means it has to balance that for future generations and also other uses. And so, you know, you divest those either to the states or to individuals, and we lose that intrinsic value that I think is the main piece of fabric that weaves all across this country that is truly American. And the idea that the states can manage this better, there's been no study that's been done

that says that's the truth. And Utah came close, and that's when oil was at a real, real high level. It was over $100 a barrel. And then it dropped out, just like you just talked about, right? And so now all those plans that they had, even though they were short-term extraction,

like go crazy and do it, those are even pencil out now. And so they cannot manage those lands. And so they'd have a couple different options. You either extract that very quickly and get a little short-time money, or you raise taxes. When was the last time you heard a politician get away with raising taxes? That's going to be their platform.

Nobody does that, right? Yeah. Or at the very end of that is they sell it. And I think Ryan is right that there's the industry that is behind this, the extractive industry. I think that's very real. But there's also folks, I mean, look at the Wilkes brothers and what they've done in Montana here in the last 10 years.

They're now the number one landowner here in Montana. They're trying to take a public elk herd in the Durfee Hills for their own. They're salivating watching this all happen and ready to buy all their bits and pieces of America. And they're billionaires, and they got the money. And it's not just them that I'm worried about. It's the, you know, foreign entities like the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese are buying places all over the world right now.

And if they owned our public lands and our clean water, think about how crazy that would be. Oh, they do a great job environmentally in their own country. You know, I would say... Those beautiful clouds they made over all their cities. It is nice. You know, some folks on the side of this argument, the pro side of divestiture,

sorry, that's like adding a syllable there, but, you know, they believe in American exceptionalism. They often tout American exceptionalism on all sorts of foreign policy issues and governmental issues and constitutional issues. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, one of the top two after our form of government examples of American exceptionalism is what we have in our public lands. I don't think you can be a fan of American exceptionalism and then want to ruin the number two example, in my opinion, of what American exceptionalism and then want to ruin the number two example in my opinion of what american exceptionalism is we have this thing that every citizen in the united

states has deed as you said last night has deed to these millions of acres there's no other group of people on the planet's ever tried this yeah that was one of the frustrating things with me about the wildlife refuge takeover in oregon is the way it draped itself in the American flag in a very literal way. I mean, literally like draping itself in the American flag. And we're looking at it thinking, but what aspect of America are you talking about? It's not the rule of law, not the part of America where we don't tolerate pointing weapons at peace officers and civil civil servants not the part of america we don't terrorize the populace like what aspect of america do you mean you know it was just very puzzling to me to see like what part of america were you promoting you know yeah what do you think would have felt like an isis flag would maybe be more well but

what with those guys what do you think would have happened if they were of a different religion and they occupied a federal facility in some city with uh you know armed and threatening federal officers you think we'd let that go on no 50 60 days i think they would have got dusted off pretty quick it was yeah it was positive like i just don't understand that interpretation of america that america is that doesn't admire rule of law i think one of the things that makes this great is like we don't in most cases we don't need vigilantism because we have a way to redress the government you know i'm actually doing it right now i'm in the appeals process fighting the federal government on something.

I'm not in trouble. You're a rabble rouser. Yeah, me and Yanni. Well, that's what, you know, you look at those guys. Don't get me involved. They say they're, you know, they say they want to adhere to the Constitution. But, I mean, to your point, Steve, for them to believe in what they do, they have to first twist the hell out of the constitution so that they can read it upside down or sideways in

a way that nobody else reads it, including every constitutional attorney that's ever looked at it. So once you twist it, then you can find this odd way to defend it and wrap yourself in a flag that we don't recognize. Yeah. Did you guys see uh german gal that came by the food contest yesterday don't think so no it was amazing she'd exchange exchange student or something well i don't want to talk them out here things that just pissed me off too much but the uh she's like what are you guys doing is this a festival i said well it's a public lands thing what are you guys doing? Is this a festival? I said, well, it's a public lands thing. She's like, well, what are public lands? The stuff you don't have.

Yeah. It was amazing. All of a sudden, I was like, oh, I'm representing the United States versus Germany. I was like, I better get this right. All I could think about was an article I'd recently read about, you know, going out and meeting your gamekeeper. Yeah, yeah. And paying your trespass fee because everything's private. And she's like, so you want to take those private lands?

Like, no, they're public. You can use them. Do you pay taxes here? She's like, no. I pay taxes in Germany. I said, oh, well, you can still use these lands and it was very cool yeah yeah i didn't know you were engaged in diplomacy last night it's a big day the ambassador um i hear a lot of times people when they're having this discussion like someone mentioned this recently how the uh tracing back public lands use back to pioneer

days um how and i've done it too to say like oh you think of a guy like daniel boone you know he came from british or you know english descent and in england if you get caught on someone's private land you know they would set traps for you and poison you and shoot you. And you could be hung for it to be hunting on someone else's property. But when those guys came here, they were trespassing in many respects. Like Daniel Boone was often hunting on ground claimed by the British and an enormous amount of friction there claimed by indigenous groups you know it was a muddy picture back then I think the only the idea of like sort of what we're talking about when we talk about wildlife in the public trust and public trust

lands is something that is not new but very much know, a 19th and 20th century creation. It's an experiment, right? I mean, it's, it's such a new thing, um, that, that we don't know. I don't think we totally know the value of it yet. Right. I mean, I think when you were talking last night, um, you know, there's just having it there has this intrinsic value. And I don't think we've fully realized what that is yet because it's such a, I mean, the history in this country is so young, in particular the public lands history is so young, that I don't think we understand the breadth of what that means to us yet.

No, it comes gradually because now we've all settled in. I mean, both sides of the aisle have settled in that roosevelt was a was a you know had incredible foresight and was a great hero he had to do he had to twist a lot of arms and do a lot of shady dealings to create the national force that he created yeah the midnight force yeah so he was really pissing people off now we're like man what man, what a visionary. I mean, William Clark, you know, one of the Copper Kings was senator at that time in Montana when he set it aside. And this is a guy that was handing out $100 bills on the Senate floor to get votes. He became a senator in Montana and he fought this because they wanted to do nothing but rape and pillage. Yeah. And so it's not like, you know, everybody, you know,

Roosevelt came up with this idea and they're like, oh, that's awesome. Good idea. No, people now it's like, what a, you know, what a tremendous, you look at like Yosemite, it's now hit where we widely regard it as being a great move. Yellowstone at the time, someone could have made a pretty good argument that you could draw a lot of money and you still could draw a lot of money out of Yellowstone, but it's becoming our minds now.

It's like, wow, we're visionaries. They did make the argument. Yeah, it was contentious at the time. I just don't think we're done having that conversation. And I think things are going to keep moving into the realm of, wow, I can't believe those guys had the foresight to have this stuff. No one else has it. I mean, these places that are still like they were thousands

of years ago are going to become much more valuable as this country develops no yeah as the world yeah as the world goes to shit we're going to be more and more like i can't believe those dudes have that exactly well think about how it's similar to our government i mean uh lots of mistakes were made we learn we learn European mistakes. We learned from all sorts of mistakes. And mistakes we made as a populace. And we formed our government, a constitution, a government owned by the people. Same thing happened with land. I mean, we made all sorts of mistakes.

We've done horrible things to indigenous peoples. But we learned through trial and error. And we came up with a land system very similar to government. It's owned by the people. These are two very similar things, our constitutional system of government and our public property. Same sort of thing. Most egalitarian thing on the planet as far as I'm concerned. I think one of the best arguments for public lands in wild places is that we don't want to have people like British people who do nature shows.

Because they don't have any trees and any woods left and then you look like like bear grills he's always like holy shit i'm in the woods i gotta get out of here quick before something bad happens you know and um yeah i think that it's like part of the american tradition to find comfort in wild places instead of having to be like this adversarial relationship you know that's why I think about it just to eliminate yeah just because I hate those kind of nature shows oh my god it's an animal run speaking of big wild places we talked with the other day when we talked to Dan he was talking about the is it the American prairie project yeah are you guys as BHA involved in that at all, or can you speak to that?

Yeah, you're going to keep twisting their arms, make sure it stays open for... Yeah, I mean, what they're doing there is quite amazing, right? And for those that don't know about this, it's central Montana. They're trying to tie into the Charles M. National Wildlife Refuge and the Missouri Breaks National Monument. CMR is about 1.1 million acres. I think they're looking at trying to pull together property at about 3 million acres. And it's native prairie. Willing seller, willing buyer.

Totally. Exactly. Private market, capitalist system. Yeah, it's buy land when it's up for sale. And nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. And so I think the American Prairie Foundation has a really long-term look at this and and so i think they're into almost a half a million acres that they have that is deeded plus like leased land on on uh on blm land and so their idea is to try to like be able to bring all this together again well they're able to buy they do grazing they like get grazing leases they get grazing leases and they're turning

those over so that they can have those used for bison. And they're getting past the whole brucellosis issue, which I think is pretty hilarious because elk in this state carry more brucellosis than bison, but they're such an established species that we hunt and that everybody loves that nobody's going to touch them. But with a bison, oh man, he might have brucellosis. And so we can't have any bison from Yellowstone that are up here in the APR or in this region. So what they're doing is they're taking any bison from Yellowstone that are up here in the APR or in this region.

So what they're doing is they're taking those bison from Elk Island that have never, ever, up in Alaska, that have never been exposed to brucellosis. And so that takes that argument away really quickly. And so now that they don't have that argument, it's more about competition for grass, which I think it's always been about. I don't think that's even a debatable point. People will debate it all day long. which I think it's always been about. And so... No, I don't think that's even a debatable point. What's that? I mean, people will debate it all day long, but I don't think the argument... I don't think it's about brucellosis.

Well, as soon as that bison eats an elk placenta, they could get brucellosis. Bison do love elk placenta, don't they? Do they? I bet they do. I don't think so. Galleries are in. No, I mean, I think think that argument it doesn't hold water

it's just one of those like red herrings right yeah it's easily easily to talk to people about and it's scary um but again i mean the the vector there that i think they should be more worried about is elk and you know that's never gonna like nobody's ever gonna take that on i don't think anyone should be worried about i mean i i have that they should be maybe using as their argument not that they should be worried about yeah. I mean, I don't know. They should be maybe using it as their argument, not that they should be worried about it. Yeah, and I've written about that group, and I haven't really talked to anyone with that organization, but am I clear that they enroll lands in block management for public access?

Yeah, I mean, I shot sharp tails on their property this year. And, yeah, I mean, they were being very good stewards. Now I would love for them instead of doing block management to kind of get into like a long-term kind of easement, like an access easement, because I think everybody's fear is, is okay right now you're doing that. So all these hunters are happy, but then they're going to pull the, you know, the, the rug out at some point. And so, you know, if they truly, um, are committed to access, which I think that they are, they should think about doing these long-term kind of like access easements. And so that gives a lot more certainty to this whole situation. And you know what I mean? Yeah, I'd get behind,

I'd get behind their mission a lot more if I didn't have, if I didn't have similar suspicions about it. Yeah. And that's, I mean, and hunters, I think in general are suspicious, kind of have a suspicious nature, right? Yeah, because every guy that grew up in the outdoors has to look at a lot of places he used to be able to hang out or that used to be pretty good, and now they're not so good. Or that they can't hang out anymore. Or they're locked up or they're leased or whatever. That said, though, I mean, there's phenomenal upland bird hunting down there.

The waterfowl hunting is very short, but there's not much water down there. And so before it freezes, it's phenomenal. Yeah, it just gets good and then it gets over. Yeah, and I mean, can you imagine, I mean, I've never hunted bison, but to be able to hunt bison in that place, and the bison that they had, I went out and watched them, and I was ready to kind of, you know, them to be cows,

you know, and when they saw us, they'd come up, and you you stick your hand out and they'd eat out of your hand or something. Take a selfie with them. Yeah. That's very dangerous in Yellowstone. But when we saw them, I mean, they were wild animals. As soon as we got out of the truck, they were running. And by the way, that was gorgeous to watch, you know, on the prairie, you know, heard of about 150 bison running was just gorgeous. But I mean, there is an opportunity for a true hunter and, you know, down in Yellowstone coming out of there.

I mean, again, I haven't hunted them and I think that's, that, that has all changed, but it's, it's not quite as much of a hunt as this would be. No, I've been down watching that happen. And it's not, I mean, it's, you know, you know it's yeah I would categorize more like in the harvest category and I don't think anyone who draws that tag thinks of it much beyond that and I've gone down there and observe people doing it when I drew a tag in 2004 on the Copper River area in Alaska it's a very difficult hunt my brother drew that tag last year and they were they blew a number of stalks.

I mean, those animals just, but then, you know, the van been there a long time and they've been hunting a long time and they've adapted to human pressure. And yeah, it becomes, it becomes a very legitimate hunt. Which I think is awesome. But I think the ones, yeah, I think the ones leaving the park have a hard time adjusting to it. Elk have over, you know, elk have been pursued for so long that they have a tendency to know sort of what the rules are where they happen to be hanging out you know an elk can be in the park and be cool and he leaves the park and he knows that it's a whole different game going on i think it's going to take more time for those animals to figure it out but yeah i mean personally you know i've been an admirer of that animal since of buffalo since i found a skull in the madison mountains and um and studied

up on a lot and i think that helping that species become you know we never we almost have biological extinction um now the term people use is ecological extinction where you've got a half million of the animals in North America I think 94% are privately owned or basically manages as a livestock you know and um I think that it'd be one of those things 100 years from now if we were to able to have some large publicly owned herds that Americans could interact with um I think it'd be one of those things where it became like people would be surprised to hear that there were adversaries to that plan. It'd become the future.

It'd become the future of Yale. Some people would be like, really? People didn't want this to happen? Like, yeah, you know, they didn't. Think about this. I mean, as hunters, we've played a vital role in establishing just about every game species back to wild,

huntable populations in North America. We're only one short. The only one we haven't accomplished yet, as Pazowicz would say, is bison. And I know there can be opposition to these things sometime, but imagine a small town in eastern Montana near the only free-roaming bison herd, huntable bison herd in the lower 48 reestablished. Do you know how many hunters and sightseers and wildlife watchers and everything would flood to that town every year?

It'd be like a tourist trap on the edge of Grand Canyon. You guys familiar with the writer Bill Kittredge from longtime Missoula resident, brought up in Oregon, but he has a book called hole in the sky. And it's sort of about issues, land management issues and environmental issues. And he was talking about an old version of this called Buffalo commons.

You know, it's an idea that keeps coming up, but he, in the end of his book, he says, go to Jordan, Montana, and talk about Buffalo commons is a very good way to get your ass kicked. It's a contentious issue. I totally understand it, man. I could put on like a different costume and go argue and probably somewhat effectively argue against it. It's not that I don't see where people are coming from. I understand both sides of it very well. If you go like, oh yeah, your, your great grandparents and your grandparents fought very hard and suffered all kinds of economic calamities and gave their hearts and souls to this idea of settling the land, tilling the land, making the desert bloom. And now we want to go and say, oh, yeah, yep, but we're going in a different direction now as a society

is a hurtful thing to hear. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the toughest places in the world to make a living. I mean, as a rancher, it's one of the toughest places in the entire world. And so, you know so as that population was established and folks came out to prospect and set up their own flag on a piece of ground, that population has been dwindling since those people came out there. But they're tough. I mean, they're tough, and they're some of the greatest people in the world. And you can see how they've been watching kind of their population shrink. You know, I'm in Missoula where it's all prosperous, you know, and everything's on the up.

They're whole generations where it's been on the down, but they're so tough and they're hanging onto it. And it's, I mean, I respect that in a lot of ways and and so i mean i definitely see where they're coming from and it's a different you know way for them to think and you know i think it you can almost have both in a lot of ways too right i mean this big scary thing about the american prairie foundation it's all willing sellers and willing buyers right yeah so you can still have cattle next to bison and this whole brucecellosis issue is out the door, right? And so, I mean, you could definitely do it. But, you know, that population has been dwindling for a long time,

and it's because it's a hard place to make a living. Yeah. In order, because these issues are so complicated, it's helpful, I think, to try to find some kind of shorthand things. And a thing I often come back to when I'm trying to find clarity on an issue, I often think like, what are the lines? What are my personal lines? I tend to always look at an issue

and I tend to come from the angle of what's best for habitat and wildlife. Because everything's so complicated, right? And every issue has so many things, but that's sort of what I've decided are my primary interests. What I think is best for the country, the best for future generations, is to advocate on the behalf of the thing

that is most likely to suffer. And I think that wildlife and habitat, as we go forward, are going to be the things that have the greatest potential for loss. I don't worry about running out of roads. I think if we had a group, if we had a meeting this weekend and it was a group advocating on not running out of roads, I don't know how many people would show up for it and donate money. It's just, I don't think we're going to run out of roads I don't think we're going to run out of concrete you know like to save the pavement foundation um you're making it's not going to inspire I think people yeah it's just like there's some stuff if you look at what's happening around

the world it's just there's things that are getting lost at a rapid rate, and we're in a good position to find a way to coexist in an economically feasible way to have prosperity and coexist with wildlife in a way that hasn't been done. Pavement Association of America or whatever, it would be that advocacy group, is that on the flip side of that is that you can continue to make roads. Like you said, we're not worried about running out of roads because we can continue to make and make and make more roads. We're not making any more of this backcountry. We're not making any more of this pristine wildlife, fishing wildlife habitat. And so that's why I think it's, and that's like that second bucket, right, is this, is it protecting special places?

And since we're not making any more of it, let's make sure that we keep that stuff the way it is right now. Yeah. You never go to your friends, he just bought some property, and he's like, yeah, and I'm going to put some wilderness in over here. And my hot tub's going over here. Right? Like, you know, I mean, I think another good example is, you example is you know is wetlands you know all these wetlands that are drained um and then people try to make them again we can't even come close to making them again you know i mean you can kind of have a semblance of a little bit of water in there but the complexity of those wetlands and all the insects and the

and the plant community that is in there you cannot cannot replicate it. You know, I mean, as smart as we are, as much as I, you know, love our ingenuity, we haven't figured that out and we never will because that happened over, you know, eons and how that was developed. There's a funny, there's that funny case study in Phoenix. They made an artificial wetlands, but it got destroyed by beavers. For real. All right.

What time is the ad? We're an hour in. It's probably good to take some questions. Oh, yeah. We're going to do questions. Yeah. Lane, lead the question thing. Or Ryan.

All right. Is there any questions from the crowd? And I think we'll have to use this other microphone. Is there any questions from the crowd? We'll just restate the question. Oh, we can do that. That's good. Any questions? I didn't make that.

I didn't invent that. He's done this before, man. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes

law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try OnX out

if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet OnXMaps.com slash meet welcome to the OnX club y'all Josh Gans so if you guys ever thought about it like this we're in a campaign here Josh Gans. that's selected to be on Mount Rushmore, and then they're up there directly saying, oh, I do something completely opposed

to one of his most powerful legacies, how do you not be like, oh, yeah, so-and-so, I'm sure he's probably going to be on Mount Rushmore. They'll add a fifth face because he's in direct opposition to, like, Theodore Roosevelt. No, I think they'll have to chisel down Roosevelt and put up, because you're not going to put him next to the guy.'ll have to chisel down Roosevelt and put up, because you're not going to put him next to the guy.

You have to chisel him down and put up a new face. Well, I mean, I'll hit this with that. Restating. Tangentially, I'll hit it. So the question is basically, I think, how can politicians now claim to be, claim to carry the mantle of Roosevelt

and be anti-everything Roosevelt ever did? I would say that's kind of what Josh is asking. I think our problem as sportsmen and as advocates for Habitat is that through whatever political nefariousness has gone on, we've allowed our issue to become one of these partisan footballs where it can only be kicked around on one side of the island, not the other. And, you know, if you go back 15 years, 20 years, conservation, lands management, environmental policy, these were debated, but they weren't partisan issues. Nobody was against clean water 15 years ago.

Nobody was against public land. You couldn't speak. I mean, could you imagine 15 years ago, presidential candidates loudly advocating in the Western United States to divest ourselves of federal land? They'd have been run out on a rail, tarred and feathered. It would never happen. Wasn't the EPA Nixon? EPA has a Nixon policy.

So I think what we have to do and what I think groups like BHA do, we're pulling this back to the center where it's no longer a partisan thing. Democrats are for it. Republicans are for it. And it's because it's a good idea. And I believe that most of these people in their heart, they know it's a good idea, but they're in the business of playing political advantage. It's not about doing the right thing. It's about playing political advantage and getting reelected and getting big PAC contributions. We got to get it back to where it's doing the right thing.

And that's what we're trying to do. We're not one side or the other. We're pulling it back to the middle so everybody's for it. Right up front. I've got one for you, a little bit of devil's advocacy here. These are not necessarily my opinions, but some of the folks who are less interested in the backcountry and more interested in the extraction might take the argument back and say, well, what if America was never populated?

Would you want to protect the whole thing? Would you never want to let anybody live here? And do you miss the animals that were extinct and the places that you can't? Yes. If I could get a mammoth tag tomorrow, I'm all over it. Yeah, so. No doubt Steve does. However, when you restrict the march of industrialization somewhat, does that not hold back people who are not as wealthy as we are? And I say everybody in this room is very wealthy to even be here.

Anybody who goes to the backcountry to hunt, regardless of what you consider your economic status, is very wealthy. And the argument that's given many times is that when you want to suppress carbon emissions when you want to preserve too much backcountry and so on it's a bunch of rich guys whether you feel like you're the rich guys for the land for everything it's a bunch of rich guys trying to hold back other people and industrialization and so that's one of the arguments you hear and i haven't heard to address that it's not my application but what do you say about it? Land restated. So I think the question that was restated for me is, is that there's this rich elite that are trying to protect us from ourselves.

Is that fair? And say that these lands, they want to be set aside for the rich elite and not used by anybody else is that fair very few number of people if you look at how many people really go into the back country we want the government to preserve this for us and not let other people maybe have their raised standard of living better medical care and so on the vast majority of people do not necessarily make a direct benefit in their lifetime. So that direct benefit, so you're, so I think...

No, it's real, because what's probably going to happen is no one's going to hear that, and we're going to have to like, so I'm trying to find a way, yeah, that's great, but everyone else that has a question has to be like a tight, clean question. But, not that that's not tight and clean but it's gonna be hard to follow so a gentleman has a two-prong question just devil's advocate he's stating people who are into saving animals preserving wild places if they went back in time would they have said no one can come into America because it's all wilderness and we don't want to lose any wilderness. And if you want to save Buffalo, does that mean we should save the short-faced bear and the woolly mammoth? Let's talk about that part first. It's like, I don't know. If people from outer space came and lived here,

would they be covered under civil rights protections? I just don't know. It's so, it's just something that it's a fun thing to juggle mentally. I don't know how it really, I don't know how it really helps us to ask that question because it's the kind of thing where you go to someone and they say, I believe in clean water. And then they go, oh yeah, but you use dish detergent. You're a hypocrite. So nothing you say matters. I can't speak to it. On a very personal level, I wish woolly mammoths hadn't gone extinct. I have a woolly mammoth tooth. I wish the whole thing was still there with its tooth in it. Yeah, I don't know. It's just like, it's too revisionist for me to even grapple with. I just sort of tend to look at it like, where are we now? What's going on in the world?

I think that whatever definition we were to arrive at and how we define wilderness, how we define wild places, in my mind, if we got a giant panel of interested stakeholders together and came up with a working version of what is a wild place, and we agreed on that nationally, and then we said, do we want more of this stuff or less of it? However we define it, I would say I'd like to have a little more. The second part of the question is, isn't this all just a bunch of rich recreationalists trying to get the government to curtail people's ability to make a living so that we have a fun playground? It's a great question. That one I think is worth wrestling with. I think that one of the big things

about wildlands advocacy and wildlife advocacy is we don't really know what we have yet and that there are a lot of activities that can occur on it that will not diminish it, including some extraction, extractive industries, including very light footprint things. I don't look at wilderness as being defined by people can't go there. You have the Hell's Canyon Wilderness. It has a wonderful avenue through it in the form of the Snake River. It's very accessible. People can go and experience that level of wilderness.

I think there are many cases where people can. I just don't think that it has minute to minute be able to justify its existence based on what's happening there right now. I'll say this too. I think a lot of the beauty of public lands is an aspirational American kind of thing. I don't get to Alaska near as much as I'd like. I wish I was up there every other week. Even if I got there only one time in my life, or hell, even if I never got there, the aspirational nature of it being there, me dreaming about it, is worth something to me. A single mom in Chicago, she may

never get to Glacier Park. She may never get to the Badger 2 Med or Flathead National Forest, but it's an aspirational thing. She can go. You can dream about it. That aspiration and that sort of aspirational stuff has driven Americans for over two centuries. And if you remove even the ability to do it, the aspiration goes with it. It's gone. So just because I would say to a single mom who might say that, it's not just for, yeah, we're using it a lot. Maybe we use it more than everybody else, but it's there for everybody to use. If you want to, you can aspire to do it because it's there. There's some inspirational, soulful thing of it just existing. So you can do it. You can dream about it. But if someone came to me and said, I'm going to make it, if someone came to me, like, like, uh, God

came down and said to me, I'm gonna make a deal with you. I'm either going to destroy the boundary waters or you and any child you ever have. And any children that ever come from any children you will ever have can't go there. I would say we'll step back. So I don't think that it's always a highly personal thing. Do I like to go there? Yeah. Does me going into these places affect them in a long-term negative way? No. If I had to decide between my access and its existence, what would I go with? I would go with its existence. There are many places I will never go. I just probably won't get to all of them.

Does that mean I have antipathy toward their well-being? I think it goes beyond the personal. Well, I'm going to address, like give Ben an answer or somebody that might ask him this. It's now being presented as this, I think the genesis of the question is that, well, you are an assumption based on it is you're sacrificing a bunch of other jobs and economic opportunity because you guys want to hunt there you're making the rest of the company country suffer economically because you guys want to

protect your elk hunting spot I say no what about the elk hunting jobs the guides the outfitters the restaurants restaurants, the towns. What about these vibrant communities, Missoula, Montana, Bozeman? They're based largely on outdoor recreation. There are jobs associated with the wilderness. It's not just all or nothing. There's other kinds of clean jobs. I mean, I work in an industry. We're all here because of it. Yeah, it's not tied to a volatile market. Right. We wouldn't be in the fight that we're in if these single moms in Chicago, to stick with that example, they may see these places as aspirational, and I hope they do, but they will not fight a fraction as hard as we do without being there for themselves and seeing what it really is and and i think those are the people

they're going oh national forest i don't even know what that is that's on the other side of the country you know they're yeah no i understand i appreciate it i recently had a conversation we've been working on a documentary project and as part of it i interviewed at length uh animal ethicist he's a he's a professor he teaches animal ethics he's an animal rights advocate um activist and we're having a conversation about how he's saying he was i was asking him like let's say you're a really smart hunter tell me what you think a really smart hunter would tell me to justify his existence just same way i did the land earlier and he he talked about, Oh, you would tell me about all the money you guys spend on wildlife habitat and wetlands. We kind of were

honing on the duck idea and talking about ducks unlimited. He's like that. You tell me that you spent all that, but I would just say, you're just doing that because you want to shoot it. Right. And I was describing to him after this, I was describing to him what happens when you go to a Ducks Unlimited banquet. And people who hunt maybe a day a year go and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and give money to an organization that is just going to turn around and buy wetlands and open it up to the public. And he's going, oh, yeah, but they only do that because they want to kill ducks. I'm like, man, you know what? I don't care what they're doing it for. If it takes some level of exposure to wild places to turn you into an advocate of wild places, does that then make it a negative because you have

this ulterior motive? I'm like, no, I know about advocating for it because I've experienced it. How can you expect that? How can you expect it to, how can you be suspicious of a person who advocates on something, but you be suspicious of a person who advocates on something but you're suspicious of them because they like it too who doesn't do that i mean who advocates on shit they don't like so it's just it's like the weirdest roundabout argument to me like oh yeah you just like you just want to save it because you like it oh you caught me red handed yeah i do love it a whole bunch you know i mean the way i would answer that question when somebody says that you're just

setting it aside um for this elite kind of hunting preserve or whatever i would ask them a question before i answered that and i said do you like clean water 70 of our clean water starts on public lands and so do you want to make sure that you have clean water? That's the, that's, that's the question. Yeah. And I would get into that too. Just like you don't understand ecologically. We don't understand as a people ecologically what these places mean entirely. I mean, you have this like interwoven connectivity.

I recently heard this theory that was really interesting where a guy was taking, he was saying, he was looking at the ocean as an organism. That you would take an entire ocean and say it's an organism. The same way we have like our body ourselves and we're comprised of organs and fluids, right? And electrical impulses that allow us to move. He's like, imagine that we have the ocean and we treat the ocean as an organism. And the fish, all the fish are organs. Everything that happened there, it's like this living being. And think of it in that way. I think you can think of our ecology in that way. And we don't really know what we're going to lose in other places by messing with these things. Look at when agricultural practices in Louisiana

and Texas changed and they started doing a lot more rice production. You created such an explosion of snow geese that it's denuding portions of the Arctic and damaging wildlife habitat in the Arctic. It's a long ways from Texas to the Arctic, but you create a wave that travels with activity. I don't think we're really understand in a wildlife sense and in a clean air and clean water sense, what would happen if we don't draw the line on wildlands protection? I don't think it's just going to be like, you can just pluck it away and act like that's gone, but everything else stays the same. We're not done making mistakes.

I mean, we've done ridiculous stuff and made ridiculous mistakes, and now we laugh about what our grandparents did. Our kids and our grandkids are going to be laughing about shit we're doing right now that we think is perfectly normal. They'll definitely be laughing at me. Let's just hope they're laughing.

Ryan, you want to jump in the back? Yeah, you touched briefly on Badger 2-Minute and Glacier and then also in water. Could you talk maybe a little bit about what's still going on with the tribe? I know this gets messy. What's going on in the tribe up there and what was trying to be done and where we're at with that? Yeah, so I don't remember the exact number of leases, and I don't remember.

You want to restate that question? Okay, so the question is what's going on with the Badger 2 medicine, and I'll orient everybody about what that is. That's an area of the Rocky Mountain Front, essentially south of Glacier Park in Montana, all the way down to Choteau. It's about a 35 mile by 35 mile area, sacred to the Blackfeet Indians, sacred to me personally. In the 80s, there were oil leases let in the Badger Tumad, and it has long been argued by the Blackfeet tribe that improper

environmental review was followed before those oil leases were let because the tribe was not given proper oversight or proper comment period on it. That's been fought in the courts for quite some time. A company in Louisiana called Solenex has one of these leases, and Solenex stepped up a few years ago and decided, well, out of the several companies that has one of these leases and Solenex stepped up a few years ago and decided well out of the several companies that own several of these tens of thousands acres of leases we're going to push it we're going to drill there we're going to call the bluff we're going to see what happens and so they started pushing to drill exploring sending you know applying for permits they're saying we're going to drill and so these leases had just been set there kind of simmering

for some time in a place that's, really is a sacred, beautiful place. My kid's named Badge after the Badger 2 medicine. Well, just recently, the federal government sided with the Blackfeet tribe. We have one of those leases. The federal government said you got to do whatever you got to do or get off the pot. And you either got to cancel the leases or you got to let them drill one or the other. You got to go and find the federal government, Sally Jewell, environmental secretary, or the interior secretary, canceled the lease. So we have one gone, but there's still a whole bunch of leases there. We think probably that the precedent

is, is that that's going to be too difficult to drill there. And we'll hope for some kind of system to retire or buy out or whatever the rest of the leases we have a good precedent it's on a good path but the fight's not over yet up front yeah so you know the nra does their candidacy endorsement or their rating candidate political candidates and like in wy, our three national delegates all get A ratings, but they're also the ones leading the charge for the transfer of public lands. So I'm curious if there's been talks of maybe doing some sort of rating system

for candidates that are positive for public lands and anti-transfer. Yep, so the question is, is BHA ready to kind of start rating candidates, right, and letting people know where they stand on issues? So this last year, or in this cycle right now, you know, with the presidential candidates, they all went down to Nevada, and then I think it was the Reno Journal that asked them questions.

There was five questions. One of those was about public lands. And so it was a great way for us to, without doing like a candidate scorecard, to like just provide information to people. Now I'll tell you that the legalities of a scorecard are very complicated because right away they're looking like endorsements. And so you have to be very careful as a 501c3, which we are are where we cannot engage in political politics at all so let's be very careful of that and you know the the i've been involved in scorecards and what the way that you kind of get around that is have instead of having like two questions about public lands that are very leading

you have to have a big array of things that you ask them, right? And that threshold is, I mean, it's very complicated, but that threshold, you can do it. Is that something that we want to do? I say yes. Do we have the resources to be able to do that this last cycle? No. But I think it's something that,

providing information to people is something that we're supposed to be doing, right? And letting them make their own decisions. And so without us endorsing candidates, which we cannot do, we can provide that information. I think that's something we'll probably do in the future. You know, I totally agree with Landon without getting into the exact politics of endorsing anybody or anything. And back to Josh's question a bit, I firmly believe that until some people lose their races because of their public land stances, it won't change. And, you know, I'm not saying who it is or who is endorsed or not,

but until the sportsmen rise up and penalize people at the ballot box, this is not going to go away because there's political advantage in it. And we have a lot of power, by the way, it's unharnessed. Yeah. I'm not going to get too deep into presidential politics, but it's unharnessed yeah it's i'm not gonna get too deep into presidential politics but it's been it's frustrating to me that of all front runners either party there's not a person who has even an idea of a background in the out of doors an idea of a background and and hunting fishing um i don't think it's over, but we've had such a strong tradition of outdoors people in politics in this country. And there are some phenomenal senators and

congressmen who have a strong land ethic, both sides of the aisle. We're lacking that right now. I know a lot of hunters get frustrated because you got one party who tends to advocate on behalf of wilderness and clean air and clean water. You got another party that tends to advocate on behalf of firearm ownership and hunting heritage. And I always feel like a political eunuch because you're just, you're torn between these two things i lament the days um of having both i think that i don't want to say a name there's a guy there's a senator out of new mexico that i think hits a very like a wonderful balance senator martin henrik yeah superstar for us yeah strikes a wonderful balance between hunting heritage firearm ownership clean air clean water wildlife habitat

but right now it's just absolutely missing from the political realm john tester same thing yeah so you heard it here first steve ranella for president nope i talk about a whole bunch of stuff that most americans could care less about man or couldn't care less about you know to steve Steve's point, though, that's why organizations like BHA are so important because if we don't have Teddy Roosevelt in office, it's going to take advocacy from very sharply-minded orgs like us to influence policy in the smoke-filled rooms.

And without orgs like us doing it, we don't just have the innate knowledge of it in the corner office anymore I was laughing at this internal very brief internal debate I was having when you mentioned the badger to medicine because it is a very very special place and I love it and I was listening to you talk and thinking don't say that don't say it's beautiful. And I'm like, tell them there's a lot of grizzly bears. Don't go up there. But every hunter, every fisherman, any bird watcher, you have your special spots and you don't want to show up and see other people there. But you got to be open about this stuff now. And it's time, you got to take the gloves

off and be willing to say hey these places are incredible you should go there just so you know i've i've been known to fly across the room grab the phone out of my wife's hand as she starts to mention utter the first letter of the name of a creek i might have been in her so for me to even mention this place i will tell you i killed a bull in the Badger Tomb two or three years ago. I saw six different grizzly bears the day I killed that bull. Six different bears. So I'm not lying when I say there's a bunch of bears there, but I like those places.

We always, when we're, our code is Stinkhole Creek. We just use that for every creek. Every creek, yeah. All right, Yanni, you got any concluding thoughts? We done with questions? Oh, no, we need more questions. I don't know how long it's been. How long has it been?

Just over an hour. Oh, really? Two or three things that folks that are listening to this podcast can do to act or advocate for pub plans, whether they're a single mom in Chicago or living in an urban environment, whether they're sportsmen or just aspirational, what can they do to help preserve these places? So the question is,

is what can the listeners of this podcast do to advocate on behalf of these wild places? Is that fair? Yeah. Can I give one and you give two? Sure. Number one, you got to start voting your sport. You got to strip your sport from the rest of the partisan politics, make ballot box decisions based upon this stuff if it's important to you. So totally agree. I would say join an organization you know i'm i'm selfish and

so i said join backcountry hunters and anglers because i think we are um you know we're tapping into something and we are the advocates for public lands so join bha but if you know you want to join the elk foundation that helps protect elk habitat ducks unlimited that helps protect duck habitat yeah i mean the list i mean you know national wild turkey federation there's many many groups out there um and oftentimes people like one of the i'm gonna let you get back to your list but one of the things that an organization like this provides is a sense of camaraderie a brotherhood and sisterhood, right? You can meet like-minded people and share information. I mean, there's a tremendous reservoir of experience to

draw from. If you have a passion for a particular type of hunting, particular type of fishing, let's say your thing is trolling salmon out in lake michigan you can find an organization that is fighting for clean water in the great lakes you know um and then you will find like-minded people and and get a lot out of that engagement yeah i would you know and truly if if if you want to if you care about public lands there's not another organization besides bha that's advocating for you there's other organizations that do great work a lot of that's on private land which is vitally important but if you like public lands bha is going to defend that or it's very species specific we're not we're ecosystem wide yeah so i think that's one and that's another big plug for bha but i think two is make a phone call you know i mean a lot of people think that's one, and that's another big plug for PHA. But I think two is make a phone call.

You know, I mean, a lot of people think that their voices don't count. And, you know, we had Senator Tester here earlier this week, and we were asking him, how can we be better advocates? Like, what can we do? Your voice counts is what he told us. He said, when somebody calls them on the phone, that represents 100 other like-minded individuals. So then that's one call. Let's have 10 calls in a day. That's 1,000 people back home. That's starting to like-minded individuals. So then that's one call. Let's have 10 calls in a day. That's 1,000 people back home.

That's starting to get somebody's attention. So that was the first one, make a phone call. The second one is as newspapers, you think they're going away, but they're still read very widely. And senators and congressmen have staff that every single day they go to those editorial pieces of paper and if that senator or congressman's name is mentioned that thing is flagged for them right away and so while we that's kind of a venue that's going away in a lot of people's minds it's not the chip shots on social media exactly exactly and so it's something that has staying power and so i like getting involved and i think you know we can help you do that but you can do that as an individual as well so those are the

like the two things that i would say i think too it's important for people to to learn how to parse out the planks in a politician's platform you know it's easy to fall into i get so sick of hearing people tell me like, you know, oh, I'm a liberal, I'm a conservative. I mean, boy, good luck applying that to me because I go by, give me an issue, man. Give me an issue. And I think that if you admire a certain politician and they have, you know, a platform made up of many, many different things, you don't need to go piecemeal.

You don't need to go wholesale, throw in with them on it. You can challenge them. You can still like that person and like what they stand for and challenge them on particular issues, and people can move someone in the right direction on a particular issue. It doesn't mean you're abandoning your political identity. I think it's hilarious when politicians are called flip-floppers, you know, now if they're flip-flopping back and forth within a week,

that makes sense to me. But what you just described to me is getting more knowledge and having a different view on things, which I, if I, if I was beholden to everything I thought when I was an 18 years old, if I was beholden to everything, I'd still be shitting my pants. It's like people change over time, man. Exactly. Right. And if you're not, if you're not using the environment around you to help educate you and help you evolve, then you're stuck in this space. Right. And you're just this dogmatic views. And so I think, you know, when people, um, uh, are, when people are educated and learn more about an issue and they change that, that's not flip-flopping, that's evolving to me. Yeah. I always admire someone, one, if they've had an opinion and then later on they have to say, based on what I'm

hearing from my constituency, I'm going to have to support this. Because in that way, it is, it's like you can take that too far, but in that way, it is, it's like, you can take that too far. But in that way, it's when there's like overwhelming pressure from the majority of people. I think it's perfectly acceptable for a political figure to say instinctively, I was opposed to this, but I cannot ignore what I'm hearing from my constituency. This is overwhelming, I have to go against my, what my, my gut reaction on this and support wilderness or, or any number of things. Sure. You know, I think, yeah, we're too like, you know, it's too easy to go like, oh, you're a flip flopper. Yeah. But again, if someone changes there, if someone says something and then there's

an immediate Twitter revolt and they go 180 degrees it's different than having than listening to your people who are just driving you insane by telling you you're wrong on this you're wrong on this this and then you change your opinion about it yeah that kind of stuff happens all the time man totally we should embrace it totally and you can move you can move people in a certain direction just by being around them articulating them and not being not being an a- to them, but trying to explain where you're coming from. We did it. Badger too, man. We did it.

I mean, that's a great example. We moved people. We motivated. BHA helped motivate our members. We sent letters. We made calls. We went to meetings. We contributed.

We swayed opinion. We got U.S. senators asking secretaries of interior to cancel leases. I mean, on both sides of the aisle. On both sides of the aisle. We can have impacts. There's a lot of victories we've had. So you're saying the people spoke up and the government made changes on behalf of the people? They shot at them, right?

Yeah. I know it sounds weird, but it works. You know, instead of, like you said to Facebook, instead of just throwing something up there with half-baked facts to piss off the whole world, you know, try being constructive. Make a call. Get involved. They listen. They listen way more than some men on Facebook. I like that.

One last question there on the left. Go ahead. All four of you have talked pretty extensively about preserving the ecological integrity of public lands for future generations. And we haven't really talked about what I think is perhaps the elephant in the corner. And that is that the same science that we rely on for our management decisions, for our biological management decisions, for our ecological integrity assessments, is suggesting that by 2050 and 2100, a lot of the lands that we rely on will be protected. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments.

And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments.

And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological integrity assessments. And that's the kind of science that we rely on for our ecological decisions, for our biological management decisions, for our ecological integrity assessments, and suggesting that by 2050 and 2100,

a lot of the lands that we rely on for the production of the animal species that we care intensely about are going to be very significantly harmed by climate change. So what do we do as sportsmen and sportswomen and as associations that are interested in preserving the ecological integrity of these lands to consider climate change as an issue so the question is all this is great but what about climate change is that fair i i i'm gonna try to answer this as quickly as possible because we should just have a whole other discussion of this for an hour and a half. I think that the solution about saving wildlands and wild places, I think is

the solution is personal and political. I think that climate change issues, it's technological. That issue, I don't think that issue is going to be resolved by American restraint. I don't think that issue is going to be resolved by American restraint. I don't think you canceling your vacation is going to move the needle on climate change because you're not going to be in a jet. It's like, there are some gigantic countries out there who aren't thinking about this. I think that the solution is going to come from technological advancement and it's going

to come through market incentive. On the wildlife side, it's a monster issue. Anybody who thinks about this stuff, I think personally struggles with it. I say the beautiful thing from a wildlife, from a BHA kind of standpoint is, even if you struggle climate change and what if and all that stuff, you can't tell me that preserving wild lands is contrary to good science on climate change.

Perhaps it's not enough, but I know we're going to be on the right side of history there. Even if history is a little uglier than I, it proves to be a little uglier than I wish it was, preserving some more wild lands is not going to add to climate change. You know, we're on the right side of that. The way I would answer that is that, you know, we are seeing impacts already from climate change. And what we need to do to help fish and wildlife have a chance as this world changes

is keep these wild places so you have connectivity of habitat, whether that's an elevation or that's north-south or east-west. And so if we fragment the wildlife habitat that we have now, they got no chance, right? And so, and, you know, whether you believe in climate change and the impacts or not, we're setting up a place for them to be for a long time, whether or not the impacts are huge or not right now. Yeah, give things room to adjust. Exactly. you know again i don't want to get into the to the house the two details the house and wise but whether we're seeing a natural phenomenon that will naturally reverse or if we're seeing something

that is a one-way street i'm not going to address my opinion on it right now but there are people looking at just if all this stuff is going to move uphill, what's uphill? Are we ready for that? Are we making it that animals and the wildlife has like some room to change and adapt, um, and, and go to new places to feed, go to new places, the bed, new places, the winter, new places, the summer. So I think again, like Ryan was saying, you're on the, on either way you're on the right side of history you're not going to exacerbate the problem by removing connective corridors between wild areas totally great gail yep what are we going to lose i mean what are we going to lose by protecting these places Yep.

What are we going to lose? I mean, what are we going to lose by protecting these places? What are we going to lose if we don't protect them? You know, it's a very simple thing. Can we do concluding thoughts now, Giannis? I think we should. Okay. Giannis?

I have one today. Oh, good. I had a great conversation with a gal I was from a third time in my life since I started working no no Floridian she lives all over the country but I got lucky for the third time in my life and got upgraded so I I feel like what's not just great about the leg room up front, but I usually have great conversations with the people I get to sit next to in the front of the plane. So I was stoked, and all I had to work to do, I engaged. But anyways, she's out on the board for the Florida Wildlife Federation. Not a hunter, just a little bit of a fisherman. But she basically introduces herself as a conservationist.

I said, really? Because really, usually, if you're not like a hunter-fisherman person, you don't identify with that. Are you sure you don't want to call yourself an environmentalist? Like, isn't that who you are? She's like, no, no, I'm a conservationist, you know, first and foremost. And so that spawned this great conversation. And I guess my closing thought

is that i think we need to find adversaries outside of hunters and fishermen you know allies yeah sorry i was struggling with that one but anyways yeah she was telling me about how in florida she seems to think that they have no problem whatsoever getting hunters and fishermen together with the environmental types and, you know, being in the middle zone and moving forward. And I just feel like too often here we're, like, setting ourselves apart and not, you know, finding those allies in other places.

Because I really feel like in the end, if we're talking about public lands and clean water and whatever we all have the same goal and so yeah well if you're a guy in florida and you have to open up your newspaper to see pictures of literally tens of thousands of dead fish from uh sugar production runoff i think you get some fishermen fired up no unfortunately sometimes it takes an image like that. Other things play out in slower, less dramatic ways and they don't get as much attention.

Concluding thought, please. Yeah, it's like dealing poker. Now it's Cal's turn. I think I'm all set, you know, and

we're going to fall out. Folks, it's an easy crowd right like everybody is here for the right thing like we're fighting the good fight and keep it up and as our new chairman here Ryan Bussey said you know change she just said how change is possible. Don't go occupying any buildings. How's your remodel coming? Oh, it's rough, man.

Is there anything you're not done with it? Uh-uh. Cal's remodeling the place. I'll buy his lonesome. You don't need to sell me on. It's going good? I'll find a gal here. Don't worry about it.

No, but I'm, no, but no. Is it coming along? No, that was where this was going. worry about it. No, but I'm, no, but no. Is it coming along? I did not know that was where this was going. That is awesome. No, I'm not going, I'm not going in that direction. Honestly, is it coming along? Yeah. Yeah. Is it like done?

Yeah, next time you guys come down, it'll be short. You got a kitchen in there? Yeah. He's cooking on a camp stove for a long time. Congratulations. Only six months. Lan? Great to have you here, Steve. I was really glad that you and your team were able to come.

You were here five years ago at our first rendezvous and you got to witness the growth and the energy that this organization is experiencing. And I think, and for the listeners that weren't here, you know, BHA is on the rise. We have members in all 50 states. We have chapters now in 24 states. The stuff that we are trying to put in this bottle,

this lightning that we're trying to put in the bottle, you can't experience it unless you go and meet with the other people. And I think what I heard over and over this weekend is people found their tribe. And so that energy that we had this weekend, I want to make sure that goes all across this country. And so the stuff that we've been talking about today, we have that for future generations.

And so for the listeners, check us out. And when there's local events, come talk to those people and see who we are and make up your mind for yourself if you want to come engaged. Ryan? Yeah, I'd echo that. You know, we've just come tremendously far. Everybody wants to be a part of a winner, and I feel like BHA is really winning.

And I really appreciate you, Steve. Not only have you witnessed it, you've really influenced it. You're a role model to a lot of people in this org. You know, and I met here over the weekend a guy, he came from Washington. And this is just an example of the sort of people that we pull in and how this energy is building on itself.

You know, we got a guy like Steve Rinella, who's the ultimate badass, doesn't have a problem killing stuff, grilling it up, eating it. We've got this guy from Washington who I ran into, heard about BHA. It got him fired up. He's never punched a tag in his life. He drove from central Washington to come here to meet other people. He didn't know a soul.

To meet other people from Washington, to meet people in BHA, he wants to know how to do this. He wants to know how to punch his tag. He wants to know how to preserve wild land. So we've got this spectrum of people who want to be involved from, from the ultimate, you know, like I said, the ultimate bad-ass is like Steve to the guy who's starting it and is going to be the ultimate bad-ass. And, you know, we want people on board and we're thrilled to be doing this. Yeah. That's what I want to on board and we're thrilled to be doing this. Yeah. That's what I want to do for my concluding thought is it's something I've talked about a bunch before is we get probably the number one email. If you're going to categorize the emails we get in, I think the top category would be people saying, um, I want to get involved in the out of doors. I didn't grow up around this. How do I do it? You can, you know,

even if that's your motivation, you can find great inspiration and great bits of information by joining an organization like this and finding like-minded folks. Yeah. Well, you can do a good thing, move the needle in the right direction, and also learn a lot of skills. I mean, that's not something we've gotten into, but a big part of what's going on at a weekend like this is people are talking shop. You know, I pulled some good information about an area I've always been interested in last night eating my dinner. Do tell. Weird. Stay out of the badger too, man.

No, it wasn't that. It was a different spot but i'm real curious about going in there so it's like yeah it's not all you know it's not you don't need to come down and just have a big weekend of goody two-shoeing i mean you can come down and uh and join a group and find some people who like to be out there as much as you like to be out there and um yeah man develop a tribe you know and have it be the tribe that's on the winning side and doing good work that's it thanks for joining Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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