The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 035

Episode Date: May 13, 2016

Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella and Janis Putelis talk with guests Matt Elliott of Benchmade Knife Company and environmental historian Randall Williams. Subjects discussed: getting hunting spots from people who’ve moved far away; the federal ban of lead shot pellets for waterfowl; why terms like ‘ecofacist’ and ‘libtard’ are for dumbasses; why it’s hard to make knives that love saltwater; the different types of steels used to make knives; sports cutlery enthusiasts; butterfly knives, and what happened (if anything) happened to them; buying a trapline though the classified ads; lead poisoning from shot vs. industrial pollutants; and shooting monolithic vs. lead core bullets. 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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Thank you. Randall Williams, who has been on the show before an environmental historian um i like to accidentally call him randall weaver who is the ruby ridge standoff person but it's in fact randall williams there's not many randalls no everybody switches to randy it's endearing yeah i know one other randall he's actually a neighbor i got a friend named randy with an eye on the end and i call her Randall, which she don't like. I can't imagine. And Matt Elliott's here who drove up from Benchmade World Headquarters down in Portland proper?

Yeah, Oregon City. Oregon City. There's an east and a west side thing in Portland. If you live on the east side, you don't really consider yourself in Portland unless you're actually east Portland. But in eastern Oregon, they call everything pretty much west of the mountains Portland. Yeah. Yeah. So are you like in the redneck part of Portland?

Is there a redneck part? Yeah, that's the redneck part. It's the industrial area. So you guys still drink like Sanka andgers and stuff, and it's not like... There's still 55 Starbucks within a mile from BenchMedia. Anyhow, we were just talking about hunting spots and stealing people's GPSs. Tell what happened now. What happened now?

You were on an airplane. You ran into a dude who used to live where you live ski lift oh right you're on a ski lift yeah i was skiing and uh i met him through i won't name any names he didn't get in trouble but i met him through another friend a colleague of ours and uh we were skiing together and uh it turns out that he was a fishing guide and dabbled in hunting guiding a little bit and actually knew a friend of mine from colorado and now lives um back east and uh so i was kind of thinking like well maybe i could get probably a little bit of information out of him you know so i just slipped in like a yeah i'm new here and you know what do you know about hunting right here

around the ski area and i mean that just opened up the floodgates. I should have just had my iPhone out on record. Because he used to hit all that stuff and moved away to Chicago. Yeah. We were just saying how guys that don't... You just don't protect your hunting spots as much as you once did once you move away from an area.

Dude, in the guidebook, I say I've gotten a lot of hunting spots by talking to people who used to live somewhere that don't anymore because they don't care and then now i'm in the situation where i used to live a you know i spent a lot of time a decade ago somewhere and i'll tell people now i'll be like oh you know i haven't been in a decade but go check it out. And I knew this dude who was working on, you know, on X on X maps.

Yeah. They're in Missoula. So I know a guy who moved to Missoula to work there. And I'm like, Hey man, you know what you ought to do is this is place. We used to find bears in the spring. I'm like around may 11,

like between the six and the 11th, drive up to this trailhead and you're going to get out of your car and you're going to think it's ridiculous because there's going to be an ass load of snow. Never mind the snow. Walk up two miles and there's going to be a southeast

exposure that's going to have a bald spot on it the size of a couple football fields and watch that for the day because it used to work out. He goes up there one day, comes back, calls me, says, oh, it's too snowy. I'm like, dude, just park, go back, walk up. It doesn't matter what it looks like with the snow. Never mind the snow. Goes up there, sits there, black bear comes out misses it something

like that spot still is good so old spots can be good definitely animals don't know how much time went by i think there's i think there's cyclical too you know spots i think that they get popular with guys they start to get hit hard animals maybe maybe move out a little bit or get a little nocturnal, and then all of a sudden everybody's like, this spot sucks! And then you roll in. To you, it's like nirvana because you just roll in and there's nobody there. Yeah. That happens even inside of the season.

It's like people go and hit up a spot. They might have drawn a limited entry tag and people are hunting it. That happened to us last year. There was just a ton of pressure on this spot, and everybody bailed because the elk were shut down. Because the human pressure definitely affects how vocal the elk are. My buddy felt like there was no elk to be found, and we'd drawn the tag sort of on his preference points.

We said, all right, well, go home. I'll hunt the coast instead. And we bailed out of there. And then a friend of mine uh told me later who knew some guys from roseburg that i'd that i'd run into there and said oh you guys are going back to the coast and have fun shooting your little five point we'll be here chasing these big bulls and and i talked to my buddy ty stubblefield actually and he he told me yeah i talked to him that you know they the elk lit up like two days later for the last four days of the season everybody bailed

out of there and the pressure got lighter and the elk just oh really yeah got fired up again conversely i got a friend he's passed away now but he uh was up in the tobacco root mountains and just you know stumbled onto a herd elk on a hillside and that dude could never get it out of his head and like when he went elk hunting his elk hunt was the goal and be like nope not there go back to his truck i mean for years he just had it was like you check they're either there or not there and then you know and later i was like i think that just one day someone bumped some elk and they wound up on that hillside i've taken that approach before where you just can't you can't shake it that you've seen an animal there.

Yeah, it was just like it haunted him, man. He just liked the idea of him on that slope. The other day I had to go down to Kansas to do a – I was giving a talk to all the people that teach hunter's ed in Kansas. I get off the plane and spend about an hour driving behind a dude who's got a thing. I'd rather be shooting Yankees. Remember that? Which is particularly offensive to me, having lived in four northern tier states. But I went to this thing, and I'm giving this talk to the hunting ed instructors.

There's several hundred of them there. And this guy asked me a question about what's my thought on eating bullet lead, right, lead in meat. And I go to – and we get to talking about x-rays that they're kind of floating around online where they'll shoot an animal with a jacketed lead bullet and then looking where all the lead winds up in the carcass. Because it gets into little fragments, get in the vascular system, and wind up being far removed from the wound channel. And it hits bone and breaks off and gets sent off in various directions.

And these x-rays are floating around. You look like you look at something that's been hitting the shoulder. And I mean, there's bits of lead nine, 10 inches out from there. And when I started looking at those pictures and a friend who's a big anti lead advocate, um, he's, he's a biologist. I'll give him some credit, but, uh, big anti lead guy. He's the one that sent it to me. And he was kind of like disbelief that people are eating this stuff. Other people I know, this is all something we conversed about.

Other people I know, um, say that the way that is, it's inert. Your body doesn't dissolve that lead down. You just pass it out. A guy commented how he'd been eating, an old guy. He was in his 70s. He'd been eating wild game his entire life. He says, I can't even imagine how many shotgun pellets I've eaten. He went in and asked his doctor to test his lead.

He said they don't even test lead. He insisted that someone test his lead. And he had, you know, like wherever the, I feel like he was telling me like high lead is 0.2 something or whatever. And he didn't even have like detectable levels. So he's like, if it's going to happen, it's going to happen to me. We have this big conversation. So after I give give the talk this old timer comes up to me and uh establishes his credentials in the field of lead by explaining that he was a 25 years like a munitions guy in the military and uh he starts telling me that it's all this whole thing about lead is BS about

lead ammo. Okay. That lead ammo, um, and shot pellets and stuff like that doesn't affect wildlife. Um, it's not soluble in that form. It just passes through your system that it was all malarkey when the steel shot, when the lead shot ban for

federal migratory waterfowl went into play. And he had a point to me. He says, how many times have you opened up a gizzard in your life off a duck or a goose and found a pellet in it? And I got thinking about it, and it had never happened. And he said, I've been hunting waterfowl my whole life and never seen a pellet in there. And he pointed out that now you can't use lead. Let me back up and clarify.

What year was it that the lead ban? I remember I was already hunting when it went into effect. They phased it out over the final few years of the 80s, and I think 91 was the first year when nobody could hunt migratory birds with lead shot. Yeah. So they had ducks and geese pick up grit for their crop, you know, and they pick up gravel, and it goes in their crop, and they don't have a stomach or not like you think.

So when they eat food, what am I trying to say? Let me back up. Pick up grit for their gizzard. It goes in their gizzard. So when a bird eats, his food will go into his crop. Then from his crop, it goes down to his gizzard. And the gizzard is just like this muscle that squeezes, and it's full of rocks. And the rocks pulverize the food.

So they build their digestive system, basically, by eating things. They grind up whatever they eat. And then their grind-up materials eventually get so ground up that it just pass through the bird. That's why you always see different times of day, you always see grouse or doves or any number of things feeding on the side of the road, just pecking around. They're just going to get gravel.

Waterfowl, the argument goes, and we'll get into the truth of this or not, waterfowl picks up shot, lead shot, as grit, and then they would get lead poisoning, and it would cause the birds to get lethargic and die. So in the late 80s, early 90s, because waterfowl is managed on the federal level, a federal ban on using lead shot went into effect. I remember that happening as a kid. I remember guys quit hunting over the lead issue. And to clarify, it really raised its head in the mid-70s,

like in 74, 75, and with groups demanding an environmental impact statement for the federal waterfowl regulations. And then in 76, they issued an environmental impact statement that addressed this, and they began to impose restrictions on certain areas in lead shot, and that raised sort of the specter of you know is lead eventually going to go away and then in the late um i think in 85 or 86 there was an amended environmental impact statement that really addressed um sort of the secondary effects of lead and that was

the basically there was a suit that claimed that the environmental impact statement uh that addressed the impact of lead on waterfowl didn't address the impact of eagles eating waterfowl poisoned by lead and so sort of the secondary uh effects of lead and so that's what really led to the eventual, okay, lead's eventually going to go away. And then they began to slowly phase it out. You're talking about lead zeppelin, right? Indeed. Yeah.

So by 91, it was done. Yeah. Yeah. Guys got pissed because lead maintains its – it's heavier, so it maintains its velocity. And when people got done with lead, everybody went to steel, which is much lighter. Now there's all kinds of other stuff that's really expensive. But people were pissed because crippling loss, most people anecdotally felt that crippling loss was much higher shooting steel than lead. It was a controversial move, and people felt that the science wasn't there.

And this guy was pointing out that not only was the science there, but the birds aren't picking it up anyway. This is just a dude on the street. Okay. Telling me this. So after I had this conversation, I checked in with a couple of biologist friends who weren't of age at that time. So they work on waterfowl. One in particular, my friend Brant, works on waterfowl now, but he's young. He wasn't involved with that at the time. And he just operates. And he substantiates it, but he just operates under the assumption that it was a good move. What do you get?

I mean, the reason it's important now or the reason I'm starting to wonder about it now is because he has so many issues now with guys being worried about humans ingesting lead. And gaming. issues now with guys uh being worried about humans ingesting lead and gaming did anybody find a study on how much lead you have to ingest for it to be damaging i found studies on on birds you know how how much lead a bird would have in its system before they really felt like it was impacting the bird's psych psychological state you know they talked about birds how they kind of go crazy if they have too much lead. I don't remember what the actual number was. Yeah, like.1

or something. It starts to impact them. But it has to be like.6 for it to really be fatal. Something like that. Yeah, I remember this guy was saying he had his lead checked. That's right. He had his lead checked. It was.2. And

maybe like 2. I can't remember lead checked. It was 0.2. Yeah. And maybe like 2. I can't remember what the hell he was saying. Maybe it's 0.6 where it really starts to impact you. Dangerous was at a certain level. Yeah. I mean, I looked into some of this, especially with the recent events in Michigan, sort of the history of lead poisoning.

That's industrial lead. Right. I mean, no. the history of, of lead poisoning. That's industrial. Right. I mean, no, it's, it's a. Often lead has already been like soluble. Yeah, no, it's a different, I mean, it's a different case, but just thinking about the effects of lead on, on the body, I guess I did some background reading and it was sort of interesting that, you know, the, the, the knowledge that lead is toxic to human beings is very old, but it's only sort of in the late 20th century that,

I mean, the idea of acute lead poisoning from high levels of exposure, that's old knowledge. But I guess the recognition that small exposure was also dangerous is much more recent, like in the late 20th century, especially to kids. It's like subclinical levels of exposure. Yeah, they test my kids for lead all the time. And when people get it, it winds up being they're getting it from eating paint and they're eating dirt that has a lot of lead in it from when gasoline was leaded. Right.

Soluble lead. I just want to know, and I don't know because I've heard it from credible sources either way. I just want to know if there's ever been a case where a hunter and fisherman... Now, I spent my whole life with split shot in my mouth because that's where we

store it. You're out fishing, you're running three split shot, and then you're in another area where you wish you only had one, two go in your mouth. Then you're in an area you wish you only had one two go in your mouth then you're in an area where you wish you had two you put one out of your mouth put it on then you're free lining it

and you got all three in your mouth and you're setting them on and off I grew up sucking on I've eaten I don't know how many shotgun pellets how many lead fragments can anyone point to where a person got lead poisoning from any kind of hunting and fishing related activities? Also, how documented is it that when birds, and I'm not trying to be, like, I'm not trying to be contrarian.

How documented is it that ducks and geese that have high lead are actually getting the lead from shot and not from industrial pollutants. Do you know? I think you'd have to find a different set of experts to speak to that. No, I'm not asking you to tell me this because as far as I can tell, it almost seems unanswerable. How would you even be able to observe them being migratory, actually ingesting the lead? And how would you know they were eating lead versus eating – This guy was telling me, yeah, they got lead poisoning. They got lead poisoning from industrial pollutants.

Yeah. Like soluble lead. He's saying they're not getting it from picking up your number six shot. That's what he's claiming to me. He says you're passing that stuff. The turn to steel isn't the only variable there. The unleaded gas has certainly changed. The switch to unleaded gas has certainly changed the amount of lead in the environment.

Yeah, which is contemporaneous. I remember being in high school and dudes having to go buy, like this dude I grew up with, Brian Peterson, he had to go buy lead to put, as they were phasing out lead in gas stations, he had to go buy a lead additive to run his old-ass car. So that was his claim. And I'm not posing it like you're supposed to know the answer. But the reason it's significant is I've hunted in areas in California

you can't use lead, right? Lead bullets. You can't use lead, right? Lead bullets. You can't use lead bullets. It's a condor zone. And it's because they are like, those things are getting lead poisoning from eating carrion from... And that is proven science.

Well, it's proven that they have... Here's the other thing. This guy was telling me, you can't detect. When you can tell something has been poisoned, you can tell it's been poisoned by heavy metals. You can't necessarily. He was saying, you can't necessarily tell that it's lead.

Lead has heavy metal poisoning. He blames it on industrial discharge and things like leaded gasoline, industrial discharge, and all these other causes. And he's saying, rather than address these causes, people have put their focus that it somehow has to do with lead ammunition. When tuna, right, and other things have high heavy metals or mercury or other. Are they eating shot? Is someone shooting tunas with lead you know it's i don't understand so i did read about a ban on lead sinkers

yeah in great britain dude that seems ridiculous to me and uh but but i guess and and this is just from reading the literature and no real you know of it. But I guess there was a documented boom in this particular swan population that was affected that led to this ban. What? Yeah, it was like these particular – Don't they know how to put the split shot on? This particular – It sounds like they need to have like a public service announcement

about crimping it on better. I don't know. But when they switched, it was like the number of these swans bumped up by like 38% or something. Really? That was the statistic that I read. And yeah, again, it was just sort of some background reading. Yeah, but I mean, you could read that a thousand ways. Yeah.

I hate listening to myself right now because I sound like the incredulous old geezer who hates change and acts like expertise is suspect. I sound like Donald Trump, right? Like, experts? I don't need experts to tell me what I know. I know the sun rises. So there's a difference between not believing everything you read and not believing things that you don't agree with.

Yeah. Now, I told Yanni a quote one time. Tell the quote I told you, or did you forget? I forgot. Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. Can't remember who said it. It's good, though. It's good, though. It's good.

Yeah. So I'm trying. I've always carried around an assumption. For a while, I switched and stopped shooting lead bullets. Started shooting monolithic bullets, pure copper. Yeah. People are going in that direction anyway. But for a while, I was just like, oh, I'll shoot these.

It's a little different. You got to generally kind of hold a little bit different and makes everything different i always like bonded bullets now i'm kind of shooting them again the other day i got a email from a friend of mine who's a uh a biologist highly educated educated in the natural sciences, very avid hunter, and sent me a thing about Oregonians' use of lead, sort of a survey about people's relationships with lead ammunition. He was very upset.

I'm going to be hunting with this guy this spring. I'm trying to think. I got to check my ammo because I don't want to show up with lead ammo because he's so but i'm hunting with him in the spring but just distraught that he's like that our fellow cazadors for you non-spanish speaking folks at spanish for hunter are littering the landscape and littering their food with this stuff and i just don't know if it's true or not. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what sort of an effect it has, but when you think about the numbers of lead prior to the steel shot,

you think about the number, the amount of lead that was pumped over like Pothole Lakes and things like that. I mean, thousands of tons yeah muskegon state game area where i grew up you'd go out on an open day and shoot a couple boxes shells i mean it's like raining shot yeah and just what just what landed in my hat would have been enough to kill somebody and each bang is is an ounce an ounce and an eighth you know uh there's a whole there's a whole whole other component to this issue that's sort of coming out. I was reading a research article about the impacts to gun clubs and studies that they've done on gun clubs because environmentalists are now coming after gun clubs over putting lead into the ground.

This guy told me that's bullshit. Right, right. Right. Well, so this study actually – I think there are things that seem like they're more legitimate and grounded in science than arguments environmentalists make. And then there's other things that are just irrational and emotional based because they're just really going after whatever issue because of some polarization of their politics or whatever it might be. But this particular study, they were looking at the impacts around the gun club, and they found at least as as far as the water goes, that lead doesn't go very far. That type of lead can't go very far. So they found that it did impact the top two inches of soil, but nothing else. He told me six inches. So this study I read was two.

And again, I think one of the difficulties I have in really forming an opinion about this, other than talking to biologists like you've had the opportunity to do, is it's hard looking around at the internet and hearing these to really discern. And that's something that sounds like the military person you talked to was getting at a little bit also. It's hard to discern how much of this is somebody's opinion or an emotional opinion and how much of it is actually grounded in science. And even when you look at scientific articles, they still sort of seem to have oftentimes a bit of an angle. So I guess in the end – Absolutely, man. Right. But I think that – here's kind of where I'm going on it is I don't think we're done making mistakes.

We all laugh now. Like I'll tell a story recently that my dad had, uh, got shot in the foot with a shotgun and he would go to shoe stores to show people the pellets in his foot and they would x-ray your foot in a shoe store to see if your shoe fit. Right. Okay.

So everybody's standing around a shoe store all day long, no protection, x-raying people's feet. The shoe salesman guy, right? We now realize that that's not a good idea to be exposed to that level, okay? So we're not done making these mistakes. We laugh now like the way they used to. My dad said when he was, again, my old man, when he was in the army, they'd put cigarettes in your rations.

When he was stationed, when he was in World War II, I think he said that you'd three cigarettes in your C ration each meal. So we now laugh like, ha, ha, ha, can you believe that they didn't know? We're not done making mistakes. Right. I'm in full agreement. Yeah. We're making them right now. Yeah.

And our kids will be like, can you believe those sons of bitches used full agreement. Yeah. We're making them right now. Yeah. And our kids will be like, can you believe those sons of bitches used to X? Yeah. And it's us right now at this table. So in some way, I'm like, okay, if there is all the hysteria and some people are sitting around saying like, yeah, but you can't totally, you don't really know. You can't totally prove. You don't really know. At what point are you being like Big Tobacco, who probably is still arguing that cigarettes are fine, you know,

or the NFL and that concussions don't matter. It's like at some point the tide turns. And, you know, on one hand, I don't want to, like, stop doing something because it just works so good and then be down the road like the guy who was the late adopter. But on the other hand, I don't want to be, like, I don't want to be misled. 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. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end 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.

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slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. LED, misled. I suppose in the end, you just have to be open to reality when it comes to you. Yeah. Right? Yeah, and I think this is one of those issues too that, you know, there's a tendency, I think, to if you don't necessarily agree with something or you're on the other side of the issue, you begin to misrepresent the intentions of the other side. Right.

And I think. Give me an example. Well, I guess like in a recent podcast, you had a letter from a listener who's talking about the reintroduction of wolves as a ploy, right? Yeah. Was it a ploy to get rid of hunting? That the Clintons pushed for the wolf reintroduction as a way to

disarm america oh steeper than because the wolves would eat all of the game and everyone would be like well fuck it and sell their guns yeah i mean to someone else i mean or i guess in his mind that they would destroy him in a way. If they sold him, he'd still be in existence. But it was just a way to get to disarm America. And I'm like, you know, the Wolf Reintroduction was controversial. That seems like a very roundabout way of disarming. And I mean, that guy, he's allowed.

He's fully entitled to his disagreement with the decision. I got to give him credit. He was saying that his buddy thinks that, and he was wanting to find a way to articulate to his buddy why that's probably not true. Yeah. No, we won't paint him into that box. But that guy's fully entitled to his, to his belief that Wolf reintroduction was a bad idea, but it doesn't change the fact that there

were decades of, um, biological studies and scientific studies that led up to that decision. And there's a documented history of, of what the, um, so if, you know, if the Clintons were to go back in time and, and, uh, and, and create this ploy. I mean, and the other thing too, I guess, is that the initial intention behind certain policies can be subverted by other groups or can be used to further other agendas. That doesn't necessarily mean that that policy was bad from the get-go, right? Or that it was all part of one conspiracy. So I think you have to – Yeah, that person could say, I don't agree with Wolf reintroduction, and I don't think

Hillary Clinton is gun-friendly. Right. But he's like, and – but he's like, but I'm going to tie those two things together. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean but he's like, but I'm going to tie those two things together. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it's one of those, I think, I think the lead issue is, is one that, that sort of lends itself to that sort of a, a polarization, right? Because as you say, there are groups out there trying to shut down shooting

ranges because of this threat. And obviously, there's some debate as to how much of a threat it poses to human health, but they're trying to shut down shooting ranges. And so that is construed then as an attack on larger issues. But I think there are certain things that we have to agree on. One is that lead can be toxic. It's not good for you. It's not good for you.

I don't know. I think at some point you have to come to an agreement on the fundamentals of a particular issue before you begin. What's bugging me is I have an enormous cache. Like if I was ever getting in trouble and they raided my house, they'd be like, he was caching ammo. I'd be like, well, you know, it looks like that.

But let's just say he had a bunch of it. You can always practice with your lead ammo. No, because you're still out there. It's really unfortunate in issues, almost any issue that people are passionate about, that the polar opposites cause people in the middle to feel like there's no truth. Yeah.

That's what you're talking about. People trying to shut down shooting ranges, and so then people are like, oh, well, people are trying to shut down shooting ranges, then there's no way that bullets are killing condors, lead bullets are killing condors. Even though there's science, people just sort of shut down shooting ranges, then there's no way that bullets are killing condors, lead bullets are killing condors. Even though there's science, people just sort of throw it all out the window

because they feel like people are trying to... They smell where it's coming from. Right, exactly. I'll point out that the gentleman who I spoke with, what alerted me to bias is he used the term eco-fascists. That's a tell. I like it.

So then I'm like, okay. That ruins the rhetoric. Right? It's like when someone says to me, if they're talking about some aspect of liberals they don't like, and they go, yeah, the libtards. It just shuts me down. I'm like, you know what? Honestly, I probably would wind up agreeing with you

on whatever it is you're talking about. But the fact that you just use that term makes it very difficult for me to carry on this conversation because I would hate for another version of you to typify my perspectives as right wing fanatic. You know, it's like, I just, I can't stand it coming from either direction. Yeah. I can't stand that kind of, yeah, like the eco-fascist.

I'm like, hey, it might not be. It might be a dude who knows a lot about heavy metals. Yeah. I mean, that's who it is. I mean, and that's who it is, right? It's, there are scientists out there who have spent their entire professional lives studying these issues and trying to arrive at some conclusion i mean they're they're uh ostensibly performing a public service right and so to to

sort of paint them into this corner and say they're they have this agenda and they're attempting to wipe out hunting as we know it it's just not very... One of the things you run into that also, though, is unfortunately the biologists in the end aren't ultimately the ones making the laws. Yeah. Right? So there are people that may or may not know as much about those issues

and don't spend their whole life just investing everything in whatever that issue is. Then you've got some natural resources committee that spends 30 minutes on something and says, you know, whatever. Done, pound the gavel. A couple guys come in and present to them. And that's it. And they vote along party lines anyways in some respects.

Right. Now, both my brothers are ecologists. They did biology and went into ecology specifically. And they operate under what seems to be like a scientific version of the Hippocratic Oath. I don't know what the Hippocratic Oath is, but doctors take it, right? And they pledge to do no harm.

Yeah, to do no harm. When they're researching something, and they research a lot of things, each of them, one deals with aquatic invertebrates and fish more, and one deals with plant ecosystems more. But they'll be telling you about something they're looking into, cause and effect,

causal relationships, whatever. Could be with environmental pollutants, could be with, one of my brothers right now is working on answers to why it's hard to get sagebrush and other plants to come back after, when you're doing coal mine remediation. So you do a coal, a surface coal mine,

and then you're obligated then to bring the land back to some usable form. They find that it's very difficult to reestablish plant communities, certain plant communities. More difficult than if the coal mine would or wouldn't have been there. That's what they're looking for. No, like to get it back to the way you left it. Right. What if there wasn't a coal mine and they just went

and it was some other parcel of land that they did something with and now they have to bring that back? I don't know. He'd probably be able to answer that, but that's what he's working on. Okay, that's what he's working on. Because when they do a coal mine, you're bonding it, right? So you're putting down a chunk of money that's held by a governing agency and it gets given back to you once your remediation is done.

So you've done the mine, you bring topsoil back in, reestablish plant community, and it's supposed to be as good or better. And the regulations used to be less strict. It used to be able to just do grass. It was easy to do that. Now, in certain areas, they're like, sagebrush

is something we're losing. We're losing acreage of sagebrush at an alarming rate. Now, when people do coal mine remediation, where you've tore up a community, a shrub community that contains sagebrush or other things, rabbit brush,

buck brush, and part of your task is like,brush or other things, rabbit brush, buck brush. And part of your task is like, okay, after the mining's done, it's going to go back to a sagebrush community. Very difficult to get that to happen. Okay. So he works on that. Another brother of mine works on a lot of issues having to do with anadromous fish.

So water quality things, climate change issues. And they'll be working on something. I'm like, well, what do you hope happens? Like, what do you hope you find out? They don't think of it that way. It's like, my job isn't to have a hope about what happens. Or I don't hope that it's caused by this or hope that it's caused by that. My job is just to try to answer, like, what is the issue?

Right, completely ruin the science if they do. Yeah, it's like, i think there are a lot of people out there working on things who aren't like i know how to get them hunters yeah interest groups have hopes i'll prove yeah but they don't they're like i'm here i'm trying to in the best way possible deliver you factual information that policymakers can then use to twist and turn however they want to get their policy through. I don't think that's their hope. Their hope is to tell you, their hope is that I can tell you this. Yeah. Like my brother, Dane did a bunch of my, he did a bunch of work out at Bristol Bay stuff having to do with pebble mine. No one asked him like, Hey dude, what do you think about pebble mine? Do you like it or not? He wouldn't even go near that topic.

Yeah. But the person that reads his research. What lives in this river? I can tell you what lives in that river. I'm not going to tell you what I think about Pebble Mine, but I'm damn sure I can tell you that this, this, and this, and this is in that river. Do these things, you know, how do they respond to certain impacts? I'll try to spell that out and tell it to you,

but I'm not going to tell you what I think about the mind. It's not my job. My job is to give you information and hope that it gets, you know, used in a sensible way. Yeah, and I think, you know, recognizing that, it's not to say that people don't bring their own, I mean, science certainly is shaped by a certain, like it's a to say that um people don't bring their own but i mean science certainly is shaped by a certain by like it's a certain type of person that's going to follow that path and become a

biologist so they probably do you know it's it's it's less likely that someone who hates the natural world is going to become an ecologist right and so there are certain there are certain larger uh biases but um to recognize those maybe biases or the predisposition of people like your brother isn't to just throw it all out the window, right? Yeah. I mean, there's a middle ground, and I think that's, yeah, too often people say either the science is purely objective or it's purely biased. And I think like you can recognize that it's, it's more complicated than that. Yeah.

I would think that, like you said, like they both got into what they do because they like, they grew up hunting and fishing and it introduced them to the natural world, but they'll always have that perspective and they still hunt and fish. You know, you could have, they could be sitting next to someone at a desk who grew up because their parents liked to hang out at national parks and were big Sierra Club folks. And they might have a purely antagonistic feeling

toward hunting and fishing, right? That they're like, they believe in like passive involvement with the natural world. Like we're not out there as players on it. Fundamentally, they're going to look at stuff differently. It doesn't mean when you put your – if you're a biologist, when you put your biologist hat on,

that you don't have to set those things aside and focus on what's factual. But it's probably very difficult to them. I'm sure it is. It is. But I think right along with that oath, most of the scientists, my wife included, they're always open to being proven wrong. It's okay for their research and stuff to be done. And even though you said those things, yeah, these things are, like you said, with the river.

Like, yes, this stuff in this river is doing this, this, and this, and this. If someone else redid the research and put it in a different way and had a different control group and disproved it, your brother would be like, oh, yes, you opened my mind and let's move forward. That's why my old man... It has to be given there to that,

the fact that they're open to that change. Yeah, because human knowledge... Did it once, that's it. Human knowledge is an ongoing process. That's why my old man would get so frustrated with ideas of human evolution or the African diaspora. Because people would be like, oh, they found a new thing to sort of rewrite. See, that's why none of this matters. Because they used to say this.

Now they say that. I'm like, yes. No one ever said, no one ever said no one ever wrote down the definitive answer that will last all time right it's just you're just adding bits of knowledge as you go along and it's a dynamic changing picture in my own lifetime like i just have a personal curiosity about the peopling of the new world right so who are the first people to show up in the new world in north america when they get here how they get here right my understanding of that in my own lifetime has changed dramatically still kind of the basic story but i never fell in love with one explanation

i just kind of follow what people are thinking rather than feeling frustrated by the fact that it changes all the time it just like makes it feel like an engaging process yeah you know but some people do really fall in love with a a version and they're antagonistic toward a new version which could be my buddy the lead guy yeah well all of us have you know read up on this subject it just really doesn't seem like there's a lot out there. So I think that's kind of nice, the Oregon stuff that our biologist friends share with us. At least that's current. That's in 2016.

They're doing some work on that. So hopefully we'll know more soon. Yeah. I'm shooting non-toxic at water following the meantime I'm shooting... Toxic? No. Shoot jack in the bullets, man. Shoot jack in the bullets.

Do you guys make any lead knives at Benchline? No, we don't. I can't say that there's not lead in our products. I don't know if I can speak to that. You don't feed the knives to dogs? We don't make toxic... We don't know if I can speak to that. You don't feed the knives to ducks? We don't make toxic. We don't intentionally make toxic lead knives, no.

You know what you were telling me? Let's change the subject a little bit. I was asking why Benchmade never make, why you guys don't do fillet knives. Explain that. What's up with the fillet knives? We have looked at it and we actually used to have this line called Red Class that everybody hated because it was an import line.

And they're like, what the F are you guys doing? You guys are an American-made knife company, and that's what makes you great, right? So we sort of did away with that. But those fillet knives were always – they're kind of coveted people. Like, oh, yeah, those old Red Class fillet knives laying around. And we were able to make fillet knives then because they were $45. And there seems to be, I mean, when we make products the way Benchmade makes products, we make products and we shoot for, like, maximum performance, right? So we're using laser cutters to cut steels because we're using steels that are too hard to stamp.

And everything that we're shooting for is all to maximize value at a high level to the end user. So then we try to figure out how to manufacture it, and because we look at things from a value and a performance standpoint and then figure out the manufacturing, the costs go way up. And with fillet knives, they seem to be more of a disposable item. They're like – people don't want to pay generally more than, $75 is a lot for a fillet knife. Why is that though? I spent a few years in Bristol Bay as a fishing guide, and we had lots of fillet knives on the fillet table.

You're cutting fish, and then you just rip them through, not even like with reckless abandon pretty much, just rip them through a sharpener, and then you get back to filleting fish, and there's guts and parts flying everywhere. And it's just not, a fillet knife isn't something that has this, you have an affinity for. It's just like this gnarly tool.

Yeah, you feel the same way. Most people do. And so we have to also be conscientious. So the reason we make them is for maximum performance and if people don't want that, they're not willing to pay that price for it, then there's no reason for us to make it because if we do, it's just going to flop. So no one's going to buy a $200 flay knife. I'm not saying nobody's going to buy a $200 flay knife, but there are a lot more people that would buy other knives that we could make like some of our other hunting products that they would be interested in. And so we also have a limited capacity in our factory,

so we have to focus on the things that we know people are going to really widely adopt or accept. Not that we don't make specialized products. Yeah, as a kid and still today, as a kid, I filleted thousands. I mean, literally thousands of perch and bluegills with those Rapala. Yeah. With a little soft pine handle with some kind of lacquer on it. Yeah, I still own one. By volume, Rapala, like fillet knives, one of the biggest selling knives still to this day, period.

Rapala fillet knives. Yeah, they were next to nothing. We'd buy the one that had a little short, I don't know, like a six-inch blade on it. And it was just like the go-to perch knife. Later, when I got married, someone gave me a Wusthof, I think, fillet knife, which I didn't like because it was too whippy.

You like a little more backbone. Yeah, I generally fillet fish with an eight inch boning knife you're like those victor knocks it's almost like a it's like scoops in it almost like a disposable kind of knife you know yeah yep but yeah fillet fish with those but i don't know why yeah but then with hunting eyes it is true like with hunting eyes i'm real particular but with flame eyes i don't know but i always thought maybe because there's no one made a souped up fillet knife. Well, also you're leaving like your fillet knife out on the cleaning table and, you know, hosing it off and this and that.

I feel like it's way more utilitarian. You know, when you're done cleaning fish, spray off the table, push all the knives to the side, bring out the sharpener and walk away. Yeah, you don't fetishize. Like you don't fetishize flay knives. No one ever gives you a flay knife and be like, see that? That was my grandpa's flay knife.

That was my grandpa's hunting knife. You're like, damn! Let me see that. There's knife companies that are good at doing that. You have to understand what are we good at? Like Dexter Russell. They make the white handled ones. That's what I was actually talking about.

Dexter Russell. That's kind of what I figured. But those are like combined, right? What do you mean combined? Like isn't Dexter – is Dexter Russell and Forrest – are they the same company? To make like the food service. I don't know. I don't have an answer to that.

They make a very similar product. They do make similar products. But the Forrestners are black-handled. The Dexter Russells are white-handled. Yeah, I was conflating those two, like just food service. Right. And guides talk about, oh, my boat knife. Most guys in their boat, they'll have like a boat knife.

But where does their boat knife go? It's like in the gunwale of their sled. The thing is sliding back and forth. It's just getting hammered. They take terrible care of it. And they will tell you, like, you guys got any – like I just had one of my buddies the other day like i need a boat knife like i don't really have a boat knife i've got like d2 steels and we've got steels they're like i need a knife i can just throw in my gunnel and you know when i'm out in buoy 10 and the salt water is just like you

know i can do whatever i cut herring it's like dude that that knife the blade is going to rust off and like yeah you know three seconds if you that. And so they want a knife that costs $45 that has really high chromium and not the – or chrome. It doesn't have all the high carbon in it because that type of knife just turns to rust when you get it in a corrosive environment. So that's part of it too, right? It's like, one, they're beating the junk out of the knives. Two, the steels that are generally more costly that are going to perform better typically have high levels of carbon in them. And so they don't do well in corrosive environments anyways. Why is it so hard to make knives that love saltwater?

Well, if you're talking about a fixed blade knife, it's all to do – and I'm not a metallurgist, but it has everything to do with the chemistry of the steel itself, like the chemical makeup. We do actually have a steel that we get from an Austrian manufacturer called N680, which is, I guess, sort of irrelevant what the number is. But N680 has a really high content of the types of materials in the chemical makeup that allow for non-corrosive properties in the steel. Now, the tradeoff is typically if you drive up the anti-corrosive properties in a blade, you will lose edge performance. Oh, okay. Right. So it sounds like, yeah, because stainless – no one ever makes a knife that's just like – that behaves like stainless steel. Right. So it sounds like, yeah, because stainless, no one ever makes a knife that behaves like stainless steel.

Right. So our hardest steels are not stainless at all. You have to coat them or you have to put certain finishes on them. And people have to take care of the blades. Now we also have semi-stainless steels. And we do have like S30V that's in all of these um hunting knives the hunt knives that particular steel actually has a really great balance between corrosion resistance and edge retention and durability but it will still i mean like you can't just like gut an elk you know carve up a deer with it you

know a quarter or something out and throw it in your pack and not think about it for the next hunting until the next hunting season pull it out and expect that the blade's not going to have corroded when you left blood all over it. You still have to take care of it. There are some super steels, like another bowler steel called M390 that's very expensive, but it actually has a really interesting ability in that steel because of the makeup of it to offer both corrosion resistance at a high level and edge

performance so there are some i mean they make custom steels just for cutlery and and even metal manufacturing companies like s30v and these hunt knives that is a steel that was specifically designed for cutlery like color like home color you mean a cutter any kind of like like sports cut oh yeah yeah yeah that's there's a difference between those two. We think about our products in the specialty knife market. That typically does not include the culinary market. Most culinary products are going to be relatively low-carbon stainless, unless you get into the Japanese sushi knives.

I got a souped-up one of those. You do? Those are awesome. My wife always threatens to throw away because an old girlfriend gave it to me. From Japan. But if you cut a lime with that thing, let's say you cut a lime or a tomato and don't wipe the blade and let the blade sit there for 10 minutes. It's going to rust.

Yeah. It turns the colors. Yep. But you can sharpen that thing nut-shaven sharp. I mean, easily. And that's like, I used to always think that just having a knife that

would sharpen easy is the best. Because I like to sharpen knives. But then you meet guys like, I've cut up five elk with my knife and it never got dull. There's something to be said for that, but I'm always worried that guy

will never get it sharp again. What happens to that guy when he doesn't get it sharp enough? Because there's also something to keeping your edge sharp that helps your edge stay sharp. Oh, yeah. Right, so you know that. So what happens to that guy when he's on his sixth elk and he's halfway through it,

and all of a sudden the knife's not sharp anymore? So I like to keep – S30D again again, offers a really great balance between everything. And you can put an edge on it in the field with a carbide, one of those carbide sharpeners with the little V-notch jaws in them, enough to get you through. But it's good to carry a knife that will do both. You have a really hard – most people carry multiple knives. It's good to have one with a really strong edge-performing, edge-retention type steel and then maybe one that's a little easier to sharpen in case you, for some reason, lose that.

That's what I do is I carry around – when I'm on a hunt, like a big game hunt, I carry in my pack my knife that only touches hide and meat. Right. I don't cut cheese with it and whittle sticks with it. That's not your pocket knife. Yeah. It's just that. It's for that. If I don't kill something, it never whittle sticks with it. That's not your pocket knife. Yeah. It's just that. It's for that. If I don't kill something, it never comes out of my pack.

Right. And then I got a knife in my pocket or knife somewhere, which is my messing around thing. And it's worth mentioning also for our steels because we have such hard steels that can be – I mean you can do 2L, 2D or whatever with one blade. We also have this really cool program called LifeSharp where somebody – even if they really, I mean, you can do 2L, 2D, or whatever with one blade. We also have this really cool program called LiveSharp, where somebody, even if they've really, I mean, honestly, That's what I was surprised by, that you can just send it in.

You can just send it in, and our team there, we have this product services team, super expert technicians. It doesn't matter if it's a 30-year-old Benchmade or a brand new one, they'll disassemble the whole thing, make sure they fix everything, tune it to optimal performance, put an edge back on it, and send it back to you. It's free service. Who pays the shipping?

Benchmade pays the shipping. I mean, not to get it to us. They ship it back to you. But we'll ship it back and pay the shipping, yeah. That's sweet. What's the turnaround time? Right now, last I checked, the turnaround time is running three days. Really? Yeah. I mean, three days in our facility, right? So there's shipping

and then shipping back. Big week, maybe? Yeah. You guys just three days in our facility, right? So there's shipping and then shipping back. Big week, maybe. Yeah. You guys just see some messed up stuff rolling through there probably, don't you? Crazy stuff, especially a lot of military knives. I was looking at one yesterday that a guy had. It was a Navy diver, and he was down cutting rope out of a propeller, and somebody turned the engine on, and it sucked the knife into the prop,

and the knife is just – I don't know how his hands it wasn't ripped off still got chunks of hand i have no idea but the knife is like it's just bent in half the scales are all blown off of it and typically what our product services team will do when they get a knife like that yeah they'll you'll say you know if we can keep the knife you know so we have the cool story or whatever they'll just you know send a new one out you know you know the company OR? Yeah, Outdoor Research? Yeah. I was down there one day.

I used to have a friend of a friend that was working there, and we were down there monkeying around, and they got this wall of shame, which is like returns they've had. And one of the things is like a guy had a pair of gloves that you could tell he had for a million years because they're just like full of holes and worn out, and then he burned them in a fire. So it's like you could tell that they were really messed up, then he burned them in a fire, and he made a return on them.

And they gave him a new set of gloves. He's like, what's with these things? I just threw them in the fire for a while. No, he said he sent them a new pair. But just like insane stuff that people try to return. They have a wall of shame at Leupold that I was looking at. They're also in Portland, so go there sometimes to take returns in or look around at new products.

And I was looking at this wall of shame and there's this scope on the wall and it's all blasted and it's got a note with it that they frame that says, let brother-in-law borrow scope. Brother-in-law dropped scope and broke it. Never letting brother-in-law dropped scope and broke it, never letting brother-in-law borrow scope again.

Going back to school too. Yes. Who do you guys mainly – what's your main clientele? So our main clientele as far – are you talking about like as far as occupation or just as far as people? Yeah, like what do the main – do you guys sell more to law enforcement and military, more to just dudes who want a knife to carry around for just general cut and stuff up? I think that people arrive at a certain level of performance expectation in their products regardless sort of of what walk of life they're in. Because we serve as people at all, fire EMS, military, hunters, law enforcement, people that are just general sports cutlery enthusiast collectors. That's a term, sports cutlery enthusiasts?

Or collectors, right? Magazine for that? Well, there's a whole industry. There's a whole industry around people. Yeah, there is a magazine for that. Blade Magazine, right? Blade Magazine, yep, yep. And Knives Illustrated.

I mean, there's a whole industry. We have a whole trade show dedicated to it. It's all custom knife makers. But I guess to answer your question in sort of a roundabout way is that we make knives for people that want to buy knives that are at the peak performance and maximum value that they can get from a manufactured knife. And we sort of bridge the gap between custom and manufactured. There's a whole world of garage shop type custom knife makers that make really exquisite products

like even the knife that you have, the sushi knife, right? Some of those knives can be thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. There's a whole world of people that just collect these. But not everybody can afford those. And even the garage custom guys, it takes them.

They have three-year wait lists for some of their products. Well, we're able because our owner originated in the custom knife world but then found this affinity and knack for manufacturing. He started working with custom knife designers to bring custom knives to a manufactured level at the same performance, but then to make it accessible to more of the masses. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are still owned by like a family, right? Yeah, the Diaz's family. Yeah.

Who started it out. Started it out, yeah. When did they start? The Benchmade was founded in 1987. So the next year is our 30th anniversary. Founded when? At 1987. Really? Yeah. God, I guess it was long ago. Well, there was a company before that. So the next year is our 30th anniversary Founded when? 1987 Really?

Yeah God, I guess it was long ago Well, there was a company before that So like around 1973 There was another company that made mostly ballet songs Or butterfly knives That's where the butterfly and our logo comes from Oh, is that right?

Right, because our owner, Les Diasis And the family ownership Les is Filipino And butterfly knives are Filipino knives, and he calls himself unemployable, and he's just an entrepreneur at heart. And he went to a gun and knife show because he loved that stuff, and he's kicking around. He's talking to these custom knife guys, and he's like,

you guys can work out of your garage. You can live anywhere you want. This is the best thing I've ever heard of. It was perfect for me. So he started getting into custom knives mostly through that experience and wanting to find something he could do for himself. And he just saw the tremendous

value that could be provided by a well-made butterfly knife. Nobody made good ones. They were all cobbled together. Yeah, we always used to buy them at flea markets. We'd make our own nunchucks. What is that word. We'd make our own nunchucks. What is that word? We always thought they were numchucks.

Nunchuck, right? Yeah, we'd buy shitty butterfly knives and make nunchucks. Sometimes we'd spend weeks doing nothing but that. So he worked with custom knife designers to make beautiful, well-executed butterfly knives, which actually is a really great design because the two handles prevent the blade from going either direction. And so if you make it with tight tolerances, it's a folding knife that basically is as

rigid as a fixed blade knife when it's open. Yeah, but it's like a stiletto. It's meant for like knife fight. Yeah. I mean, originally... That's my impression. I think originally butterfly knives had martial art, sort of a martial arts history like Nunchucks behind them. So you guys still make a Butterfly Knife?

We do. Really? We do. Does it sell? It sells like crazy. And they're $400. Really? I'd like to get my hands on a $400 Butterfly Knife.

I might know a guy. What's it called? It just has a number. So we make the 62, the 67, and they're just different blade variants. But who's buying them? Mostly when you get into the butterfly knives those are collectors people that are into like like real sort of key niche or niche i should say type cutlery products yeah i'm gonna start just carrying one man when someone asked me to cut something i'm like whipping that thing all around

some people are just butterfly knife lovers too i mean they just appreciate the design you can flip them around you ever got a deer with a butterfly knife i have never got a deer with a butterfly knife? I have never gutted a deer with a butterfly knife, but I was just looking at one. I was trying to show it to my wife last night and how I thought it could have been a good hunting knife, and she's like, I don't care what you're talking about right now. Does the classic design have an edge on both

sides? You know what? That's a good question. The one, the most classic design I've seen from us is this blade called the Weehawk, and no, it's a single edge, but we also have these crazy blades called crisp blades that look wavy, and they're sharpened on both sides. What I will tell you is that if you're, like,

the master of the butterfly knife, then it's kind of like faux pas, almost, to use a single-sided. You use a double-sided. Yeah, man. Cut both ways. Oh, and there's dudes that are throwing them up and catching them behind their back, and it's crazy. That's what I'm going to be gonna be like when i'm hunting yeah next time i come see you i'm expecting this from you when i send you a butterfly they got a pocket clip on them uh some some do usually not usually they do not have a pocket clip they'll come with like a sheath you got to

be quicker on the draw than you know out of your pocket i had no idea so is it in the bench made catalog yeah yeah it's in the Benchmade catalog. We actually have two sort of separate families of butterfly or ballet song knives. One that is more technologically advanced materials-wise. It has some stacked handles and some other things. And then one that's more classic with machine stainless handles. Gotcha. Yeah. So how long have you guys had the,

how many years has it been that you've had the, like an actual hunting focus line of knives though? Since we've had an actual like core hunting line, it's only been three years. We've spent a lot of time, I should also say there's a caveat with that. We've almost always had hunting knives in the line

and we spent a lot of time trying different approaches to like knives that were like great, that were perfectly applicable to hunting or yeah. Or even like knives called the bird and trout knife or, I mean, like actual hunting knives, but the hunt series is our first ever like fully vested knife series, like a full line of knives just specifically applied to hunting hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the

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So when you have the steep country, I'm actually holding you on these right now. How did it come to be that... How did... Like, why... I don't know how to ask this. It's all over magazines. Best this, best that. Is that, like, honest? That...

Or do you submit to those kind of things? You mean... Like, great new gear items? Like, best of the best or whatever? Yeah best or whatever so that knife tore it up so field i feel like every magazine you opened up had that knife and we do very little paid print advertising and i love saying this because hopefully this will mean that a lot of the print advertisers won't call me and solicit my business but i somehow doubt that that's true we do we do a very little print advertising Most of what we invest our money in is back into product technology.

So typically it's kind of like a biologist. This is not always true, but with a biologist, you have to come from a place of factual science or you're not credible anymore. For people that are doing gear reviews, if you're letting advertising bias your gear reviews, people eventually will see that and you'll no longer be credible

at reviewing equipment. And then you'll lose everything. So usually with a magazine, there is no connection, at least this is what they tell you. If I tried to call an advertiser and say, hey, you're advertising a Gerber knife, you gave a good review to a Gerber knife

and I just placed a full page ad in that month's issue, that's BS, they would say. We don't good review to a Gerber knife and I just placed a full page ad in that month's issue. That's BS, they would say. We don't even talk to those people. The editorial people are totally different from the advertising department and they do that because otherwise the publication loses credibility.

Do you think that's true? Because I feel like I can just point in every single magazine. Not always. Like Field & Stream, Best of the Best, we don't advertise in advertise in field and stream never have and we've won best of the best three three times in the i think three times in the last five years yeah and that's not because you're not buying no it's not because we're paying for advertising that's not what they call advertorial so there's also advertorial right where you're paying for the editorial that's a cool knife yeah i think it says a lot

about you too and the product that the sheath seems well thought out and it seems solid we've spent a lot of time on that in the last few years we the sheath has been an afterthought for us because we mostly were a folding knife company ballet songs and things so there was a learning curve over the last 10 years we started to get more into fixed blades to understand like in a fixed blade, the sheath is as it's as important as the, as the knife itself. Kind of knife you got Randall. Well,

I got a bench made now. What'd you have before that? You know, I, I have like a, just a, sorry to say, I have like little gerber uh pocket folder that i'll carry um you don't kill anything anyway yeah well then i have the havelon i have the

havelon tucked away in the pack and that doesn't get as much use as uh as the rope and cheese knife yeah but no it's i mean i uh yeah i adopted sort of the the and and now i have one of the other like the razor's edge or whatever it is but i like the outdoor edge or the outdoor yeah i like it's like a fixed blade with a blade that goes in it yeah and it's got more of a a curved yeah more of a traditional radius than the havalon for caping and stuff like that i like that but yeah i mean i'm i'm i'm, I sort of got into the replaceable blades because I never got good at sharpening my own. Yeah.

Growing up, like fur trapping, I spent a lot of time sharpening. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that we said for replaceable ones. One thing a guy said to me that weighed on me a little bit later on was he's talking about just like disposable culture. and at first i kind of dismissed it but after all i'm like god you know there is like he's like whatever happened just like having a thing that you just have and you learn how to take care of it and like the whole world is memories associated yeah and that's kind of knife and that's that's sort of how i felt about the the havalon i don't think i'm ever going to look at that havalon and say like a lot of good memories with this thing, you know?

Yeah. My dad used to have this joke where he'd say, like, he had this old hatchet. He's like, yeah, that's my great-grandfather's hatchet. It just had three new heads and four new handles. So now explain what you're in town for, Randall. I'm here for the – Like we're in Seattle. Randall's in Seattle.

Doesn't live here. Lives in Montana. Yeah. So I'm here for the like we're in seattle randall's in seattle doesn't live here lives montana yeah so i'm here for the uh american society for environmental history the asch national conference are you presenting anything nope i'm here to listen i'm just here to listen and to meet people shake hands um and uh listen to papers and but you wind up putting some papers in a magazine? I mean, that's the idea is hopefully I can solicit some. I work as an editor, and so I'm looking for scholars out there that are doing interesting research and try to solicit some manuscript submissions that hopefully we can publish.

You're paying top dollar. No, it's more of a charity thing. Just going to ask. Get ask some good exposure yeah i mean give me a for instance of something you're gonna go watch like a presentation um you know there's actually one panel that i'm sort of interested in and i don't know that it's necessarily for uh um it's it's more for personal interest than professional interest because i don't know that it's necessarily for – it's more for personal interest than professional interest because I don't know that we'd really publish any of these. But there's a panel on sort of the imposition of trapping regulations on indigenous communities in Canada. Oh, I'd like to go sit in on that. Yeah. in Canada. I'd like to go sit in on that. Yeah, so there are a couple,

and I'm not going to really, I've sort of skimmed the program a couple times and just tried to get an idea of what panels I want to sit in on, but there's a couple papers about the changing politics and regulation of trapping in, I think, like BC

and some other areas. So yeah. And imposition is being like the effects of those regulations on them? I don't really know. All I've seen is like the titles of the papers, but they're sort of looking at how this affects... I would imagine, and here I'm sort of just speculating,

but these are practices and behaviors and cultures that have existed for a very, very long time. And the way that they resisted or adapted the imposition of various regulations on these practices. Yeah, that'd be interesting. I don't know. Yeah. of various regulations on these practices. Yeah, that'd be interesting. Yeah, so there's a lot. And there's scholars working all over the place. So there are global topics. There are panels that are specific to North America

or regions of North America. But it's sort of the full spectrum. And then there are also various workshops and different things like that. So it should be a fun, interesting few days. But every sort of subfield of history has its own national conference every year. And so it's a chance for people that are spread out across various universities. You know, certain departments are larger than others, but, you know, at a school

like the University of Montana, say, there's one Russian historian and there's one environmental historian. And so the national conferences allow these people that are working on topics that speak to one another to all gather in one place and share ideas and see sort of what their colleagues out there are working on. Is there certain research that you look for, like specifically that you're hoping for out of this that you'll publish? Not necessarily. Just topics relevant to Western history, Montana history, environmental history. So sort of seeing what's out there and meeting people. And then there are a lot of people from various presses that are there to look for book manuscripts or to meet people.

So it's also sort of there's that element to it as well. So you're going to do some hardcore hobnobbing. Yeah, pretty much. I got all the business cards lined up. You know what's funny about traffic regulations? This spring in April we're going to Wyoming for some spring beaver action. Oh, yeah? And there's a reciprocity thing between the states with trapping.

For instance, Montana, you can't trap any. A non-resident cannot get a trapping license in Montana to trap beaver, for instance, like fur bears. You can go trap coyotes, bobcats, various predators, but you can't trap what they have listed as fur bears like muskrat, mink, river otter, beaver. So what a lot of states will do, let's say you're in a state that is open to non-resident trappers but since montana doesn't allow non-residents they won't let someone from montana buy a license in their state okay so wyoming is open to any non-resident coming from a state that's in turn open to wyoming even though washington has like some draconian trapping trapping is basically

illegal because they've outlawed all the tools of the trade without actually outlawing the practice so you can't use coni bears, can't use footholds, can't use snares, however it's legal so you look which made the trapping

regulations here are kind of ridiculous because everything's open for a really long time. And they barely even update the regulations. Regulations are basically like, go ahead, bro. Just can't use trap. Because you can use live traps. So I'm filling out this form for Wyoming, getting my Wyoming beaver trapping license. And I'm filling out this form for wyoming getting my wyoming you know beaver trapping license i'm filling out this form it's like they're always like um are you allowed to trap x it's like yes

um are non-residents allowed to trap x and it's like it's all like yes yes yes yes yes yes yes and i always wanted to put a note on there being like well i actually know but let's just say yes theoretically and i sent it in i got my uh i i was accepted and got my wyoming got my wyoming fur harvester you're gonna get a letter back from wyoming it says you can come hunt but you can't use yeah yeah but yeah bro yeah welcome come get some beaver but just keep mine you can't use any of the tools that go with tra traveling i never thought of the impact on indigenous people and people tend to be more sensitive to that than they do um you know yeah like other people who have traditional use practices and yeah i don't know um i i really

don't have any um specific or detailed knowledge about how it works and you haven't gone to the conference yet yeah well hopefully i'll be able to tell you a bit more in a couple days. But yeah, the Canadian side of things is something of a mystery to me. I have more knowledge of treaty rights and subsistence rights in the U.S. I'll tell you one thing I see about a lot of areas in Canada is you have a registered line. Like you have a line. The same way you might have a commercial fishing license, you know,

and you like sell. Like you have a registered line. You you might have a commercial fishing license you know and you like sell like you have a registered line you can sell that line you know when i strap is just like it's just honor system like you might be like yeah so and so works that area and nothing was actually preventing you from going out there it would just be like an honor system that you did or did not go along with but there you have man you get like a registered line. You buy a line off someone. I used to shop. I used to sit there with magazines.

In the back of Trapper and Predator Caller magazine when I was a kid, you'd look in the classifieds. It'd be people selling trap lines. What did one go for back then? I can't remember. But I remember I would waste some of these guys' time by writing and asking for more information. And they'd send these maps. Basically a map of a never-ending

swamp. Yeah, hundreds of miles you buy a trap line. I always thought it was fun. Go for it. Concluding thoughts, Yanni? Oh, boy. Can you go first?

What's up with the Hunt to Eat? We haven't talked about Hunt to Eat in a long time. No, we haven't. I meant to wear my t-shirt today. Yanni's got one on. All this kid wears is Hunt to Eat t-shirts. I can't tell if it's because he loves Hunt to Eat or if he just has a lot of t-shirts. Trying to get the word out.

Both. You have to wear your own product. How many states are you going to? We have a turkey shirt that I think goes live today. But not state-affiliated. No. Is this your first non-state-affiliated shirt? No, we've got... The first one was non-state-affiliated.

Yeah, we're up to like four or five now. I've been told to pass along word that we need an Ohio shirt. Oregon? Do you have an Oregon shirt? No. He won't make it until he hears from 10 people. I got 10 people I can call. Idaho is going to be at the printers in the next week or so.

By the time anybody hears this, it'll probably be live already. Washington, Idaho, they should be live by the time this podcast airs. How many states? Are we up to now? Yeah, by the time the podcast airs. So how many states? Are we up to now? Yeah, by the time the podcast airs. Oh, boy. Maybe 10? Close to it.

That's a long way to go. Yeah, we do. But you know what? You're adding t-shirts faster than we added states as a country. You'll catch up eventually. Yeah. We haven't added one since the 50s. All right.

Do you think you'll wind up doing Hawaii because we're going hunting Hawaii this year that'd be a good one it's like a destination hunt spot we find a lot of people buy Montana in Alaska because it's like a dream hunt you sell a lot of those

my brother the other day was wearing a hunt deep Montana I don't know where he got it I didn't give it to him I know where he got it oh do you I gave him two he said sweet Dave was wearing a Hunt to Eat Montana. I don't know where he got it. I didn't give it to him. I know where he got it. I gave him two. He said, sweet, my two new favorite t-shirts. That's my concluding thought. What's yours?

I'm going to bring it back around to lead. Like I said, I feel like the reason we're having this discussion is because there's just not enough research out there. So I'm hoping that now it's kind of coming back. And a lot of people are talking about it again. Someone's going to get after it and do some more research. Because I think we have –

Like we see that coming out of Oregon. Since you're bringing it back up, I'll bring it back up. A thing we haven't brought up is just like efficacy, right? Mm-hmm. It's some things just work real well. Mm-hmm. It works real well. So it's like I'm trying real well it works real well so it's it's like i'm trying to weigh that out as well what is the like when you come in with what is it going to say what is

what would it do to wound loss you know are you going to have a lot more wound loss as you dictate less effective ammunitions to people. I found the statistics on this, at least for someone from US Fish and Wildlife basically had said that once they instituted the ban, there was a spike in self-reported wound loss. I read that.

And then over time, it dropped back down and now it's below what it was prior because people adapted. They weren't taking 60-yard shots. They're shooting 40 yards instead of 60. But I don't believe... Here's the thing. That gets into a whole other issue of science.

It's very... I think that self-reported... Yeah. Very hard. Go around. Do a little informal survey and ask all your bow hunting buddies what they think wound... What's your wound loss rate.

You'll never get an honest answer. You'll never get an honest answer. I think that when guys fill that out, it's like, dude, I don't believe a thing. I mean, I'm sure some people probably do it, but people don't like to self-incriminate. Not that it's against the law, but I think people are like, I think most people are full of it when it comes to wound loss rates,

when they report it. Right, so the reporting might not be representative of reality, but the change in reporting over time does give you some sense, at least, of the bigger picture. So everybody's probably not reporting totally honestly, but the way they report yeah yeah they i saw that i read that same thing they saw a spike right and it wasn't a horrible spike they saw it was like from 20 to 25 near 25 percent or something something like whatever the numbers were and then within a few years it dropped back

down to 20 and then uh shortly after that it even dipped below sort of pre-band numbers. Yeah, as people adjusted. Well, for waterfowl, if you want the efficacy, you can shoot the bismuth and tungsten. It costs quite a bit more. And I wonder why we haven't seen a tungsten or bismuth cord hunting bullet yet. I don't know. I don't know if there's some reason for it or not. That'd be good.

We've got to get a metallurgist out here. Going that way with its fishing tackle. No, you mean non-lead? That stuff hurts your teeth too bad, man. Like, I can bite lead sinkers all day long. Man, you give me a non-toxic sinker and I chew into that thing. Dude, that hurts. Yeah, I'm thread through

bullet weights when talking tungsten for the most part. I don't know about trying to bite down on tungsten weight. That's ill-advised, I think. And then steel shot shatters your teeth. We used, I think it was tin. I want to say fly fishing, those green egg ones. And I actually liked those because they were so reusable.

I felt like I just got more use out of them than the lead. They're less malleable, which I think just gave them longer life. They held their form better. You're sitting about five feet from my little stash of non-toxic sinkers back there. And I'll have to say, I was just fishing the other day, and that's not the one I grabbed. I grabbed the old stylers. A lot less expensive, too, the old style. I like to keep them in my mouth um but you know

what i find though it's like uh i do catch myself like i don't like my kid messing with them i don't like him no i don't like him pinching them down because teeth like i wore a groove into my teeth cutting monofilament and i probably like capped my tooth with lead. Yeah, man. I got one. Then I switched to fluorocarbon, and you're like, dude, that's even harder. You got to use the canine teeth for the fluorocarbon. Yeah, fluorocarbon's hard on your teeth. Oh, yeah.

Matt, what are your concluding thoughts? Well, it got stolen. I was going to bring it back to the lead versus copper issue. I suppose if I had a concluding thought on that, I just hope that whatever decisions are made come from sound science and a good place of thoughtfulness and in the best interest of conservation and not political party line. Yeah.

Yeah. Not like, I don't like guns. Therefore, I think that lead is toxic. Conversely, I like guns. Therefore, lead can do no harm. Yeah. I don't think it should come from that either.

Randall, what's your concluding thought? Oh, man. I don't know. You're excited about this conference? I'm excited about this conference i'm intrigued by uh i want to meet someone who identifies as a self-professed sport culinary enthusiast i like that i'm still chewing on that one but uh i don't know sport cutlery sport i'm sorry yeah what did i say culinary culinary because i saying, that's me, dude. I'm a sport culinary enthusiast.

Here with you, a sport cutlery enthusiast. Yeah. I don't know. When it comes to lead and steel, I don't really hit enough birds for it to make a difference. So we're just talking about all my empty honey holes before we got started here. I don't. Yeah. We were talking about the, the fear of losing your GPS and Randall was just saying he'll switch GPS

units with anybody. Cause he said it can't be any worse than what he's got. I'd like to point out that I started shooting copper well before I ever thought about lead poisoning in my game meat because I saw the efficacy in the field as a guide. And I'd be like, what? Someone would recover a bullet. I'd be like, I've never seen that. What is that? Oh, it's the Barnes triple shot. I was like, wow, that thing hit that elk and just drilled him. And I know a lot of that has to do with shot placement. Where you hit.

More of that has to do with shot placement than the bullet itself. But anyways, that's kind of what got me shooting those coppers. It wasn't until later until someone was like, oh, you also get that benefit of whatever. That's what I wanted. That's another thing that I talked about that came up in this conversation

was, I said, in some ways, I feel like it's going to wind up being beyond the point, not with lead shot for upland birds and stuff. I was like, in some ways, I think it's the discussion about toxicity is beside the point. Because if you look at reloaders,

like if you look at the avant-garde, the cutting edge, there's just a very, I feel like there's a very definite shift going toward monolithic bullets. Don't you think? I mean, it's just like more and more people who don't give a shit about the lead issue

are shooting solid. You don't feel that that's true? I don't know. I wouldn't say. You'd know better than me. If I'm wrong, tell me, because I feel like you know more about that stuff than I do. I think a lot of people like, especially I think out of all the monolithics,

they like the Barnes because it's known to be an accurate bullet. A lot of people just get good loads out of it that are accurate loads. But I feel like, especially with the long-range crowd, most of them, I don't think they are shooting monolithics. Yeah, I think they're shooting lead core. Especially with long-range bullet, a lot of times upon impact is moving slower and so they need a bullet that fragments or you know pedals more at a lower velocity which the monolithics don't do that's what that's what i that was when i made the switch back to jacking the bullets was I shot a deer

with, it was pretty far out. I feel like if I remember right, it was 460 yards, which is a long ways. I shot a deer and he still continued running around

running does and i'm like i don't understand what just happened and then eventually he got woozy and fell over and when i went up to him it looked like someone had taken a dowel no and punched a dowel through his body field point wound yeah it looked like yeah like you took a field point arrow and just stuck it into him. No, that's definitely the number one complaint. It didn't do... It was like he didn't even know it happened.

Yeah. Definitely the number one complaint. But I punched him through the lungs. He eventually faded out. And then people were like... And that's when I was like, I'm just going back to something I know and trust. And people just said, and that's what I was like, I'm just going back to something I know and trust. And people just said shoot him in the shoulder.

Right. Or you got him in the high shoulder. Okay, so then I got to blow the shoulders out of him and ruin all kinds of meat. What if you miss? I mean, everybody's always preparing for the perfect shot, right? You always talk to guys like, oh, I hit him right in the head. It's like, is that right?

Well, I mean, you got to prepare for, I mean, there's a lot of variables, right? You got to prepare for the variables. What happens if your shot's not exactly high shoulder? What happens if it's a little far back? Yeah. I like, you know, like the trophy bonded, the bear claw, just the – It just works, man.

They all have failure rates, though. Yeah. I mean, you can say that those bullets, it's super close range. They might fragment too much if you do hit the bone, and then they don't make it into the vitals, especially some of the long-range stuff that is made to be very frangible. You do hit a big bone right off the bat at 50 yards, that bullet just

blows up and it might never even make it into the cavity. Alright. That's it. Right? That's all I got to say. You got a concluding thought, Randall? He gave it.

I wasn't blown away by it. I can't remember what it was. What was it? Pretty high standard. He was saying he would trade his GPS to anybody out there. Oh, yeah. And he was saying, yeah, no, I remember now. You did have a good concluding thought.

Sport culinary. Sport cutlery. He wants to be a sport cutlery enthusiast. But you did have a good thought where that you reiterated your disdain for bias. I did? Yeah. In an eloquent way. I made a point about someone

hating lead because they hate guns. And you said, but it's just as bad to love lead. It's just as bad to love lead because you love guns. Lead can do no harm. Yeah. All right.

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