The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 059: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with employees at Starbuck's World Headquarters along Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew and Land Tawney from BHA.

Episode Date: April 6, 2017

Subjects discussed: underutililized food resources, such as street pigeons and small game, and underutilized methodologies, such as squid jiggin’; guns, kids, and safe handling practices; federal land transfers and a brief history of our public lands; hunting as a wildlife conservation tool; duck stamps; the Yellowstone story; why Steve self-identities as a trophy hunter; wolf hunting; human and large predator interactions in the West; how to get engaged in the protection of public lands; and more.  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.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now 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. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. What you're about to hear is a conversation about hunters and hunting recorded at Starbucks World Headquarters in Seattle, Washington.

Me, your host, Steven Ronella, along with Lan Tawny and Giannis Putellis take questions from Starbucks employees who chose to attend the midday gathering. Okay, thanks everyone for coming in today. I appreciate it. I appreciate you joining us for this Lunch and Learn and this podcast. Kind of a cool technology that we're all, I'm sure, addicted to at this point. On behalf of myself and Partners for Sustainability, again, thank you for coming. I'd like to take just a quick second to introduce our guests that we have today. Right here to my right is Lan Tani. He's the president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, which is a national conservation group.

BHA is a nonprofit organization that was born around a campfire in Oregon in 2004 and now has 25 chapters in 25 states and also Canada. And the group claims close to 10,000 members. BHA works to prevent the development of wild lands in North America and to ensure that we all have access to those lands. BHA is set up over on the side. Please feel free after to go take a look. Some cool stuff, some shirts, sign up. We're also, if anybody's excited today, there's a giveaway from signups for First Light Gear, so an entire base layer. It's merino wool.

All these guys use it a lot. It's really high-quality, great stuff. Next, we have Giannis Boutelis. He's also made a career in the outdoors and shares a passion for wildlife and wildlife management. Giannis spent over 12 years guiding sportsmen and women on adventures out in the wild and now he's the part of the meat eater crew and executive producer of their tv show and our guest of honor is steven ranella steven is an accomplished writer an avid outdoorsman a skilled chef and a dedicated conservationist he's also the television show meat eater it's on the sportsman's channel

and his book titles include the scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, American Buffalo, In Search of a Lost Icon, and Meteor Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter. American Buffalo won a number of awards including the Sergey F. Olson Nature Writing Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. One quote from Anthony Bourdain around the Meteor book he had to say about meat-eater, chances are Stephen Ronell's life is very different than yours or mine. He does not source his food at the local supermarket. Meat-eater is a unique and valuable alternative view of where our food comes from and what can be involved.

It looks both backwards at the way things used to be and forward to a time when every diner truly understands what's on the end of this fork. One of our core values here at Starbucks is acting with courage, challenging the status quo, and finding new ways to grow our company and each other. I think we would all agree that fighting for a sustainable model to wildlife and wild lands is something we value. So today let's act with courage and have an open and honest discussion around what we can do and what we can be around this polarizing topic. I can't think of three better people suited to lead us in this discussion. Gentleman, I'll turn it over to you. First off, thank you for coming down. It was some months ago that Chad invited us to come out. He had listened to a podcast that we did. We recorded at a backcountry hunters and anglers convention.

Is that what you call it? A rendezvous. A rendezvous in Missoula, Montana. And there it was a crowd of very dedicated outdoorsmen. And Chad thought it might be cool to come and do something similar here. Primary difference being we have a way better AV setup now. So what I would like to do is just because we have limited time, he says you guys all have meetings you're going to go to in an hour.

What I'd like to do is jump into questions you have or it could really be about anything. It could be technical things that have to do with hunting is fine or it could be like more bigger picture things about how hunting fits into our contemporary understanding of wildlife management or you know ethical food or anything really doesn't matter so really anything if i can interrupt you we often play the game we're out in the field making meat eater television we play a game called stump're out in the field making media or television. We play a game called Stump Steve. And it's hard.

So really, you know, anything. You're drinking beer. Yeah. I was telling Chad earlier the way that Via changed backpacking. Great problem. I wasn't even paid to say that. Questions? How are we going to do questions?

You're going to run that thing over to people who have a question? Yeah, absolutely. Just throw your hand up, and I'll bring the mic to you. We can talk about it. While people are thinking, oh, we got one. How do you guys recommend or kind of see Sydney folk getting involved? You know, the grocery store is convenient. I have to drive out to the woods every weekend, have a couple of little kids.

I don't get a whole lot of time outside. You know, what would be some best practices in terms of sourcing food from the wild, but also living a Sydney life. Are you guys familiar with the big-ass Ferris wheel downtown? Yeah. Okay. Right now, you go down there at dusk, you will see a line of people, predominantly Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Filipino individuals,

and me and my kids, jigging for squid. So starting around Thanksgiving, running up into January, the squid are spawning. They tend to spawn in about 15 to 30 feet of water, and we hammer it. We've eaten so much calamari in the last couple months, my wife's declared a calamari moratorium. One of my first, my first book that I wrote, a big part of the book was about, a lot of the book was around street pigeons, which are, you know, a non-native, often regarded as deleterious, exotic um i mean a pile of street fish i think in a more way in a more conventional way i think that um there's just a lot of things there's a lot

of food resources that don't get a ton of attention so if you look at hunting media everything seems to be focused around like deer turkeys you know these are things that are in somewhat high demand there's sort of an industry built around them they're kind of you know for lack of a better word they're very fashionable things to go after but there are many many other items that are just like i don't want to say underutilized in that something bad would happen that something there's a negative to not being utilized. But there's a lot of fishing and hunting resources out there that just aren't exploited really at all. We're oftentimes advocating hunting small game, right?

So we spend a lot of time hunting squirrels and rams, things that people just don't do. That's the kind of stuff I do with my kids. So my kids are two, four, and six. And we do a lot of things like we fish yellow perch out of Lake Washington a lot I cut them off at about 60 perch because I don't like cleaning that man that takes us about 45 minutes we jig a lot of squid because we can go down to jig I can pick my kid up from school we can be jigging squid and then come home

in time to eat at 6 30 I take them out hunting small game because it's like they can see it happen. It happens quickly. It fits within their sort of time frame, you know. I've never, for one, had stuff to do. I think the challenge is just finding out about this stuff, and the best way to find out about this stuff is to surround yourself with people who are doing it. Ryan?

Yeah, I think that's what I was going to say. I mean, finding people is probably that best connection. I also have young kids and was fortunate to grow up in Montana where this stuff is maybe a little more accessible than it is here. We have a chapter that's growing by the day that's here in Seattle, and they're actually having a pint night on Thursday night. But those are the folks that can get you. This public land that surrounds us out here and this public water

are places where you can't do that. I mean, Steve's described a little bit of that. So I think it's what you don't know you don't know. And so getting next to people that can connect to that would be my biggest, I think, opportunity for you to get out. And with the kids, I mean, I including they can do more than you they than you think they can i mean just get them out there and get them engaged and make make it fun and the more they get out there they're going to beg for it and that's going to help you get out there a little

bit more put a little bit of suffering in there too you know well it can't all be easy that's yeah that's right kids suffer a little bit character right builds character yeah it's important for kids to suffer a little bit. Character, right? It builds character. Yeah, it builds something. Cold tolerance. Do you have any additions, guys? You have a young kid.

Yeah, but I think you guys answered that thoroughly. We can move on. Maybe huckleberries, right? Huckleberries are something that can really get you out there too, right? And those kids aren't probably going to bring any huckleberries home because they're going to eat them the entire time. But it's something easy you can do. If you find a patch, then it's something they will never forget.

So I'm a huge fan of your show. I watched the last couple seasons on Netflix while I've been on maternity leave. And your conversations about kids has really got me thinking a little bit about the role that I play as a parent when it comes to hunting and being in the outdoors. I grew up in a hunting family, my husband and I hunt, and there's going to be a time where his friends come over and do I talk to them about hunting? Do I talk to them about gun ownership? I've always grown up in a really responsible household where gun ownership was the norm, but it was also very safe. And I learned from a very early age how to handle

firearms and how to keep them away from other children or how to handle them in a, you know, a very safe manner. So I guess my question is, what have you done with your children to instill those kind of same values? And, you know, when is that time? When is that appropriate time to start teaching them about safety? And especially in this kind of polarized nation? That's a great question. I have made now two trips down to schools to explain to teachers that when my son mentions a shotgun or mentions a rifle, where he's coming from. He'll mention like, I have a blank, okay?

Or my dad has a blank that's going to be mine. They fly off the handle, understandably. I go down and I say, you have to understand this kid's context with what he's talking about. Because every piece of protein that he eats came from our hunting and fishing activities. That's all he's ever known. He goes to school with like a muskox sandwich. Okay. So when he talks about it, he's coming at this from a completely different angle than you think he's coming from. He's coming from a practical matter where he's talking about the same way you might talk about a kitchen knife or a blender. It's always in our

household, the conversation. I found that when I've had this conversation with people, they've been comforted, very cool about it. It's never led to more problems. But I've twice had that like awkward moment where he's been made to feel like he's doing something wrong by talking about a big part of his life. Okay. so I've been careful to clear that up my wife is more she didn't grow up in a household with firearms she didn't grow up around hunting she tends to more when people come over with kids she just impulsively like you know just right off the bat will bring them down and be like this is a keypad lock place where we keep firearms. And inside there, you would find

firearms that also have trigger locks on them. So we have a redundant safety system. I'm like, why do you, like, why do you bring it up when they haven't even asked about it? Because she said, I know they're thinking about it because we're like the crazy people with the guns. So she just clears it right up. And I think it's probably good. I used to be uncomfortable with it because I felt like, what are you, like, admitting, you know? She goes, no, people wonder about this stuff. You got to consider where you live, you know?

And so, yeah, that's something. And I think that my kid, too, he struggles all the time with hearing stuff at school where he's talking about, oh, we ate this or we did that this weekend. And hearing from kids, well, that's mean. And I've already armed them with the most basic arguments to try on them. Like, do you eat meat? And if you do, if you eat a Chicken McNugget, how that's produced in a sort of slurry that contains probably 40 or 50 chickens in it,

you have contributed to a little bit of depth yourself ours is more focused and targeted and he's already kind of like mastered some of these arguments because i know that he's putting up with it lance kids in montana are not having these conversations but mine in seattle are i mean they are a little bit i mean i think well yeah i mean i grew up with kids that didn't hunt. So, like, their culture is, you know, changing a little bit. Missoula is getting bigger. And people are moving in that haven't been there before.

I think I would share some of the things that Steve talked about is educating them about why we hunt. I mean, my daughter has been in the back of the truck since she was two cleaning birds out. We've been fishing. She's been on my back since she was two years old. And so I think she's been ingrained in it just like yours have. We don't, I work a little bit more than you do. And so I totally source all my food from the outdoors. But you're working too.

I don't mean that. But I think the gun thing is a different thing too. And I think like they've known, and I knew when I was a little kid, we didn't have safes. Guns were around all the time. And just this healthy respect for them. Now we have a safe now at our house, but I think the night before we go hunting, I'll get those guns out. Now the shells and stuff won't be around,

but they have this healthy respect for them. And so they know that that's not something that they touch. Now we've gone out and shot, I think, BB guns, and I think teaching them gun safety around BB guns so there's still some danger there but really the danger is not as high and so barrel safety and like when do you put your finger on the trigger where are you pointing that you know the end of your barrel I think are good things to teach them with those kind of early non-lethal weapons and then you know we have kids running out of our house from the neighborhood all the time. And so when it's not the night before hunting, those guns are away.

And that's what we do. When I was a kid, we didn't have a gun. We didn't keep our firearms and guns safe either, but it would have been like your ass if you touched one. Totally. And I think that parents are different now. They don't inspire the level of fear that parents used to inspire. So we make up for fear by using trigger locks.

But, you know, we drove around. I was kidding. We drove around on our bikes with.22s slinged over our shoulders. There was, like, kids that I now know weren't allowed to hang out with us because we were, like, armed 10-year-olds. But it's just a different world now, man. You know, it's a way different world. And I try to to be sympathetic to it but i don't like to cave into it either um you know i try to do what i think is right i think i'm alarmed a little bit how many parents

our kids have nerf guns right how many parents feel that their kids are one nerf gun exposure away from becoming a murderer and i'm like I like to think that the foundations are a little bit stronger there where a kid can sort out, that they're smart enough to sort out the difference between a Nerf gun and something that actually causes harm. And that there's a difference between shooting their dad with a Nerf gun dart and shooting at someone with something that would maim or kill them. They do a great job drawing those distinctions. I think that you've got to give kids some credit to understand nuance.

And these are all things that come out of a hunting lifestyle. I think it's like it really enhances. It just gives you an ability to discuss things that might otherwise be hard to bring up. We've already covered eggs and sperm and stuff a thousand times cleaning fish. It just gives you an ability to discuss things that might otherwise be hard to bring up. We've already covered eggs and sperm and stuff a thousand times, cleaning fish. They're dialed on that. Later when we kind of expand it outward and talk about other things they might need to know about, we'll have a good foundation and some visuals.

I think that early and often, too, like as soon as you get those kids out there, this is going to be a way they think it's going to be normal to them. Hi. I have a quick question here, kind of expanding on what you guys are talking about. I'm a new dad. Got a five-month-old. My wife was raised in a hunting family. I'm new, you know, third-year hunter, getting into it with her father-in-law a bit. But, you know, our future, wein-law a bit but uh you know our future we're thinking

of moving out east you know maybe not in the near future but um you know in the future and you know we mean eastern washington yeah eastern washington she's got family out there love that area but you know we're thinking as we talk about you know raising a kid around guns and that sort of thing you know do you do you have that assumption you know, raising a kid around guns and that sort of thing, you know, do you, do you have that assumption, you know, that families that kids play with also have that healthy respect for guns or, you know, are you talking with those parents, you know, and, and understanding where they come, you know, you know, you hear the horror stories of, of kids playing around other kids that really don't have that respect as a household.

And, you know, do you have a, you know, kind of a thought on how you approach that? Yeah, I would say that in that case, our kids' friends, I don't expose them to anything that they might not be exposed to at home. You know what I'm saying? I would never take one of my kids' bodies and be like, oh, hey, check it out. Here's our 22 words. Yeah, what about your kids going over to, you know, other friends? You know, do you trust your kid enough? Are you having that conversation with those parents? You know, I guess they're not old enough to where it's even come up yet. You know, our you trust your kid enough? Are you having that conversation with those parents?

You know, I guess they're not old enough to where it's even come up yet. You know, our oldest is six. So that's a good question. I haven't been encountered with that yet. I haven't encountered that yet. I have seen at times, I've seen at acquaintances' homes, I've seen ways in which they handle firearms and store firearms and talk to kids about firearms. Ways in which I think are, that I would, if my kids were older, I would not

want them over at that house, for sure. That they don't have the standards that I have. I think in the, I don't want to spend the whole time talking about guns, but I mean, it's a rich subject. I'm a little bit surprised oftentimes in the way in which safe handling and safe storage and making a kid-friendly environment in a gun owning family i'm i'm surprised in which the way the industry has avoided that subject i think it's i think i think it should be something that is stressed much more. But people kind of avoid it on the industry sense a little bit, I think because they don't want to make it.

They don't want to. There's a reluctance maybe to acknowledge how serious the issue is, lest it become that these things are not good things to have in the home. I don't know why it is, but I'm pretty comfortable talking about it. 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

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meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Well, I was going to say that it comes down to the foundation, so I think that any of our kids, once they are old enough to go over to someone else's house, where they find themselves in that situation, they'll know what to do in that situation. They'll make the right choice. But yeah, where I grew up, man, you walk into people's houses, they got a gun leaning on the doorframe and a bunch of ammo sitting on top of a speaker.

I think things have changed a lot. I hope they have. Yeah, I mean, my grandfather, he still has that.22, you know, back at the front door just in case there's a skunk or something. Like, I just don't know. Like, whatever. Whatever. But I think, but again, I think it's like what Yana said.

Our kids, they understand that that is off limits, you know. And now that I say it out loud, you know, maybe I'm a little nervous about it. Maybe it's, you know, time to have a conversation. I got a question here about kind of the federal land transfer to states and how, maybe you could educate us a little bit on some of those topics that we should be aware of. And maybe just I think it was interesting even just laying just a quick little conversation that we had before the show started. I was not aware of some of that stuff. And it makes me kind of upset a little bit. And I think it might be good just to talk a little bit about that and just kind of draw our awareness educate us a little bit about that yeah I think land should do that I'll just

preface land's comments by saying this this right now federal land transfers um probably probably the the biggest issue we're facing right now from a conservation environmental standpoint as far as something that's that's immediate and happening right now. Not a long-term threat, but a very immediate threat that's being addressed at this very moment in Washington. So yeah, Lance, you should break it down. I mean, this is something I could probably talk about for a long time, so I'll try to give just kind of the top lines. And if people have more questions that want to dive deeper, we can do that. I think the first thing I would talk about is really one of the things that I think is more American than apple pie and baseball is our public lands. It's a place that whether you have a lot of money or you don't, whether you live here in

Seattle in the city or back in Missoula, Montana, where I'm from, we all own title to 640 million acres. These lands belong to everybody in this room and anybody that's listening to this podcast, anybody in America. I think, you know, you look at the system over in Europe where that really belongs to the rich and the elite and the privileged. And so when Theodore Roosevelt helped start setting these lands aside back around, you know, 1900s, like that was something new. And at that time, when he did that, it wasn't like everybody around the country was like, this is a great idea. When he did that, it was to make sure that we have these lands in perpetuity and that they could continually be used for conservation. That doesn't mean

that you set up and you lock them away. That means you still have timber harvest. That means you still have grazing. That means you still have resource extraction. That means you still have hunting and fishing in perpetuity. But it's that multiple use that I think is the general idea of public lands that really sets us aside from any other country in this world. Now, I mentioned that there was some folks when Theodore Roosevelt kind of started this process that didn't want him to do that. From my home state of Montana, Senator, Wyoming Senator, Idaho Senator, they fought him. And so there's still those people that want to kind of take that for themselves. And so why do they want to take that for themselves? Well, they feel like there's too much regulation at a federal level and they want to exploit those resources.

That's one of them. Second one is they want to take them for themselves. And so they have their own private hunting grounds or their own just kind of private playground, I would say. And so neither one of those, I think, help us in our American ideals. Now, the specific question that Matt asked around transfer to the states. So this idea of transfer to the states, again, there's more local control. We can do more with those resources than the federal government can. That starts to sound okay. Now, what's a problem with that is since statehood, when these states first were granted lands, when they became states, they've been divesting

those lands. They've been selling those lands. And so why do they do that? Well, they're set up to create money, and that's it. It's not that multiple use anymore that I talked about earlier. And so I think they're set up to make money. And so right away, I think those resources aren't sustainable. And so they either rape and pillage and then divest them, or they can't manage them in the first place you think about all the fires think about the fire season that's been in the news a lot right states can't

like if they had to take over the management of those like where are they going to get the money to manage those fires let alone road maintenance let alone law enforcement and so they'd have to sell them and so i think this is not an issue that is new necessarily it's something that's been going on since the beginning and it's something that seems to cycle every 15 or 20 years but right now it seems to be more organized and uh and there's more of a push for it and i think the last thing i would say is that regardless you know whether you hunt or fish on these public lands whether you uh you know go camping huckleberry picking as we talked about earlier. Like, even if you don't do any of that stuff and spend time on them, I think you do care about

clean air and clean water. And everybody in America should care about that. And like, 70% of our streams start on national forest lands and public lands. And that, to me, like, that's one of the number one reasons. And if you think about somebody owning those headwaters and what kind of barrel they could hold you over on that, right? And we're going through it right now in Missoula. We're trying to buy back our public water because a company bought it and they're jacking up our prices, right? I mean, think about a foreign-owned company owning our water right now and what that would do to us. So I'd like to end, though, with the aspirational thing again is that it belongs to all of us. There's a $646 billion outdoor economy that's really based on our public lands.

And if that is not only sustainable, it's something we can grow. So in this great day of age and talking about job growth and we need to do this, we need to do that, that's one we should not mess around with. Well done. that that's one we should not mess around with well done yeah i grew up similar to sound like what you guys did i grew up in a pre-rural community hunting and moving up here i've had a lot of people ask me why do you why do you have to hunt why do you choose to hunt and i just wondered if you guys could take a couple of minutes and explain um the importance of wildlife

conservation has on the different species and what maybe it would look like if that if nobody hunted and nobody fished and and why that wildlife conservation is important yeah that's a huge question i think you could you could approach it through the lens of just look at that american history in general or what's going on right now at this moment land a minute ago mentioned Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt, you know, he's a wealthy city kid, right? But through his adventures through hunting and fishing, he became inspired to preserve landscapes. So it inspired him to take it into advocacy on behalf of wild places and wild lands. It was his avenue of exposure. So that's one of the things that comes from, well, how does hunting and fishing lead to

conservation? That's one way is it awakens people to a world out there that they would not have otherwise known about. In a more pragmatic modern sense, we have, every state has a fishing game agency. Now your fishing game agency is responsible for habitat enhancement, habitat improvement, oftentimes various environmental regulations, enforcement of existing wildlife laws. They do disease research, access enhancement, access improvement, meaning giving you ways to boat launches, ways to get in the water, ways to trailheads to access forest land. Your state fishing game agency does all these things. And they work on game mammals,

but we generally consider game mammals, and then non-game species. So the vast majority of fish, birds, wildlife, in any given state are non-game, not targeted by hunters, not targeted by fishermen, but they fall under that same jurisdiction, your state fish and game agency. Of the 50 state fish and game agencies that we have in this country, all of them, 60 to 90% of their funding comes from hunter and fisherman revenues. So we really, hunters and fishermen, carry the financial burden of managing wildlife in this country. Another huge way that wildlife funding comes from hunters and fishermen

is you go back to the Pittman-Robertson Act and the Dingell-Johnson Act. And basically it's excise taxes on equipment that's very specific to hunting and fishing disciplines. In the case of Pittman Robertson, this came in under the Wildlife Restoration Act in the 1930s. It's an excise tax on guns and ammunition that generates, what's it generate every year? Close to a billion dollars. That money that comes from excise tax on any guns and ammunition, that money goes to, is earmarked for wildlife work, wildlife restoration, habitat improvement work. States are able to get that funding if they meet certain criteria. One of those criteria is that their license sales,

their hunting and fishing license sales, have to be spent on core mission. A state cannot go in and rampage through their state fish and wildlife agency and steal their license revenues and apply them to other purposes, like balancing the budget or anything like that. If the state follows that law

and they're using their licensed revenues for wildlife, they then can get Pittman-Robertson funding, which is money from the excise taxes on guns and ammo, but they have to use that as well. If they don't use it up, then it goes into a general fund for migratory bird conservation. So there's a lot of muscle in this way. And this is where our funding for wildlife comes from. Now, I think culturally, we're getting to a place where other people, the term is so overused, but other stakeholders are wanting more of a say in how we manage wildlife. But we're the ones paying for it all.

So there's a general unease in the hunting and fishing community when you have other people who are not willing to financially kick in, who are wanting a bigger seat at the table when it comes to wildlife management, or they're taking a perspective that's hostile to our general extractive use of wildlife resources, extractive but sustainable wildlife resources, yet they're reluctant to pay in anything. When the Pittman-Robertson tax came in in the 1930s, it had overwhelming support among manufacturers who were going to certainly see a drop in sales because the prices on all their goods were going to go up about 10%. Overwhelming support with hunters who at the time, hunting was about done in America because market hunters, unregulated hunters who were hunting to supply feathers to industry, fur, meat to Eastern cities, they had nearly wiped out fishing game in this country so these were people coming out of like scarcity to say yes we will pay a tax on all of our hunting and fishing equipment in order to build american wildlife back up now if you go to other industries like

you go to the burning industry backpacking skiing all these people who don't pay shit and you ask these industries to kick in money and an excise tax all they do is just they're like there's no way they can do it we already have too many taxes can't do it so if you if you have a hostile view of hunters and fishermen you need to really come up with how you're going to account for that amount of input, financial input and advocacy, because the people who are out there on a day-to-day basis, like backcountry hunters and anglers who are out there on a day-to-day basis are finding their inspiration and their money is coming from that so i don't really see a way forward and no one has come to me with a way forward on how we're going to continue to enjoy the wildlife resources that we have in

this country without this base of people who has been supporting it since the beginning. No one wants to take that question up. It's not coming from the humane society. It's just, it's not coming from anybody but us. Does that answer that? Hi, I'm probably one of those people that you're talking about. I'm not really into hunting at all, but I appreciate the fact that you're saying that you're interested in conservation. And I would definitely pay to sustain our wild places, but that's another topic, I guess. Um, I'd like to know what your take is on trophy hunting and, uh, killing animals that people won't eat like wolves. Um, that's something I'm really passionate about. And I'd like to hear your point of view on that. Yeah, I'm a trophy hunter. If you walk into my house, my house is largely decorated with

skulls of animals that I've hunted. When I hunt an animal and we eat it, the meat is ephemeral. We go through it pretty quickly. and we eat it, you know, the meat is ephemeral, right? We go through it pretty quickly.

Yet I have these totems, these like things of remembrance in my home that gives that animal a permanent place of honor in my household, becomes something I talk about. I look at it and remember everything about that trip, who I was with, what was going on, the needs of the animal, its vulnerabilities. That's how I choose to decorate my home. I think that it's much more beautiful, a skull of an animal I hunted is much more beautiful to me than any painting could ever be. So that, yeah, trophies are a big element of hunting for me. As far as wolves, my particular view on wolves is that I think that it's a moral crime

to eliminate native fauna from the landscape in places where wolves were extirpated from human causes. I think that wolves should be present on the landscape like all other large mammals. I think that sustainable populations of wolves and other predators should be managed as a renewable resource at the discretion and at the direction of state wildlife managers. I say that because it's a system that has worked exceedingly well for the last 150 years. And I think that any violation of that system is going to lead to bigger problems down the road. So I do support wolf hunts in places where you have a sustainable population of wolves. Just as I support any renewable resource extraction where you're not going to harm the long-term viability of the population. So I'd answer maybe your first comment first is that you'd love to be able to pay into the system.

And I think one of the things that Steve didn't mention that was happening during the dirty thirties as well, when the kind of lid was falling off the prairie, right? Like we had these unsustainable farming practices and all of a sudden the big dust bowl happened, we were in trouble. There's a thing called the duck stamp that came out of that. And it's this thing that all waterfowl hunters have to buy to be able to hunt a migratory species. That's something everybody in this room can buy as either a collector or somebody that wants to contribute to the conservation of national wildlife refugees. By law, I think what, 90 some percent of that

money has to go to buying wetlands habitat. So that's our national wildlife refuge system right and so anybody that cares about birds and i would love you know the national audubon society to come out and say everybody should buy a duck stamp but you as an individual citizen you can do that you know my kids aren't hunting yet but i buy them a duck stamp every single year partly for their collections because they're beautiful stamps but also so i can tell them that story on how they're already contributing so that's the first one i think on the trophy hunting thing for me I had somebody explain kind of hunting to me the other day and I thought it was a really good way is that that end thing that we do when we pull the trigger is like the very last page of that book there's this whole story that comes

before that which to me is that trophy piece. And I was lucky enough to draw a once-in-a-lifetime tag this year in Montana for a bighorn sheep. Very iconic species. That sheep, I am going to have that in my house as a remembrance of that hunt. But the trophy part that I'm going to remember is some of those trophy naps that I had up on that hill in the middle of the day when I'd hiked up 2,500 feet and chasing these things around I'm by myself and I wake up like slobbering on the side of the mountain like I don't ever get to take naps anymore so that like that that that whole skull is gonna remind me of some of those times and so for me I think that trophy piece is usually

concentrated on that end result when I think it's a lot of what brings it forward, at least for me. Wolves, very controversial issue. I'm like Steve. I'm glad they're back on the landscape. You know, a lot of places I hunt, I don't see a lot of wolves, but I hear a lot of wolves. And if the wolves are around, you know, there's game around. And so one, I think that's pretty cool. I think also, I mean, maybe you've heard the Yellowstone story, you know, that these elk were eating the heck out of the willows. And then the wolves come back. You know, the wolves are now growing up. Now you've got beaver again.

Now you're getting better fish populations. Like it's this whole ecosystem thing. So I think it's really great that they're on the landscape. But we're not living in a place where humans aren't anymore. And we are part of this system. And those kind of populations that we manage, whether those are game populations or non-game, like we are engaged in that whether we like it or not. And so I think we have to have some sort of management of those wolves that we do just like we do any other species.

You know, there's an interesting guy you should read about. He's an Arctic explorer by the last name of Stephenson. And he was, even in the early 1900s, like around 1903, he was making first contact with some Eskimo hunters around Coronation Gulf and Victoria Island in the Canadian High Arctic. One thing, this is just a side note, his favorite wild game was wolf. But the main point, he spent some time with some hunters who would, when they would kill a polar bear, they would bring the polar bear back to their lodge and they would leave the polar bear's head in the room. So the polar bear was facing out toward the family. The thinking being this polar bear would observe this family,

recognize that they were an honorable family, and then he would report back to other polar bears and say, hey, if someone's going to kill you, have it be this guy. He's a good dude. I don't view it with that level of spirituality, and I don't want to suggest that I do, but I do think that there is an exchange going on about honor and an exchange going on about your value system when you do give these items a place of respect and reverence in your home. I do know as well that it doesn't speak to other people. I have served the first meal of, I've served literally hundreds of people their first wild game dinner. When people come into my home and

they see that I have skulls and animal hides around the home. They never look at that. And I know that they don't see what I see. In fact, they look at it and they go like, oh, this guy must be some kind of asshole. Now, when they sit down and eat a meal of wild game, they get really excited. All of a sudden they want to go on a hunt. They're real curious. They want to talk about this animal. So I recognize that it is a, it's a divisive thing because I think that it's like they're on a certain trip when they see it, you know, their view of the animal has been sort of tainted or colored by contemporary culture. That hasn't happened to the food though, for some reason, people really respond well to the food.

So I do know, I know what you're getting at. I don't want to seem like though for some reason people really respond well to the food so i do know i know what you're getting at i don't want to seem like i'm being a smart ass i know what you're getting at about trophies but i think that i just feel like it would be helpful for you to understand one person's relationship to the handlers on the wall and his own hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness 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 on x 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 you were always talking about uh we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you, 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

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Hi, I'm Nolan. I have kind of a touchy subject with this, and it's probably a long, so you can hopefully narrow it down. It's touchy and long. Well, it's like predators and hunters and landowners it's like is there an area in this country where it currently is working i mean

maybe canada or something like that but is there a spot where in northeastern washington we've had i mean some spots where you put in wolves and there's one area that it clearly did not work. So I was wondering if there was some spots where we could look at to hopefully replicate for this state. I think where grizzly bears are right now in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, I think it's working. Not without tensions, but I think if you look at the distribution of grizzlies in montana the current distribution of grizzlies in montana wyoming and idaho of what's called the gye and then also the northern yellowstone eco or i'm sorry the northern rockies ecosystem current distribution of grizzlies some biologists argue they're probably at carrying capacity there that no matter what you do you're not going to see more bears they won't top the bears themselves won't tolerate denser populations if you froze that picture right now i think you would find a sustainable model not without tension there's not

without livestock issues i think from an urban perspective, there's a thing I always call Yellowstone syndrome. It's like that people's understanding of wildlife ecology and wildlife management stems from sort of looking at these pristine border chunks of places and they don't pay attention to what it actually means for the people who live in this landscape who are trying to be involved in cattle ranching, for instance. They don't have a lot of empathy for what it's like for someone who's raising livestock as a way of supporting their family, and they're dealing with large predators on the landscape, like what that means for them. But in that case, I think that we've hit like a workable situation. Now, if you talk to people at the state level in Wyoming,

they're leery about bears moving out of that area. They're leery about the eastward, southward expansion of grizzly bears because people feel like outside of this core area, which is about a chunk of land the size of Indiana, outside of this core area, conflict is going to outweigh benefit. That's open to debate. I'm not even sure how I feel about it personally, but I think that in 50 years, in 100 years, we could very well have that many grizzlies

living on that many square miles and it being a peaceful relationship where all interests could be like it's working it's okay um and it came about through a lot of through a lot of fighting a lot of infighting but it's working now i think grizzlies could work in some more places too they can't work everywhere if you look at the historic distribution of grizzlies could work in some more places too. They can't work everywhere. If you look at the historic distribution of grizzlies, it's from about where the Missouri River, you know, the Missouri hooks southward from there out to the Pacific coast. I pointed out in the op-ed I wrote in the New York Times, when you're looking at grizzlies, don't confuse Golden Gate Park with Yellowstone Park, right?

We will never have full recovery, which would mean Grizzlies right here. It's just not going to happen. So there's always like ideal, like your idealistic view. We'd recover them everywhere. It's just not pragmatic. It's not going to happen. But there are places where I would argue it is working. Do you feel like it's working there?

Yeah, I mean, I'll give you a real specific one, and it's in the Blackfoot Valley. So just outside of Missoula, where I'm from, River Runs Through It. Everybody know about that book or that movie, right? So that's where the Blackfoot River is. And they came together a long time ago as a ranching community and said, we want to keep this place the way it is right now. And so they first coalesced around weeds, right? Weed invasion is really bad for the native grass that their cows are eating.

So they first came around and they came around around access and a bunch of hunters always knocking on their doors. And that's kind of where this private or public access to private land program that's highly successful in Montana came from. So now as there's, I mean, this is Borders, for those who know the landscape, there's the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Glacier Park above that. So it's this huge complex of wild land. And so you've had grizzly bears in there for a long time, but they're coming back even more.

And now the wolves have kind of exploded in there. And so in that same context of trying to keep their places similar, they're doing a lot of work with a local nonprofit called Blackfoot Challenge, and that's a specific group you can reach out to and ask that exact question. And so there's, you know, when there's a grizzly bear in the area, everybody knows kind of where it is. And so they are, you know, doing different things to kind of avoid that. And one of the practices they used to do is every time they had a dead cow,

they'd go put it in a boneyard. But what does that do? That brings in grizzly bears that are hungry, right? And so instead of doing that, they're burning those animals now and making sure that's not unattractive. Another one would be like beehives. Beehives are becoming more and more popular. Everybody likes having their own honey, right? And so they are electrifying fences around that. Now, before, they kind of were having to live with grizzlies or that they had this, I guess, respect for them. Those bears were getting in trouble, and those bears were getting killed.

And so now, like, these bears are avoiding people all the time because they get in trouble when they're around people. Before, it was just like a big free-for-all. And so I think that's a specific place to work. I think that Steve's right that the greater Yellowstone area and the northern Rockies is, as a whole, a great place to look, but that's a real specific one. You know, a thing that, yeah, predation, I mean, it's such a rich subject

because I don't know if anybody in here realized, do you guys know that you have a herd of caribou in your state that flirts with the border? So there are now about a dozen caribou left in the U.S. And they're right at this very second, probably none are in the U.S. But there's a population of a dozen, you know, mountain caribou, some people call them woodland caribou, that move between Washington, Idaho. The Montana ones are gone, gone. Now, when you have a population of one dozen animals,

losing an animal to a predator is a humongous deal. If you have 200, you can support some predation. But when you have a dozen and you lose a female, that's a major blow. It could be the thing that means that we will not have those things anymore. People tend to really like those sort of like calendar animals. And for whatever reason, you know, like a New Jersey cat lady is not inspired by a caribou the way she is by a wolf. So by playing our favorites and by using even things like the Endangered Species Act and turning it into a sort of a My Favorite Animal protection act, we've in some ways shot ourselves in the foot when it comes to wildlife management. Because people really don't want, they want to be like, I love wolves. Hurting wolves is bad.

Anyone who wants to kill a wolf is a terrible person. And not looking out and also trying to measure it with this idea of, we're trying to save one dozen caribou. Once they're gone, you will not get them back. They can do a thing right now. They can take caribou from other locations and bring caribou into Washington and Idaho to supplement this existing dozen. When those dozen vanish, and it could happen anytime, you will never have the political clout and the financial stuff to just do an outright reintroduction of

bringing caribou in. It will not happen. So if you talk to someone who works on this caribou herd, and then you want to talk about predator management with them, you will get a very different picture than what you think of when you think of some, you know, mean old rancher who doesn't want wolves killing all his calves. It's a rich subject. And I think that when you're going to weigh in with opinions, you kind of have an obligation to go look at the whole broad picture of what's going on out there. There are many different viewpoints and many different interests than what you might feel by, you know, looking at some picture on Facebook that blows up because it was a guy that shot a wolf and took a picture of him sitting there with him.

There's a lot more at play. I just had a question. So I've never really thought about the public land ownership and having ownership in that myself. And just relatively recently, the last couple of years, I've gone out to some of the national parks in Utah and then also some of the state parks here in Washington and really just started appreciating how those are kind of our best national resources and exposure to some of the stuff going on to where that could eventually go away or change hands or not be in the same format in our future has really kind of, I've gotten interested in that subject through this. But are there things that we can do to kind of get engaged in the protection of

public lands? Or what can we do as kind of individuals who are new to this to kind of get engaged in the protection of public lands? Or what can we do as kind of individuals or new to this to kind of help with that cost? Yeah, that's a great question. I think Lance should talk about that most, but I'll just point out that I grew up at the southern terminus of Manistee National Forest. Our view of it was that it somehow fell from the sky right we used it all the time never gave a an inkling of thought to how it came to be and what would what do we need to do to make sure it continues to exist it's like you know apathy yeah apathy or just lack of awareness about what it is that it's actually like in this ongoing fight and that we're still having this national debate about the validity of publicly owned land.

In my mind, one of the biggest steps towards preserving our public lands is for people to become aware of how they came to be and to understand that there are still people questioning our intent in making them. But I think that just basic awareness seems to drive a lot of action. As far as specific action, I think Lance should speak for that. Yeah, I mean, I can be selfish and put a plug in for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. Join us today.

And I think besides building numbers for us so we have more clout when we go out to Washington D.C. it's also a place to educate yourself and we also make it easy for you to engage and a lot of people in this political climate right now or just in general don't think that your voice counts anymore and you know like making a phone call sending an email writing a letter to the editor at your at your local newspaper, they think it doesn't matter. And I'm going to tell you that's the exact opposite. Every time we talk to politicians out in D.C., they know when there's actually real noise

happening out there, and they care about being reelected. Their constituents matter to them. And so that phone call, we talk about it, if they start to get about 10 phone calls, they start to pay attention. They get 100 phone calls, let me tell you what, they're paying attention. And so I think the more people are engaging that way, I think is an important thing. And it's not, I mean, there's basically, if you talk to those senators and talk to their staff, you're not talking unless you know that senator. You're probably not going to be able to talk to them unless you see them at an event.

So their staff is the one picking up the phone, and they've got a little checklist. They're keeping score, right? And here's where we hear it on this side, here we hear it on the other. Do the same thing with emails. I would say that we'll help you craft emails, but the more you do that yourself, that counts a little bit more. And, again, I think we can help you do that, a lot of people one have apathy like he's talking about oh they're just here and they're always going to be here or others think that their voices don't count I will tell you that it may feel like that but that's couldn't be farther

from the truth last thing I would say is that you know part of the reason we're having this discussion is because some people want to see management improved on our federally managed public lands i would agree with that and so there's opportunities to get involved like at a travel management level plan or a resource level plan and so you have input on the local place where you're going um they you know a lot there's a lot of talk about a lot of dc telling us what to do those decisions get made at a local level um so that's kind of like the short and dirty become a member not of us, but of other conservation organizations that are engaged in this public lands fight. We work with a large smattering.

I would say that one of the great things that I've noticed here in the last couple of years is like outdoor users have their own groups, like the International Mountain Biking Association, the kayakers. They're starting to come to this issue because of the threats that there is. And I understand. I talked to a woman who's a member of ours this last weekend in Reno. She's a big, long-distance equestrian rider. Like, she rides horses. That's what she does.

Like, she'll go on 1,000-mile rides. Where can you do that anywhere else? And she came to us. And, again, this is a plug for us. But this is really the issue that we work on as public lands strictly. And so no matter what, we're going to be standing up for them. She saw us being consistent on that time and time again. So that's why she's a member of ours.

And to me, that's again, we all have a stake in this. I don't care if you hunt or fish, ride horses, pick huckleberries, or just enjoy the clean air and clean water. We have to do something. And if not, we're going to be sitting there in a few years and being like, man, I wish I would have done something. And by then it's going to be too late. I think it's important to understand at this point, it's not strictly a partisan issue at all. The incoming head of interior department has stated several times that he has no interest in seeing our federal lands liquidated. The incoming president has had, you know, sometimes some somewhat conflicting messages,

but has stated that he's not interested in selling off our public lands, yet other people within their political party have advocated on behalf of selling off federal public lands. So it's not really decided yet. I think that whatever party you affiliate, I think you need to bring it up to your representatives and let them know. Because hopefully it won't become something that's just like this binary Republican-Democrat battle. It's not shaping out to be that way. So I think that you need to speak up to your representatives too, just like, just like Lance saying, and make sure that it doesn't

become something that it falls along party lines. Right now there's people advocating on both halves and like Lance mentioned earlier, we have a great sustainable economy built around public lands. And so we need to speak to the business aspect of it too. I hate being in a situation of trying to justify things of beauty in terms of finance, but in this case, I think it makes sense. I think it's useful to do it. But how many coffee drinkers use public lands? All of them, right? So Steve, we're coming up on our time.

What haven't we asked? What can we wrap it up with? What kind of knowledge can you drop on us? Like a concluding thought. What's the concluding thoughts? I never thought I was going to say that. Yeah, I don't have one. I was thinking still about predators. This gentleman asked about and just like a place in

the united states where it seems to work and i was just thinking about like one of the most common predators that's out there but again it's not one of those calendar animals but the coyote that species enjoying great um you know population growth all across our country it's everywhere now like you know we grew up in michigan never had any coyotes growing up you know now they're all over michigan they're all over the eastern seaboard and it's cool it's neat and they seem to be balancing and making do and the people that are seeing them are so far interested in them that could change as soon as you know a few more cats and small kids get nipped you know in central park people might not have the same view on coyotes but i feel like

all across our country coyotes and people are making do you know yeah we got coyotes in places they at the time of european contact there were no coyotes right um yeah another thing in that way, if you look at, we talked about wolves and grizzlies and how they fit now and occupy the historic range. I always think it's helpful to point out that elk only occupy about, I think it's about 10 to 14% of their historic range at the time of european contact you had elk across the united states of america so we know like elk are we've really accepted elk as sort of this like iconic big game animal right we have how many there's what a couple hundred thousand elk wyoming is 200 000 elk colorado is more than that. Right. All over the place. But we haven't even begun the recovery of elk, if you think about it in terms of east of the Mississippi River.

So I think that when we look at our large predators and we sort of weigh like what would recovery look like, what does sustainability look like, I think it's important to keep that in mind. We've definitely accepted elk as a renewable resource. But again, they occupy 10% of their historic range here. These issues are very complicated. And I think that if you're interested, if you owe it to yourself to kind of start to understand the historic context of some of the decisions we're making right now. My closing thought would be to thank Chad for bringing us in here. You know, I think

when I first heard that we were coming in here, I didn't know what kind of crowd we'd have. You know, I didn't know if there was going to be two people or a hundred people. I didn't know what kind of questions they were going to be asked. And the question, the diversity of questions today are super impressive to me. The size of the crowd is super impressive. I think that for me, that's enlightening. And I think, you know, again, these public lands, that's what I'm going to leave you with, they belong to all of us. And it's up to us to keep them that way. And, you know, I hope that you all start to educate yourself a little bit more on this issue, that you do get engaged. This is still a democracy that can work and should work.

But the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And if they're hearing from somebody else and they're not hearing from people that care about public lands, then we're going to lose. And, you know, we've had a lot of conversations about kids today. And that's the part that I think my kids are hopefully going to have the same opportunities I did. But believe me, that could slip away in a generation. And you think about the future generations and what this country, that we tried to set up differently where it was much more of a democracy that led things than, you know, oligarchy.

Let's keep it that way. And this is one of those ways that i think we can do that and so i think that takes everybody from all walks of life to be able to do that and we're you know as hunters and anglers we're just a small piece of that so that's where i'd leave it yeah well i don't know when to ask about the relative merits of 8 by 30 over 10 by 54 overism binoculars. Wrong question. Because that would have stumped me, and I would have passed that right to you. All right. Thank you very much, Steve.

I just want to appreciate you guys coming in. Giannis and Lam flew in from Montana to be here with us today. Steve's a local boy now, but I don't know if he claims Seattle yet. Do you claim us as your home? Yeah. Undeniable. Yeah, buddy. Big Seahawks fan right here. Yeah. I'm still a little sad about that. So can we give a round of applause for our guest today? Thank you. hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada you might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law but hear this

on x hunt is now in canada it is now at your fingertips you can Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, 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. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer.

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