The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 177: Poison vs. Choppers

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

Steven Rinella talks with Carter Smith and Janis Putelis.Subjects discussed: College epiphanies; a wrong turn at Waco; social ecologist Steve Kellert and sociobiologist E.O. Wilson; private land in Texas; what happens when critters cross international borders; Aldo Leopold; thriving in order; Texas’ massive population growth; everybody's deer; capture related myopathy; hitting hogs with cars; CWD and local economies; 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.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Okay, we're joined here today by special guest Carter Smith, Executive Director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Yeah, great to be with y'all. I'm going to ask some easy questions to start, but the first question I have is not easy. You're aware of how to have is not easy. You're aware of how people who don't live in Texas are often baffled by Texas.

The number of animals and just, it's bewildering to people. Yeah, the scale, the diversity, a bit of a mythology around all that, isn't there? Yeah. And you can be driving down the road and there's a zebra standing there. It's just, we hear, that's why it's good to be down here. It's because we hear from so many people,

people write in, and we hear from so many people who have, they speak about, like people from the Northern tier states or whatever, speak about Texas as though they're asking about another country. Yeah, yeah. And so it's good to come down and talk to the official. I know you don't like to go by the official voice of Texas.

Yeah, I'm not quite that formal stage. So, yeah, yeah. I'm going to ask you to cut that immediately. You're from here, right? I am, yep, yep. Grew up here, kind of one foot in the city, one foot in the country. Is that right? Call Boston home.

Our family ranched and farmed in Central and South Texas, and so it was kind of the best of both worlds. You guys ran a cattle ranch? We did, yeah, cow-calf operation, and my really uncle took full responsibility for that. We played a part as well. It was kind of interesting growing up to see my cousins really gravitate more to the ag side. I was always a lot more interested in trapping hogs and catching bullfrogs and that kind of thing.

What kind of farming did you guys do? Like to support your cow-calf operation? No, no, that was a separate operation. And so there was just a dry land row crop operation, sorghum and corn. Leased that out to a neighbor that had been there forever. And so, and then we had a little cattle operation off on that, off to the side on that place as well. And so, you know, and that's really where I discovered the outdoors. Growing up, all my friends love to punt and fish and be outside. That was pretty, pretty natural. You know, thankfully I had this blessed childhood where I had places to go and could also take, take friends, but, um, it was a pretty easy assimilation into the outdoors. Not so much

for kids today. Did you guys on your guys' properties, were you guys involved in oil and gas too? There was oil and gas activity. That's our other impression of Texas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and, you know, obviously, you know, you look right now what's going on in the Permian, and it has dramatically changed the energy landscape. Just a huge, voluminous amount of production. Yeah, the proliferation of oil and gas out in West Texas. You know, all of those notions of energy independence. And, you know, the fact that you

have now the U.S. as an exporter of oil and gas, you know, the amount of production that's coming out of West Texas is just astronomical. But yeah, the ranch that my father grew up on and that where I spent a good part of my childhood, you know, there was legacy production that, um, you know, went back to the forties and fifties and some that was, you know, during, during our lifetime. And, um, you know, it was always, the trick was to balance that with the other things going on at the ranch, um, and, uh, make sure that there was a, a coexistence, but I certainly don't want to give the listeners an impression that all of Texas is covered with, uh,. Yeah. It's not. There are hot spots where oil and gas is produced. It's a critical resource for the state, generates lots of revenue, as you might imagine, lots of jobs. But it's not as if that's an

activity that blankets the entire state. It's localized, obviously, where the oil and gas is, and where it's viable to get out of the earth out of the earth did you when you were young did you know you're gonna go into wildlife work I didn't you know it's I really I didn't have a good sense that you could pursue that is a vocation no later on yeah it was funny when we were kids like some of the kids like to hunt and fish the only thing you could think of is everyone would say that they're going to be a game warden. Yeah, right. Exactly.

I was like, I don't know. It seems like the only job anybody was aware of. Yeah. Well, and, you know, to be fair, I had that too growing up. There was a game warden in Gonzales County and one in Williamson County that were, you know, at the house and the farm and ranch all the time. They're wonderful mentors, wonderful role models. But, you know, Steve, really, I'd say it was college, and I was sort of meandering my way through trying to figure out what I wanted to do, knowing full well I didn't want to go to law school. And I sat down one evening with a

Parks and Wildlife game warden and a Parks and Wildlife wildlife biologist, and that was really the epiphany that, you know, I could pursue that as a vocation. And I went and talked to a couple of my biology professors at the University of Texas. And they said, you know, if you're really interested in pursuing wildlife biology or wildlife management, you need to transfer to another school that has more of an applied resource management program. And so one of them said, go west, young man, to Sol Ross. And I said, well, where's that? And they said, that's in Alpine in far west Texas. And so I, you know, dutifully looked it up. Small school has this kind of rich history in geology and wildlife and

transferred to Sol Ross and then left school for a while to actually come work for Parks and Wildlife on one of their wildlife management areas. And a couple of professors from Texas Tech who were doing research on the wildlife management area convinced me that, you know, look, you really need to go back to school, finish up your degree in wildlife management. Why don't you come to Lubbock? Let us show you around campus. You don't have that much to go. That's almost a rule now, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. I mean, to get into like administrative level stuff in wildlife? Well, you know, there's certainly a lot of folks that have taken that trajectory. I wouldn't say it's a rule.

The graduate program. But the graduate program. And certainly if you're going to get employed as a biologist with a state fish and wildlife agency, you need a master's degree for sure. I mean, it's just so hyper-competitive. And then candidly here, if you want to be a game warden, you've got to have a college degree. Now, there's no requirement that it's in criminal justice or fisheries and wildlife management or psychology or maybe any of the other fields you might think of or affiliate with law enforcement. But you've got to have a college degree. And that's a very important, I think, distinguishing factor for our force. But, yeah, the advanced degree, if you want to go into the biological sciences and get into

fisheries and wildlife management, it's just so competitive these days. It's just about imperative. That's what drives it in your mind, just the competition. It's not a prerequisite for application. Well, there is a prerequisite. I mean, typically we'll say preferred. And we've got plenty of biologists that have undergraduate degrees and excel inside the agency. And then we have plenty of postdocs. So it runs the gamut on the continuum. But on average, I'd say these days competing for a state fish and wildlife agency job, that at least a master's job is going to help give you a little extra chance in what is a very, very competitive field. Yeah, and you went off to Yale.

I did, I did, I did. That must have been a real shocker. That was a little bit of a culture shock. Coming from Alpine, Texas. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, somebody said I took a wrong turn in Waco. But, you know, I would—

Did that feel pretty—were you well-traveled, or were you pretty—just spent your life around Texas? No, no. I mean, I wouldn't say I was well-traveled, but I'd been outside the state and outside the country. And I was excited about a challenge. And candidly, when I was kind of making my meanders through college, which was a very circuitous course, before leaving tech, I had applied to Yale and gotten in and then decided that I didn't want to do that. Finished up my degree, came to work for Parks and Wildlife, and was here for, oh, I guess almost two years and realized I needed to go get that advanced degree. And Parks and Wildlife was looking at creating a position where I could go to A&M, pursue my master's, and continue work full-time with the department, which was a huge opportunity. Wow. But I went ahead, decided to pursue admissions again into Yale, and I went

in to talk to Bob Cook, who was the Wildlife Division Director at the time, and interestingly enough, was my predecessor as the Executive Director. And Bob said, Carter, we've got a terrific opportunity for you at College Station. I think it would work out very well, but I'm going to take my Parks and Wildlife hat off, and if you were my son, I'd tell you to go east. You need to go do that. You need to have a different experience in your life. Go experience a different culture, group of people, different type of education, and I think it'll put you in good stead in what you did. So I did. I mean, I was terrified.

Absolutely terrified. I can imagine. Yeah. But loved it. You know, wonderful university. Lots of people from all over the globe. Very stimulating intellectually. And there I had a chance to meet a professor that really became a professional mentor for me

a guy named Steve Kellert and Dr. Kellert and E.O. Wilson wrote that biofuel hypothesis you worked with E.O. Wilson well I got to meet him yeah that would be a stretch but I did work how he popularized that term biophilia we talked about him my brother's in the college oh he is okay he reads a lot of E.O. Wilson. Yeah, well, he's terrific. He's kind of a hero of his. Yeah, well, you know, and he- Is, was?

Did he pass away? No, no, he is. He's still alive. And I think he's retired from Harvard. I mean, he's probably still a professor emeritus or something. You know, I'll never forget. He's written so much on so many subjects. Just what an intellectual giant.

And there was something that he wrote one time that always stuck with me. The little guys, the little guys that rule the world, you know, and of course, he was an invertebrate biologist. And so loved ants and all the little things. And when you think about, you know, soil health and just the criticality of microbes and the huge amount of biological diversity in our soil and how that's just really the foundation for everything he was certainly spot on yeah people that i mean just listeners that are curious what you're talking about is you can look up these comparisons of you know if you took everything if you imagine all animal life like in an area and made a put it in a pile and then took all

animal life out of the soil and put it in a pile like the comparison of sizes and then you get into stuff like if you took all the beetles yeah in the world and put them in a pile the pile is bigger than all the humans and large mammals and you know pretty dramatic it's funny like you just don't you don't you don't perceive the world that way yeah yeah yeah yeah well another good comparison of that is like the tall grass prairie you know you look at those big expansive grasses, and then you dig up the root system. And what's on top of the soil pales in comparison to what's beneath it. It's like an iceberg. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, the other interesting thing about Yale that was, I mean, I knew it before going there, but of course, it's where Aldo Leopold studied. And so in the university, very proud of that connection and that ethic and, you know, Gifford Pinchot's time there.

And so there have been a lot of folks along history that went to school there. And, you know, a lot of them, Steve Keller, just one of the brilliant thinkers, real interested in the, the human wildlife interface and people's attitudes towards wildlife and nature. And, you know, I think for anybody that goes into a career in fisheries or wildlife management or conservation law enforcement, you quickly find out that most of your work is spent dealing with people, not critters. It's really funny you mention that because we had a leading mountain lion biologist on recently and being circumspect.

Yeah. He's like, you know, I mostly deal with people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I'd rather deal with lions, but I mostly deal with people. In this line of work, I spend a lot of time dealing with people. Yeah, yeah, I'd rather deal with deer, but I mostly deal with people. Yeah, yeah.

Were you familiar with the writings of Aldo Leopold before you went to school? Sand County, you know, almanac. You grew up around that kind of stuff? Yeah, well, a little later. You know, that came to me in college. I think the Sand County almanac was actually a literature class I had at first school. I went to Swanee University of the South. And it just really resonated with me. I mean, his prose was so elegant. I mean, it was so compelling.

And he just wrote about the outdoors in ways that really spoke to me. And in ways that no one had done. And no one had done. Yeah. And what's interesting about that writing is it's timeless, right? I mean, we read it today, and we think, God, that was written 70 years ago or so, and it's as relevant today as it was then. Anything in there, I reread it now and then, and anything in there that feels dated,

it's not actually dated, but it almost feels prophetic like like this most of it feels like everything feels relevant and then now and then you read something and it feels like man he really was looking yeah kind of forward or not say so much prophetic but talking about things that wound up being proving to be pretty timeless yeah yeah yeah well i think the whole stewardship ethic yeah you know and of course in a private land land state like Texas, that's very germane to what we do. And I think Aldo Leopold wrote very, very persuasively and movingly about the criticality of that ethic and making sure we do everything we can to help foster and engender that in our private lands managers and our private landowners. And so—

When you say private land state, you guys are in the 90s, 90%? Yeah, we're 95%. Yeah. And, you know, proudly so. I mean, that's part of the kind of the rich tradition of Texas. And so we're a very proudly private lands state. And also, you know, certainly from a conservation perspective here in Texas, if you're going to get anything done, any kind of a meaningful scale in Texas, it needs to be in concert and partnership with private landowners. And so that's a big driver for us. Well, I imagine. I mean, you have to be realistic about it. I'm sure there's plenty of people that

would like to have some more public land opportunities. But in a state like this, wildlife conservation is going to happen. It's going to happen on private lands. It's where the red drums fall. Yeah, yeah, you bet. I don't want to skip too much, but you wound up with the Nature Conservancy? I did, yeah. Yeah, I worked for the Nature Conservancy, and that was kind of an interesting transition. When I left Yale, I was up in Canada for a while, up in the boreal forest, way north of South Carolina. Doing some moose work, right? Yeah, do some moose work, which is pretty interesting. And then I got talked into coming back to Texas from some, interestingly

enough, some Parks and Wildlife biologist friends that were really concerned about the development of the Katy Prairie west of Houston. It was just a waterfowl mecca, historic prairie wetland areas, lots of rice farming at the time, but Houston was, you know, on its inexorable march westward. And there was a need for kind of a nature conservancy-like organization that could work with all parties to try to help protect some of that habitat before it all became impervious cover. And so I got told— What was the word you used? Impervious. So just like this tabletop, you know, the parking lot, the asphalt, nothing gets through. Oh, I got you. Like non-permeable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so Houston's moving west. You've got all this valuable rice farm habitat, wetlands, residual prairie, tons of waterfowl. But, you know, the concern was it was going to get paved over unless there was somebody actively working to go out and work with landowners to try to figure out a way to conserve it. So interestingly, a group of waterfowl guides, uh, rice farmers, um, a couple of developers, real estate attorneys, um, and some of Houston's kind of middle of the road conservationists said, we need to create a land trust-like organization. That was the coalition? That was the coalition.

Yeah, it was pretty cool. So they created this Katy Perry Conservancy. Real quick. Oh, you know what? Hold that thought. I'll hold the thought. What were you looking at with moose up in Saskatchewan? So we were looking at a variety of things,

and it was kind of this concept about trophic cascades and whether or not systems were controlled top-down through herbivory or more bottom-up through nutrient-related considerations. Meaning like who's in the driver's seat? Yeah, kind of who's in the driver's seat. And so, and, you know, how are forest management practices contributing to either, you know, helping or hurting moose populations. And there was this Coteria Universities that was working up on a Cree Indian reservation with funding from the National Science Foundation.

And so they were looking at a wide variety of things. And it was University of Saskatchewan, University of British Columbia, University of Washington, Harvard, Yale, a couple of others. And so there were professors and grad students from all over, and we lived on this Cree Indian reservation and worked very closely with the First Nations community, the Saskatchewan provincial government, on a variety of kind of research-related topics. And my job was to help kind of keep all of that going. There were certain numbers from the community that we had to hire for jobs associated with the research. When researchers and their grad students would come up, I'd have to

help them kind of get acclimated and help them get their research projects get set up. And so it was a pretty eclectic mix of things that we were studying. The moose stuff, obviously, is what caught my attention the most because I knew so little about moose before I got up there. And it was just interesting to be around a big game animal that was so, you know, iconic, um, in those, in those, in those forests. And yeah, I'll always treasure that time just, uh, but the culture shock was about like going to New Haven, Connecticut. So in the other direction. In the other direction. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I ended up making my way back to Katie

at the behest of folks here to help start this land trust, which I knew absolutely nothing about. So what was the, yeah, when you talk about the land trust for Katie Prairie, what was the developer participation? You know, so the developer participation were really a couple fold. The Sierra Club was suing everybody over, you know, development of wetlands, violations of the Clean Water Act. I mean, it was World War III over there on the Katy Prairie. And so they were trying to

find, let's create some organization in the Radical Center that can apply to everybody that's doing something applied, pragmatic, getting something done. It's not just a purely litigation oriented strategy and you know and I would say it the the area was was pretty agricultural oriented so it wasn't like a fit for an organization like the Nature Conservancy and so that was the genesis for for the the land trust being created you mean meaning the nature conservancy would generally is generally associated with less disturbed yeah yeah less disturbed land that's right yeah exactly and and then i think folks wanted wanted a group that was local um you know it was locally driven the board was local people knew who they were representatives from these different sectors that you know kind of aligned around a plan to help protect parts of that Katy Perry.

And to your question, the real estate developers saw it as a quality of life issue. They saw it also as an appreciation to real estate, is there was going to be development out there. There is development out there. But having open spaces, parks, wildlife areas, they saw that, or at least some of them saw that as a value add to what inevitably was going to be the, you know, future growth of Houston. And so having some of that preserved, they saw that as a proverbial win-win. Playing the long game. Yeah, playing

the long game. And I'll tell you what's proved interesting about that too. If you look at Hurricane Harvey, when it perched over Houston and West Houston and dumped, you know, 50 inches of rain, you know, that area west of Houston, you know, becomes the receiving ground for all of that rain. And the more that can slow down, the more it can penetrate into the soil, percolate down there, as opposed to just running off concrete into a bayou, the less flooding it's going to cause. So as it turned out, you know, what the Katy Perry Conservancy was doing when I started there, you know, it was all about waterfowl and waterfowl habitat. Um, today it's a whole lot more about, uh, kind of an unconventional flood control strategy and preserve an open space to help with attenuating, uh, uh, floods into Houston. In addition to protect an open space and wildlife habitat and places that people can, can go to get outside.

People still hunt ducks there? Yeah. Yeah. They still do, which is terrific, you know, and, um, we don't have the huge amounts of snow geese that we used to have. When I was there, those rice fields and wetlands were just absolutely covered with snow geese. It was one of the most. But even that was an anomaly, though, right?

Well, it was an anomaly because, you know, that rice attracted them. I mean, like that era of just. That era of, yeah, yeah, of just the peak snow geese. Skyrocketing. Yeah, a lot of them. Yeah, a lot of them. But, you know, lots of ducks of all stripes. You know, we're here at the tip of the funnel on the central flyway,

so we get lots of waterfowl that come through here, and we spend a lot of time here at the agency working to conserve waterfowl habitat and make sure we're doing our part along the flyway. And so that Katy Prairie provided a a pretty unique point a little further inland from the coast um but yeah those big flocks of snow geese have kind of gone away um they seem to a lot of them moved over to arkansas where you still have a lot of rice country oh is that right yeah we just don't have the numbers did you uh did you keep up as a hunter and angler through all this yeah yeah no i never lost that um and you, that certainly was my immersion in the out of doors is loved up, you know, hunting fish growing up. If I

could, you know, die dove hunting, I, you know, I, I, that'd be the happiest, you know, way to go. I think from my perspective, I just, I just love that. Um, but I've always tried to make time for it. Um, now, you know, to be fair, you get a lot of folks that I love to hunt fish. And so I want to, you know, go get a, be a, have a career as a wildlife biologist or a game warden. It's not like you got a lot of copious free time to do all that. Yeah. So people get kind of disabused of that notion. It's a professional job and you're going to have to make time just like anybody else to do the things you love. Yeah. Then you came here. No, then I went to work for the Nature Conservancy.

And so I was recruited to go work for the Nature Conservancy in South Texas and northern Mexico. It was a project in the Laguna Madre, the Tamaulipas and Laguna Madre in Texas, looking at kind of a binational conservation strategy. And they wanted somebody that could relate well to landowners and would be comfortable at the time working at Northern Mexico. It was a different time. Yeah. Explain binational. And so binational working in two countries. And so, you know, what's interesting about the Laguna Madre system, you know, the, one of the five largest

hypersaline, super salty lagoons in the world. You have it in South Texas, basically from Corpus to Brownsville. Then you've got the Rio Grande. And then you have the Mexican Laguna Madre south of that. And they're both of them, again, super salty, loaded with, you know, redfish and trout and redheaded ducks and peregrine falcons and Kemp's redly sea turtles and shorebirds and wading birds and reddish egret. I mean, it's just, it's the amount of wildlife is stunning. Is it in good shape on both sides of the border?

You know, there are differences. One of the things that I think has helped the Texas side quite a bit is the big expanse of ranch country, undeveloped ranch country that borders the Laguna Madre. So we're talking about the King Ranch, the Kennedy Ranch, some of our state's most fabled and largest ranches. Which are fairly intact ecosystems. Yeah, and in great shape. And they very actively manage those ranches for wildlife and conservation and ranch land health and so forth. And so the lack of development along the Laguna Madre,

both largely on the mainland side because of the big ranches, but then of course, Padre Island National Seashore, longest undeveloped stretch of barrier island in the world, coupled with another big swath of protected land that's part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge on South Padre Island, means that you just don't have a lot of developmental pressures in the Laguna Madre until you get deep down into the Rio Grande Valley near the Mexico border. And so Texas side, pretty good shape.

You know, get into Mexico, that system still biologically very unique, fished awfully hard. Oh, because even like the one you guys in Texas, when there was such a slowdown on commercial redfish netting and stuff, those practices probably continue to imagine. They do. They continue down there. You know, they'll put these big nets across those little bayous and inlets and just hammer the fish of all kinds. And, you know, candidly, our game board spent a fair amount of time dealing with a legal Mexican commercial fisherman coming into Texas. And so they'll come in these little pongas and they'll set these long lines

and they will hammer our, you know, sharks and red snapper. Because you're just flirting with a, you're flirting with a marine border. A marine border. Yeah. And they come over, they set their lines and they come back and they get in and out and it's a real game of cat and mouse. But that pressure has really intensified over the years. I think some of those fisheries in Mexico have had so much pressure on them that it's just been worth the risk to them to come over and try to sneak across the international boundary and fish in Texas waters.

And so our law enforcement team spends a lot of work making sure they're protecting our resources in that regard. Hey, Yanni, hit them with the question you were talking about wanting to ask them. It's out of order, but it's in order now. It's in order now, yeah. I didn't know we had an order. We like to keep it secret. Yeah, yeah, there you go.

No, man, we're running through like, think about it, like childhood yeah yeah no i see the sequence yeah no i got it i got then we got peeled off on international borders yeah but we were wondering how much you work in concert with like the mexican government now as texas parks and wildlife with critters that are you know they live in that zone yeah don't care about whether they're yeah exactly they don't know a migratory water you know migratory in that zone. Yeah, don't care about whether they're in Texas. Yeah, exactly. They don't know. Yeah, migratory water, you know, migratory waterfall. It's got to be a conversation, right? It is. Yeah, absolutely.

And in fact, we have a liaison that works here whose sole job it is to, you know, kind of work with some of our international partners. And so a big part of her job has been with working with our counterparts in Mexico on, you know, fisheries and wildlife issues. And you're right, you know, bighorn sheep or redheaded ducks could care less whether or not, you know, they're in Nuevo Leone or, you know, West Texas or the coast of Texas or the coast of Mexico. And so we still continue that work fairly actively, not as actively as it once was, just, you know, to be fair, the

conversations are good. You know, we have, there's an international joint venture, the Rio Grande joint venture works on bird-related priorities in both Texas and Mexico that we're very actively involved in. We'll frequently host workshops for Mexican biologists to come to Texas where we can help share information and disseminate information. But, you know, regrettably, things have changed in northern Mexico, and that has put a damper on, you know, some of our travel and the ease of working across borders to share resources and work collaboratively on projects. And again, whether that's the Kemp's Redley sea turtles on the coast and protecting nesting beaches or working together on redheaded duck-related management or bighorn sheep or whatever. But there's still a dialogue, and that's good.

When you say that things have changed, are you referring to just like the escalation of drug-related violence and then also things about border security? Really more the former than the latter. Is that right? Yeah, the escalation of the cartels and the penetration into northern Mexico. You know, they're just issues associated with safety that we have to be very, very mindful of because of the areas in which, you know which our folks work. That reminds me of a point I like to raise with people now and then, where you grow up with this idyllic sense, or let me put it a different way.

People imagine this sort of post-apocalyptic situation where wildlife thrives. And I always find myself pointing out to people, if you look what like chaos does not serve wildlife well yeah yeah sure like stable well-functioning governments serve wildlife well you bet you know there's this idea that i i remember going to places like going in the southern philippines when i was younger and i had my snorkel and mask and i was like oh it'll be yeah like no one's ever seen

these and you go there you can't find a fish yeah there's no no regulatory structure no enforcement no protection sure just illegal fishing illegal methods yeah using explosives using poisons no one to say no yeah that's not right not sustainable after a while you're like yeah it's the places that work smooth yeah they have great wildlife well and I think there's three legs to that stool, right? I mean, there's the biology side, there's the enforcement side, and then there's the dedicated funding side. And you've got to have all three of those for those systems to function. And so to your point, I think you're right where you've got stable governments and you've got hunters, anglers, outdoor enthusiasts, wherever you are on the consumptive or non-consumptive space, and there's dedicated funding streams to support that.

You have professional scientists, and then you have a professional law enforcement force that's charged with taking care of that and protecting it. That's where you see the fish and wildlife thrive. You're 100% right. You know, are you familiar? We're going to get back on track in a minute. But are you familiar with the, how would you describe Shane Mahoney? We've never had him on the show. Are you familiar with Shane Mahoney? Sure, I know Shane. Very charismatic, very eloquent, very, very passionate.

But he's like a wildlife philosopher. Yeah, yeah. And that's a great way to put it. He's a wonderful ambassador for the North American. He is a deep, deep thinker about wildlife and the history of governments and conservation and what works and doesn't. But, you know, wildlife philosopher is a terrific, I think, moniker for Shane and all the good he does all around the world.

He raised the point with me that kind of reflects what you're just saying, where you're talking about the system of, like scientific management through biologists, you have a funding structure, you have private landowners who want to see wildlife. Motivated to that, yeah. Want to see wildlife on their property, enjoy wildlife. And he's describing all these functions that make our wildlife system work

and how complex it is and interwoven it is. And he said, one of the reasons our system is resilient is you can't cut the head off the snake. There's not like a thing. There's not like some crystal thing that makes it work. Yeah. Yeah. It's all of it. Many things work.

And if someone were to go in for whatever nefarious reason, we're like, I'm going to destroy it. It wouldn't be clear what to do. Yeah, yeah. Like we have a, it's a very well-supported, Very well-integrated system. Yeah, yeah, thankfully, thankfully. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Okay, back on track now. So Yanni got his question answered. Check. Give us a breakdown. Well, no, land us where you're at now. Land us where you're at now. So you do that, Nature Conservancy. Yeah, did that in Nature Conservancy for- Then he said, I'm going to go run the whole damn state. Yeah. No, it wasn't that much of an epiphany, that easy a transition to say the least. Probably,

thankfully, I didn't know what I didn't know. But no, I was happily doing my work at the Nature Conservancy, really enjoyed the conservation work. It felt like it was impactful in Texas, which was really my area of focus. Although, as I said, I'd worked in northern Mexico for a while as well, but Texas being my home ground, that's where I was interested in focusing. And then I got recruited to kind of gauge my interest in coming back to Parks and Wildlife in this job. Well, you came back to serve the role you're in now. I did. I did, yep.

And what a privilege. I mean, really, what a privilege. I care deeply about my home ground, just as I expect most people care about theirs. And so, you know, the opportunity to work with a group of colleagues that are so passionate about, you know, place and our natural heritage and our history and our wild things and wild places. I love that about this agency. And so the people were a huge attraction to me just because I've always held the department in very high esteem because of the professionals that I knew that worked for the department in different quarters. And so that was appealing to me. And then just the opportunity to do things at a little larger

scale to give back not just in the stewardship related side which I'm particularly passionate about but also the outdoor recreation side I really believe firmly that if we're going to grow the next generation of conservationists that we've got to figure out ways to immerse them in the outdoors now it may not have been and probably won't be the same way I was immersed in the outdoors or either of you were, but wherever they are, wherever they're at, we need to figure out ways to introduce them and connect them. And I felt like Parks and Wildlife understood that from a state agency perspective and that there was an opportunity to help grow that and expand that. And that really, that really appealed to me as a,

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. You probably can't even answer this. Do people come along and ever vet you as an interior secretary? Oh, gosh. Their bar is much higher than that.

I feel like that should be your next play. Oh, you know, I love Texas, and you'd have to dynamite me out of here, I think, or shoot me out of here, which there's probably a line of folks wanting to do that. Give me an overview on just like the scale of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Well, so, you know, we cover the whole state, you know, 254 counties, 150 million acres or so of terrestrial wildlife habitat. Our boundaries go out nine nautical miles into the Gulf of Mexico, 200,000 miles of rivers and creeks and streams, roughly with our meandering shoreline, a little over 4,000 miles of that. Is that right?

It is big and it is vast. You draw a straight line, I think it's 367 miles. You do all the bays and estuaries straight line, I think it's 367 miles. You do all the, you know, bays and estuaries and so forth, and it's scaled up considerably along the coast. Yeah, there's an interesting statistic about Prince of Wales Island and the island of Hawaii. Yeah. Prince of Wales Island, I don't know, it's half the size or a third the size, but that's twice the coastline.

Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of the same thing. All the fjords. Fjords, and yeah, exactly. Kind of the same phenomena. All the fjords. Fjords, and yeah, exactly, kind of same phenomena. But, you know, the scale is fascinating. You know, 10 or 11 different ecoregions, you know, from the deserts to the coast to the subtropics down into the Rio Grande Valley, the southern terminus of the High Plains, the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountains, you know, the Edwards Plateau in the central part of the state, a place that E.O. Wilson, of all people, called the 26th biodiversity hotspot in all the world just because of the proliferation of interesting fish and wildlife organisms and plants that reside there, the Big Thicket, which is, you know, more like the south over in the eastern part of our state. And so it is big, and it is diverse,

is an artifact of the size, kind of the accident of geography thing. It's situated a pretty interesting part of the globe where all these systems- Oh, for sure, man. You got stuff that from a passing glance, you could think it was tropical jungle. Yeah, yeah.

And then you have, and it's amazing because you go up and you have the short grass prairie, like Buffalo country of the Texas Panhandle. Right, exactly. Where guys would talk about traveling for days without seeing a tree. Yeah, and it looks like the Great Plains. Yeah, absolutely.

Got those rolling, undulating hills. Maybe you'd hit a little bottom with some cottonwoods and a spring-fed creek, a lot gamier than people realize, but yeah, there are parts of the panhandle that, you know, I'd pluck us all down in and you'd say, sure, I'm here in Kansas. I'm in Nebraska, uh, but you're in the Texas panhandle or conversely, uh, parts of far West Texas where you get up in some of the mountains, um, and you get some ponderosa pine and Aspen and, you know, think you're in New Mexico or Colorado. And so that's fun to be able to work in a state that has that level of diversity of kind of plant and animal communities and to play a role in helping to manage them and conserve them.

What's your guys' best guess on how many deer, say? You know, and our best guess is a good way to put it, but, you know, maybe in the 5 million range. How many people? White-tailed deer, about 28 million people. Yeah. So, you know, we grow by about a thousand Texans a day. So as you can imagine. Seriously? Seriously. Yeah. Yeah. It's impressive. Our, our growth rate has just been pretty high and pretty consistently. The state grows by a thousand? Roughly. Yeah. What's driving it? Yeah. It's the economy? Yeah. The economy. um i mean people come here for business quality quality

of life um you know 85 86 percent of us live in nine major metropolitan areas so you know texas in spite of all that vast rural nature nature um empty in the middle empty in the middle um um or populous in the middle and and empty on the on the on the front and empty on the front. Empty on the outskirts. Yeah, yeah. I got you. Yeah. So roughly 5 million deer. Yeah, 5 million deer, 5 million whitetails.

Let's say someone then came and said to you, like they wanted to make a bet with you about how right the number was. Yeah. Like how possibly wrong could a number like that be? Well, and I— When you guys sit around trying to, like, throw—because five million sounds like a pretty convenient round number. Sure, yeah. And I—and, you know, take that again.

Is it from modeling? Just, like, looking at densities and then multiplying? Yeah, so our biologists are actively involved, you know, with survey of all kinds of animals year round, you know, dependent on what the species is. You know, certainly whitetail deer are surveyed very, very extensively, not only by biologists with this department, but by private landowners and others. But 5 million is an estimate. And so that's a rounding number for me. And so is that accurate within plus or minus 10%, 15% properly? Okay. We got a lot of deer. And in many cases, too many deer. And so, you know, the issue is not so much

how do we bring back deer in our state? We've already done that very, very successfully. The challenge is how do we get hunters to shoot enough deer? How do we get landowners to accept allowing hunters to shoot enough deer without being concerned that, you know, they've shot all my deer? You know, I don't see any deer. That's really interesting because a friend of mine, I don't want to say who said this because it's going to sound cynical, but he was, and this is not you talking, this is me talking, but a friend of mine was like, he says, I'm always baffled when I hear someone say whitetail conservation. Whitetail conservation

is shooting whitetails. Well, but to be fair, you know, there are parts of the South and parts of the country and where whitetail numbers have declined. And so, you know, why that's happening, you know, probably myriad reasons. In Texas, that's not the case. So when you say too many, too many by what measure? Like too many according to who? Yeah, too many according to what the habitat can reasonably sustain. Okay.

So it's not ag, it's not car insurers. No, it's, you know, I mean, we hear from, you know, some farmers in certain locales about deer densities being too high and concern about crop depredation. That's really a very, very small part of what we deal with. Occasionally, we'll hear from an insurer about, you know, deer vehicle accidents, but that's really an anomaly. But that does happen. Oh, sure. I mean, occasionally. But it's really more the poor motorist to hit a deer,

and then, well, that's the state's deer, and so the state needs to pay me for the damage to my car and my lost trip. What's your view on that? This and that. They're everybody's deer. And it's so, yeah, no, we don't have any liability associated with that. I mean, always. Is that something people test? Oh, it's occasionally, you know, it's probably been a couple of years since I've heard somebody

make a vigorous case in that regard. But, you know, we do have a lot of deer vehicle accidents. It's something, you can have a lot of deer, feral hog accidents. Um, you know, you gotta be mindful driving in rural areas. That's an issue in Texas. It is. Hitting a pig with your car. Yes. Yeah. And that'll cause serious damage. I mean, you know, it's like hitting a bear. Um, in fact, there's right around Austin, there's a, a, um, a loop that was that was built, a new tollway. And when it was put in, it seemed like there was a vehicle feral hog collision every single day. You know, and this just happened for a year or two. And finally, a couple of the counties got together and said, you know, we've got to start working on some feral hog solution.

This is a public safety problem. You know, there's all these other myriad problems associated with feral hogs, but, um, you know, a, a, a loop around Austin and San Antonio with a 85 mile an hour speed limit and somebody hitting a feral hog, that's a recipe for real problems. Um, so, um, so yeah, deer hog collisions are, are, are, are. Is it one of the things that keep us laying awake at night about the things on our list? No. Yeah. Let's talk about hogs, because I had a bunch of hog questions. Let's just do them now. What's the ballpark on hogs? Can you even venture to guess how many? Do you have more hogs than deer? I don't think so. You know, the numbers that I hear consistently, and you know, you'll listen to the margin of error of this, are somewhere between

two to four million hogs. So how accurate is that? Nobody knows. So they're hard to count. They're hard to count, you know, because they're largely nocturnal. Okay. And they're not really good methodologies that are established and that are being practiced on a regular enough basis to estimate numbers. And again, remember with, you know, species like deer, a lot of what we're interested in is trends over time, right? The exact numbers are less important than the trends and other specific indices and metrics, but lots of hogs, we have feral hogs in every one of our counties now. Really?

How many counties you guys got? 254. No kidding. Yeah, and that's not a badge of honor. So your hog distribution map is the state. It is the state. It is the state. Even on that crazy west Texas?

Yeah, where you couldn't think there's- They're javelina country. They're javelina country, very little surface water, not a lot of topsoil. It is astounding how adaptable and resilient those feral hogs are. Will they displace javelina? Yeah, I think that when hogs will come into an area and really take over, oftentimes they will disrupt those very strict social structures that javelina live in and will displace them from a habitat utilization perspective.

So we certainly see that. Let me ask you, if you could wave a magic wand, this is our favorite question when it comes to pigs, because a lot of times we have people who even work in the hog eradication industry, and we'll ask them if you could wave a magic wand and have pigs go away, they'll say, no, I wouldn't wave it. And not just because I do this for a living, but they just come to appreciate them over time.

They're a fascinating animal, aren't they? Yeah, so let's say, here you are. I present you with this wand. Magic wand. As much as there's an industry in your state, people come here. I got friends that come from Montana to go to Texas to hunt pigs. Yeah, they love it.

Would you wave the wand, and they would be absolutely gone from the state? You know, that's a great question. You're going to have to put me in that camp that's decidedly mixed, professionally and personally. You know, professionally would be the right thing to do. Because you've probably been hunting them your whole life. Oh, my whole life I grew up with them and I do have a deep appreciation for them and they are fun to chase. And we've got a lot of landowners that enjoy that, but we certainly have an equal amount

or more that are just run over with hogs. Huge problem. So how do you, but how do you, like, there's no such thing as a balance between these two things. No, and it's an interesting push-pull. But, you know, professionally, we are pushing hard to do everything we can to encourage landowners and hunters and others to trap as many hogs, shoot as many hogs. You know, we're working on a fascinating natural toxicant that is derived from sodium nitrite, you know, a food preservative. And our biologists have been working in concert with scientists from Australia and New Zealand and here in Texas and USDA to test that toxicant. It's a bait, it's a pellet that's got a very specific delivery mechanism to preclude other non-target species. Not lethal to deer.

Not lethal to deer, not lethal to birds, not lethal to cattle. Oh, that's really interesting. And so we're still in the testing phase. Yeah, I imagine you want to test that pretty carefully. Oh, yeah, got to. Yeah, I mean, clearly we don't want to have some unintended impact on all the other species of wildlife and things that we, that we care about. But it's been a fascinating study by our biologists at one of our wildlife management, uh, area. And so they've gone back to the drawing board with, um, the size of the pellet, um, the amount of the toxicant in the pellet.

And what's interesting about this is sodium nitrite, hogs that eat it in a certain quantity, it stops the oxygen flow to the brain. So they'll eat it and then they'll go off and kind of go to sleep. So, you know, it's not like other kinds of pesticides that you hear about that, you know, have some pretty dramatic effects. And so we're, you know, adverting to those kinds of concerns, but we're particularly concerned about wanting to make sure we've done everything to attenuate impacts on non-target species. Right. We want to focus on hogs. So we're not ready for, um, to, to have EPA approval yet and have that rolled out.

That would require that. That would require EPA approval. Yeah. Yeah. So rigorous testing. We've been working on this for eight years or now, testing different pellet formulations, palatability.

You probably get a lot of cooperation from other entities, right? There's been a lot of interest in that. A lot of interest. You know, similarly though, you know, to your point earlier, we've got, you know, landowners in part of the state that have operations that, you know, hunters come in from out of state,

in state to hunt feral hogs. And so, you know, hunters come in from out of state, in state to hunt feral hogs. And so, you know, they'd be real concerned about some massive- But it can be geographically controlled too. Sure. And up landowner's choice. And really at the end of the day, people have to get comfortable with the fact that you're not going to eradicate feral hogs. You can manage them.

You can try to control them, but you're probably not going to eradicate them. So that's not really- I don't think it's realistic. The whole magic wand scenario, you don't imagine? Not realistic. Yeah. How far out might be, like the whole magic wand scenario, you don't imagine? Not realistic, yeah. How far out might be, I mean, let's say you got there, you know, let's say the- Totally not tried, yeah. Yeah, let's say you got there, like how far out might something like that be, if it runs

a normal course of the process? I think we'd still be several years away, and by that, you know, say a minimum of three. There's more field testing that would have to be done. You know, we've been doing this in a setting on a wildlife management area in which we've been able to test it in pretty controlled environments. We've gone out with wildlife services and done some preliminary field tests, and that's caused us to kind of go back and, again, look at that bait formulation, the palatability look at the the level of the toxicant um in there and so probably we'll go back out in the field sometime in the next year

to test that again but we're several years away from that you say sodium yeah nitrite nitrite yes my question is uh does that start kind of the brining process? So is it safe for human consumption afterwards? Like it can go right to the smoker? Yeah, there's, yeah. Just right there. It gets cured? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, I don't think it does that for you.

But obviously we are concerned about, you know, if somebody shoots a feral hog that ended up eating some of that bait. Or other animals eating that. Oh, that'll all be part of the testing process. That's part of the testing. Yeah, you bet. You bet.

So we're making sure that we're looking at every facet of this, both from a non-target perspective, but also the human health and safety. It'd be wildly irresponsible not to, right? So, you know, as a state fish and wildlife agency, we have to, we have to do that. And this is a pretty unique area of research for us. And so we've got a real dedicated team of biologists and scientists, again, working in active partnership with USDA and other research institutions on this. But there's a real hunger out there for some kind of a solution to the feral hog problem. You can't shoot your way out of it. You can't trap your way out of it.

You don't think so? That's interesting. So you would say within Texas, more than 50% of your constituents would say, let's try to make less hogs. Yes. Yes. What are the main whys? What are the main arguments against hogs? Yeah, destructive, a lack of real kind of meaningful predators on them. Their populations just go up and up.

They're tearing up fields, tearing up roads, tearing up tank dam know, displacing native species. I'd say those are the principal ones. It's just kind of their destructive and unchecked nature, you know, in terms of how they grow, you know, with their gestation period is what, three months, three weeks, and three days. So they're having litters all the time and their litters, you know, may be, you know, 10, 12, 15 piglets and so it's just hard to get the brakes on them and yeah a deer a deer is going to kick off yeah a deer's going to kick off one or two fawns a year that's right that's right and she's going to kick off what 24 yeah and so they're going to they're probably going to have you have two groups of hogs every year, sometimes three.

They reach sexual maturity at a very young age. And coyotes will kill hogs and mountain lions will kill hogs, but not in a way that's keeping those numbers in check. And certainly hunters aren't doing that either. Explain what exactly, what is the regulatory structure around shooting hogs from helicopters? How does this work? How does that work? There's a lot of confusion about this. Sure.

So first off, the pilot has to have an aerial wildlife management permit. And remember, everything, the overarching governance for that is the Federal Airborne Hunting Act. So there's a federal regulation which governs what states can do. Now, states can work within the parameters of that federal act, but there's an overarching Federal Airborne Hunting Act that basically says you can't hunt from a helicopter or a fixed-wing aircraft. Now, so how does that translate into people shooting hogs out of a helicopter or a fixed wing aircraft. Now, so how does that translate into people shooting hogs out of a helicopter in Texas? Yeah, like aerial wolf control in Alaska. Yeah, or coyotes here in Texas. Sure, yeah, right.

So in Texas, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, we essentially serve as the agent for helping to permit activities under that Airborne Hunting Act. And so we'll issue an aerial management permit to a helicopter operator. And so that's an annual permit, has to be renewed. There are certain reporting-related requirements. And that's required if you're going to count wildlife from the air, if you're going to photograph wildlife from the air, if you're going to count wildlife from the air, if you're going to photograph wildlife from the air,

if you're going to trap wildlife from the air, if you're going to shoot hogs or coyotes from the air. You've got to have that area wildlife management permit. You also have to have what's called a landowner authorization agreement or what we call the acronym an LOA, landowner authorization agreement, LOA. And that LOA is approved by the landowner on whose property you're flying over and, say, shooting hogs or coyotes out of the helicopter. So the landowner has to approve it, has to approve the activity. So whether that's a wildlife census or maybe it's a trapping of exotics or shooting coyotes or hogs out of a helicopter.

And then there are agents and sub-agents of the landowner that are approved on that landowner authorization agreement. And so those can be observers, and they can be shooters on the helicopter. But it's geo-referenced. The landowner says, you know, within these boundaries, I've approved this map. You have this letter authorization agreement to conduct those aerial management activities, whatever they are. So that's kind of the regulatory permitting structure that we have put in place here. been a real boom, I'd say, in the last three to five years of helicopter companies marketing to people to come be designated agents and shoot out of their helicopter to shoot hogs

out of a helicopter. But it's critically important that you've got that landowner authorization agreement and you're identified, again, as an agent or a subagent and that you're only flying and shooting over property which you have permission to shoot. And that your pilot is property licensed for it. And that your pilot is properly licensed. And, again, there's reporting requirements and other compliance things that they have to meet. It's been an important tool for landowners. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Landowners will use that, and particularly- Like a guy can realize real movement of a problem. It can, but I think you'd look at it seasonally and temporally. Okay. but I think you'd look at it seasonally and temporally. So let's say you want to target hogs, and you go up in the air, and you've got some shooters, you've got a good pilot, and you find a number of sounders, and you hammer those hogs. You're going to knock them back for a while. You may chase them onto somebody else's property,

but you're going to realize some relief. Now, that's not permanent relief because they're going to come back, right? Nature abhors a vacuum. So you're going to have to manage them. You're going to have to stay after them, but it can help give a temporary reprieve. So, you know, when we're recommending those activities, again, from a feral hog perspective, it's, you know, shoot, shoot often. You know, you can hunt year round. There's no limits. Legislation passed in our recent

legislative session that if you're a landowner or a landowner's designated agent, you don't need a hunting license to hunt feral hogs. But if you're just out shooting feral hogs or hunting feral hogs, and you're not witnessing them in the act of depredating livestock or crops, you really need a hunting license. So there's a little bit of a dichotomy there from an enforcement perspective. But again, we encourage the harvest of feral hogs. And so, you know, we've tried to throw everything, but the kitchen sink at it in Texas. Um, but, but it still feels a little bit like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill at times. To what extent do you agree with the statement that

enthusiasm around hog hunting actually drives and increases hog numbers in Texas? Well, I think that's fair in parts. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair in parts. Um, because people love coming to Texas to hunt hogs and that's great. We want folks from out of state to come, give us a chance to showcase our state, just like, you know, other states would like to do that or do that as well and do it very, very well. But yeah yeah i know we welcome and want folks to come to texas to hunt hogs or deer turkeys or quail or doves or waterfowl or or whatever does that drive increased numbers or help to artificially prop them up well i i guess in the sense that as opposed to a management philosophy in that area in which people are really working to actively control them,

keep the numbers down, yeah, probably works against us. Is that the principal reason why hog numbers are just off the charts high in Texas? Probably not. Yeah. Meaning? High rates of reproduction, no real significant predation. We don't shoot enough of them to be able to keep up with their biology of reproduction. And so those factors have much more of a bearing than the fact that you may have landowners in certain areas that see wild hogs as a resource for them.

They are. People pay good money to come stay at their places and have an experience hunting hogs, love it. It's a great revenue stream for them, diversifies their operation, maybe makes it more likely that, you know, they're able to manage their land, keep the property and the family and so forth. But I wouldn't say that is a big tipping point for why we have so many hogs in Texas. And I imagine too, once they're established, it doesn't really matter, but I'm sure you're familiar with this, that some states that are on the edge of the expansion of hogs will preemptively ban hog hunting to de-incentivize individuals who might think it'd be cool to bring one home. I don't blame them.

And cut it loose. Sure. Yeah. And we worry about that. Is some disingenuous person comes and traps a load of hogs in Texas and then illegally transports them across state line and thinks, wouldn't this be fun to release them on my property and, you know, state action. Well, I mean, it absolutely has happened. And it absolutely has happened.

It does happen. And that's a problem. But you guys have probably had hogs since the 1500s. We've had hogs for a long time, you know. It's like essentially like this place, at this point, it's one could almost start to think of it as almost a native animal. Not really, but it's been here hundreds of years. They've naturalized, right?

I mean, that's how I think about it. Hundreds of years. They've naturalized. You think about hogs being brought over by the Spaniards. Some of those practices, I mean, they turn them loose in the bottomlands and let them get fat in the winter and eat acorns and then looked up, you know, round them up such as it was. And obviously then you had those feral hogs, hogs that were originally domestic, get out, reproduce, start to rewild, produce a subsequent generation, produce another one.

Next thing you know, we've got wild hogs. And those numbers have just grown, and their geography has grown. Since I've had this job, which will be 12 years in January, again, no badge of honor here, but I think when I started, there were still maybe 15 counties or so that we didn't have feral hogs in and would have thought, well, there's no way they're going to get to El Paso, right? I mean, what are they going to do there? And then all of a sudden, well, it's seven counties that don't have feral hogs. Then it's three. Then it's one.

And then pretty soon, okay, we've documented hogs in every county. And no one's come looking to kick you out of here oh i'm sure they've looked for other reasons but i don't think i've been blamed singly for that that problem got one more pig question for you yeah i was reading a piece one time and it was talking about that somehow there'd been like an oversight and shooting hogs from hot air balloons. Yeah. Wasn't illegal, was somehow illegal and the state remedied this. Is this true? Yeah, yeah, no, there was legislation.

Someone identified a problem that like once they looked at the rule books, they realized they couldn't hunt from a hot air balloon. Yeah, and you know, whether that's happened, I guess it's Texas, right?

Anything's probably happened somewhere, somehow. But it's just so, it's such a funny thing to realize was like, like the, when you look at the detail, you realize the hot air balloons are excluded. Let's go close that loophole.

Time on that guy's hands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Tell me about elk a little bit, because I know from, I'm a member of Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and I read their, and I read.

They do a lot of great work. Yeah, I read their magazine. They come out with Bugle. And I think it was in there that I read a piece where Texas had a weird situation where elk had been extirpated out of Texas in the early 1800s. Yeah, largely. They've been gone for 100 plus years. There's some elk back now. And there's some sort of pro and con.

There's pros and cons to whether elk would be regarded as a native animal in Texas and arguing about to what degree were they really present and where. Yeah. Can you break this down? Are you familiar with what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. No, no, no. I'm acutely familiar with that.

And by the way, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation just does terrific, terrific work. I don't remember it being – I don't know that it was super critical in Texas. No, I mean, but it's been a topic of interest for a while. Yeah, break that down for people. I think because it helps explain wildlife politics. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, historically, there were elk in Texas and probably covered a fair amount of the state. I mean, they were in the grasslands, you know, kind of down through the central part of the state, you know, maybe even along part of the coast. And then you're right. Sometime in the, you know, mid to some relic elk up in the Guadalupe Mountains on the New Mexico border.

Probably some free-ranging elk that still wandered through the Texas panhandle and other parts of West Texas, but largely extirpated from the state. But we, as an agency, we consider elk to be native. Historically, they were here. As an agency, you consider them native. As an agency. They are a native species of wildlife. Now, here's where the rubber hits the road. You translate that to, well, show me where elk are in Texas and how'd they get there.

Have they always been there? Were they introduced? And it's a really eclectic mix of situations. I don't understand that. So like, for example, elk absent largely from big parts of Trans-Pecos or West Texas, our mountainous country. You're saying historically absent? No, no, no. In recent time.

Okay. Yeah. And so let's say 40 years ago, Parks and Wildlife works to then go get elk from Rocky Mountain states to restock elk in parts of West Texas. And so we've got elk in the mountains. And that going on was that going on 40 years ago yeah okay yeah 30 40 years ago so that was certainly certainly going on um you know lots of efforts of course is biologists were working to restock fish and game populations that had been um pushed lower for a variety of reasons. Yeah, and sometimes with kind of a cavalier approach. And as you look back on it, some of it looks a little bit that way. Like pull up a truck, open a gate, clear everybody out, and drive off.

We've come a long way. We've come a long way. Wait to see what happens. We've come a long way in that regard, particularly with disease concerns and concern about health-related issues, capture-related myopathy, all those issues. That translocating animals has come a long, long way since the Wild West days, which you're referring to. So the department did a lot of restocking of elk in the state. And the elk were treated as a game animal up until, I think, the mid-90s. And the legislature was petitioned by landowners out in West Texas to declassify it as no longer being a game animal. Because that would mean what?

So what that means is, it now became classified as an exotic. And so no seasons, no bag limits, you need a hunting license. But basically as a landowner, you could manage the hunting of elk or opportunity to hunt on your property or ranch without worried about, well, the elk season is only a month long, or I'm only going to get three bull tags. You know, basically, you had the ability to decide how you were going to manage elk, how you were going to hunt elk. And so... How is the state... If someone proposed that for deer, you wouldn't like it?

No. So how is... What is the argument? I mean, I understand just... I understand on the individual landowner basis most people and i would be included in this probably most people are going to want a higher degree of autonomy on one's own property but like i said someone came and proposed that to you like i said you know what from now on um i want you to just give me the okay to do what i want with mallards that are on my property i

want to hunt them year round as much as i want. Yeah. You're going to say? No way. We're going to resist that. But here's what I didn't finish on the history of elk in Texas. What also began to crop up were private individuals bringing in elk from captive elk farms. And essentially, there were all of these kind of high-fenced hunting ranches in which elk might be placed on in areas where probably historically there weren't elk or they were intermittent at best. And so you had kind of all these captive elk herds. And so the state

became kind of a grab bag of elk from different locations, managed differently, different settings. So we've been in this situation now where elk, while we consider them native, statutorily they're still considered an exotic, and so you don't have the same kind of regulations that, you know, traditional big game have. And you have like, you don't have management authority over them. We don't have management authority over them. Do they continue to thrive in areas that would be regarded as potentially historic range?

Yeah. So the elk are doing pretty well in parts of West Texas. So for example, you know, the Davis Mountains is a very popular area for people to go hunt, you know, free-range elk in a mountain setting that looks like New Mexico. And so, you know, places you might have a legitimate chance at a 400-inch bull. So, pretty significant bull elk, you know, at what people would think of, you know, today as kind of a traditional Western kind of mountain hunt. But that dichotomy that you mentioned about, you know, some groups would like to see them reclassified as a game animal and have the state take over management of them. Others want to make sure they stay in their current form where they've got that kind of autonomy that you spoke to. That tends to split

landowners right down the middle in West Texas. Some of them- Oh, is that right? Yeah. We like the way it is. We want to continue to have that independence. Others of them say, no, we'd like to see it be a game animal. The elk farms, the kind of the elk ranches, that's a whole separate deal. Separate and apart from, you know, free-range elk populations in far West Texas. I think you'd have to treat those differently. Just very, very different settings and circumstances from a management perspective.

And so, in fact, the state's Animal Health Commission has really the regulatory jurisdiction over elk as an exotic, not the Parks and Wildlife Department. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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exclusive pricing on products and services hand-icked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. You just mentioned the difference between an elk herd that might be roaming around freely and an elk herd that might be contained in a fence on one individual's private property. Explain to me the regulatory difference.

Let's leave elk aside and let's just talk about deer or something else. How does the state view those two things differently? Where free-ranging deer that could be on county land, that could be on an individual's private farm, they're moving around, the people own them. And then you have deer herds that are privately held and held in to a specific landowner's property by a fence. Does the state have to treat those two different deer populations differently? Or is your view that it's all deer and it all falls under the same regulatory structure? All deer belong to the people of Texas. The public trust doctrine in this notion of public ownership of wildlife

prevails and there's a long history of that not just in our state but all across the country. That's the foundation for the North American model. And that's what we subscribe to. And certainly legally and philosophically, you know, we believe that all deer, irrespective of whether they live behind a low fence or a high fence or in a captive game form or out, you know, in a completely free range environment, those deer still belong to the people

of Texas. And so. So in a high fence atmosphere, even where you bring in, you might bring in like introduce for genetic purposes, introduce new deer, buy deer, move them around. That still has to be managed according to rules set by the state. Yes. And the reason for that is that interface between free-range populations of deer and captive populations of deer, the release of captive-bred deer into high-fenced ranches or what are called release sites, there's still ample opportunity for those deer to connect and have connections. And of course, we all know fences are anything but infallible. You know, it's like blow out, a water gap goes down, a tree falls on them, you know, a bull runs through a fence, whatever the group of hogs runs under them, whatever.

So, you know, by no means are those impenetrable. So a high fence operation in Texas, there's still an opening day. Yeah, there's still an opening day of deer season. And, you know, that's one of those great traditions, rites of passage. And I wouldn't think of all high fence properties as somehow radically different than all low fence properties either. Because of the scale. Yeah, the scale of them, that's a great point. And our listeners shouldn't think that because somebody has a high fence around their ranch that they're involved in the breeding of deer, the captive breeding of deer. That's not necessarily the case. I mean, we have 250,000 landowners in our state and about

1,000 deer breeders. But, you know, there are lots of high-fenced ranches, but the scale of them may be very vast. And so you still have the same kind of opportunities for fair chase and hunting however you choose to hunt. There may be a high fence around some or all of those property, and that fence may be more or less effective at keeping deer in or out. And so, you know, folks tend to think about Texas, you know, in that way and have this very kind of negative or pejorative perspective on high fences if you come from states in which that's not so commonplace. What we really focus on is the management behind the fence. What are they doing from a habitat management perspective? How are they managing it to promote habitat diversity? How are they managing it to promote habitat diversity?

How are they managing the game there, the non-game, the unique species? And so the issue is more that management and stewardship, not so much the height of the fence. Can you explain some of the governance around exotics and movement of exotics like like i'm assuming i couldn't let's say i somehow got my hands on a truckload of jaguars i'm assuming i can't just turn the jaguars loose yeah no so so what is okay and what's not okay yeah no so those kind of wild dangerous animals obvious legal prohibitions on first being able to have one in captivity at all, much less release one into the wild. Inevitably, after some hurricane or storm in some area, we may get a call about somebody that had a lion that nobody knew about.

And obviously, there's a lot of concern about that for obvious reasons, but. But you guys don't, you guys don't have a list of the world's animals with a checker and X next to it, right? We don't, and Parks and Wildlife doesn't regulate exotics. You know, that's not, that's not what we do, at least on the animal side. We have some overlap there on aquatic exotic plants that we're, we're involved in, but that's a whole different, different area of management and stewardship and control. But from an exotic animal perspective, that is managed through the state's Animal Health Commission. And so different regulatory structure and entity. There's certainly landowners all across Texas that have got interest in exotic game. That's very popular.ow deer axis deer black buck antelope all day out or you know

many many free range uh in environments now um and so a lot of folks are interested in that from a wildlife and a hunting perspective it's it's pretty popular in our state but we don't have any regulatory authority you got to have a hunting license to to hunt them um but what about situations where that stuff winds up impacting the things that you do have purview over? Yeah. Great question. So most of our wildlife work in Texas, as we talked about earlier, is on private lands. It's in concert with private landowners. It's voluntary. It's collaborative. Put this in perspective, we provide technical assistance on wildlife management to landowners all over the state. And we have roughly 30 million plus acres under a department

approved wildlife management plan. And that's about 20% of the state. So that's kind of evidence of that, that interest. You know, the first thing our biologists are going to do with their landowner partners are what are your goals? What are your interests? And so, you know, for landowners who are interested in both exotics and native game, you know, we want to respect that. We're obviously much more interested in the native game, and that's what we're going to work to help promote and really spend most of our time on. And, you know, we've encouraged them to make sure that those numbers of exotics are managed in such a way that it doesn't have an adverse impact on the native game

and particularly the native habitat. But again, we want to be very sensitive to the goals of the individual landowner. So if a landowner is very interested in, you know, his or her axis deer on their property or their black buck antelope, to the extent that can be incorporated into a wildlife management plan, because the landowners are going to be managing for that anyway. Yeah. And they're going to hunt them. They're going to enjoy them. They're going to utilize them. To the extent that all that can be balanced, that's just something that our biologists have to work through. But we're focused on the native game.

That's our area of emphasis but then if someone owns and if someone has a property they have a private property and they own an exotic on the private property if that exotic animal escapes they no longer own that animal correct no you'd have to get you know permission from a neighbor to go and try to recapture that animal. That ownership doesn't extend like a loose cow or a loose horse. So there's some differences there. You know, if I had that, you know, herd of axis deer and it went over to your ranch. You can't come yelling me for hunting it. No, no, of axis deer and it went over to your ranch. You can't come yelling me for hunting it.

No, no, no. Or come over and fly over and trap them and bring them back. Yeah. You'd have the ability to file, you know, trespassing charges against me. So I'd have to have your permission. Yeah. But I would not be able to go run down and sell your cattle. No, no, absolutely not.

Yeah. Have there been cases inas where you guys have had to where there's been an introduction of an exotic where you had to go and sort of catch it and stop it successfully or is the nature of the landscape here such that when things get out they're just kind of out you know more of the latter than the former when we're thinking about wildlife and particularly large ungulates. You know, again, you know, kind of deer and elk-like animals that we hunt. You know, you got to remember that this kind of history of landowners bringing in exotic game for sport and also for wildlife conservation, you know, helping to, you know, bring back populations of scimitar-horned oryx.

Oh, that's, yeah, that's interesting. Where oftentimes it's been that Texas will have more of some species than it does in its native range. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And it helps prevent genetic extinction. That, exactly, exactly. But that's been going on since the 30s and 40s and 50s. So there's a long history. So, you know, you would say, you know, take your most well-known and populist exotic game animals,

Axis or Fallow or Saika or Black Buck or Audad, you know, they've really naturalized. They're not native, but they've naturalized, so they're here to stay. Where today what we would see is perhaps there is a really invasive or exotic fish or a snake or a plant that our biologists are made aware of in a localized area, more likely the result of somebody tired of having something as a pet. Yeah. And they turn it loose in a city park or a county park. We're going to find it, and we're going to kill it. And that's the ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Um, cause just as you said, you want to jump on that and stop it from being a problem.

Um, and you don't have to, to, to look any further to something like, you know, zebra mussels, um, or giant salvinia and water hyacinth, you know, exotic plants. Yeah, like highly deleterious exotic. That's right. Yeah. They just take off. So we find an outbreak like that in. Yeah, like highly deleterious exotics. That's right. Yeah, they just take off. So we find an outbreak like that in a lake, we're going to go hammer it with herbicide to see what we can do to help kill those plants to keep it from getting established. We don't see that so much in terms of big animals, but, you know, occasionally our biologists

will get a call about, again, a snake or something or a fish. Yeah. It's localized that we can find and try to deal with that problem before it spreads. What is your perspective on concerns with chronic wasting disease? Significant. When you look at deer and deer hunting in Texas and the magnitude of that, just how important it is from, you know, not just the million, hundred thousand hunters that we have in Texas,

but how important that is to real estate values in our state. I mean, basically rural land values. That's a good point I never thought of, man. Yes. Because owning deer properties. You bet. It's huge. To the extent that people would become, obviously, less interested.

Yes. Yeah, no, they'd be very concerned about it. You know, just how important hunting is to our rural communities around the state from a tourism perspective and economic development. I mean, you go to these little towns in the central part of the state, open a weekend of deer season, and those cafes and motels and the hardware stores and the gas stations are packed to the gills with people in camouflage. And so that's real money that's out of county money, and it makes an impact locally. And you guys have had a couple positives now,

right? We have. So we've got kind of three nodes of CWD in our state. It's by no means pervasive. The first node is out right near the New Mexico border, just east of El Paso in a little mountain range called the Waco Mountains, which is pretty isolated. And we found it there in mule deer. Then we found it up in the Panhandle, the northern part of our state, very close to the New Mexico line. Again, we think with free-range animals coming over from New Mexico, but we found it in mule deer, we found it in a couple of elk, we found it in a couple of whitetail. And then down in central Texas, kind of the heart of some of the most populous deer country, we found chronic wasting disease in four pretty large captive breeding operations.

And so we've been working very actively to help deal with that. What are the biggest limitations right now on, presumably you can't do everything you wish you could do. Sure. What's the limitation from your perspective on trying to slow it, get rid of it? I mean, can you? You can't get rid of it. I mean, that's the—

So you think, like, Texas will not go back to being free of CWD? No, I don't think we will. But that doesn't mean we're complacent about it and we somehow lay behind the log and say, hey, we've got it in these three isolated areas, so we're not going to worry about it everywhere else. Absolutely to the contrary. So our strategy is

focused on three goals. First, we want to minimize the impacts of CWD to all of our deer populations, whether it's free range or captive. Secondly, we want to make sure that we minimize the impact from CWD to hunting and hunting-based economies. And that includes real estate values, rural communities, tourism, hunter expenditures, all that. And then last but not least is we want to make sure that our management actions are done in such a way that we maintain the trust and confidence of our hunters and our private landowners.

Absolutely critical. So those are the three ten confidence of our hunters and our private landowners. Absolutely critical. So those are the three tenets of our efforts. And then from a strategy perspective, we're focused on two things. First is early detection. So if it's out there, we want to find it so that all of a sudden, you know, we can get mandatory testing in place. We can get carcass movement restrictions in place. We can get prohibitions on moving live deer into and out of those areas in place. So very active from a surveillance perspective. Our biologists are spending a lot of time collecting brain samples throughout the year, but particularly during hunting season. We've stratified the state according to kind of statistical grids to sample at levels that gives us varying level of confidence or degrees of confidence that we'd find it dependent

on the sample size. A lot of effort on the early detection and the sampling. And then it becomes a containment issue. I'm not aware of any situation in any kind of a free range environment in which anybody has really gotten rid of it. So it gets at how do you arrest the spread of it? And the two biggest threats to that, of course, are large aggregations of animals, right? And then the movement of an animal from an infected area to another area.

You know, they move on a trailer or whatever, some artificial movement of deer. So, you know, working to kind of manage densities in those areas and then also make sure that we don't have movement of deer into or out of areas that we know have CWD. Again, it's a big issue for our state just because deer hunting, deer management, enjoyment of rural land is so tied to the health and enjoyment of deer populations in our state that we have got to take an aggressive strategy in dealing with it. Thankfully, we have it in three isolated areas and that's how we want to keep it. Do you feel that you've gotten adequate federal support on working with CW, like coordination and support? Or are all the states just kind of duking it out on their own?

Well, and I think that's a real issue that's out there. Historically, we had financial support through USDA APHIS to help with monitoring the surveillance because we're spending very, very conservatively, you know, let's say a million and a half dollars a year on just the CWD surveillance. So remember, that's time that biologists also could be spending working with landowners on habitat management, wildlife management, you know, working on game, non-game, whatever, whatever other priorities that we have out there. So there's a real opportunity cost to time. Historically, we did have some federal funding to help with that. Now, as I understand it, there is proposed funding this year in the House Appropriations Bill for the Department of Agriculture to help ensure that there's going to be some

funding made available to the states to help support that surveillance. That would be helpful. Undoubtedly, there is a need for greater coordination across our country with respect to how do we deal with it. And, you know, as I look at that, I would say, you know, one, I mean, states have the jurisdictional authority over deer and elk, largely. There's some exceptions to that, but mostly. And we need to respect those jurisdictional boundaries, and states need to be able to choose how to respond to things, just depending on what the cultural and political currents are of the state. Those are just realities that we have to deal with in wildlife politics, as you said. But we could benefit from additional federal funding coming to the states to help support adaptive management a more coordinated, comprehensive look at targeted research,

particularly testing and evaluating these adaptive management strategies that states are implementing, kind of independent of one another. But, you know, it's not all done in some kind of a rigorous experimental design type setting. So some targeted research to test that. And it needs to be over time, right? It needs to be longitudinal. You can't just study this kind of an issue for two years, a traditional master's student and say, hey, we're done. You need to commit to that over a much longer period of time.

We also see capacity issues in testing labs for CWD. And so, you know, we have the Texas A&M, the Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab does a fabulous job. They're really good partners of ours on their testing work of CWD samples, whether that's from, you know, free range, uh, uh, populations or from captive bred facilities, they really work hard at that, but the capacity is constrained. So there's a lag in testing those animals. So hunter kills a deer, um, it's in an area in which it's a mandatory testing area. And, you know, if they have to wait six weeks for that sample to come back to no fault of, of, of, of our lab. It's just a capacity issue.

It'd be nice if we could accelerate that with additional capacity. Last thing that I think that could probably get some help on federally is work on a more coordinated, consistent message for hunters to help explain CWD, why it is, why it matters, and what they can do to help address it. I find that there's still a lot of ignorance out there about the disease, a lack of awareness. Hunters that may be unwittingly contributing to the spread of it through the movement of infected carcass parts.

Sure, yeah. And there's just some, just distrust. And some distrust of government, right? Meaning that people are using it as a sort of proxy. Yeah, or fear-mongering, right? I mean, you know, you hear that too. It's a fear-mongering issue. It's, you have more deer killed by cars than you do by CWD.

How many times have you heard that argument? And so it affects such a relatively small number of animals across the country or a particular state in some cases that why are you so concerned about it? Well, you know, it's a brain disease. It's always fatal. It's incurable. You don't need to comment on this, but it's, and maybe I'm even wrong about my assumption, but it would seem that the livestock industry would be very interested in CWD.

Keenly interested, very interested. Because we, like as a hunter and a person that eats a hell of a lot of deer meat, I'm concerned about the human health considerations. But I mean, it would be catastrophic to the cattle industry should that disease jump. A species barrier. A species barrier.

And all of a sudden we had the equivalent of mad cow disease. Yeah, a BSE type situation. Well, you know, the thing- And again, you don't need to get into that, but it's just something I puzzle over that you just don't, and maybe it's out there and I'm not privy to it.

You just don't, you don't hear that industry talk about, wow, what is this? Let's get a grip on this. We do in Texas. You do? Yeah, Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers, you know, their members are terrific partners with the department. Many of

them are very actively involved in wildlife management on their ranches. And, you know, deer is the proverbial, you know, goose that laid the golden egg. And so they're actively involved, very knowledgeable about this. And they do compare the very strict testing requirements and food safety protocols on livestock and meat and meat-related products because of that public safety and making sure that the consumers are comfortable with the safety of the meat that they're eating. Very, very focused on that from a market perspective. So they absolutely make that parallel in terms of advocating for, you know, more testing and appropriate testing in deer populations, you know, if CWD is indeed a problem.

So yeah, you'd be surprised at the awareness or linkage. Perhaps it's not verbalized as much or perhaps it's not talked about as much in all states, but certainly the cattle raisers in Texas have been very, very strong partners with us in our efforts to help raise awareness and deal with this issue in Texas. So, last thing for you. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities you see in your position? And I'm guessing that you would probably put CWD among the biggest or not the biggest? Well, I mean, I think CWD is one of those emerging wildlife-related challenges that transcends boundaries. You think about all these different vectors and portals and areas of commerce into Texas.

And so whether it's white-nose syndrome in bats or CWD in deer or some rare fungal disease in amphibians or the introduction of, you know, exotic and invasive plants that proliferate and take over our lakes like a bad Alfred Hitchcock movie. You know, those issues are— Sounds like revelations. Those are real. And, you know, we take a lot of pride in our native plant and animal communities. I mean, we want to keep it that way. That native wildlife heritage, that outdoor heritage, that diversity of habitats that we talked about, we want to keep those native and healthy. And so there are challenges for us. And so I don't want to play let's pretend. I mean,

we've got a big growing state, 28 million people and growing, most of them very detached from the kind of things that we love, that in and of itself. You feel that that's true? Yeah. Yeah. of whether or not somebody is urban or rural, old or young, doesn't matter what the demographic stratifier is, that today people still have some kind of desire to see wildlife conserved and protected. You know, there's still positive sentiments. I think what we all worry about, and appropriately, is that increasing

generational detachment. And what does that mean? Will that attenuate? Will it subside? Will it go away? What does that mean for the future of, you know, hunting and angling and responsible and ethical fisheries and wildlife management? Will we have the support from a populace that, you know, doesn't hunt and fish and so therefore doesn't, you know, pay into the system? Will they see the benefits of that? So that population issue, competition for water, of course, is big. Fragmentation of ranches, you know, it's harder to keep family ranches together for all kinds of reasons. So we see them getting smaller and more fragmented. And that inevitably leads to habitat loss. Yeah, and that leads to habitat loss. So there are no shortage of challenges. We could write

war and peace on that particular topic. All of those are opportunities as well. How do we better connect with an urban-based audience that is detached from the outdoors? How do we use technology, not as our enemy, but as our portal to connect people to the outdoors and get them interested to come to places? How do we invest in more, you know, parks in public areas that are close to where people are so that they have easy access? How do we create more mentor programs? How do we help shape educational programs in the schools through all ages to make sure that people are getting a proper grounding in natural resources-related literacy?

You know, speaks to kind of this R3 effort that's going on nationally where, you know, I think for the fishing side of things, we've got a real opportunity to move the needle, certainly getting people in the outdoors to enjoy wildlife. Maybe they're not going to be hunters, but we want them to appreciate hunters. We want them to appreciate hunting. We want them to appreciate wildlife management, understand the science behind it, the reasons behind it, and why that can help all of the species of interest that we're charged with managing. So the challenges, again, are our opportunities as well. And I think what's the overriding concern for all of us, irrespective of where we work, is trying to leave our home ground better than we found it.

Yeah. Our buddy Doug Dern. Yeah. I don't know where he stole it but maybe he made it up no he stole it it's not ours it's our turn our turn yeah yeah yeah do you got any last final thoughts no i mean i we've covered the waterfront uh pretty well Was there nothing you were dying to wedge in there that we didn't get to? No, gosh, we have. I'm trying to think if there's anything we didn't cover. Let me hit you with my concluder, and you can do one if you've got one, and Giannis is going to go.

I mentioned Shane Mahoney earlier. In the same conversation where we talked about the model, the complex model, he was talking about that same thing he just brought up was funny you mentioned technology and and people's engagement with the natural world and he made a point that he was saying guys like him and his generation is true of me i'm 45 and this is the same thing with me we grew up in a world that like doesn't exist and he like talks about you know riding off on your bike with your 22 right doesn't happen and it's like it is he says so many people in in his age and again i'm gonna include myself in it

are thinking like for for people to engage with the natural world we need to recapture and deliver to them this child this like idyllic childhood that we had growing up out in the rural parts of america where you took off in the morning with your 22 and fishing rod and came home after dark and he's like that's the mind frame and how we're going to re-engage people with nature um and the technology's bad and he says like that technology is bad. And he says like that approach is not going to work. I couldn't agree more. We are not going to,

we are not going to bring that back and make that a scalable model for wildlife engagement. And you're going to have to find a way to make the natural world, make nature relevant in a way that people can understand and they're going to relate to how they do. And he says, I feel that that will happen. And technology, if it's going to happen, technology and an embracing of technology will be part of that.

Amen. You will not get people to leave it behind. I couldn't agree more with that approach. The other is just so wildly idealistic. We'll never go back to that. There are people who pull it off. Very localized.

Very localized. In national terms, when you talk about an increasingly urbanized environment, if we're going to make it this binary thing, you have to love nature and hate technology, and that's the only way we're going to win. You'll never win that. You know, if that was a battle,

which I don't think it ever was, by the way, although people love to frame that, and a lot of it had to do with people extrapolating, making their own inferences from, you know, some of the findings that drove the whole, you know whole last child in the woods movement, children and nature-related movement. But I think most folks who are given this issue, any real thought have come to the same conclusion is

technology is here, it's here to stay, it's growing, and it's increasing part of our kids. And you can't make kids choose. And you can't make kids choose. So meet them where they're at and let them experience. It's like taking my, I've got some young cousins that are 11, 12, 13. And yeah, I'm kind of mildly annoyed by the fact that we're sitting out there in a ground blind or something.

And they want to post everything on Snapchat and Instagram and tell the story electronically and their smartphones are going 90 to nothing. But you know what? They seem to have a ball. So who is it of me to tell them, no, I want you to enjoy it my way. You can't do it your way. You got to enjoy it my way. You catch me in the right mood.

I say all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Well, I just don't think it works. I'll leave you with this story. Fifteen years ago, I've got a buddy of mine that ranches out in far west Texas, sprawling ranch, gets left alone by his wife with his two young daughters. And I think they were four and five. She leaves to go into town to see parents or something for the weekend. And so he's doing parent duty at the ranch. He said he watched his two daughters one afternoon spend their entire

afternoon within about a five foot radius of a big oak tree in their front yard. And it dawned on him at the time that, hey, you don't need to take people to some big wilderness area. Yeah, we'd all love to know that they're there, but people can find nature anywhere. They can find it at an undeveloped city block, a lot, a park, a little green belt, you know, sitting under a tree, looking at your office building, and there's a peregrine falcon, you know, preying on a pigeon, you know, in downtown Chicago. It's not that we don't want to get people out into these wild places. We do, but let's help them discover nature and the outdoors where they are. And I thought it was interesting for that friend to have that revelation

about the population as a whole from watching his two ranch-raised girls on a big sprawling ranch because of their interaction with one tree in their front yard and how just connected they were. Sure. That thing's pretty cool. Yeah. I had an interviewer recently ask me, like, where's the best place to hunt deer? I said, as close to your house as possible.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. You got any? I know we're short on time. I'll leave it at this. That was a good story to finish on. Good. Yeah, thank you very much for joining us. I'm sure you're extremely busy, so thanks for giving us so much of your time. Delighted to be here. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm sure you're extremely busy

so thanks for giving us so much of your time. Delighted to be here. Thank you for having me. All right. Tell them, Yanni. StarsInTheSkyFilm.com, man. Tell them.

Yeah. You guys need to go over to StarsInTheSkyFilm.com and buy a copy of it. And I was just thinking that you ought to buy a second copy to give. I don't know how that works. You get a link and you can give it to somebody, but you should buy it for a non-hunter who's uneasy with hunting. That's right because it's a very good

deep dive into hunting, explores all the different realms of hunting that we all know so well and are so easy for us to talk about and understand. But Steve does a really good job in the documentary of sort of, you know, opening it up to and in a conversation where people that are non-endemic outside of our little hunting bubble can understand all these topics that we deal with and grapple with all the time. You'll enjoy it, but I also feel like if you're

somebody that wants to promote hunting and make hunting cool again, you should pass it along to some folks. Yeah. Yanni worked on the movie. Yeah. I had a good time working on it. And Yannis is the, he's the most honest man in show business is that right? he's telling you to go watch it oh yeah I know for a fact thank you guys starsintheskyfilm.com

where you can find our new documentary available for streaming and download purchase 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.

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