The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 224: Size Matters

Episode Date: June 7, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Boone and Crockett Club's Justin Spring, Kyle Lehr, and Tony Schoonen, plus Phil Taylor and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: Apologies to a dude with a rotten whitefish; a child's marble in a turkey’s gizzard; Wonders of Wildlife and selling lures out of your dad's liquor store; is Steve's dad in the B&C record?; Boone and Nugent; deductions and hunter-based grievances with the B&C scoring system; how much Steve loves the word, "penalize"; bilateral symmetry as a display of health; scoring systems being a way for folks to argue about the size of racks; fair chase guidelines in the face of emerging technology; the evolution of the term trophy hunting, associations with its meaning, and is it too late to save that word?; brown bears vs. grizzly bears based on access to salmon and the Alaska range line; what "all time" means and Steve's suggestion of a "top 100" standard; Steve's gripe with B&C for not including javelina entries; a bison source herd at the Bronx Zoo; 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 Onyx. Okay, first thing we got to start out with is two fishing related things. Now we're going to get into the real meat of the show here, but the two fishing related things on episode 222, which is a

couple ago. We just did episode 223 and someone pointed out that we should have commemorated it more carefully because it was a rifle caliber. So the 223. But the 222 episode. Which is also, isn't there another rifle caliber? Is there a 222?

I believe there's a 222. Yeah. Search that up. I challenged the veracity. I challenged the veracity of a man's email who wrote in to say that he snagged a fishing line or snagged a rod ice fishing in 100 feet of water, pulled up the rod, reeled up all the line, and lo and behold, on the end of it is a dead whitefish. And I somehow questioned the veracity of his, of his tail.

And unless he went out that day with a rotten whitefish, um, he sent him photographs that made me the back them up. So my apologies to his, his name is stew beard. My apologies to, uh, Mr.

Stew beard. That looks like a legitimately rotten whitefish that you found on the bottom of the lake. It's so rotten that he is kind of poking at it in the picture and doesn't want to quite seem to want to grab it. Guys, another interesting, this is not a fishing-related one, but a thing that someone sent in is they sent in,

did you see this, Yanni? A guy sent in a turkey's gizzard. Cut open. You know what it had in it? A marble. Like a kid's marble. I believe it. Yeah.

I'll put that picture on Instagram. So if you go to at Stephen Rinella on Instagram. The question is though, is you think he was eating it to add to like the stones? Yes. His gizzard? Or did he think it was some sort of food that he hadn't seen before? It's seven, eight times bigger than a normal piece of, that's a great question, man. I hadn't thought about it like that.

Yeah, because it's definitely way bigger than the average piece of stone that's in that gizzard. You know what he could have thought it was? You know how they eat snails? Mm-hmm. I hadn't even occurred to me that that was the case. That marble had like a little swirl to it. Could have been like a little snail twist. I found a bear shit one time that was all Crayola crayons.

Yeah, he found a box of Crayola crayons. Yeah, I think you're probably correct. He wasn't picking it up as grit. He thought he's eating something tasty. The last fishing thing is a conundrum, a father and son conundrum that we need to, that they had asked that we weigh in on. So this dude and his dad were fishing

and they both had lines out and the old man gets distracted and the kid looks and the old man's rod's going crazy while his old man's off talking to some guy. So the kid runs over and reels the rod in and it's like some tanker four pound rainbow. So whose fish is it? I think it's the old man's fish. Really? Yeah. On an unintended rod. Yeah, I do.

No, I'm going to disagree. He rigged it. He rigged it. He cast it out. It's like, I don't know. If I saw a video of what was going on, maybe I'd have a different opinion. But I don't know. Maybe his old man was barely distracted.

Yeah. So that the listeners don't think that it's just you and I sitting here talking to each other all day. I think we should ask our guests to weigh in on this one. But go ahead, sure. If you guys have anything to say, please. And keep in mind, these are representatives here from, I would actually defer to you guys. We have three representatives here from the Boone and Crockett Club. So they spent all day, they sat there and look at, you know,

whether or not to accept things in the record books and stuff. So I feel like these guys have like a moral, they sort of have the moral high ground. We have the power. You have the credentials to weigh it out. So let's say you guys were a fish, let's say you guys kept fish records, and this was a record fish, and they come to you and be like, here's this record fish, and you're like, clearly let's say you guys kept fish records and this was a record fish and they come to you and be like here's this record fish and you're like clearly it's a record fish whose name

do we put down and then uh they tell you the story a lot of times when that happens one will take the ownership of the fish and the other one will say they called it now as long as the person that called it had the fishing license they would be be good, you know, and they followed all the rules. A lot of times that's what a lot of father-sons do is they'll, like the son will shoot it or vice versa. And then we have a thing where the father could then take ownership, which is basically just a sentence letting us know that, hey, this person hooked this fish and I'm the owner of it. So we base everything off of the ownership of the trophy. Bahamut, no. So that would mean, that's what I'm saying, who owns the fish?

They would have to decide. Yeah. Oh, they would have to decide. Legally, isn't it whoever reels the fish in? Like, because there's certain states that say if you hook it and land it, it's your fish and it's on your bag limit. So I can't hook a fish and hand it off. Yeah.

So therefore, whoever hooked it had the legality of it. So the kid that grabbed the rod, I think legally it is his fish. But if he was nice enough to Kyle's point, he could allow his dad to be listed as a secondary fisherman in this case, assuming they both had the licenses necessary for the fish. I like that perspective on it. Let's say he had pulled it in, and then there was a problem. He retained a fish he wasn't allowed to retain.

He wouldn't be able to be like, well, the game warden, you better talk to my old man. It was his rod. The game warden's going to be interested in who... Who hooked it and who landed it. Yeah. All right. So it's the kid's fish.

Thank you. Settle that problem for the family. Before you move on. Now we'll do the intros. Before you move on, though. 2-2-2 Remington. Oh, okay. Triple deuce.

First centerfire.22 caliber in our country. There you go. Great. Yanni earned his key. Okay, now we'll do intros. Thanks, Google. We're talking to folks from the Boone and Crockett Club. We're going to explore this whole thing up, down, sideways, but let's start out with what he has due.

Each of you, you know. So, I'm Tony Shonan, and I'm the chief executive officer at Boone and Crockett. How long have you held that position? About two weeks. Oh, seriously? They just changed my title. No. I was the chief of staff for 12 years.

I see. And then they just decided to change my staff for whatever reason. But anyway, I've been running the organization for about 12 years. I see. And I've been 30 years in the outdoor space. About half of that was the for-profit sector. Half was the nonprofit sector. I went to my first SHOT Show when I was 21.

I just went to my 35th. I should get some kind of a prize, but they haven't offered me anything. I'm surprised you're still alive. Yeah, me too, me too. That's a lot of like coming home with like a weird flu. Yeah. I've managed to avoid the weird flus thing.

But no, so it's been a good ride. Had a video production company to begin with. And then I went to work for Wonders of Wildlife. Ran that operation down there. And then Tabuna Crockett. But didn't Wonders of Wildlife just open up? They were open before. And then when I left as executive director there, they shut it down for remodel.

And then they just opened it up two years ago, which I don't know if you guys have been there, but it's an awesome place. I keep hearing people that aren't easily impressed who'd say it's like really something. Yeah. No, it's awesome. I don't know anything about it. What is it and where is it? It's at, well, I'll tell you, I've never been there I don't know anything about it. What is it and where is it? It's at, well, I'll tell you. I've never been there and didn't know anything about it.

No, it's a museum and aquarium that was built. The first round was in 2001. And the original intent of Johnny Morris was to have a home for hunters and anglers and all the stories and the traditions surrounding that community. And then when I left in 2007, Johnny wanted to make it a bigger and better place. And so that's what he did. And so it's still a tribute to the American sportsmen and women of the country, but it's incredible. You just got to see it. I can't really describe it.

We had our two awards programs there the last two times. Like three miles of trail through there? Yeah, three miles of trail. Oh, really? Yeah. Is that the one that's down in Florida? It's in Springfield, Missouri. Oh, okay.

You're thinking of the- IGFA, right? IGFA. You said it's a hotel, right? No, we ate in a restaurant right across from it or something like that. No, but yeah, just for people to know, Johnny Morris is the founder of Bass Pro Shop. That's a hell of a story. Yeah, it is.

Like that guy's life. Oh, yeah. He started out like selling bait at a marina or something like that. No, he started in his dad's liquor stores. Was that what he did? With an end cap. Yeah. And his dad had, I don't know how many liquor stores, a dozen or so in Springfield.

And he sold, uh, he sold off the end cap. And actually there's a rendition of the very first, uh, uh, end cap that he had at, uh, in the museum. Oh, really? At, at one of his dad's liquor stores. And so, yeah. Like a live, like a live bait end cap or a

tackle end cap? No, no, it was just a, a tackle end cap? No, it was just a tackle end cap. You know, he didn't like the tackle that the local store was using. So he went to Arkansas, bought a Chuck Lowe bat, put them in his dad's stores, and that's where the whole story started. Yeah. Was he calling it Bass Pro Shop back then? Yeah, it was always Bass Pro, as far as I know. I mean, he's a little bit older than I am, but I've known John for 30 years, 40 years, and it's

always been Bass Pro. Yeah. He's a sharp dude though. He's a great guy. Yeah. And you'll find a bigger conservationist than he is. We should have him on.

I'd like to. So. If you're listening, John. All right. So moving on, then there's Giannis as though dealing poker. Good morning. Giannis.

And then moving over. Yeah. My name is Kyle Lair. I'm the assistant director of big game records at the Boone and Crockett Club. I've been there for a little over five years now. Assistant director of big game. Yep. So my main duty is to review all the entries that we get in. So we have about 1,400 volunteer official measures throughout North America. And it's my job to basically make sure that every entry that comes in basically has all its T's crossed and its I's dotted.

Gotcha. And then to make sure that, you know, to be there if they have any questions while they're scoring or any questions about our basic policies and procedures, stuff like that. Mainly keep those entries moving through. So there's 1,400 volunteer scorers. We'll explain what this all means in a minute. Yeah, plus or minus. How many are active? A good majority of them. I mean, a lot of the people that we train to be official measures want to be.

And so a lot of what they measure though, doesn't quite, I mean, it's, it's pretty rare to actually harvest a Boone and Crockett club caliber animal. Uh, so a lot of guys want to become official measures and they think they're going to measure a ton and they might only get a couple in their lifetime, but they measure a lot of ones.

That are big enough to enter the books. Yeah. Yeah. But they don't, the ones that don't make it, we don't necessarily see. So they're doing a lot of basically public contact for us. I mean, they're the people that most of the public's going to see. They won't talk to Justin or I or anyone else. They'll meet our official measures.

So they're pretty much ambassadors for us. And so it's our job to make sure that they know what they're doing and know how to do it. Yeah, my old man was a scorer. I know he was real active in Pope and Young, but I feel like I know he did commemorative bucks of Michigan. He scored for Pope and Young, and I'm almost certain he scored for Boone and Crockett.

Is that something you can look up past measures? Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. We keep track of everyone who's been a measure. I don't know if he's registered in there or not. Ronella last name.

Yeah. Frank. I did some research. He was not on there before. He's not in there? No. Frank J. Ronella? We did a database transfer

in 2000 and some of the names could have been lost. Really? Oh man. But generally speaking. I mean, everybody brought their stuff over and he had all the forms and maybe he was just,

maybe he just, no, I know he measured rifle stuff too. Well, you said at CBM, Commemorative Bucks in Michigan is another great scoring organization we work with close and a lot of these. So maybe he just, he could have been registered with them. State registered. They're trained to score with our system.

They use our system. They just may not have gone through the process of an actual BNC certification. Gotcha. Gotcha. Which I guess I should introduce myself. Sorry. I'm Justin Spring. I'm the director of big game records.

I've been with BNC a little over 10 years. Started with them at the assistant director doing what Kyle does now with the review of entry. And then when he came on, I transitioned into the director. Basically help him out, make sure the PR side of our official majors, they're doing the best they can for conservation. That's kind of what I'm tasked with. Making sure our scoring is uniform, that the current science that's coming out, we're not rewarding something that's actually a negative, which we'll get into further later on what we're looking for. But that's, that's my normal nine to five position with BNC and kind of helping Kyle out and keeping all of our majors doing the same thing for uniformity throughout the system.

All right. Before we get too deep, we should do this. I want, I want to bring people up to speed on something. Cause I feel like a lot more people know. I think that people know about Boone and Crockett. They know the scoring system. So let's just catch up on that and what that means. And if you're out and about and you hear someone say that so-and-so got a 180 whitetail, so-and-so got a 400-inch bull,

a 20-inch blackberry Like what does that mean? Okay. So the system was originally started at the very beginning. They thought wildlife was going extinct and they were trying to find the biggest specimens, which would have gone in the national collection of heads and horns, which is now at the wonders of wildlife, which we still have that collection, but they were trying to find the biggest to show our generation what was once on the North American continent. They thought everything was going extinct. So that was the beginning of our records. You know, through the work of early club members and conservationists and whatnot, things started to turn around. After World War II, conservation has really taken off. You had funding and everything in place. People no longer wanted to go see dead heads on a wall of a museum.

And we had this data set that we'd started. And so in 1950, they said, we need to create an equitable system to evaluate big game. And then we can use this system to monitor conservation successes and failures across the North American continent. So they brought together, there was a couple of people at the time, there was a taxidermist that had his own scoring system. And then there was- What was that scoring system? It never took off.

It was, I can't remember the name of it, Kyle. Well, you had Gransel Fitz and Jimmy Clark. Jimmy Clark. It was James Clark Taxidermy. And so anybody that was a taxidermy client of his would enter their trophies in a competition and he'd do a banquet and give out awards. Huh. So he made one. And he made his own little system.

Yep. And it was actually, it was pretty well done. And then the other side of it was the more, you know, widely known system. But anyway, these guys come together, Boone and Crockett put together a committee of five of them that they kind of sat down and they said, okay, let's look at the science of today. And what are the traits that we see in a mature male specimen that comes from an ideal habitat? And so you look at nature, you have bilateral symmetry. That's a huge question. Everybody asks, why does BNC have deductions? Well, if you look at nature and if you're looking at something, your eye is drawn to bilateral symmetry and it's very common. So the first thing they said is we have to have left

or right matching. That's a sign of healthy habitat and healthy animal. And so they went through each different category and kind of said, you know, what are the signs of a mature animal? What is common? What's caused by some form of stressor, and they came together with the system. You know, for moose, for example, we don't measure the length of points because a mature moose has the palmatian that gets bigger. And so a very mature bull may not have long points.

So they didn't want to reward the length of a point on a moose. Instead, they wanted to reward the palmatian, which seemed to be prevalent in the healthiest of the specimens. Got you. So that was, that was the basis. And then they just took the number of inches of whatever they felt was important. And that gave you a number, you know, that was, that was the original thing is, you know,

where, where does this rank in terms of, um. When it took a while to get there. Yeah. I mean, the, the scoring system started out with length of horn and what they called the girth of the base or the circumference of base. And that was how they got an idea of a sheep or a goat. And so it started out kind of rudimentary and they realized that in order to be scientific, there had to be more rigor and there had to be more measurements to get a, to allow again, the public, what they thought the animals that were going extinct to get a picture of what that number was. And so if you say that number 160 or a 180 whitetail, like I, you're

getting a picture in your head of what that is. Yeah. Well, it becomes, I think it becomes ingrained for people who are exposed to it a lot. I remember when I couldn't picture it, right? I didn't know what it meant. And then gradually over the years, now, if someone says like a 200-inch mule deer, I get a very specificMS in our course, I say, we've created a system of measurements that you add and subtract to get to some number that we've created. Now we think that number is important. And luckily other agencies and scientists and stuff have bought into that and the hunters as well. I mean, we wouldn't have a database if people didn't take the time to have their trophy measured. So they've kind of all bought into it. And so, you know, it's just, like I said, it's just a set of measurements that are added and subtracted to get to the score. And we say entered in as many different things, you know, organizations as there is out there because they all have an important mission. They're all trying to accomplish something. We're just one of them.

And we've created this measuring system. I think it's important too to, you know, go, you know, turning that timetable back a little bit, the purpose that, you know, these guys didn't really kind of sit down and come up with a scoring system because they needed something to do. Right. You know, there's a precursor to all of that. When the club was founded in 1887, they wanted to solve a problem,

and that was the fact that our wildlife populations were being decimated, our natural resources were disappearing in the West. And, you know, they wanted to figure out a way to fix it. And so, you know, they started with the Yellowstone Preservation Act in 1892. Then when Roosevelt was president, they got the National Wildlife Refuge System, the National Forest Reserve. Was he involved with Boone and Crockett? He was, right?

He founded the organization. Yeah. So he founded it in 1887? Yep. Okay. Yep. Yep. There's an interesting story behind that too.

Why the hell, real quick, I want to get back to the timeline there, but why did he, so why Boone and why Crockett? Okay. That's a good, so, and I'll be- You can come back to that if you want. No, no, actually that's a good place to go. So when the club was founded in 1887 because Roosevelt had been out West for three years. This was after the death of his wife and his mother.

Yeah. He was a real mama's boy too. Yeah. Well, but anyway, so he was out and he had two ranches in Medora, North Dakota, and that's when he rode around in the Dakotas and Wyoming and Montana and Idaho. And he saw all this, you know, decimation I'm talking about.

And so he was upset about that when he got back to New York city in 1887. He called around a group of guys that, you know, were influential in their respective areas, industry people, scientists, education folks, politicians. And but they were all joined by one common thread, and that was that they were they were hunters. They were sportsmen and they cared about conservation in the future. So they sat around, scratched their heads, tried to figure out, you know, what were they going to call this new organization. And at the time, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were the two most prominent names in that space. You know, I mean, they were the most famous people.

So if you went to someone in America and he said, name two hunters. At that time, yes. Now, you'd probably be on that list. No, no, it'd be Boone and Nugent. Yeah, that's right. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. But I mean, I think the, you know, so essence, the scoring system was created, and our population started recovering and growing, the system then became a measuring tool for how do we measure the success of everything that

we've done. And so, and that's what it is today. You know, that's, we're still gathering this data, we're still sharing it with state wildlife managers, with academics, with folks that, you know, why is my ecosystem not working and somebody else's is? They're getting, you know, bigger male specimens than I am. You know, they come to us and they ask us those questions. And then we can hook them up with those people that are successful wildlife managers and to help them out. And so there's a distinct purpose there besides just counting inches and counting numbers. Well, have you guys, like when you look at the records, I need to ask you another question about the records because explain the cutoff. Like you guys don't accept something until it's a

certain size, right? Or do you accept all numbers? It's just, they don't get put into the book. So what we, uh, what we do, we've set a My question isn't clear enough for people. We've set a threshold that says if it exceeds this particular level, it is worth recording as a mature male specimen

created by this habitat. Okay. If we were clearly, or if we were purely wanting to just recognize the biggest and best, why would we accept a threshold? We'd say, send in your biggest mule deer this year. Yeah. And then we just keep track of what those biggest ones were, but that's not what our mission is.

We're looking at any time a male specimen reaches a certain age under certain conditions, this is the expression of its secondary sexual characteristic, AKA antlers or horns. And so we want to mark this down because we can't keep track of everything taken in the country. So we have to take a small, small bit of this data set and then we can extrapolate it out. Now we can't say, okay, Bozeman, whatever, Gallatin County, Montana, say historically it put out 10 book mule deer a year and then it drops to five. Our records can't say, oh, well, this is what happened. But we can say, well, for 30 years it put out 10 and then all of a sudden at this point it dropped to five, what changed? And so that's, that's why we have a threshold

and we had to set it somewhere. Yeah. You know, and you, you wanted to say those mature male specimens that reach an age and beyond breeding, um, prime breeding basically was the idea of going for the super older ones because it have no effect on the population. So that's what you wanted to concentrate your,

your harvest pressure. And then we can record how often those happen and try to extrapolate that to habitat quality. So what story does it tell? Um, if you pick a species, like let's say you pick whitetail deer, does, when you look at the submissions that come in, like the number of deer every year and when did they start like

diligently keeping records? The current system was 1950. That's what I was trying to get. It wasn't real clear. We started for one reason and then it was was redone in the 50s to switch focus to really use as a gauge so 1950s that's when the current system came that's when the current system came in so if you look at from 1950 to now um do you like does the story that the record book entries tell line up with the story as we generally understand it that meaning that um starting i don't know when the hell it started

in the 90s you know we just started to have a lot bigger deer around the country because management practices began to change whitetail deer well yeah sorry Whitetail deer. Well, yeah, sorry. Whitetail deer because management practices began to change. Do you like, does your stuff reflect that? A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're, we're entering more every year and that is a testament to the effective wildlife management by our state and federal agencies. And, um, that's kudos to them.

Cause I mean, we're, we're taking more big critters in. What are the things that you, what are some animals that you realize that more and more of them are making the books? And what are animals where you're looking to be like, man, something's not right because we're just not seeing them anymore? Well, I guess before we get to that one, Steve, I want to go a little bit more into your whitetail question because it's a great example. So you have the 90s, right? Milo Hanson, the buck out of bigger Saskatchewan, world record typical whitetail. At that time, we were seeing more top end quality deer than we are whitetails as we are now. Now, I would argue that what you saw was an overpopulation of deer.

We were too successful. And then you have a density, you know, the species is too dense. So you're actually seeing a decline in the available resources to go to antlers. Well, we had that big die off a few years ago. You remember when EHD hit the upper Midwest, would have never been seen in Wisconsin, you know, across the, across that area.

And so there was a huge die off of whitetails. Well, we saw a corresponding drop in entries, but what we saw after that was you had unexploited resources, that, that Tucker buck out of Tennessee, there was some deer that absolutely blew the doors off because there was extra resources. Gotcha.

And so something like that is, is what our records are real cool about. And sometimes it gets lost because I can't look at Missoula County on mountain lion entries and make a hypothesis off of one county. Yeah. Because I don't have a big enough data set. But when I look at the entire upper Midwest and see a 70% decline, that's where our records fit in and doesn't really exist anywhere else.

So that, now to get back to your question on the species we're seeing, caribou. Caribou are dismal. Like you're just not seeing big caribou come in? With our, yeah, we're not. We used to get a few thousand every three years. We're lucky to get 300. No kidding. Yeah.

Now they're, you know, you look at the barren, oh, the barren ground caribou, Northern Alaska, they're starting to see the populations go up. So I'm hoping that I start to see that gradual uptick in our records. Um, I haven't noticed it yet. You know, that's more Kyle now doing the day to day review. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, caribou are bad. Bears, we're seeing, we're seeing more and bigger bears from all over North America. The South, the South black bears, grizzly bears, brown bears, they're seeing, we're seeing more and bigger bears from all over North America. The South, the Black Bears, Grizzly Bears, Brown Bears, they're doing awesome. Like bears are. So you've seen a lot of big grizzlies. Oh yeah.

Coming out of Canada and Alaska. Yeah, Alaska, Pope and Young's world record broke twice, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. They're the Kamak Bear out of. Yeah, that was a Brown Bear. Yeah. Chris Kamak killed the world record archery brown bear. We haven't seen it break ours, but, I mean, again,

you're still seeing some of the biggest bears in the world. So that could tell you... It's interesting because you can't tell what it can tell you. On one hand, you could look and say, hats off to Alaska, right? Right. Doing a great job. On the other hand, you could look and say,

maybe they're not offering enough opportunity. But I wouldn't really say that there because they're like increasing opportunity. I was going to say is increased effort resulting in an uptick in the number of trophies we're seeing. Yeah, it's hard to untangle it. So, and that's again where you have to look at it on a North American scale.

If you get too precise, you can kind of miss it a little bit with our data set. We're just looking at overall trends. So I can say like, oh, the Southeastern United States, we're seeing bears from a bunch of states that we've never seen before. They're getting very big. They're doing healthy.

Bears in that part of the country are doing good. Kudos to the, you know, Carolinas and Arkansas and all that. So. You mentioned mountain lions. So out of the, let's just say, I mean, they're only, you know, I don't know how many states

have 13 or 14 states have legal mountain lion seasons maybe. Are mountain lions up or down? Steady. Steady. Steady. Missoula County, Montana. That is the place to get a book skull mountain lion.

Oh, is that right? Yeah. Just over the border in Idaho. Those are the two top counties. They're staying stable. But that makes sense with the biology of a mountain lion because you can't have too many big toms because they kill each other. So it makes sense that that would be something that's kind of a status quo, you know, across their range from what we've seen. It's not likely to be super volatile.

Right. Right. Mule deer, down. Down, but holding steady and showing positives in some areas and not in others. It's not as dismal as you want. No, it's not the 60s of mule deer harvest. I actually did a talk on this one time at

Wild Sheep when I first started and, you know, I had a philosophy and I was wrong and, you know, I thought I knew everything back then, but, um, there was a lot of people that brought up, uh, brought up, um, like predator control. When they, when they were seeing those big mule deer in Colorado and these, you know, 300 inch deer getting killed, there was a lot of people using

coyote getters. Gotcha. And so, yeah, there was a big peak back in the sixties and seventies, but they're not, they're not continuing to drop, but we're putting a lot of effort into them. They're just kind of plugging along. And, and why is Colorado blowing the doors off

of everywhere else? Yeah. That's, that's the thing I wanted to ask, man. I mean, there's a ton of ground I want to cover, but I do want to hit that real quick is uh you know we spent 20 years scouring uh this state up and down and sideways um trying to find like like like a big builder you know and i thought there was something wrong with us then i started making a handful of trips down to Colorado and Idaho, and I'm like, oh, I get it.

It's just different, man. There's some places that have a lot of them. Is it like in Colorado puts off 10 to 1 compared to some other western states? Yeah, I don't know the exact, but it's ridiculous. I mean, I remember what my breakdown was, but Colorado would put in 300 and something entries entries and the next closest was like 101. And then it drops to Montana that was like 40, you know, so in the same time period. It's incredible.

Yeah. Is there even, I got all kinds of theories about why that is, but what's your theory about why that is? We let people shoot mule deer all the way through the rut. Yeah. I mean, you know, Colorado's an opportunity state, but they've, they've seemed to set it up to where their bigger deer are protected.

And a lot of those real big deer come from sleeper units. And so I think they've got, they've got the groceries, they've got the age structure, they protect them at the right time. I think, I think we. There's no over the counter deer tag there. Archery, there is still.

Oh, okay. Archery, sorry. Yeah. We'd have to check, but I don't think so. Is there really? I think pretty much everything mule deer has gone to draw down there, but either way, you're right.

I mean, they, they definitely protect those deer. But you can still, they still have lots of opportunities. You can go shoot does, you know, for a lot of the seasons. Hey, I know I don't want to leave the scoring system before I can squeeze in a couple of my questions, and I feel like we need to make sure that everybody understands it. But what I want to start off with is,

because you mentioned this, it's changed over the years, right? Is there a chance that the scoring system will change again? Because, and I can give you my example, why it brings up this question is that I remember when I just got into like, look at having to judge bull elk as a guide in Arizona for clients. And so I was getting like getting into the, that mindset, you know? And at the time there was that world record elk that was forever number one. Was it the Plute Bull out of Colorado, Black Canyon, right? And then it got bested by, I believe, like an inch or something like that by the White Mountain Bull.

So the Black Canyon Bull v. the White Mountain Bull. Yeah. Oh, geez. And it was Arizona Bull. And when you look at the two compared side by side the black canyon bull just weight alone you can it must weigh 20 pounds more than this the white mountain bull white mountain bull is long and spindly and but it had the length right which was awarded by your system but i would say if you saw the two animals on the hoof probably and saw the two sets of antlers, you'd say, well, for sure that the black cane bull is just going to crush the white mountain bull because he's just bigger and badder and healthier just by judging the mass in his antlers.

No, and so it's a great question. And if we were to create our scoring system today, I guarantee there'd be some differences. But what we did was in 1950, we did the best we could. And some of those things now we kind of have to hang on to, or all those data points that we have at this point become invalid. Yeah, because you can't go re-look at it all. Right. And so on elk, when you measure a G1, you start in the center, you transition to the outside and go to the tip. That's the number one thing that we see problems with.

If we were to do it today, I'd say that's not really, in my opinion, not necessary. Explain to people what that means. Yeah. So when you're taking. It'll help sort of show how detailed this is. So when you're taking the length of a tine, you draw on a baseline on elk is what we're talking

about here. Generally speaking on the edge of the beam where the tine, you know, where the beam would be had the tine not happened is where you start it. You follow the center of the tine, you know, where the beam would be had the tine not happened is where you start it. You follow the center of the tine along the outside curve. On elk, on the G1 point, the first point, just because of the way it sits on that base.

And I think what it was originally, they didn't have a lot of curvature to them. And these bulls were at the time, not as mature as what we're seeing now. They started in the very center, like if you're holding the elk rack sideways, like looking at it from the side. Yeah. You start in the center in the very center. Like if you're holding the elk rack sideways, like looking at it from the side, you start in the center of the tine.

It goes to the end, it transitions to the bottom edge of the tine, and then it continues around the outside curve, which at the time made sense. Now I would say probably doesn't, but that's how every G1 has been measured. So we can't now say, oh, nevermind, we were wrong on that particular measurement. I got a suggestion for you.

What you could do to, if you needed to pivot, you wouldn't do a hard pivot. Right. You would continue to measure everything the way you've always measured it so that you can at least compare relative to the past. Right. But then you simultaneously do the new way and everything has to be measured twice. And then in 10 years, you'll have this decade long body of the perfect way.

But then you miss the nineties, which the eighties and the nineties, which was the taking off of in whitetail, you know, um, Yeah, but this is for the future generations. But, but you need to see where the data set you don't want to discount 30 years 50 years 80 years you continue to do it you continue to do it but you also do it the new way everybody has to measure everything twice yeah you tell our volunteers that i'll let you break that news hold on those guys love me I'm going to stop. Right?

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the follow-up question to that to me would be like would you ever add something like the weight of an animal or just to get more data points we we did for a while ask for the weight of the rack um for a while the program the chairman was a professor at the university of montana and he was looking at rack weights and so we actually had a data collection thing on the back of the entry or the hunter guide and hunt form that asked how much did the rack of your animal weigh or horns? You know, how do you get the skull and everything on there? Well, and there was a, there was a thing, how was it cut whole skull?

And so as we tried to do it, we found out that that wasn't really a great. It's a big, it's a big ask. Right. There was a lot of variation there. So we quit asking for that particular, you, what did this rack weigh? You hear about water displacement. There's gets a lot of that to your point.

That's my brother. My brother's really big into, they think it should be water displacement. So water displacement is a, again, it's another great system. That's interesting to know, but it doesn't reward symmetry. It basically rewards freak traits.

And so if you're looking at the overall health of the animal, you get something that gets a big infection and a giant bulbous, you know, growth off of it. Well, that's going to displace more water, but that's not actually a positive trait when you're looking at, you know, how well did this rack, I mean, something. Yeah, it means you got hit by a car or whatever. Or got bit by a bug and it got infected or, you know, got in a fight and it got broken early on in velvet and created something goofy. So that's what, what would cause those abnormalities is generally a stressor that would be negative. That's a good point. Don't we have one of our universities looking at that? Isn't one of our fellows looking at that? Abnormalities caused by stressors and.

Yeah. And it's been looked at a few times. You know, basically the science that they had in the 1950s is still solid. There is some, some workout that shows like split eye guards in certain areas. Perhaps that population got so genetically bottlenecked that all the white tails from some

area will have a split eye guard. And so you could argue, well, okay, that's, that's what they all have. Well, that was created by a stressor that the population was so bottlenecked that this negative trade is now dominant. That doesn't mean we've changed the system to reward a negative trade is dominant just because they got bottlenecked. I think that the, one of the, uh, primary, one of the primary hunter based criticisms of, of the Boone and Crockett scoring system. We'll get into the non-hunter-based criticism of the Boone and Crockett scoring system.

But the hunter-based one has to do with deductions. Yep. To the point where a lot of people I hang out with, they... Please don't say Nets are for fish. Not going to say that. i hang out with they um they please don't say nets are for fish but yeah so you i'll take a stab let me take a stab at this you tell me where i get it wrong you you know you shoot a deer and you take all these different measurements not like you measure the length of the main beam you measure the length of all the different tines. You measure a bunch of circumferences. Um, you measure like the width, the inside spread. So the distance from one antler to the other antler at the widest

point, and you add all these up and what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to do it for each side, left antler, right antler. And so let's say you get a left antler that's 70 and you get a right antler that's 60. Someone would think, oh, so you shot a 130 whitetail. But in fact, they penalize you or not or reward you. There's like some penalty you just got the fact that they're different and that pisses people off now you say now you give the what i'm tell people what i'm trying to say well it's not a penalty we're just we're measuring what's out there but

people look at it like a penalty people have put constructs on it that it's some kind of penalty or reward um sure it's just what the animal you know it's what it is it's just a set of like i said earlier it's just a set of measurements that are added and subtracted and there's other scores the reason people feel like they got robbed i think is because they look at the because it's about them it's not about the animal yes it's about them i'm not saying it's not about them but when they're looking at the thing they see the number because it's even like a box it It's like net or gross. So gross is like all the score of the deer.

And then you do like your deductions. And I think people get bummed when they have to look at the one number. Yeah, because they feel like it's taxes they're paying. So they look at the one number and then they got to write their real number down. And I think they'd rather just stick with the big number. It'd be like if someone asked you like, how much do you make? I think the big number when we like if someone asks you like how much do you make i think a lot of like if someone says well how much do you make depending on the audience you tell your like pre-tax or post-tax number because you know it just it tells a narrative so i think yeah like

yanis is like being taxed so like why can't i have the big number why i'm just gonna tell everybody the big number and i'm not gonna tell them the small number tell I'm just going to tell everybody the big number. I'm not going to tell them the small number. Tell them whatever you want. So when I go to explain that, because you're right, we get that question a ton. Why are you penalizing this? I love that word, penalizing. It's like a guy comes to your house and takes the points away.

Throw a flag. What you're doing, what causes those differences? Like what causes a big deduction? I think it would help if I think if you can answer this question for me because I had written it down. I'm glad you brought up the bilateral symmetry again. Can you, is it today accepted amongst wildlife biologists that bilateral symmetry is a display of the health of an animal? Generally speaking, yes.

Okay. Yes. Like I said, that's what I tried to get at where they've shown some traits that aren't necessarily perfectly bilateral have been shown, but for the most part, you know, I mean, look at nature in a whole. A tree that's healthy isn't going to be lopsided to one side. You know, anything you want to look at, there is bilateral symmetry. And so what causes the variation to that as a stressor, which is the basis of it. Okay. But where I was going is, you know, what causes a big deduction?

Okay. Well, three of the elk's tines are broken. Well, he was just fighting. I shot him late in the season. That's not a penalty. Well, what results in excessive fighting that breaks tines? An overpopulation of bulls. So that actually leads us to believe that perhaps the bull population in that unit could be too high

because these stressors are being exhibited on this rack, which results in a deduction. So if you're 100% talking to your buddies and you're making it about, you know, well, my deer was this or gross this, gross is fine. But when we're looking at the actual health of the species in the habitat that's what the net's for so my go-to is you know the gross is for the hunter the net's for the animal yeah i think that we're largely where it comes from is i think that people um people have taken a tool created for a purpose and created like a tool created by an organization to pursue like the sort of long-term goal and they don't know about that they just know about the tool

and i think it's just a way to right 100 what how to communicate to your friend over the phone what it was yeah yeah and so they don so they see imperfections in the tool without knowing or even like, why is it that way? I mean, the club itself is so much bigger than records and what Justin and I run. I mean, we do so much more than I mean, we're known for our record book, but we do so much more for conservation. And, and I know Tony can touch on that a lot more, but I mean, what we do with our university programs and, you know, what we do with, um, our associates program and our conservation and ethics program. I mean, it's so much more than what Justin and I do. Well, roll that out.

I mean, we've gotten, we'll come back to the scoring thing in a minute because there's some more points about it. But, yeah, like give a bigger context for what, you know, besides coming up with ways for people to argue about how big the deer was, what goes on over there? Well, so, you know, really, like the records program is about 10% of our budget. When we were founded, the intent was to make some course corrections in wildlife health and in habitat health. The only way to do that was through policy. A huge chunk of our mission is spent developing conservation policy in Washington, D.C., and helping the states develop policies at the state level.

You know, we're very much involved with forest health. We're involved with wildlife disease. You know, we're a group that people go to to say, okay, you guys have the knowledge to come up with a solution to the problem that we've identified. And that's what we do. And that is what the probably two-thirds of our entire mission budget goes towards is that effort to make sure that we have land, that we have public access, that we have – when guys get out there, they have animals to look at, that the landscape that supports those same animals supports all kinds of other wildlife like birds and fish. You know, the health of the – not only the health of the wildlife but also the health of the habitat. So policy is a big part of what we do.

How do you guys get money? Any way we can. But we, you know, our members, you know, we still, when Roosevelt founded us in 1887, we have 100, you know, he founded us with 100 regular members. And again, those are guys and gals that are influential in their respective fields, but they're all joined by the common thread of being hunters. And, um, and so when they, they are a big part of us, you know, they, they, you know, member contributions, member dues are a big part of our budget. Uh, our corporate partnerships are a big part of our budget. Our, um, we have a fairly healthy endowment and those interest earnings are a big part of our budget.

That's people that die and then do like a non, like bequeath their estate to a nonprofit. Partially, yeah, partially. And then a lot of them have just been major gifts from, again, those 100 regular members. Because, you know, the bylaws have never changed. There's just the same number of regular members today as there was, you know, 130 years ago.

So you keep it at 100. We keep it at 100. And so we have about 160 of what we call professional members. you know, 130 years ago. So you keep it at 100? We keep it at 100. And so we have about 160 of what we call professional members, and those guys and gals are like worker bees. Justin and I are professional members. I've been a professional member before I ever came to the club. So you're not a regular member?

I'm not a regular member. I don't have quite that big a checkbook. Oh, I see. Steve, I got to tell you. But anyway, I've got the fire in the belly, just not the money. But I, but you know, those in the, like, state agency heads, federal agency heads, a lot of academics, a lot of university professors in forestry and wildlife departments in land

grant universities across the country are all in that mix of professionals where we, which is really our knowledge base. You know, uh, when we have a problem like CWD is a good example, you know, we're front and center with CWD research, trying to figure out a way to stop the spread. Number one, number two, that are known all over the country for being experts in CWD, trying to come up with answers to that problem. So, you know, in answer to the funding, you know, we do have grants, you know, we have grants, we do a lot of matching funding for issues like CWD and things like that.

But we're not a huge organization by comparison to a lot of others. Do you guys get checks just from people that write in a check? Yeah, we have. Just donations? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because all of a sudden, like on social media, somebody will say, wow, you guys are doing a pretty good job there. I want to help support you. And yeah, they'll send us some money. But I think that the main thing is, is that, um, unlike other groups, we're, we're not relying on events. We don't have chapters. We don't have banquets. We don't have, what we are relying on is our members and, uh,

and our member support. And, um, for a long time there there was, uh, the, the Boone and Kroger club, you know, we ran silent and deep and, you know, nobody really knew what we did. We didn't really care that nobody knew what we did. We just cared about what the end result was when we got the job done. And now, you know, we're, we're kind of coming out of a cocoon in the last 10 years and talking a little bit more about what we do, because we want people to want people to be aware that these issues are not so different than what they were 130 years ago. There's just different solutions to the same types of issues. You know, the threats to our public lands, you know, the threats to the health of our wildlife.

But at the end of the day, if it boils down to the hunter, if it comes, it boils down to the hunter and the angler. If you don't have those guys out there fishing and hunting and you don't have those licenses getting sold and you don't have, you know, our state and federal agencies dry up. And that funding mechanism is solely dependent on hunters and anglers who need fresh water to fish. They got to have public lands or land access to hunt on. They got to have healthy, healthy wildlife populations to fish. They got to have public lands or land access to hunt on. They got to have healthy wildlife populations to hunt. And so we've always tried to be in a position where we're kind of looking down the road and anticipating what is the next big problem? What is the next big threat? And, you know, we have huge wildfires now, you know, across the western states.

And, you know, the forest health and rangeland health is not what it needs to be. You know, we've got to take much more aggressive approach to active forest management and restoration and make sure that, you know, we, our forests aren't tinderboxes. And so, you know, those are the kind of issues that we look at. And I know it's really boring for the average hunter to sit there and listen to all this stuff. That's why, you know, the records program, you know, the concept of fair chase, those are two cornerstones of our organization that are really our public face that are somewhat sexier than what it is that we actually do behind the scenes to ensure that those two things can happen yeah that the fair chasing is interesting because i see there you

know you're a hunter like you're boone and cracker club is a hunter-based organization but there's a little bit of a conflict i can imagine where on one hand if it's just records keeping it would be that um like if it's just specifically trying to understand in some geographical area how many animals of a certain size the landscape kicked off put off it would include like animals that were killed by poachers animals that were struck by vehicles animals just turned up dead in someone's swimming pool, right? It'd be just bring, come one, come all. But you don't do that because there's a cachet attached to getting an animal in the record book.

And so you don't just let anyone through and you have rules and regulations about who can get in that are more stringent even than state law. Yeah. So like how do you reconcile those two things? I'm going to let Justin take that because we actually do accept found heads. Oh, you do? Yeah. So the picked up is what it goes in as, or if it was example party taken, we don't feel that's a fair chase thing, but a lot of states allow, well, three states allow party hunting. We don't list the hunter. What those rules are.

Oh, so you do have a way, I got you. So you do log the presence of the animal. Correct. You just don't reward. Yep. For example, we have a lot of state owned heads. So when they say that Boone and Crockett won't accept it. We won't list. It's not that you won't accept it. You just don't reward it.

Well, because yeah, we're recognizing the animal. In some cases we wouldn't let you won't accept it you just don't reward it well well because yeah we're recognizing the animal in some cases we wouldn't accept it if it was from a high fence population that's not indicative of the area's native wildlife i got you i never i never understood that i didn't know that that was true so you do take it into account right yeah we've got we've got a one of the first deer i process got hung up on a cemetery fence. Like they found it hanging there dead in the morning. Gotcha. So yeah. And that's a picked up head.

Wildlife agencies. And you guys want to know about it. If a state confiscates a head, we never list whoever, you know, the poacher was, but it's shown as owned by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. And where it came from. And where it came from. Oh, I see. I didn't realize that.

But it is, it is. You bring up. Cause that's not how people like. No. So i know about boone crack club is just from like shooting the with people should have had us on earlier i know well like when i hear that that's the thing i always heard is like well they don't accept x they don't accept this and that um so yeah i got you now we have it we have a set of rules that are fair chase requirements that you have to stay within to be recognized. And this goes back to the beginning of the record.

Like for you to be listed. To list deer name as a fair chase hunter. This deer taken in fair chase by this person. That goes back to the very beginning. There was no rules. And so they had to try to switch everybody's opinion on, you know, what was appropriate. So they said to get into our records book, and this is pre 1950, you know, whatever, you must take this in fair chase.

And at the time you couldn't jack light, you couldn't crust them in the snow. It was a lot shorter. Even though you might've, even then you might've legally been able to do that. So they, in the very beginning, they put that on. Now what happened is the hunter perception started to change.

Fair chase took off. You know, state agencies, Leupold started the, you know, the wildlife school in Wisconsin and is the hunter perception started to change. Fair chase took off. You know, state agencies, loopholes started the, you know, the wildlife school in Wisconsin. And all of a sudden you had scientifically trained managers that are setting this. But at the time, fair chase was 100% a necessity to force harvest on the old mature males, basically forcing trophy hunting in the beginning, which was the mature male harvest that did not affect the population. And that was the whole beginning of fair chase. Will we continue it today? Again, the reason for fair chase is kind of morphed.

We no longer have to follow fair chase to save wildlife populations. But fair chase is integral to what Tony pointed out on hunting and fishing to continue and the funding for wildlife to continue. What's an example of a practice? What would be something that Boone and Crockett Club would regard as not fair chase that could be legal somewhere? And what's vice versa? Like the opposite example. So the biggest ones that we see is some states allow the usage of radios to talk somebody into a game animal. Arizona, Oregon, for example, you can 100% or you could the last time I looked, talk somebody into an animal.

We say if you guide hunters to game with an electronic, you know, with use of electronic communications, it's out. Gotcha. You know, another one that's probably the biggest misconception that we have is cellular trail cameras. It's not fair chase to get live images of a game species while you're hunting it. We're working on that final wording on that, but for cellular trail cameras, if I'm sitting,

I could be sitting here in this podcast and all of a sudden a bear walks by one of my trail cameras, if it was legal in Montana, I could then go legally hunt that bear in many states. And that is not fair chase. The other side of it, and this is a very contentious topic, is baiting. Baiting is a general practice, especially for bears, is not a violation of fair chase. Oh, so that's an example of something you might not be allowed to do in a state, but you would accept it if you were. Correct.

And you can never do something illegal. So, you know, if, if, if it's illegal to bait in your state, you can't do it. It's. Oh, okay. So you always, you always bow to the state laws. Right. If the state is more restrictive, that's fine.

But, um, with, with the baiting for bears, you know, for black bears in certain areas, that's the only way that you can get a real good look at a bear and make sure you're not shooting a cub or the wrong bear. Well, then we look at baiting of cervids, which is a very hot topic. With CWD, you could make a very strong argument right now. In that case, for cervids, baiting may not be fair chase. But as an overall practice for baiting, as it's done for bears,

we say it is still a fair chase practice. Who is it like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt wasn't arguing about what to do about trail cams. Like who is it now? Like who is it? Who decides? It's there for, for the overall club, there's the entire, you know, it would go to the, there's an ethics committee for records. The records entry requirements for fair chase would be the records committee. It's a 32 member committee. And they got to wrestle with emerging technologies. Right. And we do constantly. Uh, have you, have you addressed drones specifically,

or is that captured under something else? So it was captured under something else. Again, it was, it was transmitting images of live games to the hunter because you can't run a drone without seeing the animal. We actually called out drones by name in the intra-affidavit. How long ago did you do that? It's been about, I was going to say about eight years ago. Eight or nine years ago. When it really got, when the use of drones really kind of picked up pace, you know, people were using them for a lot of different things and they got to be pretty popular.

And so we did call them out by name and it might have even been longer, might have been closer to 10 years ago. It's been a while. Yeah. But it was, we were getting asked by state agencies, what's your thoughts on drones? And our answer would be, well, it's transmitting an image, but we got asked enough that to help the states were like, we will call it out by name. So there's no doubt that a drone usage to find the scout for or hunt game falls outside of fair chase.

What we would deem as the ethical pursuit of the animal that they can escape. I gave you the big complaint that you get from hunters. They're almost like similar. It's not even fair as a complaint because it's just like a misunderstanding, but that people will argue about their deductions, right? People complain about that they felt the score should be higher and like, well, you know, those assholes Boone and Crockett, they'll tell you it's a 170, but by God, it was a 180.

Doug. So the other thing is, is I think that the numbers, this isn't even a criticism that comes from outside. It's like inside and outside hunting. But people look at the fixation on numbers. Right. right and that and that people feel that that uh it's like that that's kind of this objectification of animals might not be totally the right word but basically they're taking this sort of like living this beautiful living thing that has a lot of um there's you know a huge amount of cultural pride that we take and that that that we have these animals around us. And we generally, Americans, generally recognize them as gorgeous.

We're generally supportive of their existence here. There's a lot of reverence for them. And people feel that when you boil it down and just take the deer and turn it into a number, it's something that something gets lost 100 and so you'll hear hunters say this and a lot of times like newer hunters um will be prickly about it because they're excited to get a deer and they think like a deer's here if i could just get a deer i'd be so happy and they learn that there's kind of like this oh it was just a blank and it should never be that why even we recognize it should never be that well i mean even we recognize it should never be that and you mentioned to it earlier it's simply a tool that we've created and

it's kind of been i don't know bastardized i don't think it's i don't but i don't think it's your i don't know that it's your i'm not i don't think it's your fault at all yeah but it's a thing and then but people know it's the boone and Crockett score. So you get. Right. Yeah. Oh yeah. You probably hear about it all the time. Yeah.

And I'd argue that if, you know, if you, if you reduce it to any single component, it's inappropriate. When it's about you again, it's not about the animal. You should never just kill an animal just because of a number. That's ridiculous. You never reduce it to that. Honestly, if you don't care about regulations or anything, you're just shooting something for only meat and you don't care about the experience and the laws, that's wrong. It's the whole experience. You enjoy the meat.

You enjoy the amount. You enjoy the number, how it affects the biologic data. Make sure that that's still there. It's just another piece of it. You should never make a hunt about one thing. It's about the whole experience and the animal and everything that animal is. I know you guys have some thoughts about how the evolution of the term trophy hunting, that it's – each generation kind of defines it for whatever to – defines it for their moment. How has that drifted? So I can answer a little bit of that because I have been in the space.

And I, as I mentioned before, I started in the space as a film producer. And that was in 1980s. At that time, there was only four of us that were doing that type of thing. And, you you know if you turn the clock back a ways to the days of uh kurt gowdy and the american sportsman you know those were days when um you know it was all about hunting and then in the in the 80s and the 90s what started happening was as my um the business i was, there was more and more video producers that started getting into the game. You know, my films were always, you know, they told a story.

They told a story about, you know, where the animal lived, what the animal ate. You know, we didn't always get an animal. But if we did, it was always under fair chase. But later in the late 80s and early 90s, as more and more of these folks started getting into the business, it all became about the kill. How many kills do you have in your tape? I actually have distributors ask me that question. And that was prior to the outdoor networks. To determine if it was good or not. Exactly.

Because that's what they were selling it on. So all of a sudden, and the term trophy then became, started to get really polluted because they did what you're talking about with the numbers thing. You know, the bigger, the better. You're not worth a squad if you don't kill a big, big animal with big horns or antlers. And so it went from the hunting days of Kurt Gowdy to the killing days of the 80s and 90s. And it really got the term trophy of black eye. And I think the media drove that. I mean, if you look at our outdoor programming now, for the most part on our outdoor networks,

there's still a lot of whack-a-man stacking stuff going on on those networks. And I think that's not a tribute to the animal. I don't think it's a tribute to our sport of hunting. I don't think you should really call it hunting. When you say media, you're talking about our own media. I'm talking about our outdoor media. Yeah. And I think that what I see now, though, is I see hope in the fact that I think, you know, programs like yours, for example, you know, you're talking about these things and you're talking about and you're going to see a migration back now from the kill to the hunt and what it really means. And, you know, the locavore movement, you know, consuming those animals.

Where does your meat come from? And, you know, so I think that there's, there's, you know, we're starting a course correction there in a positive way. But I think that's really happened to Trophy. It was, it was hyped so much in outdoor, in the outdoor media there for 20 years that it just kind of took a left turn and now we got to get it on the right turn again it's amazing how um how universal not in hunting media but how universal in the mainstream media how universal um of a condemnation trophy hunting is it's like if you use that you don't even need to say anything else no you don't it's

like if you see an article trophy hunter like you don't need to read the rest of the headline even right you know that it is bad we talked about this recently whereas there's a fundraiser that uh don jr was going on for black-tailed deer and ducks. Okay? So when I hear black-tailed deer and ducks, I don't jump into my head like, doesn't sound to me like an evil trophy hunting adventure, but when described in the news, it was leading a trophy hunt.

And you'd have to say, well, I'd have to know a lot more. I don't really know that that's what they're doing. It just seems like they're going hunting deer and ducks. Like, how do we know that? But someone's like, I know how to make this seem real bad. I will just use the word trophy and then everyone will know that I mean it's real bad. I don't know that you're going to save that word. The term trophy was never intended to be bad.

But unfortunately, it has become that way. And I don't think it's salvageable. It's, it's just a term that has been beat up so bad and misrepresented, um, by, you know, the media, whether it's the outdoor media or the, the general mainstream media with the stories you like you're talking about. Um, you know, we need to find some other description for these, for the, for the, for the mature male specimens that were taken out of these ecosystems. Yeah, I... Oh, go ahead, Yanni. I was just going to say that I feel like some reading Jack O'Connor's stuff,

I always had the idea that trophy and then the head or the mount were interchangeable. They were synonymous. And that's how they used trophy. Would you guys agree? That it meant you just want the head. No, no, no. Not that you just wanted the head, but that's just like what that piece of the animal

was referred to as. Yeah. No, that is... Oh. Yeah, you know, I ran into a guy one time. I was elk hunting, ran into a guy on the trail. He's actually a radio... I don't want to say his name. He's a radio host. And I was talking to him like... I was like, holy into a guy on the trail he's actually a radio I don't want to say his name he's a radio host and I was talking to him like that's where I was like holy shit you're but anyways he was talking about his gun and he said he's taken 30 head which sounds like livestock I think of but yeah like 30 trophies sure but and again it wasn't a negative connotation

back then it was just like that was like they had an animal down and there were many different parts of it and then like the head was you could say it was just also referred to as the trophy like I'll grab the back quarter you grab the trophy yeah they had all their

trophies with them yeah it came along with the carcass I haven't abandoned I have not abandoned the word and I try to help They had all their trophies with them? Yeah, it came along with the carcass. I have not abandoned the word, and I try to help it out a little bit when I can. It's funny because in talking to people who are sort of kicking the tires on hunting or curious about hunting, they'll really want to push you right away.'ll be like well you're not like a trophy hunter and i'll be like well easy now because i am you know i'm a lot of things and one of the things i am is i have a lot of this shit laying around my house and i really like it a lot and so i don't

know what you call what you want to call it but like if i get a big deer any deer yeah if i get a deer i want the head. I'm never going to get rid of it. I've never gotten rid of one unless I lent one to a friend because he thought it's cool to have in his house. I've never gotten rid of one in my life. So this idea, and some people try to overdo it where they try to be like, I don't even remove the head from the woods. I'm like, oh, dude. Now you're just trying to make a comment comment on things and it's just ridiculous like you would want it and you would have it in your

house but because other people view theirs in the way that you don't find acceptable you will now sacrifice by leaving yours in the woods in order to have like make turn this into like social commentary one it should be a remembrance of your hunt yeah i mean i look at my elk hanging in my you know in my house and i remember every single one of those dude i love those things yeah it's a trophy i'm all for calling it something different i don't know what the hell you're gonna call it mementos i don't know mentos my kids would think mentos put in a shadow box yeah i love it so i haven't like walked away from it, but I know that it takes a lot of explaining. Even if you explain it like that, people are like, oh yeah, I get that.

Right. I don't know. It's like, I like all of it. I'd eat all the meat. Yeah. Whatever. I get the damn bones in my dog. I put the antlers on my shelf.

Like I'll take the whole thing. I like it all. And I found a nice little benefit from doing some so-called trophy hunting. I caught a little bit of slack for it on that video we posted that meteor hunts where I was hunting elk in Colorado. I had a tag that I'd waited 14, 15 years to hunt, but I could have very easily filled that tag opening morning and just shot a bull. But the older I get, man, I want to hunt. I remember like older clients of mine when I was a hunting guide, they used to tell me that like, man, my perfect season will be if I can kill one on the last evening of the last day of Pennsylvania's deer season. You know, I want to sit in my tree stand like 60 days. And I'd kind

of, as a mid 20 year old, I didn't really get it. But now at 42, I'm like, oh, yeah, I get it. I want to hunt every single moment that I have open to hunt and then hopefully kill on the last day. And if you're looking for something, you know, a trophy specimen or however you want to put it, a bigger buck, it helps you do that. Yeah. Right? Unless you get lucky.

But most of the time, you're going to end up hunting more. Yeah, there are a lot of trips that will be over instantaneously. And that's another funny thing. So if you're super moral, you shoot the first thing right away. That's more moral than that you wander around the hills for five days and then get one. You're less moral. It's just hard. So when you see the word destroyed,

man, just one of those things just makes you cringe. Well, you know, I, I grew up, you know, in a subsistence family. So I never had a beefsteak till I was 16 years old. But I will tell you this, my perfect hunting season is when I draw a beet tag for a cow, because then I can run out, I can get the cow and I can put the cow in a freezer and I know I've got meat

for the rest of the year. And then I can actually focus on, okay, on my A tag. You start picking that place apart. I'm going to start seeing if maybe I can be lucky enough to wander into something that is a respectable, you know, mature male specimen. I have not gotten be lucky enough to wander into something that is a respectable, you know, mature male specimen. I have not gotten that lucky yet to get into the book.

I will tell you that. But, you know. You can't just put yourself in there? No, I can't just put myself in there. Right in. You know, there's no back door. But I, but you know, I mean that, because then you do, maybe you hunt the rest of the season and maybe you get something that maybe you don't, but it is all about being out in the woods and in the experience as much as anything else for, I think, the majority of hunters.

But I think that, unfortunately, the trophy piece has been plagiarized. Plagiarized is probably not the wrong word, but it's been misinterpreted. And it's not what it was originally intended to be. It happens to a lot of words though, really, if you think about it. Yeah. You know, like now, um, there's a certain way you can throw an inflection on environmentalists, right? And he's like, oh, you know, an environmentalist, you're like, oh, so

it's someone who wants like major sort of overreach. They ruin all the good times. You know, it's like, there's like words that just like, you know, trophy hunting. You can probably sit here and list a dozen words that at one point in time had like a positive connotation, but then a version of it runs wild and it just starts to carry with it. To the point where you had no one can self-identify anymore as a trophy hunter. You've got to do a lot of backflips in order to land there. 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.

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You know, there's another thing I want to ask you guys about that we've talked about at least a dozen times. So Boone and Crockett Club, when're looking at the the animals that get submitted um you break the like you don't just break it up by species but you break it up by uh geography in in some cases because there's sort of like not hard lines between things meaning the example we always bring up is that a deer in california say a deer can run across i5 and become a different deer like meaning he could be a record book deer on the west side he could be a record book blacktail on the west side of i5 should he run over to the east side of I-5. Should he run over to the east side of I-5, he ceases to be a record book animal. We can actually look into that now.

So we can have a DNA test done that will tell us what, you know, if that deer is a blacktail or a mule deer. Oh. Has that come up yet? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. We have, we probably have, what, about two dozen deer right now that are getting DNA'd.

That are, because of that. And so what you're touching on there is if you look at the blacktail range from Columbia blacktail, Washington, Oregon, California, the Southern end of the California, we get down into California, there wasn't a definitive line. Whereas the peak of the Cascades served as a definitive line between mule deer and blacktail. So that historically was not crossable, which created this speciation where there was this particular Columbia's there.

Well, south of that line, there's no definitive, they can't get over the Cascades type thing. So it's a mixing zone. Oh, so that's what's going on there is where the severe, the severe high altitude spine of that range isn't separating black tails and mule deer. Where historically with different climate conditions it would have.

Oh, okay. And then you have. So they can, so you get down south of that range and they can slip back and forth. And what, what we've shown, if you look in Oregon, our, our blacktail boundary is the forest service line. So we pulled it off the top of the, the range.

We, we made it conservative so there wouldn't be a potential crossover. So now that they identified the loci that are unique to blacktail and mule deer, we can take a deer killed just over the border to the east and say, sure enough, it has all the traits of a blacktail. Let's run the genetics on it and see. And if it comes back pure blacktail, we will accept it in the category. Who pays for that? The hunter does. If we have a question on something, if we're not, like if it's a top entry or whatever, and we're doing it to preserve the records, we'll pay for it.

But if somebody says, I shot this deer, it doesn't make your book, but I know it's a black tail taken east of your boundary. I can now say, okay, well, 130 bucks. And once I get 10 samples and I can run it for that cost, send me your DNA sample. And then we can come back and say, definitively, here's your Q value. A Q value of 0.9 or higher is pure blacktail. Oh, really?

And you got two dozen right now that people want to challenge the man. Yeah. See our stuff's all out of date. Can we talk about that? This is my favorite thing to talk about. The I five deer thing, man. The I five boundary is actually Roosevelt's elk.

And there's no genetic variation between a Roosevelt and the Rocky. It's completely habitat driven. Okay. So then it was just an arbitrary line that has to be easily defiable, which is I-5. The other one that's really kind of embarrassing is the Canadian moose stop at

the Canadian border. And become what? Asheris. If they cross. Oh, in the Rockies. Yeah. I got you. Yeah.

But what about like in Maine? Those are all Canadians. Okay. Oh, so the Rockies. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. But what about like in Maine? Those are all Canadians. Okay. So if you, really, so there is a, there is a hard line there. Canadian moose and shiras. Yep. They can change back. They probably like the border too.

Oh yeah. I think it's cut. Yep. So it's got good young growth on it. Yeah. Well, then you have the bears in Alaska. I've had that, like a brown bear and a grizzly bear. Yeah, I was going to ask about that.

I've had that come down to yards. No. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we'll get a GPS location. I've literally had it come down to yards. I'm on Google Earth, and I've got everything up, and I've got the coordinates punched in where our line runs. Yeah, because what he's referring to here is

that you have barren ground, so... Grizzly bears. Yeah, in Alaska, like, you know, in the Rockies, everybody just says grizzly bear. But a grizzly bear and a brown bear are, if you went to a taxonomist or a geneticist, they would tell you that grizzly bears and brown bears are the same thing.

Yeah. Brown bears, they have some coloration differences, tend to get much bigger. Grizzly bears tend to have lighter colors, more pelage, greater differences in hair color, all kinds of things. Not nearly as big. And in some ways, like a lot of guys in Alaska will tell you, if it has access to salmon, we call it a brown bear.

If it doesn't have access to salmon, we call it a grizzly. But't have access to salmon we call it a grizzly but how do you guys is it a lot did you draw a line we did yeah so it's kind of the alaska range curling up around the spine of the alaska correct until it hits one of the the longitude lines so north the north edge of the alaska range is a grizzly. The south face of the Alaska range is a brown bear. Correct. And I've had that come down to yards on that range line. So what it is is you follow the Alaska range around. There's one spot that it's a straight line like Mount Elias, I believe, is it?

And then it goes a straight line across, then hits the Alaska range, and follows the peak of the Alaska range. And then once you reach a certain point, then it falls a longitude out to the coast. I got you. I'm guessing again, this was the fifties. So I was not around. Um, they probably were going with the salmon thing, cause that's what I've heard.

If it's got access to, you know, a big salmon run, it's a brown bear. If it doesn't, it's a grizzly. So it would make sense that salmon couldn't cross that Alaska range and you've got the Yukon to the north. But I think that's probably what they were trying to do was that differentiation, they were set down and

said, where is that line that's the most easily definable that hunters will understand and make sense for separating these out so that you can, but you know, bears is the worst because all the biggest grizzly bears are killed right on the line that were probably a brown bear last week. So the, the, the, yeah. So the, let me guess that the, the, the one you're looking at is a guy that feels he killed a tanker grizzly. Yep. And you're like, well, maybe it's just a small brown bear.

Where exactly? Yeah. Yeah. Or, or yeah. So all the biggest grizzlies come from the line. Not all of them, but it's but it's a larger portion of them. You kind of know where a big grizzly is going to be from when you get an entry. Is that right?

Mm-hmm. Huh. What other ones are like that? So the moose, the grizzlies? The moose don't seem to follow. I mean, Colorado's blowing the doors off of shiris moose. Yeah, isn't that wild? You think it'd be Northern Montana.

It's not. Washington does well, but so that one, you know, you'd think that just over the Canadian border would be the place to hunt shiris, but the answer is Colorado. You know, blacktail, the California area, there's actually a little bit genetic differentiation. So even though that they do potentially have some

mule deer, it's actually different black tails. So the biggest black tails are Northern California and Southern Oregon. The further North you get, they almost look more like a Sitka than they really do, uh, you know, what you'd consider a Columbia. Yep. And so, you know, those are Columbia black tails.

Yeah. There's big ones that show up in Washington and Oregon. We haven't seen a lot of real big deer in Oregon since the fires of like the sixties, when there was some major stand clearing fires the years following that we saw some gigantic black tails. We haven't seen that, but that, you know, uh, Jackson County Applegate type country down there that still puts out some big ones in Northern California. If someone wanted to, uh, what's the quickest way to get in the books? What should you be hunting for

if you want to get in the books? White tails is tough, man. Oh, yeah. Mule deer is tough. Off of like rough population estimates and whatnot, I kind of calculated out, you know, how many do you have to look at to find a booner and white tails, like 180,000 white tails

you have to look at to find one that's. And again, this is all real generic. No, I'm with you. It helps capture it. But usually one in 1,000 is kind of what you'd think. Shire's moose in most of their ranges, 40 inches wide and split brows, will get you to the minimum. And I feel like if you can get a Shire's tag, you could set your sights at BNC

and have a decent chance at it. So you got to look at how many to find one. I don't remember what that one is off the top of my head. When you say split browns, just two brow times on a side? So the way our scoring works is you terminate the measurement on a moose palm between two qualifying points on a brow. If it does not have a qualifying point on a brow, it just comes to the end of the palm. So if you want, the mature moose have a split brow. So that's a characteristic. If you want a good score, your moose has to have split brows or better. But if it's 40 wide with a split brow, that generally will put you at minimum score. So that wants to be in a two point brow.

Right. Yeah. Right. Fork brow. And that'll split down towards the end. So that'll give you a little bit more length and increase your score. So is it one in 20 you got to look at? Judging from the people I know that have had moose tag, yeah, or less. Like you find a mature bull, it's, it's pretty, pretty good. And I mean, maybe it's not true in Wyoming or some other states, but my limited experience with Shyrus, yeah, 40 inches and split brow is just a good solid bull, you know? Earlier when we were talking, you mentioned an

interesting case where you've had, you know, cause nannies, mountain goats, so males and females have very, very similar horns. The females have sort of like a little dog leg, like almost like imperceptible little dog leg in them when they come up, narrower. But you've had a female, you had a female mountain goat make the books.

Yeah, we got a 50-inch, a picture of 50-inch. I don't know if it ever officially dried. Yeah, I don't know that it's been entered yet, but we got preliminary pictures of it. And yeah, I mean, the thing's got, I bet you 11, 12 inch horns. So just a freak anomaly. Yeah.

I mean, well, it's a, yeah, it's a nanny that grew insanely long horns. And I mean, not a lot of people are shooting nannies. So there could be, you know, a hundred book nannies that just died of old age that are still in the mountains. Oh, that's a good point. You know, not really. We get that too.

You know, people, oh, is this the biggest ever? Oh, that's a good point. You know, not really. We get that too. You know, people, is this the biggest ever? Well, it's the largest ever taken in fair chase that was then entered to Boone and Crockett. I mean, you know, so there could be bigger nannies out there, but we have seen one that made our, our minimums.

Yeah. But it used to say on the score chart, male or female. But after we had that on there for 30 years and never had a female, we did away with it. Oh, is that right? Sure enough, here comes a female goat. Hey, what goat hey what is it when uh oh I got a gripe too I got to bring up real quick I'm gonna ask you what I'm gonna ask you no my gripe has to do with my

javelina but um I want you guys got to explain what all time means you want this one like the all set but i want to give my javelina gripe okay so i got a a a gigantic javelina i mean a giant i don't remember what it was but i measured it just like when you measure a bear like it's length and length fuss width very easy thing to measure i measured my javelina with my old man's i still have my old man's measuring calipers wow and i still have his genuine i don't know like 1910 uh not 1910 i don't know what the hell it was very old uh little tape measure with the pope and young yeah their emblem a little emblem on it yeah and uh his caliper and all that kind of garbage the cable got a lot of stuff. But I measured my Javelina and then went to check and see if it was booked. And you guys don't accept Javelinas.

No, our records committee hasn't taken that. Well, I mean, they've taken it on, but they haven't decided yet to add that as a category. And Gators neither, right? Yeah, and Gators not yet either. So I had to go to your competitor, Safari Club. They're not a competitor. They're not a competitor.

They're another scoring organization. I had to go there to validate that I had a giant javelina. Yeah. So the thing, the first time they looked at the javelina category, in order to have a category, the states that have them have to ask us and it has to be a managed species. And up until like four or five, maybe five or six years ago now, Texas did not manage javelinas.

They switched over to where they actually do manage them now. And so that was a big hangup. Gotcha. These were just kind of a shoot on site in Texas. So we can't really create a category for them. Well, when Texas, Arizona, New Mexico all now manage for them, that barrier went out.

So you could revisit it. And so it is being talked about at both Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett committee levels. Mine's out of West Texas. West Texas. Nice. So when you get it, let me know. I'm going to run down with mine.

I want to be the first guy in the books, man. I got one on the shelf too that's going to give you a run, I think. So between you and I, we'll flip for it. And then what – so alligators? Alligators seems like a stretch. That, again, my understanding, that discussion was before I was around. But very rarely is one taken in fair chase. Oh.

Banks. Yeah, how do you define – so you have to rewrite fair chase right i mean you're trapping him or you're catching him it's a trapped animal you know that that's a good point you have to kind of just go shoot it and run over there and grab it right you can put a hook into it which at night we're using a spotlight which is another so you have to go out in the daytime cold cock it in the head with something and then retrieve it. It's when you take a buddy you don't like with you.

Like, yeah, I got something to go to. Oh, that's a really good point, man. You'd have to do, it'd take a lot of work to accept alligators. And there is, there is my understanding is you can in the alligator rut, if that's what it's called, they will call them and you can get them in the day with a bow, like on land. So there is a very rare situation. You could take a fair chase alligator by our standards now, but it wouldn't really justify a category.

Yeah. I'm with you. Would the sample size be big enough to warrant a category? Yeah. That's a good point. Okay. Here's the thing you hear too. I honestly don't know what this means.

People will say that it made the all time. Every day of the week, basically. What does that mean? The all time books and the not all time books. So basically what had happened was, is we created this measuring system in 1950. We didn't know at the time, you know, what that would look like, how many entries we would get. And so conservation came along, wildlife populations were doing better. More people were harvesting mature animals. And so our record books started to grow.

And now we're like, okay, we've got this data set that keeps growing. What we're doing is working. We're getting to a point now where every six years we'd have to print an encyclopedia. And we know what happened to encyclopedias. No one's buying encyclopedias anymore. And so in order to sell this book, basically, in order to have a book that was manageable that we could print, people would buy at a reasonable price. We kind of had to create this other number for that trophy to, or for that to reach. And so basically it was just a way for us. Like a greatest hits. Yeah. Yeah. It was just a way for us to do that. It's arbitrary.

It is. But any report, so if, you know, one of our university programs comes to us or an agency comes to us and wants to know, you know, category-wise, what are you guys seeing? It's always off that entry score for whitetail 160, you know, for pronghorn 80, whatever the case may be. So 160 for a whitetail. Yeah. All our data is based off of that 160 number. And so that, that other number that we created was basically just a way for us to, to reasonably publish and sell a book.

So if 160 for a whitetail makes the book. Yep. If it's archery, right? No. We take any legal means of harvest. We don't separate it out. So it's not separated out. Yep. If it's archery, right? No. We take any legal means of harvest. We don't separate it out. So you don't, it's not separated out. No.

So 160 makes the book, but what makes the all time? 170. But again, that's because we'd have, if we, 160 is identified as a top species that needs to be recorded. It met our criteria, but we can't put all the 160 pluses from the last 80 years in one book. So that's really where it came from. So we said, you know what, wees from the last 80 years in one book. So that's really where it came from. So we said, you know what, we're going to.

It made the yearbook. It's the awards book, which is a three-year period. Everything entered in that three years goes in the awards book. And then we just have an arbitrary number that the very top of the top goes in this all-time book once every six years. And people don't want to hear it, but it's currently 170. At the rate we're going, that number is going to be 180 in the foreseeable future. Because the one we just, the last all-time book we did is now two volume. I mean, it's getting to the point now where we're getting so many entries that

what we thought was going to keep it at a one volume book has now expanded, which is great. I mean, that's great that there's that many mature animals out there that our species are doing well. I mean, that's great that there's that many mature animals out there that, that are species are doing well. I mean, that's a good sign. I'd rather have that than trying to fill pages. Now, do you guys remember my earlier suggestion? Because I'm going to give you another one now. Okay. Yeah.

The change in it slightly as we go forward. Yep. Keep doing the old way, but then, right. Okay. The other suggestion is this. Peel off. Forget about the threshold for the all time it's the top 100 or it's the top 10 yeah we've looked at that that's been discussed i like your thoughts in

the right place top one dude i'd buy the top 100 book really yeah like top 100 bucks let me see you hear that julie yeah you or you could do like like women's magazines and have it be the top 99 just because it catches your because then you're like wow it must be real if it's 99 anybody anybody can do 100 yeah top 100 bucks yeah you know um are you guys behind the great rams books uh because your name's in there. Yeah. So we, the last two volumes of that, we've actually published, BNC publishes books. And so Julie Tripps, our director of publications, I think it was Great Rams 3. We worked with Bob Anderson. So we actually did all the publication and whatnot of 3 and 4.

Yeah. I like those books. Yeah. Is there like, is there an equivalent for Mulder? We did a Mule deer retrospective. We went back and we took all of our old entries, the stuff that kind of got dropped and maybe never made an awards book that you wouldn't see. So we did a mule deer retrospective and we looked at doing more of a book like that. But man, that sheep world is just so picturesque and the characters are so defined that it's, it's a little bit

easier to build a book around sheep hunters, I think, than mule deer hunters. There's a, there's a book, Idaho's Greatest Mule Deer by Ryan Hatfield. I wish it was like Greatest Mule Deer of the West or whatever, but it's Idaho's Greatest Mule Deer, but it's got the stories. Yeah.

Right. I think that the, the dude, one of the dudes that has one of the best bucks ever got in idaho he um he was just rode out on his up behind his house over wasn't it yeah grover cleveland or something like that rock rode out to shoot a buck to eat yeah sees a buck thinks there's something wrong with it shoots it thinks to himself nothing more than it was quote, a squirrely looking buck or a screwy looking buck or something. And then 30 years goes by and someone finds it in his garage.

And like, lo and behold, it's the biggest buck to ever come out of Idaho. Yeah. Hatfield actually, he was, I, he had my job when I went to work for BNC. Oh, okay. He was the BNC guy that was doing those books. Yeah, it's got the best jacket of any book.

You should go look up Idaho's Greatest Mule Deer. If you look at the cover of the book, it's hilarious. So what's next for Boone and Crockett, man? You guys been around for 100 and – I can't do that. Yeah. 30-something? 132. There we go. Thanks, that. Yeah. 30-something? 132. There we go.

Thanks, boss. Yeah. Yeah, is there like a midlife crisis that happened? Like, happens? Like, what happens now? Do you guys launch new initiatives? Like, what should people, if people want to sort of see what's going on with Boone and Crockett, what do they got to do? Well, you know, obviously go to our website.

You know, we try to keep everything updated there. But, you know, we're going to continue our policy work with a focus on, again, habitat health, wildlife health, and public access. And because those are things that just that are nonstop that you always have to address. And, you know, we. So give me the three. I like that. Wildlife health, habitat health, we. So give me the three again. I like that. Wildlife health, habitat health and public access. Gotcha.

Mainly our three focus areas, you know. That's a good way to sum it up. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and as administrations change, you know, we have to change with those things. So we understand, you know, we can deal with what the politics deal or dealt. We have to deal with the hand that we're dealt, I guess. And, um, but you know, we, we just keep plugging along and, um, and that's really all we can do.

And, you know, we've had some successes, we've had some failures, we've had, uh know, one of the most exciting things from a personal perspective, because even before Boone and Crockett that I and probably about 30 or 40 other select individuals have been working on for the past 25 years is full funding bill WCF, which is, could be with the Great Outdoors America, Great America Outdoors Act right around the corner for the first time in 20 years. And I hope so because I feel like it's been around the corner for a long time now. It has. It has. Now, you know, we got full authorization a year ago. Now, if we get full permanent funding, you know, that's a big deal. And that's been a long uphill fight. But, you know, you don't get everything done.

You know, we try to do things right, not fast. And so, you know, you got to kind of look at the landscape. Okay, what is, you know, we have 20 things on our policy agenda that we would like to see done. What out of those things can we get done in one particular administration? It might only be six. So we focus on those six things for those four years or those eight years. And, and that's what, uh, that's what we focus on. Um, you know, for example, right now, endangered species act, well, you know, that's an old act. It was put in for very good reasons and we need to keep that act, but it does need to be modernized.

And so, um, I don't know that we have the appetite in Congress for that right now. So why we don't want to waste our time on that. Again, we just want to focus on the things we do think we can move the needle on. But it's always going to fall into one of those three categories, habitat health, wildlife health, or public access. That's interesting, the need to adapt that list in order to just be most effective with what, with what's going on.

Yeah. To be able to say, well, you know what, this issue is important to us, but now's not the time, but it'd be a great time for this issue. Right. Right. And then getting the people together to do that, the different conservation organizations out there to help with that. So the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, you know, the pheasants group,

the mule deer group. And so being able to bring those people to the table when those issues come up and knowing when to strike. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's an important point that Kyle brought up because, you know, one of the things that, that our organization is able to do because we don't have a dog in the fight, so to speak in terms of, you know, events and funding and because we're pretty much eternally funded, you know, um, you know, we can, we can facilitate a lot of things, um, facilitate work with among all the different organizations out there.

Um, 20 years ago, this, you know, August, we, uh, we had a meeting at our headquarters with, um, with the nonprofits, uh, at the time that were involved with, uh, sportsman's base conservation. There were 17 of them represented, including some of the ones that, uh, Kyle mentioned, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Mule Deer Guys, National Wild Turkey Federation. And, you know, the whole objective of that meeting was to, you know, conservation wasn't moving at the time very, very well. And, um, you know, conservation wasn't moving at the time very well. And, you know, the club saw an opportunity to say, okay, you know what? We're not succeeding here. And we're all going different directions.

We got to check our egos at the door. We got to check our agendas at the door. We're going to sit down and how can we work together to get the job done? And what boiled out of that original meeting in August of 2000 was an organization of, it started out to be 17, now today it's 45 sportsman's based and shooting sports based organizations that represent roughly 8 million votes. And when there's an issue that comes in front of Congress, we draft letters that all these organizations sign onto that go to our congressional delegations and say, we're in favor of this, or we're not in favor of that.

And, um, and they listen, I mean, 8 billion votes is nothing to sneeze at. So, you know, if you, if you look at the sport sporting community overall, I think it's better organized than it ever was at that policy level, which is another reason why we're actually making some headway in the past, uh, you know, few years that, uh, that we hadn't, we, you know, that we hadn't been making, but, um, but you know, that's one of our strengths is to be able to bring those kinds of groups together and, and, and, and focus on a common, on common ground. We've had, uh, Whit Fosberg, who leads the theodore roosevelt conservation partnership on the show a couple times and um we had him on recently well i guess it was months ago now but he had an interesting point where he's saying that the

periods of real bipartisan dysfunction aren't necessarily bad for conservation. Because when you have such a tumultuous situation in the House and Senate, oftentimes you can get good pieces of conservation stuff through because they're just looking for a win. Like these broad, these things that have some pretty broad support, when they have nothing going on and everything's acrimonious, it's like a thing that they can pass and so he doesn't feel totally pessimistic about and that's why he's looking at some of the achievements we've had over the last handful of years where they had um you know

some good conservation bills because his view is that it just gives them at least something to kind of agree on and to move through some common sense conservation work. I don't know if you share that opinion. You look like you don't. No, actually I do. Oh, you do? I do, yeah. And TRCP is a very active member of that AWCP,

American Wildlife Conservation Partner Coalition I just mentioned. And they were at the first meeting back in 2000. And so, and Whitney's, Whit's right. I mean, I think that the divisiveness, even though it's not pleasant to deal with, and I'm not exactly sure in the overall health of our country, it is, it is a good thing. Oh, I believe that it is not. You know, um, I will tell you for our world, it has at times, not all the time, but at times worked to our advantage. Yeah, where you could say like, here's something good you could do. Yeah, yeah.

And there's a lot of people that support this. Yep. And, or it gets tacked on to some piece of legislation to get, you know, somebody's bill passed. You know what I mean? But so, yeah, I think, you know, we've tried as an outdoor conservation community to take advantage of those types of things to do a good thing. You know, to turn what is not necessarily a great thing into something that at least at the end of the day can come out as a good thing. Yeah. This conversation came out of his, in fact, it was the it was an early the early part of the new year here and we were we had put to him like like 2019 like thumbs up or thumbs down for conservation

and he had felt that it was a a thumbs up year absolutely all in all absolutely we we made some great home runs last year um that's great to hear. Cause you'd almost think the other day we were talking about, you know, the Plains tribes, some Plains tribes used to have the practice of that. They would have a robe, like a Buffalo robe. And basically they would distill down a year into a symbol,

you know, and the symbol could be any number of things. Like, it could be like someone being sick or like something that was like a phenomenal year for hunting or whatever. And you'd like make a thing like to wrap it up, you know, and we were just saying how 2020 is just shaping up to be like the bullshit year. You know, it would have been great if 2020 would have ended on February 8th. You know, unfortunately it didn't. Yeah, I know. Things would like seem to be going great for a minute there. And also, yeah.

Yeah. But no, I think 2020 was a great year for, for conservation. For 2019. Or 2019, I'm sorry. Yeah. 2019 was a great year. We had ominous bill.

We addressed the fire, the wildfire funding fix, you know, um, trying to give our agency more money to manage our forest instead of fight wildfires. And, you know, that was a great, the Farm Bill had some great wildlife and habitat health language in it. S47, Senate Bill 47, which had a lot of public lands, great things for public lands in it. Yeah, we did some good work last year. Is 2020 shot? I guess if we can get the Great American, was it Sportsman's Act?

What's it called? The Great American Outdoors Act. Outdoors Act. And it's supposed to be on the docket here within the next couple of weeks. We'll know. That's great because I'm assuming that once like October hits, nothing's going to happen. Well, yeah. Just because of campaign season.

I mean, it'll be like so – Yeah, you know, and in the past, that's kind of the way it's been. Of course, this is – you know, you never know. But I think we – it's in our best interest, again, as a community to get as much done as quickly as we can at this point. Because most of the legislation that's on deck right now has been stuff that's been worked on. So it's not like we're trying to create language. Just finish. Push the stuff across the finish line.

We're spit polishing the deal. So if we can get it across the finish line, it'll be great. Yeah. And that, so to answer your question, I don't think 2020's shot. I think it's hanging in the balance. I feel shot. Well, from our perspective. We're only on the sixth month, right?

It somehow feels like it just needs to go away and start over again. Understand I'm the eternal optimist too. But no, you know, we still got some good things going out there. I mean, I think, again, the health of our country, the health of our economy, it's a driver that is going to resonate with funding for what we want to do in the conservation arena. in, in, in general, I think they realize they may not know why, but that, you know, the, our natural resources in our country are probably the most valuable asset that we have. And without those, regardless of wall street or anything else, nothing's out and nothing else is going to tick.

Yeah. And, you know, so we've got to maintain the health and viability of our natural resource space. I'm glad to hear that. You think that the public, uh, recognizes that? Cause I don glad to hear that you think that the public recognizes that because I don't know if I always feel that way. Yeah, it's nice to think. Well, it goes back to Steve's point about the, you know,

the quote environmentalism. You know, so, you know, it doesn't make any difference exactly how they think, but they're at least aware of it. And they may not know, again, they may not know why they may not be exactly have all the right reasons, but at the same time, you know, folks are kind of aware of the fact that, you know, our, you know, it's kind of important that we have a healthy environment to live in and it's a healthy in, in now there's going to be people that think we're cutting down too many trees Now there's going to be people that think we're

cutting down too many trees. There's going to be people that think we're not cutting down enough. You know, science points to right now, we need more active forest management overall. That's not going to be agreeable with, with everybody, but the point I'm making is people are noticing it.

You know, people are saying, you know, we've got a forest health problem. And, um, and I think that's a positive thing. Yeah. Even though some of the details might become a little contentious. Right. Details are always contentious. Yeah.

The devil's in the details. Yeah. I like to think I have, um, you know, I have a, a borderline, uh, like unconditional love for my country, like a deep patriotism. And it's hard to picture like, yeah, how, uh, would I feel differently if it was, uh, like unconditional love for my country, like a deep patriotism. And it's hard to picture like, yeah, how, uh, would I feel differently if it was, uh, um, would I feel differently if it was like an environmental wasteland? Right. Not going to help.

No, no, no. Right. It's not going to help. Well, I just, I grew up over the hill here in Butte, Montana, which, uh, you know, back when I grew up as a kid was not exactly the most environmentally pleasant place to look at. But I will tell you, you know, they've made great strides in correcting that problem. And no, you know. A couple of fists were thrown.

A couple of fists were thrown, but you know, but your point is well taken. I mean, if we don't have our natural resource base, we don't have, you know, wild places and wildlife that have those wild places to enjoy as a country. You know, I just, I don't, I think the patriotism part becomes a lot more difficult. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.

There's a lot to be proud of. Right. And it didn't, and the thing I try to more and more point out to people is like growing up up you know as a little kid or whatever you you think all the great things and the wildlife and stuff are uh just there like by accident untouched like untouched by the hands of man right and then later you're like oh no they got touched they're there because people they're there there because people decided to have it be there. Right.

It was a conscious decision. It was a conscious decision that cost money and cost time. It was like, there's nothing accidental. No, no. It's the North American model. It's awesome they realized that. What's that? It's awesome they realized that.

Well, I realized, but it took me 30 years to realize it. american model it's awesome they realized that was that it's awesome they realized that oh i i realized but it took me 30 years to realize it well i mean back in the late 1800s oh they real oh yeah it was realized and that people had the foresight they didn't just let it walk off i mean we did lose some species but you know but again i mean that's just awesome that that a group of people or a collective of people took that on and said we can't let this happen you know they tried to do like yeah or try to do the impossible or yeah or what other people were that's the thing i was like to uh bring up and it's similar to when boone and crockett started out is um when i was working on my book, American Buffalo, I talked about that guy Hornaday.

And they were so sure that animal was gone. That's why the National Collection was started. They were so sure it was gone. They dispatched him out by rail on like an emergency order to go shoot a couple and save the skeletons. Yep. Because they wanted to be able to have like a specimen and they wanted hides and skeletons. And they're like, hurry. Yeah.

Now's your chance. Well, and that was originally the measuring system too, was so we could kind of picture. Oh, for sure, man. Yeah. Yeah. He was supposed to go get like as many as he could get. Yep. So that someday people would be like, that's what it looked like.

Yeah. There it is. Well, they trucked one back to the Bronx Zoo. Yeah. And they had a buffalo sitting they trucked one back to the Bronx Zoo. Yeah. And they had a buffalo sitting there hanging out in New York, in Bronx. Yeah. That's one of the great ironies of that story is that later when they tried to, one of the projects of bringing them back to the Great Plains, they had to use as a source herd, the Bronx Zoo. Yeah.

They're like bringing them, they're bringing bison from the east to the west. Yeah. Which like that collector mentality proved to be pretty valuable. So where are you guys, how do people find you guys on the web? Hopefully you got Boone and Crockett domain name. Yeah, we got Boone and Crockett.

You got it early. Yeah, we got on that one early. So yeah, just type that in and you'll find us. That's great, man. And if you got, you know, next time you're over at your type that in and you'll find us. That's great, man. And if you got, you know, next time you're over at your grandpa's barn and you find some crazy deer head in there. Yeah, call one of our 1,400 official measures out there. Yeah. And you can find those on our website.

And maybe you'll make the all time. Maybe you'll make the top hundred bucks. It doesn't matter. Justin says a lot of times that, you know, we'd much rather see, let's take whitetail. We'd much rather see 160 inch whitetail out of an area we've never seen it before than the next 200 inch whitetail. Is that right? Because that's telling us more about the management that, you know, whatever this area was doing is now producing mature animals. So it's more exciting for us to see that animal come in from an area that we might not have previously seen something come in,

or we were seeing them from there, and then they kind of dropped off, and now they're coming back. Pick them back up. Yep. You know what book I really want the more I think about it? This would be a custom book you can make just for me. It'd be just called the top 100 but it's the top 100 everything so it's all of the things all the north american game animals

but it's like and you might you know i don't want to know if it winds up being you just have to figure out the ratio right so it'd be like probably like you probably want 20 white tails 10 mule deer, one goat. So what about that? That'd be a good book. What about a picked up head? Sure, I don't care. You don't care if there's not a story other than... No, no, no, I don't want that.

No. It's got to be the top 100 taken. The top 100 B and C. And it'd be like, however you want to break it out. It can't be like 50 mountain goats. That's not going to be very exciting. Like a mountain goat. Well,

I would like to have two lions in it. I mean, the mountain goats are the best stories we have. Yeah. Nobody kills a good goat that doesn't almost die. You need like three doll sheep. You should probably have five big horns. This is getting recorded,

right? Yeah. You got this Phil? Phil's going to outline the whole book. Yeah, nice. All right. Boone and Crockett Club. Thank you very much guys. We should have done this a long time ago. you got this Phil Phil's gonna outline the whole book yeah nice alright Boone and Crockett Club

thank you very much guys we should have done this a long time ago um next time something weird happens let us know you know how to get a hold of Kyle and I

yeah I wanna have it be that when you get uh that when you have a hard call to make like like the bear thing

or something that um we can come down and participate in making the call okay make, like the bear thing or something, that we can come down and participate in making the call. Okay. We'll film it. I'll be like, here's what I'd do. What would Rinella do? And then that guy will write into every hunting publication being, that damn

Rinella penalized me. That's good. It gets us off of us and puts it on someone else. We'll let Phil decide. We'll be like, Phil, I don't know you don't know what do you think phil i'll also point out that uh boone and crockett club has a discount code where listeners of uh of this pod here can get 10 bucks off a yearly subscription to fair chase magazine you just got to use the code meat eater And so that's for folks listening right now who are like, huh, it's kind of interesting. Well, go find out just how interesting

and get your discount on Boone and Crockett Club's publication, Fair Chase. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having us. Thank you. It's a media podcast. Talking about things you might want to hear.

It's a media podcast, people. Talking about things you might want to hear. Talk about hunting and fishing and conservation. And occasionally, I'm by whitetail deer. No underwear Steve Rinelli, he's the host Man, that guy likes to talk Severely bug-bitten, underwearless Steve Rinelli, he's the host Man, that fella loves to talk severely bug-bitten, underwearless Steve Rinaldi as a host. Man, that fella loves to talk. But make no mistake about it, my friends.

That skinny guy, he also walks a walk. Ryan Callahan and Yannis Petit. You know, how can you not be a fan? O'Kell and Yanni Germani Indeed, we should all be fans O'Kell's got his conservation podcast And Yanni is the world's most affable man.

There's a lot to talk about in conservation. And things we do and don't want to see. Lots to talk about conservation. Things we do and don't want to see. All kinds of hunting and fishing techniques. And then bad, bad stuff. Like CWD. Torn fingers and other weird injuries.

Hunting, hunting, hunting, hunting, fishing down on the farm. Torn fingers and ripped nipples and other odd injuries is part of hunting and fishing or life on the farm. But if you're lucky like I was, you know what, they can just sew that thing right back on. Learn to hunt in public access. Two more subjects we should all care about. Getting people out hunting public land and access. Hey man, those are two things that we should all care about. Fishing. Catch and release.

You think it matters to the trout? I do. So welcome to this podcast, friends. It's good to have you here. Welcome to the Media Podcast, good people. It's so good to have you here. Just remember, some of these things might seem real simple, but others, they're not so clear. Yeah, it's long, isn't it? Well, I can clean that up. Let me get the idea.

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