The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 272: Biden's First 100 Days

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with with Whit Fosburgh, Ryan Callaghan, Seth Morris, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: The deer of the NJ turnpike; Joe Cermele's IG handle and B-Side Fishing; Steve's kids get their first turkeys; the time when a retracting bike kick stand made a turkey gobble; New Mexico's trapping ban and challenging the hypocrisy of its grounds; estate sales and the laws of selling taxidermy; what would you do if your dog drowned a fawn?; more on whether snapping turtles will bite you underwater; the time when Steve's brother's girlfriend had a ball of teeth surgically removed from her body; Whit Fosburgh on Biden's first 100 days from a conservation perspective; the importance of private landowners; having a soft spot for an underwater snag; and more.Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We are the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by First Light.

Go farther, stay longer. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Yanni is going to introduce everybody. Yanni. Can I say what town we're near? I don't give a shit. We're here in Southwest Michigan at our buddy Matt's place, hunting some Turks. Less than an hour from my dad,

who I'm not going to see on this trip, probably. But who appreciates good intro. That's right. And we got Whit Fosberg from TRCP, Seth Morris, the flip-flop flesher, Ryan Callahan, Old Cal406 on Instagram, And Steven Rinella. Speaking of Instagram handles, I was wondering why Joe Cermelli from B-Side Fishing. Mm-hmm. Which is a great fishing show,

if you haven't seen it yet. Just one episode so far, right? Two. Oh, there's two out right now? Or there will be two out? There's two out right now. There's two out. Probably by the time this thing airs,

all four of them will be out jersey fishing and what else it's all stuff around jersey sunny oh nice yeah nice that's this season's theme i've seen the new jersey turnpike a couple of times on the show no just driving on it oh you just personally yeah that's all my experience and did you love it um i thought it was you know as far as infrastructure goes it was a solid piece of work you know a thing they have out east um i want to get back to joel sermelli's instagram handle in a minute here but the thing they have out east you notice those ones like that that have where there's a huge median yeah with all the mature trees in the middle yeah like the median's so big you can't see like if you're going whatever northbound you can barely see the southbound traffic

when i was writing for outside i kept they never let me do it i know i kept being like i want to do a story where i camp in there for a week and have just someone just slow down on the highway, let me jump out, and then backpack and camp down those long medians where no one can go because you can't even get out there. You'd find some weird stuff out there, man. That's a good idea. Dude, I have seen turkeys out

living in those. No one's going to get to them. Insurance companies must hate those things. From white-tailed deer crossing back and forth. Yeah, you see some of those, it's like there's no way anybody is messing around in there. I think there's deer living and dying in those things. And it's probably... And they're owned by Department of Transportation.

State, yeah, state. Yeah, they never let me do that story. Joe Cermelli. yeah they never let me do that story uh joe uh sir melly it's like joe it's like joe sir melly 138 someone check fact check me and i was saying i don't know what the hell the 138 is it's based off a misfit song like i solved two riddles at once because when we had the nature's metal dude on i was talking about joe sir melly he's a metal guy and i was saying joe sir melly likes metal he said what kind of metal? I'm like, I don't know what the hell he likes. Joe dot Cermelli.

138. And it's from that Misfits tune. We are 138. Which I still don't know what the hell that means. But what does that mean anyway? That's why he's Joe dot Cermelli 138 is because the Misfits song 138, which if the Nature's Metal guy, Rick, is listening,

he likes that song. Maybe it's a union thing. Like local pipe fitters, 138 is because the Misfits song 138, which if the Nature's Metal guy, Rick, is listening, he likes that song. Maybe it's a union thing, like local pipe fitters, 138. Yeah, it's got to be it, Cal. Guy wrote in, lifelong resident of Wyoming. This is apropos. This is apropos of the time of year. It'd be in the spring when all good men and women hunt turkeys. I didn't know this about Wyoming. In Wyoming,

you can still in the spring season shoot turkeys. Did you know this? In the spring season, you can shoot turkeys with a rifle. A centerfire. A centerfire. Ooh.

No, no, no. Rimfire no center fire you can you can shoot turkeys in the spring with a center fire rifle that changed the game huh it sure changed the game it sure changed the way i feel about i mean and i wouldn't have changed the way i feel about getting my camis on and sitting next to my decoy. Yeah, especially your full strutter. Yeah. Some dude 100 yards away. There's one. Wind blows and that thing starts moving. Yeah. Or if Nephi Cole's out there 800 yards away. I'd like to think he'd know a live turkey from a plastic one, but sure.

It takes all the fun out of it, though. The best part about spring gobbler hunting is the interaction, the calling them in. Yeah, for sure. Wyoming Game and Fish has an open public comment period on these regulations. This guy's thinking that shotguns and archery tackle is appropriate. I'll tell you an apocryphal. Oh, go ahead, Yanni.

I was going to say I have an opinion on why it is that way in Wyoming. Please. I just think it's the wide open spaces. Like you're probably not hunting turkeys in like the classic turkey hunt country of the eastern united states there yeah you're hunting creek bottoms valley bottoms yeah yeah just more open country where the same way that where we're sitting now in michigan you can't use a center high-powered rifle to hunt deer it's too dense too many people and uh you know out in wyoming you can stretch it out a little bit i'll tell you a story that comes out of florida and you were here i don't know if

you remember this but and you might have been not here here but you were present on this trip where someone was explaining about when a sportsman's group in Florida wanted to address this issue. A turkey hunting group was worried about rifle use during spring turkey season for safety purposes. Again, full camo there flat ground full camo decoys jungle like habitat landscape mimicking animal sounds right you start hearing it all and you start realizing it seems

like a way that there's a pathway toward someone getting shot and they this this turkey hunting group wanted to address um what they thought was a real serious liability which is being able to use rifles for spring turkey they did not want it to blow up into a um firearms rights question and they had gone through quite a bit of work to uh they had gone through quite a bit of work to uh they had gone through quite a bit of work to explain that the motivation is not a firearms restriction this has nothing to do with ownership but this is like hunters advocating for other hunters then the spring season should be shotguns to reduce risk and when it went for i don't know what ultimately happened but when it went forward it did not go the way they planned and it very much became a um it became like a gun rights

question and not a turkey hunting question um wonder if you can still now use rifles i don't know this we heard this story a long time ago and it might even have been had already gone on but either way i think that also it's like when when people have and i'm as guilty of as anybody not guilty it's not that you need to be guilty of it i have that tendency as much as anybody is when you have the ability to do something and all of a sudden you can't, right. You kind of go like, well,

what's up with that? Why is that? A great question being, um, in Montana, uh, right. You can't look like bear hunting in Montana.

You know, it's not a public safety issue, but you can't bait. You can't use dogs. People are quite okay with that if you live in a state where you could use dogs and also you're not supposed to use dogs anymore it encounters a lot of friction but if you're somewhere where something's always been a certain way it just becomes easier to deal with and so if you're living you know in wyoming and

you got a place and every year you get a turkey with your 22 mag and all of a sudden someone's like, no, no, no. You can picture that you would. Oh, for sure. Be a little miffed. Yeah, especially. I haven't shot anybody. They're like, super safe, never had an issue, never even came close to having an issue.

Yeah. So why can't I? Sure, I can see other people, but not me. Very natural. This is a good question that came in about turkeys. He was wondering, let's say you had a pet turkey and you tethered him out in a field. Would that be a good decoy?

Hell yes. My kid's buddy, their family raises turkeys. I don't know what the hell kind. They're like Spanish blacks or something. Spanish blacks. I was going to say, they don't even have to be the right color. Dude, well, that's some bitchin' turkey.

We went over there to get ours. I brought my boy over there with little.22 shorts to shoot turkey. Yep. That they had gifted us. And I was startled, man. I was like, are you sure? That's not just a regular wild. It looked like a wild turkey.

Almost. Oh, I love it. If you saw it coming through the woods, dude, nine out of ten people wouldn't be like, there's something wrong with that turkey. Growing up, we had bronze and white turkeys. And man, every morning in the spring, there was a flock of wild turkeys hanging out with them.

Really? Yeah. Yeah, this thing was surprising. I mean, it was different, but surprisingly. It wasn't like, I went over there, I was expecting some big-ass was surprising. I mean, it was like different, but surprisingly. It wasn't like, you know, I went over there. I was expecting some big-ass white turkey. I don't know. Like something that looked like a...

Yeah, the bronze is the one that looks probably the closest, right? No, it's like brown. Oh, I can't remember. I ordered one. We ordered a bunch, actually. Jake's going to take a few off my hands, but they're coming off my hands, but they're coming to my house, I believe, in July or August.

When you're getting turkeys? Yeah. We're going to eat some, and then I'm going to learn how to call better from the hens. I'm going to keep some hens around. But another reason I want to have them around is because, yeah, they're going to be making some noise all the time and i hope to attract some wild turkeys i think you probably attract grizzly bear here one of these days that you might have you might have your that might uh excite your black bears yoni um dr michael chamberlain turkey doc wild turkey doc on instagram

um he says if the bird acted in any way normal it would be incredibly effective which is why i doubt you'll find a state where it's legal because i don't know that but i'd be stunned if any states actually allow use of live decoys he said that thing was that type of thing was outlawed decades ago around waterfowl hunting. And that used to be a practice. Yes. Putting out ducks. I wonder what an abnormal turkey acts like. A peacock.

Panicked. It would only be effective if it acted normal. If it acted panicked. Oh, yeah. If it constantly hunches close to the ground and looks over its shoulder and tries to run away. That'd be a problem. What I had a handful...

I learned a new thing about turkeys. A thing I was able to witness several times over the last couple days. Watching deer and turkeys coming in a food plot together, that if a deer freaks out and runs away, like spooks and runs, jumps and runs, whatever,

the turkeys are like, eh. They kind of lift their heads up, but don't really care. When that deer goes, holy smokes, man. It takes those turkeys 10 minutes to put their heads back down. Even if it's off in the distance. And I today watched, I heard a deer blow.

I watched nine hens all stick their heads up. And I watched two fox squirrels run to a tree, go up the tree and start chattering. Over a deer blowing. Close, but a deer blowing. And it took those things i'm like definitely six minutes to stick their heads back down again that's valuable observation people bring up like what do animals you know how do animals right and i remember um uh talking about pine squirrels that that you know you get irritated when you're elk hunting or whatever you know a pine squirrels that you get irritated when you're elk hunting or whatever,

and a pine squirrel sees you. But then you realize that they're also doing it to elk. But then we had a squirrel researcher say that pine squirrels are usually doing that to pine squirrels. So I think the animals, they don't care at all. When a pine squirrel's going, I think everybody's like, that guy's always doing that. But man, the deer blow is an attention grabber.

They had, these researchers once took, I don't know what the hell they look like, but a vervet monkey. You know what that is? A vervet monkey. They went to this troop of monkeys and created a, well, let me back up a little bit. They found that these monkeys have a variety of warning calls. And they have warning calls that are directed toward a threat on the ground. And they have warning calls that are used for a threat in the air. And they have warning calls that are used for a threat in the air. And they're different.

And depending on what noise comes out, the animals will respond by clearing the ground or getting up against the trunk and looking up. They were able to record a specific vervet monkey doing his alarm call. And then they started playing it all the time to the troop until they blew that monkey's credibility. And people quit paying attention to that monkey. He became the boy who cries wolf. Monkeys quit paying attention

to that monkey. They blew his credibility by, he's like, oh, there he is again. You know, but there's no problem. He's probably pissed. Not that dude.

Yeah. It's manipulative, man. I noticed basically every time crows flew over the decoys, like low, they made a racket. It's like they flew over the food plot, saw that there was decoys, and started calling aggressively. Oh, I thought you meant that the the turkeys take note of no the crows just flying over like multiple times i noticed crows flying over silent they flew over hit the food plot like looked down saw the decoys and started making all sorts yeah uh aaron warburton the guy from the hunting public that i got to hunt with

in georgia a few weeks back he actually takes note and and continues to like keep an eye on the crows that are working the zone and if he's like man those crows or he'll be like oh gobbler gobbled earlier over there and if you've noticed those crows have sort of been hanging around over there they're pestering that turkey and the turkeys that the turkeys they are with that turkey yeah and like messing with them hmm um that that is you know a documented deal with big game as far as um you know scavenger birds alerting predators to large prey sources especially in the winter, because they're going to get a reward if something dies.

But I would think that like crows, ravens, they probably eat or, you know, try to eat young turkey poults or locate nests here and there too. Yeah. That's interesting. So I'm sure there's a there's a real interaction there you know another thing that i had never picked up on because i didn't have such a like such a controlled concentrated high volume area to observe it is that

we use these turkey toys uh dsds ds, Dave Smith decoys. And Holy shit. I mean, a dude looks at, they look like a freaking Turkey, a Turkey looks at, and they look like a Turkey. So turkeys will come out. I was hunting with,

for you season with my boy, a Turkey came out, a hand came out and bedded down to, to preen herself between my strutter and my hen decoy and laid down in the grass and groomed herself. That is awesome.

Very contentedly. Last night, I had seven hens out, seven real live turkey hens out in a field with my two decoys. Totally bought into it.

Like totally bought into it. Some deer. And again and again, I saw this happen. Deer come out and tell us deer, man, this, they,

the minute they step clear of the brush is like, something's wrong with that turkey. Like whatever they see is like, like what they see isn't what it, I mean, we all know it's not with that turkey. Whatever they see is like, what they see isn't what, I mean, we all know it's not what we see. It definitely isn't what a turkey sees. They see something and they're stomping their foot the minute they stick their nose out. There's something about the sheen of it.

I don't know what. They are not buying it. Circling it, stomping buying it, circling it, stomping at it, trying to get downwind that deer leaving. Our deer come out and right away. The deer be like, don't like that.

I would love to know what it is that day. Yeah. You didn't take no wind direction at all. Man is real fricking turkeys out there. Right. But your decoy doesn't have like a little funk to it from just rubbing against your hip it doesn't seem it seems visual man it seems like you know how like this whole thing they they you know they don't see what we see and we know that i mean people are always trying to tell you what they see but you know it's they don't see what we see and there's

something about the finish on it the material on it it. They see that, and they're like, uh-uh. Yeah. Or maybe it's like the stillness of them, the lack of movement. Yeah. Because I feel like a lot of times there's a real sort of sense of curiosity. They kind of come towards it. They stomp their feet at it. They do a lot of those sort of herky curiosity like they kind of come towards it they stomp their feet at it you know they do a lot of those sort of like herky-jerky motions like trying to see if like

maybe when it puts its head away does it move you know and i think it makes them uneasy how little motion there is yeah maybe maybe it's just that another thing i saw certainly a deer decoy that's completely still and motionless, it fools a deer. Yeah. Yeah, it might just be something about its body language. Another thing, this is small sample size, and I can't say it's for sure yet, but this is of interest,

is that I was watching a fox squirrel today, two fox squirrels that were perched up in trees and they're just hanging around. And when these turkeys came out, I don't know what this, I don't know what this, what is that planted in up there? Winter wheat. It's winter wheat? Yeah. I don't know why the hell the squirrels want to be out in there. Wheat seeds?

Yeah, they might be pulling up wheat seeds. I was trying to watch them through my binoculars. Whatever they're picking up is so small you can't see it, but they're picking something up. For me to you, I can't tell what the hell they're grabbing. It's probably wheat seed. I noticed there was some maple trees that had the... Oh, they might be getting the spinners off?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. When the hens came out, the squirrel came out with them and basically fed underneath them. And where they went, he went. And he didn't go out there until they went out there.

I don't know. Extra set of eyes. Yeah. And last night, I was sneaking into that same spot and could see some hens so i stopped and waited for the hens to pass through and as they passed through i realized there's a squirrel going behind them it might be just him it might be just him i don't know smart lost his parents at a young age raised by turkeys that old story

yeah um i did uh another quick no there's two there's another turkey no sorry all people turkeys drive people crazy apologies ahead of time but i took my two kids they're out there yanni they are out they ride into you they are out there and they are out there. They ride into you? They are out there and they are sick of freaking turkeys. It'll end. It'll start back up again. Took my two kids to, for youth turkey season in Wisconsin. So the state I live in,

you have to be 10 to hunt turkeys. To hunt anything, you gotta be 10 years old. And then, I think I'm mostly getting this right uh generally states have generally this is probably this is very much true states have reduced or eliminated age barriers for hunting because they've gotten into states have gotten into these mentored hunting things so for instance when i was a little uh boy you had to be 14 to hunt deer with a gun 12 to hunt deer with a bow but you could jump right into doing it it was like you could jump into not being able to do it at all and then

at 12 you could go out by yourself and hunt squirrels so what a lot of states have done they've instituted these these mentorship things so in montana for instance once your kid's 10 they can hunt for two years without before they need to do hunter safety so a kid can hunt for two years without doing hunter safety but they have to be within arm's reach of a mentor and the mentor has to be a licensed hunter of a certain age 21 years of age maybe has to be licensed licensed hunter of a certain age, 21 years of age, maybe has to be licensed, certain age thing, licensed and good standing. And then they had to fill out a,

they had to fill out a mentor form. So now my, my boy who's 10, um, he was able to hunt deer with me last year. Um, and you know, his uncle signed up as his mentor too.

Uh, Wisconsin has no age restrictions. Um, as long as you're mentored. So I took my two kids, my eight-year-old daughter and my 10-year-old boy to Wisconsin because they could each hunt. So me and my buddy Doug

were able to take those two out hunting and they each got their, they each got their first turkey. My daughter got one. She had to shoot it twice, but yeah, a little bit of a long story, but got one with a four 10 with a red dot scope, which I think is a

wonderful way to go for little kids. You think she's hooked? Very much. She asked Doug if she could hunt there again next year. Oh, good. That's great. She liked it a bunch. Liked it a bunch.

That's cool. Very cool. Liked everything about it. How'd they handle the getting up? They don't care. Really? Rosemary too, huh? Yeah, they're fine. That's cool. Yeah, they're good at getting up. Long list of things that we're always adding

to it. things that will make turkeys gobble guy was picking up his son from a play date that's a word that used to not be around what what was the uh substitution i don't know when you were a kid you didn't go on a play date the hell did you do you hung out with your buddy buddy, but... That's what I... I resist. In our household, I don't like... Everybody uses that word. My kid even uses that name. I don't use that word.

You don't say, you know what we should do? Arrange a play date. No, I say, you going to go to your buddy's house? You'd be like, yeah, for a play date. Okay. Anyways. Picking up his kid. That word was never, ever said.

I don't recall it. i don't recall it either yeah i remember hearing a linguist um i was listening to on npr and they were interviewing a linguist and the linguist was explaining what they do like what kind of thing they work on and they were and they said something interesting they were giving something that they were interested in and they were saying it wasn't that long ago, no waiter or waitress said, are you still working on that? But then there it was, and it was everywhere. How does that happen? Right.

Right. Yeah. Good question. Yeah. And there's a lot of things in language that are like that you know it's an interesting deal uh clean plate club do you guys ever say that in your households every night right every night okay so never it's a strictly enforced club man never never heard it anywhere else never heard it anywhere else i'm working as a busser in high school in this. Do you remember McKay's on the river? Oh, yeah, I do.

Right. I had a bunch of guns all over the place. A restaurant that is no longer a restaurant in Missoula. I'm working as a busser in there. And I'm, you know, bussing this guy's table. And he said, yeah, I didn't think i'd be able to get through it but i'm a member of the clean plate club that was the first time and i was like are we related i was like where are you from yeah oh because you grew up knowing it but you had never heard it

outside of your home yeah right outside of the the family. It just did not exist for whatever reason. Never heard of it. Yeah. So anyways, this feller picking up his kid from a play date. Just for you folks at home, his kid was playing with his buddy. And he's gathering his kid's bike to load it up into his truck. And the kickstand scraped the concrete driveway. Lo and behold, the time cuts out.

So then he gets the family back out of the truck, has to scrape it against the pavement a whole bunch more, but eventually gets another gobble. Add it to the list. Add it to the list. In the law, this one kills me, man. This kills me personally. We did a piece about it.

If you go to themeateater.com, our very own Sam Lundgren wrote up a piece on this. New Mexico passed a bill banning all trapping on public land, even live traps, even cage traps, public land. Public land trapping is now done.

Signed into law. Democrat governor Grisham signed into law. Passed 35 to 34. Ooh. All, like, all. And you know what? Here's the part that gets me this is the part of this that becomes conversation worthy the law was nicknamed roxy's law because in 2018 a dog was killed in an illegally set snare. So a person violating with a snare catches and kills a dog.

The logical extension of that is to ban, to make legal trapping illegal. The other part about this is. Law abiding citizens, to penalize law abiding citizens. Here's the other problem. New Mexico Fish and Game Commission had just enacted a bunch of new limits on trapping methods and equipment. Mandatory certification classes,

prohibitions on trapping near population centers, prohibitions on trapping near trailheads. Never gave the rules a chance, never even gave him a chance to take effect and see what the results would be so in terms of all the things that are pursued just just so people get a little bit understanding of this i live near a lynx recovery zone, you, a trap that's big enough to catch a lynx, it's big enough to hold and catch a lynx, which is smaller than most dogs and more fragile than most dogs, has to be by law four feet off the ground. Over a certain size,

even if it is four feet off the ground, if it's big enough for a lynx, again, it also has to be in an, it's recommended to put it inside an enclosed box and over a certain size trap has to be in a recessed enclosed box. There are a lot of things you can try before you do that. And the other part of this draws into question is again and again, before you do that. And the other part of this draws into question is, again and again, when you see trapping bans,

it's always, it's like dogs, dogs, dogs. And I don't understand if people, where has it become, how did it become that it's like a God-given right to have your dog not leashed wherever you want to have a dog not leashed? Why isn't it that there's rules governing how you manage your dog in certain areas during certain times of year? Well, the rule is your animal has to be under control, right? That doesn't mean a leash.

But, you know, like Giannis' dog is born to run and run far beyond eyesight to follow his nose and do his job. But Giannis has a serious investment around his neck in a GPS tracking collar. And it's got a tone on there. And you can zap him too. You can shock him, right? Correct. Right? But now you just use the tone that says better come back or i'm gonna zap you right

um and i would argue that that is in control now in wilderness areas you do have to have them on a leash most wilderness areas there are some that have exceptions but is that right yep i always got a ticket once so a houndsman can't operate in a designated wilderness in some designated wilderness areas, unless he wants to track on a leash. I don't know about that because they might have an exception for dogs that are pursuing or hunting. That must be, man, yeah, I've never heard that rule.

I mean, I'm sure there's some sensitive areas, like watershed areas and stuff like that where they worry about oh no like the uh it's whatever what's the one south of vale there um it's the eagle's nest wilderness i think it is but yeah i'm like seven eight miles back not even on a trail, just kind of cruising along a hillside, kind of looking at benches and scouting for elk and just got the dog with me and walk into a meadow,

and there's a Forest Service Ranger. He happened to be there because he was looking for... Dog owners? Pasture ground for horses because they were in there doing some work on bridges and stuff that they needed to bring in equipment so they needed a spot to graze the horses. That's what he was doing there. I was just cruising

along scouting for elk. We got to talking and as I'm leaving he's like, by the way. No way. God, never heard of that in my life. Boy, that guy could make a serious living walking around the bob marshall yeah writing tickets um well again i don't think i think that it's per

wilderness um yeah i'm sure it is uh yeah other thing that bugs me okay so like um So like, um, you have a bad actor, an illegal trapper doing illegal things that, uh, then gets this crazy enforcement brought down on all legal trappers. It makes no sense to me. Um, public lands are, are for the most part, by definition, not even for, I mean, pretty much ubiquitous land of many uses zones they're set aside for everybody and that can be like everybody from miners to joggers right like hard rock miners not uh yeah spandex miners or what am i saying young drinkers minors there you go thank you um and uh god there is an insane amount of public land in new mexico yeah i i looked it up i don't have it

in front of me but it's over 30 million acres of public land in new mexico i'll give you another couple reasons why this this tears me up inside I'm going to speak to a state that I know well but just so people can begin to kind of understand a little bit about some of the mechanisms some of the tools at hand

to mitigate conflict around trapping and dog stuff we have setback rules to mitigate conflict around trapping and dog stuff. We have setback rules, campgrounds, setback rules for roadways, setback rules for designated trails. Sometimes where you'll go into an area and you can't find a place that falls.

If you've got a road that switchbacks or a trail network that switchbacks around, you can't find a place to get clean of the setbacks meaning a setback meaning they'll they'll take a trail you go into your rags and it says like this trail network you can't do anything within um 300 feet of the either side of the trail no setting anything um a type of trap that used to get dogs be like big body gripping traps 330 conan bears uh in our state for instance that thing has to be half submerged you can't set it on dry ground you take like cable restraints um snares they have things like estates can come in and mandate that has a relaxing lock meaning that the lock doesn't get tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter. It has to relax once it's closed.

It has to have a deer stop on it, so it can only close to a certain diameter. They have to have breakaway devices on them. A certain poundage of pressure breaks the thing away. The relaxing thing to make it non-lethal. States will put into things that the snare can't have anything around the circle that would allow it to become entangled. So that it becomes like really like a cable. So it functions as an animal restraint. There are so many things you can do.

So many things you can do that best practices that can be implemented. It just seems to me like a wildly, just a wildly reactionary thing. And I don't think it's about dogs because this dog, this Roxy that got killed by the illegal snare was killed near Santa Fe. I'll tell you what kills dogs in Santa Fe is coyotes. Are these people anti-coyote? That kills a lot of dogs.

Coyotes kill dogs in LA. Why aren't they anti-coyote? Your trapping knowledge is great for people who want to care an iota enough to actually know about trapping. And that's not the people that are banning trapping. It's not the people who know about trapping or want to know about trapping. I guess my point with public land is I've hiked all over hell and gone in New Mexico. I've never seen a trapper or a dog walker in any event, right? There's room enough for everybody. And if you want to be invested in the fact that we have public lands, you need to understand that

those are set aside for everybody. And man, there's a lot of things that i do not do that are totally legal on public land and if you're doing those in a respectful manner man i'll go to bat for you now like there's two there's a lot of land to go around and to outright ban trapping just because you don't want to even understand it is just asinine yeah and like all of your crazy crud we could come after right your big e-biker we can come after that ban that on all public land big you know it just it's it's like foundationally destabilizing to the public land ethos yeah the powerful dog lobby man but even live traps kind of blows my mind that's why it's like it's not god bless roxy roxy is being used as a proxy this is not about roxy no it is not that's a great teaser.

I've heard plenty of stories of horses kicking dogs on the trail. Better ban horses. I think we need to ban horses and ban coyotes. I did think it was funny considering, especially you bring up Santa Fe. Santa Fe is a great town to walk around and do some people watching.

The style, the distinctly southwestern style um you talking about ponytails i'm talking about turquoise i'm talking about leather goods oh yeah uh because we're talking about trapping uh there's a decent amount of fur around that town too which is hilarious uh i think yeah you got to find a new style Southwest if you want to ban trapping. Get rid of all of your leather goods. House Bill 172 in Vermont.

Vermont House Bill 172 would ban all trapping other than a licensed wildlife control operator. Ban all trapping. Also ban hunting bears with the use of hounds. You already can't bait in Vermont. So basically

you go like, oh, no one should be able to hunt bears. And you roll those in together. Listen, man, people, like, I am a believer. I am a believer in the slippery slope i think that the slope is there i think that it's slippery oh absolutely man i mean you just start whittling especially in these cases right you just start whittling away the group of people that participate in these activities and and

give a shit enough about it to like go to bat for them if you were able to whoever it is that's behind this okay and it's not wouldn't be hard to find out i'm guessing hsus is almost certainly by humane society United States is almost certainly involved here. If you could sneak into their bedroom and hear what they talk about in bed at night, it would be, or not even in bed, over the phone with their colleagues. It's not like, oh, once we can get this bear hound thing taken care of, I'm going to hang up my spurs. The world will be perfect.

I'll sleep. No. It's just like they're like, they have it in mind what they would like to end, and it's hunting and fishing, and to some extremes, like pet ownership, weirdly. They'd like to see that end, and then you look, and you'd be like, what are the things we can accomplish right now? What are the things we can accomplish right now? Anything to do with dogs is low-hanging fruit.

Anything to do with traps is low-hanging fruit. If you're a pet owner and you support HSUS, man, you need to pull your head out of your butt and take another look at who you're sending your money to. Not anybody listening to this podcast is doing that. I'm done with that. No, but I guarantee you there's folks in Vermont who aren't going to write in on the trapping bill.

Right? It's like, you folks better know your representatives well. Yeah, what would Clay Newcomb say? Guard the gate, man. Is that what would Clay Newcomb say? Guard the gate, man. Is that what Clay Newcomb would say? Yeah. Yeah, buddy. Guard the gate.

Come on, Cal. Where you been? When something gets banished, Clay, he wants to hang a painting of it upside down on a ceiling. It's symbolic to him. I don't really understand it. All right. him. I don't really understand it. Alright. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. Boy, my goodness

do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps,

waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services

handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. We've had a lot of people. Here's a great, here's a great tool for folks.

You folks at home, a lot of people written in, uh, we're always a hobby of ours here at the meat eater podcast is explain all the weird ways in which you're not allowed to barter and trade wildlife. And people, the minute you say like, you can't sell wild game,

the obvious, and I'm not, I'm not dogging on people who ask this question. Like, like you can't sell wild game the obvious and i'm not i'm not dogging on people who ask this question like like you can't sell venison right i can't i can't go to my buddy's farm shoot a deer shoot a wild deer shoot a deer butcher it and then and then go down to the farmer's market and sell my deer meat. You can't. Very illegal to do that. You can't sell wild game from a food perspective. People bring up the really logical question, well, why can you sell its antlers? Why can you sell taxidermy? Why can you sell its tanned hides?

How do you make sense of this whole thing? Our colleague, Corey, who if you write in, if you write us an email and you want it to get read, you got to butter up. I would address it to Corey and butter him up a little bit. Corey Calkins, butter him up and your email will get better handled.

He found an interesting website. It's an online guide to selling taxidermy at estate sales and auctions. I think it helps with some of the helps with some of the legalities here's a question if say say uh i shoot a white tail doe and you're like i'll i'll take care of that for you. I'll cut it up for you. Okay. But it's going to cost me 80 bucks for bags and tape or whatever. If I give you $80 to do that just to cover materials? No. You can shoot a deer.

Give me the deer. I could take the deer you gave me down and pay for processing. You could shoot a deer and drop it off at the processor. I could go down and pay the processing fee and bring the whole thing home. But then I don't give you five bucks for the deer. Gotcha. What would happen if you said, here's a good one. What if you reimbursed him for the tag?

You said, I'm going to sell you the hide. Here's a good one for a game warden. Someone will write in. You shoot a deer, okay? You get your doe. And you're like, I'll sell you that deer hide for $100, and I'll fill the deer in free. Then what happens?

Yeah. That's a good one. That's a good one. What if you're like,'m like steve i want i want uh your deer that you got this year and you said yep no problem are we role playing right now but the tag cost me 17 bucks no right you couldn't do that now in alaska they have a lot of what's called proxy hunting um and it's an interesting system alaska has proxy hunting where elderly individuals say can buy a tag they could buy a deer tag or buy give make you their proxy and you hunt on their behalf

but the deer goes to them it's applicable in some areas and not applicable in other like applicable around some hunts and not applicable around others you can proxy hunt my elderly neighbor really wanted a doll sheep this year. Right? That type of deal? Yeah, I don't think it probably doesn't apply to that. But no, it's limited to very, it's limited, and I'm not a subject matter expert,

but the proxy hunting is limited to more kind of meat and potatoes kind of issues. Yeah, I'm guessing it's a way to uh you know keep the subsistence lifestyle alive and well yeah so you hunt for others really wanted a 10 foot plus brown bear yanni now that you're reviewing the estate sales.org are you just as you as you give it a cursory inspection are you buying it or are you feeling like it yeah yeah most states are just it's just saying any taxidermy may be sold you know as long as it was obtained legally etc etc uh california now has uh quite a few paragraphs here one giant paragraph uh alaska had some extra rules colorado everything besides

bear gallbladders bighorn sheep bighorn sheep capes velvet antlers connecticut everything besides endangered species yeah it's all here. Estatesales.org. A lot of black bear parts are out in some states. So there you go. People that need to dig in deep and have all kinds of crazy questions, check that out.

But I want to clarify, we're not vouching for it. A lot of times you look at like, the problem I found when you try to go to things that give you state by state roundups. And if you go like, what are Hunter's Orange laws in all the states, right? The damn laws change so fast and people don't go update the website.

Absolutely. You got to kind of go like you want to go to the source. Yeah, I would think if you want, if you really come down to brass tacks on some item on whether to buy it or sell it, I would contact probably U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Here's a good email. He poses this as a what would we do? But I don't really understand the question. Let me tell you the story. A bunch of guys

are out jump shooting ducks on a neighbor's pond. You with me? You picturing? So far, yeah. And they have a dog. How do you say this dog drothar yeah okay they have a drothar a drot a lot of folks just refer to droth they have a drothar they got to retrieve ducks they sneak up on the little pond a bunch of ducks jump up a couple dozen jump they they jump up bam Bam, bam, bam, bam. They get some ducks. The old man's yelling that he

got one too. Now, the dog, here's where the story gets weird. The dog goes out to retrieve the ducks. The dog gets all the ducks, and then he wants ducks and then he does a triple check to make sure they're not missing anything, nothing got away.

As he's walking the edge of the pond to check around, because there seemed to be some uncertainty about who got what, the dog jumps a bedded deer, a yearling, and sets to chasing, the drling, and sets to chase him. The drothar sets to chase the deer.

He's yelling and screaming at the dog and has a shot collar on it, but then checks his pockets and realizes he left the controller in the truck. The deer jumps in the pond and starts swimming. The dog is on top of it fighting the deer. Well, killing the deer. But here's where the story gets weird. All of a sudden, the deer vanishes.

Vanishes. And they're thinking, well, how could that be? How does a deer, like a deer can't sink? They seem to float, kind of. They float near the surface. They get so curious about it, his body strips down, jumps in and swims down,

and dives down and realizes this pond is 15 feet deep and you can't see squat down in there. Another guy jumps in and he, these guys are free, he's a free diver. Another guy strips down and jumps in there and it's so cold he can't figure anything out. Comes back later with a scuba tank. They're divers, abalone divers and whatnot. Comes back later with a scuba tank, goes down to the bottom and there's the deer lying dead on the bottom of the pond

huh oh shit so they just had to know because they didn't believe that the deer like how it just just sunk yep said to pull back straps out of it yeah i was gonna say it'd be well preserved down there and he wants to know what would you do if your dog drowned a deer on your neighbor's farm pond um i don't know i feel like i would think that it was if i drowned a deer on my neighbor's farm pond i would have a conversation i would have to have a conversation with the game warden yeah but i'm guessing i don't know if if you i remember a friend of mine i don't want you, I don't want to, you know, she's anguished enough about this,

but a friend of mine was walking her dog on a very popular hiking trail and her dog killed a deer. Killed a fawn. Very popular dog hiking trail. She was dead. No reason they should all be on leash. She was devastated did it happen but i don't know what your obligations are you kind of want to be like i don't know it was like the dog man well for sure but again you're

supposed to have your dog under control and they're certainly not allowed to harass wildlife and i think that killing wildlife constitutes harassment um so i think technically yeah you're probably you and your dog you're responsible for your dog so you're in trouble for that i would think i mean i'm no game warden but i would think that they would say cal i'm guessing this is a one-time thing for snort. You're not going to let that happen anymore. And if it does, then you're going to get a ticket. Yeah, I would imagine there's got to be some sort of a harassment. Well, you know, animal, whatever.

But, I mean, there's got to be. I mean, I know in the state of Montana, it is legal to shoot dogs chasing deer. Yeah. So there's got to be some way to get a ticket for it, too. Do snapping turtles bite underwater? We were talking about that. I grew up in snapping turtle country, as many people do. And we mess with snapping turtles a lot in trap form and stuff.

And it was said that they won't bite you underwater. And my dad had a very good friend, Al Cole. And he would look for snapping turtles by feeling blind under undercut banks just feeling his hands until he felt the shell then he'd feel the shell and you could you know how they have the the points on the back of the shell he would find he'd feel the shell and could tell by the the points on it what way the turtle was facing and then he'd identify the back and he'd just reach under and grab the tail and he'd say,

that turtle just lay there the whole time. He'd get the tail and jack the turtle back out. Never got bit. No, I'll tell you a story. Quick interjection. I was checking my turtle traps one time

and there was a turtle that he, the biggest sample I ever caught was, had gotten the door of the trap messed up and couldn't get in, but it was trying so hard to get like poking around. And somehow he had, like, I used to make them out of like, uh, you know, that hog wire with the rectangular. Yeah. Yeah. And.

Which is stout stuff. Yeah. And he had, I don't know, him or another turtle had somehow like got the door jacked up. Not that they know where the door is. They're just going everywhere. And eventually it's a funnel and eventually they poke their way in and they get caught. But he had gotten it jacked up where he couldn't get into it. The door was disabled.

So I see the turtle, the trap kind of like bouncing, shaking. It's this huge turtle. He was so intent on getting to the bait that I was able to paddle up in a canoe and grab him by the tail. And this turtle was so big, I'm not joking, I was in high school.

I could not get him into my canoe. Try as I might. And I had to hold that son of a bitch by the tail with kind of the tail over the gun of the canoe in one-handed paddle myself one-handed paddle myself to the bank climb out and drag that thing up and get the back of the truck and i brought it to another commercial turtle guy and he said that was the biggest turtle he'd ever seen biggest snap turtle he'd ever seen nice what did you weigh it i didn't i remember him saying i don't want to say it because it sounds ridiculous but he bought it he was a commercial guy and he bought the turtle from

me so uh what's funny about this this person that wrote in who's a fisheries they're they're a fisheries technician um in north car, and they're doing these survey works for freshwater mussels. He says a lot of times you're able to do your survey work visually, but sometimes you need to do it by feel or you're poking around. And he brings up an interesting observation that's like, I hadn't really thought of, but it's true. He talks about how a lot of clothing, clothing, winds up in streams.

And he describes that look that it gets. You know what I mean? When it gets full of sand. Yeah. Like any kind of fabric and stuff, like laying in the bottom of a stream, it gets full of sand. He said he has twice felt or poked what he thought was a clothing item. But it was that weird, like, you know,

the snappers get that kind of moss that grows on them and it gets like that sandy feeling. And he said, you can do all manner. When he finds a turtle doing his survey work and that turtle thinks it's hidden, he said, you can do all manner of manipulation on that turtle. And a lot of times it's hard to get

them to do anything. And when you get them to do anything, they want to get away. But he says the minute you get that turtle out of the water, he's ready to fight. But he said underwater, fighting's not on his mind. He's like, I'm going to hide. I'm going to get away. But you get them up out of the water, and he's like, no, I'm fighting.

It's just so bizarre to me. The animal is designed to bite you underwater to bite you underwater right but just apparently not defensively but when we talked about this before i brought up another thing that happened turtle trapping is i had a turtle in the trap having a vicious battle with a turtle out of the trap and they were definitely biting each other in the water. So like territoriality, sure. Eaten, sure.

But apparently when you're... Somebody gently caressing your carapace and feeling your points. Is not fighting. That's not worth fighting. That means fighting words in the turtle world. Okay, Fosberg, waiting patiently. What we're going to do is one more thing to touch off on. We've talked about this too many times now.

This is probably the last corneal dermoid thing. The corneal dermoid fixation began when some people started sending in pictures of hairy eyeballs. Hairy eyeball disease. It all happened where a buck got a hairy eyeball disease. Each hair, each eyeball turns into hair. Put it on Instagram, then a guy sent in a cow elk kill

with like big, long, like three-inch hairs growing out of its eyes. It's gross. The buck that got the corneal dermoids eventually went blind, and they had to euthanize it. Like a blind deer running around, his eyeball's full of hair. A lot of guys have written in about this guy wrote in he had a golden retriever

has corneal dermoids he thought for sure the dog the dog would be like you know couldn't see he had a feeling he couldn't see didn't know what to do then he realized they could track an airplane in the sky and that's the first thing that teed him off that despite it having these messed up eyes, it would still pick off. You know, still visually aware of what's going on. But this guy gets into the human element of it. And a guy wrote in that there's a wildlife and fisheries guy at Clemson University university a student there he has

corneal dermoids in his eye you're born with it his aren't hairy but they're white he says he can still see good enough to hunt he's especially sensitive to light he was surprised to hear that affects deer i was surprised to hear that it affects folks. This other guy wrote in. He had two boys and they were twins. And he said the only way you could tell these two boys apart is one had a real pointy nose. They eventually bring him in. I don't know what happened. They bring him in.

He had a pointy nose because he had a nasal dermoid. Required a fairly extensive surgery to remove it. It was in the tip of his nose. Traveled up his navel cavity into his skull, real close to his brain. They removed this whole thing, and the surgeon said it was shaped like a barbell from having traveled up the nasal cavity. Bunch of hair growing out of it. Jeez. Born of it. Jeez.

Born with it. The surgeon said, they sometimes even have teeth. And I remember, man, my brother had a girlfriend. I never really thought about this. He had a girlfriend, and she was saying that

they one time had to have a surgery, and they pulled out a little ball out of her that had teeth on it. Yep. Yeah. Never looked at her the same way again. Nothing against it. God bless her. A little ball full of teeth inside of her.

What if she saved it? I really thought you were saying... The guy had identical twins, and the only way you could tell one from the other was the one had hairy eyeballs. By God, that's... That's Chad. So they were pretty easy to tell apart then. All right, Whit Fosberg from TRCP.

Whit, talk us through... Give us like an update, DC update. Well, we're about 100 days into a new administration which that's like a big that's a big uh yeah a big Milestone that's a Milestone yep and do you know where that comes from I don't understand how that came to be a Milestone just nice round number yeah I think right now it's a round number is something that's been used for many many you know presidencies in a row to sort of gauge initial first step and priorities. So I think, you know, it's, I don't know where it came from originally. Do you feel that a hundred days is fair just from your observations of how deep?

Because I mean, it's, it's really symbolism at this point is, you know, what you see, what the administration's top priorities are. You will see the general reaction that that gets from the general public as well as from Congress. You know, in Congress, you know, again, you will see the general reaction that that gets from the general public as well as from Congress. In Congress, again, you have the top things tend to be the first things they deal with, the most important, the most visible, the highest priorities for whatever party's in power. So I think the way we tend to look at it with administration is first 100 days, first year, and then four years. And you can sort of break down any sort of set of priorities in those three buckets. And that's when we did transition plans for both Biden as well as Trump too.

And we laid out our priorities in those three sets. When you do transition plans, I remember seeing transition plans because you have to draw up, right? It's like when the Super Bowl, right? They make t-shirts for each win. Yep. You have to draw up transition, obviously, to be prepared. Right. No matter what's going to happen.

Yeah, we get them to the campaigns well before the election, too. Oh, you send it to the camp? Yeah, we send them both. Yep, send them to the campaigns to really lay out what we think our community's priorities are. But how different are the two letters? Oh, they're pretty different. Because you know where... Well, I mean, a lot of it is phraseology.

I mean, we knew, for example, if it was going to be Trump II, we weren't going to lead with climate change. Yeah. We would talk about a variety. We still talk about farm bill programs. We would talk about things that directly affect climate. But we certainly changed the way we phrased that. And we also think about things like the meat and potato wildlife stuff,

like migration corridors would bubble up to like number one, because, you know, they started it, they have pride of ownership in it. You know, they can do things to expand it. So it's, you know, you, I think, you know, and then, you know, there are certain things are just off the table, you know, with, for example, a Trump too, that we knew it weren't going to be worth pushing for and why hit our heads against the wall about it yeah so we're going to do things that we think we can achieve and you know so it was different and we have this sort of a second

term of a continuing administration it's not going to be as long so for example i think one we sent to the trump team was like 80 pages or 60 pages and the one that went to the biden team was probably an additional 30 or 40 pages because you already had a bunch of you already been laid forward four years with the groundwork right yeah yeah so i want to get to where we're at now but i want to talk a little bit about where we uh a little about where we've been you mentioned that the trump administration had a lot of ownership over the migration corridor right and bernhardt was heavily... Yeah, and that actually came out...

The Secretary of Interior was very heavily involved. Yeah, that came out with Zinke was still secretary that was first dropped, Secretary of Order 3362, which basically directed the Western states to identify their top three big game migration corridors, and it limited it to elk, mule deer, and pronghorn. And then it you know, it directed the federal agencies to coordinate with the states to conserve those areas. I mean, it was a really

good idea. They put some money behind it. National Fish and Wildlife Foundation came in with some money for it. And it's the kind of thing that we wanted to make sure if it wasn't, you know, Trump, if Biden got elected, that they didn't immediately come in and just say, you know, Trump did this must be bad that's that's what i'm wondering about uh that's what i was going to add that that exact question yeah are you do you do a lot of work to try to hand things off and be like no matter how you feel about the your predecessor yeah this was this is the right thing here absolutely yeah i mean i think we would define success not by how far the pendulum swings each time

but by things are actually durable that you know withstand changes in Political winds. I think migration corridors is you know classic example of that, you know It makes sense on a number of different levels from you know, if you're a big game hunter Which was obviously a priority of the Trump administration, you know something something that's really important. If you're in favor of biodiversity and letting animals adapt to a changing climate, you've got to be supportive of this. You know, so it's, again, depends on how you look at it, but it's something that should not be a partisan and proven it hasn't been. I mean, Deb Haaland in her confirmation hearings for Secretary of the Interior talked about how important it was. So, you know, I think that we've succeeded in that,

just making sure that people didn't think it was a political issue, but it made sense regardless of administration. And there were certain things that the Trump guys wanted to do, they never got to do. They proposed adding wild sheep and moose to that, and then got a bunch of blowback from agricultural producers, so took that off the table. You know, we'd love to see the order expanded to that. We'd like to see more money that could go to, for example, private landowners who are really an important part of preserving migration corridors. How do you get them to make it in their interest, as opposed to them being the burden of these animals that go through their property, for them to come in and

retrofit fences to compensate them for the elk that come through and eat their crops, things like that, but make them an important part of the solution. So I think the Trump guys, it was a great idea, but they had just really gotten started on this. And ideally, it gets expanded and works even better now that we're in the next four years. So with the first 100 days about up up or up what what's your what are your impressions is it just completely new set of priorities and you got to kind of go in a different direction if you want to get anything done yeah you know i think that's it's not completely new set of priorities in some

areas and that's a good example of the corridors but i think it's you know a lot of the emphasis is going to be changed and as opposed to that scary, we want to make that an opportunity. You know, for example, climate. You know, we have, we've been working the last couple of years to get, you know, our community, and we've had 42 different groups send a letter to Congress saying, Congress, you need to engage in climate. And part of the solution needs to be land and water side of it. Sequestration, resilience, adaptation, which is all important for climate in terms of sucking carbon out of the air, making our coastal communities more resilient, cleaning water, but it's also great for fish and wildlife. Yeah.

And 42 groups explain that. So the way we work is we're a partnership of, we have 60 formal partners, partners within the umbrella of TRCP, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. And, you know, we're a coalition of the willing, you know, so we don't force anybody to take a position on anything, but we lay out what we think makes some sense. And we had about two years of working on climate, and we put together this five-page statement or six-page statement that went to Congress that laid out our principles. We created a website so everyone could understand what it is we want. And then we asked groups to join on this. And 41 groups within the TRSP partnership joined on that letter that went to Congress and have their names and logos on the website, which people can see at trsp.org

when you're doing something like that i know we're straying a little bit from what we're talking about when you're putting that together are you finding that there are people who uh don't get back to you or they say like don't put my name on that there was uh there were some people that just you know they didn't want to have discussion and just weren't really engaged. A lot of others, they come at it from a very particular viewpoint. If you're Fez is forever, they really want to see this as a vehicle to expand the conservation reserve program. If you're Ducks Unlimited, you're going to want to see it as a way to preserve more wetlands, restore more wetlands. So every group comes at it with their own lens.

And so the danger of any one of these is that it becomes this unwieldy beast because every single priority is put in there. And the fact that it's only five and a half pages of whatever it was when it went in is actually a triumph because we kept that into certain key areas. And I think we accommodated concerns of you know, any of the groups that were there. Now, other groups like, you know, DU didn't sign it, but they're doing their own one. Boone and Crockett didn't sign it, but they did their own as well that is honestly stronger than the one we have. You know, so Nature Conservancy is a formal partner. They did their own. So the

41 that signed with us and sent that letter to Congress, those are the folks that just collaborated on this effort. It's not a full snapshot of everybody that's dealing with climate. And that doesn't mean that a third of those groups aren't interested. They might have beat their, they have their own, their handling for themselves. Right. Yeah. So, or they're just, you know, they don't really see that in their wheelhouse. Like, you know, AFL-CIO is a former partner of ours. You know, they're, they're dealing with climate in a whole bunch of different ways, you know, AFL-CIO is a former partner of ours. You know, they're, they're dealing with climate in a whole bunch of different ways, you know, that, so this isn't something they were going to sign on to. Yeah. But in terms of overall impressions of the first hundred days, I think, you know, I think we're optimistic. I think that they've have, you know, pretty good people put in. I look at over at Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, you know, obviously it was Secretary of the Interior before, Governor of Iowa, Senator from Iowa, you know, knows this stuff really well. He brought in Robert Bonney to oversee, you know, basically the, you know, Farm Service Agency, NRCS, as well as the Forest Service.

You know, Robert is an old hand on this. He was on our board for a while, a hardcore hunter, a fisherman, and very pragmatic about how do we get these farm bill programs working better than they have. We've lost a ton of acres out of CRP in the last four years just because Sonny Perdue and the Trump Department of Agriculture, it wasn't a priority. They'd rather just sort of send people checks in response to the tariff fight with China than actually ask them to do something with that money. Whereas, you know, we want to see, you know, instead of just sending $30 billion out to agricultural producers just to make them whole in a tough economic time, you know, I think

things like conservation reserve program, where they actually are doing something, they're setting aside marginal lands, they're improving it for wildlife, for water quality. And those are the things I think we think make a ton of sense. And I think we're going to, you know, the folks at the Department of Agriculture now will agree. So we already know that plans are underway to amend the current signup for CRP to make it more lucrative. Oh, is that right? Really? Yeah. So you think that'll go down? That'll go down.

We'll see a more, you know, a CRP program that makes more sense for farmers. Yeah. And then I think, you know, Robert and the team at USDA are working on this right now. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but they recognize they have a real problem and they're expecting another, if they don't do something, another two, 3 million acres will move out of the program this year. So they have to do something my uh first experience with with crp like really understanding what it what it is was watching um the the end of those first round rounds of contracts in in my like hunting lifetime and watching uh all this uh prairie and sagebrush get torn up in eastern montana and seeing an an immediate effect on

antelope specifically and just going from like more antelope and and truly like fewer hunters because people were so dispersed across eastern montana it was like the good old days of antelope by far and away and it just man it tanked and you could just see it yeah yeah and this is the same story in dakota's with pheasant uh you know duck populations a variety of different places so i mean this crp is a program that benefits you know sportsmen in a variety of different ways but i mean you know we see it as you know if you want to deal with climate and you want if you think about climate and the overall solution to climate, you can stop emitting today. But to get ahead, you're going to have to suck a bunch of carbon out of the atmosphere.

And the best way to do that is through natural mechanisms like, you know, forests and, you know, putting in cover crops instead of having bare ground over the winter. You know, things like that that are, if you go to Eastern Shore of Maryland, cover crops, everybody does it. You go to Iowa, nobody does it. And so we just need to create some incentives. It's not bad for the producers. It's just not the way they've been doing things. So give them an incentive to do that sort of work,

which is going to suck out a certain amount of carbon. Overall about it, you know, they're saying about 20% of the solution are these natural things that naturally suck carbon out of the atmosphere You know We talked a lot about you know sort of the poor state of a lot of the national forests in the National Forest System That haven't been logged that are monoculture. They're beetle infested. They're waiting to blow up and you know burn and If we you know if you're serious about doing a climate you're gonna go in there and you you're going to do some selective harvest you're going to do some areas you're going to restore

some of those areas that are pretty degraded now and that's going to help wildlife and sportsmen because you'll start developing that mosaic of habitats that you really want i mean we have roadless we have wilderness but we also want to have areas that are actively managed and you know that is far better you know than you know aant forest. I was with a group of other conservation CEOs in Louisiana talking with a bunch of the private timberland folks. And Dave Tenney, who runs the National Association of Forest Owners, laid out a statistic that managed forests, private managed forests, you know, private managed forests are seven times, take out seven times more carbon than their counterparts on the national forests. And,

and I would argue too, that, you know, they're probably better for, if you want that mosaic of habitats and some early successional forests, it's better for wildlife too. Now, nobody wants to return to the old days of spotted owls and clear cuts and salmon watersheds and all the rest but there's a happy median in there someplace oh for sure my uh you know a friend of mine in the forest service he'd uh had a stretch of like seven years attempting to do a prescribed burn in an area, you know, and it just like through, you know, you got to meet a lot of criteria to get a burn going. And it's even more, more strict in the, on the government side of things.

So, yeah. And it's just, there's still a cottage industry out there of folks who just litigate any active management on national forests. And, you know, that's, we're going to have to deal with that. We're going to have to make it a little bit easier to actually cut wood to do prescribed burns. And obviously if you do a small prescribed burn, you're heading off that catastrophic burn that we see in California and other places. And this summer is going to be bad. I mean, the moisture levels across the West are lousy. So, you know, we need to get on top of this. And Robert Bonney at USDA

understands that. And when we fix the fire funding fiasco at the Forest Service, when, until I guess about five years ago, every time, you know, there was a catastrophic wildfire, fighting that came out of the Forest Service's core budget. Congress changed that to create an emergency account like we do for all other natural disasters, tornadoes, hurricanes. And because that change has been made, it gives the forest service about a half billion dollars annually in additional revenues to actually go and do habitat management for wildlife, for fire prevention, to remove invasive species so you know part of the challenge that robert is going to be facing now at usda is getting that up to speed getting that money on the ground which is that it sounds like a big number but is it like is that that's a very big that's

like they can do a lot with that they can do a lot with that yeah and there's and it's not that you know they you know it all goes out to commercial sale. I mean, the Turkey Federation, you know, Mule Deer Foundation have been doing stewardship contracting where they actually go in and do the work. You know, they get some money to do it, but it's not the forest service doing this stuff. So, you know, Turkey Federation has done remarkable projects around the country, you know, using the stewardship contracting authority to go in and improve habitat. So I think there are different models of how you can do it, but I think there's a general consensus on the science community, certainly in the sportsman's community, that we need more active management in a lot of places, and that dovetails perfectly with climate solution. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there on X is now in Canada. The great features that you love in on X are available for your hunts. This season, the hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones,

aerial imagery, 24 K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. I know you don't speak for them at all, but take some take a group like uh national wild turkey federation have they are they articulating specifically a desire to address climate yes they they hadn't before and it's uh because it pisses people off man yeah i mean it's just the word has been so politicized yeah and you know people just retreat into their camps.

And, you know, Becky Humphries, who's, I think, you know, terrific CEO, and she's on my board with you, Steve. I mean, she understands this. She comes from a science background. And she's not going to talk to her membership about climate solutions. She's going to talk about active management. She's going to talk about, you know, doubling the size of the conservation programs in the Farm Bill, which is what we're calling for in our statement to Congress. So instead of $6 billion a year in conservation, kick that up to somewhere around $12 billion. And that's not all CRP. It's the Regional Conservation Partnership Program.

It's EQIP. It's a bunch of other good stuff that the Farm Bill does, whatever makes the most sense in a given region but we want more land in conservation and less land you know being especially in marginal habitats being converted to row crops yeah you can tell a real good story about what natural prairie grasses do or native prairie grasses do for uh poults right absolutely you grow a lot of birds. Well, and then if you do a soil segment on those, you look how deep those roots are in native grasses versus introduced grasses. And that's where all that carbon is. It's going down in those deep root systems. You look at soil carbon maps, the U.S.,

the most important area is that prairie pothole region. There is a ton of carbon in those soils, and every time they get plowed up, that's getting released. So we ought to be restoring the areas we've already trashed as well as protecting the rest of that prairie pothole region. And if you care about climate, if you care about natural infrastructure, downwater, downstream water quality, you want to protect those areas. So move over from, in terms of the 100-day picture and who they've got in place,

from the Department of Agriculture to Interior. What are your sort of gut impressions about the nominee? Well, you know, I didn't really... Not nominee, the confirmed. Yeah, no, she's now the confirmed. Deb Holland, who was a congresswoman from New Mexico. She only had one term in Congress, but she likes, as she likes

to say, she is a 35th generation, New Mexican, you know, native American, you know, her family grew up eating venison. Um, you know, so the challenge that she's going to face is, you know, it's a really political, a really controversial, you know, complicated agency. You have everything from Bureau of Indian affairs to the U SS. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. There is a lot of things that fall underneath the Department of the Interior. I didn't know that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is still in Interior. Oh, yeah. I mean, if there's... We don't do Indian issues, but

if there's one agency that could use some help and one people that could use some help is the Native American community. I mean, when I worked in Congress, I spent a fair bit of time on reservations in South Dakota. And, you know, the average person just has no idea of, you know, job and have plenty of money, but others just have. We were trying to get running water, this is back in the 90s, into some of the Sioux reservations in South Dakota. We didn't have running water. We've seen the Biden administration reverse a lot of Trump era rules. Do you think we're going to see Deb Haaland kind of reinstate or try to get back a bunch of that monument ground? Yeah, I think she was just in Utah

visiting Bears Ears and doing her own listening tour. So I suspect you're going to see those Bears Ears and Grand Staircase reestablished. You think the original... tour yeah so i suspect you're going to see those you know fair as yours and grand staircase you know re-established you think the original there may be some you know tweaks here and there yeah but no those will get you know pushed back there's a marine monument off of new england that was taken away i think you'll get that back so i think there will be but i think they'll open up the bears ears thing again oh yeah huh yep so no i think they'll be up the Bears Ears thing again? Oh, yeah. Huh. Yep. So, no, I think they'll be doing that.

I think the bigger issues are going to be things like oil and gas development on federal lands. Yeah. I mean, when she was a congresswoman, she had called for ending oil and gas development on public lands, or maybe it was during the campaign. But was friendly to wind and solar on public. Oh, sure. And that's sort of the coming. She has a very liberal district in New Mexico. That's the feeling that renewable energy is better than oil and gas. And I'd agree with that.

But the problem is that you can't just turn off the spigot on oil and gas. I mean, it's going to be around for a while. And my truck's only a year old. I'm's going to be around for a while. And, you know, you know, my, my truck's only a year old. I'm going to be driving it for a while. Yeah. And, uh, you know, the issue isn't, you know, where it comes from is demand on long-term

because you could shut down oil and gas, you know, development on public lands. And all you're really doing is screwing states like New Mexico, which have a lot of oil and gas on public lands and shifting all that over to Texas or to North Dakota. Okay. You know, which don't have a ton of oil and gas on public lands and shifting all that over to Texas or to North Dakota, which don't have a ton of public lands. So you're not really solving any problem.

You're just screwing certain areas. I think a much more thoughtful approach is you deal with the issues of methane leakage. You just make the oil and gas development on public lands better than it has been. You get smarter about where you're going to site oil and gas development of public lands better than it has been. You get smarter about where you're going to cite oil and gas development because there's also a ton of areas that have already been leased. I mean, the cat's out the door, the cattle's, the horse is out of the barn, whatever analogy you want to use. So again, even if you were to say no new leasing starting today, there are still a ton that's going to happen. So the issue really is how do we do it better? And when, you know, like Ken Salazar was Secretary of the Interior under Obama,

they put together something called mass release planning, which was before you develop an area. And this could be, you know, oil and gas. It could be solar. It could be wind. You look at a big area and you decide the areas where you can have development, where you'd never want to have development, where you can consolidate roads, pipelines. You know, just be much smarter about the development

as opposed to, you know, when Trump came in, it was under the, and Zinke would talk about energy dominance. The idea was energy development is going to take precedent over every other use on public lands and they're not, we're not going to get in this way wherever it wants to go. Well, I mean, that was more of a political stance, but it just creates problems because you're inviting controversy when you're offering leases in core sage-grouse habitat in the middle of migration corridors. So I think our sense is, and this is probably what we'll shake out in Interior, is there will continue to be oil and gas development we've just done very differently than it has in the past. Do you have concerns about working with Holland? Are you optimistic about it?

Oh, I'm optimistic. I mean, I've spent very little time with her. She'd been really good on her issues, but I just didn't know her personally. But then during the, you know, when she got nominated and then until her, you know, basically approval by the Senate, I think I had three different meetings with her and it was, you know, and she was great. I mean, she didn't know a ton. She didn't pretend to know a ton, but she took copious notes. And every time we met with her, she was better than last time. She understood what we were talking about. She was able to prioritize it. I think she valued our community as an important ally in her confirmation. And we're very happy to give her the benefit of the doubt and work with

her. The guy that just brought in as number two at Interior, he still has to be confirmed, Tommy Boudreau. He was in the Obama administration. Good guy, you know, solid conservation credentials, knows the department well. So she's been smart in putting people in key positions around there who really know how that department works because she doesn't. I mean, this is, she's brand new there. And, you know, Zinke had that same issue that he had trouble being effective within department because he was complete outsider. And that's part of the reason he brought Dave Bernhardt in who had been, you know a solicitor during the Bush administration, knew the agency. And things improved dramatically in the Trump administration when Bernhardt came in because he was a stabilizing, steadying hand.

He understood what the agency could and couldn't do. I remember after he got picked to be Secretary of the Interior, we had a conversation. I mentioned energy dominance. He said, you will never hear me say that again because it's not legal we are a multiple use agency we have to we can't just arbitrarily pick one of these things make it more important than everything else i came to like him quite a bit um i mean there's plenty of things that i didn't agree with them about, but I did like and valued their stance on expanding access and doing some other things that rolling back some things,

like there was a thing in Alaska that I found particularly irksome where they stripped the state of certain management practice abilities if they wanted to do it. I thought that was a bogus play and they moved that back but do you do you think that in the new administration there's going to be like will sportsman's access be a thing that ever comes out of their mouths absolutely you think so i think uh yeah they were i got a call from interior that they were going to

i don't know if they've done it yet or whether they're going to do it you know shortly but they're going to open up another 90 areas within the refuge system for expanded hunting and fishing. See, I was going there and I was afraid you were going to tell me that that would be rolled back. No, no. Really? That was one of the things we made sure that this is something Obama did. This is something that Trump did. This is something you guys ought to do. And a lot of it is not sort of rocket science. Areas are closed for no good reason and have been historically, and nobody really knows why, just never been open. And then the other issue was, and I give the Trump guys a lot of credit on this, you may have particular rules on the refuge that are totally different than next door on state land or general statewide regs.

And that may make sense, but if you're going to make them different, have a reason for them being different. Don't just have them different for being different because it just makes it harder for all of us to participate and to know what the rules are. So that, you know, Trump guys did a good job of basically conforming the refuge rules with the state rules.

And I hope that continues. Earlier, we were discussing New Mexico's new trapping ban uh i understand like sitting here i understand perfectly well um why that's not trcp's fight okay i like i i want to hear from you why it's not and then i want to question you why it's not. And then I want to question you why it's not. A little bit because it's a hunter-angler-based conservation organization. And I know that you can't get bogged down in the constant legislation and referendums about what you would call method of take issues. So like how the particulars of how people access game.

But at a point, if rights continuously get stripped down it will become an existential thing for you true so the way you know first we're we focus on federal policy and not state policy so that's an easy out as to why we wouldn't engage in something like that second you know we've always deferred to the states in terms of fishing game management because states have always had primary jurisdiction. And we don't want to sort of, I'd like to keep Congress out of it

as much as humanly possible in terms of every now and then you have something like John Tester and Mike Simpson having to deal with the wolf issue and the greater Yellowstone. But Congress should not be in the business of dictating fish and wildlife management. That should be left to the professionals within the states. And now if states, you know, start going, you know, very much down a bad path, then, you know, maybe we have to rethink, you know, our stance.

Maybe we do have to engage in some of those but because i agree with you but if you got to a point where you thought wow it really is a slippery slope yep and we've slid off the slope i could just i'm not inviting you to do it but i i but i think i've expressed this to you in the past yeah i have a small amount of like i have a teensy bit of frustration with wildlife groups who I feel could perhaps be impactful around defending hunting rights, angling rights, trapping rights. That they might be impactful because it would be an unexpected voice for wildlife, like hunter-based environmental groups, hunter-based wildlife groups, to say like, this matters to our constituency, this matters to our supporters. You need to understand that this is upsetting to us.

Yep. Because I feel like it would help us defeat some of these things, some of these losses we're having. Yeah, and I think that, you know, you'll see a lot of our community will engage and those, you know in the different groups that do engage in those state fights, from maybe Boone and Crockett

on a sort of intellectual level, to the Association of State Fish and Wildlife Agencies, to any individual group that happens to be strong in a particular area. But it just hasn't been our issue in the past. I mean, if we can be supportive to our you know partners who are engaged in these things we will and it may at some point maybe we will have to recalculate and engage in some of these but we have enough stuff going on in congress right now and on the federal side that we're not looking for any you know new fights no again i man i totally understand you can't be everything to everybody if you just were like a drunk guy in a bar throwing wild punches right you'd get about

you'd get about as far yeah so i understand but i think it's just you know helpful to have yeah yeah and i think that there are you know there's some allocation issues we will engage in i mean issue like you know gulf red snapper you, you know, which, you know, was, you know, you could argue was sort of a, you know, feds versus the state and a very parochial issue down there, but it had much broader implications about how we manage recreational fisheries in federal waters. So we would, we engaged on that issue. Meaning, just to, like to express differently that you engage in a state issue if you feel that it's something that has potential implications

that would occur around the nation in a similar federal state. There's some sort of direct federal nexus. And in that one, it was about federal fisheries management. And essentially the solution is let the states take over. And which we did.

Basically, they took over red snapper management. And there basically they took over red snapper management and there are a lot more red snapper out there than, you know, people used to think there were. And that fishery is very well managed right now. And so that worked, but that was a case where, you know, we were arguing about state versus federal jurisdiction on that one. Gotcha. Generally we don't engage. So it checked your federal box.

But I'll give you another example of a place where we have engaged with state issues, like when the Trump administration basically rolled back the Clean Water Act and took out half the wetlands in the country and a large percentage of headwater streams from jurisdiction. It was very clear that Congress wasn't going to deal with the issue. We weren't going to get any place in the administration. So we helped, like in Pennsylvania, an effort to increase their water quality standards, recognizing that that was where the game was going to be played. And if we could help a couple of states, you know, essentially develop prototypes about how they

can protect their own waters, we could bypass, you know, the federal legislation until or federal problem until some point Congress wanted to deal with this issue. So again, that was an area where I felt that we can get into it because this is relevant given the lack of federal engagement on an important issue that is not just Pennsylvania. If they have shitty water quality in Pennsylvania, that means the Chesapeake Bay suffers. So if we can create some prototypes in states like Pennsylvania about how they can protect their own streams better, then that's worth putting out there.

What do you think is going to happen? This is my last one for you right now. What do you think is going to happen with, and you got to kind of explain a little bit too, now that the administrations have switched, what do you think is going to happen around the Tongass roadless stuff? I think

that will get, again, go back to the previous roadless rule. I think that will get, again, go back to, you know, the previous roadless rule. You know, so those areas will get protected again. And again, we would like to see, you know, some sort of, you know, not have this flip back and forth every four years, who's in power. So I think we would be perfectly happy to sort of do what we did with Idaho or Colorado state specific roadless rules. And maybe a blanket roadless protection in Tongass may not be perfect.

Maybe there are areas where you want to have some changes to that. Let's have that discussion. But opening the entire area to development was not a good solution. I do have, I lied, there's one more. All right. Pebble Mine, it's kind of in its death throes, writhing on the ground right now. Correct. Is someone going to, you know, walk up and put one behind its ear?

That's certainly what we want to have happen. Obviously, the Pebble Partnership is appealing its denial of a permit. So this is still actually alive from an administrative standpoint. Now, I do not expect the Biden administration Corps of Engineers to reverse the Trump administration and say, you go for it, you got a permit, you can develop this mine. But long term, you know, we've got to figure out a way to permanently protect that area. And we've been in quiet discussions with Senator Murkowski and Sullivan about, you know, what would it take to, you know, it could be a land swap that creates an upper Bristol Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which in theory, it would still allow you can do mining on refuges, but you can't do it if it's going to impact salmon. You know, is that one of the solutions?

Is there a state solution, you solution, states protecting those lands? I think that Alaska's probably going to want a chunk of flesh to take development off the table because that's the way Alaska works. They're going to want either a pile of money or they're going to want a land transfer someplace where they can actually make money long term. You can't blame them. I know you're saying that's how Alaska works, but that's how a lot of places work. Oh yeah. Yeah. Alaska's just got it down to sort of an art. They have a lot of opportunities to work on it. And there's just so much federal

land up there. I mean, you know, you have to be able to develop some of it if you're going to make a living in Alaska. Yeah. And there are certain areas that are far better for development than the Pebble Mine area, that's for sure. Yeah. Okay. Anything you want to add? I'd just say there's a couple other things to keep your eyes on as we move forward. Please.

There's this 30 by 30 initiative that was talked about during the campaigns that was in executive order, not nothing to do with the ESPN. No, nothing to do with that. No, which I always love those, but this is a, this actually came out internationally and it was around the biodiversity crisis, the idea of protecting 30% of the world's lands and waters by 2030. And how you do that is the challenge.

So the Biden administration during the campaign talked about it, when the initial climate executive order came out of the White House, they mentioned this 30 by 30. Now it can go one of two ways. It could become a preservationist protect strategy where you're drawing lines on maps and not allowing any activity. And there's obviously the wilderness, the hardcore environmental advocates are pushing that direction. What the case we're trying to make

is you got to think much more broadly than that. First of all, it ought to include restoration because drawing a line around something that's degraded doesn't help you in any way. So there ought to be a restoration focus. We need to engage private landowners. If a land is under a conservation easement, but somebody is still cutting timber on it or doing agriculture, in my mind, that's conserved. It's never going to have a Walmarterved. It's never going to have Walmart there. It's never going to have condos if it's got a permanent conservation easement. If you have, you know, working forests someplace, again, that are under conservation easement, that are certified sustainable by a third party, FSC, SFI, the two outside forest certifying bodies. In my mind,

that ought to count as protected. Again, it's never going to get developed. And if your goal is climate or biodiversity, as we talked about, that mosaic of habitats, having some young habitat is a good thing. So we've been arguing that define this broadly and use the word conserve and not protect. Because instead of making this scary, say, to a Western landowner who thinks you're going to go in and lock up their land, they become part of the solution. You can incentivize them to protect an area, to put a conservation easement on it, to plant things that improve soil health, deal with carbon.

And still make a living. And still make a living. And still make a living. Yeah. And I just think that makes a lot more sense. So when the executive order came out of the White House, we won round one. It had the word conserve in there and not protect, which was important symbolically.

It also laid out a stakeholder process that includes private land owners to talk about how are we going to define this and what's going to go into it. And that process will probably be rolled out by the interior department in the next week or so. I don't know what's going to be in there, but it's definitely worth something to watch because it can blow up and be thrown out as perceived as a land grab and top-down approach, or it could be aspirational and has a lot of folks behind it trying to make it work, including private landowners. The goal is 30%. Do you know what percentage is protected or conserved right now? Well, again, it depends on how you define that. The USGS did

some sort of study a while back, and they said that 12% of the nation's lands are currently protected. But they only use the definition of, I think, national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, the hardest core protection that we have. They did not look at conservation easements on private lands. They did not look at regular Forest Service lands that are well managed but are not, quote, protected in that sense because there may still be timber harvest on them. I'd imagine if you're going to do that right, you'd want to find a way to begin to consider even like recreational properties like the one we're sitting on right now.

Sure. That a recreational property would have, and I know there's conservation easements and stuff, but they would have pathways and i know there's conservation easements and stuff but they would have pathways yep would it would have pathways to become that well i would argue even you know like a crp which may be on a 10 or 20 year contract i mean we want as much land and that type thing as we can get that's not going to get developed we know for 10 or 20 years and uh let's count that you know so let's you know err on the side of counting more as opposed to less. And if we have more than 30% protected, great.

Well, that's what I feel like. Let's raise the goalposts. They got the cart in front of the horse. Right. I feel like you'd have to get your hands around. There should be like gold star. Okay.

Gold star being wilderness areas. Like how many gold star lands do we have? Right. Down to a bronze star and maybe that catches crp lands yep add that up and then say like are we satisfied with that or should it be more i would argue that we'd probably want to increase it sure but to just throw out some wild ass number when no one even knows what's there it came out from the international perspective you're thinking about sub-saharan africa or south america and the Amazon or Southeast Asia. A lot of these really rich biodiversity areas that, you know, are not protected at all. I get it. I get why they're laying out these, you know, we have 640 million acres of public lands in this country that are never

going to get developed. Now you may argue that, you know, having a solar array or oil and gas development or timber harvest is development. Okay. We can have that argument. Those are three real different things.

Yeah, no, it is exactly. Cause I would go no, no. Yes. Right. Yeah.

So I think that, you know, again, it depends on how you define this stuff. And that's a great conversation to have. Let's have that conversation. And I think that we win on the merits when you're talking about biodiversity and carbon. I'm thinking 60 by 30. It doesn't have the ring.

I think they did it because the ring, right? Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. 50 by 50. Yeah. But I think you have to consider private lands and and you know recreational properties when you look at the amount of private ground that that is you know on the tax record like dedicated to recreation specifically wildlife um that that outshines that makes that 640 million acres look like 640 piddly million acres yep

we got a lot more in private because that approach is also saying that this this 30 and i know you're not like sitting here like ready to take bullets for the 30 by 30 right but that this 30 will all happen to be west of the mississippi river oh yeah no yeah it's got to be west of the Mississippi River? Oh, yeah. No. Yeah, it's got to be, you know, that's, it's got to engage, you know, private land, I think. And I think there's beginning to be broad agreement on that, even within the Biden White House. So, which is good. And then, you know, then we can think about things like, you know, Farm Bill and how that can be used. You know, properties like this, where it may not even be under conservation easement and probably would need to be to be counted. But, you you know given the work that's been done the biodiversity we have here you know the myriads of habitats

you know this is exactly what you want and we ought to be figure out ways that we can encourage folks like the guy who owns this land to enroll you know be a part of that accounting yeah because there's i mean you know we talk about him all the time, but like Doug Duren's place, man. Yep. I mean, you know, their family's got a few hundred acres of land, but I mean, they obsess over every square inch of it. Yep. You know, what's it going to look like in the future? What do we need to do now?

How can we keep it the way it is? How do we not break it up? You know? Well, and also just even the habitat side. I mean, let's make sure we have some snags for sure yeah woodpeckers and yeah it's all happening there and then you imagine that um and i don't i don't have any proposals but if we really wanted to get serious about this thing um that there would be more of a sort of i guess some really smart person would come up with some expression

uh like like a more sort of elastic uh expression of like the nation's good will toward that consideration and activity yep that it's not that if a family is thinking about it in a certain way it's not just like one person's death like it's not one person's death away from development correct you know and i know we have mechanisms in place but i know they're like they're sometimes onerous and hard for people to deal with and i don't know i don't have the answers but i imagine that we have any there's just a i'm just thinking about now actually think about this this this percentage thing we have an enormous amount of land in this country that's that people are thinking about yep right they're not just like waiting for it to hit a certain dollar figure so they can cash out right and

turn it into houses like they're like man i'd love for it to stay like this well we haven't even talked about the ocean side too. And that's really where it got the, you know, the, the hunting and fishing community kind of spooked on this whole thing to start with, because there was a process back in California,

you know, a couple of decades ago that set up Marine protected areas off of California that did not allow recreational fishing and even well managed recreational fishing, like catch and release or something like that. And, uh, you know, and that was, so when 30 by 30 got, was started to be talked about and there was, you know, there was a bill in California to, you know, first be the first state to adapt, you know, 30 by 30.

And it died in the California legislature because the sponsors, you know, basically would not put in writing that recreational fishing should be allowed. So that ought to be a warning sign to the preservationist community that, you know, let's be sensible here. We want people to get on the water, to enjoy it, to, you know, be a part of it because, you know, they're going to be the, you know, the future generation that's going to be there to protect this thing. That's right. They're the best stewards out there. You know, you and best stewards out there.

You and I going out there fishing and catching a couple of fish for dinner, that's not the threat. The threat are bottom trawls that are trashing the habitat. It's ocean dumping. It's ocean mining. It's that sort of stuff that ought to be out of bounds in a protected area, not us going out there and maybe killing a couple of fish to take home for dinner. Yeah. People want to us running the managed.

People want to feel good about themselves, but they don't want to feel like they're totally screwing themselves to get there. Yeah, exactly. And plus, it's just, you know, you create division and you create dissension where there shouldn't be any. If you did something that has no biological basis, like banning recreational fishing in an area of the ocean. Now, if it's a spawning area and there's a good biological reason to do it, fine, do it. There's a, every year we take our kids down to an area in Baja Peninsula and there's a small closed area there.

And it's, they really go out of their way to express the value of that closed area so the signage around this this marine this marine preserve the signage has calculations of the number of fish caught by small commercial harvesters thanks to the closed area because this becomes a fish producing yeah and it's like very it's like it's articulated in many ways in many places that that's what this is yeah you know it's and you can see that there's a little bit of a psychological game there um don't be pissed like what you're harvesting comes from here. Right. And that's, I think a very reasonable way to look at it because obviously that they've done some science there. They know the key or spawning areas,

you know, and they've made a public education outreach program around it. But before you just go off and zone off huge areas of the ocean, just so you can meet some mystical 30% goal. Yeah. I'm with you. Let's be thoughtful about this stuff. You guys got any more questions?

Nope. Good job, Whit. Cal seriously thought about whether he had a question or not. He didn't just say no. Well, it's lots of questions. It's like, what direction? Can we start a new direction? No, you did a great job. That was great.

All right, guys. Always good talking to you. Thanks for joining us, Whit. Again, Whit Fosberg, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership can be found at trcp.org. Right on. Send him a big old check. Thank you.

Whit will write you a thank you note. Many. And he'll write you a reminder next year. He might come visit you if the check's big enough. All right, thanks, Whit. Remember when we used to do closing thoughts? I don't even remember what we used to call them. Is that what we called them?

Closers. Closers. I still believe in them. I just eventually got to the point where people would just, I don't know, I just thought that people would know what to say them. Yeah, that and if you've been going for two hours then you know closing thoughts just add another half an hour but i have one today i have two actually please one i found i saw a tree it was an old dead snag speaking of snags i was near the power line and i see an old dead snag and about i don't know head high there's a plastic collar on this dead snag this doesn't ring a bell

i mention it to guy guy says yeah your buddy steve had me put that on a dog collar no oh yeah i'm doing this with my arms i know on that tree. Oh, I thought you meant a dog collar. No. Oh, yeah. I'm doing this with my arms. I know, but I don't know, man. I thought you meant the tree was like that and the snag was smaller and there was a plastic collar. Yeah. Oh, because we've been talking about that too.

Oh, yeah. We did tell a nasty story about a dog collar. Yeah. That's what I thought you meant. I got you. I got you. Tell me about this plastic collar on this tree. I was walking along with Guy and saw a wood duck come out of that tree. And I said, you ought to wrap that tree in something so the raccoons, of which there are plenty,

so the raccoons can't get up there and kill the wood ducks. And the way I remember the story is he was already planning on doing it. I think he's giving me credit for it because he's a generous person, but I think it was on his radar. And now, is that something that you can just buy, or is that custom? What I meant for him to do

and the practice I was familiar with, and it's probably expensive if you had a lot of wood duck trees, is you, I remember people used to wrap them in, you'd buy sheet metal, like aluminum flashing, whatever, and wrap it in that. But I mean, if you went out and if you wanted to do a dozen trees, you're probably, you know,

big trees. I mean, that's, that's a hit to the pocketbook. So I'm glad there's some kind of plastic. What you do see is those things people sometimes put on or those things that look like you're trying to keep squirrels out of your feeder. A flange that comes down at an angle.

But I knew that, you know, in the old days you used to put flashing around it so they can't get purchased with their fingernails on it. But there's gotta be less, you know, cheaper, less sort of visually. I mean, you know. Better know better it looks like a tree wrapped in aluminum from yeah a million miles away so i'm glad to hear that he glad to hear they did

it yeah no it was great you know for because at first it looks you think like yeah that's kind of weird and unsightly but then you know it has such a good purpose stoked about it yeah uh my other closing thought is uh you've seen this big giant Oak that we uh called a gobbler from yesterday and killed him and as we went we took a walk around that Oak now a few times during this uh turkey hunt and uh standing next to that Oak in all of it it is but you were off looking at it from afar when we killed the bird but i've also stood now i've sat underneath johnny called a bird from it and he called a bird to it oh because they they show up at that weirdly man oh so you've hunted turkeys around no i've just seen i've just been looking at that field and seen them

oh i've described to people like there's one by the you know cal and i might go sit under that oak here in the next an hour too but uh it's like it's a such a big tree i mean what do you think the diameter of the base at least six feet yeah yeah i mean yeah if you're on one side of it you could hide three grown humans on the other side not see them no problem yeah it's a big tree it's huge yeah the the the first branches are long enough that they could be their own tree if you just cut them off and we're able just to plant them into the ground yeah they're like i mean they might be 60 feet yeah i mean they're huge it's a giant and it sits right in the big in the middle of this uh it's a cornfield this year you like whoever you kind of have a soft spot for whoever was

clearing the land yes well i got to notice and there was a there was a chunk of rebar drove down in the ground at the base of that tree it was probably a corner at some point in time. I thought it was either a corner or it had lightning protection on it. I was going to say, somebody tried to ground it. I think someone had such a soft spot for a big old tree that they left it there. That's what I like to think. Well, you'd have to be some sort of evil person to cut that thing down now. Well, I mean, it just got me to thinking about like the way that like like whatever you want to call it preservation

conservation um the way that it can hit you and i was just really standing there like in awe of this special thing and thinking how like like you're saying you'd have to be evil to cut it down now but like some special person had the forethought back in the day and now you could take anybody from anywhere in the world and put them 20 feet from that tree and they would sit there in awe and i think that we all need to like have that try to have that mindset sometimes you know when you're just going about the world just have forethought to think what's stuff going to be like for future generations you know when it comes to nature because something like that is just yeah spectacular but you also got to be the

person that can look at an old dead snag and know the value of that too that too that too there's a lot of wildlife value in that oak there's a lot of shit using it yeah a bunch of coon crap at the base of it oh yeah all kinds of cardinals here rubs it's it smells like a uh like a farm there's so many deer laying underneath it when you're sitting there you catch that i was like man it's like elky almost but i think it's just so many deer so much stuff uses it yeah that's cool all right thank you Yanni for the closers oh you're welcome

and thank you everybody out there for listening see you soon Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians.

The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.