The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 295: A Soft Spot for Outlaws

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Steven Rinella talks to Sam Lawry, Paul Lewis, Ray Lockard, Brody Henderson, Phil Taylor, Corinne Schneider, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: F'd Old Deer Stands is back in stock; Chester the Divester's Book of Outdoor Etiquette, aka Chetiquette; Auction House of Oddities continues with original gnome art, Brody's black bear baculum, and a chance to win a seat at the MeatEater Podcast Trivia table; MeatEater women hunting specklebelly geese; Yellowstone's wolves or Montana's wolves?; being pro-wolf hunting doesn't mean you're anti-wolf; our moral responsibility to wildlife; an anti-fishing leaf blower movement; ask a cop; is it legal to parachute into land locked public land; being cool on your child support payments so you can pick up roadkill deer in Illinois; Paul Lewis, AKA "Zippers"; being a night cop and having BBQs at 7 in the morning; keeping your back to the wall; the origin story of FHF and how to keep current on their new releases; Sam's book, "Stories of the Past: An Arizona Game Warden Remembering the Outlaws"; the "it was just so big" excuse; gaboon vipers as the "One Step Snake"; robo turkeys; 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

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First Light, go farther, stay longer. All right, we got a lot to cover today. Giannis is here. I'm going to do intros. The opposite way we normally do them. I'm going to start with Giannis because I'm so happy to see him. Giannis here. Sam Laurie is here who you would

know if you listen to our Close Call calls series. He tells the, the, the tremendous, the mud puddle story called the mud puddle. Former game warden. You gotta get way closer to that mic. I guess I'm supposed to acknowledge it. Yeah, no, you'd say something like, oh, good

to be here. Oh, Steve, it's great to be here. There you go. Great. We'll, we'll, uh, we'll get to you in, in greater detail later on.dy's here corinne's in the lazy boy with a crazy ass shirt on um yeah what's what's that kind of animal yeah she's got a like a cosmos pizza slice sloth shirt love that uh phil's here. Paul Lewis

from FHF. This the first time you've been on the show? No. Yeah, first time. Is it really? Yep. God, you look familiar over there with those headphones on. Right, no, never been in here. You've never done it before? Never. You sure? Yeah, I only live a few blocks away it seems like, but first time in here.

Yeah, something about you and the headphones seems familiar. I don't know, probably shine off my head. i don't know you send rick down here now and then yeah rick comes down a lot rick hutton so rick hutton who you've seen and he's been on the show uh rick hutton's like i don't know boss yeah he likes to think so yeah yeah uh paulus and then we have a special guest ray lockhart ray so if you paid attention a long time ago we have a special guest, Ray Lockhart. Ray, so if you paid attention a long time ago, we did a fundraiser for a local public school. And Ray won that, won the chance to come to the studio. Is it everything you dreamed of so far? It's exceeded my expectations.

Yeah. And you started yet. This guy's already happy. Quick announcement, the FUDs. This is an internal explanation. I'll give you some production thing. Have I explained this before, Corinne? What SRME means and all that?

I don't believe so. I don't think so. You've mentioned it briefly just in passing, I think. In the production world, I don't know if this is across the board but in the production world that i'm accustomed to you come up with acronyms when you're packing boxes like production equipment you use acronym acronyms so in the zbz offices in the old days when we operated out of there we'd have like if our show was going out on the road the pelican cases would

all have masking tape on and it would say S-R-M-E. So it'd be like Steven Ronell and Meat Eater would be on the things. And then it was A-B-N-R would be a bunch of Pelicans and that would be Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations, and on and on and on.

So we've adopted that a little bit. The FUDS calendar is the fucked up old deer stands calendar. It's back in stock. It might be sold out again. An aggressive order this time, Phil. Yeah, speaking of behind the scenes, we're recording this several days before you will hear it. And the calendars are back in stock.

They are on sale. But moving at an astonishing clip. Yes. So there is a small chance that by the time you hear this, they will not be in stock anymore, but you should try your luck and check it out. Yeah. And this is one of those things they do like on the radio and stuff where

they'll say like, they're going fast. So act now. I'd always ask myself, well, if they're going fast, why are they buying an advertisement

do you know what I mean like I felt like I was being manipulated like they weren't really going fast they're not like worried about you getting one but these but to be honest in all honesty these are moving like hotcakes it's just like the vindication

the vindication keeps flowing in. It's going to give me more. I feel like it's going to give me more leverage to do the Chetiket book, which is Chester on etiquette. You know about this, Yanni? No. Yeah. So Chester wants to do a book.

Oh, he was telling us about fishing etiquette. Well, yeah, but he needs to think way bigger. He wants to do a fishing etiquette book. I think it needs to be the Chetaket book of outdoor etiquette and it's Chester on all things, outdoor etiquette. So it even would include, we're going to start doing it. He's going to start. We just today, Corinne and I were emailing about, he's going to start doing little guest segments so we can sort of test the appetite, public appetite. He'll do guest segments in which he'd explain like you're on a trail and you're walking and here comes a rider, a horseman. Is that a good term for that? A horseman?

Yeah. Yeah. I'd say horseman. What's etiquette? Right? You are walking down a trail and there's a biker. Let's say you're the biker and you're biking and you're coming up behind someone. What's etiquette?

I like it. And usually they're screaming on your right, on your right. And you're so confused. You're like, go right. Or, you know, like it's so this whole, the whole world of chaticate, outdoor etiquette. Steve, would that include a chapter on fishing against docks? Oh. And sprinklers and. Yep. He'd get into all that. Floating etiquette. Steve, would that include a chapter on fishing against docks and sprinklers? Yep. He'd get into all that.

Floating etiquette. Yeah. Dock etiquette. Yeah. He needs to, he needs to start thinking big. He wanted to do just fishing, but I think it's a great idea. Outdoor etiquette.

And then I think there's a lot of regional, like there's like regional specific etiquette things probably. Oh yeah. Remember when you were down in hunting ducks in North Carolinaolina all that craziness about the blinds oh yeah like we can't even really get into it yeah it's yeah we don't have enough time um i saw quite a few comments after when on instagram when we announced that these uh calendars are in stock, quite a few people were writing to say that,

man, it'd be great if you guys just did like a big coffee table book. There's people that refuse to buy the calendar because they're waiting for the book. And this is all leading up to the book. Good. I think Ross is into the book idea. To anyone who's going to send in more pictures of their tree stands, give us some background.

We need a story with that stand when you send in your submissions. Yeah, that would help a lot. Because we just had to make up stories for all the other ones. Well, we did some digging as much as we can. But yeah, we got creative

with some of them. Well, no, you guys did a good job because one of well it was a chris gill photograph but it was from my family's property in wisconsin the real real high yeah the real high stand and you guys did a good job because without knowing the background you guys did a good job of painting a good stab at it. We'd love to have the real info. Oh, another thing. Those are back in stock. Another small announcement.

Waterfowl season kickoff. We have a new episode out on YouTube. It's good because if you've been hearing, everybody always hears Corinne's voice. This is a chance to see Corinne in the goose woods. It is a goose film, a speckle belly goose hunt

between three women that work here. So Hillary, it was her first time ever hunting. Samantha Bates, who's a producer on our Netflix show, Corinne Schneider, producer is hunting, along with Jonathan Wilkins of Black Duck Revival, so you can go check that hunt out now. Plug it, Corinne. Say something, like, make people sell people on it.

It's a standalone. We don't normally do that here. It's probably one of the first standalone videos we've got. We normally have stuff in series. And so, I don't think we've had any Meat Eater hunts filmed involving the speck goose species. Do you think we have? Have we? Speckle bellies? I don't know.

No, that I know of. Why not? Can you make the noise of a speckle belly? No. Oh, that was close. You were getting there. Work that in. Go a little bit higher.

Do you get some gun play in on that episode grint yeah yeah that's what i want to know is how many shotgun shells did you shoot oh you can see the trials and tribulations of our of our two-day hunt uh there's some funny moments and some poor shooting form and then you can see the failure and then the turnaround and then the success are you one of those kind of goose hunters who when everybody shoots you're like i got that one i got that one i was dead on no actually that was one of the most challenging parts of the hunt um we we were in Arkansas in December, and our camo was like these white painter suits. Exactly, the white painter suits. And we were kind of in a long row of folks, and you kind of sit up.

You just use your abdominal muscles to sit up, and really quickly quickly like when you pop up rest your uh put your gun butt into your shoulder and pick one goose out and shoot and i was terrible at that because there were i mean it was really there were so many birds in the sky it was incredible incredible and they were so loud but there are so many and to just like identify one and then to follow it and do that like paintbrush technique that you've mentioned to me a couple times and like i think after my major failure the first day i called up yanni and i was like what do i do i'm like aiming at the ass of the animal and i'm missing and so he's like you gotta aim like in front of it and like where you know you want to greet them you want to greet them

with the shot yeah uh there's a quail hunting thing like aim at them all you get none oh and at one you get two yeah yeah but it's pretty damn true so i don't do what you asked because i failed a lot but then like had a success which was fun but yeah go check it out on youtube what's like what's the best way to find it? I guess just go to our YouTube channel. Yeah, go to our YouTube channel. I think it's the most recent thing that we've released.

It's called Specklebelly Goose Hunting with Jonathan Wilkins. Just that. Pretty straightforward. So go watch it. Enjoy. Auction House of Oddities. So, phase one is over. Auction House of Oddities. So phase one is over. What do we call them?

It's not phases. They're groups. The group one auction is over. So we're on to the group two auction. Do you know how much my pheasant tail went for? Yeah. Do you know? I saw some random numbers that were thrown

around, but then people were wondering if it was real or not yeah it's absurdly high it's absurdly high now I feel like I should have held on to that because who knows what it could have been worth in another 5 years for Yanni's pheasant tail first pheasant tail hey I might shoot another

pheasant this year and then we could auction off my second pheasant tail yeah i might shoot another pheasant this year and then we could auction off my second second peasant tail yeah that'll go for more right maybe uh oh this auction group this includes the uh puppy danielle's puppy an actual live puppy it is is a... Yeah, and you like dogs more than I do. It's a drawthour. A Deutsch drawthour. Of course. All drawthours are Deutsch.

So, Danielle Pruitt, our Wild Foods editor, is contributing this puppy, an offspring of her dog. So, this is a high-test damn dog. Oh, they do it all. Yeah. Including the fox and the box. Yeah. And Danielle's. Then they come in the house.

They turn off the hunting. And they just become couch lap dogs. And just family dogs. We interviewed her at length about this dog. But she's going to have the dog. We'll probably get her on and talk some more about the dog. We should do that, Corinne. Have her come in and talk. Before it's too late, Have her talk more about the dog. Even more, yet again. Like again, just to drive up the bidding. Remember, when you

go to the Auction House of Oddities, all the money goes to our land access initiative. So it's not like you're giving us the money. You're giving the money for us to do the land access initiative projects. We got a handmade river hawk knife. here's another one our uh remember the gnome project where we had the gnome packing out it was my brother's vision of a gnome packing out a unicorn in his backpack so we commissioned that with an artist's, we're auctioning off his original gnome sketch signed by the illustrator. So this is like the ancestral original sketch of the gnome with a severed unicorn's head in his backpack. So in his bow, he's got his crazy gnome bow and he's walking through the woods. The original artwork is for sale at the auction

house of oddities oh now we got a collection of prototypes so we just did a new uh desk skull mount like for putting uh freedom mounts if you want like formerly known as a euro mount but you want to put a freedom mount on a stand on your desk all the prototypes that went into making that one we got. Brody's got a black bear baculum. Also known as a pecker bone. It's a drink stirrer. Do whatever you want with it, man. Brody doesn't care. It's your pecker bone.

What's the largest baculum of a mammal in the world? I know that a walrus is big enough to use as a cane. That would be it. Is it the biggest in the world? Yeah. You know how you can estimate a bear's rough size by the width of its pad? Oh, yeah. I think it's the same thing with length of the baculum. Is that true?

I don't know. It was with this one. Oh. Like you measured the baculum and added an inch? Oh, you got to add an inch? Then it's not true. When you measure a bear's footprint, you add an inch to get squared. Then an inch then it's not true when you measure a bear's footprint you add an inch to get squared then i'm not right which is pretty damn reliable yeah

like a five foot bear is going to have a four inch wide pad this one is very reliable inches to feet it was a good match i feel like by the time you get your hands on the back of them you probably know how big the bear is yeah that's a good point it's a good point but if anyone wants to know how big the bear was that's an excellent point but it is like it's still a good little trivia bit yeah yeah it is uh my boy my six-year-old the other day we were talking about what all had baculums and didn't have baculums and he said people do oh boy it stumped me for a minute because i was like should do they and i'm like no they definitely did the conversation end there he was very adamant they had a pecker bone

um oh so anyways uh we announced last week is it like so in the first round of the auction house of oddities when you you could go in and sign up to get that bottle of skunk essence that we extracted from skunks. No more. It's gone. The new free thing, the new free sign-up item at the Auction House of Oddities is a chance to come to the studio to participate in Trivial Pursuit. Not Trivial Pursuit.

That's someone else's game. What's our thing called? Trivia? Meteor Trivia. You get to come and play Meteor Trivia with us. That's a new thing you can win. That'll be the second time we've ever allowed someone to come in here.

The first time is today with our friend Ray. So starting today, as you're listening to this on launch day, starting today through Halloween, you can bid on all these items, including the new dog and everything. And then for free, you can sign up for a chance to come hang out with us in the studio to play Meat Eater Trivia with Spencer Newhart. Right?

We've had a lot of listeners on this podcast reach out to us about donating items, which is very generous of you. So we've had the NFL dudes with the jersey. We've had Major League Baseball dudes with other stuff. Artists. What all? Lots of stuff. A lot of artists want to donate stuff to the Auction House of Oddities.

And if you want to do that, here's what you need to do. You just email. Just email meateater at themeateater.com. And then in the subject line, do auction donation. And Corey will get you squared away and sent over to the right person. Am I saying that right, Corinne? Okay. Steve, if I wanted to donate a signed book of Game Warden Tales

and have you guys sign it as well, would that be of interest? Oh, yeah. And you don't even need to email that email. I'll leave it to you right here. I'm not going to make you jump through hoops. I brought it right here today. I'm not going to make you jump through hoops. You can just right here today. I'm not going to make you jump through hoops.

We'll just do it right now. Oh, that's a hardcover. That's the quality one. Most people buy that one. Oh, really? That was a little joke. No, we'll do that for sure. We'll save you the email.

Yep, yep. That's perfect. So anyways, Ray Lockhart is here all the way from Maine. He won the Hawthorne Elementary School auction that we put on earlier. Welcome. Thanks. Do you have any messages you want to broadcast to the broader world? Like say something to your mom?

No, not really. I'm not on any social media or any kind of stuff. I specifically stay off of there. I try to keep myself, but just excited to be here. Yeah, this is really cool. Really like the brand and been following you guys for a long time. So do you, uh, more power to you on social? Do you stay off social, um, just cause you haven't gotten around and gotten onto it or do you hate it? Uh, just never felt like it was something I wanted to,

it was really probably staying away from some of the family that I didn't really want to connect with on Facebook, you know? Oh yeah. They'll find you. Yeah. Yeah find you. Yeah, the arm's length, and then they come and find you. Friends, the same thing. I've got a circle of friends that I have a hard enough time keeping up with as it is. So I am a consumer, obviously, for your guys' stuff and things like that. But it turns out to have been one of the better decisions I made because I feel like it's a rabbit hole. It's tough to pull out of once you're done. Good. Thank you.

Did you let the kids do it when they were growing up? Yeah. I mean, my wife does all that stuff and just feeds it to me. So I get at arm's length, you know, feedback off of social media, but I have enough buffering system in there. So you know that some friend of yours

that you haven't seen for 25 years got a new dog and stuff like that? New baby in the family, all that stuff. I get it all filtered and report out and it's a lot more efficient that way. Here's a note that came in uh through trcp and it was why it was widely broadcast as well but uh trcp has been pretty focused on cwd uh and there's these new like major outbreaks cwd outbreaks going on chronic

wasting disease which if you're late to the game is uh I'm not too far off when I say it's like the deer and elk version of mad cow disease. New outbreaks in Texas, new outbreaks in Pennsylvania. Wisconsin, including it's one of the most, if not the most, extensive web of deer shipments from a CWD positive facility on record, according to industry officials. There's a deer farm in Taylor County that sold 387 deer to 40 facilities in seven states since 2016 that were infected with CWD. Unbelievable. Do you still, and no one wants to do anything to curb it. Like anything meaningful. That's something that's got to change.

The deer farmers have power. Yeah. But how are they finding out they're positive? So there's testing involved. Is it after the fact? I don't know. I would imagine they get tested when they're shipped across state lines. There's got to be some kind of protocols going on for that.

But that doesn't come in before they're sent out. So in other words, there's not a gating item to let them out of the state before they... I don't know if that's wrong. They'll go into a facility and have 100% infection rates inside a facility, and then you can go look at where that facility's sent to. Yeah, I'm just wondering how do you... That'd be a way to get in front of it, like they do with other things.

Get the test back before you greenlit the ship. Well, they're letting the captive deer industry... And it's like, it's not even... It's, you know, in quotes, it's like captive deer hunting. This is not like agriculture. It's not like supplying like venison. Oh, it's not a farm. Okay.

So I thought that was something like restaurants. No, this is mostly, this is mostly like deer breeders sending around animals for like captive herds. The high fence. Yeah. That will be used in a sort of quasi make-believe hunting scenario. And they just keep grinding it and grinding it. And people keep relying on the industry to self-police. But they're overseen by the Department of Agriculture, not Fish and Game.

So, you know. And most people who are, most people who are watching this give the USDA a pretty, a failing grade on their willingness and ability to get out ahead of this and stop having these like captive deer breeders corrupt wild herds that joe blow america hunts for from getting an infectious disease from captive deer right i gotta think it would be handled differently if it was u.s fish and wildlife Wildlife Service. Well, are the captive deer of native origin, are they whitetail? Or are they axis deer? No, they're whitetails.

They are? Yeah. So you'd think there would be some jurisdictional responsibility of the state overseeing those. Yeah, there's been efforts on that behalf. Some states you can do it, some states you can do it some states you can't but they the the captive deer breeders are those herds fall under like an ag those herds fall under like an agricultural administration and are regulated through an agricultural industry rather than through wildlife. Even though these are a native wildlife species

that give an infectious disease to wild animals, it's still on an interstate federal level, they're oversaw USDA. Not wildlife organizations. It's a mess, man.

Oh, we have a thing come in. We're talking about Osage Orange. Because we're doing this. We talked about this call we're doing with Phelps Game Calls. Where we cut down a black walnut in an Osage Orange. We're going to make about 1,000 turkey calls out of that walnut tree. And about 1,000 strikers out of the osage orange and we're talking about how that tree has so many damn names um we're talking about burdock or like

some people call it burdock but it's uh you're saying bodark is a term for osage orange and it comes from the french like bow to arc you know this word anyone when you see osage orange bow to arc it's like uh bow you know basically it's like bow wood you'd make bows from bowdark and it's a derivation of that french word did we pronounce that properly bowdark no i don't know. But boat, but like the derivation is Bodark. So when you hear like a weird time of how people would call it, I don't know, Bodark or Burdock or whatever the hell, um, this guy was just writing in like what you're, what you're trying to say, what you're getting at is it's a, you're sort of butchering a French word.

Beau. It's like Beau, B-O-I-S-D hyphen A-R-C. That'd be Bois. Here, look this up. Look, tell me what, look this up. I've seen it spelled that way. Because, uh. Here it is. Didn't, didn't Boone, when Boone moved to Missouri, didn't he live right now on like the Bodark River?

Wadark, a common name. It's French for bow wood. Told you. That's what I said, right? Mm-hmm. Wadark. You nailed it. Wood of the ark.

Oh, ark. Yeah, ark like a bow. Yeah. Or the flight of an arrow that's good man these turkey calls are getting cooler by the minute all right brody brody's good brody do the book report for us about the uh what's going on the latest uh the latest twist and turn on um on what america loves to call yellowstone's wolves yeah i like to call it wyoming's and montstone's wolves. Yeah. Or I like to call it Wyoming's and Montana's wolves.

Yep. I'm going to talk about them, but you can't talk about them without talking about what's going on in a couple other states too. But anyway, late September, northern border of Yellowstone Park. So just south of here a little ways,

three wolves from Montana's, from Yellowstone's Junction Butte Pack got killed on private land, which hit the news. It was two female pups and one female yearling. So, you know, people were kind of up in arms when the news hit about it that some of Yellowstone's wolves got killed

because the Junction Butte Pack is the most viewedte pack is uh the most viewed wolf pack in the world and they only spent about five percent what's the number two probably the other the other ones in the park um but they they uh den right next to like a major road so they're like seeing all that oh yeah if you ever drive through the park and all those people standing up around uh lamar valley standing around there yeah that's that's what they're trying to get a gander at so uh but you know wolves don't know there's a border there some line drawn on a map so they they spend about five percent of their time outside the park, usually in late fall.

And until recently, that part of Montana, the State Fish and Game Agency limited the number of wolves that were taken from that area adjacent to the park's northern boundary. But they recently changed the regs, loosened them up, and lifted restrictions on the number of wolves that can be taken there. And part of those loosening of restrictions, changing of regulations was authorizing baiting from private property. But you know what? You can bait. I just had this big argument yesterday because I thought I had, I thought I came up with like a secret idea.

You can bait on public. you can bait wolves on public you can't night hunt or use thermal vision to hunt wolves after dark on public it's in the regs man i i'm not doubting you yeah but i'm just i ran around i read this thing that you're talking about and i ran around first off this i had a genius idea occurred. I mean, it went up not being that genius because I thought it was like only private land baiting. Yeah.

Which to me, basically you take a, you find a deer to got hit on the side of the road and drag it out and wait into a good spot and then sit there. Yeah. Uh, and when I thought it was private, only a light bulb went off in my head.

But then, uh, Garrett long pointed out in my head, but then, uh, Garrett long pointed out in the actual reg, you can bait public or private. You cannot night hunt on public. Gotcha. And now you can snare. I think probably the reason the private property thing came up is,

uh, about a third of that Northern boundary of Yellowstone borders, private property. And these wolves were shot on private property. I'm assuming they were baited across the border. Were they chasing livestock, you know? No, they were shot by hunters. It was, you know, the wolf season had opened and they were shot by hunters. Um, as, as angry as some people got about this it was all completely legal right nothing no laws were violated um and i think what a lot of people forget is you know there's 27 wolves in that pack yeah there's only 24 now but if they're managed as a renewable resource. Those, those three are going to get replaced,

even though, you know, some people think it's the end of the world for the wolves. You know what the number one cause of death is for wolves? The number one cause of death is that a wolf gets killed by a wolf. Yeah. Yeah. How much,

I forget what, um, she said now her name is, uh, Diane, Diane Boyd, right? Yeah.

Uh, how much, what percentage of the population dies off every year? Was it 25 or almost 50%? It's very high. It was a lot. So if there was 100 wolves in the Yellowstone Grader ecosystem, it would go down to something like 50. And then the next year.

And then the next year it would be back up to 100. It does that every single year. And I think if this hadn't been wolves from that junction butte pack, they're just wolves from the middle of Montana somewhere, you know, this would have never made the news. But the media is pretty focused on Montana and Idaho's war on wolves these days. And then there's the reporting problem that happens in the news all the time that I think is they're always using, like matter where it happens it's always yellowstone's

wolves so there was a story where our governor um killed a wolf yep and i look at the headline it's like montana's governor kills yellowstone wolf i was like that's so weird that our governor would go into yellowstone and kill off but lo and behold it's not yeah it was in montana there's no fence on private property he didn't kill one of yellowstone you could say he killed the montana wolf yeah but they they this is why this is this is partly fueling my thing where part of my life goal um is to get yellowstone turned into a desert to a wilderness area yeah like rip out all the infrastructure leave the highways in place it becomes a wilderness area that'll give it enhanced protection no motorized use it's more protected and then wildlife management goes to

montana whelming that would be fantastic you can have a raffle for the Yellowstone Super Tag. Go get them all. Like 10 Super Tags. Yep. And it's like more protected, more pristine, less human involvement, restore human predators to the landscape. It's like better for everybody. It'll never happen, Steve. You're going to have to figure out a way to replace those tourist dollars that are going to be cut out.

Super tag lottery. Think that'll do it? I got to think on it. Over in Idaho, the Department of Fish and Game entered into an agreement with a non-profit hunting group to reimburse hunters for the expense of a proven wolf kill. Hold on, what now? Well, they're calling it a reimbursement program. Oh, okay. I'm reading that as a bounty on wolves, which, you know, whatever.

The Foundation for Wildlife Management is a hunting group that describes its mission as protecting deer and elk. So they coughed up $200,000 to reimburse hunters for the expenses they incur while killing wolves. Huh. 2,000. Do you have to turn in receipts? I'm assuming you got to bring a dead wolf, but I don't know. But they have like, here you go.

2,000 per wolf in hunting units where Fish and Game says predators are keeping elk below objectives. 1,000 per wolf in the northern tip of the state and 500 elsewhere. So this is getting attention. It wasn't even last year when it was like Idaho's killing 90% of their wolves. Yeah. Which wasn't even close to the whole story. So there's a lot of people that are irritated about this, this bounty system they got going on.

They're not calling it a bounty. No, it's like an expense reimbursement program. Huh. I don't think they, that's got to be intentional that they're not. So they've got 200 grand. They're going to dish it out in $2,000 increments? 2,000, 1,000, or 500, depending on the situation. Oh, what unit you're in.

Yeah, where it is. But, you know, like, bounties don't usually work well for, like, coyotes and smaller predators. But I could see that kind of money motivating some wolf hunters. That's really interesting. I can see why people would be a little, that's like a hard one on optics, man. Yeah. Yeah. That's a hard one to manage right there.

Well, once you put a dollar sign out there, then you have some motivation for an unethical behavior. Yeah. That's right. I can see it triggering that. Yeah. Cause you see guys who mess with coyote bounties by bringing them from

other areas, other states, whatever. Huh. I get what they're getting at. I got to think about it. I got to sleep on that one. I knew that that was... I heard of that happening. I can't remember if I heard it in the Idaho Panhandle or something.

Maybe Diane Boyd was talking about that program. That's a tricky one. Yeah. I get it. But I just, I'm trying to think about how to market that one, how to sell that one. So then finally over in Wisconsin, I'm sure everyone remembers last year, they had their first wolf hunt in a while. The quota was 119 wolves and they exceeded that by about 100 wolves in a couple of days i think it was it was very quickly and the hunt got shut down um this year there's a citizen panel that recommends uh quotas for game animals and that citizen panel recommended 300 wolves this year the dnr didn't listen to them and went with 130 um which you got to assume they're thinking they had to react to

what happened last year and avoid over harvest um and something i learned that that I did not know is half of those tags go to the Ojibwe tribe. And they have historically chosen not to use those tags. So essentially there's going to be 65 tags available to hunters this year. You know, that resource split is something you see around the country on different wildlife issues. Like when I was, uh, living in Washington, we would do a lot of clam digging and they would have, uh, uh, on some of those beaches on the Olympic peninsula, there'd be a, there'd be a biological assessment that was done in tandem between the tribes and the state. And they would do like, let's say they're looking at razor clams. They would agree on a razor clam abundance, right right they need to agree on like what total

harvest should look like and then they whatever that total harvest should look like for the year they just split it 50 50 yeah so 50 50 went to the tribes and the tribes could conduct their own thing do commercial digs whatever they had their end of it and then the state would deal with their half however they dealt with their half through right you know recreational clam digging so like that that concept of doing a uh a tribal state resource split but it does get a little skewed when it's going to go on use but if it goes unused then you imagine the next year's recommended right the next year's recommended harvest might be higher yeah yeah and interestingly the ojibwe are currently suing the federal or their let's see

yeah federal lawsuit to cancel the wolf hunt altogether arguing it violates their treaty rights um they don't harvest wolves because they view them as family but they also believe that wisconsin failed to use sound biological principles in the past you know when setting these quotas yeah we'll see where that goes it's a tricky one all around man because the minute you start talking about how you believe in wolf harvest people think you're anti-wolf i'm like anything but anti-wolf right like i don't think i don't like us uh just me speaking personally i don't think that humans are really in a position to decide that certain wildlife species should be like eliminated from the earth that's like a level you know we have i think a moral ethical responsibility to

keep native wildlife on the ground sure but i also think that they should be managed and hunted for yep i agree and like if if the last decade or longer has taught us anything is that you can absolutely have wolf hunting and wolves because we've had wolf hunting now for years and we got more wolves than we had when we started so you have a wolf hunt plan don't you no you don't oh just messing around yeah no i got well i got a couple irons in the fire yeah no i got me them new the new snowmobiles to burn uh burn a hole in my pocket oh yeah that'd be good for that um no we got a couple yeah snowmobiles to burn a hole in my pocket. Oh, yeah. That would be good for that. No, we got a couple.

Yeah, but I got to make a couple phone calls with people. I've been very interested in predator calling for them, which is a little bit tricky. I don't want to say what these boys are doing because I haven't tested it myself yet. There's an emerging strategy I've been catching wind of. This is unrelated to when I thought I had that little breakthrough with roadkill deer, but I haven't done that. All right, so continuing on with a thing we've been exploring lately, which is fisherman harassment. How's that even a thing? But hunter harassment I get, you know?

Like whatever, you're out duck hunting and some person comes out freaking out on you but fisherman harassment is we've got a lot of stories from listeners about being out fishing and having dock owners come out and try to scare the fish away from their dock area or scare the fisherman off scare fisher yeah harass shoot garden hoses at fishermen and whatever you can do to like ruin their fishing which is illegal but this one came in from mecosta county and uh that that holds a special place in my heart because um i grew up south of there and i used to uh i used to trap in muskegon county nuevo county but then for a bunch of years in december late december january we would trap up in mecosta county so we'd go up to mecosta county and trap through the ice for uh beaver and muskrats now it's kind of like the highlight

of the trap and you're i used to love hanging out up there um anyways these guys wrote in that they've had this uh a lot of encounters with an anti-angler what's the world coming to anyways the anti-angler he would uh used to go down and if you tried to fish his dock so if you're going along and you're pitching jigs under his dock this dude would run out and yell at you but recently this guy was out doing yard work and he had one of those uh backpack leaf blowers like a like a leaf blower strap to his back and as they're coming by trolling he runs down to his dock and starts leaf blowing the water blowing the water every which way in an effort to spook off fish. So this is interesting.

We have two law enforcement. Former. You guys are law enforcement who can speak freely because you're former. Correct. So now you can tell people what you really think. Oh, yeah. So Paul was a former regular police man. Sheriff's deputy.

Sheriff's deputy. That's not a regular police man? I mean, not a former regular policeman. Sheriff's deputy. Sheriff's deputy. That's not a regular policeman? I mean, not a game warden. Not a game warden, correct. Sheriff's deputy. Yep. And Sam was an Arizona game warden. Correct.

So, I want to ask each of you guys. You get a call from an angler who says, I'm out fishing right now, and I'm coming by a dock, and there's a man blowing his leaf blower around in the water to scare fish away um do you like turn the sirens on and race over like what would be your attitude yeah certainly no sirens uh my my first uh thought would be to call the game warden because it's obviously a wildlife related. Oh, that's what you do? Yeah.

Cause in Montana, at least, you know, we've got a whole set of rules that fit under game laws. I see. If they weren't available, uh, it would be just under normal laws would be disorderly conduct, which everybody calls disturbing the peace and kind of the catch all. Or you might, you might get a disturbing the peace type situation going on.

Potentially. Yeah. Um, that would be the, that'd be where it would fall under in Montana law if it, if the game warden wasn't there to write the wildlife ticket. Yeah. And that was, uh, often the case where the local sheriffs or police department would get a

hold of us when it was a wildlife related thing and, and vice versa. When we got into drugs and drunk drivers, we got ahold of you guys. I didn't want to deal with it. The first thing that hits me is, you know, is there any way I could deescalate that thing? Sometimes these people out trying to harass, whether you're a hunter or an angler, want the publicity out of it and make a big issue out of it. And in fact, we had, uh, when you're saying the harasser wants broader attention,

wants the attention and the next thing, you know, next weekend, there's three people out with leaf blowers. They start a movement. Yeah. It's a leaf blowing program. Well, yeah, I would, uh, if, if I received that call, there's nothing on the books from Game and Fish at that point dealing with harassing anglers. It was literally hunters and hunter harassment, which we did find many, many times where they just sought publicity. They just wanted officers to show up and, and make their case. And it was

on the news. And so you deescalate it. So that's what I would have certainly done in this case. What does that like walk me through it? What does that wind up looking like? Well, I probably get ahold of it. How many geese did you shoot? I, uh, and so if I got a call, obviously there was a, a, a person that called the dispatch and I would get in touch with them and see if I can meet them and go, all right, here's this guy. He doesn't want you near his place. You'd want to meet with the fishermen.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I mean, there's this whole lake here. This guy obviously doesn't want you out here. The more you make an issue out of this, the more likely he's probably going to get some buddies doing it too. Just back out of there. Really?

Yeah. And then I'd probably go talk to the guy, the leaf blower. Okay. Okay. And just say, come on here. Let's try to reach some kind of a balance. Why are you doing this? Well, every time I go down there and try to read my book, here's some guy.

And one time he almost hooked me in the ear. Okay. I can understand that, you know. But let's think of some other options, you know. This guy had a kid with him. He wanted to introduce him to fishing, and now his whole day was ruined. Let's talk it out. Yeah.

No tickets. Yeah. I'd agree with that 100%. A therapy session. Yeah yeah that's what you go you feel better already that and reading sam so uh we're going to talk some more about sam's book we have sam's book is uh stories of the past in arizona game range of remembering the outlaws and uh the thing that struck me most in the book is you aren't um you don't wake up in the morning wanting to bust someone's balls. Only a few people.

That was generally lenient. Yeah. No, lenient's not the right word. You don't seem to have real axe to grind. Well, you know, it's like I think I told Corrine. you know, these people that, uh, well, well, let's just say this for those of us that are actively involved with hunting and angling, uh, I mean, almost avid and that means greedy. If you haven't violated a game and fish regulation, I'd be surprised.

Yeah. And so mistakes happen all the time. And you look at 90% of the people out there, 99% of them are good, you know, conservationists enjoying recreation and passing on a tradition. And accidents happen. Certainly you recognize those kinds of cases and walk into it gently. But the real bad guys, you're darn right I stayed awake at night. I wanted those guys and I was going to put them out of business.

Some of those stories are in there. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers

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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. Can I squeeze in a follow up siren question? Oh, yeah.

How how how civilians use it to mean the lights? No, no, go ahead. No different. So everybody's seen it. I think when you're driving along and all of a sudden, like, some sort of law enforcement

officer is next to you and the lights come on and they buzz down whatever X road or highway for seemingly a shorter distance and then the lights go off

and then they just continue about their day. Yeah, that happens all the time. Okay. I'll tell you what I think is going on. Okay, please.

I think that they got an emergency call and then someone called and said, never mind. Okay. That's A. I don't think that's where Yanni's going. B is like, I got to get home real quick because I got to go number two. C is I got another errand to run. And D is I have this power. I'm just going to use it just'm just gonna like why do you just a

little bit why do you do that i'd say sometimes all of the above could be true that's a diplomatic answer i've seen uh i've seen guys you know after leaving uh uh i don't know the taco joint you're like I need to get back to the office right now. Um, and, uh, and, and use the old lights and sirens. Yeah. I mean, that's usually a night shift thing, but, um, the, uh, the, while I'm at it, I'm going to scare the shit out of some people more often than not. It's something that is like an emergent call but not necessarily worth risking anything

for and you just catch a red light and you're like man i'm gonna sit here for five minutes or i'm gonna get through this one and keep rolling oh that's probably the most common you know instead of causing all the chaos of going down the street. Cause you know how hard it is to drive even through Bozeman, much less a big city, um, in rush hour traffic and you just sit there for hours. And so sometimes a call comes up that you're like, man, I just, you know, I could be there in, in, well, in Gallatin County and be there in 10 minutes or I'm going to not be three blocks yet in 10 minutes. So you get through it just to kind of get through the, the cluster and then move on. We should do a whole, we should do a show like a weekly show called ask a cop and get a whole panel

of cops. And you ask them like, why do you guys always, I know a couple. Did you ever get involved with any, uh, Montana stream access, like access law?

Yeah. Yeah. There's, with any, uh, Montana stream access, like access law? Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's, uh, cause I'm obviously worked in this area. I have to be careful who I talk about, but the, uh, um, you know, there's several landowners. I'm reading between the lines on that one. Nearby here. Um, nearby, you know, in Bozeman being a big fishing community has got, you know, just loads of people parked all the way down around all the bridges. And we have guys who have, you know, cameras out, uh, ready to, you know, if you take one step above high water mark there, they have motion activated cameras and alarms on their phones and they're calling and they want everybody sighted. And it's typically, I'm sure Sam can,

can, uh, relate and then it's typically spurred on by somebody and, you know, some fishermen with bad behavior causing them to get a bird under their saddle about it. But we've had cases, uh, where, you know, bridges, there's not really great parking areas and we suspect the landowners who typically would call every day with, with fishing or, you know, access issues. Those are the bridges we would show up and there'd be, you know, a crate of nails spread around in the ditch. So everybody who parked ended up with flat tires and limited the numbers of people who would go out there and try and park in the ditch but yeah we dealt with it fairly often and then a lot of times you know i had a guy who

he's a young college kid he was trying to do the right thing there was a bank in the river that he couldn't stay in without swimming. And he was outside of the bank. I don't know, maybe it was just a couple of feet. He had to, he had to go around a rock to get around and he came, you know, the guy had the motion activated alarm on his phone, had the recording by the time I got there and everything on camera and said, I don't care, He was trespassing. I want him cited. And he's dealt with it enough that he just, he, he has it signed very well.

The guy, you know, if he'd have known the law, I'm sure probably would have avoided that whole side of the river. So you had to write that dude a ticket. Yeah. Written a few tickets that I've almost felt like I needed to apologize for yeah he's gonna wear a kid's gonna wear that riverbank out yeah won't be no good for nothing anymore after he comes walking through right uh oh a guy wrote in here's another like this is a access question

so he's talking about legally accessing landlocked public land this is this is a good topic of discussion um landlocked public land is like where you have state or federal land and it's surrounded on all sides by private land there's no public access road cutting through it which makes it sort of like de facto private land um more and more people are using helicopters to access that stuff if the land management agency that holds the land allows you to land a helicopter on it but this guy's wondering um why can't you parachute onto the land i see of course you can extraction just throw a military term at it becomes an issue but you remember that john

wayne movie green braves and they caught that like high profile target and green and they hooked that dude to those balloons and that plane came by and hits the string and pulls the guy into the back of the plane. Yeah. You gotta get a rig up like that. It's been a long time. Uh, yeah. So you could parachute in. I don't know how you can get out of there. Yeah.

I think you gotta hire that helicopter. Yeah. Short haul your way out of there with a long line. If you can get out of there. Yeah. I think you got to hire that helicopter. Yeah. Short haul your way out of there with a long line if you can't land. Yeah. Or if you're just moving there, I guess you could parachute in. I suppose.

And what's the, what's the intent of, what are you after? Are you hunting or fishing? Uh, he has, I'm assuming he's talking about hunting. He wants to go hunt it. So, uh, yeah, I guess get after it and then have a pickup. Yep.

You know? I think I'm going to get into this a little bit, this parachuting on the places. I just got to figure out how to get out. That's a good idea. It's a great question. But yeah, I don't see it. Because a lot of stuff you can't because you cannot land the aircraft on it. But there's no thing with you just landing there in your boots.

But you still got to get picked up can you jump out of a helicopter you know that's another good question i'm guessing there's some like if you're if you go on let's say you're going on to a part a land agency that says no landing helicopters i wonder how they view i'm sure we get a concrete answer to this, what the airspace implication is. Because you're not going to be like cute and have it be that the helicopter never touched and you just hopped off. I'm guessing that they're going to, there's a point at which they're going to not really care about how clever you are. It's like, it didn't actually touch. Yeah, I did that once and I forgot to take my helmet off with the mic.

Oh, yeah. I was jumping off the skid and right at the end, I remembered I still had that helmet. That would have been stupid. Yeah, that's a great question, man. It's interesting to think about. And I don't know how it would go like just the jumping out of a helicopter i'm guessing that you have to stay that that thing has to stay a certain distance above what does it like parks have it right like national parks you can fly a helicopter over park

but you have to there's a ceiling well you can't go and even shoot video or uh you know whatever commercial pictures uh in the wilderness out of a helicopter you cannot oh really really i just remember that because a guy gosh i think it was this guy named chris davenport a skier that skied all of colorado's 14ers and he had a bunch of uh images and i think video that was or he had maybe even done some accessing through helicopter i can't remember exactly what but i know that they shut him down for the helicopters use stuff got it we had an interesting thing coming to uh a last note a guy was a guy named gilbert that's probably the first dude named gilbert ever write us i think so guy named gilbert wrote in he's hunting in illinois this weekend and discovered an interesting regulation this is a quote road to kill deer may only be claimed by those individuals who are

residents of illinois and are not delinquent in child support payments. Very specific. I think, Sam, you'll be able to speak to this, but isn't it true that in a lot of states, you can't hunt and fish and have a hunting license and fishing license if you're delinquent? I believe so. I think it's getting more and more, probably.

When we used to sell fishing licenses at the fly shop, there's a question on there. Are you delinquent? You have to be a citizen illinois so the driver a driver hits a deer the driver says i don't want the deer the next guy in line can't be from wisconsin he's gotta be from illinois and he's gotta be up on his child support good he could be like well i murdered some people but i'm cool on child support and be like well go ahead or at least he's getting it processed and delivering it to his child yeah maybe he's like no no you don't get it man i'm giving the deer to my exactly exactly cut me a break here all right bump it down now we're going to talk more about paul. Paul Lewis, you're cool with me dropping that motor off, right?

Yeah, yeah. Have at it. We got a showroom you can fill up as much as you want. Just put stuff in there and leave it there? It's like a big storage unit for you. You know, so here's the thing I wanted to, one of the things I want to talk about. So Paul's the founder of FHF. So when you see us on the show running around with a vinyl harness, that's an FHF vinyl harness.

I first, I don't know if I've ever even told you this story. I first, my late friend, Eric Kern, who died years ago now, I remember he was the first person that made me aware of your products a long time ago. Yeah. And yeah, back then I was doing basically all custom stuff. And, uh, yeah, I don't remember. I got asked the question before how, how that, uh, first interaction happened. I don't like. I got asked the question before how that first interaction happened. I remember getting an email from Joe Rogan who was introduced to it through you guys. But I think I got a random phone call from a, which I don't answer a lot of phone calls. I don't know the number for.

It was a Bozeman number, so I answered it. And for me, it was like, hey, it's Steven Rinella. I'm like. Oh, really? You're bullshitting me. I think that's how it was, or it was a, it might have been an email and, and yeah, so we, I made you a couple of custom ones early on.

Yeah. And. Cause you were stitching vinyl harnesses that just on your free time as a, as a cop. Yeah. Yeah. It was a side gig a, as a cop. Yeah. Yeah. It was side gig trying to make a little extra money. And, uh, yeah, I started doing custom work, uh, like I said, kind of a hobby and, and,

and just to pay the bills and, and kind of caught on being in Bozeman. I was doing a lot of tactical gear initially, you know, for SWAT team buddies. And then, you know, had kind of involved in some online forums you know that we're doing tactical gear stuff and but being in Bozeman all my hunting buddies and then there's a couple outdoor jobs in Bozeman so there's a few people that hunt around here and that is sort of what took off. Were you when you you were out doing, uh, all your, uh, police duties, were you ever wearing your own accessories that you made for yourself? Not on patrol, but originally when I first started, actually, that's, that's actually

how I started is I was too cheap to buy something. Cause I was on our SWAT team as well. And, you know, we have a part-time team and I was too cheap to buy something and figured I could make it. So, um, and that led to making stuff for teammates. And I, there's one guy at work, his nickname for me was either zippers or pockets or something. Cause I always had, if I needed a, something to put something in a pocket, I'd make a pouch for it. Did you always have a sewing machine kicking around?

I was going to ask the same question. No, I, I, I took seventh grade home ec. Me too. And. I made a fanny pack. Yeah, I did too. And those were cool in the 80s or 90s, right? Yeah, I skateboarded all around Kalamazoo, Michigan wearing that thing.

And yeah, I had been able, I had just enough skill. I felt like to, you know, repair something if I had to. And, uh, my wife had a sewing machine and so I figured I could make this thing that I was too cheap to buy. And that just led me to buying more materials and more machinery and more of everything. And it just kind of.

I feel like you gotta be a real confident in your masculinity when yeah it helps that i sew camouflage things rather than lacy doily things you still feel like you still feel manly right yeah that's a good point try to and it's like ballistic nylon right but it's like kurt kurt and you both you know very manly individuals but there's like there's a point where i think a lot of people are like yeah i'm not messing with the sewing machine it's just too too dainty yeah my wife has one i don't want to be a seamstress yeah and we got you know i got that from guys i worked with like oh you oh you know giving me that snicker and sewing again but you know when i made more money really occurred to me if i would i wish i could had a

sewing machine i knew how to use it man i'd be sewing all kinds of junk yeah well the tune changed you know you start making more money on your side job than your main job then they're like wait a minute maybe it is worth doing so you uh how did it be that you went to school for wildlife management way back in the day well it's i's, I had, I was going to be a game biologist. Well, you want to be a biologist. Yeah, that's where I was aiming. And then, yeah, my junior year in college, after spending all this time and money on classes, they came in and said, you will never get a job as a biologist.

So find something else. Like you specifically or at the time it just wasn't the right time? It was a, no, it was a, uh, a big full on classroom. They came in and said, you know, here's all of MSU, like a dispatch for MSU PD, just cause it was usually pretty slow and I get a lot of study and done at night. And, but I got to know those guys had some interest in enforcement. And then, um, when I realized that being a biologist was going to be a lot of work. And, you know, I had this plan to be able to travel around and be a, a tech and take

side, you know, short, short-term jobs all over the country and do studies and realize that probably wasn't going to work as a, an adult trying to be, trying to, you know, be responsible. So, uh, one of the game wardens came in and gave a talk in the same class and to, you know, be responsible. So, uh, one of the game wardens came in and gave a talk in the same class and said, you know, we're hiring and, you know, we give you a truck and a four wheeler and horses and, you know, you can be outside all day and, and

you don't need more than a bachelor's degree in a related field. And I was like, I think that's probably what I might look at. So, so I started aiming for that direction, but, um, you know, did internships with the wardens here, worked in the wildlife lab, did, you know, that's right when I graduated college,

I ended up taking a job as a security officer up on the flying D and thinking that was as close as I could get to a job experience. And, um, when I graduated, they did a hiring freeze here and weren't hiring any wardens. So I took the written test, which happened to be, I was on search and rescue, a volunteer for search and rescue with the sheriff's office and they were hiring. They take the same written tests, the police standard police test. And I applied really just kind of to see how I would

do on the test and they ended up hiring me. And I realized they at the time at least paid better than the state. They, I got to stay in Bozeman instead of getting shipped to who knows where in Montana. And it's a lot easier to get time off during hunting season when you're not a game warden. So that's, uh, that's what I did.

How many years did you spend on that? Uh, with the sheriff's office? Yeah. I did my full 20, retired with 20 year retirement. I got a friend, I don't, I don't want to say what town he's in, but I got a friend who grew up in a town, um, and did all their bunch of professional things around construction

and then i guess probably late in life for police work but late in life went to academy and became a city policeman in his hometown and it radically transformed his idea of the town that he lived in where he said he had no idea yeah and i had no idea that's true here i didn't grow up here i mean i went to college here but i think for the most part people are you know bozeman's a nice place to live but you know we as law enforcement in the area certainly stay busy and there's a lot more going on here than people realize yeah he was astounded by the child abuse the spouse abuse. Yeah.

It's like, how do you live your whole life somewhere and have like an impression of it and then you get a look under the, you know, get a look under the covers and he's like, it just mortified him. It changes your outlook. Yeah. I worked six years straight, a night shift and you aren't dealing with your general population at three in the morning. Um, you're, you just, you population at three in the morning. Um,

you're, you just, you're seeing people at their worst, you know, even if they're good people, they aren't, you know, it's not normal to be having one-on-one dealings with the police at three in

the morning. And so your outlook on life sort of changes. And that's when I started this side gig, it was one of those things that really helped me kind of realize you know because you know i was hesitant to meet people customers having gear built you know i'm like i'll meet you in a parking lot somewhere i'm not going to tell you where i live you're just paranoid yeah i my only friends were other cops and you know night shift cops because you know we had our barbecues at seven in the morning

instead of normal times. And, uh, um, it, uh, it, having this side gig come up really kind of helped me realize that there was still decent people in the world and especially hunters and anglers as a general rule is kind of much better people than i was used to dealing with when you when you started building fhf did you uh did you get like a guilty conscience that you had a that you weren't like 100 you know i guess you still are because you're still doing your shift but i mean did you feel bad like you were betraying your occupation or something um in what way what do you mean like like that you had another love right um not really i mean i was able to kind of balance you know i i i mean i ended up i was in charge of our detective division and you

know that was my main job but definitely all of my off time was spent as this as fhf kind of grew i never planned it to grow as quickly as it did in fact I tried to slow it down several times because I was so busy and I was you know doing everything myself um but it just kind of took on a life of its own and so you know by the end I was trying to hang on to make my 20 years and and uh you know I'd say there are times where I probably gave a little more attention to that, to my side gig than I probably should have, but I tried really hard to not, not let it, uh, affect my day job. Yeah. Um, on the, like the gradual path to vinyl harnesses, we like, like in the old days,

we'd put like a pair of binoculars around our neck. Right. On a rigid strap. I wish I still had this thing. Maybe I do. But we started inexpertly sewing stuff. And I remember cutting a strip out of a pair of neoprene waders, old neoprene waders, and made my neck strap out of a neoprene wader stitch a piece right and then stitched strapping to that okay that hooked the key rings that were in the tethers like in

the the fastening points on my binoculars right and then we'd take a piece of a bungee cord and fasten one end of the bungee cord to the binocular to that key ring run it around behind your back and to the other key ring you'd have a piece of paracord in which you'd tie a prusik right and tie the prusik around the bungee you follow me yeah so as you shed layers you could like tighten the prusik up on the bungee it was to have the bungee so when you put your binoculars up you'd have the resistance of the bungee for stability and then when you're belly crawling that bungee would suck them up to your chest i like it yeah we should uh hire you as a designer i i i don't remember exactly but i don't think i invented this i think this is just like looking

at stuff and doing it but I remember that dude Eric Kern being like oh no man there's this guy in Belgrade that like makes these whole things you got to tell him what you got you know and he makes it all it was funny is at the time like no one really knew about that stuff and and um we get the vinyl harnesses and I remember camera guys so we we had a lot of dealings with production people um no interest in hunting at all i remember one of our camera one of our longtime camera guys i don't know how many episodes of mo film like um not 50 yeah maybe 50 him being like they carry all their batteries and right media everything in there? And he'd run around being like, I can't believe my whole life I wasted this real estate.

And he'd even be going, like, he'd be shooting Bourdain's show. You know, they'd be whatever, like Singapore shooting Bourdain's show. And those dudes would all have your bino harnesses on with their, like, camera equipment and stuff in there, you know? They loved it, man. And they're all wearing the chest rig now, right? Yeah, yeah. Now they don't have to stick it in the bino pocket now because now there's like an actual chest rig

that's more accessorized but that was this big thing is like this whole life you'd wasted this this space where who knows you could keep all your stuff here yeah paul when you came up with like that bino harness design what were you seeing that you didn't like you know in the other options that were out there um well it's funny because there weren't oh i have to admit i hadn't actually researched making it based on what you didn't like about other shit the first one was actually made for a custom order for somebody else um and you know who had had a bunch of elk scared away by, um, he had one of those, uh, early magnetic ones that stayed open. The wind caught it, popped it shut and made a huge noise. Elk got scared away. And he's like, I want something without a magnet. So that was the

first, first one I started making. I made a few for, you know, a few other friends and customers went to, uh, actually one of Randy Newberg's, um, really early, like get togethers and came away from there with a bunch of orders. And, and, uh, you know, and I'd been wearing just the old elastic cricket horn, um, bungee bino strap. And, you know, and I'd had my own issues with that, you know, hiking around and bouncing, hitting you in the waist or, you know, lower if you weren't lucky. Or the chin sometimes.

Well, and that's the thing. I had tried to jump over a stream one time and, you know, I jumped and ended up hitting the other bank. Binos went one way and came back and hit me right in the nose. Ended up standing in the creek bleeding and like,'s got to be a better way to do this and uh yeah that's kind of how it started and just kind of evolved from there you know it hasn't changed a

whole lot um it just kind of added a few features here and there over the years and you know now to be honest i got so busy as the company grew where I was running day-to-day business stuff all the time and really had very little opportunity to update products or even design new ones. Now, we're finally getting to a point where I feel like we're moving forward on all sorts of new stuff. When you started your, when you started your business while being a full-time police officer, what was the, how many years did you do it before you did it a year where you're like, had a profit, like realize that you had an actual business? Um,

it wasn't until I actually started, we, we ended up, uh, working with a company to help sew gear for me. So like certain things that I would have a list of, um, I don't know how many years it was into it,

probably probably two or three where, you know, I was just sewing everything myself. And I, I am one of those people who like, that's not worth that, you know, give me five bucks for that. I'll, you know, it's probably not worth that much. And so I look at some of my early stuff. I can't believe people paid for it, but, um, they like when I found a company that helped me, like my most requested products, I just had made for me. And, um, that's when I started seeing a profit because I, it was just the time of actually

sewing. I could just sell those things, um, one after the other, instead of spending, you know, one by an harness would take me four and a half hours to make by myself. You know, and that's when I was selling them all the time and felt good at it. And so, you know, at the time I was probably selling them for 60 bucks. It's hard to make a profit at that rate. Well, when you were early on, were you tempted to not stick to having everything be American made?

Um, no. Just cause you could have gone and had like hundreds of them made and just have it all be like. No, I've pretty much always stuck to that, that I try and source everything I can, both materials and obviously labor, um, in the U S and, um, that's kind of been one of the things throughout the whole history that I've stuck to and kind of built a customer base around. And I think a lot of people appreciate that. Um, and early on, you know, I was, I didn't want to invest too much money into something and, you know, going overseas, you have to do huge orders and wait a long time. And it's been nice, uh, with us production is that, you know, if I have a change, I can make that change and have a turnaround pretty quick versus a two-year planning process to try and, you know, get something made overseas.

Uh, you know, another thing I wanted to ask you, do you have a, how many, how long has it been since you retired? Uh, since 2018. Do you have a lot of days where you wish you hadn't done that and stayed in it? No. A lot of the guys still there, I still see. And I recommend retirement to them every day, especially in city. You're like the opposite of a recruiting force. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I miss the people. I miss the work sometimes. I miss being in the know what's going on in the valley and in the news and, but I miss being in the know what's going on in the Valley and in the news and, but I don't miss the stress and the politics and the BS that you have to deal with every day. I mean, I don't, I haven't been shot at yet since I retired.

So that's kind of nice. Yeah. Do you feel like whatever kind of, um, I don't mean to like, I'm not trying to like lay a diagnosis on you or anything like that, but whatever sort of, I don't mean to like i'm not trying to like lay a diagnosis on you or anything like that but whatever sort of i don't know like ptsd as shit happens to you from being like the first on a car crash like yeah you're just like you right right you're running into like like dead people become a part of life yeah in some way like this inescapable part of life like most if you went out and polled americans like have you ever seen have you're like been in proximity to a dead person i feel like at this point in human in american history a majority of people would have a no answer outside

of a funeral home yeah no no yeah like like you know that you like encounter in close proximity a dead individual not not in a funeral home like i i think that a vast majority of americans would say no i have not right like it's just out of whatever it is societally we've gotten cleaned up like you're talking my dad when he was a little boy it seemed like you couldn't turn around without there being a dead guy laying there but like nowadays it doesn't happen but then you're forced in that line of work it's just like a thing it has to have an impact yeah i, I think it does. I actually read something once from a law professor who talked about, you know, you kind of, you get used to it or you never get used to it, but you

get to see it so often. They talk about grains of sand where you, it's something that you don't realize it's irritating you, but it is irritating you every call you go to and all those things. And I think many in law enforcement, any emergency service, they kind of, the, this analogy that was made by this law professor was, you know, we all learn to like build a pearl around those grains of sand and polish them up.

And, you know, a lot of that polish has dark humor in it. And, you know, you just kind of, you try and find what's funny and what you can laugh at later and vent your stress that way do you find it getting out of it you start uh drifting back to whatever you were pre i don't know if i'll ever get there yeah i still have that you get stained yeah yeah i definitely you know i still can't go and eat at a restaurant without sitting with my back to the wall somewhere. Seriously? Oh, yeah, I don't. What is your concern?

I don't know. That some guy you cuffed and stuffed is going to come up. Yeah, and you just kind of, you learn to always be ready. And, you know, driving around a patrol car, you're always thinking what could happen next. What if this happens? You know, kind of the what if scenarios all the time. And, you know, luckily if scenarios all the time.

And, you know, luckily 99% of the time it's pretty boring. But that 1% of the time when it's not, if you're not ready for it, it could be real trouble. And that's, you know, you go out to eat and you're like, you know, what if somebody comes in to rob the place? What if somebody I know, you know, or arrested or whatever comes in and recognizes me or you know i don't know i just don't want to be you know be hit in the back of the head i'd rather see what's coming he is sitting in the back corner right now yeah he said yeah he's in the back corner watching the what are the type of well let me rephrase this uh it's from a night shift going back into obviously working with more of a day shift operation and any of the residual health pieces

or that, how did that unwind, you know, from trying to change your, sort of your basic lifestyle? Um, I don't know. So I worked nights. I was, luckily I was a lot younger then. I can tell as I got older, things got harder, um, to stay awake all night. Um, I remember I went through a full year.

I learned to tie flies on night shift and, you know, cause you wouldn't, your day's off, you'd stay awake. You couldn't sleep really. I, um, I didn't have kids yet, uh, early on. And my wife at the time worked night shift. And so it just, we were like the vampires of the neighborhood. And so you'd stay on the, you stay on the rhythm. I'd just stay on my schedule and, you know, made it a lot easier on the work schedule to go back to, to night shift. And I'd tie flies. And I remember that's when I finally decided, you know, I probably ought to get off a night shift when I had so many flies done because I never fished. It was dark. Yeah, it was dark out. So I had so many flies tied up. I'm like,

man, I'm never going to get to use these if I don't get off the shift. Um, and then I went through a long period where like I had a hard time having kids, you know, not, you know, I was used to hibernating for 12 hours during the daytime and, you know, blocking out the lights and turning the AC on and, you know, just, I, I did great on nights, but then when I had kids, it was pretty tough to transition you know and realize my life now revolved around their schedule and not not my own uh you know that jumpiness you're talking about uh do you feel that you do you make your kids jumpy um yeah i don't know it's hard to say whether i caused it here that's uh but do you sense that in them that they pick up because they're they're like they they pick up a lot man yeah I don't know they uh

I got a teenage daughter who I'm it's pretty oblivious to anything but her phone so I think she's not like a gunfighter no facing the door I don't think so no do you ever look back and wish you hadn't gone into that work um yeah uh like what because primarily what like what is the main thing i don't know you know it's it's hard it's like i'm torn because i i enjoyed the work i actually when i got hired i never planned to go into that that line of work and and honestly when i got hired i was like i'll try this for a few years and see what happens um but i had fun i think the people i worked with are genuinely, you know, some of the best people I've ever met. They always would have my back. They, um, you know, we come, came to rely

on each other. So, you know, similar to what I'm sure I wasn't in the military, but similar to, you know, we hired a lot of veterans and, and that same mindset came with them and it was different in that, you know, I worked with, I'd say the same core group of people for 20 years doing the same thing. And you just get to know those people. And so I wouldn't give that up for anything, but at the same time, you know, I'm sure, like you said, I'm, there's some scars there. I'm sure that will always be there, but you know, I guess that's who makes me, me. So, or what makes me, me. And I think, you know, it'd be nice to not have them, but at the same time they're there.

And I think I've learned from a lot of things and I was very naive naive when I got hired. And I feel like hopefully I'm not so anymore. Yeah. I'm guessing that's probably accurate. Well, I appreciate the service to the community. You know, that's what I really, I don't know if you feel that yourself, but I think that's like something that I feel like I'm missing sometimes, you know, as kind of an adult in their prime. And I'm always thinking like, man, how could I do more just around, you know, to help

out, but. Like, I know that way. I know that. That weighs on, that weighs on you honestly in a legitimate way, man. Well, and it does for me too. I want to get more involved with some of the conservation stuff now that I'm out, you know,

I'm just used to being, um, you know, I try and help with cleanups and different things around the community, but yeah, there are times where I'm like, man, I wish I could get more involved when i was in law enforcement you know it it was different but it's funny you bring it up and kind of tie what steve said earlier about getting in later like when i first got hired i was 21 years old and you know really i wasn't thinking about just starting drinking yeah um yeah writing mips to people'm like, I would have partied with a few weeks earlier. You caught me on the wrong night.

Yeah. Last night I'd been with you, but tonight I'm going to ticket you. Yeah. Um, but you know, when, when you're young and you know, maybe not everybody's like this, but I didn't realize really what I was getting getting into or maybe what the what effect i could have you know and of course then you get into that and i think sam talked about it at some point where you get into feeling like i can clean up this community i can fix everything and you realize you realize that that's not possible either you go through a phase where you're, you know, nobody can clean

up this community and screw it all. Um, and then as you get older and I saw it with older hires, you know, you've mentioned somebody else getting into it later in life. You'd, I think those were some of the best hires we had because you had guys that already knew what was going on in the community, what they'd like to see changed they had community connections you know i was a college kid basically you know when i got hired i my connections were you know what bar are we going to go to yeah um you know it just it's a different outlook on life and being involved and so yeah it was good when we hired and you know the sheriff's office here did a really good job of hiring and picking those people that wanted to be involved. So I was, you know, by the end, you know, certainly I was at a place where that was one of the best parts of it, where you got to go talk to kids and, you know, help out at different places.

You were out of the game when it happened a year ago. But when you saw stuff like, uh, when you read like defund the police and stuff that, that hurt, did that sting a little bit? Yeah. Um, definitely I feel bad for the guys, you know, that are still working that I have to put up with, you know, that what I hope is kind of the vocal minority of people that, you know, have that hatred, but, um, you know, not to say that there isn't room for improvements in certain places, but, um, you know, I have my whole, I go on for

hours about that, but I won't, but they, uh, you know, there are certain things that could be done to help, I think, improve the outlook of the public and the police, uh, working together. And I think defund the police is certainly a, the wrong message to send out there. I just read an article in the, in the times of our day about, uh, the radical reversal of that movement. And it looked, I think it was most particularly looking at like Dallas or Houston. I can't remember. It was like that they had stripped overtime funding for a while. And then now they're back in with more overtime.

People are like, oh, I didn't really mean that. Yeah. You know, and it's like a widespread sort of movement away from thinking that that's actually not the plan. Like that's not the path toward more peaceful neighborhoods. Right. Yeah. It's a tough, tough topic to cover. And, you know, obviously every area of the country is different.

I was lucky. I worked in Bozeman, Montana. There's worse places to work. Um, you know, so I have a limited perspective from that, that end, but you know, it's still, you know, I've worked with a lot of guys who moved here from Bozeman or sorry from big cities you know dc dallas different places and they moved to bozeman to get away from the crime and the lifestyle and they wanted the bozeman lifestyle and they realized well you guys don't have very many people and so you're still dealing with almost the same number of calls every night same number of you know deaths you know we don't have the homicide rate of chicago or something but

um you know we we're small enough we don't have the gang problems and different things and but we're still dealing with a lot of the same stressors and it's just fewer people to deal with calls and so your your ratios are still yeah yeah yeah the um travesties per person yep yeah it's still there um what uh tell us about what's coming up at FHF at your, at your, at your now business. Um. You're now not, you're now not as traumatic business. Yeah. Um, although I, I joke when people ask if we're staying busy, I, I say, I don't get to take as many coffee breaks anymore.

So I think I'm busier now. Um, but. the donuts just don't come like that no um a whole other story about where where your food comes from and not eating at restaurants in uniform and only uh yeah sorry oh yeah yes you've usually arrested most of the cooks. So starting in November, we're going to launch a bunch of accessories to our chest rig that launches limited items that were built to accessorize the chest rig and make it a little more versatile, more modular. Should start seeing that stuff trickling out. Yeah. Explain the chest rig. It's like, it's like a, it's like a, imagine a

vinyl harness, but it's just like a rig, like a carrier. Yep. And you can do like fishing parts, other kinds of inserts. Yeah. Like a zip top pouch that you wear on your chest. So you're not wasting real estate.

Yeah. Not wasting real estate. And that's a, I'd make, made a fishing chest rig for years, always with the plan. I built it with Velcro inserts so that you could customize it to how you wanted it. And I always had plans to do a bunch of inserts for it and different accessories, never had the time. And until recently, and finally we kind of reworked it a little bit and started selling it bare and then have a fishing kit that you can set it up for fly fishing or you can set it up for, um, turkey hunting. Um, we're one of the things we'll be coming out with is, um, some waterfowl stuff. Um, just some options to make it a little more versatile carry.

So if you don't want to wear it on your chest, you don't have to. Um, you think about making a beaver trap and insert i i would if i had some had some insight i'll get rick on that i thought it needs to have a little liner so that the caster lure doesn't uh you'd have at least 10 customers 10 customers yeah um i got mine i got mine i got mine rigged up for uh coon and lion hunting. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, we've been talking to Clay quite frequently about potential upgrades we could do for him hunting down there. He's really loving it. For hound hunting.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, because he's got all the, whatever, GPS shit and all that. Yeah. Yeah, and you got a leash in there, and you still got to have a skinning knife. And he's not wearing the big binos you know all the time down in that country so he's got the real estate i just took my little 8x25s which are like the best gear kind of thing i've done in the last year you got to get a pair you just don't understand i don't know what i'm missing oh man yeah i was jealous during turkey season with those things eight by 25 yeah i'm a 10 by 50 man

but i can see it i can see it check try them out but yeah we'll have a better way to carry some smaller binos um but hopefully we'll have a lot of that stuff out in november and then our next big launch probably won't be coming until spring um some of that stuff uh my wife jen runs our marketing side of things and brand management and she'd be upset if i tell you all this but you know what i'm gonna i i can't believe you won't just talk about what i'm most excited about well you're the rifle sling dude this thing is like you already put it on the instagram i know but this thing is you got trouble didn't you no no I didn't get in trouble. That, I think,

is the coolest thing. I think it's going to... The feedback on it so far has been really good. Everybody has been out testing it. To what degree can I explain it? Well, you already explained it pretty strongly in the... Okay.

So picture... You know when you got your backpack on how you can't get your... I'm talking to you, the audience, not you, Paul, necessarily, but I'm sure you're aware of this. Right. When you got your backpack on and your rifle sling and your rifle sling won't stay put, I've in the past...

I don't know if you've ever seen this. I've in the past taken a big-ass button off an old coat and sewn that big-ass button to the top of my shoulder strap so that you had a place to hook your sling. So I sewed it to the top of my backpack shoulder strap and you could like tuck your sling into that button. You picture what I'm saying? Yeah. Which kind of works. But either way, it's a pain in the ass.

But this thing you have, there's like an attachment clip. Right. Like what do you call a normal buckle? Side release buckle. Yeah, side release buckle where you pinch it. Yep. That, the female end of that, hooks to your backpack strap. And then the male end of that is just on your sling.

Vice versa. Oh, is it vice versa? Yeah, females on the sling. Okay, females on the sling, the males on the backpack. Yep. So when you put your rifle over your shoulder, you can just take one hand and go click. And that son of a bitch is clicked to the top of your sling. It's clicked to your pack.

And you can do any amount of crick crossing, log jumping. No slippage. No. That's the worst thing about slings. And then when you wind it down, you just reach up and it's free in your hand. Or there's this other thing you can actually hook it to the bottom of your waist belt too but that thing just man like going up sheep hunting

going up and around junk all the time i just kept it clicked in because the other thing is you don't you're not like looking for a pull cord or anything it's just like right there you just reach up yeah very very fast and you can walk without holding your sling the whole time you don't need to hold your sling the whole time you can hold't need to hold your sling the whole time. You can hold your trekking poles. Tell you what, man, it's like Nobel Prize. I don't know if there's like a Nobel Prize in rifle sling making. No offense, but that's such a simple innovation that's going to, I'm like, add to cart.

I'm ready to push the button because I've struggled with that same thing. And just as you're describing it, it's like, where's that been all my life? Pull up a prepay for Ray here, man. Yeah. He's ready to go. He's ready to make a purchase.

Jen's working on the website. No, it's slick, man. It's slick. And you guys got some other cool stuff that I've had. I've Ray here, man. Yeah. He's ready to go. He's ready to make a purchase. Jen's working on the website. The, uh. No, it's slick, man. It's slick. And you guys got some other cool stuff that I've had. I've been privy to. Yes. But I don't want to like spill the beans.

I know all the stuff like it might change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all production dependent, but we're hoping it all shows up and we'll, we'll be ready to go by early spring on a lot of that stuff. And like the sling, for example, you know, we're, we have it with a bunch guys here at meat eater and and we're all using it and making sure there's not any last minute changes before we you know pull the trigger on a full production run but you know i just heard

today about you know about like uh you're talking about like businessmen people in manufacturing like having all these problems with like shipping and all that right now i heard today that this thing that there's a huge like just like there's a shipping crisis in this country particularly import export right but even even domestic there's shipping issues and they're saying that when the um infrastructure bill passes that they're anticipating um it actually it's just this is and I'm not like a subject matter expert on this if when the infrastructure passes, the amount of like shipping and trucking resources that will go into construction because the money is so much better, that it's going to worsen. And that you haven't even, this is the good old days right now. In shipping and transportation.

In context of what the next couple of years could look like. Yeah, we've heard that. Like no one's like, oh, we're getting out of it. in transportation in context of what the next couple of years could look like. Yeah. We've heard that. Like no one's like, oh, we're getting out of it. We've heard that, that we should prepare for some of that, those issues. Although it's weird because we've gone the last 10 years with not being able to keep anything in stock. And right now we have a pretty good inventory.

So we're opposite now. You're bucking the trends. Yeah. All right, man. Next time you come out, we got to talk a whole bunch about we were gonna do it i don't know what happened about the the bighorn bighorn hunt yeah i thought about bringing that uh head in and i listen to a good idea listen to the honest bringing his in what'd you do with the hide on that thing it's actually i so i tried to do a full cape. I was by myself, full body mount. My wife suggested I do a full body mount, which

I was going to take her up on and, um, ended up being by myself in, in a bad position, ended up doing three quarters, but brought it out. It's all tanned up. I'm going to do a pedestal mount with the reproduction and then Euro the freedom mount. I'm going to have to get one of these desktop pedestals. I know what I got.

I wonder if... Oh, you know what? It won't work. I was going to ask. That's the only thing I found. It won't hold a muskox. Oh, no, no, no. It'll hold a doll sheep.

What am I saying? It holds a sheep. But see, those bighorns are so heavy. It won't hold a muskox am i saying it holds it holds a sheep but see those big horns are so heavy yeah it won't hold a muskox i know that i put okay our desk mount that we're talking about you can put i've put everything from pronghorn we put white tails of all shapes and sizes mule deer of all shapes and sizes it holds everything i put doll sheep on it. It holds a doll sheep beautifully. But a bighorn's got a little more... Yeah.

A little more grr. But you should throw one on there, Yanni, and see what happens. I will. But yeah, I was wrong. I feel optimistic that it'll hold it. We'll try it out. And then you have it on your desk.

Yeah, that's what I want. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, 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 a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps

that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. 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 hand-picked by

the on x hunt team some of our favorites are first light schnee's'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. Okay, shift of gears here a minute we're talking another law enforcement from the fishing game fish cops fish fuzz what do you guys call yourselves fish fuzz

fish fuzz fish cops fish fuzz so uh let me reintroduce sam here because he's got an interesting story i found out about sam because when we were working on our close calls we were like casting for lack of a better word for our close calls series and um i was talking to someone i can't remember who i was talking to now and someone's like oh there's this guy he's got this crazy

story about the mud puddle story that like he's alive today uh i don't want to give too much detail away on that one no we played the whole damn thing on the show so yeah you heard so if you listen to the show regularly you already heard sam's mud puddle story but anyways i found out about him someone told me this story i was like but they didn't know who it was and i think they said something like whoever it was i can't remember his name but i think he uh went to work for like pheasants forever or some shit like that so i send out a text to a few of my colleagues who are pretty well connected and i'm like okay guy arizona game warden something to do with the mud puddle and pheasants forever and like 30 seconds later i get like a thing like sam laurie you know and

we got in touch and we recorded the story and And in the process of doing that, we kept talking about that you had completed a book of, like, a really good book of game warden stories. And you call it Remembering the Outlaws. And I'll give you the full title. It's Stories of the Past. So this is from 1984 to 2004. An Arizona game ranger remembering the outlaws and the biggest thing i and reena that that was funny is um uh it's almost like you you can correct me on this but it's almost like remembering them fondly like you have you have a little bit of uh uh

you got a real soft spot for the outlaws yeah i think each one of them kind of left a little bit of a, you got a real soft spot for the outlaws. Yeah. I think each one of them kind of left a little notch in me somewhere. You know, I mean, there was a lot of personalities out there. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I used to tell a lot of these stories to friends and my kids and things. And they always say, dad, you got to write those down. And so it was actually when I was working for Fenton's Forever,

because we were traveling all over the country and at meetings and evenings at the hotels, I'd write rather than go down to the watering hole. It's better for you. Fewer headaches. Yeah, it felt a lot better, more productive. So, and, but only, you know,. But as Paul was saying, he had a desire to become a wildlife game officer. It's funny, I spoke to the University of Montana Tuesday wildlife class about careers in wildlife. And I said that to them that when I went to school, the professor stood up and said, two of you out of this class of 100 will become biologists. The rest of you are going to be car salesmen or lawyers or whatever.

And so I was strictly a biologist. I was a waterfowl nut. I went to work for Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Station studying pintails and my whole life was ducks. And I had a move to Arizona where I ended up doing more work with some big game animals and a buddy of mine said, you ought to go out for the wildlife officer of the game warden jobs. And I didn't want to be a game warden. I thought,

no, that's beneath me. And, uh, but no, I did. I went to the academy, ended up hiring on. And, uh, you know, as you've probably heard, a lot of people refer to the game warden job as the most dangerous law enforcement job there is. I think yours was, Paul. I mean, we deal with people with guns all the time, but I don't have to do that stuff you guys did all the time with real crime, I guess, if you call it so. So anyway, yeah, as the unit manager there, you're also the biologist. So we had to do all the wildlife surveys and fisheries management and all that. But you're in charge of a big geography as also the warden. And that's where those tales started. I got a real interest in interview and interrogation.

I became kind of a specialist. Yeah, there's a lot about that in the book, man. Kind of like your approach. Yeah, I like it. Like you don't come in hot. I want, I want you to kind of, I guess, well, I just want to get the truth out of you. And, and at the end, I can't tell you how many times people pretty much told the whole story and thanked me for it. Because they needed to get it off their chest.

One of the things I like about the book too is uh maybe you're able to do this because you got enough distance from it now but you kind of lay out it's a bold move because in the beginning you kind of lay out your sort of violator credentials which which like like you said earlier man if you're a passionate hunter and angler like you just have yeah you've broken laws and you talk about being a kid and i'm sure there's more we talk about being a kid like an uncle saying don't cross the river you know we're not allowed to hunt that side of the river and how at the end of the day sure enough you're on the other side of the river and it's just right yeah and i think that that that you telling that story about yourself

and kind of that you know in a lot of ways you're a product of generations ahead of you, you know? Right. And I wrote about it in one of my books, man. I mean, we, like, I grew up around a lot of game law breaking. There were certain inviolable things. Like, there's certain things you just would never do. Like, no one in my family would ever go jack lighting deer right like but you would definitely um it was just it they didn't people didn't go out of their way to like hide it that ma drew a doe tag which means that everybody

has a doe tag until ma comes out and puts a doe tag on a deer and it wasn't even like and it wasn't even it's like when i was a little kid it wasn't even like a shh wasn't even like when I was a little kid, it wasn't even like a shh. It was just, it took me a long time to realize that somehow you weren't supposed to do that. And I think you kind of acknowledge in a little ways of having like some of that in your upbringing, which probably leads to that thing of how you had a little bit of a, you never had hate for hunters and anglers. No. And as I said, I think the far majority of them were, were all good people and ethical, uh, users of the resource. I, I can't tell you how many, how many times, you know, this book focuses on a lot of bad guys. Um, but that was one 10th of 1% of 1% of all the people I contacted. And when you saw, you know, what I call opportunistic poachers, they didn't leave the house that morning to violate a game law. But they got in a situation where they were excited and they shot the wrong animal or they shot one in a unit

they weren't supposed to be in. And those guys, they're a dime a dozen. You're going to run into it all the time. What I kind of focused on was what is that 1%? I had a guy tell me once that every small town or every town has a 1% poacher. The real bad guy. And, uh, those are the ones you kind of want to focus on and spend a lot of attention on trying to, to, to put out a business.

Have you heard the term? There's a criminologist who had a term super poachers. Yeah, I guess. Like a form of sociopath. See, and those people, they're not, they're not, uh, bothered at all by their activities on the resource. I mean, there's one guy, and I don't know if you read the one about the, uh, the, the lion guy.

Yeah. Like setting those baited hooks out. I mean, treble hooks with meat on them on steel leaders to catch anything he could. Yeah. I'll guarantee you that guy's still alive, he's doing something wrong right now for a while. I'll guarantee you. No, I got you.

You know. And I think that's one of the things that I hope, people that read this book might just have a little more inclination to say, you know what, maybe I won't put up with knowing old bob doing what he's doing yeah and and give a call and well that that's like there's a certain egregiousness and you pointed out in that story about the guy with the baited treble hooks where it's like and you describe going on the scene and you can tell where he's caught like somehow had gotten a lion in one right and he's got just like junk out like meat scraps and

and just it almost like the way you describe it it's almost like walking and it's like kind of like an insanity that someone's dealing with it was and i can tell you this that was way way in the back was i mean we we took a four-wheel drive probably three and a half hours before we trailered and got horses and went, we were actually doing a deer survey at the time. And, and when you come across something like that, that far out in the boonies, the guy had no concern at all that they were going to be caught. Um, I mean, there, it was such, such an egregious, uh, act that it, I mean, those are the ones that bother you.

And I'm sure, Paul, you can remember the cases that bothered you. A lot of times with you guys, it's people, it's children. Yeah. And from a wildlife officer, when you see just an absolute disregard for a critter. Yeah. And this guy, you know, know the arrogance i can remember interviewing him you know from me to you and this guy was kind of like the old sociopath that looked right through you no he didn't give a hoot yeah what you were about to talk to him about you can tell in your

stories a lot of the guys um they they're they're good enough where they immediately go into a game like as you're interviewing them it becomes like everyone in the room knows but you the way you describe how all of a sudden their wheels are turning and they're like this guy knows he knows what i did but i like here's i'm already playing my defense do you mean like he's already in the courthouse oh yeah do you know i mean like and they're not already in the courthouse. Oh yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, and they're, they're not like, oh, you got me. And they don't break down in tears, you know, but they're like, okay, I can play this game with you.

Well, you know, it was, was always funny to me is, uh, let's just say Steve did something wrong and Paul called me up and said, Hey, Steve shot a deer out of season. And I said, well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to gather a little bit of information, but I'm going to go talk to Steve. And I pick up the phone and I call you. Steve, Sam Lari with Game and Fish Department. Hey, I just wanted to know if I could meet you this afternoon. Got a few things I wanted to ask you. Yeah, I guess after work, uh, yeah, that'd be fine. I'd show up there and I'd, I'd, I'd come up and Steve, do you have any idea what I want

to talk to you about? And they'd say, well, no. Well, the person that was innocent would always say on the phone, what is it about? Oh. The bad guy already, what is it about? Oh. The bad guy already knew what it was about. And I'm going to talk to him. So the first chink in the old interview process happened before I even got there. You just gave that away.

Yeah. Kind of a good little one. Yeah, you should have revealed that crime fighting tip. Well, there's so many more, though. For my brothers and sisters that are out there still enforcing wildlife laws and other laws. You'll replace that trick with another trick. There's many, many more. There's a funny story you got here where you're out checking.

You're working along the shore of a lake checking licenses. And you get to your guy and he's like, God, I don't have my license on me. So you're trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and you're like okay just leave your gear here and just go get your license you know and a while goes by he's like the guy never comes back the guy never comes back the guy never comes back eventually you gather up his gear and tell about how you caught up caught we'll tell you how you caught up with the guy so there was uh that's what we call furtive gestures is when you're, you're shaking. You know, if someone asks you for your fishing or hunting license today, you're going to be shaken when you get it out of your wallet.

Yeah. No matter what. Just no matter what. Yeah. Cause like, I don't know, maybe I did something wrong. Oh, and you love it. You just love it. No, I'm just kidding on that.

So there was furtive gesture is a little bit of excess with this particular guy. And I thought, boy, there's something wrong here. And the old warrant is what's hitting me in the head. Well, he has a warrant. Well, that's what I'm thinking now, because

there's more to this than blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, he says it's in his glove box and there's a bunch of other fishermen on the shore. And I said, well, I'll just continue on checking these guys and, and then I and then I'll, you could come back here and leave your gear here. Well, he never came back.

So I gathered up his gear and started walking back to my patrol truck and up the trail I go and a little branch fell. I looked down on the ground, a little five inch hunk of oak leaf and I could kind of, what the heck? And I looked up there and there he was. He was hanging on that like a gibbon. I can't remember his name, but I summonsed him, come on down out of that tree this is just a fishing violation you know and uh i don't want you falling out of there yeah i think long story short i think he did have a warrant and he i think he got a little right yeah yeah yeah oh that's too bad yeah maybe not too bad well yeah yeah another i'm gonna lay out another game warden trick you guys got. I guess you told the book, so I can tell it.

That when this kind of surprised me a little bit. When game draws come out, so limited tag draws, that you like to go, one, you go see if you got anything. And then you like to see, did any do

our known violators, do our one percenters, have our one percenters drawn any tags right but of more interest you is have our have our one percenters had a mother who drew a very coveted big game today yeah like I just have a feeling it's not his mom who's hunting. But an Arizona mom could give it to him, right? No. No, you have to shoot the animal with the tag, and there's no buddy hunting.

Is it maybe transferable now in some way? Yeah, because I think I know a lot of people who have their spouses apply when they get enough points and they just train the kids. There might be some new regulation associated with kids or something. Oh, I thought it was Eddie like Ken. Well, the reason I think that he was right at the time is he tells the whole damn story and then arrested the guy. Well, you have these, yeah, you have a few red flags, but remember, this is some time ago where, you know, you look at an officer's car now and there's a laptop there. Yeah.

You know, we had this hard printout and you'd go through it and find, oh, there's so-and-so's grandma. And, uh, you'd pull into camp and, you know know there's no grandma to be found you know and so yeah you kind of push it a little further yeah and you know I mean everybody says wait a minute just buddy hunting they allow that in all kinds of states and but where they don't allow it, you know, and you could get into this, it's based on the models for genuining the permit numbers. And it's based on the harvest. And if you're just an outstanding hunter and you can shoot five elk, that's going to disrupt the model that they're putting together that generates the permit number.

And so you need to follow the law in those cases. Outstanding hunter or unethical hunter who shoots five elk. Right, and I think this is a pitch, if I will, to all of your listeners, is there's little teeny pieces of information that come across to wildlife officers or law enforcement officers in general that you might not think as much. I pulled into a gas station last night and I noticed there was some blood on a bumper. It's not hunting season. Well, the guy did something wrong. Maybe he did something to a human or there's some kind of wildlife

infraction, drive the license number down and just call. And, you know, there were many cases that we made that we were looking for the shooter of an animal. And lo and behold, someone called and gave us just that little piece we needed. And I think if more people did that, you'd see a little bit less of some of the things going on. But one of the things I have to say too, and this goes back to that whole thing with law enforcement and the feelings about law enforcement these days. And in order for people to come forward and say, hey, so-and-so did this, they have to trust you. And so the wardens, both the male and female wardens out there, really have to build that community trust so that you will go talk to them.

And know that that's not going to come back to haunt you. And, uh, I think they do a great job at that. And, uh, my hat's off to all the, the, uh, wildlife enforcement officers nationwide that go out there every day and try to do the right thing. Because as you know, all of you from Meat Eater, the seven principles of the North American model. I can't name them all, but I know I'm aware of them. Number one. Well, let's just go to number four is allocation by law. Okay. And so the permit structure is allocated and regulated by law.

And obviously it's public trust, all that information, the other pillars. But if you take that one pillar away, the model's broken. Yeah. So it's just as important as game populations need to be managed by science, right? Yeah. Just as important as equal opportunity for all. It's just as important as no commercial harvest that will impact a population. So don't break the pillars down.

That's what I told people. Yeah. There's an interesting story that has to do with those. I was reminded of it when you're talking about the subtle cues. But I remember you were talking to a guy, and you just noticed that blood under his fingernails as you're talking to him. You're like, why does this guy got blood under his fingernails? And I think it was the guy that turned into, these guys had this huge bear.

Huge bear. That they killed illegally. And what was funny is you confiscate the bear. And their last request is, can they get a quick grip and grin? And you let them get a grip and grin. And I'll guarantee you, that picture is sitting somewhere on somebody's wall. It's like just can we just please get a grip and grin all right get a grip and grin then i'm out of here with your finger

well and you got you gotta do that because how are you gonna load a 400 pound bear you know they had to help me you had to keep on your side oh yeah before i drove i like too because the guy's like it was just an explanation for his actions. It was just so big. It ran across the road, and we had to shoot it. Don't you feel a little bit like they got what they wanted out of the deal by getting a picture? Did they really want the hide and the meat that bad? Oh, yeah. They wanted that trophy, and who knows?

They wanted the baculum to boot. But a little trophy. And these guys, those are some of the to boot. But they want a little trophy. And these guys, those are some of the ones that you can actually look back and laugh. Yeah. Because they weren't a threat to me or they probably weren't going to ever do it again. Right. But they got caught. Yeah.

So, Sam. It was just so big. So big. So, one of the easiest ways that I see these dumbasses getting caught today is they post this stuff to social media. So it doesn't take a lot of detective work to see a guy post them with a, you know. What was maybe, you know, in the days you probably were coming in on very much the beginning points of any kind of a flip phone, you know, people taking cameras, stuff like that. What was sort of the dumbass approaches to getting caught? You know,

you were doing some detective work there with blood of the fingers and things like that. You had to be sort of aware of your surroundings, but what were some of the egregious ways that people tried to get caught? You know, it was just, they couldn't keep quiet. And you know, you'd, you'd, in certain instances you'd work undercover, unmarked, and go to a couple different taverns and get right in there amongst them. Oh, really? Just for an evening, spend an evening at a popular bar with hunters? Yeah, and you'd start, you know, throwing out, oh, bear hunting and guiding, or I want to get into this.

And, oh, you need to talk to Bob. You know, what are you guys doing here? Oh, we're looking, we're real estate folks from California looking for some property to invest in. And then all of a sudden you start hearing all kinds of stuff. Back then you really-

I don't imagine that being the pathway into hearing all kinds of stuff. I mean, I know you mentioned that in the story when you're undercover, but- Well, if you, I mean, a lot of those undercover ones in the book were specific. I was working a guy. Oh, I, okay.

So your story is tailored to it. Yeah. But if, if you were, uh, you know, let's just say it's living in a small town and you had suspicions about you, but I knew you hung out at whatever two lanes. I'd send an undercover officer in there to, to work you. Buy him a couple of beers of truth serum and a way to go. Get some pool with him.

Yeah. Find out what he's all about. Yeah. You know. Uh, you know, another funny thing is you guys had that deal where you're working an illegal reptile enthusiast. Had like all these illegal snakes and stuff hiding in his walls and stuff like that but it was funny that he there's like a very small detail you mentioned the book is he

kept his weed in a break-open shotgun that was like his his hiding place was in his gun right so it's like such a weird place to hide your weed. So when you break open a shotgun, it's all in the barrel. Well, it's Paul. Cops will never look here. You go into a search warrant, you make the place safe, right? So the first guys through the door, we put this guy in handcuffs and he was in his bikini underwear. I'll never forget that. A sickening sight.

But then we had to make the place safe. Yeah, it seems like you're going to go grab, check the guns. Well, just everything. You're looking for everything, you know. And here's this gun leaning against the bed and we cracked it open to make sure there wasn't a shell in the chamber. And what's that baggie in there? And that was just dope.

Yeah, that was a bizarre one. Now you talk about strange. Yeah. Like tell people about what he had. So he had just 500 different kinds of reptiles, and I'm not a reptile guy. And all the food for him and everything, man. When you walked in that house, your eyes burnt from the ammonia, from all the mice that he was feeding these critters and

anyway we had some undercover officers work him that he had two gaboon vipers which are nicknamed the one-step snake they bite you you get one step and you're done and so I was the search team lead on that one and I had four five officers in there and I didn't want any of them getting bit by one of these darn things. And, and, uh, we couldn't find them. We had fishing poles. We were flipping out dirty clothes. And for some reason, Paul, why were the search warrants always in the worst places you can imagine? It's, I don't know.

I think it's, uh, just what they do. They're awful. Yeah. I don't even know. I think it's just what they do. They're awful. Yeah. I don't even know. Every search warrant we did, it was like, I need another set of gloves on top of my gloves. Oh really?

Oh yeah. Gloves, gloves and gloves and. Both their houses and their cars. Oh, just terrible. Really? People who are inclined to have a search warrant issued for them tend to be messy. I'd say on a more than general rule.

Yeah, that's good to know. Yeah, very seldom did you enter a really plush place. And they bring their sex toys everywhere. Oh, is that right? Really? That's why when you write the warrant, you're pretty wide open in the areas that you can search. And of course, for wildlife, you're pretty wide open in the areas that you can search. And, of course, for wildlife, you're specific.

I'm looking for an elk or I'm looking for these snakes. But you also are looking for records and photographs. And when you start looking through the photographs and things of that nature, you see exactly what Paul is talking about. Oh. Some of that kind of stuff, especially with a snaker. Well, then you probably wind up, I want to get back to the story, but you, you probably wind up with like collateral damage, right? Because you're in looking for snakes, but you can find certain crazy shit that all

of a sudden becomes like its own thing. Right? So if it's in plain view, right, when you walk in, here's a big bowl of pot. Uh, back then, anyway, that was, you know, you could collect that with a search warrant. If I'm looking for records and I go through whatever his desk and find something, then if it's, you know, let's just say it looks like a big baggie of dope, I'd stop and go have one of you guys go get a warrant for that. I got you. We would do the same thing if you came across something in a place you could look, but it

wasn't what you were looking for, we would stop and get a separate search warrant. Right. I'm with you. So this guy. You use that as your probable cause or whatever the hell. Right. Yeah. Once we're in the door and it's written down in a reasonable place to look for it, it's open.

Yep. But this guy's Gaboon Vipers were nowhere to be found. And there was a Tucson Police Department officer there with arms about the size of an oak tree. And I walked up to the bad guy and I said, look, I got a bunch of officers in here. We're looking for these snakes. We know they're here. And I need you to cooperate with us. Where are the snakes?

I'm being Mr. Nice Guy again. And the oak tree guy came up and grabbed him by the head and gave him a little encouragement. And he said, they're behind the dresser in the bedroom. There's a hole in the wall. And sure enough, we moved the dresser and here was a little round piece of plywood. And you could spin it to the side and there's a hole in the wall of the drywall. And that's where he keeps them. That's the weirdest thing, man.

That's where he kept them. And we had a herpetologist. Do you think he threw them in there when someone banged on the door? Was that like their height? No, that's where he had them because there was droppings and all kinds of stuff in there.

It seems like they could get you at night and just crawl out of there. Just crawl out of sleep. Well, I literally said, okay, well, that's really, well, the herpetologist grabbed, asked for a mirror and he gets a mirror and a flashlight and he looks and, oh, there they are. They're beautiful.

And oh my goodness. And I said, well, you're going to have to get them out of there pretty darn quick or I'm taking a sledgehammer and knocking this wall down and we're going to get rid of these things. Oh, no, no. Give me a chance. Long story short. He asked for a couple of white mice and started dangling them by the tails in the hole. And all of a sudden, I was holding the mirror and here they come. They're coming after those mice.

And he had the tongs and just snagged them up. In the book, there's a picture of me walking out with a box with those two gaboon vipers. And I don't want to ever see those again. He was getting in trouble just for like illegal wildlife traffic? So yeah, they were, he was selling, you know, commercialized trafficking of not only endangered species, but prohibitive wildlife. And it was, it was really important. They got these gaboons cause they're from South Africa and a very similar climate. And, uh, you know, they could have been all over Arizona, who knows, but, uh, yeah, that was a creepy one.

Uh, one more, I got, I got a couple more just general questions, um, about how, uh, advice from you to hunters and anglers about how to interact with game wardens, which I think we should talk about. But I want to bring up one thing is you talk a lot about experiences with like robo deer and robo turkeys and whatnot, which seems like a hell of a lot of fun. You know, like I told you earlier, I was an avid duck hunter and sitting in a blind watching a decoy is better than shooting ducks. So we had turkeys and we had elk and we had deer. And we always put them out in areas where it was just going to be a no brainer that you had an intention to illegally take this critter. And so the unit was closed, for example, to turkeys. no brainer that you had an intention to illegally take this critter. And, and so the unit was closed, for example,

to turkeys. And we put a turkey out and we had robotics in them. So you could move them with a little, you know, gyro and truck comes by and comes to a hauling script. It sounds like, like it'd be like when you set these things up, it's like the first set of headlights.

You're like, oh, here comes one. And like, sure enough. It was pretty predictable. It was pretty predictable. And, you know, and I think you, I mean, the scary part of that was what we found, which actually we kind of got a policy out to all the wildlife agencies. Yeah, this is what I wanted to ask you about. The decoys were new.

We were one of the first agencies to use them. And, you know, there was, we had to go through all the county attorneys and judges to make sure it wasn't considered entrapment. Yeah, you know, let me, because I feel like I didn't set this up properly, just real quick. What we're talking about is they can take,

so let's say it's illegal to hunt deer at night these guys will take a a decoy and they'll actually make it robotic so its head will move and stuff and you just set it out so you just wait for some guy to come on and start shooting at the deer at night or you go to an area that you can't hunt turkeys but they'll just put a turkey decoy out and wait for some guy to drive down the road and try to kill the thing. And, um, and then, yeah, speak to the entrapment thing. Cause I always feel like it's a little bit like you're kind of like tempting people, right?

So, uh, the, the courts and the county attorneys were, were, uh, they encouraged us highly. Don't put a big rack on a mule deer. Don't make it a trophy. Cause now you're crossing that line of possibly entrapment. God, it's the biggest deer I've ever seen in my life. I had to shoot it. So we would use little forked horns. Gotcha.

Um, and, and really the, the, the few cases that I actually went to trial on, um, always came out that we didn't put the gun in your hand. Okay. If I stood there along the road and said, look at that, it's a buck and I got a gun. Here's my gun. Yeah. Now, you know, clear entrapment. But, um, yeah, we were doing a night, uh, deer operation one evening and, and up in

the white mountains and it was on, you put these decoys on a turn of the road. So when the headlights came around a 90 degree turn, the illumination of the eyes hit. Yeah. And you'd have to place it so you had a good backdrop. Backdrop.

You didn't, you'd do a lot of recon to make sure there were no camps around or ricocheted bullets could hit a trail or whatever and pick the spot and then set the set the decoy up and we'd have a blind right where you suspected the vehicle would stop on the other side of the road so you could hear them. And then we'd have a patrol rig ready to go, two uniformed officers about a quarter of a mile away, hidden, ready to respond to the vehicle.

So we're watching this truck parks, and these guys get out, and in this case, there was the blind with the people observing them, and then me and this other officer were about a hundred yards away. Um, actually we were with that, the, the vehicle to catch them. And, but we're looking at them with binoculars and we can see this guy coming towards the decoy and it's dark. And then all of a sudden I'm looking and my partner's looking and I say, good God, Kim, he's aiming at us. And when the store case was all done and we apprehended them, we asked him and he said, yeah, there was a pair of deer eyes on the other side of the road to the reflection of your binos.

Yeah. So we immediately got out a thing to all the agencies saying no binoculars on nighttime decoy operations. Yeah, you can see that being a little dicey. Yeah. Tell about the guy you had that was approaching a turkey when the turkey's head flew off. So that was funny that the guy actually responded when we stopped him. Whoever was running the decoy was a little bit vigorous and knocked the head off the decoy. And the guy stopped, and he was in pursuit of it.

And we started approaching him. Hey, hold it, Game and Fish. And the guy looked. Hey, Sam, is that you? I said, yeah. You know, in a small town, I knew most of the people. I said, what do you, what do you do? Oh, I knew it was a decoy.

And I said, well, uh, you got a shotgun in your hand. Oh, it's not loaded. And he leans down and he's got it leaning right on his toe. And I said, well, let's just make sure unload. Pa-boom! It goes off. Gravel shoots everywhere. The guy was a hunter safety instructor.

That looks bad. It was kind of bad. So he ran into a ball. So what like based on all your experience doing that give us tips hunters and anglers

tips for how to how to engage with uh how to engage with wardens in a way that just makes you know decreases tension like whatever like if you had to give people some advice you're getting your license checked here's a couple pieces of advice good question uh number one i would just say know that that officer put on underwear the morning the same morning as you did he's a human being and they're out doing a job and it's okay to be a little nervous because everyone is even if i get pulled over uh on on the streets and i'm looking for my registration or something i'm fidgety so it's okay but just recognize that they're out there um and they're they're human being just like you

so it's okay to be nervous it's okay to be you don't take nervousness as a sign that like you don't take nervousness as a sign that they must be guilty. I almost look at it the opposite. If you're too cocky, something's wrong. Oh, really? Yeah. But a lot of people are. Paul, I know you've seen it where they're calm with you.

They've been through it a time or two. And this is nothing new to them where all of a sudden, I don't know. Have you ever been checked by a game officer, Ray? Not in a long time, but yeah. Yeah. Were you nervous? Yeah, I was in my twenties. So I was quite nervous, even though I hadn't done anything wrong.

Yeah. Oh yeah, at that age, you like, when you see a cop, you like turn the radio down. Right. Like you're just generally nervous. Hands on the steering wheel. Tenant two. Tenant two. Right.

But you know, you try to calm your nervousness, I'd say. They're human beings. Yeah. If you're not doing anything wrong, there's nothing to worry about. How do you feel about the guy that when you pull up, he's already got his license out? Well, he's either been through the routine a couple times. For example, if you check a common lake and you see a bunch of fishermen, then you park and start walking down.

There were people that literally would have their license up. And you don't take that as a sign of something or another? No, you're good. You're good. I didn't even look with binoculars. We'd pull up on watercraft and come to the shore and just look at you. Hold your license up and you're good. But you saw me approaching and all of a sudden your chair folded up and you started going

up the hill. That's another thing he mentions. This is our trick. The mic was off. He talks about coming down to a lake. He's always real curious and who has to get to their rod very quickly. We'd always take a non-uniformed warden and put if there's a row of 100 fishermen non-uniformed officer would go down on the other end just to watch just sit there just to see who

really needs to tend to the ride and then now i come out i make a big display i pull right up onto the boat ramp yeah get out start walking there's three or four of them headed out gotta go wife just called uh so the funny thing about getting your license out is you want to get it out but then i always think that the the warden's gonna be like well why do you think i need this like like it's a little presumptuous like how do you know that's what i want how do you know so then you stand there like should i offer it do you know what i mean you stand there like, should I offer it? Do you know what I mean? It's just like, it's also awkward, man. Well, a lot of it has to do with the communication of the officer.

You always immediately come down and hopefully you're going to say, how's it going today? Nice day out here, isn't it? You want to hear that from a person? Yeah. Talk to them a little bit. If you walk up and it's an immediate you know i need to see your license or you're saying you'll ask them how it's going yeah start out talk to them a little bit and how's it going see you got a couple of fish there does a warden want the

hunter angler to be chatty at times you're pretty lonely out there so it doesn't you know okay so if you're like hey how's it going that doesn't that doesn't set off a red flag no i mean you could detect if there's something not quite making sense here this is a little false yeah you could feel it what was your attitude towards self-reporting where did you were you did you actually were you actually able to be lenient to people that would self-report absolutely so. So what, what, uh, and, and again, even with that note, you know, if, if you make a mistake out there, uh, you know, turn yourself in, it's, it's the way to go. And there, there might be a couple of horror stories out there where, uh, you wish you hadn't, but if, if the officer finds out some other way and that you shot the wrong deer or

you, you know, did whatever you did, then things are going to go a little harder. We had the luxury at least to work with our county attorneys. And in many cases, we just had JPs that we could talk to. What's that mean? Justice of the Peace was the judge.

Okay. And we could go in and see the judge and go that mean? Justice of the Peace was the judge. Okay. And we could go in and see the judge and go, I want you to know this was an accident. Um, and the person called me, I showed up, we got the animal salvaged and then, you know, donated. Um, so I just want you to know that. I didn't, you know, a lot of times they'd ask

you, well, what do you want to do? What do you think? Oh, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was going to say, even on my side over there, that the same way somebody would self report something or have an accident was

cooperative and just wanted to do the right thing, even if a ticket got written, you had those conversations with the prosecutors and the judges and say, this is not the guy that needs to, you know, have the book thrown at him. We need to, and a lot of times they just get, you know, dismissed or, or, uh, you know, if you're don't get in trouble for six more months, it'll go away. Um, so yeah, by far the best way to deal with it was just to be upfront about it.

Yeah. Sam, you tell another story where this has a little bit to do with like, like discretion or, or, or, you know, individual by interview. I was not thinking the right way to put it, but, um, where you're able to take like a level of subjectivity to what's going on. And you talk about going into a, uh, I think it was an antelope poaching incident but going into a home and extreme poverty no food already ate the thing like that you ended up approaching that a little bit differently yeah you know it's it's funny because as we said a lot of times when you conduct a search warrant, the places are less than, let's just say, the nicest places you've ever seen.

And yet, I didn't have that kind of feeling when I was issuing a search warrant. In the case you're referring to, it was an antelope that was allegedly poached. And when we got to the location, I mean, these people were hurting. Yeah, I remember you said no running water and they were cleaning a jackrabbit in the sink. There were flies all over the kitchen and about four jackrabbits in the sink. And no running water, kids outside playing in dirt. Uh, the meat that we found, uh, was wrapped in, in more of an ice box.

It wasn't, you know, kept fresh. So whatever they kill, they're going to eat probably that week. So you got to make a call to yourself. Am I getting out of, am I writing a ticket? Yeah. You know, or what are we going to do here? And it was also a young kid.

Yeah, I remember you just telling the mom, like, you got to talk to your boy. I don't want to come back out here. I don't want to, you know, we're leaving. Yeah. But I'm going to put you in touch. There's a lot of programs out there that can help you people. And programs that can give you food. And, you know, the wildlife resource out here is sparse and you can't do what you're doing.

Yeah. So I don't want to come back. You know, that, do we, do we understand each other? Are we good? And. No, it was kind of, it was a touching story, man. Oh, it was, that was, yeah. You went home that night and hugged your kid. Yeah.

Yeah. That's good, man. So, uh, tell people how to tell people how to find the book. Well, it's funny because when I did the bud puddle story for the Campfire Tales, Savannah told me to give her my Instagram. Okay. I said, I bought my wife an Instapot. I don't know what an Instagram is.

So my daughter set up an Instagram account. Okay. Is it proper? It says at Sam Lowry. Oh yeah. Hell yeah. And on there is a link. So you wound up getting at Sam Lowry.

Someone else didn't have that? No, I got it. No, that's cool. Yeah, I think. Have you ever checked it out? Yeah, he'll check for us. Yeah, he'll check it out. Sam Lary.

How do you spell it? S-A-M-L-A-W-R-Y. So that's on there. Okay. And she told me to say, you can find a link on there to buy it. These proceeds from anything I make on this go to my kids because she did the pencil drawings in it got it and my daughter put it together through that account so it's their project now yeah my stories are out there and i hope people enjoy it and if they want to get it

for a stocking stuffer go for it yeah it's a lot of fun. So again, the title, Stories of the Past and Arizona Game Ranger Remembering the Outlaws by Sam Laurie. And of course also, Paul Lewis. You can support Paul. Go to FHF. Yep, FHF. Buy some gear, man. Fish Hunt Fight.

Yep, yes indeed. American made accessories. All kinds of cool shit. More stuff coming out. Anything else, Yanni? You good? Feeling good? I'm good. Thank you.

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