The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 303: All Up In Your Airspace
Episode Date: December 13, 2021Steven Rinella talks with Papa Janis, Nephi Cole, Dave Willms, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: Papa Janis praises Jani for being a good dad; lobbyists; explaining the National Shoot...ing Sports Foundation and the National Wildlife Federation; the death of Otto Schneeloch's parents and the life of his triangular shaped bullet idea; who's got Steve's old Winchester Model 94?; shooting sports injuries on par with that of billiards; the number one rule of safe gun handling; how you can bid on Pete Alonso's signed bat, VIP tickets to Trampled By Turtles, skin real estate on Spencer, Seth, and Chester's arms, Steve's speargun, Corinne's handmade squirrel jewelry, a tour at Doug Duren's farm, plus Buckman Juice, and other prized items at MeatEater's House of Oddities Auction; a corner crossing court case in Wyoming; should MeatEater's Access Initiative funds go toward step ladder apparatuses that enable hunters to cross corners?; the public domain of air space and the airspace above water; how there's no law in the books that expressly prohibits or allows corner crossing; how revisiting fence lines opens up a big 'ole cans of worms; when cows and bulls get it on through a fence; Alec Baldwin and the tragedy of what happened on the set of "Rust"; talking firearm safety with your kids; exactly why you can't find ammo in the store; the infrastructure bill; funding to Pittman-Robertson; delisting wolves to relist wolves; Your Mountain Podcast; 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.
Transcript
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All right, everybody, we got a ton to cover today.
Papa Yanni's in town. Yannis' dad, Yannis,
is in town.
How you doing over there? What are you doing
in town? Why are you in town? I came to visit
my grandkids and my son,
daughter-in-law, kind of check out things.
I'm getting ready to move here
hopefully within the year. Oh, really?
Yeah.
Trying to sell my house.
I told Katie that the house will be up for sale.
So you guys, if you want to move back to Michigan.
We can swap places.
She liked the house.
And she told me about a lot of times that she was there that I wasn't there.
Do you wind up, oh, like partying over there?
That would be the case.
Oh, so you have the same house now that my wife used to party in as a high schooler?
I think so, yeah.
More than one.
Well, actually, two houses.
Why are you, eh?
Well, because I think it was more at his other house.
The old house?
His house prior to that, yeah.
Oh, I got it.
But she was telling me about being out on the pond with you in the paddle boat.
Oh.
We used to fish.
He lives on like a, I don't know, 10 acre lake.
Yeah.
Got good largemouth bass fishing.
So you knew Steve's wife?
In high school.
In high school.
That's why I'm here today.
Exactly.
I had no idea.
Oh, like if you had to, so when you're hanging around Giannis and his lovely children.
Right.
Are you all the time kind of like biting your tongue
because you don't like
the job he's doing
you know
and you do it different
or do you kind of like
how his whole family's grew?
Well I was going to go
into the spiel
to congratulate you guys
on 10 years.
That's a big deal
in business.
Oh.
Yeah but I want to talk
about his job as a
I think he's doing
a great job.
So when you're over there
you're digging what you're seeing
in terms of how he's running
the whole program with the family and everything.
Oh, with the family?
I thought you were talking about Meat Eater.
No, no, no.
Oh, the family.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Oh, yeah.
I think I even get some tips from him on, like, you know, don't leave the male thing out of it.
Got you.
So do you feel that he is doing better than you did.
Oh, 100%.
Really?
Oh, wait.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, because.
Giannis is red right now.
He's literally turning red.
Well, no.
He's gotten embarrassed twice already.
But the reality is when you're going through divorce, it's really tough on the kids.
And it's equally as tough on the parent because you're trying to figure out like,
okay, where am I going to fit in? How am I going to make this work? And so we each have our own
sort of approach and guess where we get that approach from our parents, right? So some of
the things that I picked up from my parents or specifically more my father were not the way to
raise kids. And so you go through this journey of learning, Hey man, don't do that.
That's stupid. That's bad for you. It's bad for the kid. And eventually you get to a point where
you go, Hey, I think I got part of this figured out. So I would say all of my children are light
years ahead of where I was as an adult trying to raise kids. Wow. So the world's not going to shit.
Oh no, not at all. And the other thing is that he, he's.
That's the best news I've heard all week.
I mean, there's, you know, it's not just about raising the kid. It's what the child is exposed
to, right? That environment and that the child knows that you care about them, you know, like
giving them limitations. You can do this. I want you to be adventurous. I want you to explore.
But, you know, here's the limit.
You can't go beyond that.
That's really important.
Yeah.
Can't light your brother on fire.
No, but you can try.
Yeah.
So what I see them doing, you know, not just Janice, but Jennifer, they make a really good team.
And, you know, I would assume that if I went to your house, that I would probably see the same thing.
Just your own version of it, your adaptation of how that works.
That's good to hear.
You should be lapping this up, Yanni.
You look like you're not enjoying it.
This is great.
He's heard all this.
Not many guys ever get praised by their father in front of them.
You don't think so?
No.
Most people, your dad's job is to take you down.
Take you down a notch or two.
Well, that's what he does now he takes his old man down joined also by nephi cole dave willms we met because you guys
used to be whatever the hell this means advisors to former governor matt mead of wyoming yeah that's
right and you were on the show matt mead was well liked, so they must have done a good job
at advising. He's the best politician in the
history of America. Yeah, but he threw in the towel
and he threw in the towel
and doesn't want to run for president. No, he crushed
it for eight years and then
deservedly did what every good politician should do,
which is he said, I've served,
I did my job. Yeah, he did it right.
And now he is lifting weights at
Gold's Gym right now Probably while we speak
He's much thinner
He's tanner
He's buff again
He's playing a lot of golf
None of those banquet meals
Every night
I think he should
I think he should
Do like a
There's probably a lot
Of strikes you get
No I don't know
Because
Chaney was from Wyoming
You could be from Wyoming
And play on the
Play on the main stage
No actually Wyoming
This is like We're're going to go down
a rabbit hole, but you get actually a lot of
outsized
political clout when you're from Wyoming because
there's some interesting stuff that we've done.
First of all, we keep the population very low.
So we have two senators and
500,000 people. So your ratio
of senators to people in Wyoming is better
than it is in any other state.
Oh. I did the math one time and figured out voting rates.
So like Wyoming's population, what percentage of that population is voting age?
What percent actually votes?
Basically like six dudes can send you to the governor's mansion.
That's about right.
And a third of the populace is right here.
And if you don't get elected, you still get to be a policy advisor.
That's how it works.
Oh, that's great.
So it's nice.
But now you don't do that anymore.
So now, Nephi, you've been on the show two or three times.
Two times.
Yeah, Dave and I have both been on here together twice.
But the first time, Dave just listened to a football game on his iPhone the entire time.
Well, in my defense.
No, I don't have a defense.
I think I was actually kind of following a Broncos game at the time.
You're a big sports fan.
I'm a big sports fan, but also, like, Governor Meade was your guest,
and we were on there as well, and he was so good at everything.
I just sat back.
I'm like, I'm not going to need to say anything on this podcast
because this guy, like, he knows his stuff.
He knows everything.
And so I can just follow a football game.
Yeah, it was pretty fun.
We picked you up at the airport in Denver.
Oh, did we record at some kind of sports stadium?
No, we went.
Oh, that was a different time.
We went to P.F. Chang's for lunch.
I don't remember that.
And then we, with Rourke Denver.
Oh, that's right.
With Rourke and some guys from Magpul.
And the Magpul guys came down.
We all had lunch together and we drove down to the governor's mansion
and rolled in there and sat down in the giant circle.
Yeah, I almost took a different flight or something because I know I was there.
No, you drove because you were hunting afterwards.
You were going antelope hunting.
That's what it was.
You were going antelope hunting up in Wyoming.
You flew in for the antelope hunt.
Giannis drove a pickup in with all the stuff in it.
And then you guys met
at the governor's mansion.
Then he picked you up
and you guys drove up to Casper
where I'm pretty sure you stayed at the,
I don't remember where you stayed.
I'm a little disturbed by your memory.
Dude's mind's like a steel trap.
Yeah, right.
Like that, I'm impressed.
That's good, man.
I mean, I remember this.
I'm going to start being more careful.
Should I say her own name?
Right, no kidding.
I mean, I remember the stadium, right?
Because you came a second time for a sage grouse hunt.
Yeah.
Right.
And we-
Little known fact, the second podcast we did with you, you were like, we kicked on the
lights at the football stadium because we wanted to make a pitch where people should
go, because you always talked about going to the University of Montana.
And so we're like, well, let's take them to the football stadium.
So we went to the wildcatter suite, turned on all the lights while we're sitting in that
suite, opened, you know, while we're sitting in that suite,
opened, you know,
they filled the fridge full of adult beverages
and whatnot.
And Josh Allen
was actually under the lights
out on the field
throwing passes
to some of his teammates.
But, you know,
it wasn't the same guy.
Before everybody knew
who Josh Allen is.
I still don't.
Yeah, quarterback
of the Buffalo Bucks.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So now he's like,
really good.
Yeah.
But we were sitting up there
talking about stage grouse.
Do you think that he had all that success
because of the podcast that night?
I'm sure it was piped through the stadium speakers.
He's like,
now there are some boys
that take the job seriously.
That's right.
I'm going to take a,
dial it up a notch.
Play out of that playbook.
Nephi now is the NSSF director of government relations, state affairs, NSSF being National
Shooting Sports Foundation. What states? I cover the Rocky Mountains and the upper Midwest.
So, you know, it's not the, I love those states. And then I do all the interactions with governor's offices.
Oh.
And then, so I go to Republican governors and Western governors and all that.
And then I do also, uh, association fish and wildlife agencies.
So all the interaction with like the, uh, you know, conservation partners at those things,
all the, you know, the, uh, directors of game and fish agencies, those are my people too.
So I'll go to all those meetings and I interact with those guys on behalf of us.
And NSSF is the Firearms Trade Association of America.
So for people that don't know, we represent the 9,000 manufacturers and retailers of firearms,
ammunitions, optics, a lot of clothing manufacturers in the outdoor space.
So some of our members, a lot of your sponsors are members people like weatherby bench made um vortex got me in there
no vortex absolutely um conservation groups like uh rocky mountain elk foundation mule deer
foundation so those are our members it's 9 000 different entities that are members it's not
people we represent entities like corporate entities non nonprofits. So do you, when you say Republican governors,
do you just not even get the foot in the door with the Democratic governor?
No, we go to the Democratic Governors Association as well. Yeah, absolutely.
Like you'll get a one-on-one meeting or no?
Absolutely. I've had some great conversations with, there's a lot of, there's great. So this
is again, going down the rabbit hole. I don't think
you can classify good or bad politicians based on party. I think you have to really look at the
individual and see if those individuals are looking at facts, if they're trying to find things out.
In general, I think that human beings are smart. And if people are objectively looking at facts,
they're going to come to, they're going to make good decisions. And I don't think-
So they don't just instinctively slam the door in your face that they don't even want to hear about it.
No.
I mean, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't more difficult in some offices than others because, you know, you know, Dave and I, and like, you know, you've, you've got a whole group of people sometimes that you have to tranche through to be able to talk to the guy who's in charge.
Yeah.
And with that comes a lot of opinions.
It comes a lot of, you know, comes a lot of, you know, history and life history and background thoughts and levels of experience and levels of education. And so when you're working
with, you know, political figures, and this goes for everybody listening, you have to be
cognizant of that. And you have to be respectful of that. If you're trying to talk to a guy and
convince him of something, you got to try and understand where he's coming from before you
throw your idea out there on the table and demand that he believe as you believe you have to work your way into that. And, and, you know, I'm lucky that I
work for an organization where I think we are doing the right things. And so it makes it very
easy for me to be able to, you know, walk through what I believe to be truth and what I believe to
be facts, and then to walk people into what I think is, you know, the, the right decision based
on truth and facts. And I think that's, you know, I mean think that's why I feel lucky to work where I
work. Working for Governor Meade was the same way. When you work for a politician who you believe in
and you believe he's doing all those things for the right reason, it makes it very easy to go to
work every day and to feel good about yourself at the end of the day when you turn off the computer.
Can you give us an example of something, an idea you might pitch when you go into these offices?
Yeah. Let's see. There's tons of them. Constitutional right to hunt and fish in Utah.
So Casey Snyder, we visited with Representative Snyder when he just got into the legislature. And so that's one of the legislatures that I work.
And so when I say I work legislatures, that means, you know, from January till April,
I'm traveling around all these different states and I'm meeting with lawmakers constantly to talk about things that we believe are priorities.
Every legislature in the country is going to have 500 plus bills every year, or somebody's
going to be trying to change some piece of law. And so my job is to try and look through those
and make sure that I'm catching if there's something that's negatively affecting hunting
and shooting sports, wildlife issues and things like that, I'm going to try and, you know, analyze every one of those
things, try and figure out whether or not, you know, we have a position as an organization that
we can take. If we don't, if we can make one, and then we share with, you know, to go back and
educate those lawmakers as best as possible on what we think the facts are and why we think that,
you know, think people
should vote a certain way. So for example, the right to hunt and fish in Utah, Representative
Snyder, we visited with him about it. He believed it was important. The debate on both sides will be
some people will say, well, you don't really need to, you know, have a constitutional right to hunt
and fish in the state constitution. Who would take away the right to hunt and fish? And so then we
would respond to that. I'm going to go visit with that lawmaker and say, well,
look, you know, in California, they've already outlawed bear hunting. There's places, you know,
in Nebraska, they tried to outlaw, you know, this is one I worked on also, they tried to outlaw
hunting cougars. They've, you know, in every state you get these different rules, regs,
laws that come up. And so I'm talking with him about this and say, this is why you need to have
the state have a constitutional right that says, no, we believe in hunting and fishing as regulated
by our game and fish agencies, that that's an individual right that should be protected under
the state constitution. Because if you don't, it's not fake that people will come in and they will use,
they'll chip away at that individually. They'll find excuses for why you shouldn't be able to
trap with this kind of trap in this area. And they'll whittle away at that. And that's not,
I'm not making that up. That's happening today. And so what we do is we try and convince those
lawmakers to pass legislation or to defeat
legislation that would, you know, take those things away. And so that's what I do for a living.
Is lobbyist a naughty word in your crew, in your crowd?
No, not really. No, I'm a, so I'm a-
Because people love to hate lobbyists, but they don't realize that-
I lobby, you know, and I'm a registered lobbyist in a
couple of different States. I'm not, you know, but you don't, you know, depending on the laws
of each state, it's totally different. I mean, it's just such a, you know, you throw that word
out there. It means different things in different States based on different, you know, legislative
priorities and different rules and regs again. And so in some States I have little teams of guys
that I work with. Um, I little teams of guys that I work with.
I have some fantastic people that I work with that you know.
I won't mention their names, but in Colorado and places like that where they have those existing relationships. So you might have individuals that are super passionate about wildlife and sportsman's issues in Colorado.
And some of those guys are Democrats.
Some of those guys are Democrats. Some of those guys are Republicans. And depending on who's in office, you need to know those people because you have to be able to get through the door to talk to
that decision maker. And if you have put yourself in the position of alienating all the people that
you need to work with when something big comes up, you're not going to be effective. And so for us,
that's why we, you know, we need to make sure that we nurture relationships and we care about people
regardless of political party in all those different states where we work.
Because firearms issues, sportsman's issues, they're not Republicans or Democrats.
They are, you know, these issues, these things we care about, these things that are important, they're apolitical. And so if you allow yourself to be just lost in this idea that everything has to be associated with an R or a D next to it, that's a real tough position to be in because ultimately then you put yourself at the whim of whoever you made enemies with that's in power.
I can see it. You want to – like periodically you're going to get locked out of certain states for eight years or 12 years.
And it makes no sense.
Or perpet, perhaps.
Yeah, because as Michael Jordan, I don't know if you probably know this, Michael Jordan.
Do you know I'm a Michael Jordan expert because I watched The Last Dance.
Well, Michael Jordan said.
Oh, the whole damn thing.
You know, and everybody said they wanted him to respond on something.
He said, hey, Republicans buy sneakers too.
Yeah, I remember that.
I mean, it's the same.
They cover that in The Last Dance.
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to that you know that
you know that applies to hunting in the shooting sports it's like these things
they are they cross political divides uh dave wilms now national wildlife federation senior
director of western wildlife that's a big title and acting acting VP of public lands. Yeah.
Yep.
Yes.
So you want me to do something with that?
He's checking sports scores right now.
Just give us the sports scores and then tell us a little bit about what that means.
Yeah.
So when I left Governor Meade's office, I joined the National Wildlife Federation.
And I think the easiest way to describe it for
folks that aren't familiar with the National
Wildlife Federation is you heard of Ranger Rick?
Oh yeah, buddy.
That's us.
Right.
So that's our flagship publication.
So the National Wildlife Federation.
Was Ranger Rick still out?
Oh yeah.
Can you get my kids a subscription?
You can.
I'd love to be a lot more streamlined if you
did it.
I can, yeah, I can.
I always got Ranger Rick as a kid.
I thought Ranger Rick was dead. No, no. Ranger Rick is alive and well, doing great. streamline if you did it you know i can yeah i can i always got ranger rick as a kid i thought
ranger rick was dead no no ranger rick is uh alive and well doing doing great uh really oh yeah yeah
uh still still our uh flagship publication we also have uh a couple of other publications out
there really you could still get man because my kids right now are getting the week for kids i
don't like that no no go get ranger rick oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, we'll talk after. I was a big Boys Life
guy. Did you get Boys Life?
No, Ranger Rick. No, Ranger Rick.
I didn't know Boys Life. Boy Scouts.
Was it a Boy Scout thing? Oh, yeah.
Were you an Eagle Scout? Close.
Okay, hold up now. Hold up now.
Sorry, we got a lot of topic.
We got a lot of it.
This is still just introductions.
National Wildlife Federation, Ranger Rick.
National Wildlife Federation was founded back in 1936.
So in 1936, President Roosevelt, not Teddy, obviously, but for FDR.
Yeah.
In response to a bunch of conservationists from all over the country convened this conference that still goes on today,
right? The North American Wildlife Conference, which is held every March, every year, convened
this big conference, brought everybody together to have a big conversation about, like, the idea
was there are hundreds of these sports organizations, conservation organizations
working on the local level, doing a lot of great things. But there was nothing bringing them all
together to advance federal
policy to help wildlife recovery across the country. You know, there was this recognition
at the time we were still dealing with the fallout from the market hunting and, you know,
and the expansion West and just wiping out all these herds of all these animals all over the
place, you know, all the different wildlife that we maybe take for granted a little bit today.
And so we said, we got to convene this group, bring everybody together.
And this guy by the name of Ding Darling, who was actually a cartoonist, Pulitzer prize winning
cartoonist from a newspaper in Iowa. Yeah. He was a political satirist, right?
Right. Yeah, exactly. So he has a big wildlife refuge named after him.
He does. He actually designed the first federal duck stamp, too.
Okay.
He was the head of what used to be the preceding organization to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
He was also the first president of the National Wildlife Federation.
He was?
Yeah.
He was the one that helped convene this, working with the president and others, convene this big conference, bringing, I think, 2,000 people attended at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.
And at the end of this conference, what they decided is we needed a large federation.
We needed a wildlife federation that brought together all of these interests from all over
the country to take all these local interests and really focus the efforts.
One of the things they were talking about at the time is the same thing you hear about today, right?
Is we don't have enough funding for wildlife management, right?
We, you know, everybody wants to do the right thing.
Everybody recognizes that wildlife are struggling, but we don't have the funding to put into it.
And so this was one of the first things that happened.
So this conference convenes, creates the National Wildlife Federation out of this conference.
And one of the first things that the National Wildlife Federation does is help pass the Pittman-Robertson Act.
The big, you know, this big piece of federal legislation to figure out, okay you know, ag interests and bird watchers and hunters and anglers and everybody that can say, okay, we might not agree on everything.
But let's really work on the 80% of things that we agree on.
And let's try and improve the situation for wildlife and habitat on the ground.
And that's been the mission really of the National Wildlife Federation ever since.
So today, you know, fast forward 80 years where we are one of the largest, if not the largest, um, conservation organization in the country.
We have 6 million members and supporters.
We have an additional 2 million members through our affiliate network, which is made up of 52 affiliates from all over the country.
So we're here in Montana. The Montana Wildlife Federation is one of our affiliates. Our affiliates,
these 52, more than half of them are what you'd call your traditional hook and bullet clubs,
right? They're, they're founded on really the hunting and angling principles. And, and then we have a couple dozen, right? That are, that are more of the, um,
they aren't really, that are more of the environmental type of group, right? Do you got some of the groups that are just, that aren't, they don't, they're not have a, I'm struggling here.
They don't have a stated anti-hunting position, but you get the sense that they, their private conversations are very anti-hunting, sort of like Center for Biological Diversity.
Are they in your group or no?
Not that I've run across, no.
And what's interesting about the way we operate as a federation is so at the National Wildlife
Federation, our affiliates actually set our policies and our direction, organizational
direction.
So you have on one side of the coin, you have your traditional hook and bullet that you
view as maybe a little bit more conservative, right?
And then on the other side, you have more of your traditional environmentalism using very broad labels.
Yeah, that's fine.
That tend to be more left-leaning.
And they come together at our annual convention every year and they set our policies.
And so they have to agree.
And what that usually means is we come in right down the middle on things and we aim to be a nonpartisan organization that really
just wants to make sure wildlife and people thrive in an ever-changing world. That's our
mission statement. So we're a big tent organization, but we have of our membership, I believe the last
I saw nearly 2 million of them are identified as either hunters or anglers, like they are hunters or anglers, or are interested
in hunting and angling. That makes us a pretty significant player in the hunting and fishing
world. Uh, but we also have this other side of our organization that you have your, you know,
backyard gardeners and, you know, you know, we have, you know, your folks in the city that want
to do, you know, do right by wildlife in their backyards. And we have a garden for wildlife program where you can, you know, have a, you know, habitat in the yard, uh,
recognized for doing good things for wildlife, for pollinators, whatever. Um, so it's just a big,
big diverse tent. And then, so my, my niche within that is right now leading our public
lands program, which is primarily focused in the Western United States on public lands issues, although we do some in other
places, uh, where there are public lands.
Um, and a lot of Western wildlife issues,
which actually turns out there's an awful lot
of overlap between those two.
Oh, I can imagine.
So we're going to hit you in a minute here.
We're going to hit you with, uh, uh, we're
going to hit you with the thing we're going
to talk about.
That's going to have a lot of touch points
for you boys. It's Wyoming,
public lands.
You're going to like it.
Look forward to it.
Quick note, Dave and I actually still work together a ton
on issues.
Dave's organization and my organization
both sit on AWCP.
American Wildlife Conservation Partnership.
Oh, okay.
Interestingly enough,
you know, we were joking about this
when we both started working.
You guys are like nuts on a dog, man.
You just...
We can't get rid of each other.
In fact, he was talking about Pittman-Robertson.
Our organizations, our members,
were the folks that worked with NWF at the time.
And of course, you know,
we want to make sure people know,
like, our membership are the guys
that stroke the Pittman-Robertson check.
You guys should get a little duplex
and just live there.
We may have one.
I don't want to talk about it.
Do you guys influence the legislation as in lobbying for what happens in the United States Congress?
Yeah.
So both of our organizations have a government affairs.
I don't do that personally.
We have a government affairs team that works with Congress in D.C.
Our affiliates do the work locally at the state level.
And I work more on the advocacy policy legal side and help provide those folks with the right information when they need it to ask, make the right asks.
And occasionally I'll go to – I don't go to Republican Governors
Association meetings, but I'll go to Western Governors Association and go to a lot of the
wildlife conferences where state wildlife agencies come in. It's important to have those relationships
with state wildlife agencies in particular. I've had exposure to state legislatures in Michigan
as a home inspector. I was president of the association, not to
bog this thing down, but it's amazing to me how stupid, and I don't have any other word,
state legislatures can be. It's about bringing out laws that you mentioned earlier.
I think they're extremely intelligent and every state legislator is handsome.
Dude, these guys are just throwing out nothing but olive branches over here.
Well, I'm just speaking from my experience.
Oh, it's a different, yeah.
I've been in hearings where I have, and some of these legislators now are, you know, and
senators, they went from state legislatures to the federal level.
And I'm thinking, this person has no clue.
And I always, I'm amazed at how are they there how do they do
what they do and not know what's going on around them dad lobbying that's why because if you're a
good lobbyist you're like nevi came in and told the wrong stuff exactly uh for here's the thing
nevi this this would be good one for you because uh our our colleague sam james say hello to
everybody sam hello everybody
tell everybody what you do around here uh my role here is the general merchandise manager
uh and what i do is uh i build and cultivate an assortment of products for the meteor web store
and this assortment of products is based on the products that our team of content contributors
uses in their pursuits,
whether that's our hunting team, our fishing team, and our culinary team.
So I work very closely with our content teams.
And then my goal is to bring the products to the people so that you can, for our followers, our listeners, and our viewers,
they can learn about the products that our team is using and then come to our site and understand why we use that product, why we think it's the best, and why they should consider buying it for their own purposes.
But today, Sam is here.
He's going to tell us about – I don't know how I found out about this.
Sam's great-great-uncle Otto invented a – I got't know how I found out about this. Sam's great-great-uncle Otto invented a...
I gotta know if Levi knows about this.
Invented and promoted
a, instead of a round,
a triangle bullet.
A triangle-shaped bullet,
which never took off.
Correct.
Now when you say it never took off oh so
multiple meanings on that yeah no no i guess i'm guessing it took off it flew but it flew but
didn't take off it uh yeah yeah walk us through it here this is this is a good story so uh my
great great great grand uncle uh his name is Otto Schneilach.
He was one of-
So he was a great, great, great grand uncle.
Yeah.
I love that.
You could probably marry him without even getting in trouble.
Yeah.
Like that distant.
The brother of my great, great, great grandfather.
Oh, that makes sense.
I believe that's called a grand uncle.
Otto Schneilach was his name And he was one of three boys
Their parents were killed in a runaway carriage accident
In Germany
In the mid 1800s
They were made orphans and they traveled each
A runaway carriage accident
That's part of the research that I did
For today
They were killed in a runaway carriage accident.
Both the parents tragically killed.
The boys were made orphans along with their sister.
And each one of them.
Were they in the carriage too?
That's a good question.
I assume not.
Hmm.
Man, that might be a good time machine token right there.
Yeah.
If I had like a lot of tokens, i might take one to go see that happen
yeah i don't know if i had one token that's not what i would do with it
what would you do i don't know oh i'd go back to see the first americans enter the western
hemisphere and i'd ask them some questions that sounds great yeah and maybe the next time i'd go
find out what happened on that with that runaway carriage
accident.
Well, the three boys and their sister were made orphans.
They eventually all came to America independently.
And the three boys, Otto, Hugo, and Emil began working in the firearms business.
And Otto was the inventor.
He was the one.
Did you say already what year they came?
They came around 1850s, 1860s.
Okay.
So German orphan kids.
German orphan kids.
Um, and the three boys, so Otto is my great,
great, great grand uncle.
And his brother, Hugo is my great, great,
great grandfather.
Now Otto was the one who patented the 307
triangular round and revolver.
And Hugo, interestingly as well, he worked for
the Winchester company in New Haven, Connecticut
for 50 years.
And he is said in our family lore to be the
designer of the Winchester Model 94.
No. No.
Ooh.
Now that's not what's in, in, in the history books and online.
So I don't want to misstate, but that's what's said in our family records.
Man.
Can I tell you a quick story about that?
Sure.
My, one of my childhood mentors, my dad's close friends was a fella named
Eugene Groters
Uh he
Had
In his place he had built these overhead
Gun racks
And he had
He liked to have a gun for every year he'd been alive
I like this guy
So yeah he's like in his 80s you know
And the gun Just like the roof is like I don't want to say it's, the ceiling is basically carpeted in firearms.
But he one day, I was too young to realize what an act of generosity it is.
He one day in my presence, when I was turning legal firearm age, which is 12 in michigan he one day uh acts as though he just made a discovery that he's 80 but
there's 81 guns could i do him the favor of taking one of them and he gives me a uh model 94
with a peep sight wow and i went on to shoot not a bunch i want went on to shoot deer with this
thing and then one day took it down to the wood stove store which had like a gun counter and sold With a peep sight. Wow. And I went out and shoot, not a bunch. I went out and shoot deer with this thing.
And then one day took it down to the wood stove store, which had like a gun counter and sold that son of a bitch, man, for 350 bucks.
You couldn't buy it now for 350 bucks.
Just so you know, if you wanted to go find that gun again.
I want that one back.
I'm just saying, like when you find that gun, because somebody's got that.
Somebody listening to this.
Somebody does.
Like somebody listening to this podcast has that gun.
Twin Lake, I think it was called, I can't remember.
It was a wood stove gun store in my hometown.
Anyways, go on.
By 1983, it was the best selling high powered rifle in history.
I think they sold over 7 million of them.
So they're out there.
By which year?
1983.
83? Yeah. So your family needs a. By which year? 1983. 83?
Yeah.
So your family needs a good lawyer to get some of that money back.
Yeah.
So in family, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, the history books say one thing, but everybody knows that, yeah.
Apparently, Hugo was, according to our family history books, he was hired by Winchester in his mid twenties.
He was a gunsmith in New Orleans at the time.
And he was brought on to, to be, to Winchester
to become their chief of design.
That's what's in the history book, family
history books, excuse me.
But, but if you look it up, it was John Browning.
Some Browning guy.
Designer.
Yeah.
That guy. Some loser.ing. Some Browning guy. Designer. Yeah. That guy.
Some loser.
What does he know?
And Browning left.
Yeah.
As soon as you said that, I was going to ask.
You know, I think that I've recognized another name associated with that.
And Browning, of course, is amazing.
I have not heard of the triangular bullet.
I saw first pictures of the patents yesterday that Corinne shared with me.
So it's very interesting.
And yeah, it's interesting how some of that stuff, there's some really fascinating stuff out there when you go back in history and look at some of the firearms in history.
Some of the other, you know, Lewis and Clark just comes to mind immediately, you know, packing around a multi-shot air gun.
Exactly.
You know, in the early, you know, things like that, that people would just never imagine were
invented.
It's just really fascinating.
I agree.
We'll get to Otto.
All right.
Get to Otto.
Or whoever, whatever's next.
Yeah, you got it.
Basically the focus of Otto Schneilach's 1872
triangular bore, triangular revolver invention
was to create a more effective personal
protection firearm because the public at that time was becoming increasingly interested in carrying their own
pistols for personal protection. And the battlefield weapons of the time were too
heavy and too large for concealed carry. And so the major gun manufacturers started designing and developing personal protection revolvers.
And most of them, I believe the first one was created by Smith & Wesson, their Model 1.
And it was a.22 rimfire pistol revolver.
And it shot eight rounds, eight round capacity. Eventually, the public wanted to have greater firepower above a 22.
And so Smith & Wesson created a 32 capacity revolver with greater stopping power, with greater bullet weight.
So this is where Schneilach came in.
He wanted to create a revolver that had a heavier bullet and also had the higher capacity. So his triangular idea, triangular bullet idea,
was basically like if you cut an orange in half
and you look at the sections in the orange,
the nature of the triangular bullets,
they fit together in a tighter cylinder within that revolver.
Oh, that's what he was driving at.
Yeah, so he could...
It wasn't like lining up a bunch of circles.
It was just touch edge to edge and create a lot of metal. Yeah. So he could. Wasn't like lining up a bunch of circles with just touch edge to edge and create a lot
of metal.
Exactly.
So his concept and the invention was he took
the same cylinder out of a 22 revolver and was
able to fit, uh, seven, uh, 30, uh, I believe
it was seven, uh, 32 caliber bullets within the same cylinder as a 22 caliber. So
what was previously that the 22, uh, revolver shot eight bullets, the, the existing 32 caliber
revolvers from Smith and Wesson shot seven. He could, he could shoot eight of the same caliber
in the smaller package.
If they were shaped like a triangle.
If they were shaped like a triangle.
And it never really got off the ground.
He got the patent.
And interestingly, he got a secondary patent a few years later for an improvement on a
breech loader gun.
And that patent was about creating an attachment to go within the breech loader that could adapt the breech loader to shoot rimfire bullets.
Because they were just centerfire at the time.
Yeah.
So that was kind of interesting too.
So do you guys have around any of these old triangle pistols and triangle ammo?
I don't.
We don't.
To my knowledge, there's only one that exists that's got the triangular bore as well um but um
where does it sit that i'm not sure about um that's the word for my grandmother that she knows
at one point there was one person who had bought this revolver and uh they were looking for it but
but beats me did you guys have this conversation just to make me happy? Because like, honestly,
like I'm such a geek about this kind of stuff.
No, we were fixing to talk about this for a long time and I thought
you might enjoy it. No, it's awesome. It's super,
super interesting because like you look
at the advancements that people were making in like
the 1850s and some of the stuff that you were talking
about and then the technology of the times, how
they basically, I mean, you just described
firearms
design and changes in firearms. I mean, you were described firearms design and changes in firearms design.
I mean, you were talking about 1850s. You could have been talking about any time in the last 200
years because that's, I mean, that's, that is the, like, that's how it works in this country.
Like it's typically a lot of people don't know, but innovations in firearms designs almost always
come from the civilian market. And it's driven by people who have real world concerns and real
world needs. And then it goes back to some engineer who's a guy who's working at a company
like Browning or like Winchester or, or like Colt. And then they're faced with trying to figure out,
you know, why Steven Rinella wanted this thing in his gun and then figuring out a way to make it
work. And then they test it and then they roll it out to the public and they see who likes it. And
then, you know, uh, somebody does like it and then it becomes
popular. And then interestingly enough, like a lot of times you hear people think that like
these advancements come from kind of this military direction and they drive down the
civilian market. That's just not the case. It actually goes the other direction. It's civilians
like was Lewis and Clark who come up with, you know, the Hawkins rifle, you know, better guns.
And then ultimately, you know, these things are proven out that they're workable technologies. Then they make their way the other direction to
where, you know, military guys will start using some of those products to improve the stuff that
they have access to. And it's just, it's really a fascinating aspect of American firearms culture,
this back and forth and interaction that's always occurred in our country since a guy,
you know, put rifling in a, in a
long rifle on the banks of Wyoming Creek, you know, in the 1600s.
Uh, what come of Uncle Otto? Did he ever like come up with a great idea and struck it rich?
You know what happened? He was actually killed in a shooting competition by a careless companion.
Wow.
Uh, yeah, he...
Really?
Yeah, and you guys might find this interesting.
After he enlisted in a two-year term in the Union Army as a volunteer,
he got through the war, wasn't injured.
So Civil War veteran.
Civil War veteran.
The NRA was starting up right about the same time.
I believe that was 1870, 1871.
And a couple years after they founded the NRA, they started holding shooting competitions.
And he got into these.
And according to NRA's annual reports from 1873 to 1876, Otto did pretty well in these.
And he even won one of the sportsman's competitions.
So he was a competitive shooter and it was
actually, it was competitive shooting that
was ultimately his demise.
He was killed on the shooting range.
Man.
Accidentally.
Shooting, like firearms accidents and
firearm incidents seem to be so much higher in those days
when you read life and death at the mouth of the muscle shell which i recently read
i mean people just i think it's like people just trying to figure stuff out but man
shooting themselves on accident shooting each other on accident a lot of the things you take
for like a lot of the sort of behaviors
we take for granted around safety just was not baked in.
Yeah, hunter safety wasn't around yet.
No, it's like, it's interesting.
Today it's shooting sports are safer than any high school sport
that you can pull up.
Safer than soccer, safer than softball, safer than you name it.
You know where it lines up?
I was looking at some statistics.
Billiards.
Yeah.
In terms of injuries per hour,
it's like right around.
But there's a lot of severe injuries
on the billiards table.
There are a lot of reasons for that.
No, I'm just talking about rates.
Like rates, like it was like all like,
cross country skiing, downhill skiing,
blah, blah, blah.
And you look at like the rates
and when you get down to like rate of injury per hour spent per practitioner, I think it lines up with pool and billiards.
It's super low.
And that's like Giannis hit it on the nail on the head.
It has to do with, I mean, it has to do with where we've come to, you know, firearms related accidents are near all time lows right now.
They've like, it really is.
It's a safe endeavor to get into. That said,
it's because people need to follow the rules. You know, there are certain rules of firearm safety.
We all know what they are, right? Number one, and we may talk about these again,
because they're super important. Number one, every gun is always loaded. Even if you have
decided in your head, you don't think it's loaded. Even if the guy that hands the gun to you
says it's not loaded, every gun is always loaded every gun is always loaded you treat it like it's always loaded no
matter what even if you just check the chamber and you think it's not loaded you treat it like
it's always loaded you know you know book i bought recently i couldn't finish reading it what's that
it's called dying to hunt in montana and it's a a exhaustive catalog broken down by cause of death of everyone they can find in the history who has died hunting here.
All the people that have died from grizzly bears.
Exposure.
Anything you could, like, the fact that someone took the time to put this together is amazing.
Like, did they write a story about each person?
Dude, it's live.
It's like two sentences.
It could be longer.
Oh, it could be really interesting if you had the whole backstory.
A lot of them have.
This was somebody's master's thesis.
A lot of some of them have good backstories.
Master's thesis.
But you're back in the, when you're back in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and you're in the hunting accident section, you can't, it just like, there was a sort of mental shift
that occurred about firearm handling.
Well.
That like, that kicked in some point between then and now where just the amount of things
where you're like, what, what?
Like crossing a fence, crossing a fence, crossing a fence, handing the gun
to someone under the fence, just on and on and on.
And I think that there's like,
we've somehow got to a point where you just
walk around a little more paranoid.
It's like, it doesn't have to be paranoid.
It has to be habit.
And I think that that's what we've gotten into now.
And to be frank, this is one of the challenges
that you see, like go to a shooting sports
competition now, right? Your girl Taylor, right? You watch somebody like that handle a gun at a
range, what never happens? The gun never points at anybody. Why? Because there's a practice. If
that gun's ever pointed at anybody, if it's ever pointed in the wrong direction, you're done for
the day. You're going to go home and buy ice cream. You're not welcome here because your
handling practices aren't correct. The other things, you know, rules of firearm safety also
obeyed theirs. You know, you never point a firearm at anything you're not willing to destroy. Why?
Because it's always loaded. You never have your finger on the trigger and the manual safety
disengaged until you're ready to shoot. Why? Because the firearm is always loaded, even if
you're not pointing anything you don't want to destroy. And then last, you never, ever point a firearm at something to shoot it, put your safety off and finger on the trigger,
unless you know exactly what you're going to shoot and exactly where the bullet's going to go.
Be sure of your target and what's beyond it. Why? Because you're responsible for every bullet that comes out of the gun.
And through shooting sports, like none of that is negotiable. It all happens all the time.
And so when you go to places
where people are participating
in the shooting sports,
those safety things are baked in.
Unfortunately, if you,
when people become,
you know, we see this actually
in the hunting community way too much
where people become,
they can decide that they can be lackadaisical
with the rules of firearm safety
because I've been doing it since I was 10 years old. And now I'm,
you know, this age or whatever, I've always done it this way, right? Where guys, they,
they take shortcuts. They don't obey the rules. They put the gun, they carry it in a weird way.
They think it's okay to, you know, do certain things. And what you see is when you see competitors
and you see, you know, and I've heard, had people say some of
the silliest things I've ever heard. Somebody say, well, look at guys who are like in elite
military units. They point guns at each other all the time. No, they don't. You know, I know,
you know, Kyle Lamb, some of the best shooters, best people in the entire world. There's zero
tolerance for breaking the rules of firearm safety and it's baked in. And that's something
that we need to do as sportsmen. We need to bake this.
We just have to insist on that.
Because, you know, you take new guys hunting all the time, I'm sure.
I do the same thing.
It stinks to have to yell at a guy.
So first of all, don't yell at him, literally.
But it's not fun to have to be the guy to have to remind him the sixth time, don't point that at me.
But through doing that, if you do that enough days in a row,
guess what? He doesn't point it at you and he doesn't point it at anybody else. And then it's
his turn to tell somebody else not to, you know, to, to be, to be muzzle aware. But if we don't do
that as a community, like it's, it's that it's having, it's caring about somebody enough to
make sure that they have good firearms handling skills that has made it so that we're not the 1920s anymore.
So that you can go to a shooting competition and not worry about your physical safety.
It's just something we have to do.
Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.
And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.
And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.
Whew, our northern brothers get irritated.
Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there on x is now in
canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt
app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land hunting zones
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That's right.
We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater 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.
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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit on X maps dot com slash meet on X maps dot com slash meet.
Welcome to the to the on X club, y'all.
Oh, real quick, and they'll do this other real quick thing.
I have noticed this might be anecdotal.
I have noticed in my lifetime a different attitude
about chambering rounds now we used to chain in high school it was like part of stepping out of
the truck you throw one in the chamber was because no one be caught with their pants down right so
it was always ready to roll and then you just have the safety you know standing between you
and that and i've noticed in in my rather extensive social circle, the people are a little more
deliberate about when it might make sense to rack one in and walking out and setting
decoys.
Maybe, uh, maybe you rack it when you're all set up and not just kind of like habitually
have it racked at all times during all activities.
Like we're more careful about that now
yeah well you get set up you get the blind made you get the decoys out then you might throw one
in the tube man i'm gonna i'm not that guy you step out of the truck and yeah like and it's
i've watched friends that do what you're talking about like
they don't rack until the last second like on an elk hunt for example and i've watched them forget
and pull up and just click right like well there's the last second and then there's just being
deliberate i'm gonna i mean it's it's not like i'm riding down the road racked up but you know
like when i go set up my goose my goose I get my gun loaded, put it in the
blind, and then I set everything up because what if something comes in?
Yeah, in case you got a barrel roll back in the blind and start shooting.
I got you.
Like I said, it's anecdotal.
I'm probably overly cautious.
But all those things are going to be like, those are going to be personal decisions.
They're going to be cultural decisions.
They're going to be family decisions.
And the one thing I would say, because I don't think all of us here, we could argue about that till we're blue in the face.
Obey the four fundamental rules of firearm safety.
If you obey the four fundamental rules of firearm safety, literally every other incident that you're going to talk about or imagine your head goes away.
They don't exist if you obey those four rules.
Okay.
Are we done with Otto and the triangular bullet?
I don't know.
Did any other tragedies happen in his family?
Well, there were actually two more things I
wanted to mention.
Oh, please.
One of the reasons that Otto didn't make it,
his invention didn't make it, is because Colt began producing the single action army revolver, a.k.a. the Colt 45, in 1873.
And that really blew up in the following years when they started creating shorter barrel options for civilian carry.
So that was one of the big reasons, not just his death, that it didn't go anywhere. And then the other thing that just to mention is that the third brother, my other great,
great, great grand uncle, he worked for Springfield Armory in Massachusetts for 50 years.
So these were three orphans from Germany that came to America on their own independently
and then ended up being innovators and developers within the firearms trade in the 1850s to the early 1900s.
Can I bring this full circle again?
Yeah, go for it.
Friday, meaning the day after Thanksgiving just a couple days ago, took possession of his great-grandfather's
Springfield Mark I, 1903,
which was manufactured in 1919.
And that now sits in my gun safe.
That's pretty cool.
That's awesome.
It's got that little red something,
Redfield?
Yeah.
Little peep. Yeah. So he was in Whis red, something, Redfield? Yeah. Little peep.
Yeah.
He bought, so he was in Whiskey Whiskey 2
in the Pacific Theater and came home and just
bought a gun like what he was issued when he
was training in the military.
And that's what he bought.
He bought it used for 12 bucks and they still
had the receipt.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
My kid's real fired up to shoot something with it.
Real fired up. That's with it. Real fired up.
That's super cool.
That's no,
he's really,
yeah,
he's excited.
It was cool.
Uh,
okay.
So,
uh,
auction house of oddities group six,
again,
auction house of oddities to support our access initiatives here at meat eater.
We have a New York's met a New York Mets baseball bat signed by our buddy,
polar bear Pete Alonzo.
So you can go get that bat signed by him and use it to thump fish in the head
after you catch him.
We have two Trampled by Turtles concert tickets.
That's Dave Simonette, who's been on the show as well.
So Pete Alonzo's been on this podcast.
Dave Simonette's been on this podcast.
If you want to go find the one that Dave was on,
it was episode 235 called Sex, Guns, and Bluegrass.
So Dave has the tickets, and when you buy this package,
you go to the concert and you go backstage to attend the meet and greet
with Dave. It will be playing. This one is good for Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheater in July of
2022. So you can get tickets for Colorado Red Rocks Amphitheater. Go back, meet Dave, um, all paid. Here's another weird one.
You can get,
so Spencer,
Seth, and Chester
have all volunteered
to let you
pick what you want
them to have tattooed
on their arm.
They're giving you a quarter, so it's the size of a 25 cent piece.
They're giving you a quarter sized portion of the real estate on their arm.
You pick a tattoo design.
They will get it.
This will be Seth's first tattoo. So you select a design, and then three people, the flip-flop flesher, Spencer, and Chester the divester, all will bear your design.
No, it says here Phil too.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
No?
What up, Phil?
No, that was part of the introduction.
Don't you care about conservation?
We can talk about that later, but no, it was just... Why does it say you
jumped on board? I thought it was referring
to on board, like getting a tattoo trained,
not this specific tattoo.
What's wrong with this plan?
It sounds like a great plan.
I just don't know if I'm, you know,
committed to the bit. I mean, those boys are going to bring in a little bit
of money, Steve. Those boys are being
like not smart.
I support it totally, but come on, man.
So you just explained why
I'm not going to be a part of this.
Would you do it?
Hell no, but I'm just thinking
a quarter on your arm
would really bring in the bucks.
Yeah, but I don't want
a tattoo on my arm.
Me and my wife are the last
untattooed couple in America.
But I'm going to get uh i am gonna get that world slam turkey tattoo i'm talking about if you get it too no i'm not i'm gonna get a outline uh outline of uh like uh north america
on my arm and then a dot where all the turkeys
from my turkey world slam came from.
Isn't that sweet?
My kids, when I told my little boy that,
my six-year-old boy, he almost started to cry.
He like thinks tattoos are very,
like just not a good idea.
He doesn't understand them.
What would it take?
Maybe he really understands them.
He might understand them better than I do.
How much money would it take? Like, let understands them. He might understand them better than I do. How much money would it take?
Let's just say if we just had that person that should just shell out whatever number you picked.
You probably want to be real careful about this.
Oh, like what amount of money?
Yeah, for you to do a quarter-sized tattoo so that all that money would go to land access.
$500,000.
That's it.
How long do you have to keep the tattoo?
Because I understand laser removal is a thing,000. That's it. How long do you have to keep the tattoo? Because I understand
laser removal is a thing, right?
So you could get the tattoo and have it take some
period of time. It's like a permanent easement.
And then take it off and remove it.
We haven't gotten to that level yet.
They could pull a fast one like that. I don't think
they're going to pull a fast one. The other thing is Spencer's getting
his whole damn arm tattooed.
It's just going to be in the mix.
I was talking for you.
That's what you can do. I mix. I was talking for you. I was talking for you.
That's your, that's what you can do.
I'm sort of like extending off what they might do.
For me, it would take 500 grand unless it was what I want.
If they were just going to pick what I want anyways, then I would just do it.
But I don't know if I want it.
Like, no, my wife doesn't want me to, my wife doesn't want me tattooed.
It's like a lot of familial resistance against this whole idea.
But like our friend Pat Durkin,
he started getting tattooed in his 60s
because he thinks by the time he's sick of them,
he'll be dead.
So that dude's covered in new tattoos
because he doesn't have enough time to regret it,
he says.
He's just going to die
and think they're still cool.
Who's that guy that,
who's the one on Saturday Night Live?
He has all those tattoos
And he's going through the process of having them all removed right now
Pete Davidson
Yeah and he's talking about it being the most painful experience of his life
That's one dude I don't understand
It's baffling
Like it's baffling
He's the least funny person
On the planet
It's like the least funny
Funny person Yeah and he's dating some mega famous model
like a different one every single month it's just it's wild i don't understand it yeah how you can
be that unfunny have you watched he did some roasts on on uh comedy central that were really
pretty good i only see him coming on and screwing up Saturday Night Live skits.
But not even in a funny way.
Well.
Anyhow.
Welcome to the middle age, Mr. Riddler.
I got to keep moving.
No, it's not a middle age thing.
I think a lot of stuff's funny.
Just not him.
Oh, so you pick the tattoo.
They get it on their arm.
So those guys are putting their arm out for access.
My personal spear gun,
which I've been shooting for a few years
now, and if you successfully
so season
10, our next
episode is the drop for season 10
on Netflix. You'll see that spear gun
in there. Mignani's super famous
spear gun YouTube video.
That's the gun in there. I've used's super famous spear gun YouTube video. That's the gun in there.
I've used
it in Mexico, Hawaii,
America, all over the damn place.
That gun is up for
auction.
Mark's tree saddle
from Back 40. So Mark Kenyon's
tethered mantis tree saddle
that he used to kill the
wide eight on Meteor's back 40.
Signed and donated
by Mark Kenyon.
We got some arts and
crafts type stuff. A lot of it.
And then
Corinne's Crystal Critter Collection.
So, they're sitting in front of me
right now. These are handmade
red squirrel sterling
silver herkimer diamond jewelry set.
Includes earrings, a necklace pendant, and a ring all made of sterling silver and squirrel feet.
Sterling silver and squirrel feet?
Let me pass these bad boys around.
Beautiful work.
My daughter, shit her pants.
I can tell you like legitimately right now,
like this is literally,
I'm holding a napkin.
It's tissue paper, buddy.
Don't demean it.
I'm sorry.
Don't degrade it.
It's gift wrap.
Those really are squirrels feet.
Tiny little feet.
Beautiful squirrel foot earrings.
All kinds of squirrel foot jewelry.
Brody's turkey foot,
which is flipping the bird,
which is a great,
I love making those things. You make a little little plaque it's a turkey giving you the finger brody's got one of those now here's a
weird one in the auction house of oddities and we've i have one in my personal collection now
you got to hear me out because we've checked into this this is is legit. It's a brick. Okay.
A red.
You look at these bricks and you know these sons of bitches are old.
It's a brick from the general store that Jim Bridger owned in Kansas City, Missouri.
We have three of them.
I rat holed one away.
It's on display in my house.
I rat holed one away from me. Spencer has one.
And Spencer has given the third brick from Jim Bridger's General Store in Kansas City, Missouri.
In the Auction House of Oddities.
And you can check in the pedigree of this brick and everything.
It's legit.
Check this one out.
Here's a good item.
A guided tour of the Duren family farm. You get to go
spend the day doing a tour.
I think Duren's going to donate four
hours.
You spend four hours touring
with Doug Duren, getting a tour
of Doug Duren's farm
to talk about wildlife management,
habitat management,
how a family farm pays the bills and provides access and does the right thing by wildlife.
You talk about all this with Doug.
I could spend four years driving around with Doug talking about stuff on Doug's farm.
He's a wonderful tour guide.
He'll take you to get some cheese curds.
He will even throw in a whole jar of Buckman juice.
You do not need to worry about the authenticity of the Buckman juice
because you can watch Doug.
I'm trying to talk.
Wait a minute.
Doug is willing to let you watch him emit the Buckman juice throughout the
four hours and he will fill that jar up.
I feel like we've crossed the line here.
No.
That's a wonderful idea if you're into his
Buckman juice, but I've got even maybe a
better idea.
I think we should go national with that.
I think you could have a Wisconsin version of
Buckman juice and then you could set up
franchises all over the country.
Yeah, but they'd have to like do whatever,
they'd have to like have the same diet as Doug.
Doug would have to lay out a regimen for them
of how he produces such a potent juice.
I've got to tell you,
the Latin Eagle's version works too.
Oh, really?
Well, I mean.
You feel like you got?
I don't know.
A lot of deer came by my stand this year in Wisconsin.
Oh, that's true.
What we'd have to do is put up a trail cam.
You take a whiz on a tree and Doug takes a whiz on a tree,
and then we wait and see.
It would be constant revenue is what I'm saying.
No, no.
Yeah, because the problem with Buckman juices is it's not scalable.
Well, we don't know that.
We haven't tested it.
If it hits the market and it's all over and someone gets to calculate
how much urine one man can produce, it might be like an expose.
Do you remember when there was an expose on dough and heat urine?
Right.
And someone went and looked at, in all the sporting goods stores around the country, how much dough and heat urine was for sale.
And then they went and looked at how many captive doughs are there?
How long is a doe in heat for?
How much does she urinate while she's in heat?
And they're like, there's a lot of stuff out there that says doe in heat urine,
that there's no way is urine collected from a doe in heat.
I agree.
And that was like a big scandal.
So if we do Buckman juice and someone gets to doing some math,
it might turn out that they're like, it ain't all Buckman juice.
Let me just introduce the next level.
And that level is that you go to all these,
you make it Buckman brand, but then you have
localized versions of it and you go to all
these small breweries, you know, and you just
have a thing outside.
Hey, like we'll pay you.
You know, Buckman juice becomes like a brand.
There's like Doug's signature.
There you go.
Like the Doug's signature line.
And then, yeah.
All across the country.
Like stop peeing in the alley and pee in this cup.
That's right.
Pee in the cup.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's good.
I like that idea.
There could be a legal aspect to it though, because if you turn it over to the cops, you
know.
I feel like this is going to hurt the value of the, though, of your original.
You're trying to auction off.
Oh yeah.
But here's the deal, man. This, this is going to hurt the value of your original. You're trying to auction off. Oh, yeah, but here's the deal, man.
This is going on now.
So if you want to get it on the ground floor, you can get your Duren family farm tour.
This farm tour with Doug Duren, dude, it better go for high dollar.
I became friends with Doug Duren because a long time ago, I didn't get a lot of mail.
I got a letter from Doug.
And the letter was so touching.
And I was so drawn to him and so moved by his story of his family's property that I went out
and visited him. He could have chopped me up and buried me in a hole, but he didn't.
We became like friends and I'm one of his biggest cheerleaders and to go and
spend time talking about landscape and and relationships with the land with doug duran is a
um quite a prize there's uh here's a free item giveaway so this way all this other junk we're
talking about you got a bid on like you want those squirrel feet jewelry you got a bid on you want to hang out with doug you got to bid on. Like you want those squirrel feet jewelry, you got to bid on it. You want to hang out
with Doug, you got to bid on it. This is for free.
It's a giveaway item. Soft-sided
Yeti cooler, so Yeti hopper.
Signed by a bunch of folks here at MeatEater.
Stuffed
to the gills
full of merch. Teas,
caps, cups, spices, etc.
We also got a bunch
of other stuff. Lots of art.
A guided fishing trip in Arkansas.
Genuine gator scoots.
So cured
taxidermied gator scoots that you lay out
on the counter, which I kind of want to bid on myself.
Check it all out. It's all in the
auction block.
Alright, you boys ready to get
brass tacks on some Wyoming public land
stuff? Let's do it.
Okay.
We're going to avoid rabbit holes on this one.
I'm going to lay the groundwork.
All right.
Well, Yanni's going to lay the groundwork first.
Yanni, explain for the 18th time.
Oh, you know we talk about corner crossing so much that there was a Yellowstone public radio story that someone sent to me. And in laying out, when trying to like define corner crossing, the journalist pointed out that we talk about it all the time on this podcast.
Really?
Yeah.
What does that make this podcast then?
A place where people talk about corner crossing all the time.
But it's like reference material.
Yeah.
Journalists. You might know it from this,
it was said like a popular
Bozeman-based podcast
where they're always yammering on
about corner crossing.
So layout for me,
so I can drink my coffee,
what it means.
What it means and why it matters.
Succinctly.
Yeah, wow.
Yeah.
Out West,
a lot of places,
we have what's called checkerboarded lands.
I'm not going to get into how they got that way because I'm doing the abridged version.
Is that okay?
But it is a good story.
It is.
Don't worry about it.
But basically, if you think about a checkerboard and if all the black pieces were public and all the red pieces were private and you were able to hunt the public,
just the black pieces,
you would have to hop corner to corner to make it across the checker field and
access all of the public land that technically you and all of us here own and
should be able to hunt.
But because of rules and States basically saying that the landowners that own
the adjoining land, the red pieces,
when they come to a corner, they own that airspace above their two corners as well.
So even though you don't touch their land as you cross over from corner to corner,
you're trespassing through the airspace above their land, thus making it illegal.
Let me ask you a question, Johnny.
What would you imagine?
Would you imagine that they're not actually
concerned about your shoulders passing over
their airspace?
What do you think they really are after?
Control of said public lands.
Like it's just, it's all for you.
So it's like a proxy is this airspace issue yeah like i
don't think anyone's like i'm worried about my airspace i think they're like man i'm worried
about a bunch of hosers walking through land at time immemorial has just been available to me and
my family very even though i don't pay taxes on it very small rabbit hole i apologize why is there
so much checkerboarded land?
Because when they put the railroads in,
that's how they gave away the land.
It's that simple?
The railroads would encourage settlement
and they did all kinds of transactions through land.
So the railroads come in
and to incentivize railroad construction,
they would give,
as the railroad company was laying track,
they were subsidized by land grants.
Okay?
So you would get like, it could be different deals.
You might get 50 miles on either side of the train tracks if you build the tracks.
Then those people needed to encourage settlement to have something to have freight.
I'm just going very general here.
Sure.
The railroad companies wanted to encourage settlement and they had the land they could settlement to have something to have freight. I'm just going very general here. Sure.
The railroad companies wanted to encourage settlement and they had the land they could dispose of what they will, but oftentimes they would give them every other section.
Gotcha.
And they issued it out on these corner to corner touching pieces.
Okay.
So in some areas, it's literally, like you might look at an area that could be, let's say a township size, so 36 square miles.
The entire 36 square miles might be like literally checkerboarded mile squares touching on the corners.
It might be 2 million acres.
Sometimes you'll get into a situation like this where, let's say you have a chunk of BLM.
We'll just take BLM for instance,
because what I'm going to get to, I think is a BLM story, but let's say you have a chunk
of BLM and there's a road cut through it.
So there's a county road and you have access to that BLM.
If you could jump one corner, it might not just open up a bunch of more checkerboard.
It might open up a huge contiguous block.
There are areas where jumping one corner, the ability to jump one corner would open
up 10,000 contiguous acres of land.
So there's some boys in Wyoming that are in trouble right now because a lot of states
like it's unclear in a lot of states,
like what the actual thing is Montana.
They've often recommended against it.
Their policy is we recommend against it.
We recommend that you get landowner permission because of the airspace issue
for guys.
They were non-residents.
I feel like they should have been residents for non-residents in Wyoming
right now are up for criminal trespass because they corner hopped.
Okay.
There's a lot of interest in these fellers prevailing because if they prevail and they're found not guilty of criminal trespass for corner crossing.
It sets a precedent.
People would be less likely.
Dave's shaking his head vigorously.
Uh-oh.
That's why you're here, Dave.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
It's not your turn yet.
I'm not interested anymore.
I'm going to give a disclaimer
for Dave real quick.
If Dave says no,
then I want to move on.
Dave's a lawyer from Wyoming.
He's got to take off
his professional hat really quick,
so this doesn't represent
the opinions of either
as Dave or Dave.
You've got to talk to us
as Dave.
I'll talk to you as Dave. Yeah. Regular Dave. Regular dave yeah dave let me tell you something i have of all
the names i have the best luck with dave's an incredibly long line of dave's that i've we go
back generations there are names i have trouble with i don't want to say them. Nephize and so forth.
Nope.
He's the only one I know.
There are names I have trouble with historically,
and there's names I do well with historically.
And Dave, whenever someone's having a kid and they say,
like, we can't think of the name, I'm like,
I'll tell you what your name is, Dave.
Because then I'll be friends with him.
So I'm trusting you, and I want to hear from Dave,
not some crazy-ass lawyer.
All right?
What if I'm both?
Not some tight ass lawyer.
So let me lay a little more groundwork.
Yeah, for sure.
In your answer or in your analysis of this situation.
Oh, first I got to get into this.
There's a GoFundMe to help these, help these
fellers fight their legal battle.
Where is that? What is the GoFundMe? Can you find it? Oh, holy cow. Like all GoFundMe to help these fellas fight their legal battle. Where is that?
What is the GoFundMe?
Can you find it?
Oh, holy cow.
Like all GoFundMe, it's like horrible.
www.gofundme.com slash F slash corner dash crossing dash legal dash fee fundraiser.
But I bet if you typed in a bunch of stuff like GoFundMe Corner Crossing Fundraiser, you will find the thing, which is people raising money to help these corner crossers with their legal fees.
Here's my final thing I'm going to say about this with Corner Crossing. I personally, personally and professionally would love to involve like i've seen i actually seen in some
places a imagine two adjoining step ladders that have so you pick these these like key areas
survey them mark it out you have two adjoining step ladders so people are able to go up a step
ladder land on a platform walk across the the platform, down the stepladder.
And sportsmen, I'm sure, I would take every dime we raise with our access initiative.
I'd have to check with Cal, but I bet Cal would be into it.
And we would put all of the money we raise with our access initiative, if Cal is okay with it, into said surveying and said stepladder apparatuses in strategic locations.
We would pay for all of that and start strategically going in and being like,
here's another thousand acres for public hunters. Here's another 2000 acres. Here's another 500
acres. Survey it, mark the corner, put the stepladders in if we could resolve the airspace issue. So now, Dave, what comes to your mind when you hear all this?
Okay.
So I'll start with-
I like that throat clear.
Sorry.
That makes me feel like I'm getting a straight don't.
You're going to get it, right?
Yeah.
So I'll start with this.
I don't know 100% of the particulars of this case.
Oh, forget this particular case.
Right.
No, I don't mean to forget it, but it can inform it.
But let's just talk about it in general. Just corner crossing. So because this is in
Wyoming, I'll talk to you in the context of Wyoming. Right. Uh, but I can, I can be a little
bit broader, right? Like, so for example, let's start with, with the basics of there's no law
at the federal level that specifically allows or disallows corner crossing. So there's no, there's no statute on the books.
What would a law like that say?
It would, if you were to have one that allows it or disallows it.
Yeah. I mean like what, yeah. Like what would the law be? You know,
would it be like an airspace issue or?
So I, I, it might be right. Like, so right now the FAA controls the airspace.
Okay.
Navigable air it might be right. Like, so right now the FAA controls the airspace. Okay. And navigable air space.
All right.
And it, and the way that that, the FAA defines it is, you know, in urban areas, the, the
navigable airspace, which is the public domain for airspace starts at a thousand feet.
Okay.
In more rural and unpopulated areas, it's at 500 feet.
That's the FAA.
But there've been some Supreme Court case law that actually
has said, well, you know, maybe that actually extends even closer to the ground than that.
So, but, you know, at the time those regulations were started, I don't think people were really
thinking about corner crossing for hunting or accessing public land. So you'd write a law that
if you were to at the federal level that says, you know, for purposes of accessing use BLM, for example, you know,
that it would be legal for stepping from one corner at a survey pin, right?
Stepping over the survey pin to another piece of adjacent federal land.
That's very simple.
So you could be like that nuts and bolts about it.
For purpose of
public foot travel, public access. It is legal to blank. Yep. Absolutely. You could do something
like that. Um, okay. So the federal level at the state level, now this is where I'll get a little,
uh, may get out of my lane just slightly because I haven't done a survey of every state. Right. But,
um, and I might, so I'm, I, because I know like in, I might get this wrong because in like
South Dakota, right?
You can walk section lines and that's a means of access.
But places like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, some of those intermountain West
states that you think of with the big chunks of public lands. There's no, I don't know of any law on the books in those states that either permits
or specifically prohibits corner crossing.
So you start with this fundamental premise of there's actually no law on the book that
expressly prohibits that activity or expressly permits it.
So then you have to dive a little bit deeper to figure it out.
So here's Wyoming, for example. And so that's where I'll go to dive a little bit deeper to figure it out. So here's
Wyoming, for example. And so that's where I'll go to Wyoming because it's sort of what I know.
Yeah. And that's what this case is.
And this is what this case is, right? So in Wyoming, we do have a law on the books
and it's 10-4, Wyoming statute 10-4-302 and 303, which defines the ownership or gives the ownership of the space above
the lands and waters of the state.
It's vested in the owners of the surface beneath that air.
So basically you own the surface, you own the air above it, and there's an exemption
carved out for aircraft so long as it's not so low that it interferes with the
existing use of the land. So theoretically it could come pretty low if you're not interfering
with the existing use or enjoyment of the private land. I mean, if you're scaring the hell out of
someone's cattle, that might be interfering. Might be interfering. Yeah, exactly. So that's
where you hear the argument come up that, okay, if you own everything – if you have a law in the books that says the landowner owns everything from the ground up and you have these – and you have laws of surve thin, right? That when you get to these corners, there's no way of
actually stepping across a corner, even if you know the survey pin is there without, to your
point, without your shoulders entering the airspace, which is where the argument is that
you can't corner cross because you have this law on the books saying they own the airspace. I think, and I'm not taking, like, I don't take a position, right?
I'm like not taking a huge position here.
I'm just trying to lay out what the.
Let me ask, is this.
So here are a couple of.
It's supposed to be Dave.
Right.
Let me ask you this.
Okay.
Let's say our whole system of government and rules and everything changed.
And it just became where now and then we decide that we're just going to ask Dave if it's okay.
And that becomes the rule of the land.
And we come to you and we're like, this one's in your court, Dave.
Yeah.
Is corner crossing okay or not?
Okay.
What would you say?
As do I want it to be okay or is it legally okay?
You get to pick because you're the command.
You're putting me on it, man. the final the constitution needs this it's like the constitution
says on this issue dave will decide yeah i want us to figure out a way to be able to access our
public lands right and and so it's evasive but you're there yeah thanks i'm feeling so there are
here two examples i'd give you of where this if there's a principle in the law when you're interpreting a statute.
So I look at this one of ownership of airspace.
There's a principle in the law called, you know, when you're doing statutory construction, which is, you know, a court is interpreting a statute.
And you start with the plain meaning of the words on the page.
You start with, okay, what's the plain meaning of the law say?
And if the plain meaning is clear, you don't go any farther.
That's what you apply.
But there's another principle in statutory construction that says you can't read a statute to create an absurd result.
Really?
Yep.
Yep.
And so I'd propose this.
Here's two examples I'd propose to you that I'd throw out there in Wyoming.
Of examples where if you read the letter of the law, you'd be trespassing every time.
But I've never heard of anybody cited for trespass in these two examples because it would be an absurd result.
One of them is if the property line is infinitely thin, we have laws for building fences, for example.
If you put a fence up on your property line,
that's not infinitely thin. You are by definition trespassing on your neighbor's property by putting
up that fence. But we allow you to do that. And we encourage people to do that. And in fact,
we're a fence out state. So if you don't want neighbor's livestock coming onto your property,
you're encouraged to put up a fence and keep them out. So there's an example where I've never seen somebody cited. You follow the statute for how to
construct a legal fence. And as long as you do that, you can put a fence on a surveyed property
line that's your property line. And even though that fence is half on their property, it's not
a trespass. You can do that. Yeah. Can I give you another example?
So here's my second example before I
forget it, because I forget.
No, no.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
My second example is, so in Wyoming, water is
the property of the state, right?
Yep.
And it's, if you want to float on, so the, the,
a landowner may own the, in Wyoming, they may
own the bed and the banks of the river.
You can't put your foot on the, on the bottom of the river and you're trespassing.
But as long as you're on that water, you're not trespassing.
So you're sitting on public water, but over private land, therefore in private airspace.
But I've never heard anybody get cited for trespassing when they're floating down a river.
Yeah, when it's six inches deep And you're floating along in your tube?
Right.
You're technically, and everything underneath you is private land.
Yeah.
Why don't they make the airspace argument there?
I've never heard it made, right?
Because I think it would be an absurd result.
We've said those are navigable waterways and that the public is entitled to use those
navigable waterways as long as they don't put their, you
know, anchor down or, or, or get out and, and
wait on the.
Why is this the first time I've ever heard that
point raised?
Cause you haven't talked to me about it.
Yeah.
He's a good attorney.
You're floating in shallow water.
You're closer to their land than you would be
stepping over it.
Right.
What I was going to point out is let's say you get out to take a leak on the side of the road and you walk
down and you point at something over the fence you never gonna get a ticket for
your arm pointing over the fence right I thought you're gonna say and you have a
little bit of wind drift with your pee no they like like if you're staying
there and I'm like you know whatever I gesture over a fence and someone says
I'm gonna give you a citation for having your arm over that fence there's no no way you're going to wind up walking out of that courthouse with a
fine.
You're right.
My arm waved over the fence.
So can I make a couple of other points on this?
Make a show out of them.
I don't care.
Okay.
So you get to,
let me talk about this specific point because I think,
Giannis,
you were making the,
when you're introducing this,
you're saying,
well,
maybe it'll set a precedent or something the way that the judicial system
works so this is in a circuit court right it's a misdemeanor offense the penalty for a criminal
trespass in Wyoming is a maximum of $750 and up to six months in jail for for this misdemeanor
it's not going to result in jail time. Dude, yeah. If I could pick between those two.
750 bucks sounds better.
Yeah.
So it's a misdemeanor offense.
Right.
If the defendants here are acquitted at the circuit court level, there's no legal precedent set.
Why is that? Because they just found that the facts of the situation showed there
either wasn't enough to convict, there wasn't enough to show that they actually trespassed or,
or the facts show that they in fact did not trespass, but there's not a legal interpretation
of, uh, uh, in that situation about whether that, uh, whether the application of like 10,
four, three Oh two, the airspace law, whether that creates this, uh, whether the application of like 10-4-3-0-2, the airspace law, whether that creates this,
whether they breach the invisible barrier.
And there's no interpretation as a matter of law there on an acquittal.
Now, if they're found guilty, then there is a process to appeal that to the district court and the Supreme Court.
And then at that point, they could make arguments on matter of law and do this interpretation and talk about,
maybe you're creating an absurd result here or whatever.
And then you could potentially get to the point
of having something that sets precedent.
But if at the circuit court level,
if they are not convicted at the circuit court level,
it's not going to set a precedent.
Can you plead guilty?
And then if you wanted to advance, let's say you really wanted to push for a test case.
That doesn't work that way?
No.
You can't plead guilty and then appeal?
No, you just plead out.
I mean, I'm not a criminal lawyer.
I haven't been a criminal lawyer.
This will remind me of another wildlife issue that I used to follow. There was a, on the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana, there was a rule that like, at some point in time, tribal members were able to sell land to non-tribal members.
So you had a lot of non-tribal members who owned land within the reservation boundaries, but because they weren't tribal members, they didn't enjoy certain hunting privileges on their own land because it was governed.
The hunting was governed for tribal members.
I remember this guy when I was, when I was living over in that neck of the woods, this
guy would make a big scene out of every year, inviting a bunch of people out to do a pheasant
hunt. And he'd always be, come arrest me, please.
Because he wanted to get it pushed to the right court.
And he would be frustrated because they wouldn't do anything.
And he just wanted to get it to a point where it could be clarified in law.
He wanted to challenge the law, but they never would take the bait with him
because they knew what he was after.
Is there a chance that someone would just be like,
okay, you're not guilty
in order to not do precedent?
Or does the world not work
in like conspiratorial ways like that?
You know what?
I don't know the answer to that.
That's not something I could speculate about.
I would hope that our judicial system works in a way that the facts of the situation, the law are applied fairly to everybody.
And nobody's trying to use it as a way to game to game a system.
Right. Especially in the criminal context, which this is, you know, in the civil context, I've definitely have seen examples of trying to, to game, figure out
a way to game the system.
But in the criminal context, I really hope that that, I really hope that doesn't happen.
So does it seem like the GoFundMe is getting ahead of itself?
Like they should maybe not fund these fellers yet.
So that they don't have, like, like have them go in with a poor legal defense.
They get convicted.
Then you pour the money to them, and they go to the next state supreme, U.S. supreme.
Yeah, it would go state supreme.
It's a state statute.
So it could never wind up.
It could never go to a federal thing.
I don't think they'd be making a constitutional argument here.
I suspect that this stays at an interpretation of state law and it would go to the state Supreme Court and that would probably be the end of it for that because we're talking about the application of a state statute, criminal trespass statute.
Are you tempted right now to do like, you know, sometimes like big shot lawyers come in and do like, they do some grandstanding by doing like a pro bono deal and all that.
Are you drawn?
Are you feeling tempted?
There's a lot of these cases, a lot of situations like this that are tempting.
Yeah, for sure.
Tempting.
Just to get in there and see what's going on.
I haven't been asked.
I haven't been asked.
I don't know if I would be asked.
But yeah, it's interesting. There are a couple other things on this that I think are worth
knowing, right? As far as Wyoming specific law and corner crossing. So they're being prosecuted
under criminal trespass statute. We have two different, we have several different trespass
statutes. The criminal trespass is one that the only way you get cited for that is if you know, so either the landowner themselves
or law enforcement have told you, you can't be here, you're trespassing, you can't be here,
or the landowner has posted signs making it very clear that you are not allowed to be there.
So it's incumbent upon the landowner to notify the
person potentially entering the property that it's, uh, that they're violating, you know,
that they don't want them to trespass. In that case, they can be cited. In Wyoming.
And just his corner fence isn't enough?
There might, there might not have been a fence here. So what I understand,
my understanding of this particular one, and I might have the facts wrong, but I've been briefed
a little bit on it, right? Was that there's a survey pin, but no fence. And that he actually used a step ladder,
like you're talking about, to cross, right? And so never touched the ground on-
That's crafty.
Yeah. Super crafty, right? And if it's the spot I think it is,
there had been some T-posts jammed into the ground with no trespassing on the private side
to make it impossible to squeeze through.
No. So you actually, the only way you could
do it was to go over the top.
No. So it was actually,
it, you know, may have taken a little
forethought to do this.
Now Nephi, why do you seem
like, you seem mildly uncomfortable? Are you just
amused? No, not at all. I love it. Like
Dave and I talk. Cause you're like, so you've
dealt a lot with water stuff.
Yes.
Okay.
Hit me with the water thing, the floating down the river.
Oh, it's different in every state.
No, no.
I mean, let's stick with Wyoming.
What about it?
You do a lot of water rights issues.
So why has no one ever said.
Here's my disclaimer.
I can't speak on behalf of like, first of all, I'm not an attorney.
Second of all, like as Nephi, I can give you opinions.
Let me ask you some yes or no questions.
Okay.
Are you,
or are you not an expert in water rights?
I'm going to say no.
Bullshit,
man.
Dave's not going to disagree with me either.
You know,
I actually,
I actually practiced water law for like eight years.
But I thought that was your whole deal.
You're all tangled up in that water stuff and all that.
Water is not water.
That's not water rights.
That's different.
So like waters of the U.S.
and things like that,
I can talk about waters of the state,
waters of the U.S.
I could talk about the arguments in them,
but when you're talking about water rights,
you're typically talking about
an individual's right to pull water.
That's not what I meant.
I meant floating down the river.
Yeah.
I can talk about it in a lot of states.
Why has no one challenged,
why has no landowner said, those people coming down my river are in my airspace.
Please give them a ticket.
Why have they not done it?
What I think has happened is I think we've carved out an exception the way we did for, that the FAA did for navigable airspace.
And we did the same thing for navigable water.
So we've effectively created an exception. We said it's navigable waters. They belong to the same thing for navigable water so we've effectively created
an exception navigable waters they belong to the waters of the u.s and we've the reason that we've
made that hook is the fact that they are navigable waters could you really say well we're calling
them navigable waters but we're going to tell you you can't navigate but my question is they're
saying that that little lens of water negates the little lens of water. You're in the water's airspace.
That's exactly right.
Right.
That's, that's the theory.
But, but, right.
Could you say.
Spoken like a true expert.
Could you say there, that there is or should be.
He does know.
See, he was being coy.
He does know a thing or two.
The thing is, Dave, honestly, like I'll say this, Dave is better at this stuff than anybody I know on earth.
And like, there's some of these issues that like you haven't even touched on yet that I'm hoping, like I'm sitting here with a
kind of a grin waiting for the chance to get you to talk about a different legal issue in Wyoming
that Dave is really, really good at, but like Dave is the man on this stuff. And so I could,
I can tell you what I think and what I know. And half of what I know comes from sitting in a car
with Dave and talking about suppressors while he tells me about trespassing.
Do you guys do it at the same time?
Basically.
Probably, yeah.
Just talking right over each other.
All right.
So go on.
All right.
So the last piece I was going to say is, okay, so water, we've created this exception for navigability, like this navigable waterway, right?
That creates an exception.
We've done it for airspace.
There's still a question about how far that airspace comes down, right?
And there's some Supreme Court case law from the 1940s that kind of suggests that, and it's specific to airplanes, right? But as long as you don't, and I mentioned it
earlier, as long as you don't disrupt the enjoyment of that private land, meaning you're not harassing
livestock or you're causing major problems, uh, to the landowner, uh, that if you're in that airspace,
uh, you're not violating that property, right? Now that hasn't been fully played out. This was
very specific to airplanes. It wasn't to foot traffic and it was, you know, 75 years ago. But I do have a question that I think and I don't have an answer to this, but like we've carved out a space for airplanes for navigable water or for air. We've traffic as a means of navigability of public, of a public
trust resource.
Cause what we're talking about here is a public trust resource of airspace to move commerce
and so forth, a public trust resource of water, uh, to move on.
And we have a public trust resource of land, uh, so air, water, and land.
And we haven't decided that land piece yet.
Um, but it gets back to the sort of, uh, come back to that, you know, interpret a statute
with absurd
results. And I, you know, if, if I were making an argument and I'm not providing, right, I'm not
providing legal advice, we're just having a conversation about, you know, what ifs, right?
Just another Dave.
But I, yeah, just another Dave, but I'd consider making that case that it's another form of
navigability of a, of a public resource, right? Of a public trust resource.
I want people to understand. I want to put some superlatives on here.
Sure.
This is not to degrade or demean any of the work done by conservation
pro-access organizations that do a lot of great land acquisitions like
in a minute nephi is going to tell us about this 8 000 acre property in utah which is super cool
okay um rocky mountain elk foundation has set aside i don't know where the hell they at now
i mean absurd millions numbers of acres that the rocky mountain elk foundation yeah has like
raised money to buy and to open to public access.
Ducks Unlimited, enormous amounts of acreage that they've bought
and handed over to public access.
All that stuff's great.
But in terms of a single act that would increase public access,
there's nothing that would come close in the next 10 generations of humans.
Nothing would come close to a broad scale clarification of the ownership of that airspace
in terms of foot traffic. You would be opening up literally hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of acres.
Millions.
Literally millions of acres.
You just have to find the right person and the right case.
You have to find the right opportunity, the right attorney, right person.
It's interesting.
There's another issue a lot like this in Wyoming.
Go on.
Well, in Wyoming, you can't hunt wilderness areas if you're a non-resident without a guide.
Oh, man.
I got a lot to say on that.
Oh, we've covered that one.
And I've even explored it with Dave.
Yeah, but not on your podcast.
No, I know.
But you know what I did?
I summed up a thing you explained to me once where I was asking you.
We talked about this recently.
And I mentioned, I don't think I mentioned you by name, but I mentioned something you explained to me.
Where I was always going like, with certain rules, I mentioned you by name, but I mentioned something you explained to me where I was always going like with certain rules.
I'm like, well, why?
What were the arguments for and against?
And you had explained to me that when it comes to legislative action, they don't memorialize all of the whys.
They memorialize the outcome, but no one like puts down like, here's the pros that so-and-so raised.
So when you go back to something
that's been in existence for a long time,
you don't have an accurate record
of who argued what point
and what were they really getting at.
It's just you just know what they came up with.
I was explaining that.
I might have mutilated that.
That's right.
Because I was asking you,
why, what was the argument for?
And you're like,
I can't go tell you what the argument's for.
Yeah, yeah.
We did talk about that. At some point, if you want, why? What was the argument for? And you're like, I can't go tell you what the argument's for. Yeah, yeah. We did talk about that.
At some point, if you want, we can talk about what I think the legal vulnerabilities to that law are.
I know you think it's vulnerable.
I've got a couple now.
I think I've talked to you before about at least one.
But I know I've got a couple of legal vulnerabilities to that law.
Explain the law.
One, you explain the law.
And then one, you explain the vulnerabilities.
Are you done with the corner crossing?
If you are.
I mean, are you.
I was trying to lay a huge superlative on it.
Yeah.
Oh, the other part is the other part of that, I think that, that, that, that, that sporting
community, the access community needs to be prepared for is they need to be prepared for
the fact that, um, fences are often laid down in terms of, uh, people eyeballing things. They're laid down in terms of people eyeballing things.
They're laid down in terms of convenience.
You might, if you have like a finger ridge coming off a ridge 130 years ago,
some guy might've run his fence just down the finger ridge
because it was approximately right.
And it was a hell of a lot easier than running it down some rocky draw
where you couldn't put a post in.
If this became a thing, we need to be prepared for, like I said, overcoming a lot of issues around marking, surveying.
It doesn't mean that you just jump up to any two fences that come together.
Those fences could literally, those fences could be 100 feet off.
So it's not just a matter of you hopping fences everywhere.
It would take some like educated doing to avoid conflict.
That was my last point.
I was going to, you made that, it made me think of something that would create, I can
create a little hyperbole out of this.
Something, if you do this, so you said we'd go out there and survey every corner and we'd you
know strategically right um one consequence of that is when you did when you just described what
you described of all of these fences running in different places like you may just open a can of
worms on adverse possession claims and just pit people, like just people fighting
over property boundaries.
Oh, what do you tell a guy like, hey, you know what?
Your neighbor is grazing a half section of your land.
Like you start doing that and find out where these corners actually are.
Like just can open worms everywhere.
You know that Robert Frost poem about the dudes building the fence?
It's called like fence building or something.
Those two guys like that come together every year and rebuild the stone fence between their properties.
People should go revisit that poem.
It's a great poem.
And they're lying.
He's like old stone.
He like, basically they're like friendly thing. And as you get into the poem, it's like he puts it like these old stone savages still out there, you know, wielding their stone weapons.
But yeah, fence building.
Anyways, there could be a lot of people who got over it a hundred years ago and then you reinvigorate the dispute.
Yeah.
The only, the very last thing I'd say is at least in Wyoming, and I think Montana tried this two years ago, legislature actually tried to introduce a bill to legalize, formally legalize corner crossing.
It was 2013 in Montana.
It was 2011 in Wyoming.
2011 in Wyoming.
Both efforts failed.
There was a reverse effort in Wyoming at one point to formally ban it, to make it illegal.
That also failed.
Oh, really? Everybody's like, politically ban it, to make it illegal. That also failed. Oh, really?
Everybody's like, politically, nobody wants to touch it.
If that came back up now in this state, I bet you could tip it the other direction.
Was that voted in the ballot?
It was in the legislature.
No, in the legislature.
It wasn't a ballot initiative.
Not every state has access to that.
Right.
And even then, it can be very problematic to pass something through a ballot initiative. You every state has access to that. And even then it can be very problematic to pass something through a ballot
initiative. You could tip it through public education
because you have a lot of people
who
you have a lot of people who are
deeply incentivized
financially and otherwise
that they want that land
for themselves.
And I can imagine if something like that
came up, you'd have a lot of people who were felt
like acutely, very personally threatened and a lot of other people who were sort of vaguely
supportive, but you're going to have people who are really going to want to fight because
they might be basically running, basically running, you
know, outfitter businesses on what would be public land because they, no one can get to
it except them because they lease a adjoining parcel.
You're gonna have some people that are going to fight tooth and nail to block that.
And you're going to have a lot of hunters who are just sort of like, oh, that'd be cool.
Fuck a corner hop, but I'm not going to get all involved.
Yeah.
And that's a hard thing to do too, right?
You're, you're talking about something that is going to inherently put the hunting community
against the landowner community where the hunting community in most of the country really
depends on the landowner community for access and opportunity.
And even in the West where you have a lot of public land, still some of the best places
can be on private lands too.
And you depend on those relationships and you're, you're talking about something that have a lot of public land, still some of the best places can be on private lands too. Sure.
And you depend on those relationships and you're talking about something that is-
Some of the best places.
I mean, the best places.
Yeah, right.
And so it goes to that.
I think there's some political reluctance to do that because you're creating a tension
with those that you want to be natural allies.
You want the landowner community and the hunting community to be on the same
page with conservation and,
and landowners to be supportive of hunting and allow access and opportunity.
And you could be putting this, you know, creating a situation.
I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying there's.
No, I'm with you, man. I would, that's why.
That's why people are afraid. I think afraid to,
afraid is not the right, right word, but maybe it is. It's,
there's a discomfort with taking
on that issue at a legislative level. Oh, I feel uncomfortable talking about it. And the reason I
feel uncomfortable talking about it, and I have to psych myself up to talk about it, the reason I
feel uncomfortable talking about it is I have cordial, very respectful relationships with a lot of landowners who would look at that and
probably feel threatened. And so I'm like, man, I don't want to like, I mean, that dude's a good
dude and he lets us on his place. I don't want to piss him off by talking about it. But I also feel
like in terms of if I have like an obligation to, um, if I have an obligation to my audience,
it would be to, um, explain to them things to them things that matter to them a lot.
And I feel like I have an obligation to talk about it, but it's thorny as shit.
Yeah.
I have a question and I don't know that it directly relates to this, but I noticed that
on X, which we use a lot up in Wisconsin and I use it in Michigan for hunting.
Why is it that the on X map, which I assume is very accurate up to a meter or
less shows that where the property lines were, they are no longer. Cause I noticed that some
of our property has expanded and on one of our neighbors who used to have thought he had 10 acres
now has like 7.4 acres. Yeah. So this is a, so. I mean, is that just satellite?
Pre-political world, like I actually worked doing mapping work for USDA NRCS for a long
time.
And that's like my background.
The reality is because Onyx isn't perfect.
And so when you look at Onyx, what you're looking at is Onyx goes out, when they get
that mapping information, they're collecting that mapping information from a host of different
entities, people, counties, federal agencies.
And what Onyx did that's magical is they're putting it all in one database
so that you can pull it all from one database. But you can't, and this is the other problem, you can't assume that
that database is right. Because it isn't. It's not right.
It's not reliable. It's not reliable down to that I'm putting my
foot, I'm putting my left foot on public and my right foot is now on public too.
And so I don't want people to think that that's the issue is it has to do with the accuracy level of the mapping.
And that's the other problem with this is because even your phone, unless you have a base station in a pickup truck that's kicking out, inch level accuracy, your phone's going to be
off by a couple of meters. The guy who went out and did the map may have been off by a couple
of meters. So it's not just the map, right? I mean, it's the map could be totally accurate.
The map could be a hundred percent, like make this assumption. The map could be a hundred percent
accurate, but the satellites aren't like the satellites telling you where you are on that map
might be within a meter, but not within the six inches you where you are on that map might be within a meter whenever
you look within the six inches you need to be every map is an abstraction of reality right
the earth is a circle with hills and everything else like that on it and you're getting a different
we call it a projection of that every time you're you're looking at a map you're looking at
a false representation of what it really exists in reality And that's why this gets to like all these infinite, like you just can't be 100% perfect.
And that's why you got to really watch yourself.
You can't just be like, oh yeah,
I've got this handheld unit now, so I must be fine.
So you tell the game warden, I'm okay to be here.
I've got my GPS unit.
You can't do that because.
So how accurate are those UFGA?
It depends.
So that's the next question.
The pins?
So how do we know that we're actually corner hopping?
Those are pretty accurate.
They're pretty dang good.
That's what everybody relies on.
Those are surveyed in.
Everything has a, any land ownership claim is going to default to something.
So if it's like surveyed and you put a corner pin, there has to be like a baseline understanding
at which you have to stop arguing.
Yes.
Your legal descriptions are based on a professional survey.
Like the legal descriptions that you put in the contract when you sell a piece of property are based on the surveys that are done out in the pin that's stuck in the ground.
And the projection that that pin was based on.
You can rely on that.
It's all in there.
And so it's all part of legal deed.
The problem is like when you get it on your phone, you're not often working in the same projection.
It's just an assumption.
We'll have to realize that in this world where we think everything is, you know, digital, it's at your fingertips.
It's not as cut and dried as you'd like.
I appreciate that answer because that's
always puzzled me and I didn't know what to
tell the neighbor.
I said, well, you just lost it, you know?
Well, I got one last fence thing.
We were recently out on a place, a rancher,
I know when he's got, I noticed he had two
fences with his boundary with his neighbor.
I don't know,
there's like six feet apart
for long ass ways.
And I later said to him,
what's up with you and your neighbor
having the double fence?
This is a trivia question.
Why do you think they got a double fence?
It was because of the easement
or because they could drive cattle
on it more easily?
Nope.
Bulls breeding cows through the fence.
Oh.
Oh.
Well.
Huh?
And they needed six feet of space?
That's not a leader.
I didn't go over there.
I didn't know.
I didn't go over there and measure it.
But I was like, why do you guys have like, did you like each put your own, like what's
up with that?
And he goes, oh no, it was the issue with, they were putting whatever.
And I had, I traditionally ran my, one or the other, like I ran was an issue with they were putting whatever, and I traditionally ran one or the other.
I ran my bulls, and they had something going on over there,
and blah, blah, blah, and they just put a buffer in there
to reduce some of the tensions.
Well, those are good bulls.
The tensions between the herds.
That's a good neighbor right there.
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All right.
Nephi, break down this.
We started with a sad story
where people are in trouble.
Now we'll move to a happy access story.
Access.
Hey, you know what?
Uh, hunters access is the number one, the number one thing impeding people from participating
in hunting or the shooting sports is access.
Even shooting sports.
Nowhere to shoot.
Yes.
Nowhere to shoot.
So you don't have access to either the expertise.
You don't have somebody to teach you to do it.
Right.
That's a huge impediment.
You don't have access to a community to be involved in that leads people to leave it. So you may,
you know, live in a community, like you're, you're the guy outside, you know, nobody likes you
anymore. Um, accesses, access to ranges, access to ammunition, access to, you know, all that stuff.
But yeah, in Utah, kind of a good access story.
Same guy that we worked with to do the- Right to hunt fish.
Right to hunt fish.
He also, Casey Snyder last year did a, ran a bill to make it illegal to bait big game animals on public lands.
Awesome bill.
Really?
Yep.
He crushed it and he had lots of support from a variety of
On what lands? Public lands. So in Utah, until last year, it was legal. You could take a box
of apples. You could throw it on the ground in the middle of the sagebrush in Utah. You could
set a trail camera over it to talk to your cell phone. You could sit there and wait for animals
to show up at that bait site and then go out and shoot the animal. This is a mule deer or a trophy elk.
And at the same time, you could also sell that location information. And so a trade, you know,
Casey, to his credit, took on a lot of, you know, a lot of flack and interest.
Oh, he must've.
No, dude, he is, he is a, he's the man. He's a real champion of those issues. Well,
he also took on in Utah, this 8,000 acres. So use of state lands is a big issue.
You know, are they public lands? Aren't they in a variety of states? And in Utah, they face a lot
of challenges there. And they had 8,000 acres in the Cinnamon Creek drainage, what it was called.
And it's one of the few real public accessible areas in Northern Utah. It's in Casey's district.
It was going up for a lease sale
and Casey was able to put together,
to work with a bunch of other people,
including the Department of Natural Resources
there in Utah to win that lease.
So that 8,000 acres now
will be a wildlife management unit
where people can,
where the public can go hunt.
When you say a lease,
how long is a lease?
I don't know the answer to that question.
I'd be speculating.
So I'm not going to, but they're still working on the issues.
So for people who live in Utah and are interested in these issues,
they need your support at the legislative level.
And so this is a pitch as a lobbyist that I'm going to make a lot to people,
which is if these are issues you care about, respectfully call your legislators and talk with them respectfully about these issues because, you know, nothing
poisons your issues more than calling and yelling at somebody and nothing helps them
better than hearing that you actually care and you know that they're a real person.
And for in this case that, you know, as Casey's putting together the stuff to, you know, carry
this through the legislature in the spring, you know, call your legislators and tell them to support, you know, that effort and support those bills.
Here's who all kicked in significant funding.
Mule Deer Foundation, Sportsman for Fish and Wildlife, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Nature Conservancy, State of Utah, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Pretty cool.
So if you live in Utah. That's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Pretty cool. So if you live in Utah, congratulations.
Yeah, new spot to hunt.
Yes.
All right.
Okay, here's one for you, Nephi.
I don't know if you want to answer this as your job
or answer it as you.
We'll see what it is first, and then later on, I'll tell you which one it was after I get in trouble for it or
don't.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's a good idea.
You can follow up.
So next week I'll be like, oh, by the way, that was Nephi.
Yeah.
It has nothing to do with it.
In fact, it wasn't even Nephi.
It was some other guy.
Some guy.
Sounded a lot like him.
What was your, being in the firearms industry, um, and working on policy and also, you know, public opinion, what was your take on the Alec Baldwin movie set shooting?
I mean, it was stretched in every imaginable.
What a terrible tragedy.
Direction.
I mean, that's the, the, the most, the thing to say is what a terrible tragedy. Direction. I mean, that's the most, the thing to say is what a terrible tragedy.
None of us, I don't think, sitting around this table certainly know all the details.
I'm sure that it's an ongoing legal issue with lots of stuff going on there.
And I think that everybody ought to be able to just step back from that and say, like, what a sad thing that changed a bunch of people's lives permanently. And I think the best thing that you
can possibly say about it is there are rules of firearm safety. And if everybody obeys those rules,
this doesn't happen. And that's just reality. And you can just take that to the bank.
There's a level of education there. And I'm not saying these, you know, everybody that was there was or was not educated. I have no idea. But what's the first rule of firearm safety? Every gun is always loaded. You never point a firearm at anything you're not willing to destroy. You keep your finger off the trigger. You don't shoot unless you're sure of what you're shooting at and what's beyond it. And so I think that rather, you know, I can't say anything about that situation
because I don't know all the particulars, but I can say for everyone listening,
for all of us involved, no matter what we're doing with guns, obey the safety rules.
And this has been a big thing.
NSSF, you know, if I could brag about us just for a second,
like safety issues are things that we're huge on.
Project Child Safe, Operation Secure
Store, Own It, Secure It, Respect It. These are all initiatives that we have where we put
big time work and money into trying to educate people on firearm safety, on safe storage,
on all these things, because really we all ought to be able to play in this firearm space
safely. And we've demonstrated it since the 1950s or 40s, whatever you said, like you
can see it in the rates of how we've gotten better at this.
And we can continue to do that if we're all willing to just, you know, have a discussion
about it, an educational discussion about it that's, you know, absent the political
undertones.
And so, you know, it's again, super sad and it's ought to be an example to all of us to
take a look at what our everyday practices are and just be better.
I was surprised that, that in those scenes you're using functioning firearms and even
that the same firearm might be used like for real.
And then later that day used as a prop.
I,
you know,
I can't,
there are guys who are experts in the industry who have talked about this and
have done articles about it already.
I didn't say it's naughty.
I said,
I was surprised.
Yeah.
And it is one of those things where,
or again,
like,
you know,
I'm not exactly sure other than hearsay,
like exactly what happened on that set.
But I do know that the industry honestly has best practices that mirror what we're talking about with the with the rules of firearm
safety they obey those rules in the industry they obey best practices when you go to the right sets
with the right people and so i don't think it would be fair you know a lot of people have been
like oh they need to quit they need to use cartoon guns and stuff like that now. And I just think, you know, I'm not enough of an expert to say what everybody should or should not do. But I can certainly say that, you know, there's a reason that, you know, they have really good armors that they have, you know, a lot of these movies, like, you know, dudes who are like former guys from, you know, highest end military are there
doing on site, making sure that people are following these rules. And so I just think
like all of us, just again, I'm not going to criticize, you know, what happened there,
but I'm going to say like, it's for me, I have to think about, okay, how do I work with the
firearms that are in my safe around my kids, around my friends, around my job, around the things that I'm doing, and just make sure that I'm doing the best practices that I can
when I'm doing that. There was a lot of turmoil on that movie set aside from the day, like there
were walk-offs and the days before, like corners are being cut everywhere. So it was just a horrible
combination of things that came together in that one moment. But Steve, what you said, how,
you know, guns are used for you know
shooting real bullets with like casings and powder and actual projectiles are then brought to a movie
set to be loaded with blanks and somehow there was a live round with a casing and a bullet and
powder in there i that's that's how i i don't understand how that happened at all it seems
because normally they they use blanks with with you, a casing and powder, but no projectile.
I've used those in movies and plays before.
Well, reading about that there's like a rolling tray that had ammo plus unidentified ammo, loose ammo and a fanny pack.
And just like, no, I mean mean some people know now because they're
investigating it like i don't want to come in and like comment like this that and the other thing
but the impression one gets from reading about it from a law enforcement perspective there were
plenty of reasons to to come in and say no vomit what like that seemed to be kind of the from the the people that i saw speak about it
were like it's very hard to untangle what exactly was going on here and yeah with what was being
used how it was being managed a lot of questions but i i have like two things one i felt that
i had some commentary on two ways it was received. I think that
maybe we're at a safe distance now.
I was alarmed by the way in which the victim,
somewhat like a mother
and husband,
died.
Who had nothing to do with any of this shit.
Right?
Are you talking about the cinematographer?
Yeah. The director got hit in the shoulder.? Are you talking about the cinematographer? Yeah.
The director got hit in the shoulder.
He survived, though.
Well, okay.
Yeah.
But I'm just saying, yeah.
A mother of, like, young children was killed.
So it was like, to me, in a way, when everyone,
when it became so politicized, I looked at it and I kept thinking,
like, man, there is not enough space. The way it was being
utilized and weaponized, I
felt people weren't taking the time
to think like, here's a person
at work for a paycheck
who has young children who just
died. And I don't
know what her opinions are about any of this,
but that needs to be paid attention
to. The
other thing is I found on the other side of stuff is that I think a lot of
people had a lot of people who were struggling with why all this,
this from,
from the gun rights community,
why all this kind of,
you know,
vehemency toward Alec Baldwin or toward the industry.
It'd be a little bit like,
I kind of like in some ways like
demonstrated a hypocrisy where you have
someone who questions why,
why does anybody need these guns anyways?
It's like,
oh,
unless they're making a movie,
then it's cool.
Right.
But that you would have one for something
else is ridiculous.
You don't need,
people don't need those things.
Why do they need these things?
But,
oh,
but no,
I'm a,
I'm a movie maker.
It's, it's fine for us. Story'm a movie maker. It's fine for us.
Storyteller.
Yeah, it's good for us.
Yeah, I'm telling stories
about bad people with guns.
Matter of fact,
we got somebody laying around.
We don't even know
what the hell they are.
The best thing.
But now you.
No, no, no, no, no.
That was a little,
I think that's where
a lot of that just,
that's where a lot
of that frustration came from
was sort of,
there's kind of like
glaring hypocrisy which and people don't like there there couldn't have been an easier target
than alec baldwin either like couldn't have been like a more so it like from both both sides it
was just insanity yeah setting setting you know that specific situation aside like hey teach your
kids firearm safety you know don't don't hide from that. You know, take the opportunity to not just, and you should be, you know, if you've got young kids in the home, you know, get a safe.
And if, but also teach them firearm safety.
You know, talk about these things and have a real discussion because not a lot of people in the world today want to do that.
You know, these, you know, guns are taboo.
We're not going to talk about guns.
You know, we're not going to deal with that.
And like the more we can do to like have, you know, conversations that are intelligent about firearms and firearm safety.
Like we're just, every day we do that, we live in a better country.
I just finished a book, like it's done done now, about kids.
Like it's called Outdoor Kids Inside World kids like it's called uh outdoor kids inside world so it's
about raising outdoor kids and in the hunting section i talk about um how you communicate
about guns with kids and one of the things that uh i've just really strived to do is we have never
taken the attitude that these are that guns are like these magical things.
Right.
They're not capable of magical acts.
It's like it's a thing you can understand very well.
And we're going to talk about how they function, how you handle them safe.
We're not going to create like they're not fetishized.
They're not attributed with magical powers.
If you look at them wrong, something will happen. It's like, like a functional practical understanding of what it is, what's safe, what's
not safe, how it would be that you would hurt someone with one and talk about in a very realistic
sense. Yeah. My eight, I have an eight year old and 11 year an 11-year-old, both little boys, and both, you know, have been to the range so many times I can't even count.
And there have been, you know, my 11-year-old now has gone on his first hunts.
And, you know, like those kids, like they know.
And so it makes it much easier because they've got that familiarity and they've seen what a firearm can do. And so this,
you know, they know when they go to somebody's house, like it's much easier. They've had those
conversations. They know why they're supposed to walk away. They know why they, why these things
aren't toys. They know why they call grownups. They know all those things. And I just think
those are healthy conversations to have. They shouldn't be, we shouldn't hide from them.
Okay. We're going to do, we're going to jump into some quick hitter stuff.
Everything we're going to bring up as quick hitters is as important
and warrants as much discussion as we've already done anyway,
but just in the interest of time, I'm going to do some quick hitter stuff.
I'm going to bounce from one of you to the other.
It'll be a contest who can do it the quickest hit.
Nephi.
Why is there no ammo? Yeah, Nephi, why is there no ammo?
Yeah, Nephi.
Is it a vast conspiracy?
12 million people bought firearms for the first time since the beginning of 2020 that have never owned a gun before in their entire lives.
They tend to train more than people who traditionally own guns. And if those 12 million people each bought a box with a hundred rounds of ammunition, that's a billion new rounds of ammunition in
demand on the market in the last two years that didn't exist before. The reason you can't find
ammo is because America changed significantly in the last two years. And the people that bought
those guns were 58% increase in minorities, 40% in women.
They were Republicans.
They were Democrats.
And it's changed and it's taken the company's time to be able to ratchet up to match the demand.
That was phenomenal.
I'm going to get you another quick hit.
Okay.
But I have a question on that.
Please.
How many people buy 6 five three hundred weatherby
i can answer that at least i'm looking around the table because here's here's what's been
explained let me do let me try and then you tell me where i'm right and wrong this doesn't count
against my time you don't uh ammunition manufacturer needs to tool up and they run runs of certain loads and calibers.
And there's like huge demand and huge deficits in certain things.
And so they're running those things that have the greatest need from the greatest amount of retailers.
People are clamoring for it.
And it makes it that you don't have the luxury of stopping to tool up for what might be regarded as a more esoteric round.
How was that?
Very good.
If you want to know
what guns Americans
own, look at the
shelf and the ammo
that you can see back
on the shelf.
That's what guns
Americans own.
It's not what they
don't own.
You want to look like,
why is no one buying
this?
Why can't I find
Whelan?
Nobody has a.30-06
anymore.
I haven't seen one of
those on the shelves
in like two years.
My kid just took
possession of one on Friday.
You guys...
Any ammo to use with it?
We're worried about that.
Well, it's from 1903.
I'm going to get some from Yanni.
But he's got some.
Thank you.
Okay, next one.
Dave?
Oh, I had a second one for Nephi.
Well, I had kind of another quick hitter, ammo quick hitter thing.
Never mind.
It's too... It'll be faster. Well, okay. You of another quick hitter, ammo quick hitter thing. Nevermind. It's too-
It'll be faster.
Well, okay.
You're opening up a rabbit hole.
Is there a worry that if they do all the steps to ramp up production, that the market will
drop out and they'll be left with this new facility that's half finished?
I can't answer that question.
Okay.
I think yes and no.
Okay.
They are ratcheting it up.
But they're like, is this for real enough where we'd go and build a new plant?
Yeah.
But I can tell you that they are building the new plants.
Okay.
Dave, big infrastructure bill.
Everybody fighting about it, getting mad at each other.
They won't vote if they can't vote for this.
They won't vote if they can't vote for that. But in the end, the infrastructure bill, I gather, people in the conservation world had some cause for enthusiasm and excitement about the infrastructure bill.
Wildlife enthusiasts.
They did.
Why?
Well, this is a quick hitter, right?
So, not to say that these aren't rich issues, but just in the interest of time.
Yeah.
So, their biggest thing., so this passed, right?
Be clear that the infrastructure bill was bipartisan and it passed in November, sometime in November, right?
So it's done.
It's happening.
One of the biggest things in there is it created a grant program, $350 million federal grant program for wildlife crossings. So a competitive grant
program around the country states can use to, you know, so many states have been identifying
places of highest. What's that get us like three crossings? Well, so a crossing, so crossings can
be underpasses, overpasses, and I believe overpasses are in that 12 to $13 million range
a piece roughly now. So it actually gets you quite a lot.
Yeah, nice.
Some overpasses cost a lot more.
There's one that we're working on organizationally in California in the Los Angeles area for mountain lions, actually, because there's this urban lion population.
This is Cal-Anne's favorite subject, right?
Yeah, they get smacked by vehicles there.
So fundraising for that right now.
But this will create resources
for projects all over the country. There's also a lot of money available for forest restoration
projects. So think about cheatgrass and forest grassland, sagebrush, right? So cheatgrass
mitigation, forest fire mitigation, things like that. A lot of money for that.
There were things like Forest Legacy Road Program funded. So there's money now to maintain
forest roads, you know, some of the two track inventory roads that are out there. There's also
money to decommission roads and restore that habitat. There's also money for culverts.
And you don't think, you think, well, culverts, what does that do?
Well, creating fish habitat have had their movement cut off,
but also for other species of fish as well, game species that we might like to catch, right, that that program's there for.
So there's all sorts of stuff that's as quick as I can be without going into lots of details.
But there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in that infrastructure package that go back directly to projects on the ground that will benefit wildlife habitat and
opportunities for hunters and anglers. Yeah. The next time you're sitting there
making blanket statements about how terrible lobbyists are, keep in mind that when they were
debating that bill, wildlife people were in the room saying, I understand you need to cut a bunch
of stuff out, but here's why you can't cut out the fish and wildlife stuff.
Don't touch the fish and wildlife stuff.
This is why it's important.
If not, if no one was putting a bug in their ear, they would have axed it.
They would have axed it in favor of whoever was putting a bug in their ear about some other aspect that they cared about.
And it was a lot of bugs in a lot of years, right? I mean, it was the entire,
not just the hunting and fishing community, but the broader conservation community. Everybody
rallied around this idea, especially around wildlife crossings, but a lot of these other
pieces too. It was an economic thing for wildlife crossings. It was costing, I think the last report
I saw was vehicle collisions with wildlife were
costing the economy something like $6 billion a year. So just from an economic standpoint,
a $350 million investment in addressing a $6 billion annual problem makes good business there.
But also when you look at the sheer numbers of animal vehicle collisions that animals lost,
you think about that from an opportunity standpoint as a hunter, you can't help but think, well, you know, that Ford Taurus smashed that deer
and then it goes some opportunity for somebody, right.
To, um, food on the table, all that kind of stuff.
So really, really some good stuff in that bill.
So whether you, they're going to be, it's like any legislation that has a lot of things
in it, they're going to be things that make people angry and things that make people happy but at the end of the day the beauty of the
bipartisanship is like uh i you know i don't 100 like this bill but i i like 80 of it so i'll
support it yeah you know then a lot of people get a lot of things out of it uh nefi what will
2021 pitman roman Robertson funding?
What's that going to come in at?
And like,
how long does that money take to hit the ground?
Uh,
it's going to be a lot this last year.
The,
the,
the money that we're getting at the end of this year is going to be over a
billion dollars just from firearms and ammunition.
It's the first time that doesn't include the Dingle Johnson stuff.
It doesn't include anything but the firearms portion over $1 billion.
From 2021.
Yes.
And again, it's like...
Even though no one can buy ammo.
Yeah.
Imagine if the shells were fully
stocked. It'd be $2 billion.
The largest contributor to Pittman-Robertson
is federal.
Oh, yeah.
Federal premium ammunition. Yeah, I'm sorry sorry i thought i meant the feds not federal they're just huge and it's but yeah
it's uh oh yeah federal ammunition for sure yeah it's it's over a billion dollars the big challenge
is going to be and you know for what fish and wildlife agencies is going to making sure that
they can meet the match because people always forget about this.
So that money that comes in that billion dollars,
80% of that is from non hunters.
It's from people who are buying,
who are sport shooters and people who are buying a defensive handgun,
just like they did in the 1850s.
And so those triangle shaped,
those triangle shaped bullets that kicked in a penny,
that's 80%.
It's 80% of the market are those folks.
And so.
Yeah, that's the thing that like, that's an interesting point we've talked about before
where hunters almost like to over-recognize their PR contributions.
Yep.
And when you get down to like where that money's coming from, it's coming from shooters.
Yeah.
But the caveat is that hunters are the match because you have to match that money.
So hunters also buy tags.
So where you and I make up a smaller portion,
maybe as hunters, we may make a,
you may make up a small portion.
For the state matching portion.
Yes, because you've got to bring for that billion dollars.
If we want to see that billion dollars
on the ground in conservation,
states have to pony up a billion dollars.
They have to come, you have to get
somebody else, you know, all of us at this table have to get one of our friends to buy a tag,
whether or not they fill it or not. Because if we want that money to then be able to be used,
that federal money, you got to match it. And there's some states that have done that in other
ways. It doesn't have to be licenses, right? You can pass, you know missouri has a one percent um sales uh you know there's a tax
that they put towards conservation recreation issues so there are other ways to do it um but
states need to be really inventive and they need to get on the ball because we don't see the it
hasn't slowed down dave i'm gonna let you pick a pick and here. Do you want to do a quick hit on restoring America's Wildlife Act?
Which one is more titillating to you?
That or revisiting legal issues around wolves and bears?
Or you can do a twofer.
Oh, man, a twofer, right?
You can do a twofer.
We'll see how good you are.
Yeah, I'd love to touch on both of them.
Okay, do a twofer.
So recovering America's Wildlife Act.
We're talking about Pittman Robertson.
And I told you about at the very beginning of this, I told you about the founding of National Wildlife Federation. Okay, do it. is it's similar, right? We have Pittman-Robertson and we have license fees and we still have 12,000 species of what are species of special concern
that have been identified by states
through what are called
state wildlife action plans
where every 10 years
they're identifying the species
in their state that are of the most concern
that need the most investment
and where you can do some conservation work
to help support those species.
Doesn't mean they're threatened or endangered or threatened with becoming endangered of a federally listed species.
It just means the state views them as at risk and there needs to be an investment.
Well, we don't have the money for it.
Sportsmen and women have been paying Pitt and Robertson fees for 80 years, right?
And we don't have the resources, you know,
that that's supposed to go to not only the species we hunt and fish, but everything else.
Right. So enter recovering America's wildlife act, which the idea was to, to amend the Pittman
Robertson act to create this new fund, uh, that would be used to help States implement those,
uh, state wildlife action plans to help conserve the
non-game species.
And then, so that would free up a bunch of money for hunter and angler dollars to put,
you know, to take out of that pot potentially that right now we're paying to manage all
species through our hunter tags.
And maybe now that'll come back in and be able to dump more into mule deer and pronghorn
conservation, moose conservation.
And then, you know, we have this new pot of money that could be used for everything else.
And so right now, like in the Senate, it's been it was this bill was introduced earlier this year in the Senate.
It has 32 co-sponsors right now as we're talking, 16 Republicans, 15 Democrats, and an independent.
This is one of those cases where Whit Fosberg from TRCP has explained to us during highly partisan, nothing can get done times,
sometimes real good common sense conservation work gets taken care of because it gives them a chance to have a win.
Yeah.
And the biggest hangup on this, I think, for the longest time on getting this passed was how are we going to pay for it?
And I think there's, they've identified a way to pay for it, which comes out of federal revenues generated from violations of environmental and natural resource laws and regulations.
So it's programs administered by the EPA,
Environmental Protection Agency.
They levy fines for violations,
environmental violations,
goes into this big pot.
And now we're saying,
we're going to take part of that
that's not already going to the general treasury
to fund schools, highways, whatever.
And we're going to say, you know what?
Maybe what this should be used for,
they created the problem by violating the law and creating these cleanups that we need to deal with.
Maybe having some of that money diverted to going back into wildlife conservation isn't a bad way to
do this, right? So that's sort of the pay for, and it seems to have pretty broad support. I mean,
you have real politically diverse senators that have signed on to this. And like I said, it's got momentum. It's got equal number, you know, the one independent typically caucuses with Democrats. So you really have 16 and 16. You have this really, it's as bipartisan as you can get. And so the question is, is it going to happen? And hopefully, like you said,
maybe one of these common sense things
that just lines up and happens.
And that's one of the things
that we've been working on
as an organization for years
and a lot of other organizations.
You know, I know NIFA
is with National Shooting Sports Foundation
has been engaged in this too.
And this is something
that the entire conservation community from the sporting groups to trade associations,
to broader conservation organizations that like they're,
they're all rallying around this.
It's,
and it,
uh,
it'll be a game changer,
an infusion of something at $1.4 billion a year into,
uh,
into the States to manage these species that right now are just woefully
underfunded.
Got it.
Yeah.
Bears and wolves.
Bears and wolves.
So how do we want to talk?
So there's just a lot going on around that right now, right?
That could just open up rabbit holes.
You know, you've got the, so you've got the state of Wyoming's petitioned now to delist
grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone area.
Again.
Well, this, yeah, well, I think this is the
first time they've actually formally petitioned.
Every other time it was the Fish and Wildlife
Service that initiated a rulemaking process and
formally proposed delisting.
Uh, in this instance.
This is the first time that what happened?
That the state of Wyoming has actually taken
the initiative to petition the Fish and Wildlife
Service.
So there's two ways.
But they're petitioning the Fish and wildlife service to do something that the fish and
wildlife service already tried to do.
Twice.
They tried to do it twice.
So what the hell difference does it make that you petition them to do it?
They already tried to do it.
I agree.
No, I agree.
Right.
But perhaps the, maybe the state was thinking, we don't know if this administration is going to try again.
Okay.
And the only two ways under the act to start a process are either on the initiative of the Fish and Wildlife Service or somebody submitting a petition that requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to act.
Yeah.
And so if they suspected that the Fish and Wildlife Service wasn't going to be interested in doing it or might delay, might take a long time. Maybe the state said, all right, well, we're going to do it and force them
to do something. The other thing that could, you know, there's a legal calculus to it, right? So
in the past when the Fish and Wildlife Service does it, it means that any lawsuit arising out
of that is typically filed in Washington DC or in Montana. It goes to that court in Missoula,
which will, yeah.
Yeah. Right.
So, so here the state of Wyoming submits the petition.
If their petition is declined, then maybe they initiate the lawsuit in Wyoming, federal
district court.
Get a friendlier judge.
And who, right.
Because the judge in Missoula always like, they always find a way to say, uh-uh.
Right.
That seems to happen.
Yeah.
Strange.
Seems to happen.
So that's the, that's sort of where we are with grizzly bears i'm just so you see all you see that big
list of you know that letter that went to um deb island and it was signed by i don't know what it
was bernie sanders is on there i don't know 16 17 senators signed a letter calling for like
instant re-enlisting of the gray wolf.
Of the wolf.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I saw that.
Yeah.
That's happened before.
No, no.
I sent it to someone who kind of analyzes that stuff.
And he said, I'm sure they're currying favor with the animal rights community who donated some money to them.
And they're doing like a pointless thing that'll lead nowhere.
So they can be like, see, I tried.
We tried.
Yeah.
No, it's happened before.
There are other times where, you know, members of Congress have done that. lead nowhere so they can be like see i tried we tried yeah no that's happened before there are
other times where you know members of congress have done that i was a little surprised to see
old burn on there man like being from like vermont and everything really she seems like you were no
not really no i really wasn't corinne always wants to get bernie corinne always wants to get
bernie sanders on the show and i'm like tell me why and we'll do it. Maybe now she's got her in.
Because he's on this letter?
Yeah, that's funny.
Yeah, so there's a ton going on with wolves, though, right?
And that's sort of a weird web to unravel about all the different things going on with wolves.
So you have all the different state laws
that are getting a lot drawing a lot of attention in montana and idaho on wolf hunting right they're
gonna kill 90 of them yeah write that in your journal i don't it's not like and then come back
to it in a year or two no we've covered it we've covered it quite heavily like we've covered quite
heavily the discrepancy between what the rules are and how one would sum them up in a headline on USA Today.
Right.
So you've been through all that.
Oh, we've covered it.
Yeah.
But what you do have is like this now a really interesting situation where wolves in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington, Panhandle of Utah,
like that whole population was delisted. Prior to the prior administration doing a nationwide
delisting rule that effectively delisted everything else nationwide, right? Except for
those that were already delisted and Mexican wolves and red wolves. But delisted everything else.
I think that what that did is it created a little bit of an opening here.
And so now you have this petition to relist gray wolves in the western United States.
Only instead of calling them a, like right now, they were delisted as a distinct population segment in that area, geographic area I described.
Since then, you've had movement of those wolves.
Those wolves are genetically, you can find genetic connectivity between those wolves and wolves in Western Oregon.
One just got killed on I-5 after he walked across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Right, in California near Yosemite, right?
Like 15 miles north of Yosemite National Park, something like that. No shit. Like these, you're having this genetic interchange. I might be
mixing up two wolves. There's a famous wolf running around California. He just got hit on
the side of the road. Yeah. No foul play. That's the one I'm talking about. Yeah. Um, so, but what
you have now is at the time wolves were reintroduced to Idaho and Wyoming, central Idaho and Wyoming,
like there was no genetic connectivity between any other wolves because there just weren't wolves other places. Now those wolves have dispersed.
You've had some other wolves dispersed from Canada and you have these, a more genetically
connected population. And so now this petition to, to relist is saying, you can't draw this
distinct population segment the same way. It can't be Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Eastern Oregon,
Eastern Washington, Northern Utah. It can't be that anymore.
It has to be the West.
And by the way, when you draw it that big, it hasn't recovered West wide.
Yeah.
And so it, by delisting them nationwide, it actually created this opening to make a push
to relist wolves in the entire Western United States.
They can use your success against you.
Right.
Right.
And then, and so what you're left with is, okay, so you have a petition out there and
the service has to act on it in within a year under the endangered species act.
And so what's going to happen, right?
If what's going to happen is whether they say, yes, they're warranted for listing or
no, they're not warranted for listing.
There's going to be a lawsuit filed. So next year, this time, that's this you can write in
the journal too. There's now going to be a lawsuit in the forum of whomever's choosing,
whoever's filing it in somewhere in the Western United States, maybe Montana, to say, say that
service says not warranted, that lawsuit will be filed
in front of judge of their choosing.
And we're, we're just, we just hit the reset button on wolves.
My, my opinion is we've hit the reset button on wolves and we're looking at probably in,
you know, another decade long fight.
Um, we'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
That's my crystal ball.
Like, you know, crystal ball and tin tin hat at the
same time right you know it's sort of what i'm thinking we're looking at with that was one of
the primary um we talked about this last week where i was talking about the the ebb and flow
of things and like the ways in which it's hard to find a win because I was disappointed when President Trump removed the roadless rule for Tongass
and opened up more of Tongass National Forest for road building. I was disappointed by that.
And I was happy to hear that the Biden administration is putting those rules back
into place. At the same time, one of the things I've worried a lot about
the Dan Biden administration is I've worried
that just some crazy wolf-bear stuff is going to come down.
But then other people say, well, it's not really,
the way that those rules work, it's not really susceptible
to four-year administration changes.
It plays out in a more slow way.
Do you feel that that's safe to say or not safe to say?
Or let me put it in a more clear question.
Does having, like if you have like Democrats hold the Senate, Democrats hold the White
House, is it a foregone conclusion that they're going to walk back state management of wolves
and bears?
Or is it not something that they can just put their hands on the dial? I don't think because it so rarely happens. Okay. I don't think that Congress
jumps in here and does anything. Okay. I think you have, you'll, you'll see political statement
bills that you've already seen. You'll see political statement bills saying grizzly bears
should be delisted, you know, a grizzly bear delisting act. And you'll see statement bills
of a grizzly bear protection act that would be along the lines of a bald and golden eagle protection act.
I don't think under the current construction of Congress, even with Democrats controlling both bodies of Congress, that either like that effort could go anywhere or if Republicans took control that that effort could go anywhere.
The place where I think you have to watch is what
happens at the administration level. And that process can play out quicker because you have
timelines prescribed in the Endangered Species Act to respond to petitions. And then you have
litigation. That's the part that gets protracted. But you have a petition. The Biden administration
by law is required to respond to that petition in a statutorily prescribed period of time and do an analysis best based on the best available science
as to whether, uh, wolves should be listed or not. And they'll have to answer that question.
And that answer half of the people will really like, and the other half won't,
and that's going to create a fight and that's just that's just
how our system works and why we have these perpetual fights about predators and almost
no other federally listed species it's always the charismatic species and typically predators
and uh yeah so that's kind of where i think we are i will tell you we should talk again
in a few months, right?
Because I'm finishing up helping somebody write a book and I'm finishing a book chapter
where it's called Dave on Wolves.
No, it's on grizzly bears.
No, it's an analysis of my contribution to it is how to use the act in a different way
to empower states or encourage states to be able to take on more of a leadership role in managing threatened and endangered species.
And my case study is grizzly bears, and I propose a solution for how you get grizzly bears back in state management, even if they're listed.
Okay, one last quick hit for you fellers.
Your Mountain Podcast. Hit it. Oh. Okay, one last quick hit for you fellers. Your Mountain Podcast.
Hit it.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, there it is.
So for the next hour,
this is what we're going to talk about.
We thought we were going to be able
to hide all of that
and no one was ever going to find it
and it was going to be
to our betterment.
No, what better teaser
than what we've been doing?
Yeah, no, that's pretty much
what we do.
So Nephi and I
and another buddy of ours, Mike, Mike McGrady, uh, you know, three years ago, one, just, just as we were leaving the
governor's office, uh, we'd been listening to a bunch of different podcasts and we thought,
you know, there's one, they're all stupid, right? No, there's a lot of great, there's a lot of
great podcasts out there. Um, but we actually did feel like there was one space that, that wasn't
completely occupied where we, we could step in and
provide value. And that was really providing from a boots on the ground, like a guys in the trenches
kind of approach of, let's talk about the law and policy around a lot of these conservation issues
at a state level and federal level. And so we created this, basically our tagline is,
every day things happen that affect your land, water, and wildlife.
And you should know about them.
And that's where we come in and talk about all the policy nuances.
So it's really kind of a walkout, kind of nerdy podcast called Your Mountain.
I don't know why we keep doing it.
And, you know, you were gracious enough to be our first guest on that podcast three years ago.
And you're like, oh, these guys aren't going to.
120 episodes.
140. We've done
140 plus now.
We have as many episodes as
listeners.
We're moving up those charts.
Available everywhere.
That's the deal. Available everywhere.
When someone gives you a chance to plug your stuff, don't walk it back.
I appreciate that.
It's been super fun.
It's given us an opportunity.
Before we left the governor's office, we said, like, we want to stay in touch.
We want to keep doing stuff together.
And so this has been an excuse for us to sit down in an office once a week at night and, like, spend an hour talking about.
Like, we had a whole episode.
You talked about corner crossing, and it's kind of funny like we did a episode 118 we spent
an hour and like 40 minutes talking about that specific issue you know the wilderness rule we
talk about you know breaking down pr breaking down lotus breaking down you know esa and and you know
four different episodes and stuff like you're welcome and it. And it's been super fun as friends to be able to,
I'm sure you get it.
Yeah, like if you want to become the kind of person
when you're driving down the road with your friends,
you can be like, no, that's not how it works.
Listen to your show.
That's what you should do.
And then you can tell people, that's not what happens, man.
What happens is this.
First it goes to the Supreme Court.
Yeah.
Yeah, like if you want a nerdy podcast.
I'm not trying to make it seem nerdy. I'm trying make it seem like to understand the nuts and bolts of everything like that's that's we yeah it's a deep dive into the
nuts and bolts of law and policy rather than being the kind of person who's like well no they wanna
it's like home who who's they it kind of gives you like an understanding of what is the what
it's been super fun and And you were super cool.
Like, it was funny.
You've been here 10 years.
Like it was, again, it was just super, it's been super fun for us to have that friendship
and keep that connection.
And, you know, graciously you were like Dave said, like our first episode, we flew out
to visit you and we're like, we think we're going to do this podcast.
Would you, would you be our first guest?
And so we went and sat down.
That was very kind of you.
And it's been...
How many years ago was that?
Three and a half.
Three and a half, I think.
Three and a half.
We started in...
It was a year left in Meade.
We started in May of 19...
I don't even know.
It's been a long time.
It's been over three years now.
So your mountain podcast available anywhere podcasts are given away.
That's right.
Yes.
Spotify.
You guys on Spotify?
We are.
We are everywhere.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You should definitely subscribe to it no matter what, because that's really good for our egos.
We don't monetize it.
Yeah.
So we do it for you.
No monetization.
Zero.
Zero.
I'm going to subscribe right now.
Is that dumb or what?
No, I think it's great. It's a service. It's a service to the American people. Zero. I'm going to subscribe right now. Is that dumb or what? No, I think it's great.
It's a service.
It's a service to the American people.
Actually, for all you lawyers listening out there, there are a number of episodes where
if you're a lawyer in Wyoming, you can get a CLE, a continuing legal education credit
for your law license.
That's exactly right.
And you could probably apply for those in other states as well.
A former Senator used to make his staff listen to our podcast.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we've got different Senate offices where we know there are folks in the office staff listen to our podcast. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And we've got different Senate offices where we know there are folks in the offices that
listen to our podcast.
Dare I say it's an insider's look?
You may.
You might.
You may.
You guys need to get, you guys need to hone up your marketing.
We're going to put that, by the way.
No, we're terrible marketers.
Yeah.
If we knew how to market, we would say, we would quote you now, like Steve Rinella, dare
I say.
Yeah, dare I say, an insider's podcast.
But we haven't posted anything on any of our social channels in four months.
We don't even know.
I don't know where the passwords are.
I forgot, too.
But it's there.
It's up every week.
It's there.
We check it, and we respond to all the emails and everything we get, but it's there almost
every week.
We've been kind of busy.
Your Mountain Podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Appreciate that.
Last thing.
Next week.
So, listen.
I know what happens to you people. Christmas holiday, you're not at work. Appreciate that. Last thing, next week. So listen, I know what happens to you people.
Christmas holiday, you're not at work and all that.
You don't listen to your podcast.
But next week is our Christmas holiday extravaganza extraordinaire episode.
So Christmas time, all hectic.
Everybody's unhappy, arguing, trying to get your kids in the car to go see grandma.
Listen, don't forget us.
We're there.
Our Christmas gift to you. We. Our Christmas gift to you.
We have a Christmas gift to you.
We're doing a double episode drop where you get your regular podcast,
which is the Christmas extraordinaire.
But then we're going to throw down and have a monster trivia showdown episode.
That's right.
I can't wait.
Trivia showdown episode.
That means two episodes in one week.
Bill, he's not going to have any time to do anything. I guess Spencer's running trivia.
Spencer's going to run trivia.
Wow.
And we have a special guest, Matt Rinella, for the Christmas special.
Yeah, and he might be in on trivia.
I don't know.
But we're going to debate social media.
So family argument, eggnog, whole kit and caboodle.
I can't wait.
See you. argument eggnog whole kit kaboodle i can't wait see you Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.
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