The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 322: Better Hunting and Fishing For America

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Brent West, Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, and Phil Taylor.Topics discussed: the flea story; how to make maple sugar; marrying for the environment; the Poop-Trailhead Index; Steve's strong opinion about Thoureau; Fly Rod Crosby; the last caribou in Maine; when Eisenhower talked about flyfishing on D-Day; Federal Ammunitition sends 1 million bullets to Ukraine; mail carriers "terrorized" by wild turkeys in California; Popeye, Jani's one-eyed turkey; when the taxidermist knowingly gives you back an animal that isn't yours; the irresponsibility of the pen-raised prarie chicken arrangement; Brody's advice to wolf haters; refunding wolf tags in Wisconsin; getting rid of tags?; what a land easement actually is; abuses of the land easement system for tax evasion purposes; make a donation to MeatEater's Land Access Initiative; submit a property for our 2022 initiative; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. You can't predict anything. Presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First Light, go go farther stay longer hey this is steve this sounds weird it's because i'm using the voice memo function on my phone and

phil's patching it into the show it's a very important message i have for you on may 3rd we're doing a live show in billings montana at the alber Theater. So Alberta, like Canada, and bear, not like a bear that you'd go hunting for, but B-A-I-R, Alberta Bear Theater. Get tickets through them. Live show, May 3rd. I'm going to be there. Giannis Poutelis will be there. Old Cal. For the entire show, the flip-flop flesher, Seth Morris, will be fleshing beaver and raccoon hides off on, I believe, what's called stage left in a beautiful spotlight. Chester the divester will be there.

And everyone that buys a ticket gets a signed copy of my new book, Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. Get your tickets now. Go to Alberta Bear Theater website, May 3rd, Billings, Montana. Can't wait to see you guys. Love y'all. All right, everybody. Here's the deal.

Normally, the way the show works is we do, like, what kind of intro. I don't know if anybody out there actually listens carefully enough to notice this, but you guys probably don't even realize this. That are in here. I think we do. We'll do, like, a light intro of a guest, right? Like a light intro. A little banter.

Are you explaining to us how this works? Yeah. And listeners. I think we got it, but for the listeners. Okay, tell me, then what happens? Do a light intro. Light intro, then we introduce everybody. And then what happens. Okay, tell me, then what happens? Do a light intro. Light intro, then we introduce everybody.

And then what happens? If you remember. And then what happens? And then we go into talking about shit that either people wrote in about or stuff that we did

that week or. Couple rabbit holes, maybe. Yeah. Then what happens? Then we go on a few tangents and then we sometimes argue about shit

and then we go to the guest and talk about. Look at that. Seth's been paying attention. We're going to change things up because we're going to do a light. I'm going to do a couple of talking points, then the light intro.

Cool. This is going to further test people's ability to pay attention because, just because of a weird issue I don't want to get into, where we recorded a show that we're going to release after this show. It features our beloved Giannis Petelis, who's sitting here right now. You're not going to want to miss it. In it, I allude to a flea.

At the end, I allude to a flea story that i wanted to tell but ran out of time so now people are going to in the future hear me allude to a flea story that i want to tell but i'll have already told it can i can i can i tee it up for you please so steve had me come over and put a rack on his can-am the other day. Well, I wouldn't put it that way. Well, we worked on. Help, help. Yeah, yeah. You just want to run in the project, though.

I was happy to do it, but I show up. Steve comes out of his garage, and he's kind of. Hold on, hold on. You came to say he asked me to come over to put a rock. Rack. Rack. A rack on the can. Installing a cargo rack.

Chester came over to help me install a cargo rack, but I wasn't able to give it my full attention because of my problem. Yeah, so I show up, and Steve kind of comes out of the garage, and he's like, oh, man, guys. He's kind of frantically moving around a little bit. He's like, I'm in deep trouble right now, guys. I'm in big trouble. Just hold on.

Just do your thing. And this is why. So I had brought a coyote home at night. And my dog hates coyotes and hates coyote fur skin, hates coyotes, won't go near it. If you come in with a coyote hide, even a a pelt she goes to the other end of the house she can tell she loves dogs but she knows that that dog it's not her friend never met a dog she didn't like but she can smell something on that that like that son of a bitch is not a right she just knows so i laid on the floor of the garage and thinking, well,

she'll never go near that. Then I'm down here in the studio and I'm looking at my text messages and my wife and our babysitter having this like ongoing thing about, holy shit, the fleas on the dog. And they're like, is it from the dog park? How could it be?

They're like, they're all over. I mean, her head's crawling in fleas. And I'm thinking, no one knows about the thing in the garage except me. So I gotta be like, I think I might have a little something to add here. You wouldn't have believed. You should have had just Chester roll over there and grab that coyote and just hide it. What? Oh, and just play dumb. Yeah. I really should have had just Chester roll over there and grab that coyote and just hide it. What?

Oh, and just play dumb. Yeah. I really should have. It's like she went, you know, like when something's body temp gets to, like, there's a point at which fleas. Mm-hmm. They're on a sinking ship. They start migrating. They're on a sinking ship.

It's like she laid down and spooned with that thing. There's no way to explain the number of fleas on that dog. I've heard, um, like trappers that have a, have something that's got fleas. We'll put like a warm rabbit next to it. So they like a fruit, like a cold,

but something they trapped that's cold. It's got fleas. They'll put a warm rabbit next to it. So all the fleas get on there. Who told you that? I don't know where I heard it. And then they'll put a warm mouse next to the rabbit. I'm not saying it's true.

I'm saying I heard it. And then you burn the mouse. Then you get all the fleas on there. To make a warm rabbit, is that like 45 seconds on medium high? I don't know. No. Look, I'm just saying it's a funny story. I hear all kinds of stuff I don't talk about on the podcast.

You had a warm dog next to a cold coyote. Oh, really? Yeah. Give me an example of something funny you heard that then you decided not to talk about. It'd be something like that. You want another good, real quick flea story? Yeah, but okay, go ahead.

Because then I'm going to finish my flea story up, but go ahead. Old outfitter I worked for, he used to collect rabbits for a mink farm in Colorado. That's how he put himself through college, partially anyway. And he would load up the trunk of his car with jackrabbits every night.

And his roommate was like, hey man, can I borrow your car? I got a date. He used, he did this business in a car with a trunk. Yeah. Not a truck with a bed. And, and like would drive alfalfa fields at

night and, and just thump rabbits with, with his front bumper. Oh. You know, mink farmer wasn't real particular about how the meat showed up. Field care. Yep. And so he didn't get a chance to drop the rabbits off to the m showed up. Field care. Yep. Um, and so he didn't get a chance to drop the

rabbits off to the mink farm, lets his buddy take his vehicle and, uh, his buddy and his date seemed to really hit it off and they were using the back seat up until a point where they, uh, neither one of them could concentrate due to the itching involved. Oh yeah. And apparently these two were just coated head to tail in, uh, in fleas.

That was me this day I'm talking about. I went to the gym. So I got up in the morning and took the coyote out of my truck. And I must've bear hugged that son of a bitch without thinking about it. I'm at the gym, just itching like blue bla I'm at the gym just itching like blue blazes. I'm sitting here itching like blue blazes, and I'm like, man, I got to freeze these clothes, which I did. I got to go home and put these clothes in the freezer and take a shower.

But I thought it was like I wasn't even thinking about the damn dog. I'm still a little itchy. I got a question. Is that the coyote that's sitting by my desk right now? Yeah, but I froze it. All right. I froze to hide. I froze to hide. Garrett's using it as a question. Is that the coyote that's sitting by my desk right now? Yeah, but I froze it. All right. I froze the hide. I froze the hide.

Garrett's using it as a wall. He's keeping it as a wall hanger. Dude, I'm surprised that you didn't get in trouble. You probably did, actually, for the smell. No, the smell of that thing was just unbelievable. Oh, no one liked that. They know I don't even care to hear about that kind of stuff anymore. Yeah, it was a really fecund odor.

Oh, another pre-talk thing. I was getting checked by a game warden in Arizona a couple weeks ago. And he said, oh, after he checked my license and realized that was cool, he goes, he says, oh, you were talking on the podcast of why we do grip and grins with confiscated material he goes it's not like a grip and grin he said later in court it's to demonstrate the magnet it's to later in court for a jury it's just to like demonstrate the magnitude of something because you can tell people all day long about x pounds of whatever and it's kind of in one ear

and out the other. But when you're like, you lay all it out. You know, same thing with when they lay all the narcotics out. It's just so people can be like, my goodness. And you weren't like, and so it's not because you guys are a little bit proud that you guys compensated all this stuff? No, no. He said it's just

a thing to present in a courtroom. Just to, he said the same thing with drugs. Like in a courtroom. Just to say anything with drugs. Like you tell people like kilos or whatever, and then they see it and they're like, holy cow, look at all that stuff. So that's why he does that. Oh, another funny thing is I, on Sunday, was ice fishing and stood up my phone. iPhone 12 right down the ice hole, 26 feet of water. And we had a flasher going and you could watch that phone.

Now, if you call his phone a perch pick, so. Yeah, I went and stood over the hole yesterday and I was like, it's so, like Chester was off doing something 20, roughly 30 feet away. And I'm like to think Chester that my phone, that I'm as close to you as I am to my phone, but it's so far away. So you guys were fishing yesterday, which was

a Monday. Kind of took picture. We were, yeah. It was work. We were working. I fished Sunday, I fished Monday. And Monday was worse than Sunday. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know what was worse than fishing? No. Was sitting in front of the computer all day. Oh, working. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

We were talking about that. It was like best day. Yeah. Chester was saying that a bad day of fishing. fishing no it was uh sitting in front of the computer all day oh working yeah we're talking about that like best day yeah chester was saying that a bad day of fishing is better than a bad day at work uh no that was me saying i have a pretty good quote on that actually oh we're not ready for you yet well okay hold that quote we're gonna get into you hardcore in a minute here. Oh, another thing. People need to start. People need to start. Go on Clay Newcomb. So like Newcomb. Clay underscore Newcomb.

And start pressuring Clay. For Bear Grylls podcast, I've been trying to get Clay to do a deep dive on the Wetzel brothers. Lou Wetzel and the Wetzel brothers. Lou Wetzel and the Wetzel brothers. He won't do it. It's starting to piss me off. Can you tell us why? What's interesting about the Wetzel brothers? Very controversial frontier figures.

And very controversial frontier figures from the Indian Wars along the Ohio River. Why don't you just do something on them? Because Clay should do something on them. No. The Wetzels. If you're so interested. They used to call them the Death Wind.

Now you bring it up and we're all interested. The Death Wind. They were sociopaths. They were psychopathic killers who were sort of tangled up in the Indian Wars. They haven't made a movie about those guys? Fascinating. Bloodthirsty little bastards.

He should really do a dive on the Wetzels. But he likes to do things that have redemption. And there's no redemption with Lou Wetzel. Sounds like a Tarantino movie. Yeah. I mean, his family was mostly killed off by the tribes he didn't like to do vengeance through the military they just like to go with her go their own go with their own they would cross the ohio and just go on these like murderous trips

fascinating dudes horrible people but fascinating and he won't do it because there's no redemption so you could just put a comment on everything that clay posts just start writing the death wind horrible people, but fascinating. And he won't do it because there's no redemption. So you could just put a comment on everything that Clay posts, just start writing to Deathwind. Last quick note before we get to our guests is if anyone knows, if someone could write in,

there's got to be like a 1022 expert out there who does souped up 1022s. Mm-hmm. Well, didn't you guys cover all the biathlon and shoot stuff and all that? I mean. No, but I bought my boy a Ruger 1022 for his birthday. He doesn't like it because it's not a tack driver. You got to do a lot like ammunition research.

Spend a lot of money making those things. They spend a lot of money. Yeah things. They spend a lot of money. Yeah. The Olympic, uh, 10, 22 target. Right.

Uh, a lot of guys use it for dialing in big game rifles too, but you know, it's, why is it a 10, 22 target? It's not just a target. It's,

it's the target that they use for like competition. 22. It's not 10, 22. You just said, yeah, I did. I was just 22. Oh yeah. 10-22. You just said. Yeah, I did. I was just.

Oh. Yeah. I'm trying to find someone who. Get a bunch of ammo. As many manufacturers as you can dig up. Get that target. And. Oh.

And little Jimmy's going to be very pleased with one of them. And try to solve the problem that way. Yeah. I think there's a lot of tweaking that goes on with those 10 22 i know that's what i'm curious about because it's got like i'm just curious like what people do the competition like you give yourself a cz the only thing you need to do is they restock them and rebarrel them and i like what you're saying but as far as the the ammunition too like we had one of, like the top tier 22 manufacturers up in Kalispell. I'm not sure if they're still there.

Um, but even, even those rounds, like competitive shooters will, will go through and look for flaws and deformities and, and then go with like the most uniform batches and, and set them aside in batches. Oh, really? Yeah. There's a big huh big deal yeah

barb uh was running a 10-22 hers was souped up i think all but pretty much just had a bull barrel yeah it was the main i'm not sure what else she had done with it all right brent you ready i'm ready okay brent west is here from high peaks alliance tell us what high peaks alliance is and corinne thinks you might be the first native Mainer. What do you guys call each other? Mainers? I guess. May not.

You know, like a Michigander. There's only a few of us. Montanans. Just call each other by name. Michigander. Mainers. Yeah, that's right. Mainer.

That's the actual thing? Yeah. Mainers. Huh. Okay. High Peaks Alliance. Yeah. High Peaks Alliance is a conservation recreational nonprofit in Franklin County, Maine.

So our major goals are to conserve land and access for our communities. And we do that through a number of different projects, whether it's trail projects or land conservation projects. But the real thread is that everyone who grew up here, lives here, visits here, have a lot of things in common. We all have a wood pile, a garden out back, a little buck meat in the freezer. All these things kind of tie us together as people who love to live in rural Maine and visit rural Maine. It's not enough hassle up there, and it's a really great place to live

because you just have this freedom to roam. And you want to keep it that way. Yeah, absolutely. Tell us what's in that bag right there. I brought you some New Portland wood-fired, hand-tapped, I used a old hand drill, buckets, spiles, hand drill. Buckets, spiles, maple sugar.

Not syrup, mind you. Well, so this got me in some trouble at the airport. You had a big bag of brown cocaine. I got pulled out of line and the lady tested it and sniffed it. Did she taste it?

No, but she did stick her pinky out a little bit. She didn't do like in the movies where she rubbed it into her lip? It turned blue. She's been watching too much Miami Vice. I imagine in class, like when you're training for that job, they're like, if you come across powder, don't sniff it.

Well, I was thinking away how we could give you something, a piece of Maine here that kind of in line with your values. And Cal actually has had some of this already. This is the first time I've ever came into physical contact, I think, with plenty of the syrup, which is maple syrup. Yeah. But tell me how you got it down. Like, how do you get down to crystal form?

And is that a real pain in the ass? Well, what I, what I do is you make an abundance of this. So like my father boils a lot of it. I tap a lot of the trees. We kind of do that together. He has an old oil tank cut in half that we put a pan on top and we burn wood under it to boil it off. So it takes

about 42 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. One gallon of syrup will probably reduce again by 40% or so when you boil it to, I forget the temperature, but it's like 352 degrees or something like that, that you have to boil the syrup to, and then start stirring the crap out of it. And it just starts crystallizing. And then most of it is fine, but you can run it through a few food processors or like break up the big pieces.

But you, you could put that in water and make it back to syrup if you got the. Are you good? The right amount. But. Yanni's snorting some right now off a key. We pretty much only use maple sugar now. We don't really buy any sugar anymore.

Do you guys call it a sugar bush up in Maine too, like your little operation sugar bush? Yeah, yeah. A lot of people do maple syrup right now. Literally my father sent me a picture. He's boiling today. So what you want is sugar maples are the best, but pretty much any maple species will work. And you want freezing at night and about high 30s, low 40s during the day.

And what that happens is the ends of the branches will freeze. And when they thaw out during the day, they create a vacuum. And that's what makes the sap run. No. That's what's going on in there? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Really?

Yeah, and all you have to do is tap. Did you know that? I mean, I knew it ran, but I didn't know it was related to that. Seth probably knew that because he's trained up in forestry. Well, there you go. My family's got a little sugar bush back home. My cousin Jake. So, yeah, Yanni's ordered some of his syrup,

but it's pretty fascinating, that whole scene. It's fun. Guys nowadays do it very technically. You know, it's reverse osmosis, oil fired. We do it pretty old school. So what we got here is we got a quart-size Ziploc. That's good. Probably 60% full.

And that's the result of what volume of sap? I'm unsure. I had a huge, like two gallon bag that I just scooped that out and threw it in my carry on. So that, I mean, they say it really doesn't reduce that much from liquid because it's already very viscous as syrup. Yeah. So you're really not taking that much much from liquid because it's already very viscous as syrup. Yeah. So you're really not taking that much more water out of it. So you could take a quart of maple syrup and

maybe get, you know, 75% of that in volume and sugar. Gotcha. Do you bake with it? I don't do much baking. My wife loves to use it, but. How long have you been married? Sick going on six years.

That going all right? Yeah, it's going really good. How many kids you got? I got one. Seth's getting married. Yeah, well, I think we all need to get strapped down as good American men. She actually is a big gardener. You think it's good for America to have married men?

Well, if you are into population dynamics, we're going towards a pretty crazy cliff of not many young people and a whole lot of old people. Like Maine, for instance, by 2028, we'll have from 2018 to 2028, there'll be a 40% increase in our population of 65 plus. Anywhere from an 8% to 12% decrease in all of the age groups. Short term, that sounds scary. Long term, I like it. Yeah. I mean, it might be difficult. I mean, just in a global sense.

Like globally, I don't think there's anyone out there thinking that globally we need a higher human population. I don't know. I think a lot of people think in conservation and land and natural resources that human are the scourge of the earth. I think that's a poor way to look at people. I think. I didn't say that. Well, I think. Have you heard anyone say on a global level, have you heard, do you know of any global thinker

or like on the global level, someone saying what this earth needs is more billions of people? Anyone? No, Jordan Peterson talks about that dynamic of that more people isn't a bad thing. Does he hunt and fish a lot? He doesn't look like it. Well, that's the biggest rub when it comes to it.

When I look at Jordan Peterson, I don't see, I'm not like, there's a hard-hitting outdoorsman. Go get him. No, I think he's questioning climate change and stuff like that too. No, he's a thinker. I'm coming at this from a hunting and fishing perspective. Morally and out of ourself kind of thing?

No, just global population. Listen, man, you guys are starting to make, you're acting like I'm saying at this from a hunting and fishing perspective. More land to have ourselves kind of thing? No, just global population. Listen, man, you guys are starting to make, you're acting like I'm saying something crazy. I don't think there's anyone out there that says what we really need is 9 billion human global citizens. It's just like no one is saying this. piles of human feces at a trailhead, like the relationship to the population, to the relationship of human piles of feces at a popular trailhead. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I mean, less people is better. Yeah, just from a poop perspective. Well, you have, that's a confounding variable. Just the poop trailhead index. When you're losing more access, by default, you're going to get more of those piles at your public access points. Yeah. Oh, that's true. So if, I don't to get more of those piles at your public access points. Yeah.

Oh, that's true. So if, I don't want to dwell on this, but I'm just curious. Like if someone said to you, you can, you're not causing any pain and suffering, but someone said to you, you can choose that in a decade, the earth, what are we at right now? 7 billion, 7 something billion. Okay. Someone says to you, you can choose that in a decade, the earth, what are you at right now? 7 billion,

seven something billion. Okay. Someone says to you, you can choose. There's no, you're not making pain and suffering. You can choose that in a decade, there's 6 billion global citizens, or there's 8 billion global citizens. Up to you, no pain and suffering. But what do you choose? What would you choose? I think I think I get your point. The point I'm trying to look at is, so you have a number of kids too, right? Yeah,

three of them. Three of them. So in the last 20 so years though, we've had a big decline in families having four kids, three kids. And that's been traded over to no kids. Because they're hard to deal with. Well,

but it's also, you know, all these guys are getting married later and they're having kids later. And that also affects, you know, more people getting into the outdoors, liking these things. So it's just the original point I'm trying to make is you shouldn't look at people as necessarily the problem because there's a lot of good that comes with people having kids having families uh you know having those relationships in your community you know i think those things lead to better outcomes for the land in general uh you're talking to a guy who has three kids yeah you're part of the problem and you're talking to a guy who has three kids. Yeah. You're part of the problem. And you're talking to a guy who I think the dude should be married. Yeah.

Exactly. Because I think it allows them to focus on productivity. Well, house chores. Yeah, for sure. Before I was married, I focused a lot of time on just drinking alcohol. That was my focus. And shooting pool. Really?

Dude, when I was in graduate school, man, we'd sometimes finish up and if, like, whatever. Are you a shark? I got good at it. We'd sometimes go down there to get, we'd like finish up doing something or another and go down like at noon or one down to the dinosaur cafe to get like a po' boy.

And the next thing you knew was last call but man putting in a shift yeah it's like we just shot pool for 12 hours well i think that's the attraction of going so long you know all your 20s being free hunting fish do whatever oh yeah all right uh chris said you had some main factoids. Who generated these factoids? They're factoids. Did you generate them? I reached out to many.

Actually, we enlisted a Jeopardy champion to come up with some of these. Are you playing trivia with us later? I would love to. Are you intimidated or do you think you're going to do well? I'm not scared a bit, Steve. See, I know. Cal didn't tell me you were like a contrarian, like a real fact-based contrarian guy. Well, I am from New England.

He's a Mainer. We liked it. That's one thing I noticed in the Westerners. You guys take offense fairly quickly. What do you think of that? I'm from Michigan. You noticed that where just out and about

just in your 24 hours we like a level of play you gotta talk to Cal cause Cal's from the area yeah Cal's the only one here Brent canvassed the town yesterday talking with everybody I talked to all sorts of people everybody I talked to was offended it must be the town

yeah but nobody that lives here is from here everyone's really nice I actually got a pretty good lowdown on what's happening It must be the town. Yeah, but nobody that lives here is from here. It can't be me. No, everyone's really nice. I actually got a pretty good lowdown on what's happening on the Madison River, the dam blowout. I hear that's fairly contentious around here. It's just going to make bigger trout. Listen, okay. We covered that pretty exhaustively.

Okay. All right, but give me some Maine factors. We've got to get the show rolling here. Well, I just want to tell you more about, you know, Maine as a place that's kind of steeped in sporting

heritage. 1847, Henry David Thoreau, you know, wrote his book on the Maine woods, went up to. He's a candy ass.

You like that guy? He did inspire Teddy Roosevelt to go up to He's a total candy ass. Falls. Well, he's like obsessed with his mom.

Even when he was doing that stuff about living in that camp, he's still walking home to his ma's every other day. Well, I mean, he had it a little harder than you and us, right? No, I don't think so. He didn't have power. He didn't have anything. I don't think so. I think he was, wasn't he like running off someone else's money and stuff?

Well, probably. He was dabbling. He's a candy ass. I think he was a dabbler. Go on though. Well, anyways, my point was that kind of started Maine as a tourist destination. Vacation land, right?

I went to the woods to live deliberately. Kind of at my mom's though. I actually haven't read the Maine woods. This is a factoid That was brought up to me That they thought would be important to say He was a misanthrope A what?

A misanthrope What's that? Hated people Like Steve Well I think Yeah and you're like pro people Go on Pro people's good man

Yeah we're in a showdown now buddy I know A prairie showdown I don't know This showdown's, bud. I know. A prairie showdown. This showdown is going to reach its climax during the trivia. I noticed in the trivia he's very competitive, and I like that about someone. So he's already playing hardball, I see. But anyways, I brought you a book to peruse. It's called Becoming Teddy Roosevelt. I thought you'd like this.

And that's just by bookmark. It's not a... That's going to be the only Teddy Roosevelt photo I've never seen. Well, there you go. Have you seen that picture before? Yeah, I own the book. I mean, besides this book. No. Look at that. Let me see it. Talk about having a weird relationship

with your ma. This guy. And running off of somebody else's money that's true but i still like sounds like well that book's about uh his time in the main woods and how uh bill sewell and wilmot dow two main guides kind of uh had a big impact on his life um so he went up and hiked Katahdin and moccasins. He did all sorts of crazy stuff. It was a great book because it gives you, at the time, a lot of people were going to Maine because it was so accessible

to New York and Boston and it was a wild country. So you get some wild ass wilderness on a train. Yeah, exactly. And that's what kind of drove a lot of things. Like in our neck of the woods, the train came through late 1800s. Same time, Fly Rod Crosby was the first ever Maine Guide licensed. And she was a pretty interesting lady. Hold on.

Fly Rod Crosby was a woman? Correct. Oh. Not her birth name. Cornelia Thurza Crosby. And this is what she said about herself. her birth name. Cornelia Thurza Crosby. And this is what she said about herself. I am a plain woman of uncertain age,

standing six feet tall in my stockings. I scribble a bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish any day than go to heaven. You have to hook me up with her. Yeah, she's awesome. She's passed away now. Oh. I was like, I'll find a feller for her. But she went to like the first sportsman's expositions in New York.

And she brought like a whole log cabin down there. And it was the main woods. And she wore a scantily short doe skin skirt, which showed her calf. That was scandalous back then. Really? Friends with Annie Oakley. And yeah, so very interesting. She'd catch a ton of fish.

This is the same area. I don't know if anyone's fly fisherman, but really a lot of history there. You have Kerry Stevens inventing a ton of different flies. You know, four of these people in this room were fly fishing guides. Good. Well, do you guys know Gray Ghost?

Sure. The old streamers. Black Ghost. Those are all invented in high peaks of Maine. Herb Welch. Herb Welch. So that was like, what, like in the 1920s? 1910?

Well, so what was interesting, the rail companies hired fly rod in these people and they said, don't talk about how good our trains are. Talk about how good the fishing is. And so people be by default taking the main central railway up to Rangeley and catch these huge brook trout. The railroads used to host like big fish competitions too. Right.

So they'd like give away cash to whoever gets the biggest fish, but it was based off of like these got to get on the train and go a long way to go fish. And there, you know, there's a lot of history out West of like people going out to Alaska catching big salmon, but you couldn't get there back then in a reasonable amount of time. So you even have accounts of some of the ponds in this neck of the woods getting stocked with sockeye salmon and stuff like that.

Just really bizarre histories of sporting camps. America's longest running sporting camp ever is in this Franklin County, Timpon Camps. But there's a bunch of old logging camps that turn sporting camps. And so there's a big tradition of that in this neck of the woods where people would come up from the smog of the city to get some fresh air and stay for two weeks a month.

Are you going to hit on how Fly Rod Crosby ended up being the last person to legally harvest a caribou in Maine? What year was that? That was, I think it was around 1900. But I think that also, that was, I couldn't drill down on exactly what year that happened. Yeah. I know like in 1908 was like the last time they saw them up in Northern Maine.

Like, so it was in that time period where she had shot the last legally one. So I think the population was declining. They probably stopped hunting him. Yeah. Is there ever any that you've been privy to? Like we just, in our own lifetimes, watched caribou blink out in Idaho and Washington. Um, is there any serious conversation ever in Maine about trying to, uh, restore caribou herds in Maine? Or is that just ship sailed?

They did that. They tried hard. Oh, they did. Yeah. For a number of years and it didn't, didn't work out as well. I think there's probably too many land changes in Northern Maine, forestry wise to, to support

them. And I think you were already coming in on a radically receding environment anyways. I mean, if you go back to like the tail end of the Pleistocene, they were down in Ohio and Indiana, you know what I mean? I think you're sort of like, we kind of arrived in time to watch them blink out anyway.

Well, I think like they have records of the red paint people in our neck was 12, 13,000 years ago. And so I'm guessing that's when it would have been more tundra like. Yeah. So that's probably, you know, more when a lot of those were running around. Tell me about how Eisenhower, I understand Eisenhower, Dwight Eisenhower.

There's a famous picture of him like holding up his hand to paratroopers on D-Day. And they've used this picture a lot. But apparently the backstory is that he found out some of the troopers there were fly fishermen, so they all just started talking about their favorite fly fishermen. And that's what he's doing with his hand? Yeah, he's holding the fly rod.

Really? Yeah. I heard a story, I've heard this a couple of times, that after he addressed the 82nd Airborne, that he went and he gave him a rousing speech, but went and wept, because he knew it was a death sentence. Yeah, I couldn't imagine.

All the guys come in on gliders. He knew they'd all be dead in the morning. And so many of them were. Imagine that. No, I can't imagine anything like that. Go get them, boys. And they had like all these calculations, like they're all just gone. Well, you can imagine why he needed to go do some fly fishing.

His favorite fly was old dry fly called the H&L variant, house and lot. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Hell of a fly. Yep. Watch this transit. Chester, you ever fished that one? Yeah.

It's crazy how you're still like flies invented so long ago are like still some of the the best flies today uh federal ammunition this is interesting because it's just interesting for a bunch of reasons federal ammunition so like a uh part of a publicly traded company vist outdoors owns federal ammunition it's a publicly traded company federal ammunition is itself sending um a million rounds of ammunition to ukraine like the president was offered the president of ukraine it's it's weird like speaking of uh this how do you zelensky is that how he pronounced his name this guy used to be a comedian he was like a commentator it'd be like a john stewart i mean i don't know if it'd be like that but he used to be like a like a entertainer a comedian the president of ukraine he's emerging as this

kind of uh churchill figure yeah refusing to leave the Capitol, um, rousing speeches. Yeah. Which is like total defiance. He's been putting out all these offers, like, uh, not offers. He's putting out like requests. We need this. We need that. We need this.

Yeah. When the U S offered to get him out of there, he replied with, I don't know. What did he say? He doesn't need a ride. He needs ammunition. Oh. That's a hell of a line. Oh, I need ammunition.

Put that on my tombstone. I need ammunition, not a ride. That's a hell of a leader. Federal Premium's parent company, Vista Outdoor, has committed to donating one million rounds of ammunition to Ukrainian forces. They're also launching a fundraiser to raise money to help Ukrainian refugees.

Went on a spokesman wanted to say there are some callings in life we just have to answer. This is one of those callings. We think it's the right call to help our allies defend themselves. That's bold.

But I wonder if, I just don't know, I'd just be curious how all this the right call to help our allies defend themselves. That's bold. It is. But I wonder if, I just don't know, I'd just be curious how all this, we have an article about this on themeateater.com with a bunch of quotes from people and kind of give some of the background. But it's just not something I would have thought, I got to read about how,

something I would have thought would be possible. Well, they already uh have contracts with military people all across the world that's why i think it's gonna be pretty easy and quick to do it well yeah and you know obviously like the announcement of the amount like the sheer amount dollar amount of aid that the, um, feds have authorized, right? Like I imagine this has to stand aside from contracts if you're going to say, we're going to

send out a million rounds, right? Otherwise the press release would be like, Hey, we just got paid our normal rate to send out a bunch of rounds. Mm-hmm. So, uh, I did see that, um, the Latvian government Mm-hmm. And, you know, different countries are saying, yeah, like, if you go, don't fight. You know, there's lots of ways to help or stay here. There's lots of ways to help.

But I saw the Latvian government issued a statement saying, like, if you feel like it's your duty, go for it. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. And they're going to let people cross. Mm-hmm. What was that saying, Janus, that Latvian saying that you said is getting revived these days? Nummies, nummies, nummies.

Nyet, nyet, Soviet. Oh, yeah. It's just what used to be on t-shirts and placards and everything when we were kids going to protests when Latvia was still under the USSR. We used to walk around saying- Now they're using it again. Nyet, nyet, Soviet. What does that mean, Giannis? It's in russian it just means no no

yet does no one in russian here's one gripe i got with america this thing that like people now complain about turkeys do you know what i'm saying it's like just like municipalities that are like at war with turkeys because the turkeys are too mean. So there's this huge dispute in Sacramento between mail carriers and wild turkeys. Like it's come to blows. There's an article out in the LA Times mail carrier

accused of killing aggressive wild turkey this guy Sacramento County the mail carriers have been quote terrorized by wild turkeys at times disrupting deliveries this week tensions between

the foul and one U.S. Postal Service worker reached a violent climax. Did they use the joke, went postal in here? When the carrier killed a turkey while on duty, prompting an investigation by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The mail carrier was carrying a stick of some kind, quote, a some kind of a stick, unquote, in his mail carrier vehicle.

An aggressive male turkey attacked him. He retaliated and killed it with a stick, which is no small feat. No. Yeah. Like, you don't, unless you got a full-on baseball bat and really cocked back

And had that turkey stand still It ain't a one strike No it's not a Swing and be on your way scenario It's a commitment It wouldn't be like whacking a grouse Like they'd fall over dead Oh but I do think if you

Had the right velocity And the right stick. You could wind up on him. I don't even know how much. I mean, yeah, just like a. Like on the head. Yeah, in the head or in the neck, and you break its neck or smash his brain with the whack. He's going to go down pretty easily.

But the best thing about this is the actual headline, Steve. A feud between mail carriers, wild turkeys comes to a deadly climax near Sacramento. Which one of them died? Like, it's like, it's going to be on that serial podcast. When I saw the headline, I was like, hold on a minute, a turkey killed a mail carrier?

Yeah. There's, these turkeys are getting serious. It's going to be on the serial podcast. There'll be like a couple episodes of like the turkey's life prior to how it grew up. Yeah, other turkeys. When he was a little kid, the other jakes always beat him up, and it really impacted him psychologically.

So they don't know if they're going to press charges on the dude. A guy from Fish and Game was like, our job is to determine what exactly happened, and then we fill out a report. We might send it to the district attorney, was like our job is to determine what exactly happened and then we fill out a report we might send it to the district attorney and the district attorney decides whether or not a crime has been committed the postal service said as an investigator in the incident noting in a statement that employees quote have had several altercations with aggressive turkeys in the area, including a recent attack on a letter carrier.

Then they go on to say, however, this allegation is alarming. And if true, is inexcusable and does not reflect the efforts of our more than 650,000 employees who faithfully serve and deliver for America every day. So pointing out that all 650,000 employees of the postal service are not stick-wielding turkey killers, lest one start stereotyping. What would be their response if it was a domestic dog, an unchained, unfenced domestic dog, and he whacked it with a stick?

Well, here's... And killed it? Well, they're saying they don't stand with their employees and defend themselves. Well, the plot thickens. Is it self-defense? The plot thickens. Or is it illegal means of take?

Well, attention is turning to area residents as the plot thickens here. So far, the Department of Fish and Wildlife's investigation into the incident has revealed strange details about the area's turkeys and their behavior and treatment. Investigators found that some residents had been feeding the turkeys, quote, copious quantities of food. Unquote. I thought you were going to go meth turkeys on us.

No. Had been feeding turkeys meth. They're saying it probably contributed to the massive size of the turkey in question. This is a quote. Because it was eating just an unlimited amount of food every day from this particular household. The turkeys seem to have been targeting delivery workers. Really? The attacks had also

disrupted deliveries. They're indiscriminate in their delivery attacks. These turkeys had also disrupted deliveries from FedEx and UPS, so the private sector. I think there's something to that.

Did you ever remember Popeye at Jimmy Miller's house, the one-eyed turkey? Yeah. Well, that son of a bitch was nice as can be for years to me. Come up, strut for you. Jimmy Miller would? No, Popeye, his one-eyed turkey. I was like, I didn't know you guys had something like that going on. Oh, okay.

Go on. No, we're still cool. And never was aggressive. Then one day I roll over, get out of my truck, and I can see him coming for me, and I could see the look in his one eye. I'm like, something has changed. And, like, foolishly, I'm hanging out just, like, to see. And, I mean, I didn't really have time to think about it. And he was on me like the full on,

like breasts kind of pointed towards the sky feet coming at me and wings, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, you know,

coming right at my legs. Not trying to hump you, but trying to beat you. Oh yeah. And, uh, so I run around the truck. I'm like,

really? What's up, Papa? You know? And I look around the corner, he's coming against, I quickly boogied into the house. Well,

lo and behold, someone else very similar in stature to me had recently been effing around with Popeye. And kicking him and booting him and whatever. Like a sadist? Since then, whatever. That person just wasn't into having farm pets be like pets. Right? He wasn't into having farm pets be like pets, right? So he was probably just shooting it off, but in a more aggressive way than I ever had. And from that moment on, it didn't matter. And Popeye, that's his turf.

If you were roughly a 200-pound, 6-foot-plus dude, Popeye was coming after you. Really? Yeah. And the kids would get out of the car. Nobody would bother them. Hmm. Hmm. Wow. They've been suggesting that these male carriers start hosing these turkeys with pepper spray.

They're allowed to carry pepper spray. But I want to finish. My point is. I thought you wrapped it up nicely. No. The point is, I think that the turkeys can, if that had happened from one delivery driver, like some aggressive. Ah.

They see a truck roll up and they're like. Yeah. And they're like, oh no. He like knows the delivery. Yeah. Anybody that rolls out of a truck that's not normally around here. Carrying a box. And is wearing a uniform.

Get him, boys. No. I got what. Yeah, you didn't bring it full circle. Yeah. They learn to be like, watch out for that. Yeah. They've been telling them to shoot them with pepper spray and they've been also beating

them with their mail bags. Uh, Brent here has 16 turkeys on order. Nice. Nice. And, uh, he happens to know what the maximum butterball turkey weighs. Uh, we grew turkeys for the first time a few years ago and we didn't know how many weeks to let them grow. So when we slaughtered them ourselves,

we weighed them and we had 38 pound to 42 pound dressed turkeys. Dressed? Dressed. These things were big turkeys. Dressed? Dressed. These things. Dressed? These were big turkeys. Oh, because I was going to, I thought it was going to be so awkward because I was going

to one up you. Why breasted? What brand of turkey did you get? They were, I think the broad breasted. Yeah. I was going to one up you, but I can't one up that. Well, that's a big turkey, Steve. So anyways, I, we didn't know how to cook these turkeys.

We gave them out as presents due to all the in-laws for their Thanksgivings, like turkey for you, turkey for you. How long did it take for them to get to 40 pounds? 22 weeks, something like that, maybe a few more weeks. Five months. Yeah. But they had open, they could eat as much as they want. But anyways,

I call up, Butterball has a hotline and you can call this and get any turkey question answered. Is that right? Yeah. And so I was like, well,

why not? Well, I'm going to have Corinne, we're going to call, we should get a, do a live call with Butterball. I heard about it because on the radio they were talking about all the funny calls they've had.

Like does bar and chain oil, is that okay to cook your turkey with bar and chain oil? Cause like, obviously someone. People deep frying them in bar and chain oil. Well, no, they like cut the turkey in half with their chainsaw. Oh, I got you. But anyway, so I call him up cause this is a big bird. I didn't want to dry it out. I wanted. I thought he meant he's going to fry it in barn chain oil.

No. Instead of peanut oil. No. I think they just got a little bit on it. But anyways, I call him up and I said, you know, is there any recommendations for a 38-pound turkey? And she says, well, sir, that's not a butterball turkey. We only grow up to 30-pound turkeys. Yeah.

And so they told me, just baste it, 20 minutes a pound. So they helped me out anyways, even though they called me out. I can't one-up you with this, but I can back you up. Good. That's the relationship I'm looking for. My boys' buddy raised turkeys, and we went over there, and we took a.22 over there to get our two. And my kid shot it with a.22 just in the little pen there, you know.

And I'm like, grab it, grab it, because it's jumping all over the place. And he couldn't get a hold of its neck. They're very strong. I couldn't get a hold of its neck. I took that turkey on an actual digital luggage actual, like, like digital luggage scale. And the turkey was 50 pounds. Yeah. On the hoof.

I didn't know they got like that. Well, have you seen the presidential pardon turkey every year? They're like a 50 pound bird. Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah, they're big. One of our guys, Garrett Long, he claims to

have raised a 75 pound turkey. I believe that. Cause these things could have kept growing. These were still juveniles. I cut, I had to cut the ones I had in half. You couldn't even like, you couldn't have put that son of a bitch in your oven. No way.

We did it. 38 pounder. Whole. Yeah. It just barely. At about a half inch clearance. Like his feet were touching the roof. I did some butcher twine for sure.

Yeah. I want to give one last quote, my favorite quote from this article about these man-eating turkeys one of the guys says i've been around about 25 years so i kind of know turkeys and i just looked at it and i'm like oh this is the biggest turkey i've ever seen All right, Seth. Tell us your bear story. Don't name names, but just tell your bear story. All right. So, what was it?

Three years ago now, Chet? Taxidermy gone wrong. It was at least three or four years ago. Chet was with me when I killed the bear I killed a bear The hide sat in my freezer for A year Because I didn't know what to do with it

We all shot a turkey right before you shot your bear Yeah it was a great spot Um so Fast forward A year after I killed the bear I got talking with Steve and he recommended. Oh, really? Well, yeah.

Was that really the deciding factor? No, he just told you to take it to this guy. Yeah, I don't know. I asked around. I asked around. No, you're right. I don't know if it's a recommendation, but you said there's someone that. Yeah.

Yeah. I know. You didn't want to take ownership, huh? I got to, though. You didn't know. I wanted to. You wouldn't have known if I hadn't sent you there. Yeah.

So blame me. So I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just, this is just part of the story. Take my, meetup. So this guy actually sent someone that was working for him at the time to pick up my bear here in the parking lot at work. And I wrote a check in full for this guy to, um, tan the hide for me. So this was two years ago when that exchange happened and I waited roughly, I don't know, probably 10 or 10 to a year.

So he was just tanning it. Yeah, just tanning, just fleshing it and having it sent off to get tanned. Yeah, I waited probably about a year before I started bugging them, wondering where my bear is. You probably didn't even bug them originally. You probably just were like, hey, man, think about getting my bear. Originally, it was just questioning when it might be done.

And I think this was like right around the time when COVID hit. So I got like the COVID excuse. Like tanneries are backed up because of COVID or whatever. So, you know, thinking nothing of it, just let it go. And then waited roughly another year. And then I started bugging them. Like for a while there was like once a week. Or no, it was like once every other week, once every three weeks, something like that. And then it got to like once a week.

Finally, um, you know, there was a lot of like, um, like I'd say, Hey man, like, can I get my bear this week? And he'll be like, yeah, he'd be like, yeah, let's meet whatever day. And I'll hand it off to you. And then that day would come. I text him, be like, we still good to meet up and get, you know, I can get my bear. And it would, there would always be some excuse, um, to why he couldn't meet. Um, finally the day comes where he can actually meet up with me to give me my bear. So we meet at a local gas station here. He pulls in, hops out of his truck and hands me a black bear hide, black phase, black bear. Um, and the bear that I had shot was not black. It was a chocolate face black bear. So I told him that that's not my bear.

And he gave me like the, Oh, I was in a rush. Must've just grabbed the wrong bear. Um, my bad. I'll, I'll go grab, I'll go grab your bear and meet you back here. I had to go to a meeting at work here, so I was like, let's meet back up later in the day. So. What was going through your mind?

Yeah, I want to know too. Were you excited? You're like, sweet, finally I'm getting my black bear. He tried to get Chester to go to the meetup, and Chester chickened out, wouldn't go, made Seth go alone. I went the second time. Oh, you did? Chester went the second time. Because of the did? Oh, okay. So you went the second time.

Because of the brow beating I gave you? Yeah. Yeah. Did you think there was going to be something going to go down or what? No, I just kind of just. Oh, man, meeting in the gas station parking lot? Seems like, I don't know, Chester should have

been there. Old fishing buddies. Go on, Seth. So, and I should say, there's been lots of rumors going around town about this particular taxidermist. He tried to give a, he tried, my buddy had a black phase full mount, paid full price for a full mount black bear. And he tried to give him a blonde phase, a small blonde phase full mount. Yep. So I kind of went into this meetup knowing that I most likely wasn't going to get the bear that I had given him two years prior.

Um, so he tries to give me the black bear. I tell him it's not mine. He, he leaves, um, I meet back with him a couple hours later and he pulls out of the out of his truck uh chocolate phase bear and i take one look at it and immediately know it's not my bear but i'm thinking to myself in my head i am never getting my bear and like i'm just to take this one. So I have something. Something to show for it.

Something to show for it. Cause I could have been like, listen, this is not my bear. Um, and it would like, who knows what would have happened? He probably would have gone back to his shop and grabbed a different bear. Or you'd have never seen him. Or I never seen him again. Yeah. Hmm. to never seen him or i never seen him again yeah so and i i know this is not my bear because

my bear when i um skinned it in the field i didn't take the time to like skin the paws out i just cut the paws you just wanted the yeah i just wanted to hide it i wasn't i don't need all shriveled up paws hanging off my my bear hide i wasn't interested. And this bear he gave me has Paul's on it. Which is a... I put the Paul's back on for you. I went and found him. I felt bad, so. Man.

Yeah, another indicator was when, you know, for people that have gotten stuff tanned before, when you get something back from the tannery, it has like that nice, soft, white leather. Yeah. Still back from the tannery it has like that nice soft white white leather yeah still smells like a tannery yeah this thing was like yellow dirty like something that had obviously been sitting around for many years um so he he handed to me like thinking that i know that you're thinking that he you know he that I know that it's my bear. I just said to him, that'll do, and grabbed it and hopped in my vehicle. But what about the person whose bear it was?

Well, it's so old. It's so old, yeah. They had already quit calling. Do you think that that would have wound up in the right guy's hands? No, but it's like- It's just something he had laying around. Yeah, ask for cash. Be like, all right, let's just follow you to the bank and you can pull out a couple hundred bucks that I already paid you.

Did that hide have like, did you see like the stamp they got to put on it or like any, you know. There is some sort of stamping on it. I didn't really look into it. Yeah, they hit him with those little ternary stamps i literally just balled it up and do you have any advice for people for people that might in the future be looking to get a deposits not for the price right man i i guess just do your research don't listen to Steve or Johnny. But if the guy is such a mess too, like, I mean,

as we know from our previous podcast guests, like good record keeping. Yeah. I guess just do your research on who you're taking your stuff to. If you're in Montana, take your stuff to John Hayes. Cause he's. Yeah.

Go to like an established. Late. Not some dude that's working out of his garage or something. If you're going to someone that's like, if you hear through the grapevine that like, oh, this dude's cheaper than everyone else. Like that's, that should be a red flag. I'm biting my tongue so bad on a contractor dispute. I feel like piling on. Not about that, but I feel like being like, oh man, I got a story for him.

I'm not going to tell it right now, but you know what i'm talking about yeah um not you but uh yeah so yeah and then i i ended up texting him later um just to let him know that he didn't pull the wool over my eyes um i just wanted to make sure he knew that I knew it's not my bear. No reply. No reply. Yeah. I sent you a text on this last week. Yeah. Brent, I'm sure you can weigh in on this too. But so the Wyoming legislature just passed a bill that would extend the ability for people to raise this very controversial sage grouse program,

right? That starts with people going out and stealing the eggs from free ranging live huntable populations of sage grouse. So game birds taking those eggs, rearing them to adult sizes. Um, you know, there's a lot of, uh, a lot of eggs don't make it. And then taking those birds and releasing them back out onto, uh, the landscape. And, you know, for folks who don't know, like birds that are raised in captivity don't have any sort of awareness of predators. The studies that exist are pretty hand in hand and they're pretty much for pheasants, chukar, quail, you know, birds that are very commonly raised in captivity for putting. And it used to be thought that that these-raised populations would help build wild populations. But if you believe in math, there's like a 98% mortality typically within the first 24 hours.

Are you serious? Yeah. Within 24 hours of birds? Because they're just standing there like out in the... Yeah. Wow. Kel, do you think these folks know when they're raising them that they're going to basically release these birds and they're going to die? Do you think they're releasing them for their own personal hunting?

Oh, he's got to get. No, it's a little deeper than that. Yeah, there's a huge like bird dog training type of deal around this. And there's, there's lots of like R would allow folks who are buying up this prime habitat, this keystone habitat for this species, in order to develop it. And maybe we'll get lucky and instead of them having to purchase other habitat that would replace this habitat that they destroyed, they could instead invest in this rearing population and just replace, like physically replace the birds.

So there'd be, you know, a study that goes out and says, okay, well, the amount of habitat that you guys destroyed would have produced X amount of birds. So you guys need to replace X amount of habitat that you guys destroyed uh would have produced x amount of birds so you guys need to replace x amount of birds elsewhere um however it just doesn't you're not replacing any birds you're just net net losing birds and on top of that you're stealing birds that could grow up to make more birds at the egg stage. And that's what's going on in Wyoming right now. The governor over there has already said that he's in support of this prior to the state legislature voting yes to extend the... It was supposed to sunset, meaning it was supposed to stop this year, but they voted

to extend it. And, uh, there's no good science supporting this. So, um, if you don't like your game birds to be stolen and you'd like responsible development to go out and be responsible with our wildlife as well, uh, let's make sure they do so. Call the governor of Wyoming and tell them to not only not sign this bill, but veto it. If you were, you're going to dumb this down as much as possible. Let me say a statement and ask this as a fair statement. The greater sage grouse has been flirting with endangered species act protection. Like there's a case to be made that it should be listed.

ESA listed. Um, years ago, they struck a deal that people thought was going to be very impactful on sage grouse recovery. A lot of that stuff wasn't implemented. It became highly politicized that's failing and so they're suggesting that to hit the numbers they need to hit they just pen raise them and then periodically release pen raised birds count them up and be like oh see there's enough yes it's not as simple as that well i mean that's that yeah we could say sure yeah yeah i mean

they're they're saying nope we uh in theory destroyed this amount of land which would have produced this amount of birds here are the birds without a place for them to be um well they would they would then be released into suitable habitat. However, they're just not built at that stage to survive in anything outside of a cage for a viable period of time. They'll get them, because there's a lot of attrition and a wild brood. Maybe one survives or something like that they're getting them like past the vulnerable stage and then letting them go and yeah with the with the idea that then they're gonna run around eat a bunch of food bump into another sage grouse and mate and make more sage grouse um and and there's a a great study out of south dak Dakota again on pheasants, um, where they took a couple of

different release points and did like severe predator suppression. Um, and they were able to get some hen pheasants to, uh, survive long enough to mate and nest. And, but but you know like their nesting ability was low however when they were able to breed they could have the same like a viable competitively viable amount of eggs as a wild as an actual wild hen pheasant egg salvaging. Egg salvaging is a real long-term practice. So like when I was banding ducks in San Francisco area, Fairfield area, California, with California waterfowl, they had a practice of egg salvage with ducks. And so out there, I think it was partially

trying to get more opportunity. I mean, more hunting opportunity. I guess because it's pretty contentious as far as a lot of people believe if that egg didn't hatch, maybe there was a genetic defect that you would not want to introduce into the population. The other side of it is that it's such a difficult thing to hatch eggs out in the wild, you know, water conditions, predation, that egg salvaging takes away a lot of those variables.

I think that's the case for it. And I think when they've tried to reestablish populations of game birds elsewhere, a more successful model is to go where they have a lot of them and take some of those and put them in another place. Yeah. Versus this sounds more like, and I don't know

this situation at all, but this sounds more like there's no previous knowledge of life they're just throwing them out there so i don't know if that would be successful if there was if this was a tool in the toolbox right i wouldn't instinctively be against it i mean if we're doing everything we can to preserve habitat right and that wasn't even on the table like we we're preserving habitat, doing all the things we need to do, and then someone proposed that like in addition to doing all the right things, we're going to attempt to do some of this to see what the efficacy is. I wouldn't be like, no. We're going to allow people to develop sage-grouse habitat. We're excusing them from mitigation as long as they can turn out X number of chicks on the ground somewhere, which will have no long-term – that won't solve the problem. The problem is habitat loss and a handful of other factors.

It just seems like a bunch of mental masturbation. Yeah, it's a waste of time when we know what the answer is. And you know, it's like gas prices are climbing up. I get it. But I think responsible energy is something that like everybody can get behind. It doesn't matter if it's a wind farm, a solar farm, or pumping crude out of the ground, right? It's like, if those companies

do it in a responsible way, then, you know, people will buy responsibly even more so. Like, I don't understand why it's like necessary to give them this uh end around situation yeah like a workaround right yeah not a reach around but a workaround yeah isn't part of the issue with the esa listing that um the states haven't listed it yet like is that a state managed species?

No, the listing is federal. The listing's federal, but these are being managed state by state. Correct. Correct. Right now. That almost changed. It almost changed during, um, I guess it was during the Obama administration. They considered it and decided not to based on this like deal that had been put together by matt mead and governor hickenlooper and the department of the interior and it's a

big deal like doing the work on the front end instead of being like we brent and i just talked about this last night right it's like nobody wants to fight unless something's getting taken away from them right so our ability to be proactive on this stuff and prevent the bird from going on the list is severely diminished by people who are like, well, let's just see how it works out. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And once they go on the list, then these people are really going to have to do some. Oh, all these cattlemen out there in Wyoming with public land grazing allotments and stuff. It's like, that's going to hurt you. It's like, oh, there's an endangered species out there. Yeah, that was when we had Wyoming's Governor Matt Mead on the show to talk about sage-grouse before.

He, at that time, felt that the energy companies saw the writing on the wall and knew they needed to get with it because he because their ability to operate on the landscape was going to be dependent on their ability to recover that bird i don't know if that's i don't know if he'd tell you the same thing right now that was many years ago that he he was feeling optimistic about that that like they were going to be that he felt that they were taking the driver's seat on it because they wanted to stay in business and they knew that when that bird hit the endangered species listing, business was going to be crippled. You know what, Brody, makes everybody mad all the time?

No. Here we go. About dogs? I'm mad at them now. What's the breed of the week? I'm mad at them now. Why? What did I do?

First, tell what happened, Brody, to this OR-109. Oh, yeah. A while back, we talked about OR-93, the one that. The one what? The wolf that wandered from Oregon way down into Southern California and got hit by a car. It was a collared wolf. Another collared wolf in Oregon just got killed, but it wasn't an accident. This wolf, OR-109, a collared female, was shot and killed the morning of February 15th.

And there's been a series of killings of wolves in the state. Legally? No, they're federally protected in Oregon. Just shooting them and leaving them laying? Yeah. And Brody's condemnation is very weak. What? No, they're federally protected in Oregon. Just shooting them and leaving them laying. Yeah. And Brody's condemnation is very weak. What?

You're like, you do that little thing people do where you're like, no, of course we know that no one should. That's just a note to myself. Okay. Let me hear it. I'm saying if you're the kind of person that hates wolves and you're going to go out and kill a federally protected wolf with a collar, like you're shooting yourself in the foot. So, okay. So you're offering advice.

Yeah. Don't do it. So you're, you're offering advice to. To the kind of. Wolf haters. Yes. Okay. So this is Brody's advice to wolf haters. You're shooting yourself in the foot because this is the kind of thing that like just draws

more attentions to keep, keeping wolves protected. Like in the long run, it's like. That's what you're saying. Yeah. I thought you were doing, I thought you were, had a tip pretty tepid. No, no, no, no. Because at the end of the day, it's a wildlife violation. It's yeah.

Of course it is. He broke a law. And it's a wildlife violation. It's a federal wildlife violation. And I thought you were being a little tepid. No, no, no. Because at the end of the day, it's a wildlife violation. Yeah, of course it is. He broke a law. And it's a wildlife violation. And it's a federal wildlife violation. And I thought you were being a little tepid. No, no, no. No one ever says that word on this show. It's like... In your condemnation. It's gonna backfire on you in the long run. Is what I'm saying. Do you have a lot of other advice for wolf haters?

Not really. Smoke a pack a day. Okay. That was a bumper sticker. a brody do your second do your second this just in from the wolf desk um this one this one's great because uh it's a it's a great example of a bipartisan you know reaching across the aisle for the greater good. In Wisconsin, who knows if it'll result in anything, but in Wisconsin, Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin introduced a bill to remove protections for the wolf in the state of Wyoming. To remove federal protections. I misspoke. In the state of Wisconsin.

Yeah. Correct? I misspoke in the state of Wisconsin. Yeah. Correct. They were backed up by some some Republicans in in Wyoming. Johnson said that Wisconsin residents should have a say in wolf management. Baldwin issued a statement saying she believes the wolf population is strong and federal officials should let the state manage wolves. And this is the reason they're doing this is, is a federal judge in California last month ordered federal protections to be restored for wolves after they were lifted. What just last year they were, the wolves were delisted. Now they're listed again. Um, this keeps going on like constantly.

Um, you know, the, the wolves here. It's like watching a yo-yo go up and down. Oh God. Yeah. Since I, the crazy thing is that the wolves in the upper Great Lakes, the Western Great Lakes, they've met recovery goals for, I think, over 20 years.

Um, there's over 4,000 of them up there now. Yeah, that's the thing people lose sight of. There's more wolves in the Northern Great Lakes than in the Northern Rockies. Right. And here, the states, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, they all have state management of these wolves. If these wolf protectionists would stop spending

all this money on lawyers and making fish and game agencies and other people spend all this money on lawyers, imagine what you could do with, take all that money and put it into sage grouse. Yeah. Or. But no one's going to fight over sage grouse.

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's been on again, off again. Like they were, you were able to, the states had management in Minnesota for like a year, maybe you could hunt them. And the same thing happened in Wisconsin recently. Um, but now they're back to being that, that

whole upper great lakes population is, is back to being federally protected. Well, it's funny too. Cause it's like, if you're really into wolves, why don't you leave these ones alone and talk about the Mexican wolf or the red wolf? The ones that are really hurting. Yeah. Or whatever, yeah, or the wolves that used to be running around in Kentucky.

Yeah. I mean, if you use Montana, Idaho, Wyoming as an example, like it's a great example of state management of wolves, right? Like why can't Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota manage them the same way? Well, it's interesting here, too, because, like, some of the language is, if you break it down, is, like, very, it does make sense. It's agreeable. It's like you're talking about populations that don't see individual state borders. Right. So it's like, okay, well, if we are concerned with the overall population, is it right to segment off these populations, making it at a Wisconsin population, let's say like a Michigan population, can we do that?

And then still take into context the overall population recovery goals. Yeah. And thinking about it that way, it's like, yeah, I do get that. But look at everything we've done that with. Elk are only recovered across 13% of their historic range. Yeah. When we hunt elk. Bighorn sheep. Bighorn sheep, a fraction of their historic range.

Yeah. So black bears, a fraction of their historic range. Yet in states that have a bunch, you're allowed to hunt them. No one says like, well, we can't, you shouldn't hunt elk in Utah because what does that mean for elk covering in Illinois? No one makes that case.

That's very true. That's very true. The difference being though, right, is elk in Illinois aren't on the endangered species list, right? Because all that stuff predated the endangered species list. And we're dealing with the Endangered Species

Act, and this is the language that we're miring through. And yeah, it is just like this horrid, crappy political football that goes back and forth. I want to give people a little context here. It's the thing we've talked about, but I was going to re-talk about it real quick. There's a thing, anytime you're hearing about wolves, anytime you're hearing about grizzly bears, you're going to hear a thing called DPS.

You take something like, so people know, like everything in the lower 48, like everything was wolf habitat. There were wolves all over the damn place. When wolves got listed under the Endangered Species Act, they got listed across the damn place. When wolves got listed under the Endangered Species Act, they got listed across the lower 48. Later, someone said, that's not a very good management decision.

We're not going to recover wolves in downtown Nashville. I'm just pointing that out because people wouldn't be surprised when you read about the market hunters like Daniel Boone and his cronies. When they're running around Kentucky kentucky tennessee they're interacting wolves all the time right so somebody later said you're not going to recover wolves in downtown nashville so let's do this

thing where we look at like where could you actually have them and create these things called distinct population segments and let's manage these distinct population segments and everybody thought this was a good idea at the time. Right. So we made how many other for grizzly bears? Six, seven? Five or six. Northern Cascades, Northern Continental

Divide, Greater Yellowstone, Cabinet Yak. Would be Alaska, right? No, it's all this lower 48 DPS. Oh, it's just lower 48. So they made a bunch of these dps's um with wolves okay northern great lakes they make these like and they're like let's manage this so the crux of these arguments keeps coming down to you could point and say the northern great lakes distinct population segment of wolves looks strong it looks great but someone who wants to block any kind of state management

wolves is always going to go like, yeah, but what about the neighboring area? And, and so they're sort of rehashing this thing that everybody agreed on is to manage these distinct population segments. Like you're never going to recover the grizzly bear in Golden Gate Park. You're not going to recover the grizzly bear

in Golden Gate Park. Which is part of its historic range. It's part of its historic range. Absolutely. So let's stop talking about areas that aren't going to have them. And let's start talking about these areas that have the possibility of having a

population. Or that do have a population. Yeah. That do or could possibly. Again, like your, your point of like all this crap and the billboards and the, the and the legal firms, like had that money been put into like a big wildlife easements on the Rocky Mountain Front, what that would do for grizzly bears and wolves would, would outweigh all the back and forth bull crap that they're going through right now. Yeah. Like, like prevent this stuff from turning into condos.

You're going to do more for wildlife than, than all your back padding. Enriching lawyers. Yes. I want to hit on this real quick. This just came home for us in Montana. Get rid of tags, man. Remember the old days you had to wear a back tag on your back? There's a couple states that still got to do that. You're hunting and you have to wear a thing on your back with your license in it.

Cal, did you ever have to do that out west here? No. Was that ever a thing? Wisconsin, shit, man. If you don't anymore, you only recently didn't need to. When we started kicking around like archery gear or, you know, like tree stand archery gear at first light. That had the back tag hangers. Probably like 11, yeah, 2011, 2012.

It was like, it's got to have this, you know, a couple couple little metal Grommets that you can stick this giant Safety pin through For your back tag And the last time I hunted deer in Wisconsin You still had to have that sun bitchin thing How many years ago was that? The last time I hunted deer there I don't know 5-6 years ago Yeah I think I don't think you have to wear them anymore

Yeah You couldn't obscure it like I had a backpack On and so all the armchair experts are writing in like he's actually in violation because his back tag's obscured by his backpack and you know. Anyhow. When I was at Doug's too, so he was telling me

about those regulation changes and he said that the regulations read that if you choose to wear a hat, it has to be 60% orange. Or you just go nothing. Right. I was like, so my bald, highly reflective head. The way these apps, so here in Montana, they just went to an app.

It's called the e-tag. In your future, you're not going to carry a tag around anymore. You might be in a state where you still do, but it's just going to be all app-based. Now, here's the weird thing about the apps. I heard through the grapevine, a little birdie was telling me that in designing the app, they were wondering about the ability that when you were e-tagging, so you're using an app that works offline you don't need to have a cell signal and you fill out information male right right

date of kill method of kill male female how many times on each side right whatever biometric information they're after you just do this all in your app and it files it. There was talk about why not have it also pull the location. Since if you read your reg, any reg in the planet, a game warden can ask you, take me to the kill site, and you have to take them to the kill site. It's just a thing. Any warden at any time can make you take them to the kill site of where you killed an animal also when you do your surveys like if you trap and you trap uh martins

otters you hunt black bears you hunt wolves there's a part in the thing where you say where it was right they had this chance where you could have captured that for every tagged animal in the state and you would not need to do surveys, right? It'd just be that, you'd know, imagine like the detailed look you'd have on harvest, but they've, they felt that it was a privacy issue.

When you download the app, it asks you if you want to have location services turned on while you're using that app and it'll tip when i downloaded the app i didn't notice that it asks you the question oh so you can opt in you can opt in and when you validate that tag it's going to record right where you're standing i didn't know you could opt in yeah you can do i did not because it's like like i said they can go they have it just is weird because they have the right to make you take them there anyways but that doesn't violate privacy yeah that's just like a given but they they like i think a lot of people are going to be leery of saying yeah go ahead and track me while i'm oh yeah no one wants that um but what's so funny is everybody's like you know

up in arms about being tracked but like dude what do you think your phone's doing oh sure it's like your phone monitors what you talk about um and serves you ads about it in articles yeah but i posted about how much i like the idea of not carrying around 10 pages of paper in my backpack um and a game warden sent me a message and he said that these apps, you know, they sound great, but there are like cons to them too. Um, there's like, he believes there's going to be issues with officers inspecting people's phones, perhaps like privacy. Batteries. Yeah. But with that.

Yeah. And it'd be like, oh, I left it at home or I Solid batteries. Yeah. But wouldn't that. Yeah. And it'd be like, oh, I left it at home or I forgot it. Yeah. I don't know how to do it, but I get his concerns. It's just the way. That ain't going to stop anything. No, it's just the way things are going to be. This is going to be how it's going to be.

Yeah. In 10 years, I don't know, five years. Yeah. You're going to be like, remember tags? Yeah. I bet you. I already feel that way now. tags because they've gotten just chintzy and like they used to be a like a substantial tag it was printed on fancy papers like indestructible and now for years like you

know montana you just print them at home nebraska for probably 15 years and when it gets wet you watch it dissolve yeah exactly and um i kind of like the heavy duty tags it's kind of like a little collectible thing at the end oh yeah i have a folder that's you know two inches thick now of uh you know 20 years plus of tags and when i started doing a while back, I'd just take a Sharpie and after a hunt, I'd just make a few notes on it. I was with Chester. We hunted. Didn't get anything.

Lick Creek. Didn't get nothing. You know, never punched this one, but if I did, you know, who maybe helped. You know, I figured as an old man, those would be nice memories to flip through. Yep. Enough, enough unpunched tags to stuff a pillowcase.

That's kind of what I'm working on right now. Does anybody understand this conservation easement tax fraud deal? I don't understand it well enough. It's pretty confusing because it's not. How eloquently can you speak to it? I can bring up some questions about it. Yeah, tell me.

How do you use, how do people, how would people use something where they hear like conservation easements? Like who would be opposed to that? That sounds fantastic. So what you're referring to is syndicate conservation easements. I don't know what that is. So there's two types of transactions when you talk to conservation easements.

You know, can you go real high level? Can you back up one step and tell people what the hell a conservation easement is? You hear about it a lot in some areas. And growing up, I never heard anybody talk about a conservation easement in West Michigan. Well, they've been pioneered in the last 30 plus years. Oh, that'd explain that, wouldn't it? The land trust movement has really caught a lot of excitement the last 30 years. Like in Maine, for instance, we have 80 land trusts because we don't have much public land.

So it's been responsive to that. And so when you conserve a land, there's fee simple, which is you're buying all of the land. I own all this land. It's my land. And then a conservation easement is a type of easement that restricts certain uses of the property. So most of it is development rights. And so like a land trust would buy the development rights on this piece of property because you want to stay wild. There can be a bunch of other prescriptions in an easement, like no two easements are the same.

Some allow public access. A lot of them don't. That's one big misconception is you see conservation. And easement does not imply access. No, no. And there's actually, you know, with federal funds like forced legacy, other things like that, they've actually required that to happen as part of that program is that that easement has to have public access. And public access isn't necessarily vehicular access or anything like that.

It's foot access, like just the legal terminology of public access. Um, so the, the thing Corinne sent, um, is less interesting from a conservation and our standpoint and more interesting from tax law, I guess. And so when you donate a conservation easement, there's in tax code, if you're donating it to a charitable organization, the value. Like let's say you donate a chunk of swamp to Ducks Unlimited. I don't know. Is that a good example? Well, let's say you, you in Maine, this is, this happens, you've owned a hundred acres for your

whole life and you want to donate that hundred acres of woodland to a university or a land trust and you want them to keep it for the public good. And the public good can be defined through scenic resources, natural resources, public access, a bunch of different metrics apply under that public good. Even a certain amount of income, like you can have it defined as needs to be managed in a certain way. So if it's an active woodlot, right? Well, like forever wild easements are very popular now, which means like you can't do

anything to it. Let nature take its course. And working forest easements are another example where they allow for that commercial use. Like you can log it, you can have roads, anything associated with that use. But when there's a donation of fee land or easement land, there's a value associated with that.

So you can get an appraisal for just like a fee land. So the total land donation, how much is land worth? That's what the person could deduct. As a tax write-off, like a charitable donation tax write-off. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And there's a number of ways they can do that.

And that's like, literally as a land trust, you say, we can't, you could qualify for this, but we can't give you advice on this. So they have to do all this. So they have to go get. You mean the land, like, you know what's so confused about land? Like a land trust has always been like a plethora of organizations in this country that buy, help preserve land.

There's now an Airbnb for hunting called Land Trust, which is like kind of made it. Yeah, I've asked them not to come to Maine. It's like makes a lot of name confusion. Cause it's like, yeah. Well, there's also community land trust where for affordable housing, that's a big terminology issue too. So there is a lot of. Yeah. It's like the, the, the, you had to like go think of another term now. Yeah.

So a land trust. So conservancy. Yeah. You know, um, these are mostly not what that article is talking about. But when you say that, when you talk about the tax write-off part, like let's say I donate my 100 acres. Yeah. And I say to you, hey, man, I need to know the value so I can do a tax write-off.

You're saying that you don't get, you're like, go figure that out on your own. Like I'm not going to give you a value. Yeah, we would have to say, give you an acknowledgement. We'd have to substantiate that it is a charitable, um, within that our mission, you know, and it falls within those values that we're protecting. And we have to substantiate those values and most reputable land trusts, uh, either go by the standards and practices or are accredited by the land Trust Alliance. And they have, you know, a very long list of standards and practices, like getting an appraisal before you buy any land.

And for conservation easements, this is kind of a subsect. These have come in favor because the private landowner can continue to own the land, but their development rights are restricted. So this is very popular in Maine forest land because the forest owners can get income from the easement purchase. It's not really in conflict with their current use, i.e. forestry. And, you know, they can continue to cut the forest after that's in place. Yeah. But they're ruling out that it'll be turned into a subdivision.

Yeah, exactly. You can't subdivide it. You can't, there's limits on structures and commercial use, and those are all defined differently. But what's happening in that syndicate conservation easement, there's a loophole where, um, as a business, you can buy land and in this situation, um, simply put, you get investors to invest. Let's say you're buying a $200,000 piece of property. Okay. Um, you get everyone, four guys to invest $50,000 each. The issue is you can, through an agreement, say any charitable donation by donating an easement can go to those people in this agreement.

Okay. So at that point, they found a lot of people in violation of this where they go get an appraisal that's inflated. So say you get your buddy Jim, you pay him on the side to say, hey, can you do an appraisal? Can you make this appraisal come out to be $400,000? Got it. And then you donate the value. And so all those guys who are part of the syndicate get a hundred thousand dollars each um tax deduction so it that to me so that's the crime at play here well it's if there's a legal way to do it now as a tax shelter but most likely um a lot of these these deals which I'm not an expert on, are taking advantage by getting inflated estimates

of value and stuff like that. And putting it in perspective, I think the article Corincent was $9 billion a year in these syndicate organizations are getting put in for tax write-offs. Whereas the Land Trust Alliance says out of all their ones, just within their organizations that they deal with is $1 billion. So it's being used pretty much. The numbers aren't adding up. Well, at the center of all these deals is usually a law firm. So they're kind of figuring out, you know, when you do a development, when you do

land purchases, asset transfers, this could be a tool in their toolbox where they can give people higher value tax deductions than the investment they're putting in. That's the kind of the basic of two cents of it. I'm not familiar with it because literally anyone with a logo that says land trust or anything like that is not a party to these deals at all. Like that's not, that's the confusing part about this. Oh, that's why you were trying to create distance between yourself and these fraudulent activities. Cause you're just not involved in it. There's not, there's no one who really does these back in the day. there were some of the bigger organizations that before the Land Trust Alliance started, did stuff like conservation easements on golf courses. And, you know, obviously that's kind of outside the point of a conservation easement, but

a golf course could have a tremendous value. So you would get that donation receipt. And so that's like the land trust alliance came, came around because there's a lot of us that are very passionate and integrity, like it says trust right in the name, right? So like, you know, your integrity is very important. And so to have companies lobbying for this tax shelter is kind of adverse to what we want to do, which is build trust and not undermine it through, you know, just doing backdoor deals. And that's a big misconception when you're doing land trust work is that everyone's doing it for a charitable deduction. And in my experience, working with a couple of different land trusts,

most, I would say a majority of the people who donate the properties do not take that deduction. Got it. That's a shrewd trick. You can imagine a golf course or a ski hill or something being like, we're going to come in, we're going to develop the piss out of it. Then we're going to take the parts that are meant to be skied on

and say that they'll never be used for anything but skiing and get a tax deduction off it and hand it back to people as a conservation easement. Well, and there's two issues is that they can create charitable nonprofits that may not be that true blue. Yeah. So they, that's a legal process to create that. And so they can create a fake nonprofit, so to speak, to act as that conservation easement holder. Man. So that, you know, that's where I don't, you know, I think it's an issue that the Land Trust Alliance is right now, they're lobbying to try to close that door. So that's the point you were saying earlier, you're saying that they're lobbying to try to close that door so that's the point you were saying earlier you're saying that they're showing these like nine billion dollars of land trust conservation

easement activity but then when you go and ask the actual groups that are doing like legitimate land trust work they can only show a billion bucks so no specifically that nine billion is syndicate conservation and easements where it's a company who's passing the charitable gift down to investors. Yeah. Got it. So versus a nonprofit who may be getting a donation from a individual or, you know, even a business, but not in that situation where they're passing on the charitable gift through

some investor agreement. And, and these are, it's important to make the distinction, right? Because these are incredible tools for, you know, ma and pa rancher out there who want to stay on the land. They want to be able to pass it down. And they need to like be competitive, right? With like rising tax costs, like Gallatin Valley is a great example, right. With like rising tax costs, uh, like Gallatin Valley is a great example,

right? Like you have, uh, property tax values that are, are outweighing, um, the value of farming of agriculture here, but you could work with, uh, a number of, of trusts and the, uh, federal government to figure out ways to put wildlife easements on that property that do pay something. Well, so Maine Farmland Trust has a program called Buy, Restrict, and Resell. And agriculture is a charitable use of the land, public good. And so you don't necessarily have to link it to other wildlife resources. So their easements are quite different than the ones we've worked with because their sole goal is to keep farmland at a price point that farmers could buy them at. So they'll buy the property, they'll put a conservation easement on it, which reduces

the value of the property because you're taking away those development rights. And when you appraise land, mostly you're appraising on development rights. Unless you're talking about large swaths of forest land, they would then value those based on timber receipts and stuff like that. So their hope is that will allow farmers to stay on these properties, productive farm soils. So that's the easement is to me for public access, an imperfect tool because you still have that private landowner issue. So like if you want to build trails and stuff like that, you have to be very explicit with what you're trying to preserve with an easement because you still have the burden of going to court. If that said landowner or even a third party violates your easement terms, you have to be ready to then go defend that in a courtroom, which can be extremely expensive.

So because of that, most land trusts have legal endowments. That's one of the standards and practices, stuff like that, to help insure against those inevitable costs. I want to get a little bit into your organization, High Peaks Alliance. Can you tell the story of just a – we came in talking about like how people sort of abuse the system. Can you tell – because we talked about the Shiloh Pond project that you guys ran. Can you talk about – can you explain to people how your organization and what you did and how that worked out to demonstrate sort of like what we're talking about when we talk about – Yeah, for sure.

Like these sort of like what we're talking about when we talk about. Yeah, for sure. Like these sort of access projects. Well, so Shiloh is interesting because High Peaks Alliance has been board driven for the past 10, 15 years. And so we finally got to a point through the good work of our board to be able to hire me full time. So when we started the Shiloh Pond project, it literally started with a Facebook post from a guide who's a local lady. She's a teacher, too, who said, how do we preserve our, you know, redneck yacht club here, our small pond, the place we love? I had grown up fishing this pond because I grew up in this area. I pretty much fished any pond up there I fish. So it kind of doesn't limit it. But, you know, it's this small 20-acre pond, and it does have some natural occurring trout and some stock trout.

But it's close to town, and it's completely undeveloped, which is rare. And who owned it? So that's what kind of really gets my passion going because Maine in general has switched from forest land owners to investment owners. And so the Winter family owned this and they also ran the HG Winter Mill in Kingfield, Maine. So they had owned a lot of land across the landscape. And so when you know- They're a forest family. Exactly. Sawmill, they ran a sawmill. And this story could replay a million times over Maine where it's a pulp and paper or sawmill company owns a large tracts of land. And through technology, it's a lot of money.

Let's bring back more money to our shareholders. Let's sell this. So we've gone from, I think, from 1998 to 2005, 40% of Maine's forest land changed hands. Hold on, give me that figure again. From 1998, and this has happened before, if you took a bigger window, it'd be even larger. But from 1998 to mid-2000s, 2005, 40% of Maine's forest lands changed hands. So not just land mass, but forest lands.

You're not counting like every house that sold and stuff like that. No, we're talking about the 12 million acres of northern Maine. Huh. So, and these, I mean, these have continued to- A lot of buying and selling, man, but huge tracks probably. Well, some of them can be really massive, you know, hundreds of thousands of acres. I mean, John Malone, he's the number one landowner in the U.S., owns over a million acres in our neck of the woods as one individual.

Um, he's the guy who bartended at Cheers. You remember that? No. But hold on. Did he pass up, uh, he passed up Ted Turner? No. Yeah. Left him in the dust.

Really? Yeah. It was the main, well. That's gotta hurt. Peter Bach, big owners, uh, was like a subway founder. You know, Apple, like Maine Forest. I mean, there's foreign ownerships. There's Yale's Endowment owns a big portion of the Maine Woods. You know, these are all investment owners.

So they're looking to extract as much value for their purposes, investments. And all of us are semi-responsible if you think about like we all have 401ks and stuff like that. And in those, you will have a line called natural resources. And so, you know, forest land is one of the mechanisms that would go into that. So getting back on topic, this parcel of land was the last piece this family owned. There was five siblings. They had always let people use the property. That's kind of the tradition because everyone worked.

There was a social contract that like you worked at the mill. You knew the landowner. It was that, you know, you got power. The forest companies got a lot of influence at the state house and otherwise in the communities and they got employees. And in exchange for that, you know, we got access to the land, we got good relationships. And so that, that culture has evaporated in Maine to where the best you can do now is work with a local forester of said investment group. So that social contract is kind of evaporating.

That's what High Peaks Alliance is kind of focused on creating. So that much access is evaporated as that kind of – Well, some of the access, like let's take Weyerhaeuser, for example. In Maine, they have all their land open. You can camp on their land. Heck, I even got a Christmas tree permit from them this year. Okay.

But if you look at their practices in other states, I don't think they've allowed that much access like at West, stuff like that. So there's still some of that goodwill by some of the companies in maine because of our landowner liability protections and such like that um but you know there has been a lot of trail closures like we don't want four-wheelers on our land we don't want you to camp on our land. And because of the reduction in staffing, you're getting more gates. So they start out as seasonal gates, like let's protect our road during mud season.

That's a reasonable thing to do. But you're not going to spend the staff time or build a relationship locally to give anyone access to open those gates back up. And so, you know, for instance, an area I used to go swimming in as a kid, Brook trout fish. Um, I wanted to bring my whole wedding party there and, uh, like have a wedding picture of us jumping off the cliffs and, uh, just thought it'd be a cool picture. It had everyone from Maryland, Florida, all these family friends, uh, got them back of the trucks. We had our beers in hand. We roll up the dirt road. Within a week of my wife and I scouting this

and bringing out my entire wedding party, there was a gate. And people, it was a real bummer because it was like a mile from where the swimming hole was. So we went and did something else, but it kind of underscores how it's just this slow erosion of loss of access. Yeah. And you couldn't point to one thing.

So Shiloh Pond, you know, people love it. People tend to love, uh, the ideas of landscapes, but specifically gems on the landscape. Like this is the viewpoint I love the most. This pond I love the most. And so this is one of those places that a lot of people loved. We wanted to get the town to own it because I was still part-time at the time. And so we talked to them, would this be something you would own if we could figure out how to fundraise for it? They said, yeah, people see you have to go to a town boat. You know, there's some interest.

So we asked the Trust for Public Land, who explicitly just does transactions. In our neck of the woods, they don't hold any land. So they said they would come on and help us because I laid out, here's the property. Here's some potential funding sources we could apply for. This is my case. Can you guys help us? And so I put Betsy Cook, she's the state director there, in a boat in Shiloh.

Like I convinced her to come up to Shiloh Pond and wouldn't let her out until she said yes. But yeah, so then we. It's like a very Kennedy move. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, you get to this pond and it's completely undeveloped and I hope you never visit it to all your listeners. But, you know, because this is a community project, right?

And so the idea is people like, where did the money come from? How do we do this? This is impossible. And so that's one of our goals, High Peaks Alliance, just showing our communities that things are possible. So we, we have to get the landowners on board. You have to sign a purchase and sale agreement. You have to get an appraisal. You have to do due diligence, hazards assessments, surveys, uh, look at land access rights, like

going over, uh, the right of ways into the road. So it's not simple. We, I got Betsy out there to talk about when it was listed in 2018. We closed on the property in 2021. So it's a saga sometimes to conserve land. Like the quickest you ever do land conservation would be like six months. And that's if you have the money, right? Like, so it's a slow process. So the landowner has to be okay with that fundraising period, and you have to have an agreement to that. Yeah, with my minimal involvement to watching these transactions occur,

I hear again and again of conservation groups. They just can't. Conservation groups or federal agencies, state agencies, they can't move quick enough. No. And like a sweet property will come up, and it's like people want to do it as a habitat thing.

But for the owner, the owner's like, I could sell the thing tomorrow for cash. Like I can't sit around and wait for you guys to pull all this shit together. Especially now with the market. We lucked out in that. I think the family had some sentimental care that this could be a conservation property. So they're willing to work with you over the course of three years. But we, well, I mean, it was more, more like late 2018 to very early 2021. So a couple of years, but, um, and that's about as long as you ever want to draw one

of these things out. It's just, um, you know, you have fundraising hiccups. We had a right. It turns out there was a gap in the right of way because these owners had owners had sold a piece of property but didn't retain a right-of-way on it. So I had to go get five different landowners on a Zoom call. I read Chris Boss, Never Split the Difference, FBI Tactics to Negotiation. Like the day before because I'm like not screwing this up. I mean like we already were in bed with you guys.

You had already sent your donation. What was the book called? Chris Boss, Never Split the Difference. It's one of the best books you can read. FBI, Negotiator. I mean, his point is you really got to understand your counterpart to then have them care about what you care about. He's not the guy that did that master class on negotiation. Yeah, he is.

Yeah. I haven't taken it. Never mind. But he's really good. I just lost interest. Why? Did you take the class? No, but I was kind of interested in master class. I don't want to explain why, but I was interested in that

whole world. And I happened to watch his one and I thought it was pointless. He had good tips on how to small talk. Well, anyways, we got five landowners. Let me give you a small talk tip. We got five landowners to sign the right-of-way access deal.

So you've got to have something working right for them. Yeah, well, no, just for listeners, I want to just digress real quick. So let's say you got a small talk with someone, but you don't feel like it, but whatever, your wife makes you go to something. Say something to me, Cali. Just say whatever. Say, I got a new laptop. Hey, it's good to see you here.

No, no, no. Say. Let me show you. I want to jump ahead. I want to jump ahead. Let me show you a picture of a buck I killed. A buck you killed? Yeah.

A nice one. A nice one. Yeah. A nice one. Let's a nice one Here it is Just whatever they say you just say it back to them with an inquisitive tone And like people that just want to talk about themselves It doesn't go for hours So Cal be like say I got a new laptop

Hey I got a new laptop Yep it's silver And a big screen Ah big screen I like that? What if you come across someone that wants to talk more about you than themselves? That's usually not a problem.

Go on. Well, I think the intent is to actually try to understand the person. No, I'll read the book. Yeah, you should. I'm telling you, I'm sold on just for this one transaction. Because you got the deal done. I got the deal done.

Well, and we had to raise funds for road maintenance fund because they had been maintaining all the road for all these years. So it's just complex. And so anyways, you know, what was cool, we had a town vote on this to see if they would accept the property. And that was really heartening because you can't get town votes that are landslides usually. But this was two to one in favor. You know, I couldn't imagine there'd be anyone against it.

That shit blows my mind too. Cal, you remember when they did the Sabinosa? Yeah. And they're like, no, we're trying to give you the ranch. We want to give you the ranch. And you're like, well, I don't know if we can take that ranch. Yeah. And they're like, no, no, we're going to, we're trying to give you the ranch. We want to give you the ranch. And like, well, I don't know if we can take that ranch.

Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And there's even like people in the political sphere, like to make a point, we're saying like, nope, not going to take it.

Come again now. What? Like why? And to elaborate on this, uh, the Sabinosa wilderness area was our i think our only at the time completely landlocked inaccessible other than through permission crossing private land so it was a wilderness area you couldn't get to yeah 17 000 acres i think um i think it

grew to 23 000 acres with um shoot um, shoot, I can't remember that anyway, these folks had put together this ranch that bordered the wilderness. Their kids, uh, unfortunately for them, like let, let it be known that they had intended to sell the ranch when mom and pa passed away and, uh, mom and pa were like, we're not seeing this thing get sold off to whoever and so they they cut a deal with um the wilderness land wilderness trust yeah yeah and i remember being a sticking point where they the the blm right had to accept it the blm sounds like we're not in the public land business anymore and we won't accept. I mean, they did, but it was like, how could

people not want it? I think it's like to prove a point. Well, I mean, there's also small towns, you have like the worry of long-term maintenance and, you know, fixing up the road and, you know, you're talking about. It's like, what's it going to do to the tax base is always the question.

Well, yeah, exactly. It costs money to own land. Yeah, and I mean, that's all dependent on the level of investment and development you want on your recreation lands. Like ball fields obviously are going to cost a lot more than undeveloped forest land. So I don't think there'll be a tremendous cost. And, you know, when you're thinking about these projects, you always want to think about those costs when you're fundraising. So, like, we have a fund to help them with some of their startup costs. Oh, that's a good idea.

Well, like, you know, the bridge needs to be redecked. The road needs a little fixing up. Yeah, so you're not handing them a total pile of headache without some way to mitigate it. Well, not only that is we've helped them develop a town committee. And they actually, we capped it at nine members. There was more applicants than available slots. And so the select board actually had to interview some of these people. So we got a really good mix of passionate people. And most of them all had some personal

connection to them loving Shiloh Pond. So that's one of the big benefits I find of local conservation is you're building some of that self-governance across the landscape. It's like you have a say in the land. So that's important. You guys, what was interesting, you know, part of the, part of the fundraising was your help, you know, with the land access initiative.

And that was a really fun grant, so to speak, for me because it was so different than everything else we do. What was the normal way you were getting the money? Well, like a lot of these deals, you try to structure it around one head large grant. So ours was this main natural resource conservation program. It's a mitigation fund. And then you have trust for public lands costs, the survey costs, other land costs, all these deals. And, you know, so you have a number of private philanthropies that solicit grants. Got it.

And individuals. And so you know you guys were a little different on that. I saw the posting and I said, well, what the heck, I'll put in something. I don't know. Why not? I do a lot of these, so it's not that much effort. Cal, explain the posting. So, yeah, our Meat Eater Land Access Initiative, which started around the Ranella Putellis 2020 campaign merchandise that we built up.

And then we got it. We were like, oh, we should do something good with this money. And it became like the campaign promise, which was provide more hunting and fishing like and so we decided to fundraise fundraise through merch fundraise uh through some auctions and uh even got a couple of direct donations that they were able to funnel to Brent and the high peaks Alliance there at the end. But, uh,

our ask was for anyone who listens to our shows, goes to our website, uh, watches our stuff on, on Netflix. If you know of a place that could use more access, ideally like, you know of a place that could use more access, ideally like, you know, granny's passing away and doesn't want to see the farm go to just anybody.

So you guys can buy it. And it provides like a pathway to a hundred thousand acres of landlocked public land. Or the only way to get on the river. Or the only way to get on the river. Or an easement that we could help pay for that goes through a new subdivision into the national forest. There's a bunch of different things that we'd be interested in. So we kind of put out that call to action a couple of times. And we have a, if you go underneath the conservation tab at the meteor.com, will see our land access initiative through there you

can go in there and click the button that uh says uh you know submit a property submit a property we have it on there twice just in case you miss it the first time and that and you just found it like that just joe i saw the Ronella Patelis ad. I got a kick out of that, and I said, I'll go look at it. Did you buy a campaign hat? I did not. Are you guys running in 2024? We've got to wait and see.

Got to wait and see how the field shakes out. Yeah, no. So I checked out most programs from companies are really horribly executed in that they're normally worried about how it's going to look for them. And when I saw your program, the questions you were asking, I could tell you actually wanted to do a project and help a project. So most of these things I just cut off. Like I don't attempt them because you can, when their first question is, what's your social media following? You know, you know that their intent is not the project. Their intent is to do cause marketing, which couldn't be a benefit, but it's hard for me to put in a lot of effort into a grant application when you know it's just going to be an extractive process because these are pretty difficult and you have to respect the donors and respect the grantors.

But, you know, you want to work with people who want to do the work. And so the question is- What was the term you just used? Cause what? Cause marketing. Cause marketing. That's interesting. That's a good term.

It's been a lot. It's been an exciting term for nonprofits, I guess. But also like you think of like Tom's Shoes, that would be an example of cause marketing. Wouldn't it be like that we're going to name the sports arena Kinko's Stadium? Well, cause marketing, that, you know that i wouldn't call that cause marketing i would call it like these companies are showing as part of their business model um it's not about profits it's about like mission and so a lot of times they use a non-profit to align that way yeah um whereas like i keep thinking of tom shoes like you buy a shoe

and they donate a shoe patagonia is a good example but home but i don't get where why is that bad it's not bad oh it's that when i am a non-profit trying to get this project done it's expensive money i see where you might be in a situation where you're like, that's all good and fine, but I got to move and I don't want to bog this down with. Well, how, you know, it's more like a job, right? I would call that fee for service. Like sometimes we do work for other organizations like writing management plans, stuff like that. But I would consider that a fee for service or a sponsorship versus. A grant or a donation or yeah just how it

it's and it's there's legal terminology obviously but then there's just the reality of limited capacity to work and please a business to the fullest extent that they want because they have an outcome in their head versus, you know, we're trying to get this deal done. So how do we do? I mean, be honest. It was our first year, so. Well, I think we can do a crash course on conservation just because, you know, like

the examples you're using of like, hopefully your grandmother has access to this. It simplifies a pretty complex process of like finding opportunities, vetting opportunities, vetting funding sources. You know, so I think with us, it's worked. We had a benefit because most conservation organizations are so put together in their approach to projects that something like this might've been hard to fit in. I don't know what you got for applications. Um, how many applications, how many things did you get Cal that were serious? Oh, I think we ended up with close to like 450 submissions and of those i would i would only consider like 150 to be like worth a second look and of that 150 uh 23 and then got down to eight where you're like, oh, yeah, this is real, real deal stuff.

Yeah. You know, and that's, I mean, when you're working with reputable organizations, we're doing the research to highlight through our strategies, what are the best opportunities? What are the most bang for your buck? Because there's not a single nonprofit that's not working under restricted funds. And so, you know, there's a lot of effort going into looking across the landscape. What are the landowner willingness? What are the ecological values? What are the constituents values that want to donate to such things? And so you get to a point of a lot of people who call you up and say, Hey, you want to

conserve my land? Uh, there's this idea that there's this endless amount of money in conservation because there's some people that donate lots of money, but it's not like compared to what land costs. It's a difficult thing. Um, so when I applied, the questions were pretty straightforward, you know, like what's the opportunity, uh, what do you guys need help with? How do you see meat eater helping? There's a few others. Um, and what was exciting to me is, you know, I've really enjoyed, uh, the meat eater series on netflix i have not consumed as much on everything else just because

of time um but your ability to describe what hunting is beyond the kill is you know what i've reflected with and so that's like why i'm in conservation is that you get to see people's love of the land and you get to describe that in different ways. And so, you know, in real terms, everyone in Kingfield loved that piece of property for a different reason. Like one guy talked about ice skating there as a kid. You know, trout fishing fishing caught my first trout there used to camp there used to throw parties there you know like so people have different ways to relate to the land so we used to burn tires and have keggers out there yeah they still letting high school kids have keggers no no well it's not kids these days don't have

the same fire in their gut. They're lazy. Yeah. They don't want to pack tractor tires a mile back into the woods to have a kegger. I think that died. My generation, maybe when that died. But yeah, so we applied. Cal reached out. That was refreshing to me because usually as these things unroll, your first few opportunities or your best opportunities and then people encumber these things with process and make them more cumbersome is just the the the way you apply

because you get more committees involved you get more people involved and it becomes more difficult to you know grants in general are like this foundations in general are like this. Foundations in general are like this. But I think, I don't know if Cal remembers the email, but I got an email from Ryan Cal Calhan. I got a big kick out of that. And I woke up 4.30 in the morning because you have to get in your tree stand early. And I think I wrote that in the email. Like I'm writing this in the golden hours. So I'm most focused focused meaning like if i was to be hunting this would be the best time to hunt and that's why i'm writing you back at this time

so i'm like super focused um so your goal is just to present the best case possible and cal did a great job he flew out very soon after to make sure I wasn't full of crap. Got a famous red Maine hot dog. Yeah. It was great. Like a lot of extra phosphates? Well, I don't know what makes it red, but it makes it taste better. They probably die. It's got the snap. Yeah, I got you. It's got that snap you read so much about.

Yeah. You've never had a red hot dog? Have you ever had a red hot dog? I've had red hot dogs. You don't have to read about it then. I'm talking to the listener. Took a paddle around, took a paddle around the lake, checked out the waterfall. So did Cal seem like a shrewd negotiator when he came out? I think he just wanted to find out if what I was saying was the truth and that, you know, it was easy to do. I was excited to show them around the area

because the area in this area of Maine, it's, we call it the high peaks, which is puny compared to your mountains, but it's the 10 of the 14 tallest peaks in Maine. And it's that aggregation, it's headwaters of a lot of the rivers in Maine. And so, you know, there's a lot of big landscape conservation happening now too. You know, Boston University put out a study of looking at Biden's 30 by 30 goals. And if you look at like species diversity, carbon storage, ability to protect large landscapes, all those things on their own have different areas of the u.s that those could be the highest values but like maine really lights up when you start laying all those values on on top of each other people that talk about you know people talk about 30 by 30 by 30 for a while and i and they point

out the necessity to sort of like uncouple that with the Biden administration. Yeah. I, you know, we, cause now you're going to fall into this thing where the next administration, they'll jettison it because it was the Biden thing or vice versa. It'd be like,

you know, throwing out whatever anybody had ahead of you did. Do you know? I'd like you to go back and correct. I think it, I think it came out of like a EO Wilson. Is that who? Okay. Call it the Wilson 30 by 30 yeah and uh i think he wanted 50 by 50 exactly to your point is that right 50 of the landscape by 2050 that i think eo wilson that was what he wanted the uh arizona legislature had a bill um that i can't i don't know if it passed or not, but said it was just a flat out no to the 30 by 30 plan, which isn't actually a plan yet.

It's just like, it's a concept. It's a concept right now. Like no, you can't hold that concept in your head. Exactly. Yeah. If you do, we'll find you. That's a little polarized. Yeah.

And I guess they just latched onto it as like a good marketing piece. Yeah. A lot of people have pointed that out. Where you put those lands, like for instance, I think Montana is something like 37% publicly owned state and federal, something like 30 to 30. I got two different numbers. One is 30. I think that was the federal land.

So it's like maybe Montana already has their job done, right? But Maine's conservation land is, Eastman and otherwise, is 20% of land, whereas all the other New England states combined is 27% of land. So that's 4.2 million acres of conserved land in Maine versus 5.8 in the rest of New England. So like Maine has cheaper land, which is changing rapidly and large landscape. So it's like a place where you have a lot of opportunity that is more easily executed on because it's all privately owned already. Yeah. Did Cal ever make a suggestion that you change the pond to Ocal?

Ocal Pond? Yeah. Well, there is a- Or else no moolah? You know, there's one stipulation here I forgot to mention. Yeah, your checks are already spent. There was a debate,

and I have never solved it, but on the older maps, it's called Dutton Pond. And sometime it was renamed Shiloh. And I've debated whether this was because of the biblical references. Yeah, that sounds very Old Testament. Or was it like Battle of Shiloh? Like did they change it after, you know, those wars? So, you know, I don't know. I haven't been able to find it. I did find a cool forest and stream article,

which was the precursor to field and stream. And they talked about how they brought up a guided group to the three ponds up there and they caught 500 trout over the three days and they're going to start bringing up more and more people. They had them all on a stringer. Oh, really?

Yeah. So. Man. So since stringer. Oh, really? Yeah. So. Man. So since the, since the, you guys finished the, the pond deal. Yeah. Done. Got all the money, bought the thing. Has there been any, has there been any cons to come out of the whole thing?

It's been interesting. Has it been heavily visited? There's been increased visitation for sure. Mostly non, I don't think it's a hunting and fishing crowd really. Is that right? I think a lot of the local press brought some of the resort people down to check it out. There's definitely an interesting study we could do on canoe storage. So we've been debating because in Maine, there's a tradition that you drag an old canoe to a body of water and you just leave it there for anyone to use. Yeah, in case you ever need it again.

Yeah. That's a good way to get a canoe out of your yard. Yeah, exactly. And the problem was people sometime in my lifetime started locking their canoes. They would put nicer canoes out there and lock them. And so that's led to like way too many canoes. When everyone just used some old beat up, you know, aluminum canoe, it was fine. You know, you got wet, but that was the deal.

It was like there was a canoe there. You didn't need to bring another one. But what was interesting is we've had old canoes leave and new canoes show up, but it's a net negative. So we've set a policy of thresholds of canoes that if it reaches this specific threshold, that we'll consider it an issue. But for now, we're going to keep it as is, like traditional Maine, like you leave your canoe. Because we're going to keep the parking lot out where it is. And yeah, it's going to be a walk-in pond. Um, so that's the idea is what we've heard from everyone on the committee is that they want to

keep it, uh, primitive. They don't want to build it up too much. They want to do more traditional signage, um, and have it because it's just so rare to have something with that feeling of wilderness be so close to you know town yeah i know a spot that has that people stage boats and there's they've brought three up over the years two of them are unusable now one of them is huge and bright blue and it's hard to get them in there well you're not bringing them out are you i just i want you so bad though because it's so beautiful to get them in there. Well, you're not bringing them out, are you? I want to so bad though,

because it's so beautiful to get them. They're like, oh, there's that stupid thing sitting there. Well, like in Northern Maine, Nature Conservancy, AMC, they do programs. They have volunteers that go out and drag out these broken up trees. Oh, do they really? Yeah.

I'll have to call those guys. See what their budget is. It is pretty funny though. Like you get underneath like the canopy of the trees right on the pond shore. Where I'm talking about or at Shiloh? At Shiloh. Oh, okay.

And it's just like a long history of paddling on that lake laid out right there. And it's like, and those people on the end are dead. Well, we joke that like, is there, are some of these boats here like past their owner's demise? I don't know if we'll ever find out. Yeah. You need to do like you got to do when you leave an ice shanty out on the lake. If you leave it there, you got to put your name and address on it. Well, there's been debates about a boat registry, and that doesn't sit well with some people.

I imagine not. No. But I'm just trying to get rid of this old boat. While you're registering your guns, go ahead and put down your canoes you exactly oh yeah i firmly i stand firmly against canoe register yeah exactly but i could see in the case of something like that it might be that if you're going to ditch your canoe at this pond since we own the pond we would like you to leave your name on it that's not big government telling you to register your canoe. Well, so we have a system worked out. There's one boat that's irritating me. They leave, most everyone's respectful, brings it back up into the forest, like in this area

that's been culturally appropriated here. Just, uh, there's one guy that keeps leaving it on the sand gravel bank and you know, it's just being lazy. So I've dragged this canoe three times now. My new approach is going to be drag it back to the parking lot with a note. So like every time they want to leave it on the shore, they have to bring it all the way back into the pond. Big woods canoe politics.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was going to ask Brent if he would be excited to know how much funding we have in the land access pot right now. Yeah. You got to, that's what, that's what Cal, now you got to lay it out, Cal. So. You got to titillate them.

Year one, when we, I don't even know what, what we really started with, like five grand or something after our initial kind of push. And then we started forming this thing up and eventually we cut you guys a check for like 35 grand. Is that right? Well, with the donors you helped link us up with, it was 70,000. All said and done. Yeah. And then, yeah, so that was like cash on hand,

fundraising, and then some last minute donors. Well, I really wanted to thank you guys because I was pretty blown away with like the DOS boat and your rifle. You know, I've never considered ever putting my rifle up for anything. So I thought that was. I got a bunch more I'm fixing to auction off, man.

So we auctioned off the original DOS boat, uh, from our series DOS boat, uh, lefty rifle from Steve, Giannis threw in at least backpack and some other things I think. Yeah. Uh, we had some really good donations. I got a steel chainsaw in the mix and some, some good conservation books.

And that was a fun thing. And we are, obviously, it's live on the website right now. The Land Access Initiative lives again. We're taking both donations. If you make a purchase at the store and, and round up, you can choose to round up into the land access initiative. Uh,

the auction house of oddities is going to come back in mid April. Oh, that soon? With a bunch of awesome stuff. Uh, in, in including we're working on the Mako,

the DOS boat three, which I honestly want to bid on. So you got some competition. So that DOS boat three, which I honestly want to bid on. So you got some competition. So that DOS boat three boat will be an auction item, not a raffle item. That's right. Cause there's some legal thing you can't. Right.

That's such a pain in my ass. Pain in the butt. And we're trying to do good stuff with it. Like, is somebody really going to be like, you guys. I get so sick. That Shiloh Pond thing you did.

It's so cliche to like dog on lawyers, but holy cow, those guys just make stuff just so complicated. So yeah, you can contribute that way or we would absolutely love. And I know Brent has a bunch of good ideas. He's going to be one of your competitors. Suggest a property that we can explore and hopefully help fundraise and secure to provide more access to hunting and fishing You'll know you're getting close when Callahan shows up and paddles around

That's right, no water, water, whatever He's still caught a paddle Yeah, that was the tip off, they're not going to send them out here on a flight, right, if you're not interested. How do people, like, give a snapshot of what kind of stuff people should be keeping their eyes out for. Well, you know, Brent had something that really was like a beautiful situation, right? Then a lot of the legwork, the property that they wanted to secure was going to be held in perpetuity for public access to things that we hold near and dear, which is just like going out and experiencing and enjoying nature plus fishing. I think if you drew a moose tag, you might be able to get a moose out there. Yeah, we have some pictures. And again, they had like a goal line like we gotta have these funds by this closing date here we go come in and help and

so that that was a great one but uh funds for let's say fishing access sites, funds for, uh, public easements through private ground. Mm-hmm. Um, is, is something as simple as, you know, canoe or kayak launches into rivers? There's anything that provides more access to a place that doesn't have it. Yeah. The, I think the best case scenario, like if you imagine, if you wanted to imagine like the extreme good one,

it would be, let's say there's some five sections. I'm just throwing this number out. There's five sections of landlocked public land. There's no legal access to it. But all of a sudden, they knew about their granny

had an acre of land. And if someone owned that acre of land and made it a trailhead, people would be able to screw around on all that landlocked land. That would be a sweet deal.

I would say some practical tips. Hit people with some practical tips. Well, so I deal with a lot of public. What's wrong with that? Well, that, I mean, there's a few good things there. If someone finds that piece of property. Well, I said his granny owned it. Well, so I do a lot of public. What's wrong with that? Well, that, I mean, there's a few good things there.

If someone finds that piece of property. What if it's granny-owned? Well, perfect. Okay. Then that guy, one, has to figure out if granny is willing to sell. But that, that a lot of times would be your best bet is to get a group organization in your area

involved. So like, let's say you find that one acre piece. You've been cruising on X. You've been on your tax rolls, which most towns have public tax rolls. You can find pretty much where anyone, you know, any piece of property exists on earth. You can find who owns that. You can start compiling that information and then figure out who are the players in your area. So states usually have boat launch, you know, departments.

And there's IF&W, which is Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in Maine. There's federal. So you would look at, in your area, who has done work before and reach out to them with this opportunity to say, not only do I think this would be awesome for all these reasons, like it connects to your conservation land, it protects this stream, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that there's also this group that I think would help fund it. There's this opportunity through the Land Access Initiative that we could suggest this because it would be right up their alley. And so your goal is always to link good projects with donor interests.

So your donor interest here, as I would describe it, is like it has to be something to do with hunting fishing. I know you casted a wider net as far as other access, but my understanding of you guys, which you laid out there fairly obviously, is the project probably should have some fishing and hunting values added. Yeah. Meaning if there's a river, assuming there's a fish in that river,

which is a safe assumption. Yeah, but not, you know, a mile multi-use trail or something like that. Gotcha, yep. So yeah, that is the big thing. Go to themeteor.com. You'll see our land access initiative. And this is our big conservation push.

So we've raised. And you're going to assess the stuff that comes in. Yep. Assess stuff that comes in. Ideally, we're going to have so much good stuff that I'll need some help too. And we got that lined up. And when we fire up the auction house of oddities, how long are we going to run it for this time? I think we're going to run it for two weeks only.

So lots of good stuff, high turnover. This is your chance to make a big impact to access and get something awesome. That's great. And then Brent, are you going to send in some submissions to OCAL? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then Brent, are you going to send in some submissions to Ocow? Yeah. Oh yeah. We got, we have one right now. The Nature Conservancy is trying to purchase

7,000 acres for the state. And our role into it is to try to keep the road open that for a length to be determined because this area, like the book I gave you, that moose hunting book, the great Maine moose hunt. Yep. Um, you know, a lot of those bulls in there

were shot up in that land. And so, you know, a lot of that lands on going to a forever wild management scenario. And, uh, it's good. We want it to be conserved, but we want to keep road access into this area. Got it. So we have to raise some money to help out with that.

I see. That's a good one. That's a great example. Yeah, but then we'd have two in Maine in a row. Yeah, but this is landscape. You could show the progression, Steve, of small project leading to larger project, right? That's good.

Send your thing in. Keep that in mind, folks. There's pitch. Send your thing in. Everybody send your pitch in and also do stuff like, we'll have various ways coming up where you can support the Land Access Initiative and people have done a lot of support already, but just like you know, auction house,

roundups, when you go on media.com and you buy something, do the roundup. We're going to have some roundup matching stuff coming into play. So stay tuned and all that. Send ideas. We're trying to find a really cool freaking project, man. Absolutely. And if you're in Maine, you can always reach out to Brent West, the High Peaks Alliance. Talk to him about, you know,

being our first ever recipient of the Land Access Initiative grant, let's call it, and see where you can help out in your home state of Maine. If you're listening at home and you've been meaning to go get that old canoe you got tied to a tree up at shiloh pond look for it in the parking lot well thanks yep brent west high peaks alliance find them if you're if you're a mainer that's right mainers if you're a mainer um jump on and do support there because they're obviously doing real work on the ground to give people places to recreate outside including but not limited to hunting and fishing fair yeah definitely and i would say you know anyone who visits or loves this neck of the woods should reach out because we have a a tremendous seasonal population you know in this area is the recreation basket for the northeast

you know there's 60 million people within a 12-hour drive. And, you know, this might be our last opportunity to keep an area that you can drive to with your family, for your kids, that's within striking distance of those big eastern cities. Keep this big landscape intact. Before it's all bought up and locked up. Exactly. All right, man. Thanks a lot. Stay tuned for trivia. Got trivia coming up.

I'm going to smoke, Brent West. Bring it. Thanks, man. Thanks a lot. Stay tuned for trivia. Got trivia coming up. I'm going to smoke, Brent West. Bring it. Thanks, Brent. Thanks, Brent. Thanks, Brent. Thanks, Brent. you