The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 342: Getting Busted for Touching Air

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Brandon Butler, Brad Cape, Phil Yeomans, Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: How HOAs are the worst but neighbors can be shitty as well; caveat emptor; Blue Cheese, the bulldog and the pigeon that nested in a balcony grill; Ryan Callaghan, HOA President; wild haymakers and getting subdued by jiu jitsu; Cornell University’s bird identification app; how you need to watch Jani’s new show “On the Hunt” on MeatEater's Youtube channel; an update on Brandon Butler's cabin arson; when you accidentally leave your parole papers behind in a place where you’ve been squatting; a distinctly methy look; corner crossing and infinitely finite; touching air; ranch hands who brag about how "important" the landowner is; taking pictures of every single corner; hunter harassment from the truck; the need for some privacy when you piss; the original real estate ad; bruised airspace; the Unlawful Enclosures Act; a long 3-day misdemeanor trial in a tiny courtroom; and more.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Holy shit, it's the Missouri Corner Crossers in the studio. Dudes are famous. Do people come over to the airport and be like, it's the Missouri Corner Crosser? No, we're unrecognizable. No one knows who you are?

No. Huh. This is the first media thing you've been able to do? Pretty much. I've talked to some people on the phone. Oh yeah, media thing you've been able to do? Pretty much. I've talked to some people on the phone. Oh, yeah, but you haven't been on one of these here digital radio programs. No. You're the first.

That's awesome, man. Yeah, exclusive interview. We also have Brandon Butler here, who's an arson victim. Also a Missourian. Is that how you define yourself, Brandon? That's what my business cards say. Do people come up to you in the airport and be like, are you an arson victim? You would be surprised how many people have heard this story.

Oh, it's a great story. Is it? Titillates the hell out of me, man. Oh, God, I'm depressed after I heard the little summary this morning from Brandon. Oh, no, listen. Yeah, it's not a good thing. I mean, no, it's horrible.

And then did you see how nice this place became? The place that the poachers burned down, how nice it became after we were there last you think he would have waited to invite us over when it was all done up and fancy i wanted you guys to experience it when it was raw raw and cold yeah it's a it's a tragic story but there's like a little bit of justice in the end there is uh first First, a couple of things. Cal, you were telling a story that was so good, we wanted you to start over again. But it's apropos for this podcast

because it is about government, hyper-localized government, which is your homeowners association or in my case, condo owners association. Yeah. Of which. I got a hot tip for listeners. I bought a house with the HOA, but I didn't really know what it meant.

Like I hadn't, I hadn't bought a bunch of houses. I bought one other house before and there wasn't anything like that. And then I heard that there was one and I didn't really think about it. I know now that I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever again, buy a house with HOA. It's like a group that makes it that you can't have your boat that you like can't work on your boat the way you'd like to work on it. Yeah, exactly.

And I think like the seasonal approach, like your friend was saying is a, is a great one, right? It's like, if you want to work on some junky old vehicle, that's totally fine. But if it comes to be that there's four foot of snow on there and there's junk everywhere and you're obviously not working on it, then it

becomes not fine. Yeah. I can see that. That seems reasonable to me. Yeah. It's like, if you have your, uh, you know, let's just say, let's say you're bringing your camper somewhere

and then the world's washed out. And you're like, ah, I got to fix the road. I don't know. Yeah. And you don't want to, you don't, yeah. I can see where you're going with that. But here's the deal. What if you didn't have, let's say you didn't have an HOA

and your neighbor, and you could do it where you live, and your neighbor's like, you know what? I'm going to open up a burger joint at running out of my garage. So now- Well, that wouldn't be an HOA issue. That'd be a zoning issue. Well, I'm saying, let's just say you were outside of the, you're on the other side of that line that's right behind your house and you're outside of city limits or whatever, and you were in a place where you could do it. I don't understand. You don't?

You're saying that I live in a place where it's zoned for someone from my neighbor to open a burger restaurant. I'm saying you don't. I'm making up a place where you could do that. There's no rules. Well, I'll give you- No HOA.

I'll give you a good example, Yanni. And no zoning. Okay, for instance, my HOA says, because we are zoned, where obviously you can have a business. You can have a burger joint. You'd get zero business. I don't know if it we are zoned, obviously you can have a business. You can have a burger joint. You'd get zero business. I don't know if it's a burger joint, but you can have...

No one's going to your house for burgers. You can have an auto repair shop. Welding shop. Okay, a welding shop. I'd like that very much. I wish all my neighbors had welding shops. Well, actually, I wish it was welding. Pipe fitting.

Welding and fabrication electric lumber yard plumbing the taco stand so all of a sudden your neighborhood wasn't nice and quiet and there was like 500 people coming to visit whatever business it was you'd be like oh cool yeah but what's that what's that got to do with having a camper or a boat in your driveway he's trying to go extreme. He's trying to rep. Because there's the extreme version of HOA and extreme versions of shitty neighbors that HOAs are good for controlling. I wish my house was the only one that looked nice.

Because people would be like, geez, that's a nice looking house. All those other people got junked out cars. And then i needed a part right now i need a piece of aluminum i don't give a shit two inch four inch wide i needed a piece of aluminum bar stock in alaska at our fish shack in alaska there's sure shit no hoa i could easily find that by going to my neighbors and looking around where they keep all their garbage. Here, it doesn't work that way. But if all my neighbors had junk collections, I'd go like, hey, do you mind if I dig around? I'm trying to find a, you know, yay big, whatever. They'd be like, hey, man, I got all my junk here.

Yeah, don't cut yourself. Tell me, man. So, yeah, you know, the Latin cavit emptor? Mm-mm. Buyer beware. Mm-mm. Buyer beware. Covers it all. It's like, oh yeah, that neighborhood?

So to be realistic, what I would say is this. I would say that if like, well, start on my point, I won't do it again. If I did, I would be like I would have an H, like I would make an HOA that said the HOA rules are, it's cool to have and I'd list things I like right campers boat trailers like stuff I like and that was okay at my house can someone live in your uh

camper full-time in your yard depends what their groove is and if I like it so i'm swinging in to the condo the other day and it's work live right so they are businesses on the bottom level residences on top and uh what do they call them live and works yeah work live live work yeah um but they're dual zoned and, and that doesn't make too much of a difference here. But my, uh, buddy across the street works on, uh, wind generation, power generation stuff. And, and he's a major tinker. He's got his garage open all the time. And he's got this little bulldog named Blue Cheese. And, uh. What kind of, what kind of tinkering is he into? Uh, woodworking, lots of woodworking, lots of

moto stuff, lots of bicycle stuff, um, automotive, whatever, like he is into it. And that's, what's cool about the neighborhood or it's slowly changing, but, um, weekends, especially like everybody's got their garage open and, and nobody really wants to go bullshit with each other.

Mm-hmm. Cause they're too busy tinkering. But you can always walk over and borrow a tool that you need. And between the open garages. Sounds like a great neighborhood. It's yeah, it's ideal. Well, we've been getting this infestation, uh,

uh, rock doves, city pigeons, and they've shown up for the first time. They're crapping on everything. I have been, I don't own an air rifle anymore, but I was trying to solicit some work from somebody who does. My boy will do it, but the problem is we just had to order him a new magazine for his gamo this morning because according to him it broke then he lost it but it didn't matter because it was broke that's what he tells me over at his buddy teddy's house if we're gonna pay to fix something does air rifle shooting is that okay with the hoa is. It is because I'm the de facto president. I was stupid enough to join the board.

You put a clause in there. And then everybody else moved away. So there's one board member right now? Right now, which is not up to the bylaws, but here we are. Nobody wants to do it. I get it. So I come pulling in yesterday blue cheese who's always a potential speed bump comes strutting out there and uh he smashes this squab this flightless pigeon on the on the side of the sidewalk like he catches it he catches it which is not super likely right and so i'm looking around

and determine that the only place that the nest could be is inside the barbecue of this neighbor who's not even there oh i got you now flightless because of its youth of its youth yeah i understand yeah so it's a you know city pigeon so just get out of the nest and the dog grabs it yep yeah and then you know my dog takes great interest in that and she gets it from the bulldog who's super pissed and there's just a slight height uh difference there and so he's jumping up at her they're making all sorts of noise she's trotting around super proud with this bird in her mouth looking around probably then the other neighbors show up who are from away we'll just say from steve's old neighborhood in seattle and they're watching all this and i'm i'm more concerned with the origination where this bird

came from because you got a hot clue now yeah so now i can eliminate the nest the situation that i am with the bird that's in hand, literally, has already been caught. And my neighbor from behind me goes, can you just end it quick? And so kind of without thinking, you know, I like call Snort to heal. I'm looking for the nest. She hands the bird off. I grab it by the legs. I give it a quick like, you know like a towel whack you

know and then chuck it in the dumpster and you know i'm still like focused upwards and i turn around and there's just kind of a scene a quiet scene of like it was too smooth it was too effortless right yeah they wanted more like contemplation and you to come over and be like right wow man let's wrap our heads around that right yep that was intense but uh it's not now how it works on the mean streets of bosangeles you know uh okay we got a lot to cover, so we're going to only talk about one or two things here. We were talking about Braxton Hicks.

You guys got kids? Oh, yeah. Two girls. Two girls. Old kids. And now grandbabies. Oh, really? Yeah.

Do you guys remember what a Braxton Hicks contraction was? Yeah. We were talking about how there's only two women that listen, and I don't know why we're talking about that. Because we're wondering why we're covering Braxton Hicks contractions. But we were wrong. Because three women wrote in. We're off.

By a lot. By a wide margin. And they had things to say about Braxton Hicks. So we're off by 50%. Someone wrote in, if only two women listen to the show, I'm half of them. She went on to say,

as for Braxton Hicks contractions, they can happen for half of or none of a pregnancy and vary in intensity for each person. And there's no way in hell a woman who's had a labor contraction could confuse the two. Another person mentioned that

her husband had a cousin whose name was Braxton Hicks. Spelled differently. H-I-X. Braxton Hicks. It's a great name. Corinne got your, talk about your blue belt corinne and jujitsu

thanks for putting that in the talking points yanni not necessary to talk about but yeah i got a i've been doing jujitsu for a little bit over a year with uh crone gracie and very unexpectedly got a promotion the other day so so if I, help me understand this. Yep. Let's say I threw a wild haymaker at you. Do you feel that you would then beat my ass? Like, is it useful like that? It's, so jujitsu is-

A drunken wild haymaker. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of things, but part of it at its core is self-defense. So it doesn't matter if you're bigger than me or stronger than me. If I've got technique down, if I can feel myself in my body and feel like what and see like what you're doing or about to do, then I might just be able to get you in a little pretzel. Okay. So let's say.

She's not going to beat your ass. She's going to subdue you. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I'd count that as something. Or like'd count that or like i'm like laying there i can't do anything that's that my arm bar something so so never mind the wild haymaker because it doesn't work but like let's say um yanni i was like okay now corinne and yanni will fight right right and there's no haymakers it's like you guys square off to fight. Do you feel that you would beat Yanni's ass? Because you know this martial art.

I would say I have more confidence. As you're thinking this through, remember that I did about six weeks of karate when I was 10. You did the karate. 10 or 11. And that stuff sticks with you like a bicycle. So the first thing I would try to do is get you to the ground. I'm asking a yes or no question. Would you be able to beat Yanni's ass in a fight? Maybe.

Really? Maybe. So it works that good? Oh, it's on after this podcast. It's all technique. If you're a smaller person going against a much bigger, stronger person who doesn't have the level of technique that you do, you can subdue them. But are you relying on them also fighting by the same set of rules? No. Okay okay so you're

not you're not it doesn't have to be that that they're you're playing checkers and they're playing chess like it doesn't matter you're gonna whoop them anyway uh oh so many factors come into play but there might be things that they don't, you know, someone might like step to me and be really cocky about their ability and not defend themselves in places where, I don't know, I might be able to do something. I watched this play out in high school. We're old enough now, like we were there when UFC kind of started. And we had this buddy named Jay who thought he was like studying it. And he was a martial artist. We had this truck driver named Valente, who was like six, four, two 20 in high school. And Jay's like, sure. He can take them. Cause he knows all these skills. So we move all the furniture out of Valente's like parents upstairs and there's tile

and Jay's like in his gear or whatever whatever and valente's in some like ripped up acdc t-shirt and jay comes running at him valente lifts him up as high as he can and slams him on the tile and the fight was over that was it the big guy just overpowered him my uh friend ex ex girlfriend from a long time ago uh studied judo from and she's from like a judo family and very very tiny lady and my friend who was a division one linebacker whose claim to fame was he once tackled barry sanders picked a fight who everybody knows was a very difficult target to tackle. Very difficult. But he picked a fight with her and it was over shockingly fast. Because he whooped her.

She whooped him. She whooped him. And all she said was, they always try to pick you up. I thought you just said, hi-yah. No. I don't think there's a lot of hi-yahs in judo. Judo is like, yeah, is getting you to the ground is very explosive. So that's not surprising. Her takeaway is big guys always try to pick up smaller people.

And what, throw them down? I don't know. But she's just like, yeah, they always try to pick you up. That's a gold standard. On with the night. No big deal. So what'd she do? I couldn't really see it because they were kind of wrapped up, but he was.

Went down. Howling in pain and was like, okay, okay, okay, okay. So it turned, turned the conversation around real fast. Okay. Last thing Yanni wanted to plug. I haven't downloaded it yet, but Bogan loves it. Oh, it's so cool. Everybody in this room should get it.

It's free. It's called the Merlin Bird ID by the Cornell Lab. Everything good about birds is from the Cornell Ornithology Lab. Absolutely. Oh, hold on. I just opened it and it says, your five-day grace period is over. Oh, no. I just opened it and it says, your five-day grace period is over. But listen, it is 100% worth paying whatever they're going to charge me.

What do they want for it? Listen, I don't know. I'm not going to go in and figure that out right now. But you're going to pay it. Yeah. Because on my recent bear hunt, they have a sound ID. So you can just hit the microphone button while you're sitting there at first light and all the birds are going off

and it just starts showing up every bird is going off that's what I was hearing about it'll be like the whole list it'll be like 10 birds and then as each one's going off it'll highlight it so you're just sitting there watching it

and all of a sudden the robin highlights it goes away then the chipping sparrow highlights it goes away then the mountain chickadee highlights then the red breasted nut hatch highlights that's so awesome cool do you gotta have service for it to work no no you pre-download like sections of the united states and it has it all there see man you know that's good to know because what's daunting is we're gonna um we keep a good list at our house, but we're going to start doing a list at our little property. And it's just daunting because it's like starting from scratch.

No, this is so easy because you don't have to see them. It's not all the normal ones that you're accustomed to because you're higher elevation, different kind of habitat type. So I was actually doing it in reverse now. I was sitting there listening to him going, oh, that's's that bird and I could see the picture on my app and then I could glass around and look at the little birds Flooding around and find them and go. Oh, there is the red-breasted nuthatch. It's great. Okay, do your last little promotion I want everybody going watch the brand new six episodes of my show called on the hunt on Meat-eaters YouTube channel channel brody have you watched them all how many have you watched still catching up who's watching who's watched one in this room

i watched one nice what'd you think turkeys with room app it's fun liked it yeah i'd say watch more based off of that okay good thank you cal Thank you, Cal. Sorry, Giannis. That's all right. We got an email today that said that that was the finest thing that this company has ever produced. Did you see that email? I did see that. It was very nice of that person to say that. Was that an email peer-reviewed?

It was just a random email. It was my mother. She's been a great supporter over the years okay we're gonna get into law and justice cue the song Phil now here's the thing to make this legal everybody needs to

comment on it because it's criticism hit it guitar is a little twangy in my opinion it's a great tune that's my comment here

I never watched this show. No, it's not his show. Oh. He's singing. He's singing. He just said lawman. All right, turn it off. It's the Law and Justice episode.

Who sang that? It's this dude from, he's kind of like a, he was this kind of fixture around Austin, Texas. Had a lot of mental problems, had a lot of substance abuse problems, but would now and then pull it together and do these albums. And he then later did an album with an outfit

called Ockerville River out of Austin. And they kind of brought a lot of his music to life. But he had a lot of, he was a troubled individual. Is that how you say it? Ockerville? Ockerville. Yeah, it's from a Russian novel. No way.

Yeah, I swear to God. That didn't stick as a kid. All right, Brandon, you ready? Yeah. Okay, we got two major things to cover because we're going to do a big follow-up. Well, these are both stories. The Missouri Corner Crossers, I guess I could call them Wyoming Corner Crossers, whatever the hell.

The Wyoming Corner Crossers from Missouri we've reported on quite heavily, and then we reported on Brandon Butler's Justice Saga quite heavily, and now we're going to do a recap on both with everybody in the room. So if you can, give us where we last left off. I think where we last left off was the suspect was in custody. No, no, no, no, no. Recap the story. Recap the whole thing?

Yeah, you're sitting there, you hear a bunch of gunshots. Yeah, so I got to go back a little bit further than that and talk about how I even got there. There was a camp called Camp Zoe that affluent girls from St. Louis would go to in the Ozarks. Fluent or affluent? Affluent. Okay. And the governor at the time of Missouri was Jay Nixon, and his mom had been a camper at this camp. And then she went on to become a counselor at this camp. And then she went on to

become a counselor at this camp. Tell folks where we're at here. This is in Shannon County, Missouri, just North of eminence, maybe 15, 20 miles at most. And the governor always had, you know, he had affinity for this property. It was beautiful. Sinking Creek, you guys saw Sinking Creek flows through it. And eventually it got bought and turned into a music venue and it was called schwagstock that was a music venue it became you know a place where hippies would gather and swim naked in the creek was it bigger or this is just on year 48 no this is just down the road where the state park is where we went and i used the internet that. So you're talking about just the general area. The general area. And hippies in the creek.

Then it became worse than that. You know, the weed turned into heavier drugs, and ultimately the DEA raided this property in 2010. It went up for auction, and the state bought it. The governor had. You're into the distinction now between hippies and crazy-ass hippies. Yeah, I don't have hippies and meth heads in the same like category like it went oh so it's that kind of transition not even crazy

ass yeah it went from like you know smoking weed in the creek to hard drugs and at that point the dea i guess had enough and they came and raided the property confiscated it for like back taxes and other issues and then the state bought it in an open auction. They ended up paying $640,000. It's a little over $300,000. That's how the state park came to be there. Yeah. And it was the governor's vision.

He had like a year left and he just went all out on building this property. And it's the premier state park in the state of Missouri now. They put like $61 million into it. The lodge is incredible. Right? Yeah. Have you guys been to Echo Bluff? I like $61 million into it. Oh, what a steal. Have you guys been to Echo Bluff? I was just going to ask you if that's what it was. It is. I was trying to look up. I've been by it.

Yeah, I've been there. It's pretty, isn't it? It's beautiful. It's a beautiful state park and an absolute point of pride for the state of Missouri. But because of this kind of contingent of folks, a very small contingent. I have to be careful because I guess last time I got in trouble because I got generalized and saying like it's the whole area. Oh, we've seen a guy get in a lot of trouble. He's from England.

Man, he got a lot of heat. I'm talking about a very small group of people that live like back in the woods, like in these hollers that like this outlaw way of life that they've been conducting for generations where like rules and law simply don't matter. But the majority of people down there are incredible people. Like they're just salt of the earth, hardworking, love the outdoors. But it's like they got to hide from this like bully mentality. They can't speak up for good.

They can't speak up for like justice because if they do, then they're going to face like ramifications. But back to the park. So the governor puts all this money into the park. At the time, I'm running the Conservation Federation, which is like the state's largest conservation nonprofit. It's affiliated to the National Wildlife Federation. And the governor asks me to kind of help lead PR issues, like make people see the benefits of this park coming in to this part of the state. So I'm doing that, and while I'm there, like, exploring this property, I finally decide this is it. Like, I've been waiting my whole life to have a place,

like my own property and my own camp. You know, my first camp was like a G.I. Joe sleeping bag under the stairs in my parents' basement. And then in college, I became a camper, and, my first camp was like a GI Joe sleeping bag under the stairs of my parents' basement. And then in college, it became a camper and like the dream of just having a cabin. Like that was always the dream. So now I'm like, this is it. I'm going to buy a place down here through a series of like fortunate events. I find this 40 acres real close to the park on the Creek surrounded by public land. And I it bought and now i show up in my conservation truck like wrapped with like conservation on it and i mean man i grew up not too far down the road

from you in northwest indiana did a lot of work in like gary and and some really rough places as a kid yeah it's a hell of a nice town and now i think about it in a sense like like when i reflect on the decision i made it'd be like going into think about it in a sense like, like when I reflect on the decision I made, it'd be like going into Gary and building a mansion and expecting like, you're just going to be friends with all your neighbors.

You know, like everything's going to be fine. You know, even if you're not trying to change them, you just being there somehow like shifts this mentality.

Yeah, you and your conservation schmuckety schmuck. Right, right. Following the rules and uh so i go about it and you know but i i tried to you know immediately do well i went to sam's club and bought those tens of popcorn and i took them to everybody's house on the road for christmas you were they divide the tin up into three and they got three flavors yeah you got like cheese

and caramel and all that so like i took those out and now I'm thinking, you know, now these people are like, who is this dude? Like that's coming to our house with a 10 of popcorn to like introduce himself. But ultimately that was like my introduction to these folks and my like, please don't burn my house down, like offering. And things were good for a while. I hired all local contractors. Uh, you know, it was just a real rough piece of ground. I brought in a guy with a bulldozer. He cleaned up a couple acres. There was an old cabin there. I took it apart piece by piece so I could repurpose the materials. Like the old roof became the ceiling in the new cabin. The rafters became bookshelves. Just a lot of that. I took this old potato sack that was insulation in the old cabin and I framed it because it was, you know, a hundred years old. Oh, that's cool. Insulation was cool. So shit like that was just what made that place special.

And then we started hunting there and I guess maybe they had a few, a few people kind of had felt that I was encroaching on their public land. You know how that goes, right? They'd been hunting there for a while. Somebody else comes in, starts hunting the same public land and I'm bringing guys down. Cause you got a parcel, but your parcels by public land. Yeah.

My parcel was surrounded on three sides by a parcel of public land. That's like 60,000 contiguous acres. And there was probably about three or 4,000 acres behind my house before you got to a road that I really started getting to know. It's where Giannis killed his turkey. Oh,

you too. You killed yours there too. Well, yeah, but, and, uh, I found a crippled up turkey that I killed.

I actually jumped it. That was a good story. That was great. Uh, that's one of my proudest moments. So it's going well. It's going well for a while. That park comes in.

The locals start working at the park. You know, there's jobs now. Like 100 people are employed there. And like the local sentiment starts getting better for the park. But it is bringing a lot of people in there. And then there's that group that has like the frustration for the fact that this area is becoming more exposed, like more people know about it, more people are visiting. And I assume there's just like a deep seated resentment towards that. And if you go back a step further, there's just a really deep

seated resentment towards government by a lot of these people in general, because the national park there, which is called the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. It's 135 miles of river corridor consisting of the current river and the Jacks Fork River with 85,000 acres of public land along those rivers. Now, a lot of it was taken by eminent domain back in like the 50s and 60s to become that park. Everybody was paid. Everybody was, you know, nobody's land was stolen. But that's the sentiment by a few people is, you know, the land was stolen from us.

Well, no, you know, a check was passed. Yeah, I get it. They got you a check, but I mean. Yeah, there was people that held out. Yeah. And that. That's a common story. And like, it's like.

There's resentment for sure. Sure. Like if you have your farm being taken by eminent domain for a park, you cannot expect to be like, oh, you have no right to be mad. We gave you the money. It's just different, man. The way I think about it is like if my grandpa said something, it was gospel. You know, and now you've got this like generational anger that comes from like the people who actually lost the property to the two or three generations after that are now like carrying that flame. You know, I'm going to find some way to right this wrong because it's like our family's heritage.

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So there is like this real deep resentment towards government in that area. And now they come in and put this park in and start bringing people. And then people like me show up and buy property and, you know, want rules to be followed. Like don't shoot deer at night with spotlights. Don't run your dogs illegally on my property. Things that are just pretty basic. But we're getting along fine until maybe three years in. And my friend Eric is hunting a tree stand along the creek.

And there's this little seven-point buck out in the field in front of him. And a truck pulls up at the opening to this field, jumps out. Two guys jump out, and they start firing on this buck. They wound it. Not gun season. It was gun season. Okay. They do most of their poaching.

I'll give them that. Most of the poaching actually does take place during Not gun season. It was gun season. Okay. They do most of their, I'll give them that. Most of the poaching actually does take place during the rifle season. So they wound this buck. It runs up onto my property, beds up. They go switch vehicles. I guess they got like a shooting vehicle and a hauling vehicle. So they had to go get the pickup truck. That's a good idea.

Yeah. Multifaceted poaching operation. So then they come barreling across the field. In the hauling rig. In the hauling rig. Jump the buck up and it runs right at my buddy who's sitting on a power line cut at the creek, full's screaming at him and they're now they're like oh shit you know they're scared that they they're shooting this guy so they come up and then they explain to him that it's his fault because he didn't put a blaze orange marker at the opening of the field so they would know not to shoot from the road yeah so at that point like i don't call

the law i'm still like the executive director of this organization, constantly promoting like anti-poaching campaigns and doing the right thing. And in that instance, I didn't, you know, and that never sat right with me. I wanted to keep the peace. So I went and talked to the people and tried to like smooth it over like good, like neighborly. And it did get smoothed over with some of the like powers that be some of the more like patriarchal type in that area. But the guy who did it, he just went around telling stories and making up lies. And, and that started breeding this kind of like anti sentiment towards me in a small, like contingent crowd. But we lived with it for years until we got to gun season of 2020. And it was Sunday night and me and my buddy, Nathan, everybody calls him shags, my cousin, Derek, and my buddy paddle down, like we're sitting around this campfire and a truck comes across. Remember how we couldn't come across the creek. So to get into this property, you had to like drive on an underwater bridge.

Like we call them Arkansas bridges because they actually build them underwater. And you come across this Arkansas bridge. And when it's flooded, you got to come through the forest. And I took you guys in through the forest. The bridge is all flooded out, but somebody comes across anyways. We couldn't believe that they were crossing it. This truck pulls in and this is like 830. So it's three hours, three hours after dark.

It pulls into this field, like right at the base of my property where the old man who had owned it died like two weeks before. And I'd been over there that day and the power line people were there. And I thought that the power line people had recognized that this was now a vacant property and they were coming in there to poach at night. So when this truck pulls into the field, they throw on like an LED light bar and we can see the muzzle flashes before we can hear the shots. And at that point, I just jump in my side by side and take off to try to confront them. My buddies come running after me. The truck evades and gets out of the holler. And that, I was like, that's it. This is the line in the sand. So I call the game wardens who I know, we call them conservation officers in Missouri. And they come out. But that morning we went looking for the truck and we found it before the agent got there.

And I knew who it belonged to at that point. And it was like, this is going to be serious if I cross this line. So they actually come out and they reiterate that to me. They're like, you know who this belongs to? And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, what are you going to do? I was like, I can't not do it. Like it's never sat right with me that I didn't the first time.

Like I'm the guy telling other people to do this. Like I got to do it at this point. So I turned them in and it ended up being three women. There was a younger lady who I guess had come down to hunt and didn't get a deer. And they were like, oh, well, we'll get you a deer. They went out to get a deer and they all three, I was in the courtroom. They all ended up pleading guilty. You know, there's no reason to say their names at this point or anything, but they, you know, they got multiple violations and each about a thousand dollars in fines and, and pled guilty to that.

But the, the suspect, uh, in burning down my cabin, it's like one of those women's boyfriend's son who's been like in and out of prison all this time. And now he's back in prison. So that was like November and it was January 4th. And when this dude came and burned your, what was the date he burned down your place? It was like 10 o'clock at night on january 4th

oh 2021 and you got trail cam of him yeah so i set out i told that before too you know i i thought i'll set some trail cameras out where they'll think these are the cameras that i'm using to protect the property and then i took the real cameras and hit them much further back in the woods and had like good shots of them so i I got pictures of the dude, like on the porch, walking up to the cabin, carrying a rifle and a bottle. That's obviously like a bottle of accelerant. And then I've got a picture of them leaving, uh, leaving the property with fire coming out of the far back window. And then I got a 30 second time-lapse of it burning for the next hour until the fire department gets there. And then there's actually a picture of me, like when I approach that the trail cam caught,

but yeah, they actually pulled the chips on the dummy cameras thinking like, ah, this idiot, he put these cameras right where we can see them, you know? So the trap worked. And, uh, so I got, I got the photos and I went, I went to court like multiple times. And it was a very interesting experience. And you can show the photos of this dude from his Facebook. And he's wearing like the same mossy oak sweatshirt. And the pictures to me are very clear.

Like I know who it is. But in a court of law, in a county of 8,,000 people where 4,000 of them are probably related, like, is it enough evidence? Yeah. Cause all you gotta do is demonstrate some doubt. Right. So they get a lawyer for this guy and they're talking about this sweatshirt in this court case and shags is there with me in the courtroom and a sweatshirt that everybody in that County has. So that's the lawyer's point. Right. And he goes, uh, to the And he goes to the deputy that's on the stand at the time. They're like, what about the sweatshirt? And he's like, well, yeah, it's a very clear sweatshirt.

And he goes, could that be a sweatshirt that everybody in this county has? Do you yourself own that sweatshirt? No, I do not, says the county policeman. No, I do not. He goes, you do not. Well, do you have a Mossy Oak hat? No, I do not. He goes, well, do you know people in your family that do? No, I do not. He says, well, what do you do? He goes, we're, we're that other, what's that other one? and somebody in the back of the courtroom yells real tree you've got to be sure this is in the court yeah this is in court and the whole like now the courtroom's laughing like we're a real tree family you know which makes

total sense oh yeah like so so long story short we've been going through this and then if he would have wanted to take that logic he could could have been like, they sold 11,000 units of that sweatshirt or whatever. down within 12 months of mine prior to mine and one since mine and a United States federal property, the round spring ranger station, which we'll get to, but nobody was torched and that's in retaliate. The story just keeps going, man. Like, so I start making a stink about it. Like most people just took it. Like there's nothing they can do. They show up, their cabins burned down. There's no evidence. There's no cameras. There's no nothing. Well, I know who did it. And I go to the Lieutenant governor, sit right down in his office. I call my Congresswoman. Like I just immediately, I'm communicating with the head of the department of conservation law enforcement. I'm talking to the director. Uh, I get one person removed from

the FBI. Like I just went as deep as I could go as fast as I could do it. And the cabin was burned on, on January 5th. And that dude was arrested on January 15th and he hasn't been out of jail a day since. And he's still, still not been charged with mine. The beauty is,

is when he had broken into another cabin, he left his parole papers behind. Had to keep them someplace dry. Right. You wanted to keep those safe and had committed. Back that sentence up again. Okay. Explain it to me again.

So he was squatting in some dude's cabin and was, you know, he had his parole papers and left them on the table. So that's how they knew he was there. And ultimately he's pled guilty to this charge. Like I'm trying to understand, like, well, when you flee a place. Like he's making a point or he's just. No, no. Like he just.

Forgot his. Those were like his possessions, right? He had his possessions. When you flee a place, you probably take a picture of your kids, right? You know, you got to have some documentation to get around in the world. Yeah.

Huh. So he had stolen some stuff like a four-wheeler and a generator. And, but the real, like the part that like is crazy is like, he had these outstanding felonies hanging over him since 2016 and nobody triggered him. Like he was going to like probation meetings and they're like, oh yeah, like you got two felonies that we could ring you up on. But, you know, keep your nose clean. And what sorts of felonies?

It was a classy felony for like theft. And I don't I don't know exactly. I'd have to go into that case and look it up. But but ultimately stealing that four wheeler and generator or whatever, that constitutes a class C felony. And burning my entire house down is a class D felony. So the way like- Burning your house down with everything in it to the ground with an accelerant while armed. Yeah, like no potential for physical harm to a human supposedly is what dropped the charge.

But the dude showed up carrying a rifle. How does he know your buddy's not staying in your... Or my kids weren't sleeping in a room upstairs. I understand. What does that go by? I don't know. Two guys go to stay in your cabin. One of them runs into town to get a couple cool ones.

There's no car there. Right. I don't get... It just doesn't make sense to me. I don't either. If you burn a large structure with multiple bedrooms down, I don't think you should be allowed to be like, I knew no one was there. How did you know no one was there?

I agree. But anyways, the charges of stealing the four-wheeler and the generator were higher, and he's since pled guilty to those. That's, in the eyes of the law, it's worse to steal a generator and a quad runner than it is to burn someone's house to the ground. Must be, at least in this case. But if he would have gotten charged on both, I was told that those sentences could be run concurrently. So it honestly, you know, other than me being able to have the satisfaction of saying that, like, he did it for sure. You know, legally, I could say that right now I have to say, like, he's the suspect. But he's in prison. For how long there's a five-year stint that's it yeah when he's out can they get him after for burning your cabin down there's like three years i think we have three

years and and that's why you know like there's still an ongoing case i actually called the prosecutor and uh got a call back from the agent and was like, this is what you shouldn't say. This is what you, you know, you can say, but be very clear that he's a suspect because it's an ongoing investigation. So are you, are you breaking any rules right now by talking to us and saying what you're saying? I don't know. I don't think so. Like that's all out there. But aren't there multiple suspects? Cause things just keep getting burned down or is this, you're just saying. We're just talking like about my place.

So, so then what I did is I went, you know, I'm very friendly with the department of conservation, you know, Sarah Parker Pauly, our director is like a personal mentor of mine. I think she's one of the most outstanding conservationists in the country. And, but I went to her and I said, look, you got over 200,000 acres of public land in this County. It's obviously known as one of these places where

like infringements happen, but we divide up our agents essentially two by two by two. We don't need the same number of conservation agents in downtown St. Louis as we need in Shannon County. So at what point are we going gonna like ramp up enforcement down here and boy ramp it up they did they were flying helicopters over these camps and it was hilarious you know like they started a facebook like page to fight back to get a petition so they would be left alone they were gonna get a petition done that they were going to give to the sheriff so law enforcement would leave them alone while they were conducting their poaching. What was the base group? I don't know.

It went, it went away after a while, but they were like so mad that like helicopters were like coming and sitting over the top of them while they were running their dogs illegally. So what they do is they, they release these dogs and you know, I'm the first one to sit here and say like, what you're doing with Mingus is awesome.

Like having hounds and hunting with hounds and all of it, you know, I love it all. But in this sense, in this instance, it's illegal and it's illegal because they're running them on everybody else's private property or shooting every deer that they can shoot. It's taken this property that I developed in my dream and essentially ruining it as like hound after hound after hound comes through my 40 acres on opening day of deer season. And the worst part of it is, is they'll run the dogs towards the river and the deer will get in the river. And then they'll, they'll watch on their GPS as to where these deer are going to cross or where the dogs are going to cross the deer. And they'll run a jet boat up there and, and shoot the deer like as it's trying to get across the river. So it's, you know, it's just this ongoing

battle and they like, they make t-shirts for it. Like it's our tradition or whatever. But hound hunting's illegal there. Yeah. How long has it been illegal for? I have no, forever. Okay.

As long as we've had deer season. Right. What's that? Hunting the deer's illegal. With hounds. With hounds. Yeah. I mean, you can coyote hunt.

You can. Yeah. By saying hound hunting, I mean like hound hunting for deers. Running deers. Illegal. Got it. And it's a, it's a, just an ongoing battle. That's even more evidence that Missouri is the North.

That's a good point. Remember I sent you that quote that one time about Missouri, you know, it's just kind of its own place. So, you know, that was a big issue was like the hounds that just continuously run through. And then they get this like effort to try to curb it this year. And some dude in retaliation goes and burns down the round spring ranger station, like this very historic building that had all the records of, you know, of the area and the riverways and, and, uh, they got him too. Like he's in jail now.

And was he a local? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Was he a felon? Yeah. Or he was. I mean, dude, we should have, you should have

a poster of him in here. It would fit with your motif. Like have a poster. Oh, I like that picture. Yeah. Can we get that picture? Yeah. He was quickly apprehended and brought to justice.

That was the guy that has that distinctly meth-y look to him. He's meth-ed up, man. That's him. Yeah. Burned down the station. Yeah, they stole the truck too. And that was like outside of their MO.

Like it's normally not theft. Normally it's just like torch it. Because you don't get in that much trouble. Yeah. They stole the truck too. And that was like outside of their MO. Like it's normally not theft. Normally it's just like torch it. Because you don't get in that much trouble. Yeah. As long as you don't steal the generator. And then right after that, some other guy came in out of a small town, like kind of in between where I live and this and bought like a big chunk of property, like a 500 acre chunk of property. And there's all these like unincorporated roads, old logging roads that are still used for transportation and the people who had owned this property before left this gate open and he came in and locked it, got it. So they ripped the gate out, burned his house down, burned his tractors, everything. He's like a, he's like a farm bureau insurance agent.

So I found his office and went and talked to him. Was he well-insured? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's a. But you could always use more. You could always use more. But, you know, it's like, welcome to the area, man.

You know? And again, like. Had they apprehended who burnt his place down? Nope. Nope. But it was a blue pickup truck because it left blue paint on the gate. On the getaway. I guess. Or when it smashed down. When they smashed through the gate. On the getaway. I guess.

Or when it smashed down. When they smashed through the gate. They never caught who burned that place down. And there's your- God, whatever happened to going over and just talking? There's your PSA for trail cameras. I like that, man. I got to go over and burn that house down.

Right. Damn. So the battle continues, I suppose. And I sold the property. That's a sad part of the I suppose. And I sold the property. Um, that's a sad story for me. You sold the property. I did.

Honestly, I don't feel safe going down there. I mean, there's been things said and, and, uh, and messages given. I didn't know you sold it.

I did nearly quadrupled my money on it. So it wasn't all bad. Did you have a, did you put a little disclosure in there? It ended up going to a guy. What's really nice is it went to a guy who's related to some really good people down there. And he called me recently or he got my email and email me and I called him

back and he wanted to know about like the plumbing system. And I think it's in good hands. I'm happy for him. And I feel like a few years from now I can go down there and like have a beer on the porch with him. Like he was a good dude. I'm glad it went to him. No shit.

I didn't know that you like, so you rolled away. Yeah, man. Like I, it's like Hatfield and McCoy's. I can't go down there. Like there's families down there that are like on my side and they got to like secretly be on my side. You know, like it turned into this thing. And there's two little boys that live down that road that are, you know, very special to me. Like I really, really care about them.

And, uh, and their parents are my, like, going to be lifelong friends. And there's an old guy. But they got to flip you off when you're in town. I just don't go down there. They come up and see me, you know? And I don't remember if you met that old man. I called the mayor, Daryl Tucker.

Like I called him. I don't remember that. The one that drove around smoking cigarettes, drinking cheap beer all day? Yeah. He weighs like 110 pounds and drinks the 30 pack a day. Oh, yeah, I remember him. The mayor. So he's still down there, but he's selling his place

and getting out too at this point. He's going back north a little ways. For the same reasons? Yeah, it just became uncomfortable. It just became uncomfortable. But there's people down there man that i care about like you let the terrorists win dude no no they're not winning they're not winning it's like their way of life is changing like and if i can affect it from the outside

by bringing in you know you know heat justice whatever and and making sure that you know, heat, justice, whatever, and making sure that, you know, they don't do it to the next guy, then I win. Wow. I had no idea. Yeah. Were you going to set up shop somewhere else? I don't know. Not yet. I did, you know, pick up a small 40-acre chunk in North Missouri that's like a 40-acre bean field

where he killed giant bucks. Killed some really good ones there, but it's not the dream. I might join Yanni up in Wisconsin. I've been looking up around Hayward. When I was growing up, it was like that whole Chicagoland area. How do you feel about that, Yannis?

Outsiders moving in? Big box. Yanni will burn. Yanni and them other Latvians will burn. The story will be even better when it's against Latvians. I'm building my next house out of concrete blocks. Big box.

Yeah. So, no, man, I, you know, growing up, it was, we'd go to Michigan. We'd go to Wisconsin. Like, that's what we did. We just went north. I'm sure you guys went north all the time, too. Even though you're already kind of up there. Then all of a sudden, one day you wake up and all the big bucks are south of you.

Yeah. Yeah. There weren't big bucks up there when you were a kid like it was any antler deer it was like everybody knew the good deer hunting wherever you lived you went a little bit north yeah and then one day like i said in the night early 90s also was like you were leaving big bucks to go up in the woods and to go up north and hunt forkeys yeah in the in the swamps. So I don't know where I'll, I'll build another place.

I mean, I lived out here for four years, walking down main street today. You know, I lived in Bozeman in 2006 and it looks a lot different. You keep hearing the stories, the Bozangelas as, as Cal said earlier. You ever been to Los Angeles? Yeah.

Quite a few times. Not quite there yet. Not, not quite there at all. Starting out like a sleepy little bird just like this place once did. Hell of a rodeo team, I heard. You know, I've never been anywhere I like more than Montana. That whole

area up in there, I think that's still kind of unspoiled. So that might be a place that I look at too. Not anymore. Cut that out, Phil. Bleep that out. Yeah, bleep it out just like we did for Huff. I was in a bar

in the last fall and they're like, yeah, they don't like outsiders. They're all outsiders. Everybody in that town is an outsider. Not everybody, but it's like, whatever.

We'll cut all that shit out of there. Don't get me started. So what'd you end up doing with the money people raised after you burned your cabin, after they burned your cabin down? Well, thanks for asking. I did want to address that, you know, you guys helped push this GoFundMe, which was a strange feeling, you know, like I'm, I'm not in a situation where like, where I needed financial help,

but it was very, very comforting to have that. And, and what you guys did and, and Pat Durkin and so many other people and kind of helping tell that story and push it. Like the, the feeling of like camaraderie from the industry was so much greater than the money that came into that account. But I went up to Michigan and bought a Stealthcraft drift boat out of Baldwin and a brand new six horse four stroke motor. Um, and I've still got a little bit left and going to figure out what to do with it.

Um, but yeah, the industry, man, like it was so good. You know, Camp Chef sent a truck, they sent so much stuff. A truck showed up with like a pallet to like replace. Oh, really? To replace all the junk you lost? Yeah.

And sadly, Tim Anderson was a longtime Mossy Oak guy. And, you know, he passed away unexpectedly. But he sent me like a note and said, hey, our mutual friend, Pat Durkin, was telling me your story. I hope this helps. And he sent me like all this Mossy Oak clothes. And Yeti sent me a new cooler. I mean, like people just really, really stepped up and you guys had a lot to do with that. And, and I'll tell you, you know, like I expected to have these emotions of like vengeance and like real deep seated anger and it never happened. It still hasn't happened.

Like it's just acceptance and like strangers showed up. We did a cleanup day and like people I'd never met showed up to help me clean it up and like run trailers up to the scrapyard and we scrapped it all. Guy brought a tractor and, you know, we all went out for dinner and, you know, we cleaned. It took five years to build that place. An hour for it to burn down and four hours to take everything to the scrapyard. But like, dude, the, you know, for lack of a better word, just like the love from people. Like, I've never really felt anything like that before.

Like, it was incredibly humbling and comforting. And the positives that came out of the experience have like outweighed the negatives and it's hard to listen to my kids talk about like missing it you know yeah because i truly did build like it was like my willy wonka chocolate factory you know like it was my dream place that i wanted when i was a kid so my kids could have what i had manifested in my head so many years ago and they would bring their friends down and these are like mostly girls that had never been on a river before. So they were kayaking and rafting and jumping off cliffs and catching crawdads and fishing and like that was the best part of it all was like sharing that and getting them to put their phones down. Like for the longest time, I didn't even have the internet. So they were forced to like play cards, read books, you know? And, and that's the part that I miss so much is because like my girls are

going to be a sophomore, going to be a senior and they're in this position like now where it would have been even as they're getting older, it would have been even more fun, you know, to have them down there on the rivers and doing that. So, so yeah, I'm looking for like a, a comeback spot, you know, because I want down there on the rivers and doing that. So, yeah, I'm looking for like a comeback spot, you know, because I want to be able to provide that. But, you know, they're going to be going to college soon. The older one, she wants to come here.

She was born in Montana, so she has like a big spot in her heart for Montana. The younger one wants to go to Florida and be a marine biologist. So they're going to split, which after that, I don't know where I'm going to build a place, but I've always loved the North woods. Always loved the North country. So. I'll keep us posted, man. Yeah. Maybe I'll invite you once it's all finished this time.

Please. Without all the poachers around, I don't know if I'll be able to find a crippled up Turkey that someone that shot the 22. Yeah. Well. I don't know. I mean, I assume a lot of listeners probably know that you guys came and turkey hunted there, but that was a lot of fun. And, you know, Clay Newcomb was there and we fried crappie in bear grease.

Hal Herring came down there. Hal, who lives in Augusta, Montana, said the coldest night he's ever had in his life was in that cabin in the Ozarks. The governor came. The damn wet. It became a really special place. It was a place to highlight the beauty of this region and all the natural serenity that

can and does exist in pockets. But it's just curbing that mentality of these few people against the world. Yeah. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it.

Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services

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onxmaps.com meet. onxmaps.com meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Alright. dot com slash meet. Welcome to the to the OnX Club, y'all. All right. Good jump into the corner crossing situation.

You guys ready? Yeah. Let me, I want to do a quick because we've talked about so I want to do a quick recap for people. And then we can get into details of you guys

because I got a bunch of questions. As we've explained, Riani you guys, because I've got a bunch of questions. As we've explained, Yanni explained corner crossing. You've done enough, you're probably good at it. For the 30th time on this show, Yanni will explain what corner crossing is. Well, if you look at Yanni's inseam, he can straddle a corner like no other.

In a lot of Western states when they became states they were given land from the railroads correct me if I'm wrong here I'm still heading down the right path gal and there ended up being public and private land that was literally put out in a checkerboard fashion. So you can imagine a checkerboard, all the red being public and all the black being private or vice versa, it doesn't matter. Anyways, I can't, what was the reasoning for that? That it came out in that pattern?

So the original, it's, so the railroads were given a ton of land in order to open up the West basically for a taxpayer base, right? The railroads were the most efficient vehicle to get a bunch of people seeded out into the great unknown in order to start bringing in more cash for, for the government. And they were being, they were being compensated for the track building with land grants. Exactly. Exactly. So, um, it's funny that you bring up Hal Herring because he had this great quote and he calls it an unholy union between government and industry. And, uh, so yeah yeah they got all this land they could sell it they

could lease it they could do whatever they want with it and then there's also like the state house sections which when a state became a state from a territory they were also granted sections of land set aside for the purpose of raising funds for public education or just raising funds in general. So do you know the reason for the actual checkerboard pattern? You know what? the Jeffersonian grid system, which is how we came up with this marker system, right, the monument markers. Yeah. That, that show the checkerboard deal, but it's this idea that, that Thomas Jefferson came up with to literally make sense out of something like, that doesn't

make any sense to people, right? Like I'm staring at what would could be described as the hell's canyon landscape behind steve right now and it that's it's like trying to make nice even grids that can be divvied up sold and accounted for with our tax system and revenue system that we have even in a place where little grids don't always work yeah right so corner crossing being yeah so it ends up being that there's all this public land that is um again either the blue or the or the sorry the black or the red on a checkerboard and it's inaccessible because most believe that you cannot go from one corner of public to another corner of public.

Because you violate the person's airspace. As your shoulders and hips pass over their land, you're doing them harm. Well, technically, it's not just your shoulders and hips. It is. Your body, whatever the hell. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, it's your whole body because that that corner isn't defined it's infinite in all they like to point out that it's infinitely finite yeah right the narrowest line but the philosopher and you could say that i am

equitably in all four places so i'm in equal parts public as to private yes only half of me is doing only half of me is problematic since only half of me is problematic. Yes. Since it's infinitely finite. Yeah, but it's still a problem. So a lot of states have, this is a, a giant question mark looms over the issue of corner crossing. Where states like the state of Montana, they basically recommend against it, right? In some places it's not, it's like not specifically clear like people might recommend against it there might be sort of a question mark lingering over whether

it's okay or not um our guests here got a little bit i'll say got. Got famous in the access world, in the public access world, got famous for going in and hunting an area where they had corner crossed. Okay. In Wyoming, though. In Wyoming. Now, can you guys lay out what you were trying to, like how much ground were you trying to access through the corner hopping of how many corners?

Would you mind introducing yourselves as well? Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I can do that first. My name's Brad, Brad Cape. We're from Missouri. My buddy Phil's sitting over here. Go ahead, Phil. Phil Yeomans.

From Missouri. From Missouri. Okay. So to back up a little bit. Please. Being Missouri, Ozarkans. Did you guys burn his place down? No.

No. Let's just clear the air here. We're only an hour or so from that area. We're like the north of the Ozarks. He's deep in the Ozarks. So to be sitting in Missouri and thinking about corner crossing is non-existent. It's not a thought process.

You know, it's unheard of. Because the land's not laid out like that. Correct. I cannot explain our story if I'm not standing on a sidewalk or a tile floor. It's unexplainable. Which are typically later in Missouri. In Missouri.

Yeah, in Missouri. Yeah. So when we found this place that we wanted to look at and was looking for access in there, it was a no brainer. You know, I can park right here on the corner on the county road and walk right into this thing. That's what I wanted to ask you guys. You pick that spot based on what that little corner would then give you access to.

Potentially. One of the reasons. Yeah. We're getting into one of my main questions, but I'm just going to hit it right now because you're kind of answering it. You weren't looking to do like a Rosa Parks-esque civil disobedience you were looking to get some hunting in absolutely we're just hunters you were there because there were elk absolutely and we could draw a permit you know just like that because i think there's the impression from a lot of people that

it was like oh these are the guys that we're going to push it until something happened just to clear things up. Like you're going to go and get in trouble on purpose. Yeah. It was never a thought process. I mean, it never entered our mind. We never dreamed in a million years that I'd be sitting here right now because I stepped through air. Our bank accounts wouldn't be big enough or something like that. Yeah. And, you know, I've been talking about public lands for a long, long time, Our bank accounts wouldn't be big enough or something like that. And, you know, I've been talking about public lands for a long, long time. And I'll be real honest that the great public land battles of Missouri don't come into play real often. So advocates from Missouri is kind of a stretch, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we looked at draw statistics and kill statistics and we're looking for a place to hunt, you know, is all that was. And so when I'm like, Hey, we can get a tag right here, you know, and we actually went there first in what, 2019 leaving from a antelope hunt.

I'm like, hey, let's go drive around this. So we go and drive around this mountain. And this is the first week of rifle season for elk. And there's no camps. There's nobody there. There's not a track. We pull off and work on our trailer lights. There's no vehicles go by.

So we're like, we're onto something here. We got our own little oasis. We just got to figure out where to park and how to get in there and hunt. Got it. So that was the gist of, of the whole deal. But how, when you lined out the property you wanted to get into and where you could park how were you certain that you were going to be able to do that step right where where there's you have a foot on public and you're placing your other foot on public even though you just step from a red checker spot to a red checker

spot you know because there's the question where fences aren't accurately laid down. You, you know, you gotta be pretty good, right. To know that one foot's in one and one foot's in the other. Was this a thing you thought about as, were you thinking about precision at all? Well, I'm a fence builder by trade. So I've been around property corners, property lines, researched all this. That's what I've done for 33 years. Okay. You know, so. So somebody had a question.

I know what a survey stake looks like. I know how to find the survey stake. So that's what we did. But did it even, the first time you did it, was it even in your head that, look, we're going to corner cross? Or were you just like, we're just going to go from here to here to hunt? Like the corner crossing thing, was it even an issue in your head? Did you know you weren't legally supposed to do it? No.

It was a laughable thought that we couldn't step from here to here. And I think. Like not even to the point where you wanted to call and clarify. Just like, why not? It was laughable, honestly laughable to us that, and everybody we talked to that you can't step from one to the other. But why the ladder? Cause I want, this is my other big question. You brought a ladder.

That happens later. That's later. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, that's later. So we're still in the 2019 season right now? Well, we didn't hunt in 19. We just looked at it and said, yeah, that's a place we want to go. So back home through the next year, studying maps of where public is and roads and how to get in there.

We do that. We go in there and hunt. It was easy. It was fun. We didn't have any problems until we have an elk down. Um, ended up, deputy comes out, landowner calls. What year were you in now? This is 20.

Okay. 2020. So not a conservation officer, a deputy. Well. A sheriff's deputy. If we roll back a little bit, the landowner calls deputy. I call the game warden. Game warden says, we don't even come out and investigate these sort of things. You're corner crossing.

There's nothing here for us to do. The deputy says that. No, the game warden. Okay. The game warden says, I don't do, I don't take corner crossing calls. Correct. Not my fault. And we had read the attorney general's piece,

you know, that everybody's read in the. The Wyoming attorney general. In the Wyoming game and fish site. We had this conversation. We're hunters. So where do you research when you're an out-of-state hunter, you, the website for the game and fish commission, you know, that's where we got our

information. We call the game warden from up on the mountain because I can see the deputy down in the valley and say oh i gotta make sure i'm getting this right and this is in 2020 you cross the corner correct and then you're hunting the land you got into correct and you look and lo and behold you see a deputy correct down at the corner at your truck. No, not at the corner. In a canyon there. Okay.

And we were up on the mountain. And you feel as though he's looking for you. Correct. You just feel this or you know? We knew the game warden, or not the game warden, help me out, Phil, the landowner, the ranch manager, says, he comes and sees us and says, hey, you're not supposed to be here.

We say we're on public land. He says, okay, I'll go call the deputy. I got you. We say, great. Um, so we go on when the deputy shows up, we are up on the mountain. And so then we don't know whether we have to turn around and go back down to see the deputy or carry on. And so I called the game warden and said, what's my obligation here? What do I do? And he says, your obligation is to go to the elk that you have down. You know, if the deputy doesn't have his lights on and isn't hollering for you over the speaker, your obligation is to your down elk. Which is a legal obligation. Correct. Correct. Yeah.

So that's what we done. Fast forward a day, I believe, deputy had came to our camp and left a note on my truck window, said, call me. So we call him, he comes, we have a meeting, a powwow. He says, you guys aren't doing anything wrong. The deputy. The deputy. Why is he there then?

Because he was called there. So he had to call and investigate. You know, so he comes. Oh, so he's like, I'll go out and take a look with my own two eyes. Yeah, he come out and talk to us. And his investigation determined that you're not doing anything wrong. He says, go hunt. You know, Phil even said, so we're good to go.

You know, this is in 2020. He says, yeah, you're good to go. We told him how we crossed the corner. You're good to go. And I'm going to go tell the landowner there's nothing he can do about it. So that was in 2020. And what are you thinking now, Phil? What are you thinking? landowner, there's nothing he can do about it. So that was in 2020. And what are you thinking now, Phil?

What are you thinking? Yeah, I'm thinking we're good to go. You know? I mean, how else do you take it? It feels like I thought about it long and hard to determine that. Right. You guys are thinking you guys got a pretty good hunting spot.

Exactly. You spend a few more days hunting there and we were actually tagged out, I believe. Yeah, we were tagged out at that point. And we're good hunting spot. Exactly. You spent a few more days hunting there. We were actually tagged out, I believe. Yeah, we had tagged out at that point. And we're packing animals out. Right. Is what we were doing. It only took two days to tag out. So there was no altercation with the law on that 2020 trip.

No, not at all. No citations issued, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. All right, let's go back. The conclusion that you came to, though, is you got a darn good elk hunting nothing. Nothing. Nothing. All right, let's go back. The conclusion that you came to, though, is you got a darn good elk hunting spot. Absolutely.

So now... How could you not think that, right? It's 2021. So what had happened was landowner takes two T-posts and signs in a chain and goes over the top of that corner. But are his T-posts on public land?

His T-posts are on private land. Private. Oh. But a portion of that chain. How is he not violating, like, or does he do it in such a way that he's never, his chain or nothing is on the public? No, you can't because it's.

Well, I know, but I'm saying maybe he blocked only his corner. So you can't, like, enter his corner. I'm saying maybe he blocked only his corner. So you can't enter his corner. What did he block? So the T-posts were one on each side of the corner on private property. And the chain was stretching across the corner. And the chain went between them with signage. Okay, and since these corners are infinitely finite, his chain is on public land. That's the way we see it.

Well, and he used the signs. He put one sign low on the post and one sign high on the post and overlapped them to try and block the whole corner. And you're seeing this for the first time when you get there in 2021. You can see it from the county road. So his positioning of the signs was meant to be not informing informing someone was also meant to be preventing passage well he testified in court that he took the chain down okay and what was his reason for that if we want to go there right now but well he was asked if that change served he said it served no purpose that's why he took it down why did you take the chain down it served no purpose. That's why he took it down. Why did you take the chain down? It served no purpose.

Why'd you put it up? Yeah, why'd you put it up? He wouldn't answer. God, man, I need to go more of these court cases, man. It's like the mossy oak conversation, the chain conversation. Okay, so. So, yeah, go on. You're on the ground and you see this for the first time.

We know the signs in the poster there. Because you see them when you show up. We knew previously that they were there. We built the ladder in Missouri and brought it with us. Okay, but you knew it through the grapevine? I don't need all the details, but. Yeah, pretty much. Okay, okay.

Okay, so you became aware. Yeah. And so to, just out of respect for the landowner and not touch anything. I'm not doing my job if I don't dig in a little bit here. I don't need to know specifics, but you leave in 2020. No sign. No arrests, no sign, no nothing. Signs were there in 2020.

Saying what? No trespassing. Okay. On this section there in 2020. Saying what? No trespassing. Okay. On this section and this section. Got it. And then you're made aware that this person has taken additional steps and has tried to obstruct the corner, even though you were told by law enforcement that you're doing nothing wrong. That's how we took it. So rather than going and haggling about, well, he needs to remove that and doing that, you're like, okay, we'll just bypass the obstruction since we've been told we're okay.

Correct. We just made it easy. And in that interview, in the year between those two hunting seasons had you learned more about what an issue corner crossing was in the west like you know you weren't really aware of how crazy it was in 2020 and in the next year did you learn that it was a big deal out here i don't think anything changed no no our minds weren't weren't changed But you didn't just casually start researching the issue and history of the corner crossing debate.

Some. Yeah. But yeah, not enough for you to... Not enough to change your mind. There's, so, it was very simple for us. There's no law against corner crossing. Yep. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you get on the message boards, if you get on talking to whoever you want to talk to, it's all fluff.

It's all horseshit. You know, there is no law against corner crossing. In fact, a deputy met you at your camp and said, go ahead. You know, game warden won't even come out, you know, and investigate it or even help us deal with the deputy. In a state that's very, very friendly to landowners. Like, you know, very, I would say. We don't know this. Well, no, I'm just saying like Montana's known as a state that's like, they don't have a

law against it in a state that's very, I would say, friendly towards private landowners. Yeah. We're assuming, you know, we don't know. We just know there's no law againstowners. Yeah. We're assuming. We don't know. We just know there's no law against it. That's our thought process. So you're thinking this guy can do whatever he wants. We don't care.

I'm not going to go bang on his door and ask him to move it. I'm just going to go around it. Correct. Okay. Up and over it. Who makes a good ladder for going over corners? A fence builder? All-type fence.

You had the perfect solution. Custom. Yeah, yeah. It's made out of fence pipe. It's really serendipitous. It's you, man. Yeah, there were some strange things of how this all worked out. Can we have that fence for the,

we have a thing called the Auction House of Oddities? The ladder, you mean. Can we get that ladder? Can we auction off that ladder? I think we already offered it maybe to backcountry hunters and anglers. Oh, as an auction item? Wyoming VHA?

Like a museum exhibit or something. Right. We talked about that. We talked about it. Donating it to the Carbin County Museum. No, that's a great idea, man. Is it lightweight? Oh, yeah.

It's light enough to carry up there. I built it as light as I could. I only had to go a couple hundred yards. You know, and built it as light as I could. Only had to go a couple hundred yards. You know, and still get over the corner. You trucked it out here on a trailer. Yeah. You'd get a little side business going, man. Right. I'm guessing it doesn't have to be a very tall ladder,

right? Well, I know how tall a T-Post was, so we just made it six inches taller than that. It really seemed like a simple go-together plan sure you know and you're not just destroying or defacing private property because you're not doing anything to alter the t-posts which are on private property and we are private landowners back in missouri you know we've got public rivers go right through the middle of our place. You know, there's all kinds of people using the public waterways, you know, through our

land. So we, we know how that game, you know, is played. You just tolerate some things and establish boundaries and just be respectful of people. You know, and we never thought for once that we were disrespecting anybody. We were, somebody said we touched air, you know, that was never thought for once that we were disrespecting anybody. Somebody said we touched air. You know, that was just crazy to us to think of such a thing. Okay.

So you show up 2021. 2021. You want to take over, Phil? 2021. You want to talk about the whole hunt or what? Yeah. Are related no not just friends yeah okay he was in high school with my wife okay you guys been hunting together a long time ah five six seven i don't know a handful of years you went to high school with his wife yeah did you date her no no did you guys have a lot of like Western hunting experience or was it just. I hunted Colorado for like through the nineties. Okay.

So yeah. You know, but then a hiatus of raising a family and doing, you know, what everybody does. Building fence. Building fence, trying to make a living. Me and Phil get to be buddies and say, Hey, let's go West. Got it. You know, so that's what we did. So we've been doing it a handful of years.

Okay. How old are you that's what we did. So we've been doing it a handful of years. Okay. How old are you guys? 50. 51. You are. You're what? 50. Oh, Phil, you're 50.

Yeah, I got a birthday in about, I was going to say. You're my age. Six, seven days. You guys are neck and neck. Yeah, I got you. Okay, go on. Have you, because you have built the fence. The ladder. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

You built the ladder to cross the corner without touching these private T-posts that are on private land. Have you reached out to conservation officers or law enforcement prior to your trip to, in addition to your preparation of how you're going to cross these TIPOs? No, we had talked to law enforcement, you know, in 2020. Got it. That said we were doing nothing wrong. Yep.

Um, and so the latter is kind of an extra. Just to, just to show that we're doing it as right as possible. Right. Cause you don't want to bend his shit out of the way. Absolutely. See his go over it. It's an extra to be ultimately clear as to our intent.

And even in 2020, 2021, we rely on our intent. You know, our intent, we think we're decent guys. We're just trying to do things the right way. And our intent is to hunt public land. I got to level with you on something. And I'm glad it turned out the way it is. I, in my mind, leading into this day when I would meet you, in my mind, I thought that there was more of a like trying to stick it to someone screw them yeah i didn't know like like i thought that there was like a cuteness to the ladder but the ladder is more like no i don't

want to mess with this guy's stuff right it's absolutely a tool you know yeah where you you know you like had a legal scholar be like well let, let's try a ladder. No, no, we, we've had our share of attorneys through this whole thing. You know, we're just a matter of what do we have to do to do it correctly to where nobody can question us. And we have a mentality of, we will walk a mile further than the next guy. We will do whatever we have to do, you know, to, to hunt, you know, to pursue our game, you know, to be successful. We're going to do what we have to do.

Got it. Um, American elbow grease. Yeah. Yeah. It's just kind of how we roll, you know? So we get there, we take off up the mountain, you know, our very first evening. We spend the night up on the mountain, you know, with a base camp down at our truck. And at daylight the next morning, here's the ranch manager guys driving up and down, you know, through BLM ground.

But they're hunting us. They're looking for us from the get-go. So they don't find us because we're up on the mountain overlooking them. And we take off. And we spend. Four nights. Yeah. Four nights.

Take off to evade them or take off to be what? No, up the mountain. No. On our hunt. Just to hunt. You take off just to hunt. You're just like, you're bivvy camping. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

So we spend four days, four nights hunting off our back. Phil kills a bull. The. Fourth day. Fourth day. Yeah. So we're archery hunting the first four days. Right.

Rifle season starts October 1st. So we have to go back to our truck camp, switch out bows for rifles. And of course, everybody knows, you know, the archery season's over, rifle season's starting. So they all, when I say they all, the ranch, law enforcement, whoever, they just set up and waited for us, you know, to come in that evening. And so we get down. Because they know bow season's over. Correct. You know, so that's a logical time we're going to come back to our camp.

So we get to the corner. We take our ladder. We go up and over the corner. We see trucks parked over here on the county road and trucks parked over there on the county road. With our camp in the middle. We know these trucks. You know, we've seen them. They're ranch employees like you guys are gonna quick pack up all that stuff and haul us out you know i don't

know what they're thinking they just don't like us there and the landowner is a is a pharmaceutical feller right where is he from north carolina yeah north carolina he made a bunch of money in pharmaceuticals and bought that ranch. That's the way we understand it. Yeah. They don't do any outfitting or guiding on that. Not that I know of. The research I'd done on the ranch is the previous owner had some outfitting, but this guy, I think, just uses it as his private hunting oasis.

Don't blame him. Yeah, no kidding. Awesome don't blame him. Yeah. Yeah. No, no kidding. Awesome. You know, good for him, whatever. So we crossed the corner, we're walking to our truck. I just happened to turn and look up and I see

dark green trucks sitting up on the, up on the mountain. Assume it's a conservation agent, you know, by his truck. Tell the guys, Hey, the conservation agents is watching us. You know, and we talked about that. We wanted them there. That's good because we can see these other guys staking us out.

We're wanting help for a confrontation. Yeah. That's what it amounts to. We get to our camp. It wasn't five minutes. Conservation guy pulls in and he's just smiling and laughing he's like i cannot believe you guys built the ladder you know he's like i even called my neighbor and said you're not gonna believe these guys built a freaking ladder you you know, to go over this corner. And we're like, yeah, we knew what we had to do.

He's like, well, I'm calling in deputies, the ranch, we're all going to have a meeting and we're all going to get on the same page, you know, with what's going on here. Um, so we're like, great. So, and this was all, well, we, we were in our tent. We may have even asked him if he wanted supper or something oh yeah and offered him supper drinks whatever the deputy showed up he goes outside the tent we stayed in our tent they go out have a meeting however long that takes the ceo and the deputy yeah yeah two deputies okay i picked out one so all the law enforcement's

getting their and the speed on what's going on. And the ranch manager. Oh, so he's got their ear then. Is there, which is the famous body cam video of him making an idiot out of himself. And he was the one kind of threatening law enforcement with, do you know who my- Correct. Do you know who my boss is? Do you know how much land he owns?

Do you know how many drugs he has? I mean, it's. But we don't know any of that's going on. It's a brutal deal too. Like it's, it's, it is an important part of the picture, but it also has nothing to do with the picture, but it's about 50 square miles of private land. It's a lot.

And how much, uh, how much did you guys figure you hunted of public land during your, the season of confrontation, we'll call it. Like eight sections, something like that. You covered eight sections within,

eight sections of public that he has the 50,000 of private surrounding. Yeah, that he has. I'd have to look on a map, but that's pretty accurate. So like 5,000 acres maybe, something like that. Which you stepped foot in, right? Correct. You didn't grid eight sections, which would be eight square miles. No, we're calling and hunting, camping. Yeah, and we didn't grid it, but we covered that many sections,

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So, we're sitting there in our tent after they have their meeting. And they say, we're going to go confer, and then we'll come visit with you. That was the initial conversation that we had. Okay. We never talked to the deputies. They never came and spoke one word to us. Okay. And do you guys still have meat on the mountain?

Yes. Yeah, because as of this point, we only had the one bull down. Correct. And you packed some of it out, but not the rest. We hung it all. Okay. It was. We hung that whole bull.

Yeah, we hung it. Yeah, we didn't bring any of it. Because we had all of our bivvy and all of our. Yeah, we wanted to get back. We were loaded. We wanted to get back. But he was skinned, quartered, and hung in a tree. Yes.

Got it. Yeah. Game warden walks back into our tent and says, okay, we've had a meeting. He says, guys, it's public land. It's your land. Go hunt. Again? Yeah.

This is a different game warden. Really? They switched game wardens from 2020 to 2021. And he comes to the same conclusion. Yeah, he just. Along with the deputies. Deputies never came and talked to us. If you watch that video, they're pointing, they're, they're croft pointing their fingers at each other.

You know, it's my instruction that you handle this. No, it's our instruction, you handle this. So. With the ranch manager right there. With the ranch manager. Pushing them. Right. You know, to do something. Right. But at the time, we didn't know any handle this. With the ranch manager right there pushing them to do something. But at the time, we didn't know any of this. We're just sitting in our tent. You know it because the body cam stuff, which is public.

Which is all later information. And the ranch manager got to be a part of this meeting with the CEO and the deputy. Yes, correct. And he's saying, do something, do something. Correct. Because somebody's behind him being like, you better do something. This is your job. Correct.

And then he wants to play like he's safety ranger because it's my concern that we got hunters coming in tomorrow. They're going to shoot anything they see. We want to know where these guys are. He's doing you a favor. Right. That's right. It kind of paints North Carolina hunters in a bad light, doesn't it? If you love these guys from North Carolina, they come out here to Wyoming, shoot anything they see.

Right. So the gist of it was, though, because we had had a conversation with the law enforcement the year before, we were really trying to get it clear. Yeah. And narrowed down. To not have a conversation when you're out there trying to hunt. Yes. So we could hunt because that's really all we care about. Yeah. And so I questioned the game warden.

I said, did you tell the ranch this? You know, I wanted it clear. That's a good question. And he says, yes, I told them it's public land. You guys are going right back in there. And that's when he asked us, the ranch wants to know where you're going to be. Really? For safety.

For safety, exactly. To which you could say it's really none of their business. And that's pretty much what I said. I said, we're going to be on all the public sections on the mountain. South, south of where we're. And I said, we will work our way south and west in the morning. Which is a lot of information.

More than I wanted to give. Right. Yeah. You know, but that's what I did. And that's what we done. Next morning, we get up and I can't remember if that next morning, I get up and I can't remember if that next morning, I believe we had those same two trucks sitting on the County road, watching us still the next morning

after they were told by the game warden that we were public land hunters going and hunting public land to leave us alone. And so we go up the mountain. We spot mule deer. Zach, our hunting buddy has a mule deer tag. A side-by-side comes driving up. They're on private land, but they come driving up within a couple hundred feet of us. On the public. They are. No, they stayed on private.

I got you. You know, we're following a line east and west. Um, we're watching the mule deer. They pull up, let's say beside us, a couple hundred feet and just shut the side beside off and just stand there and watch us. Um, we're wearing orange, you know, we're not trying to, we're on a wide open hillside behind

a big rock. Not hard to find. You know, not hard to find at all. Um, we don't know if they even seen the deer, you know, but eventually they started the machine and took off. We go on up over the deer, go over the lip. We presume we end up, Zach kills, you know, that mule deer. We haul it back to camp that day. So we get back to camp mid afternoon, early afternoon,

not time to go back up the mountain again. So we stay at our truck camp that day. Um, day, next morning, I don't believe anything happened the next morning. Nobody's there watching us and we go back up the mountain again get in on some elk i killed a bull that morning um we packed your elk hung my elk long day big day because i have a hell of a huge day that was a big day because we cross multiple canyons we were tuckered out when we got back that night. When you're doing it right, you don't take the ridge road. Yeah, you guys, because you guys are prevented from taking a straight line of travel because you got to adhere to the public section. And we laugh about it.

We have pictures of all those corners. Every time we come to a new corner, we take a picture of it, just prove we'd been there. Because I bet you we laughed about this. There's nobody been to a lot of them corners since the surveyor put that stake there. Because I mean, they are in some hellish, hellish places. Wild, wild the places you find those things. Yeah, and we brought full elk out on our backs across those corners. So, Pack, your elk out have, and part of mine, I believe.

Yeah. And come back down the mountain. We rest the next day. We don't do nothing. And we have ranch vehicles stake us out and basically watch us in our camp all day. The hell are these people supposed to be doing? Ranching, I would think. That's what's killing me this whole time, right?

You think of the enormity of the property, and I just can't help but wonder what the hell else is going on. Oh my God. Animal wise. Like the elk and deer and antelope playing on the other, you know, 42 sections of land so where are we at

they're surveying you camping they're watching us camping they're counting your cards we're not doing anything but laying around being lazy recouping what do we have we have a partial elk to go pack out Yeah, we're not doing anything but laying around being lazy, recouping. The next, what do we have? We have a partial elk to go pack out.

Right, the rest, the remaining year elk. Yeah, so we're going back up the mountain. These guys, one truck that believed that morning. Right. We could back up a little bit. We did have a confrontation with them. If you want to tell. Tell us. well it was that it was that day right so we we couldn't go to the bathroom we got we got a truck on one end watching us and a guy right above our tent watching us you can't even go out and relieve

yourself you know yeah without exposing yourself inde exposure. Somebody called the police on you. Right. He had his penis out, waving it around. I was staring at him through my 10 by 50s. So we head to the local convenience store to let our buddy John use the restroom, grab a little ice cream and whatnot. But the white truck that's watching us, as we drive away, he starts driving away, but we're, we're gonna, we're gonna pass each other. Brad stops him and pretty, pretty buntly just asked him, Hey, are you watching us?

Guy's like, no, I ain't watching. Well, what are you doing? I'm scouting. Brad's a little clearer on this. But I asked him if he had permission. Right. You know, if you're scouting, you must have permission to hunt. Do you have permission?

He says, no. I said, well, what are you scouting for? He's like, well, well, first he said he was scouting for the next week. And I said, do you have permission? He says, no. I said, what are you scouting for? He says, well, across the road is a public cow area and um i said well that season's not till december and january and he's like well have a

good day and took off and so that was kind of he's on the radio going now if they ask you this right what you're but you can tell that they had a little bit of a now, if they ask you this, what you're going to do? But you could tell that they had a little bit of a story. Hey, if they talk to you, just say you're scouting. But they're supposed to be just making you stay miserable. Yeah, exactly. They're just pestering us is what they're doing. And so that was that.

The next morning, we still have this elk to get out, but we're feeling good. We're heading up the mountain. I've got to ask you a question. Go ahead. I'll forget later, but I should ask it later, but I'll forget. Have you guys thought about doing anything civil against the people who are ruining your time and obstructing your ability to hunt?

Like a hunter harassment type thing? Hunter harassment. Go ahead. We wrote statements, but that's not up to us to whether charges are brought so but but i mean are you will like is there have you considered taking legal action against someone who's intimidating you know we had a discussion civilly whether to do something civil i don't know that it's worth it simply because the way we hunt, we don't spend that much money.

I mean, that's the honest to God's truth. We don't have guides. We don't have big expenses. And so I believe the Wyoming law tells you what you can recoup, which is your tag. A little saucer of ice cream. But does it have to be, like if someone's intimidating you, does it have to be like if someone's intimidating you does it have to be that you suffered financially there's not like a thing like just general

intimidation so there is a law of hunter harassment yeah that doesn't need to be that you lost money correct but to do it civilly for us to push something we would have to do it in a civil manner otherwise it's a criminal thing. And so what we've done is. Oh, like you're saying the criminal thing isn't up to you. Correct. The criminal thing would be someone would determine, a prosecutor in that county would determine, I'm going to go after the people who are harassing these individuals criminally. Exactly.

I got you. And that's up to them. We wrote our statements all individually of our experience of being harassed by this ranch. Any word on whether that prosecutor is going to pursue that? No. What's your gut instinct? No. Okay.

We turned it in. We turned it into the game warden. Game warden told me that he turned it into the prosecutor. Prosecutor told game warden that we'll wait and see how the criminal thing pans out. Okay. Well, the criminal thing is panned out, you know, not guilty, but we haven't heard any more on the civil, on the harassment issue. That's really interesting, man.

If he can, if that, and I don't know him from anybody, but it's interesting if that prosecutor can just decide that he doesn't want to do anything about Hunter harassment in his county. Is it a she? It's a she. Yeah. But I think they have that soul power. Yeah. That's an interesting call to make.

Totally their decision. Like, are you cool with Hunter harassment in your county or are you not cool with it? Right. That's interesting. Maybe it comes down to what that harassment is. Like, it's impeding their ability. Sure sounds like there's a fair bit of documentation. Right.

But is it impeding their ability to hunt? I mean, who knows how they define it, right? It gets a little better. It gets a little better. Well, just at this point, right? Like, just that is more than a lot of people would stand like sure you know because just like you said like what you guys want to do is hunt dealing with people in these confrontational manners is not hunting

right that's not like okay when i go out to, I know there's going to be this big confrontation. And then I'm going to go do, go have a nice walk. Yeah. Be alone in my thoughts. And next year I need to bring my ladder and my little outhouse shelter so that I can pee. Right. I can pee in private. Get a lawyer on retainer. Right.

Yeah. Niche. Okay. Not exactly the goal. No. You know, so we're going up the mountain to retrieve the last of this elk. And we knew we were being watched from the same guy in the same truck. And you go straight up a mountain and you peak and you hit a road.

It's on the BLM that goes across the middle. They use this road a lot. It's a ranch road. And we see the ball of dust coming, you know, from the ranch manager comes flying across the ranch and he drives right up to us and goes, what the fuck? Hmm.

Like he just had enough at this point. That's the first words out of his mouth is, you know, what are you guys doing here? Um, and I simply tell him we were told we could be here. You know, three days ago, the game warden told us it was public land. He told you the same thing. It's public land. We're going to hunt.

We got a bull we're going to go get. We're standing in the middle of a BLM section. Does he, actually he ordered us back to camp. Right. Get back to camp. The landowner. The landowner manager, the ranch manager.

The representative of. Yes. And you were like, you were, you guys were on public land. He was on public land. Dude, we're not even,

yeah, we're in the middle of 640 acre. Yep. You know, and he's like, you get back to your camp and no you know or what right he just said no and i said where you got an elk to go get i'm done talking to you we're going and so we did and so this this road you know kind of makes, makes a big bend that goes, I measured

it. It's like 700 yards, I believe. And he followed, he turns around and follows us within. 20, 20 yards. Yeah. 20 yards of us in his truck. Creeping, creeping down the road as we're walking in front of him. As we're walking along.

Yeah. Um, so we cut a corner. Good way to get you guys out of there would be go pick up that elk and help you back to camp. You would think so, wouldn't you? Yeah. So we cut a corner. Good way to get you guys out of there would be go pick up that elk and help you back to camp. You would think so, wouldn't you? Yeah. Wouldn't that be a neighborly thing to do? And you'd be out of there fast. And we'd be gone.

Yeah. Right. That's your last tag? Well. See you next year. We had asked him to do that the year prior, and he kindly declined. True. I did ask him the year before, hey, you want to help us haul this out?

And he's like, no, I can't do that. So finally we have enough, right? And so we stop. I wave him forward, you know, and go, dude, you're harassing us. You know, you can't follow us in your truck across the middle of public land. We're trying to hunt. Get out of here. Leave us alone.

Um, and he's, go ahead, Phil, you tell this part of it better than I do. Oh gosh. You questioned him. Well, I just, yeah, I just, he said, he, he, he said, well, I'm hunting. It's like, well, where's your orange? He, he kind of looks behind us, you know, does a head whip, you know, and, well, where's your orange? He kind of looks behind us, does a head whip. And Zach says, it's not legal to hunt from your truck either, is it? And he says, I can do whatever the F I want.

Right. Is exactly what he said, really. I didn't see that last. Did you guys film any of this stuff with your phones or anything? No You don't think of that crap And you're just going to make the person Your blood's boiling a little bit

You don't know what's legal either Privately do that stuff We actually read him the attorney general's opinion We did right there in the middle of the road We read him the road John did opinion. We did, right there in the middle of the road. Right there in the middle of the road. Forgot about that. Yeah. John did.

Yeah. And he had never seen that before. Or he acted like he'd never seen that before. And he just did a lot of head nodding and, okay, yeah, yeah. But I can do whatever the. Right. Yeah. So after that confrontation, we take off again.

I don't know. Did we get a half mile? Maybe. Half mile. Phone rings. It Did we get a half mile? Maybe. A half mile. Phone rings. It's the warden. What? Yeah.

He says, hey, I hate to do this, but I got to ask you guys to get back to camp. The phones are blowing up all over the place. Prosecutor's office is, you know, there'll be a deputy back at camp. Go to your camp till you, till you hear from me. But you have meat on the mountain. We have meat on the mountain. Right. Which should trump everything.

And he knows this, the game warden does. And he was super nice to us. Very professional and pleasant through everything, every encounter we had with him. Um, so we do, we turn around and go back to our camp. It wasn't too long. A deputy shows up, you know, and he's getting super nice and is kind of lighthearted about it and says, Hey, I got called on this trespassing thing on this corner deal, but you guys are just corner crossing, right? And we're like, yeah, we're those guys. He's like, that's what I thought when I got the call.

I thought it was the same guys. We'd, it was you guys, you know, that we'd got called on before and you're just corner crossing. So he's like, go hunt again. Again.

They wanted to go back down to your camp. His exact words is go hunt. And I'm like, well, game warden told us to come hang out here. So we're going to hang out here, you know, because that's what he's like. Yeah, that's probably smart. You know, that's what the game warden asked you to do.

So that's what we done until that evening. Another deputy shows up. Another deputy shows up and says he has. I was instructed to issue you guys citations. By who? Instructed by who? By his boss. His boss.

His boss. Who is? Take that for whoever you want to take that for, whether that's the sheriff or the prosecutor. I don't know. But he was ordered to come give us citations. So in the background, someone's working political lines here. A lot of phone calls. Yeah, the governor.

One would assume. Yeah. We know what we know you know the rest of it we're assuming you know so i questioned him you know how did we trespass and he wouldn't answer any questions he just said you got to tell the judge ask the judge and but in the end it was that you're you went through the air of that person's land in the end that's apparently with the argument you know that was made because no one that's the thing i think is it's so obvious i hesitate to bring it up but what we're talking about here is it's like it's funny because we're

talking about it's about one thing but we're talking about another thing what it's about one thing, but we're talking about another thing. What it's about is that you have a bunch of private land to yourself because it's landlocked. Public land. Yeah. I'm sorry. You have a bunch of public land that only you can hunt. That's what this is about. And you want to keep it that way because it's sweet. But what you got to talk about instead is this issue of that your body is crossing.

When you do that, that that one step you're violating their airspace and they're acting like they're they're sort of saying like no i care about the airspace they never go like i'm trying to preserve private hunting yeah that's just smoke you know so i'm saying like it's like one of those weird things where but then you get to go to court and in court they can't say well i'm trying to i have this kind of sweet deal that I don't really pay for, but it's sweet, so I just want to keep it that way. They've got to focus in on this airspace shit. On the airspace thing.

Well, and all of our encounters with law enforcement were always on our side, but you could tell that they were being pushed from other directions. What's confusing to me is I've always known that you're not supposed to do that, at least by rule, but it doesn't sound like the conservation officers approached it that way. It's state by state, keep in mind, right? So, and even within the state of Montana, that on paper has a stricter view of what corner crossing is, there are counties that will not prosecute corner crossing.

Like it is too much of a quagmire. It's not defined well enough. The time of the court is too valuable to have to wade through this. And they want to punt it to a higher court, which is interestingly enough, one way that can be seen how this case is going here with the civil suit has been punted up or grabbed, however you want to see it, by the federal magistrate. So when agents are going through the academy, this isn't an issue that they're being schooled on? I'm sure they're like, do they look like they have a bunch of drugs in their truck? If so, this corner crossing thing would probably be something you'd want to pay attention to.

I think game wardens are like, this is not our, we don't oversee this. This is for the county sheriff. Yeah, they're trespassed to hunt. Man, I missed out on some good hunting over the years. Well, the way we understand it, the game and fish is right on their website. You know, Attorney General's opinion is it's not illegal. So when you tell me you just always knew you weren't supposed to do that, how did you know that? What did you read that said, I can't.

That's a great question. I don't know where it comes from. In this state, what do they recommend against it? Yeah. I think even on Wyoming's, it says we recommend you don't, but it's not codified as illegal. It does not say that. It doesn't say they don't recommend. No.

Most of my Western hunting was in the Eastern part of Montana. And out there, I mean, you just know not to. Because it's recommended against it. Yeah. Okay, so I had a conversation with a BLM law enforcement officer about an area that we were going to take a helicopter into. And he flat out said, well, why would you do that? Guys walk into that all the time from this road. Well, that's a good point. When you ask where I learned it from, Randy Newberg did that with that helicopter and like blew that big issue up.

Yeah. So that was one place that I'd heard that, I suppose. Yeah. My opinion. All right, let's, okay, yeah. Just being an out-of-stater and trying to read some information, you know, on this is the powers that be, the people that don't want you to corner cross, have done a great job of feeding propaganda bullshit to the public. And what got me pointed down that is I found the real estate ad for this ranch when it went up for sale back in the earlier mid-2000s. And I read it.

And it said that the public, this is a real estate ad, says that the public ground around this ranch has been litigated through a, I can't remember if it said a district court or a court system, and that it was deemed that the public couldn't go there. No. So I didn't believe it. That's in the listing. That was in the real estate listing. I think I even may have that printed off somewhere. Wow, that's great, man. And so I tried to look up these court cases and found out there was no such court cases. You mean to tell me that a realtor.

So, I mean, here's, here's just, just to show our side of the fence here in Montana. And I started collecting a file on these, um, because I, I, it's one of those things that when I'm having a bad day, I like to make it even worse by fuming about this horseshit, as you called it. Cute, almost new, two bedroom, one bath cabin

on six plus acres with the two-car garage being sold fully furnished with all appliances blah blah blah ready to be a rental full-time or part-time residents the subdivision boasts private trout stock ponds and access to public land behind a locked gate uh so this is comes right back full circle to our HOA, our evil HOA discussion that we started this thing with. And then it goes on to talk about just a short drive off the county maintained, which means everybody, county taxes are paying to maintain the road and school bus route taxes around land only. It's a commodity. Anyway, sorry. is around land only. It's a commodity. Anyway. Just out of curiosity,

were you guys accessing state or BLM? Both. Yeah. All right. So there you are. He gives you your citation and the citation carries with it. Can you do,

is it mandatory court? Could you just pay it and be done with the whole thing? No, it was a must appear. Must appear. If I remember right. Okay. And they set the date for?

November 8th. That's right. Good job, Phil. So you guys would already be out there hunting. That's perfect. Right. Save you some cash. Nice of you.

Good deal. You get a lawyer. Well, so it's a $750 fine, if I remember right. We know we didn't do anything wrong, but we're in a conundrum of what do we do here? How do you fight this? We all kind of wanted to fight it. Yeah. But it's still at $750.

We could just be done with it. Like you'd go down and be like, all right. Right. Yeah. Right. Which is typical. If you went and paid it it then were you just going to come back next year and pay it again well we hadn't thought that through all the way you know

but i and that would be mentioned right you know that hey we just double the cost of our elk tag and pay the fine and go you know type thought but that's as far as that went. Um, but we've met some local guys and they're like, Hey, this is ridiculous. Uh, we know an organization. I'm going to try and hook you guys, put you guys together. And so this BHA group, this back country hunters and anglers.

Wyoming BHA. Wyoming BHA. The Wyoming chapter. Um, I can't remember. We get connected and they're, they want to know our story. And so we write them, you know, what happened, a statement and send it to them. And they see it as an opportunity as a legit, you know, you guys haven't done anything wrong. We want to back you on this. And so they, uh, set up the GoFundMe thing and get that ball rolling. Um, they find attorneys, you know,

Hey, I know this attorney, that attorney, you know, contact these guys. And so we just got on the phone and got representation and it snowballed, you know, went to what it is now. And they done a phenomenal job of getting that money going. It raised what? 30 some thousand dollars. Fast. Fast.

Ultimately, you know, right around 78. And then it kind of flatlined a little bit. And then Steve hears about it. Right. You know, and throws a Instagram thing out there. Me and Phil's checking game cameras or something out in the woods one day. And my brother-in-law, John, texts and says, have you looked at the GoFundMe?

I'm like, no. And he's like, look at it. And it was just, it was clicking after you threw the Instagram message out there. And it like doubles in money overnight. And here we are, you know know the whole thing just grew how long was the so how many of you guys had to show up for the trial four of us all of us how many days was the trial three are you serious yeah now who did three days for a misdemeanor did the actual landowner show up? No. Did the ranch manager?

Yeah, he was on the stand. Okay. Was he wanting to be there or was he called to the stand? I assume he was called. Actually, he was called by the prosecutor. He was the prosecutor's witness. And this is like, there's a jury. This is a jury thing or not?

Because it's a misdemeanor, it's not a jury. It is a jury. It is a jury trial. I didn't know this. Because you had to plead. You pled not guilty, which makes it a jury thing or not? Because it's a misdemeanor. It's not a jury. It is a jury. It is a jury trial. I didn't know this. Because you had to plead. You pled not guilty, which makes it a jury thing. Well, you still didn't. You have to request a jury trial, I believe. Okay.

The whole legal side of it. I didn't know this. A misdemeanor is only six jurors. I didn't know that either. Yeah. So learn that through this. Less expansive. Yeah, I guess.

Three days of witnesses. Three days of looking at different maps that were the same map, just in a different color. You know, and Legos. Yeah, the Lego defense. Did you guys have to outline like everywhere you went and things? No. Well, we're defendants, you know, so they have to prove us guilty. Right. Did you have the ladder there? No. The ladder didn't come into, you know, so they have to prove us guilty. Right. Did you have the ladder there?

No. The ladder didn't come into play? There was pictures of the ladder. We weren't going to haul the ladder back out. How long did the jury deliberate? The ladder. Two hours. Well, they ate lunch.

Two, two and a half hours. They got their lunch out of it. Yeah, they ate lunch and was out an hour and a half, I believe. As much coffee as they could drink. Right. It was pretty quick. So they deliberated for an hour and a half, which included lunch. Correct.

And they come back and what? Not guilty. It's that easy. It's nervous. That's a pretty nervous deal, staying in the dump. You know, whether a jury's going to decide whether you're a criminal or not. But had they decided you were guilty, would you have had to pay court costs? I don't know.

I wondered at the same time. I'm sure they would have. You know? Yeah, I don't know how that got played out. You weren't handcuffed or anything, were you? No. No little hordes, jumpsuits or nothing? No, we teased my brother-in-law, John, who's one of our hunting buddies.

He's the nervous one. You know, he was just scared to death somebody was going to think he was a criminal, you know, because he touched air. And so we teased him about getting his own jumpsuit. Don't pick up the soap type thing. Be a good Christmas present. Right. And there's stands right now. And I don't know to what degree you can't really get into it.

They're revisiting this through a civil suit. We have been sued civilly by the landowner. Can you disclose how much you're being sued for? There is no amount. Right, because you have to prove the damage. I believe it reads the amount is to be determined by the jury. Sure, so the jury

would have the serious weight on their shoulders of determining how bruised the airspace is and what that bruising would amount to in a dollar figure yes of air that moves what that surgery is going to cost so the air is when you go to like settle up with the air it's different air now it's different air now. It's different air. Yeah, I read this thing one time that was saying that- Where do I slide my card?

When you breathe, you're breathing in air molecules that had been breathed by Jesus. The air molecules are just like- So Lord knows where those things are now. And what was the value he assigned to them? You know? As Caesar. Let's get into it. It'd be interesting if you could ask him,

what do you think about this whole corner crossing thing? Yeah. Going back to what Steve said. Not much, I imagine. Going back to what Steve said, my favorite part of this is that they can't say the quiet part out loud, which is that we just want to protect our sweet public land. That's ours.

Ours, in quotes. When you're sitting in the courtroom and the phrase touching air, I know that's not how they framed it in the courtroom, but did their defense or argument sound preposterous? That's exactly what it boiled down to. So he never turned to the judge and was like, was it a man or a woman? It was a woman judge. Okay, never turned to her and said, Your honor, let me level with you.

I bought this because I thought I could hunt all this public ground and no one else could. This is kind of fucking that whole deal up. Well, he was never there. Oh, yeah. The ranch manager. He sends his representative. Hired hand in there. Did the lawyer for the other side, did they seem pretty committed or were they kind of eye rolling the prosecutor yeah they were very

committed he wanted to see you guys get in trouble they were very someone had lit a fire under his ass i i was a woman it was a female her ass actually but i don't know we never understood what why she had a horse in this race well you know what was the judge's demeanor about the whole thing did she seem to be that her time was being wasted or professional professional you know i was on a jury one time and we convicted a guy on on uh it was a crack cocaine deal and we convicted and then the judge says the jury i want you to hang around for a minute okay and they all the stuff happens everybody leaves and the judge says i'm gonna tell you some things that if there's any amount of guilt that you might feel i want to put that

guilt at rest and tell you about some non-submissible evidence gotcha which he then laid out all this shit that they couldn't tell you about and you're like dude why are they not told about that right like shooting people strangling people made you feel good about putting the dirt oh yeah they're like they couldn't because it was like he already had been in you know i mean yeah and then you get done today like damn wish i'd known that all along man i would have been sitting there out of well i would have done what they try to get you to not do which is get them make them pay all over again for what he done earlier right man we just hope going through this whole process that people look at us and go i think

they're pretty decent guys that were just going hunting. Yeah. You know, because we've read the stuff where people thought we were trying to get arrested on purpose. And that's insane. They're like not a bunch of hooligans. Yeah. When you guys were camped there over like both times, did you have any groups of hunters drive

by and be like, hmm, what are they up to there? We had a couple of guys stop and say, hey, you know, just trying to feel out your hunting situation. And so I used to fish a lot competitively and stuff. So I've learned how to. You're a competitive bass fisherman? Yeah, a little bit. So you learn how to have those conversations and talk and not say. Without giving anything away.

Yeah. You know, so that's the same thing you do in the hunting world. Getting any? Seen a few Now Steve, just out of curiosity How did you jump to the conclusion That he was a competitive bass fisherman? Because he's from Missouri

I didn't think he was a competitive trout fisherman Well no, they probably got some good trout fishing Because if you tallied up How many competitive fishermen are in the world Wouldn't 99% be competitive bass fishermen? If I was talking to a Bahamian and he says he's a competitive fisherman, I would think he's in like the tuna

Calcuttas. Yeah. Being from the Bahamas and all. Yeah. Good conclusion. So the do we want to talk about the Unlawful Enclosures Act? No. I want to save that the Unlawful Enclosures Act? No. I want to save that.

Okay. Because that's a super interesting part. Like where this is headed? But that's one of the things that we hung our hat on. Oh, you did hang your hat on it. We hung our hat on that Unlawful Enclosures Act. Also, that came up in court? No. Oh.

That came up in our personal conversations of building a ladder and them trying to block us and all that well cal i haven't been keeping you up to speed because it's brand spickety new but i'm i'm working lead on a guest that could get into the subject matter expert perfect awesome so i was trying to just to milk this out more, you know, the, um, but sorry that it is relevant for this because that was the argument that allowed it to be kind of plucked into federal court. The, the civil, civil trial. Oh, because so it is, it is emerging already like that conversation. I thought that was like a conversation that will come eventually no there is an argument made on behalf of all four of our corner crossers that said um this civil suit has no basis because of and i'm very very much simplifying and and uh uh anyway well the reason i'm going easy on this is i have been i'm not trying to be like cryptic well i am i don't know enough about it well i've had i've had off the com i've had off the record conversations with individuals who have they've off the record

explained issues around the enclosures thing that I would like to get into in the future because it's very interesting. And do it in a way that doesn't lead people in a lot of bad directions. Yeah. And assumptions.

No, that's good. And as in this studio, Dave Wilms. Yep. Who doesn't have a, he's no out that the enclosures act has been used around like a commercial travel. I think if I remember correct, it's on public records is on this episode or on this show. It's been used around shipping.

It's been used around trucking. So commerce, but it hasn't been, it's never been applied to pedestrian traffic. And in his pondering, his pondering was on the episode, previous episode, his pondering was what would happen were one to take pedestrian traffic and look at it through the lens of the Enclosures Act. And to date, that hadn't been done. And he could, and he, I can't remember exactly, but he brought up ways in which it would be an interesting conversation

and he could see this and he could see that, but it hasn't been applied to foot traffic. Interesting. Did I kind of roughly summarize that correctly on the civil suit? Yeah, it's part of the argument, I believe. We haven't had great in-depth conversations. We've had small conversations with attorneys, and we let those handle the legal thing. I just sit here and keep thinking of, as an out-of-state hunter and there's thousands of us

that go west to go hunting why can it not be simple is what you can and cannot do yeah you know you shouldn't have these conversations do you guys still have a little jingle in your um legal defense fund no really no it's short and i've got one more attorney bill i need to pay so we're gonna have to have some conversations and get some more money rolling. I don't think we need much. When will the civil thing become more clear, like what you got to do and all that?

We don't know yet. Okay. There's some judgments, some... Well, it depends on that federal court, right? Well, the federal court's keeping the case. Right. And so then there's some emotions out there that they have to rule on first got it maybe just a motion to dismiss i don't remember exactly

that's attorney's jobs yeah one of the problems i've learned this watching different supreme court cases and federal cases is oftentimes you want it to be like this um like final decision right but a lot of times it doesn't happen no it's so odd like the findings are so obscure would be that our ruling is that the state should go and better define part of this better define a term at play here you're like that was it right yeah you guys are gonna have to define air yeah right or like you know you're like, ah, that was it? Yeah. You guys are going to have to define air. Yeah. Right.

Or like, you know, you're like, oh, I also want to be like, ta-da! Exactly. And that ends up being. It just winds up being like another sort of, they punt it, right? That was part of the argument in court was they argued over the definition of public land and private land. And so the prosecutor wanted to use the definition of private land. And so our attorneys argued the definition.

Well, in that case, we must have the definition of public land. And, but if one would have been. And there goes a day. You know, right. You know, you waste a lot of time in court. Were you following everything in court? Was it easy to follow? If just someone who had been sitting in there?

If we're sitting in a room, the courtroom was about twice this size. Oh. So, yeah, there's no getting away from any of it. You're right in amongst the middle of everything. I mean, did it ever get to where they were arguing over obscure stuff you hadn't thought about before? Or were you tracking the arguments? Like, you knew what was going on? Oh, yeah. There's a lot of stuff you hadn't thought about before? Or were you tracking the arguments? Like you knew what was going on? Oh yeah, there's a lot of stuff you don't think about.

That they brought up that surprised you that it came up. Yeah. A lot of that before we actually went to court too. All the different motions and arguments were. Right. Forever. I thought we already did this.

Worded a different way. Right. So where things are at now? Did it screw up your hunting plans for this year? That's what I want to know. Where are you hunting this fall? That place might be a little blown up now, man. Well, we're probably not going to draw tags this year.

Don't say too much, Phil. You don't give out that kind of information. Remember, I'm an old fisherman. We've got other plans. We'll hunt somewhere. The landowner, he probably just invited you out by this point, didn't he? My phone hasn't rang. You can hire you guys as guides out there.

Right, he should. Well, maybe you write a letter that says, come on out to our place in Missouri. You know? Yeah, he can come. There you go. I'll take him hunting. There you go. I don't know about that.

Yeah. All right, guys. Didn't even swap, right? We're going to wrap it up. First, first to raise some money for your legal fund, you need to develop a like packable lightweight, like carbon fiber version of that, that ladder. Well, when you guys do find out what's up ahead, please let us know and we'll help get some more, we'll help get a little more jingle rolling for you.

That street turn for money, Yanni. Yanni's like, what are they going to do with some jingles? Yanni's trying to think of a jingle. Yeah, thank you guys very, very much for coming out. It was great to have you. I want to take a picture with you guys.

Here's some evil corner crossing. Oh yeah, this brings me all the way back to the out corner crossing. Oh, yeah. This brings me all the way back to the outlaw Josie Wales, man. You don't mess with the Missourians.

There you go. Missouri boat ride. All right, guys. You guys sticking around for trivia? I guess if we're supposed to. You better.

I don't know. No, it'd be great. I'll probably beat you guys' asses. We're counting on it. Phil's the trivia guy. Phil's the trivia guy. Phil's the trivia guy. All right, thanks, man.

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