The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 360: The World Coming to You on a Wing

Episode Date: August 22, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Drew Lanham, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Sean Weaver, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: The Home Place and Sparrow Envy; Drew's very cool bone carved crow skull necklace; Cal's Week In Review's special edition Ep. 171; a "close call" story that doesn't quite cut it for our third audiobook; how Pat Durkin is pissed that "white-tailed" became whitetail deer; arguing about language; El Hefe; the Spring Light Goose Conservation Order; a black bear, a grizzly bear, and a polar bear walk into a snow goose nesting area...; not pullin' a cork on crab whiskey; starting as a bird watcher, then becoming an ornithologist; impaling your prey on bushes and thorns; the family legend of coming back from the war bearing gold; free as birds; moving science to the masses; feeling first, then thinking, then doing; the amazing capacity of birds to do what they do; how to be a responsible feeder keeper; Nine Rules for the Black Bird Watcher; and more.   Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light. Go farther, stay longer. How is it you guys were in Hawaii for so long and you're both like still pale? I was thinking the exact same thing. Because we had full fucking wetsuits and our faces were in the water. Yeah, plus you... We weren't there jimmy-dicking around on the beach. Steve and I were standing out doing the

cooking yesterday and just came to the conclusion that the sun over there is just an evil, evil thing, man. Oh, there you go. Savage, dude. There you go. Look at that tan. Like there's something about it that just like simultaneously

cakes salt onto you, sucks the moisture out of you, and burns you. Yeah, it's the only sun that makes you want to shower right away. Yeah. So were you snorkeling or scuba diving? Spearfishing. Free diving. Free diving, yeah. So you got likeorkeling or scuba diving? Spear fishing. Yeah, free diving. Yeah.

So you got like a dorsal tan you'd come up with. Right. Except for I don't have a lot of coverage on my head anymore, so I have a full hood just for the sun. Yeah, I could tell you

some fishing stories to curl your hair, Brody. Let's hear them, man. Come on. Wait, we are recording we should start with that no okay let's start with this let's start with this okay join today uh drew lanham who man we've been trying to get you on for a long time but we got kind of like i don't know if you're aware of this we got waylaid by covid what what was that oh so you know he's over it now it was a pandemic not not quite over it but

yeah you know it's uh it's been a while but glad to finally be out here yeah we were talking about it a long time ago and um originally it came from we were reading your your book which now it's like a 2016 memoir so i was reading a little bit late but uh drew lanham uh a birder and ornithologist professional professor of wildlife ecology at clemson university author and poet and uh is this your this is your most recent book the home place no there's a book of poetry got it called sparrow envy field guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts. So that came out 2021. And I also got a little book of poetry on a place called Edisto Island that you might be familiar with down on the coast of South Carolina with two fellow poets.

We call ourselves the Pluff Mud Poets. Got it. So. You have like a school of poetry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the three us and then uh working on about three other books so oh excellent we've got some stuff going on the his 2016 memoir um which we read and we're gonna try to have drew on and then one thing led to another is uh the home place memoirs of a colored man's love affair with nature. So we're going to dig on that.

I had to cut Cal and Drew off because they started talking about what's up with quail in the south. And I got real interested. So we're going to return to that in a minute. And also I want to point out, explain to people your necklace, which is the coolest necklace I've seen in a long time. Yeah, it's a raven skull. It's a miniature raven skull that's carved out of white-tailed deer antler. So ravens are kind of a, I don't know, a totem sort of for me. You know, large black beings that like to play.

All right. That's what I dig. A couple things to watch out for if you're in a viewing mood. Duck Camp Dinners with Jean-Paul Bourgeois is back for season two. Follow him and his crew as they dive deep into their duck season in Louisiana, getting after great duck hunting and cooking up some badass meals at the camp along the way. I'm working on an episode. We're in the editing process on an episode we did with Jean-Paul down in Louisiana, which is a

hell of a good time and a lot of fun. Went cray fishing too. So stay tuned for all that. Cal, Cal's got something to plug. Oh, we've been talking a lot about our block management access appreciation program that is tied into, I would say our overall access pillar here on the conservation side of meat eater uh so it falls in there with our land access initiative but

we purchased a 46 steel chainsaws 46 visa check cards randomly drew 46 participating landowners in Montana's private land public access program, which is called block management. And we showed up on a bunch of folks' doorsteps and just said thank you on behalf of hunters for being part of the program. There's about 7 million acres enrolled, 7 million private acres enrolled, some of which gives or provides access to a lot of landlocked public land as well. And it's, it is a great program. Every state has one like it. And you can hear one of the most fun projects I think Phil and I have got to do, uh, which was listen to a bunch of landowners candidly talking about the program and, and, uh, have a little conversation with me while on the road, dropping off these thank you packages. Um, and that's on Cal's Week in Review. If you want to listen to that, just to get an idea of, you know, what we've been doing over here. Episode 171.

171. 171. Yes, sir. I need to figure out if you dropped off any gifts at the, uh, BMA I want to antelope on that. Exactly. You want to throw to that? There's a big caveat, big caveat in there that said, if you volunteer to drop things off, do

not ask for hunting access. This is the last time these landowners are going to see a hunter. Well, I got you. And not be asked for something. This was a thank you mission only. And it was great. Lots of good interaction,

lots of good feedback on the program and just gave a good perspective that you don't get every day on the other side of the fence. Cal's Week in Review, you can find anywhere. Well, if you're listening to this right now, use this same platform and switch over to

Cal's Week in Review and hear Cal's Weekly Show. Also, Sabretooth on our YouTube channel. Sabretooth with Kevin Gillespie. Go check out there where he cooks up scimitar-horned orcs. And that is an animal we covered on an episode of our own show called Cuddle the Scimitar. Is that what we called that show?

Yeah, we did. And Steve, there's a cute photo floating out there. Me cuddling a scimitar horned orcs? Then they killed and ate. No, not yet. Not yet. I mean, maybe it'll be shipped back to Chad. Maybe it's got strong genes.

But anyway, it's a very cute photo. Our Campfire Stories is out right now, the second installment of Campfire Stories. And so we're already beating people's doors down. And I'm talking to you folks, you listeners. We're starting to collect stuff for three, volume three. So we had, most recently we released, and it's kicking ass. Who's Brene Brown?

We were beating Brene Brown. I don't know who that is. I'm not sure how many listeners of this podcast know who Brene Brown is. But our audible book was beaten. But a lot of Americans know who Brene Brown is. Yeah, I didn't know when you sent out that little message. I'm going to venture to say... It's a woman...

I'm going to venture to say that if you're the spouse in a relationship not listening to Brene Brown, you've been told to listen to Brene Brown many times. That's exactly right. So our audio book was whooping her audio book is that what you're telling me yeah yeah it's good i like to hear that um when it came out it was like uh it was you know like in the the trending it hit all the tops super top yeah super tops and all of them anyhow we're out looking for new ones now i'm on to a hot lead from, I don't want to spoil it. I'm on a hot lead from someone who's been in this room who was, I don't want to tell too much of the story.

Yeah, because then we're going to start guessing. Just a little teaser. Let's say had front row seats too. He had, he was, worked for a helicopter logging operation. Oh, I can't possibly imagine who this is. And was present for the rotors coming off of the helicopter above him. Present, but not responsible for. No.

Insane. He felt a bunch of lug nuts in his pocket. Insane. And he's like, oh, I've got to tighten them up. No, it's no laughing matter. Wait, whose thing is the lug nuts thing? We don't have a lug nuts thing. No, isn't, didn't we have a isn't... You're thinking of a Christmas story.

No, didn't we have a guest on who was saying, like, no one ever... No one knows what lug nuts are. And, like, if you know what lug nuts are, you're, like, a real... Yeah, you're right. Like, an independent, self-sufficient human. And if you don't, then you're, like, a millennial. I've had a close call with some lug nuts. When I was a fishing guide, people

who didn't like fishing guides would loosen the lug nuts on the boat trailer. That's a good trick. No way. Oh yeah. That's like eco-terrorism, dude. Really? Happened to me twice, yeah. I've seen that one where they pull the pin on the hitch and leave the hitch in the pickup

and then when you go pull away, punch inside, balls on tires. That was one, too. And then when you go pull away. Yeah. Punching side balls on tires. That was one too. To this exact point. Over trout. Man, y'all are gangsta. Yep. A buddy of mine who's the, he loves to spear fish striper down in California in the rivers.

And people who love to, you know, target those things with the giant, super expensive swim baits don't like that. Right. And he's had people pull the pin on his boat trailer. So when he goes back and in there, and as you like to point out, kids love playing on boat ramps and stuff. So he's like super dangerous. And this guy's a big family guy. But last week he was diving and found a fully set up boat on the trailer, totally submerged in the river.

Really? Yeah. Oh. He said he swam down there and got a picture of the VIN number and started posting it around. How would the person not know that it's down there? Maybe they just couldn't get it out. Of course they do.

Yeah. Yeah. In our hunt for stories, we got a guy submitted one that Corinne and I decided is best just read here. Goes fast. Bear with us. Just heard about the Close Calls Campfire Stories audiobooks. He goes on. I'm reading them.

I wanted to share a close call that happened in our deer hunting party that I often share, as it is important for others to hear of the dangers involved in shooting that run-in game, not knowing your background, shooting above your abilities, target fixation, and sometimes a total disregard for safety once the buck shows up. Below is the brief version. That's the best intro ever right there. Yeah, that's a good one. Maybe 60 or 17 years old.

Says he can give us more details if we need them. Our hunting party had come to the end of a deer drive, and as we were just stepping out of the woods, a buck that had held tight to the last few feet of the drive decided it was time to vacate the woods at a dead run. He did this in full view of the entire party, which consisted of two posters and approximately six drivers. So eight-ish shooters. We'd have called those pushers and sitters.

What does Seth call them? Watchers and stand? We called them drivers and posters. Ours would pushers and sitters. What does Seth call them? Watchers and stand. We called them drivers and posters. Ours would be drivers and blockers. South Dakota. You know what? Pushers and blockers, I think is what we called them. Pushers.

Random pushers out in the woods. Mm-hmm. So eight shooters, back to quoting. Everyone fired, myself included, until we were empty. The deer was untouched. However, three quarters of a mile downrange was a farm. As we left the hunting area, we passed the farm. And there was a man in his bathrobe, standing outside with a pistol.

Two of our party stopped and asked if he was okay. He said someone shot him and revealed a bruise on his arm. Upon investigation, it was determined that a bullet from the hunting party had passed through a thicket of trees, reached his house,

passed through two walls of the house, and struck him in the arm while he was in bed sleeping he worked nights right away I wanted to I wanted to I I looked down on him because he was lazy sleeping the day away bed sleeping in the middle of the day. Sleeping in the middle of the day. He worked nights. Should have been out there driving deer. Yeah, totally excusable. Pushing.

Upon searching the man's bed, the bullet was discovered where it had torn the blankets when it struck him. The man calmed down and later said he thought his ex-wife was trying to kill him. We all knew the man and his family, and they have never spoken a bad word or exhibited any bad blood towards our hunting party why i don't know why didn't we pick that one for the next book steve that's an exercise of patience right there that there's a lot of morals in that story one take it easy when it comes to shooting your guns. And two, wow, the forgiveness. Yeah. You know how we have the No bad blood.

It's all good. It's all good. You just shot me in my bed. You know how we have the longest one sentence story ever on a t-shirt? Yeah. That might be a good t-shirt right there. I think we need a series of t-shirts that are various stories. I mean, did anybody offer to patch the drywall?

Or was the guy like, well, before I go on my shift, I better. If you want more details, you got to call them. So there you have it. Yeah, that might be our next story. There'll be a whole line of t-shirts called story t-shirts. Because we have one about the sexual depravity of turkeys. I had to check in and see how well that's selling uh speaking of which go to the meat eater store and check out that turkey story shirt you don't you don't know you don't have any updates on whether people want the turkey story shirt i gotta get those updates we can insert i'm gonna put i'm

gonna put a picture of it on instagram. We covered Alaska's fire season, and we were pointing out how it'll only get worse as fire season kicks up. And a firefighter who's been working up there pointed out that it's a different fuel model up there, and the timeframes are different. So their fire season starts early and ends early. So their fire season is May to August.

And he says partly due to the sun being out 24-7. Although the length of the season is lengthening and record acreage is burning more and more. Thanks for the outdoor advocacy. Man, so much feedback. I can't even get into it all on whether you say this is a good question for drew if i said to you i saw two deers or two bucks or i saw two buck Or I saw two doe tonight. What do you think about all that? Depends on where you're from. You know?

Let's say where you're from. I'm going to say two deer. And then you see two bucks. I see two bucks. Bucks. Not two buck. Two does. Yeah, two.

If I'm saying two buck, that's like, you know, two buck. That's like some sort of dance or something. buck two bucks is two male deer okay now say like like they do in pennsylvania two buck no no no nope and uh one doe two does got it one of the guys that wrote in thought that it sounded like a Dr. Seuss book. He thinks we should clear it up in order to make a Dr. Seuss book called, it's all set to one fish, two fish. One deer, two deer. Deer there, deer here. Steve shoots, it's a miss. Brody's next makes a hit.

And he goes on to say, just spitballing. A guy from Pennsylvania where we were kind of based on wrote in like saying like he says someone for someone to say seeing a few buck doesn't strike me as an odd thing to say and in most cases mr webster agrees so webster dictionary will accept deer and also deers will accept bucks or buck okay but he points out some exceptions i mean the ones goes on shrimp beaver duck turkey the exceptions that webster does not include is you cannot apparently say mooses that's right and you cannot say gooses i kind of where you can you can you can say gooses i I kind of like that. Well, you can.

You can. You can say gooses. I mean, but that's. Multiple species of geese. Well, no, that's a thing you do to somebody else. Oh, like a bird. Oh, yeah. Like he always gooses his buddy.

There you go. But you say geese. You don't say meese. I mean, it's like two different. It's a weird comparison. I thought it was. Is there a term for when a writer chooses to use a word improperly like that? Like to like in a turn of phrase or a regional colloquialism.

Just be like, they're a colloquial writer. Yeah. Steve just got in an argument with Pat Durkin. I got in an argument with Pat Durkin, wrote in arguing about, what the hell is he arguing about? Whitetail versus whitetail. I got an argument with Pat Durkin. I got an argument with Pat Durkin, wrote in arguing about, what the hell is he arguing about? White-tailed versus white-tailed. Oh, that you're supposed, like in his land, you're supposed to,

in his mind, and he gets frustrated with our editors, that like, in the old days, it was white-tailed deer. And he's pained by the fact that white tails one word is now a thing he prefers the old hyphenated like white tailed deer which makes it seem like you're like you know reading uh what's his name isaac walton to pat's credit heffelfinger agreed with him Yeah but Heffelfinger's got a lot of stupid things

Smartest guy I know But his whole thing about Not a lie he's got a couple stupid things The cows thing and the whitetail thing Are stupid things that Heffelfinger believes in God bless him I love him Smartest guy I know but he's wrong on cows And he's wrong on whitetail deer

I would bet they're the same way about Green winged teal Blue winged teal blue-winged teal versus you know green wings and blue wings which is colloquial i told him i've been fighting with editors my entire career about this thing and there's nothing that to me at a glance looks goofier than white dash tailed deer it's like they're white tails and i told pat he's probably still lamenting the loss of thee and thou in popular vernacular. And I told him this. There's two school thoughts.

There's two, like dictionaries take two forms. I feel like I've discussed this. You have like a descriptive approach to language and you have a prescriptive approach to language. Prescriptive would be like you're saying how it should be done right you're prescribing its use a descriptive approach is you're capturing its use right there's also a matter of efficiency right like whitetails sure easier than but it's like at a point like lang like usage proper usage should serve the users i feel hence that we've moved away from the end out it's like it should serve the user so i just like i like stuff like that i don't have any

i don't have any like sympathy for that. Drew, as a writer, do you have thoughts on? Yeah. You know, it's a matter of, uh, it's kind of like accent to me. So I always want to feel the accent. I want to know where someone's from. So, you know, to move, for example, diction or a conversation into some unrealistically stilted place takes away from the action. It takes away from the environment. So, you know, I'm all about keeping colloquialisms. And so to understand, I mean, I like old duck names, for example. Right.

Hit me as an old duck name. I mean, Spoonie. Oh, okay. Yeah. Right. You know, um, so, and you think, or summer duck for wood duck. Oh, I never heard that one. Yeah.

Summer duck. I mean, because in South Carolina, historically, I mean, that was about the only duck we were going to have in the summertime. I mean, now we got, you know, Fulvis tree ducks and, and, and black bellied Westland ducks that are around, but summer duck. So that was gonna, I mean, that said enough that you knew that that's going to be a duck that hangs around in the summer. You're not saying espansa, you know, the Latin name for that bird. But so, yeah, to keep the action real for a nonfiction writer.

Yeah, you want to keep that there. And for a fiction writer, really, I stop believing, I stop reading when someone is sort of out of context for a place. So if they haven't done their work and, you know, you've got someone from Pennsylvania saying something that someone from South Carolina would say then you know I kind of push that yeah so that's where I come down I'll take this opportunity to once again plug the works of Cormac McCarthy who more than anyone learns like the language of what he's talking about there you go I mean do your homework you know like he went to the

southwest to start writing about the southwest and holy shit or like when annie proved started writing out of wyoming i mean she got where she knew it better than anybody man um what the hell is that talking about oh yeah the lead episode let me do an abbreviated version there's a guy that hunts uh muzzleloader-only areas. And in some states, it actually spells out, like, you have to use a lead projectile with a muzzleloader. And he's like, what's a fellow to do? And you'd be like, well, like, I've hunted with my muzzleloader, with Federals, all copper muzzleloader ammo, but it's saboted. And there's no true to bore.

What does that mean? I believe this is correct so the it's wrapped the projectile is wrapped in a plastic sheath right okay so what actually so let's say you let's say you're shooting a 50 caliber muzzleloader the projectile is actually what do you guys know not 50 no it's not it's like 36 or some shit like that and it's wrapped in a you know it's wrapped in a it's basically wrapped in a, it's basically wrapped in a wadding. Okay. Like, you know, in the old days you take like a little bit of, take some bear grease and put it on some linen and wrap your ball in it.

What that does is that bites the, that, that, that helps bite the lands and grooves inside the barrel. It holds, helps bite the rifling and gives it a snug fit. So gases don't escape around the edge. So if you wanted, if you were, if you were like desirous to shoot all copper thing through your muzzle loader, it's going to be saboted in a plastic sheet. And that plastic bites the lands and the grooves and throws a spin on it.

And then when it comes out the muzzle, it sheds that plastic. And so some states require true to bore, like when they spell it, like what exactly is a muzzleloader, it requires a true to bore projectile. And so there's no copper true to, maybe I'm wrong. I don't think so. There's no copper true to bore muzzleloader projectile because it's not going to, I think

it's like, it's not, it's too hard. It doesn't bite. Am I wrong? I don't think I'm wrong. I wouldn't know. That's what he wrote in about. Speaking of Heffelfinger, and that's just, that's not because El Jefe sounds like

Heffelfinger, but because Heffelfinger is because Heffelfinger is always nipple deep in the whole Jaguar conversation. Tell us the Jaguar news, Brody. Yeah. How does Spencer say it? Jaguar? Jaguar. I say Jaguar. Spencer calls them Jaguars.

There's a famous Jaguar down in- Jaguar. Down in Southern Arizona, known as El Jefe, who was believed for several years to be the only Jaguar that was in the United States. And just a bad looking mofo, man. So 2015 is the last time they saw him. I think they may have believed he was dead. But in any case, he just disappeared in 2015. So that was seven years ago.

El Jefe just popped up across the border in Mexico. Still alive at 12 years old. It's a pretty cool story. It's like, it, I'm gonna bring up something that always gets people riled up as shit. Um, if when debating, when debating the border wall, okay.

I brought this up a hundred times. I'm gonna bring it up again. When debating the border wall, like a normal, I can't think of how to approach this subject. I'm going to, I'm not, I'm not scared to approach. I was going to approach it. When debating the border wall, you would think that people would be like, I want to hear all the sides to it.

Right. Aside to the debate around the border wall is what it means for the freedom of movement of large land mammals. Yeah. Okay. Birds, no problem. Well, a lot of birds, no problem. Yeah. Ghouls, turkeys, probably not great, but it's a thing to factor, right?

But people get mad that you bring it up because they're like, well, your job hasn't been taken by a, right? It's like, well, no, no, I'm just entering in a thing to consider. The same way if you're sitting there with your, like, my wife and I right now are kicking around what we might do for Christmas. It just so happens that airline tickets are very expensive right now, and we have a family of five. So if we're saying, we want to go to X for Christmas, and then someone says, however, let's bear in mind, plane tickets are very expensive. Is it then, do you then say like, well, you just hate vacations or is it? No, I'm just making sure I factor everything in and making my decision about how I feel

about us going on the vacation and the same, building an impenetrable wall across a couple thousand miles of wildlife habitat will have implications. But this is interesting because this thing is moving back and forth. That's right. Well, so are the people. To be fair, he may have, I mean, that wall hasn't been, he might have found his spot, right? Yeah.

And like, and people move back and forth, but it's interesting that, that he, right. That he, that he has his way of doing it and not even being captured by inner, like, and not even just getting picked up by electronic intercepts. Yeah. They, I, they ID'd him, I think with think with, I don't know if it was trail cam pictures or whatever, but someone got some images of him and they ID'd him by, you know, they basically like fingerprint Jaguars with their markings. Sure. And that's how they ID'd him and found out he's still alive out there. So 12 years old, I'm imagining that's an ancient

my understanding is you're at the end of the road you're at the end of the line um just from just from stuff like work and work in south america 10 11 12 their teeth their teeth are cooked and then they usually wind up chewing on someone's dog in their backyard because they can't get any you know they can't get anything to eat uh you know you're talking about the fingerprinting on jaguars is you remember a few years ago one turned up in a on the mexico side of the border one pictures turned up on facebook um the the person with the jaguar was unidentifiable but it was like a jaguar a dead jaguar shot and the floral i think they call it was rosettes they call them on there i think you're right rosette yeah you they're the rosettes are diagnostic and they actually in that jaguar had

spent time in arizona yeah so they're you know i think the question of whether they're moving back and forth has clearly been settled but you know i wonder if uh el jefe left any offspring in in the u.s if you're interested in the jaguar debate in this country i'm gonna try to like talk about as quickly as possible as like as they look at jaguar recovery and jaguar protection there's a spirited debate about what function historically did west texas southern new mexico and southern arizona like what function did they actually play in the in the well-being of jaguars and some people are like there's enough evidence to suggest that it was like there was a thinly dispersed viable reproducing population of Jaguars in those States and recovery would mean that you had a thinly dispersed reproducing viable population of Jaguars, or it would

be that now and then one showed up. Yeah. And it was never core habitat. But either way, it was like the Northern edge of their territory, right? Like they weren't, there wasn't ever a lot of them that was as far as they went, you know. Sure. Well, I think to, to Brody's earlier comment,

it would provide some context to people too, to think about the dynamics of these cat populations because like, did El Jefe leave any kids behind i i would have heffelfinger's book read el jefe how many kids he left behind and how many he ate along the way that's right uh sean hit us with um you you had an assignment. Yep. We listed out a ton of duck reports to do like eight, eight different subject matters to cover. Oh, quackity quack. Don't hawk back.

That's funny. Go outside. Go on. Um, one of, one of those subjects being what led to the explosion of snow goose populations and we've kind of discussed in the duck report before tell people what we mean yeah like if your dad was a goose hunter right there was no like you know insane like no plugs needed electric electronic collars allowed bag limits of 50 snow geese a day hunting them during turkey season yeah none of that was happening no and all a lot of it comes back to human influence and human impact on the environment and agriculture. Right. Uh, when you came and hunted with me in South Dakota, the first time we did podcast that

was hunting the Anthropocene and we. Good titles, man. Always good titles. That was a good one. The next, the next title, it'll already be out, I think, but it's, um, throw had little use for you. That's a tittle later. So, so we, but we are hunting flooded beans, right? And flooded corn and like how that benefits ducks and how ducks thrive in that environment. Snow geese

are another example of winners in the spread of agriculture and the explosion of grain agriculture across the midwest and the west um you know you go back to like early 1900s and snow geese were this and there's there's a lot of you know old historical records that the Fish and Wildlife end up wintering in a sliver of habitat in coastal texas and louisiana fast forward to the 1920s 30s and 40s as we see small grain kind of explode across the plains and places like Kansas and Iowa draining wetlands and creating, you know, pretty much a food source for those snow geese. Define small grain. Wheat, barley, and in addition to that, in Texas and Louisiana, you see a lot of those coastal brackish marshes get drained and turned into rice fields.

And what happens is snow geese respond positively to that. Their population starts exploding. Because now, as they make this crazy trek, right, which we discussed in the odometer duck report, where we talked about how much, you know, the average snow goose flies 20.5 miles per day its whole life, which is just wild to me. That's incredible, man.

That's so much. So, so now that they fly all this time and spend so much time traveling, now they actually have a food source that helps them be healthy along the whole way. And, um, you know, in, in the sixties and seventies, a guy named Dr. Rockwell, who helped me with this and helped me with an article I wrote, he started researching snow geese on La Prousse Bay on the edge of the Hudson Bay in Canada. And he pretty much, what he found and what he argued for starting actually all the way back in the 70s was these snow geese every year are more and more healthy as they come back north on their spring migration and it coincides beautifully with more and more food across the midwest as they

as they come back North. Yeah. So you get these new spots that they kind of stop and hit along the way. Uh, Squaw Creek, which is now called Las Bluffs, uh, in Missouri, Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge in South Dakota, et cetera, where you have this perfect collision of habitat where you have a good water source, you know, a consistent water source every year that they can stop at surrounded by food. And freeze out lake here in Montana. Yep, exactly.

And, you know, I remember you could call, uh, when we used to go up there and hunt that you could call a hotline and the hotline would tell you that there's 20,000 snow geese an estimated 20,000 are here then you call a few days later be like an estimated 26,000 are here and just like decide if you're gonna go based off the number yeah they they used to have that on sand lake national wildlife refuge in south dakota too i remember one time that they estimated there was 2.2 million snow geese sitting on that day you're kidding which is so many in one place so so long story short um you know for example with dr rockwell's research he watched during his time living up there on the tundra researching snows he watched that hudson bay population go from 1500 nesting pairs to over 500 000 nesting pairs man during his time of research there and that's just not in his life that's during his career right and now so so what we had then in the 90s is guys like him making an argument for these snow geese are extremely productive.

Agriculture is benefiting them. We got to do something. And in 1999 is when they took the gloves off and said, all right, hunters, have at it. Shoot as many snow geese as you can. Adding, you know, no plugs, use electronic calls. Yeah. All things that are like unheard of. Right.

In waterfowl management. Right. And, you know, give credit where credit's due on that. Like Ducks Unlimited was huge in hunters getting that opportunity because frankly, there was a lot of discussion around poisoning them and which is hard to think about as we you know we look back on like poisoning of bears and wolves across their whole native range and decimation of that we see it as like oh we would never do that again but only 30 years ago it was like on the table to poison snow geese. Did I ever brag to you about the vial, which is probably still at my mom's house, that we had a glass vial of what my dad swore up and down was like a white powder.

And he said, if you put that and mix it with corn and put it out, it'll kill the geese right off. No, I haven't heard that. But what is it? Do you know what the chemical is? I don't know. It sat on the windowsill in the garage. Probably. I bet you it's strychnine.

And no, like we never touched it. But my dad's like, that's what it is. And he'd gotten it. I don't know where the hell he got it. That's for killing geese. Yeah. And he was going to someday mix it with some bread and put it on the beach. Just to see what happened.

But like I said, I guarantee that thing is still sitting there. I need to go grab that. Just a goose killing powder. Of course, the kid eats it. So anyway, what. Has it been effective? No. No, it hasn't, man.

They're just too productive. And they fly around in such large flocks. You know, the hunter impact on snow geese has been single digit. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Percentile. How could that be true? And, you know, the thing is, I mean, we've got an episode of Duck Lore that's out, Snow Goose Hunting with Kevin Gillespie. And, you know, you'll have 40,000, 50,000 snows fly over you. And you kill two.

You kill four. Like, there's so many eyes. They live to be so old. They see so many decoy spreads. You know, we're putting out a thousand decoys with dozens of speakers mimicking snow goose sounds, a great hide. And like, they just, they just know.

They are the hardest bird to hunt. And, you know, it's interesting to see that they, nature does a lot better job of canning snow goose populations with spring storms on the tundra than hunters could ever, you know, dream of doing. Is there any speculation that their population could like crash because there's like, there is no usable nesting territory. You know, that was originally the speculation, right? It was degrading Arctic habitat. Right. That was the argument behind the spring light goose conservation order was they're so negatively impacting their tundra habitat that we got to preserve the tundra. What we've seen instead is that as they degrade certain areas, they tend to just disperse and find new areas, right? That they, they hop around to premium habitat and they've actually moved away

from a lot of the coastal habitat and they've moved to more interior nesting in some places. Another wrinkle I've heard of in this, which could change the dialogue a little bit, is as there is a reduction in sea ice and an escalation in snow geese populations, the polar bears are becoming increasingly reliant on snow geese nesting colonies. You buy that? There's, well, there's, and there's so much. I'm not saying you buy it, but do you know about that?

I do. Doctor? I do. Doctor. I do. Dr. Rockwell was actually talking to me about how they're having a hard time knowing exactly. What's going on on the tundra with snow goose populations because there is so many bears moving with these snow goose colonies and that it's like dangerous to have researchers on the ground because there's now spots where there is a there are spots where there is all three bears colliding around snow goose habitat no yes that'd be cool to see yep you have one stop shopping right there

yeah no shit mmhmm wouldn't it be wild to see a black bear a grizzly and a polar bear like

wandering around a snow goose colony eating on some eggs a black bear a grizzly bear and a polar bear walk into a bar well thanks man

yeah it's a fun one Oh If you want to learn more About Duckler Go back and check out Our episode called Test My Meat

And they tell a little Backstory on that And also Speaking of Test My Meat We solicited Where people were Supposed to send us The toughest meat

They've ever encountered We got it in our freezer And we're gonna Not all of it Well People need to follow My instructions Corinne's very disappointed

In people's listening abilities. She's become like a critic of the American education system. However, very explicit details that were not followed in many cases, but we have a lot of samples in the freezer, and we're going to get, instead of doing it on the podcast, we're going to fire up our meat testing tenderness testing machine and do a video about it so everybody can see how it works. You guys need to do that geriatric cow I shot last year. Oh, totally.

Did you feel out of form? No, I didn't know there was one. Follow Corinne's rules, Brody. Are you ready, Drew? Ready. All good. While we do this, Callahan is going to bartend for us. We covered on the show that they're making a...

Yeah, green crab whiskey. They're taking green crabs and making whiskey out of them. Sort of. Yeah. Who's the outfit? Tamworth Distilling, New Hampshire. And they make a Beavercaster product. We're going to have to ask them about that.

Is that not true? Maybe they do. I don't know. Who's holding it right here? Dave Musk. Hold him up. It's a whiskey infused with Beavercaster.

Is that what we're trying right now? I thought we were drinking the green crab whiskey. infused with beaver caster. Is that what we're trying right now? Is that what you poured us? I thought we were drinking the green crab whiskey. Castoreum flavored whiskey. I didn't think we'd be on a meat eater podcast and not get around to the beaver caster whiskey. Okay, so we're doing the beaver caster first and then we're going to have to do the green crab.

But thank you to the listeners who wrote in because I said that we probably couldn't get this product here in Montana. Speaking of the crab, you know how early we're talking about euphemisms no i'll tell you when i stole from charles portis who uh charles portis who wrote true grit and someone says of rooster cogburn that he likes to pull a cork yeah and i and you go. And I stole that from that book and that's what I use when I'm talking about

someone who drinks a tad too much. I like this pull a cork. It is Friday afternoon. Here's the sound effect. Oh, that was so good. Oh, that was real. That was a great one.

Put that one in the file. I might sell that. I might sell that sound effect to someone. You want to put a drop of that on your tongue and see if you can detect any beaver caster? Yeah, let's taste this, guys.

Or smell first. Listen, dude, if you come to the right place, because I got a nose for beaver caster. Oh, yeah. I smell that. It's cool. I mean, you know. Zero.

Zero. I'm not getting anything either. It smells like whiskey to me. It tastes like whiskey to me. You guys don't smell that? It tastes like whiskey. guys don't smell that? I could be hundreds yards away From a beaver lodge and I'll smell the caster

Beaver caster is a powerful smell Don't you have a whiff of that in your Little shot glass? I just got it You know how I got it? Drink your drink, suck it dry And then get your nose about 2-3 inches away From the mouth and take a whiff.

And I just hit the caster. It's very subtle. Castorium flavored whiskey. Yeah. Man, that's pretty tasty. Go like this, bro. It's not bad. Go like this, go.

Steve is doing some motion where he puts his nose up in the air and he looks really, really bougie. What's the other one? The crab flavored one? Yeah. Okay, so crab trapper, right? This is the one I was kind of giving a hard time having never tasted it based off the fact that

their descriptor was a better tasting fireball. Yeah. I thought, boy, what the world needs. And it comes packed in what I thought was a suet cage, but then realized I think it might be, it comes in a little crab trap, but I think it's a suet cage.

Do they got an origin story we gotta read? How's the crab one there, Cal? I'm trying my trick. I'll take a little bit. Was the last time anyone was drinking on here hot buttered rum? It was. I got a good plan for this upcoming Christmas episode.

Hold on, this is the, what's this? This is Crab Trapper right here? Desert Door will make an appearance. Oh, nice. That one's different. That's different. I used to have a theory that all the Swirl beers were all made in the same factory. Brody just made a face like he busted into his dad's liquor cabinet.

Yeah. Back when he was a wee lad. When he was supposed to be sick from school. I give him credit for going after those crabs. I can actually. I got good? Yeah, that's some marine going on in there. Yeah.

Oh, you can taste the crab. Oh, yeah. It's there. Yeah, it's there. It on in there. Yeah. Oh, you can taste the crab. Oh, yeah. It's there. Yeah, it's there. It's there. It's briny. Yeah, it's briny. It's sort of like crab been left out in the sun.

It smells sweet. Briny isn't quite what I'd... Briny's giving it some credit. Yeah, it's past briny. It smells good. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Holy shit.

Stronger than the castor, for sure. Now, I thought the castor was quite good. I haven't had a sip of whiskey in many months. Let's try some of that tarso gland. Are we going to try the tarso gland, too? Yeah, Drew was wondering if they made one with a tarso gland off box, man. There's something about this. This is called Deer Slayer.

Oh, that is the tarso gland. He had just shaken his head. It's made with deer meat. It says venison-flavored whiskey. Maybe if you rimmed the glass with Old Bay or something. Oh, that is the tarsal gland. He had just shaken his head. There's maple deer meat. It says venison flavored whiskey. I mean, maybe if you rimmed the glass with Old Bay or something. Right, right, right. Yeah. Yes, that's what it tastes like.

Yep, there's Old Bay seasonings in there. See, I'm like part Chinese. Something about this is dipping into that fermented funky, like we have a thing called, you know, stinky tofu. Doesn't sound appetizing, but it is. Oh, Drew, what's your face telling us right now? Listen, I'm not going to catch a buzz from this. That's what

it's telling me. I'm not going to drink enough of it. This is a deterrent from pulling a cork. So that sound effect, reverse it. What does it sound like when you reverse it? We'll find out. Wait, now he's...

Whoa. Here it is. Is that the tarsal one? No, this is the crab one. That's not sad. Not as good, no. Now neither is that drink. There's no vacuum.

What do you think about that? I'm ready to start the interview now. If anybody would like to try the deer one, just pass your glass down here. Yeah, we probably need to end with that. I'm more of a beaver. What's it called? Beaver trapper? The beaver.

That was good. That's real good. It's like a tasty bourbon. So that's something I've been Americanizing for far too long. I'm probably out of old cartoons cartoons it was always ode day but here it is spelled out in front of me and it's e-a-u space d-e space musk so they went with crab trapper for green crab flavored whiskey and they didn't go with beaver trapper we have a seasoning called beaver trapper though but they did over the musk 80 proof castoreum flavored whiskey which i thought was quite nice crab one would have to go with the shrimp oil or something what's the difference

between being a birder and an ornithologist and like how do you define a birder and in that answer me this how do you become a birder of mammals? Why is there no equivalent? Well, you know, it's a matter of dedication. It's a matter of obsession. Okay. Between ornithologists. The ornithologist is the professional, right, that can, maybe you're studying taxonomy.

Maybe you're thinking about behavior. Maybe you're thinking about conservation and culture like I do. So ornithologists, typically, you're pushing towards that realm of scientific study. Got it. Of the creature. The birder is the hobbyist, the aficionado, somebody out there following. And birder, bird watcher, are sort of interchangeable, even though I'd like to think about them kind of in different ways. You know, the birdwatcher maybe is someone who is a little less avid in terms of following birds and going after the

rarity and traveling all over the world for it. Maybe satisfied to be like a lot of us had to be during the pandemic, to sit in the backyard and let the world come to you on wings. So lots of ornithologists are birders, but some of them aren't, right? But it's just a matter of it's sort of, you know, degrees of separation in terms of those people who are thinking about birds from a hobby perspective. They want to see those birds, as many of them as they can, as many different species. So lots of birders have life lists. Do you keep a life list? Not anymore.

You know? You've walked away from it. Yeah. you know you walked away from it yeah i i mean i know every bird that i've seen but um to me for me now it's really about sort of the connection with the place as well as the bird right so you know i was just up in denali national park up at camp denali and you know lots of the birds that i see in the wintertime for example example, a white-crowned sparrow. It's a bird in South Carolina that is relatively local and you hear them sing sort of one plaintive mournful song and you sort of see them in this way in this landscape, in the southern

landscape. Well, you go up there and those birds are singing, you know, seven or eight different variations of songs. Right. And and so you get to see the bird at the other half of its life. So that's that's that's watching to me. It I wasn't so interested. Yeah, I wanted to see lots of different birds up there.

There are things that I hadn't seen that I wanted to see or that I wanted to see in the context of not being outside of the range as a rarity, but being in their place and seeing them comfortable in their place. So that was watching to me. Got it. That was absorbing the birds in a way. What's, what is the, what is the number? I mean, if, if you can make a list, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I wouldn't. This would be a great trivia question for Spencer. How high does the list go? There are roughly 10,000 bird species in the world.

Roughly? Yeah, roughly 10,000. Why is it not specific because of taxonomic lumping and splitting? Yeah, I mean, ornithology and the ability to split hairs, well, feathers in this case. Birds that every year, you know, there are species that sort of morph in and out of one another. So the splitting, you know, sometimes gives birders a larger life list. Yeah, I've got a question for you there. So you said 10,000.

So in that 10,000, are there, like from your perspective, are there five different wild turkeys or is there one? Well, you know, if I'm going by the biological species concept and those birds can interbreed and produce viable young, that's one species. Right. But as a birder. As a, as a, well now as a birder, yeah, you know, you're going to list, I mean, and those birds have different behaviors, right? So understanding that behavior and you think about how the different habitats have created or attributed some different character to those birds.

So, you know, you can't argue that an Eastern is like a ghouls, right? Sure. Yeah. I mean, and you're going to, if you're a hunter, you're going to hunt those birds differently. I was, I was impressed the first, you know, in my first sort of observations of, of, of Miriam's in's in Nebraska, I mean, they were everywhere, right? They just didn't seem wary like Easterns. And people would tell me, they'd say, well, because I was interested in hunting Miriam's. They said, well, that's easy.

You know, they're sort of like, they treated them like you were going to go out and hunt pigeons. You know, there wasn't a whole lot of, to me, seemingly value placed upon what that bird was from a hunting standpoint. Now, as a birder, you know, to see those birds and to see those white tipped tail feathers and all of that stuff and the way the bird was behaving in that habitat on those sandhills, you know, that made a difference to me. But from a conservation, and you have to think from really an organizational standpoint and those people concerned with the conservation of wild turkeys, then, you know, if you split, then there's the opportunity to think about turkeys in a different way. You know, it's sort of like the, you know, any species that we go after as birders and we think about, you're thinking about diversity. You're thinking about seeing all of these birds and all their permutations. And well, sometimes, you know, as the AOS gets together and their taxonomic committee is thinking about

these birds. Does it explain who that is? Oh, they're the bird gods, the American Ornithological Society. And you're a member or a board member? You have some role there? Not now. No, you don't? No, no, no.

I've de-boarded myself for the most part. But, you know, it's their arguments every year about discussions, I guess I should say, about who these birds are, what they are. And see, you keep hearing me say who birds are, because I'm thinking about them maybe in a different way than a lot of folks think about them. So when it comes down to a species that someone has noticed some differences or in behavior, perhaps, or in occurrence of that bird in a given place or a given range, then they begin to think about splitting them. So I think about birds, a bird that, you know, winter wrens that are now Pacific wrens and

then in Europe, the wren. So, and Aleutian wren. So that bird was once one species, but then it's sort of like the roll of the taxonomic dice, you know, and you come up and you got, you know, and you roll double sixes, there you go. You got more birds on your list. You know, one that, one, an occurrence, I'm sure you're familiar with it, that I followed because it kind of happened with a bird i was interested in and in my lifetime was when the blue grouse right yeah when the blue grouse ceased to exist and was broken into the dusky and sooty right and it was like there was like genuine things i mean

one of them likes to has a different pattern of how it does its call in the spring one generally wants to do it on the ground one generally wants to do it in a tree differences in the what do you call that on a bird when you got that eyebrow eyebrow that puffs up and shit you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah the eyebrow yeah yeah like differences there and all these behavioral differences and then you see it and now you you see it like reflected in the hunting regulations. Yeah. And it was the outfit you're talking about.

The American Ornithological Society said, hey, we got it wrong. There's one that lives in the coastal ranges. There's one in the interior ranges. It ain't the same thing. Yeah. And those opportunities to split out and to recognize those birds for who they are. And in some ways, you know, the science allows you to kind of de-objectify the birds. So it's a, you know, it's an exercise that frustrates some people, especially when they lose species.

If you are interested in maximizing the number of things on your list and all of a sudden they get lumped down into one or two, then you're like, oh, you know, um, some people don't like that. It's a thing. Sure. Is there a, uh, a number against all birders are measured, right? So are there benchmark type of numbers out there that it's like, you're not going to be taken seriously until you hit.

Just tell us your number, man. It's like you're not going to be taken seriously until you hit this chunk of the label. Just tell us your number, man. You know what? Here's the thing. And people, bird watchers, birders, keep lists down to the patch. When I say the patch, that place maybe that they go constantly. I've got a place in South Carolina, Townville, for example. It's mostly, it's ag fields, ponds, farm ponds, abutting forests. And so a lot of diversity out there.

And we see quite a few species that you'd expect to only see in the West or the Midwest. So you can go out there and you can, certain times of year you have a fair chance in a big flock of wintering eastern meadowlarks. If the birds are singing or if you've got a spotting scope you can pick them out, you might pick out a couple of western meadowlarks. And so the list out there and that expanse, if you can get 200, 250 birds out in that patch, in that localized area, that might be sort of a benchmark. But birding has become extraordinarily competitive. I mean, so you have these big years, these big days. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, there's like a very popular book about it, and then they did a movie, right? Right. Called The Big Year. So if I'm understanding this correctly, it's not necessarily just one long list. It's a, here's the list that I acquired during one day in this region. He's being evasive because he doesn't want to tell us his number. Yeah, you can do that. He doesn't want to tell us his number.

Oh, you know, you can do that. What is my number? My number, like I said, I don't have, you know, I don't have a number as much as some days I'll go out, right, and I'll say, this is going to be a sparrow day. And I want to see as many of the sparrows that one might expect to see in this place in that day. And so it might just be a sparrow day for me. Let me put it to you this way. I'm not going to ask you anymore. Yeah, okay.

It's one last final question. It's nothing to do with you let's say you met a competitive like the worst type of competitive birder yeah okay and they're just gonna they gotta tell you and they hit you with a number like my lifeless number knowing that the top end is around 10 000 right right they hit you with a number like my lifeless number, knowing that the top end is around 10,000. Right, right. They hit you with a number like, I have in my life with all the money I've spent, I've seen X birds. What would the number need to be for you to say,

holy shit? Three, 4,000 birds. Okay. That's all. Wow. That's a lot, man. That's all I want to know. I mean, in North America, so think about, you round up, you say North America, there are 1,000 birds or bird species.

But really, you've got these kids, you've got really young people who have seen 2,000 or 3,000 birds. They're out there that aggressively searching for the species so they're chasing um they are are really thinking about the ways to maximize the number of birds they see they're traveling to foreign countries here's one yeah maybe you'll answer this one how many countries have you been to searching for birds uh rough i I mean. Yeah, about 10. Okay. You know, and mostly though, taking students to those.

Yeah, got it. To those places. So, you know, I have a bucket list of places that I want to go. But you've been, have you been to like all kind of eco regions of the world? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I haven't been to Antarctica. I haven't been there yet. I would not have thought that, I don't know why, that it would be young people getting overly ambitious about it. Oh, yeah. That's hard to picture. swamp up there in Toledo, near Toledo. You go there in the springtime and you've got birds, migratory birds, warblers, thrushes, tanagers that are piling up on the edge of Erie. And those birds

are just piling up in there are boardwalks through that. And so Kim Koff and the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, they are doing science there to sort of keep track of some of those birds. But you have hundreds of thousands of people coming into, you ever been to Oregon, Ohio? No. Well, now it's, you know, the interesting thing you drive into, you drive out of Toledo, I don't know, maybe 40 minutes, something like that. And all of a sudden you're in all this ag land in Northwest Ohio. You got the lake right there. You've got the forest and those birds pile up and people, all of those people come up there. And a lot of those people, you got kids who are carrying around camera lenses that are almost as long as they are tall. What do you mean by kids? I'm talking about 12 yearolds, right? And they're identifying birds in ways, I mean, their sense of hearing and seeing and the way they notice. I mean, I can remember being down at Laguna, actually not Laguna Atascosa, but it was a park in South Texas. And this bird called a parakeet, you know, it's like a nightjar,

like a whippoorwill. There's this one spot where you go to see them. But, you know, if you've ever seen like out here, it'd be a poorwill. You know, you almost step on those birds. You can't see them. They're that well camouflaged. So here, these parakeets are in the daytime. They're in a thicket. They're really super hard to see. And you're lucky, you know, you look long enough, long enough. It's like looking for a rattlesnake in a brush pile. And suddenly you see this bird, you see this one bird and I'm standing there and I see the one, then I see two. Then eventually I see maybe three or four of these birds. And I'm really thinking, yeah, yeah, I got this. I got the visual down. This kid steps up next to me,

maybe nine or 10 years old, sees 12. Seriously. And so this is like a roost. And so, you know, they're seeing things and birding is such a great opportunity to give people access, you know, to nature in that way. I mean, part of the reason that I don't kill more deer is because I'm out there birdwatching. I mean, it's, you know, and so I'm looking to see I'm at this different level with these birds and able to see them. So, you know, I have a deer stand. I try to keep a list on the deer stand. I'm not a great turkey hunter. Why? Because warblers are coming back through the woods during the on the deer stand. I'm not a great turkey hunter. Why? Because warblers are coming back through the woods during the spring season.

So I'm being anything but still watching these other birds instead of watching for the bird. Yeah. So that opportunity in all sorts of places to see them. And I think the numbers bear out that during the pandemic, even more of them got into, into birding. It's almost, you know, if you think about that old, our son used to have a, you know, he had a Pokedex, right. And I don't know what that is. Yeah. Yeah. Pokedex is so Pokemon, you know, that, you know, people going out looking for these, these fictional creatures in these habitats. And I mean, you got a lot of

adults still doing that. But, you know, I think it would take us, it takes a slight tweak if you start sort of characterizing these birds with the superpowers that the Pokemon have. So the migratory ability of a yellow warbler, the singing ability of a wood thrush. I mean, this bird is singing triharmonics. So I think that's not a big leap that brings people into birding in a way to say, wow, you know, these are pretty fantastic creatures. And I can see them. They're real. I don't have to contrive them. You mentioned kids. Did you, like, were birds something you were super interested in as a kid?

Oh, geez. Yeah. Yeah. Early. That's when you got. Early. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, you know, they were flying and I tried, but, you know, too much jelly cake and gravity kind of kept that from happening. But probably I would, maybe when I was six or seven years old, you know, I was interested in birds because they were sort of a vehicle for me to visit the rest of the world. And I always, I would climb my grandmother's pecan tree and you'd get this bird's. That's a pecan. Yeah, yeah. Nah, pecan. I know, I know, tomato, tomato, whatever.

But, you know, it gave me a chance to see from a bird's eye view, but I wasn't just satisfied with that. I wanted to fly. So then I began to, you know, do things like build wings out of cardboard boxes and make parachutes out of trash bags and trying to be Mary Poppins, all that kind of stuff. And none of that stuff worked, but birds didn't fail at that, right? You'd see them doing this thing that you wanted to do. And then my grandmother, she's the first person I ever saw in my mouth. I saw her feed birds.

And no, she didn't have sunflower seeds. She didn't have millet. She didn't have all this stuff. What she did have were bags of grits. And she would take a handful of grits and throw them out in the yard, in her backyard, when what she calls snowbirds, juncos, would come down in the wintertime. So there'd be this flock of juncos and other sparrows. And now I i think you know my my birder brain sort of reverts and i'm like man i wish i had just looked more carefully if i had known about the sparrows back then maybe there was something that was showing up in her backyard that

wasn't supposed to show up but seeing her appreciation for those birds i think was was part of the of of my origin in that way. But flight, you watch a red-tailed hawk soar, and you're like, how does that happen? It looks like it's hung up there by a string. You watch a peregrine falcon dive, and that's super. That's super.

That's beyond our ability. Even if you put on one of those squirrel suits, you know, you're not going to be able to do that. So all of that to me was fascinating enough that I wanted to be a bird. I wanted to be a bird. So that it's been a lifelong, lifelong thing for me and the fascination. So to go from watching birds to, you know, having it sort of as my official hobby, but then being able to, to be a professional, to be an ornithologist, man, you know, it's living a dream. Is, is there a group of birds that you found yourself being partial to and falling in love with more than the rest for some reason. Yeah, that, you know, and that's, that changes. But sparrows, in part, because they're brown, they're nondescript, and a lot of times people sort of overlook them. Right? So there's some allegories to human behavior and social, what goes on socially with us.

But they are, when you take the time to look at a sparrow, you begin to see these colors on its back. You see these vermiculations. You see differences that really bring out this subtle beauty. Yeah. The duck hunter version for me would be, it's easy to right away fall in love with a wood duck,

but then you eventually get to falling in love with how beautiful a gadwall is. Yes, yes. Seeing those fine reds and grays. There you go. That's a good point. There you go. Hey, folks.

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Uh-huh. Yeah. You remember how, I mean, everybody knows this, where they're like a symbol of monogamy, right? Yeah. Allegedly. Yeah. I don't know what specifically you worked on, but I know you looked at reproductive behavior in bluebirds.

Yeah, yeah. Patty Gawaddy, Patricia Adair Gawaddy, one of the first eco-feminists and someone who had interest in sort of trying to figure out if that whole idea of monogamy in passerines was, whether she could verify that, if you will, by the science. And so what we do is she'd send out a crew of us, all male, to watch Bluebirds at the box. Now, there was, and I say all male in terms of the crew that was working. There may have been a woman or two, but in my crew, it was all male. She'd send us out. But not by design. I think so. Oh, you think it was by design? Yeah, because here Patty is challenging, at least at that time, the known science or at least challenging assumption.

And so to be out. That these birds mate for life and they stay true to each other. That these birds mate for life. And here's a female scientist doing this work, challenging this convention. So I think it's pretty smart to have your observers sort of on the other side of the table. And, you know, we see some of this with current research that is shown. You know, the assumption was that for the most part, male birds were doing most of the singing. Well, guess who the researchers were that were coming up with that? Most primarily male. When you put female researchers out in the field, they're beginning to find that you have

non-males singing. So, you know, to sort of shuffle stuff around, you know, it's- Like people's like biases and- Yeah, it's important. So we'd watch these boxes and, you know, you'd see a male at a box and we would band these birds. Most of these birds were uniquely banded, had been captured and banded. And you'd see a female at the box. And because most birds aren't banded, people are seeing those birds and they're assuming, oh, there's the father, there's the mother, there's a happy family brewing inside that box. Well, when you begin to look at the behavior of the birds, you would see interactions between different birds that would come into the territory. So you would see a male, for example, that might do a wing wave

and warble or that would, in some sort of agonistic behavior, go at another bird, another male, and you say, oh, he's defending home. He's defending that female. You know, that's sort of the easy assumption. You'd see that one female and most, you know, in terms of the way we thought about birds for most of ornithology is that that demure female is being defended by that male. Well, you begin to really do these, and by the way, you'd see some of the most violent fights, some of the most aggression between females. And on occasion, you find a dead bluebird and you'd inspect it and right in the back of the head, it would have, yeah, I mean, it would have been taken out.

Like another female pecked it in the- Yeah the head. You know, it would have, yeah. I mean, it would have been taken out. Like another female pecked it in the. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, you know, that would happen on occasion. But then to look at the nestlings and do the genetic study on those birds in the nest, you begin to find out that those birds, those young are coming from different birds than the birds that are tending the nest sometimes or that they're so, you know, I started in hindsight, you know, years later, I started calling it the the Maury Povich Bluebird Project because it was like the who's your daddy kind of. But, you know, the question is also who's your mama? Yeah. Right. Because you begin to make assumptions about seeing single birds at a nest box, and those assumptions were erroneous.

But we have a hummingbird feeder. Yeah, yeah. And a hummingbird shows up. My kids, they name them hummingbird or whatever, humming. Right. Then one day there's two, so they're like, oh, that must be a male and a female. It didn't matter what went on at that hummingbird nest. It fit into a very strict paradigm of that hummingbird nest. It fit into like a

very strict paradigm of that being a couple, right? And they were somewhere rearing young and it just, they, they, they made this whole working for them that very much resembled what they see going on inside their house. There you go. There you go. And then, you know, the next step, you know, people are thinking, well, the male chooses a mate, and then they go on to have this family. Well, one of the most important things, I think, from her work and then this other work, other subsequent work, has been female choice. That these females are choosing, that females are storing sperm, that they're making decisions. There's this female choice in these birds. They're making decisions about who? There's this female choice in these birds. They're making decisions about who is, you know, who's parenting a brood. So all of that was, I mean, it was for me

at the time, you know, being a field technician, being out there watching it and seeing, watching it unfold was, was this huge revelation. And it flew in the face of assumption, which, you know, for a scientist, you know, that's like finding gold, right? When you're able to find something outside of the norm. So bluebird of happiness, well, maybe happiness doesn't just mean being with that one bird, so to speak. Maybe it means making the best decisions. You know, you're not just making it based upon the blueness of the male. You know, that was one of the, you know, the bluer males are more successful than less blue males or those kinds of things.

Man, you'd find sometimes at a couple of boxes, you would find two adult females tending a nest. And you would find nest dumping like you find in wood ducks, for example. Okay. So beginning to think about why things like that happen and to move past the convention that we have set up as human beings. Two female bluebirds. At the same box. Co-tending.

Do they each have eggs? Yes. Yeah. And there's not like a resident male then? There's a male that might be there, right? But that paternity is uncertain. So that whole idea of uncertain paternity, are you the daddy? The question might not be yes or no, but the best answer is maybe because the assumption was, yeah, you are, you've got to be, to be investing time here in this nest. So the two females that had the two females that had a

single nest and they each contributed eggs to the nest were probably contributing eggs from many males. Yeah. That, I mean, that happens, you know, you don't know for sure unless you're doing those analyses. So but again, you're flying in the face of convention with that. And that's cool stuff. And it's and it's not just the ornithology. So then you can begin to think about, well, you know, what are the assumptions that we're making about mating patterns, not just in passerines? But it then opens this whole world up to think about female choice. You know, because the, you know, what we're thinking when we're in the whitetail woods is what? This buck is making it.

Nah, that buck, that buck is tending. That buck might not be making the ultimate decision. So, you know, those, so you begin to think about beyond birds to mammals. You were asking, well, who are these? What's the mammalian equivalent of a birder? Well, in some instances, it's a hunter who's out watching behavior, who's seeing all of these animals and being able to say, well, yeah, what's going on with this? How are females, how are does making decisions or how are bucks making decisions? Who's the choosier sex? So that was the sort of the box that opened with that research. And that's when, you know,

I'd be out there and I'd see all kinds of birds. I mean, I'd see bobble lynx, I'd see metal larks, I'd see a scissor tail flycatcher or two on occasion, which at that time was pretty rare in South Carolina. So between these box checks, there were these opportunities to bird. But then being an ornithologist and shifting from ornithologist to birdwatcher, from ornithologist to birdwatcher, after a while, these things began to sort of blur. The lines began to blur. And for me, that's where the excitement occurs, when you can blur those lines between the two. And ornithology, probably more than any other kind of taxonomic sort of following, has the most volunteers. It depends on all of these people who are out there gathering all this data, inputting a lot of it into eBird, doing Christmas bird counts, doing all these things. That data is what we ultimately have, the best data that we have to say anything

about global or continental trends in birds. So it depends a lot on those people getting out there who nobody's paying as a professional ornithologist to do ornithology. And they are probably not calling themselves ornithologists, but ornithologists ultimately depend on birders, bird watchers, bird lovers, bird adores, birdists. They ultimately depend on those people to pull the data back. They're not.

That bird or Twitter, right? Yeah. Like. There you go. The connection a bunch of different ways. And that's the citizen science rise, which is super cool. You get people some ownership by getting their data collected. Yeah. I mean that, you know, that, that, that, that crowdsourced science that's out there to, to put 10,000 people on the ground. I mean,

try to pay those people, right. That's not, that's not going to happen, but the satisfaction from, from a lot of them derived to know that a little bit of what they do that gets in goes a long way to help bird conservation. So, you know, you were asking about favorite birds. The most intensively studied birds, the most intensively studied birds that we know the most about are waterfowl. You know, and because we need to, they need to, the scientists are feeding that data to managers who are then setting limits. Adaptive harvest management. Adaptive harvest management. And so one of the things, when I blur the lines with, as I'm teaching ornithology, I tell birders, if you really want to know your waterfowl, if you want to begin to know and understand gestalt and how to identify these birds on the wing from a long way.

What's that word? Gestalt. Gestalt. Gestalt. It's a feeling. So a feeling is not being able to see all the feel marks, but an impression of the bird, an impression that gives you the identification ultimately. So how the bird is flying.

I'm glad there's a word for that because it's like the people that are good at it, it's like they shout it out and you're like oh give me a couple minutes man like what are you even looking at in in in bad weather you know in duck weather which is typically bad weather at distances right and no binoculars not being able to stand up out of that blind and look and they're telling you yeah to know how a widgeon moves right to know that we had this conversation where when i was hunting in the mississippi delta we had this conversation where like in a lot of places i grew up hunting and hunt now it'd be like you know there's mallards and a couple pintails or it's like there's some teal and woodies right

but down there it was nine ten eleven twelve things and i just get where i lose it all but then people that they grow up with that are shouting stuff out like there's no possible way you could know then it gets closer like how did that guy do that and what happens if you call it feeling what happens if you call that waterfowl or a birder. Does anybody ever do that? No. No, it doesn't happen, but they are. Right. They'd be like, bullshit. Well, that is an interesting thing though, right? Because if you're a hunter making some of these

claims, all of a sudden it's biased information versus, you know, a random observation taken from somebody as credible as a birder, which is something I've run into in the past and it's really interesting. Like in, in, like we'd, we'd talked about quail and coyotes. Yeah, yeah.

Um, I was at a fish and game meeting, lots of people talking about how there were no more wolves and there was this, this idea of putting some money into a general fund to do more wolf control work in Idaho. And half the room there was like, well, there's no wolves to begin with. All the wolves are gone. Before you could hunt wolves, we used to see wolves all the time. And now that you can hunt wolves, we never see them. Um, and that was like, uh, a generally well taken observation from the general recreation crowd.

Right, right. But when I stood up and identified myself as a hunter, I said, well, I run into wolf sign all the time. I've seen a few wolves, but I've seen plenty of sign. That is a biased opinion because I'm there wanting to take elk out of the woods. Uh, and it's not taken into consideration that I'm also where the wolves are. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so when, uh, you have, uh, a, a quote consumptive user making a report oftentimes i've seen it where those reports are discounted i just had this conversation with uh i'll just talk about him you know he's not here i had this conversation with lauren where one of our camera guys is telling me happy birthday lauren lauren big 50 he was snowmobiling in a

mountain range that i didn't know had links and he's saying i saw links in that mountain range and then i spent 10 minutes trying to convince him that he was looking at a bobcat to which he got a little frustrated right yeah it's just like you like there's a lot you know when it comes to the the observational you know there's absolutely yeah everybody's not taking everybody at face value but if cal had said that you'd have been like no shit yeah i probably did it because he's a camera guy who doesn't hunt yeah yeah well it's i did to him what I don't like people doing to me. Well, look, in some states, I don't know about Montana, but in some states, waterfowlers have to pass proficiency tests.

Yeah. Especially states where you have, like, for example, Oregon, right, where you have the dusky goose. That's, like, there's very few of them. They're in a very specific place. You got to know exactly how to identify them on the wing. Yeah. It looks mostly like a snow goose. Yeah.

It's like very different. Until it's not. And then the thing is, if that bird is in your bag, you know, you're going to, as a, as a waterfowl, you're going to pay a penalty, a severe penalty for that. Birders don't pay severe penalties for misidentifying a bird with binoculars. Right. I mean, other other other than losing cred. They should, damn it. Yeah. Other other than that, you know, and in the community, that can be a strong thing.

And it can also be a deterrent to bring in other people forward in birding. You know, if somebody is so fanatical that they're going to criticize somebody because they misidentified a house finch as a purple finch, and then they're suddenly persona non grata because they misidentified that one bird. That one time. Yeah, that's not cool. Right. You know, so that's, and those are some of the blurred lines that you get in this thing that we do. And, of course, people run across the gamut.

Most birders are perfectly fine, really nice people who want to involve others. But then you run into those folks. That's the pressure, right, that they want to positively – and everybody wants to positively identify these things. But I run into situations where I've got to out-counsel people on an identification that that probably was not an ivory bill woodpecker at your feeder. And the way that we do that is not me discounting who they are as a person because they misidentified that bird, but really to, you know, to have a conversation about it. So what, what did you see? Yeah.

And, and, and I'll tell you nine times out of 10 people come around and they, you can hear, you can hear the change and they're calling the field marks and they're saying, Oh, well,

yeah, you know, that, that probably was a pilliated boom. There you go. I'm glad you say pilliated, you know, instead of pileated,

you're kind of screwed up on pecans. Yeah. Well, so I made up for it, right? I want to do a bunch of quick hit things. Yeah. So I'm going to hit you with some things because I want to burn through some stuff. Cool. One of our guys who's not here had this one for you.

Are you from the Camp Robber? Like Whiskey Jacks, Grey Jays? Yep, yep, yep. How do they find, when you kill an elk in the mountains, how do they know within 30 seconds? They're always watching. It's visual. It's not smell. Probably not. Even though we know that some birds have a more acute sense of smell than we thought.

But think about how those birds just appear out of nowhere. And there's a network. They're also watching other things, right? So they're also watching, but they're usually the first ones, from my understanding, to get to. I think about, you know, up in Denali again, here I get into camp and suddenly here are, you know, here are four whiskey jacks. There they are.

I didn't see whiskey jacks again those two weeks I was up are. I didn't see whiskey jacks again those two weeks I was up there. I didn't see them. You say they're always watching, but in the case of coming to a hunter's kill, are they watching the person? Are they like,

something could happen here? I see them come and check on you whether you've killed something or not. There's a learning process. They're like, that guy, I see them come and check on you whether you've killed something or not. That's the thing. So there's like a learning process. They're like, that guy, something good might happen here. And this is, again, sort of the fluid, the beautifully fluid nature of the science is that we're learning so – we can't keep up with what birds know, how they learn. So, you know, jays are crow cousins, you know, as we know, and sort of how we measure, we say, oh, well, they're extremely intelligent,

but we don't know the stat, you know, how they learn, how fast they learn, you know, being able to track a hunter to say, or to think about you as a predator. Right. So we know that some birds follow predators, you know, with that whole idea of benefiting from the kill. What's to keep a whiskey jack from seeing you that way? So, you know, again, to to loosen the bounds of convention and sort of think about, um, part of it is, is, is ego on our part hubris to, to think, well, yeah, we're the only ones who can do that. Yeah. And, um, and to, to not project our measures of intelligence on other creatures. I do make sure that they know I'm providing them.

Yeah. You tell them that. Oh, I'm fully talking to them know I'm providing them. Yeah, you tell them that. You tell them that. Oh, I'm fully talking to them. I'm throwing sinew high up in trees. I, I, we're, I, I want to let them know that if they were to come across a bunch of elk on a day when they're not talking, they can let me know. And, and it's gonna, one win, we all win. Those things, those things in magpies, like magpies

can really choke down a lot of fat, man. You're like, how can they fly away? Well, well, think, I mean, if, and, and I don't have specific examples, but if you think about indigenous culture and you think about what people have known for a very long time, how to watch birds to perhaps put them on game, but also in terms of what you're doing, showing appreciation to that bird and what that bird learns or what any of these things are. It's, again, why I get to this point of talking about birds oftentimes more as who's than what's.

You know, to try to give some sort of credit for what we don't know about them. You know, yeah, I make assumptions like everybody else on certain birds that maybe this shrike, this loggerhead shrike that I'm seeing, this butcher bird that, you know, I've kind of fallen in love with because they're such cool birds. They code switch, right? They're passerines, but they're also raptorial in terms of what they do. Their feet aren't strong enough to carry prey and hold it. So they impale their prey on thorns and barbed wire fences and that kind of thing. That's super cool. Yeah, that's wild. But, you know, to watch that bird, I've seen what I think. I haven't marked the bird. I haven't banded it.

But for like three, four years, this bird that hangs out in the same corner of one of my patches. And so I make certain assumptions, poetic assumptions maybe, about this bird and who it is. And man, I've written this bird letters, right? Because for me, it's like a kind of worship to be able to have a relationship with a creature in that way across those boundaries. And so I can respect it for what it does, who it is, what it is. And I don't know what that bird's thinking of me at all, but it gives me this sort of deeper move

into this place of, of, of, of being a bird watcher, of being a bird adorer. So, you know, that's the way that I try to, I mean, it's, I mean, it's the same way in sitting in a deer stand and watching and sometimes getting so caught up that I'm not taking a shot or I'm thinking about those animals in sort of these different ways. So all of it is kind of line blurring for me. And ornithology is a birding is a perfect way to sort of get into that space. So, you know, I talked to my mentor. She's still my mentor, Patty Gawaddy, from time to time. You know, and I thank her all the time for that. She taught me how to be a scientist.

You know, that whole idea of getting out there and objectively gathering the data and being rigorous. I mean, it was hard work. But then also for her helping me understand how you began to make the linkages between, you know, science and perhaps even policy. Because every policy begins with one person's agenda. And so it's blurry. And birds are the way that i go through life blurry i i dig who they are and i sometimes still wish i was a bird so there's that uh here's the next one in 50 years or however you'd handle this however you want in 50 years are people hunting bob white quail in the american

south yeah because they've raised them in pens and they're putting them out. Oh, that's what it's going to take? I don't think that's, I think it would take, let me put it this way. We aren't approaching it the right way. I don't think, you know, to have a put and take fishery as it were, so a put and take hunnery here is basically what it is. And you got to look at the ethic of the hunter. a put and take fishery as it were. So a put and take hunnery here is, is basically what it is. And, um,

you got to look at the ethic of the hunter. If we're talking about hunter conservationists, then we got a chance. If we're talking about people who just want to go in, put a kernel of corn on a hook and get a trout, then probably not. What, what is,

what, like what in your view is driving or drove the decline or is it the same like death by a thousand cuts kind of thing? family farm. Um, when you look at clean farming ditch to ditch, when you think about, um, what we lost in that, in terms of, of this edge habitat of these patches, this patchwork quilt across landscapes that, um, as you know, agriculture became more, um, efficient than, you know, people are farming row to row. You can't lose a single inch of that field. And so those ditches that used to grow up in weedy tangles and briars and ragweed, all that stuff, you lose that. Well, then you compound that with something like red imported fire ants. And to see that, that's horrific to see fire ants on a nest of hatching bobwhite quail eggs.

And to see those chicks, they can't even get out of the shell before they're being eaten alive. So you've got that. You've got, in some of these landscapes proliferation of of edge predators. But what we discount in terms of edge predators is proliferation of of outdoor cats that are killing billions and billions of birds. So, you know things do compound it. But then again, you know, I say where effort is spread out, where all your eggs aren't in one basket. You know, this isn't, again, any theory that I can prove. But I think that network, those patches of small farms were an opportunity to mitigate damage large scale. Got it. And so culturally, you just don't see those small family farms. You don't see them. Got it. saved is in those large 10,000 acre land holdings where they're doing fantastic management,

but they're doing management at a scale of both ecology and economy that a 40 acre land holder is not going to be able to accomplish. So to me, that's a cultural issue of how we think about and how our mindset has changed about what quail are. So it used to be, you know, bobwhite partridges. Now it's gentleman bob. You know, and you might be out there with a $50,000 shotgun after these birds with dogs that have got blood lines that have gone on forever,

eating lunch in the middle of these piney woods on, you know, fine linen and bone wear. And then you get back out there to the next group of quail. Well, people who are doing that, you know, they want to push coveys. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, do we want quail just for hunting, for killing, or do we want the experience of having those birds on landscapes in ways that is good for the bird and good for the hunter? And I think we can do that. I think we can do that. On my piece of land in 96 in Greenwood County, South Carolina, man, I remember I was actually coming out of the field one day and something all of a sudden I'd stopped at the gate and all these things start running around my feet. And they're butting quail. You know, they're these little bumblebee quail, rather. And to have quail reproducing on that property, to me, was like having some endangered species on it.

Within that setting. Within that setting. And to know that, you know, that's land that's been in my family for generations. And now I have the responsibility of stewarding it. That bobwhite quail have become, for me, one of the things that I want to manage for. So how do I do that on that acreage? I mean, I'm not rich. How do I get it burned?

How do I keep the timber thinned? You know, how do I keep Chickasaw plum as part of that landscape? All of that is something that I think about, and it's not just thinking about hearing that bird whistle. It's thinking about what the rest of that land can be because of that bird. You just mentioned your family's parcel, and I'm a little hazy on some of the details from your book,

but explain how, like like i remember your family came as slaves to the area where you still reside in the 1790s yeah maybe yeah yeah what like what was the what was the pathway from that from being there on the landscape as a slave to you guys having family farms did you go did your ancestors go through like sharecropping and into into land ownership down the road and far in agriculture because you like you grew up on a family farm yeah yeah that's you know that's one of the mysteries and and um one of the things that that frequently happens especially with descendants of enslaved and black families is those records sort of get muddled from all i can tell i have never heard any of my family talk about sharecropping and so when we came into this

land they may have no right um but my recollection and thinking about um the land and the research that i've been able to do is that it came into our possession at least the land that we were on probably when my grandfather got back from world war one got it so and he came back from World War One in in 1908, late 1918, early 1919. So who was in he became a farmer? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He you know, he was farming the land, you know, amazingly, when I look at what Edgefield was. Politically and how black folks were being treated, that my grandfather became a successful farmer, had a successful, during the Depression, egg and milk business, and was receiving farm aid.

I found some of his old maps, was receiving farm service agency assistance in 1932. So, you know, it speaks to this stewardship. But when that land came, actually, if it came into possession before that, now there are stories that sort of circulate around the family about, well, he that somehow he came back from World War One and had gold or these other things. I don't know. They're interesting stories stories to consider but what i want to know is i really had gold mean like like found it earlier they came back somehow came back from from world war one bearing gold you know bearing gold you know who knows i remember my you know my brother used to wander around the woods i mean he sort of became obsessed seriously he became obsessed with it you know and and he'd go all the Oh, the gold was there. Yeah, yeah. Family legend. That's fun stuff. Yeah, that he was going out looking for this gold.

But that's one of the things that sort of eats at me is wanting to know that history more completely. And it's not like waiting in some library somewhere. It's gone. No, no. And that's what's happened in the South with a lot of history, especially a lot of black history. A lot of it's been burned, got burned up in courthouses, burning down. And it's always interesting to me how courthouses were the first things to burn down. But yeah, and so you have to sort of stitch together this history from this one. So I go from, you know, this paternal ancestor of coming in about 1790, right, and then picking up when I do, you know, and I belong to some of these ancestry groups and that kind of thing, picking up ancestors in the 1830s, right? So what was happening between 1790 and 1830, and then an ancestor that was brought in on an illegal importation.

Slavery importation became illegal, I think, 1805, 1807, something like that. So then breeding plantations ramped up because the production of enslaved depended upon domestic production. That sounds sick to even talk about. But it was 60 years before the abolition of slavery that they made that you couldn't import slaves. Yeah. I didn't know that. So then there's an ancestor that comes into Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1857 on a converted yacht.

And you've heard about the ship that was found, the slave ship that was found down in Alabama. Those were bets. People were playing games with this stuff. Because the bet was, well, we can beat the embargo. So this ancestor that comes in in 1857 from the Congo, her name was Lucy. She came in to Jekyll Island, Georgia, and she was three years old. So how does she fit into my into my family's history. Did Harry have children, this enslaved man who was brought south in 1790 by the Lanham brothers? And then the interesting part of that, those Lanham brothers, they were

good friends with that guy over in Augusta who was going to prolong enslavement, Eli Whitney. So those stories, so, you know, when you have those kinds of stories wrapped up in your history, you're trying to. You lost me on Eli Whitney. Yeah. That's the guy that invented the cotton gin. Exactly.

But how does that, how did that, I'm not arguing one way or the other because I don't really understand, but that was the way it wasn't, didn't that make, oh, cause that increased production. Oh, cause he found a way to pull the seeds out of cotton oh so then you could get you could yeah you could handle more of it yeah i got what you're saying yes yes some some historians say that that prolonged it by about 50 years got it it just made it made like more yeah make it more profitable and drove more business exactly exactly i got you so so those are bits and pieces of this quilt that you try to stitch together.

And the land for me is really that template that I'm trying to, I guess, that back batting on the quilt, if we're going to stay with that analogy, that you put these pieces on and trying to find how all these pieces fit together. And some of it can never be known. When you said the Lanham brothers. Yeah. Like the Lanhams, Josias Lanham and his brother, who came south from the mid-Atlantic, most likely around Prince George's County, Maryland. They came south.

There was a great sell-off of enslaved around the mid-Atlantic because they had been farming primarily, what, tobacco. And tobacco burns up soil. And some of these founding fathers were going broke. And so they began, there was this huge sell-off of enslaved around 1790 south, especially to the deep south with cotton production, sugarcane production down in places like Louisiana, but also to breeding plantations. And so Harry, you know, I have to check myself sometimes when I say it, Harry was in some ways fortunate in that he didn't end up deep, deeper South, right? That he ended up, um, in South Carolina in the Piedmont that's productive for cotton, but it's not nearly as productive as the black belt of Alabama because

of those soils. So in, in thinking about sort of, you know, where fortune, you know, what, what is that saying? Fortune favors the brave or whatever. Um, you know, fortune, you know, lucky year. I can't, I know what you're saying. Yeah. Fortune favors the bold. But, but here's a case where, you know, fortune favored, um, you know, poor soils because to, to, to be put further, to be put deeper into hell, um, into the deep, deep South where you were getting maybe 10 bales of cotton per acre, whereas only in South Carolina, maybe you're only getting two bales of cotton per acre. That was a difference in life,

or to be down in those sugar cane plantations down in Louisiana, or to be somebody's breeding stock as a human being. So I think about all of that stuff, and I'm always connecting it to land, and then I'm always connecting that to birds, because birds are sort of the conduit for me to think about history. Because I think about some of the birds that I see at present and I'm wondering what those birds ancestors saw or what they flew over. And likewise, that my ancestors were watching birds, that birds were inspirations for them

because the birds were flying free. And that maybe we held that in common, that they wanted to be free as birds and that I wanted to be a bird and free. So, you know, there's convergence there, man, all the time in watching birds. So yeah, it's, um, it's, uh, you know, maybe I'm listing sort of different kinds of things these days, but, um, those birds are stitching together time and landscapes for me in ways that, um, 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. You're irritated.

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Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. In your career, you made a conscious, I hope I'm not wrong on this, or you might put a different way, but you made a conscious switch from like hard science or you can put it how you want to put it, but like from hard science to sort of, uh, culture, people, interpretive work. Yeah. Is that, is that how you describe it? Yeah. You know, I, Iive work. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is that how you describe it? Yeah. You know, I'll always be a scientist, always be a naturalist, always be an ornithologist. But part of what I wanted to do was to be able to move that science into the masses.

Because you think about, and I always call the science that we do the scripture, really. I mean, it's critically important to not deny good science and that data that tells us what's going on, that gives us some idea of the patterns that are out there. But then what good is it if you've got 900 pages of data and people don't bother to read any of it. So sometimes it's important to be able to take reams of data and get them down to a digestible portion. I mean, you read different reports, but if our attention span is what we can see or pay attention to during a traffic light stop, then people aren't going to read those reams of data.

So I wanted to move to a place of really being able to sort of get those to paint pictures with creative writing that moves people to think about the science, to think about what's going on out there. So then maybe they feel something about it. My, my, you know, for most science, the, um, the objective is not to get people to feel something about it, but to think about it. Right. So to think then, you know, the science probably doesn't care. It doesn't care whether you feel something about it or not. My whole idea is to arc the other way, you know, to get you to feel something about it. So then you think about

it. And if you feel something about it, think about it, feel, think, feel, think, feel, think, feel, think, maybe that's a spark, you know, maybe you get a spark from that reaction back and forth and you do something about it, not just damn read about it, but do something about it. So that's the, you know, that's the transition that I've willingly made because, you know, you stand in front of a classroom of 19 and 20 year olds. And as, you know, and Aldo Leopold talked about, you know, the danger of being an ecologist was living in a world of wounds. And, and, um, God, man, that dude was like a quote factory. It's, it's, it's, but very prescient, right?

Way ahead of his time in so many ways. But if you're in front of a classroom and you're teaching, you're doing this teaching, doing this teaching and these students, and you could see them, I could see them. And they were just like, their faces were like, well, what the hell am I supposed to do with all this? You're just feeding them this data day after day after day of how things are going south. And there's not going to be anything left for you to deal with. Well, you know, I think you got to infuse some hope so that people have some motivation for doing something rather than

just sticking their heads in the sand and saying, you know, fuck it. I'm not, this is not for me. Let me go over in this department and do this. So that whole idea of moving the science to a place where I get you here, then I can get you here. And I mean, marketers know that. And it's not to in any way diminish or deny the science, but to give it an opportunity to dwell in heart as well as head. And you can do, I mean, the whole idea of a picture worth a thousand words, you know, I look at this wall here and I can, I mean, there's science all over that wall.

Now, is it going to pass peer review? Certain peer review is going to pass. Others are going to decry it as something else. So, but I think it's important for us as scientists, especially as conservation scientists, it always bothers me when I hear people say, well, I'm not an advocate. You know, I'm a scientist. Well, conservation to me means that you have to be an advocate. I don't see the separation. And I don't think being a scientist means that you can't be an advocate. Sure, you gather, you're an objective data gatherer. That's your job, to gather data objectively, to report that data objectively. But then, damn it, do something about it. You know, if there are declines, what do you do about those declines? Do you just say there's declines and then

report the next decline and report the next decline and report the next decline? Well, it's a little hypocritical, right? It's like, how many folks do you know that go out and get that grant to go study and gather data on something they don't give a shit about? Oh, happens all the time, right? I? I mean, oh, sure it does. Certainly it does. I mean, and then we're on these two and four year grant cycles. And so I think that where we are as scientists, as conservationists, okay, so let me paint a picture here, sort of bridge.

Think about how so many people came into some sort of knowing about climate change. How did that happen? Well, it was all about drowning polar bears. It's all about drowning polar bears. Now, certain sets of people care about drowning polar bears. I mean, now, let me say I love polar bears. I'm not trying to take anything away from polar bears. I want them to be fine. Not trying to pull the iceberg out from under their fuzzy feet. Exactly. ice caps, is also impacting the way people breathe, especially people of color who have these asthmatic conditions, for example, at almost a tenfold rate of white kids. But people weren't talking, or kids, or white kids from Appalachia who have a hard time

breathing. But nobody was talking about that. They were talking about climate change and polar bears, climate change and polar bears. Why not arc that, okay, arc that science outside into sociology? Begin to tell the stories evocatively of how polar bears are drowning in rising seas, but people in the Lower Ninth Ward

are also drowning in those rising seas. There is this connection between the great white bear and black people. So in thinking about that kind of connection, you know, it's hard to get that into peer review and Journal of Wildlife Management. Yeah. I mean, really. And that's not the place for it. So where does that work go? Where do I put that work? I'm going to put that work somewhere where it reaches the masses. You know, one of the experiments that now I've never done it, but it's one of those things I'm going to say.

I'm going to put good money that if I published an article, I don't know, on painted bunning productivity in the coastal plain of South Carolina. Cal would report on it. There you go. So it would be in Cal's bigger review. So there it is in the journal. And I'd tie it back to feral cats. Okay. Good for you.

He's like, just one more reason. Shoot a cat. But if you do that, you tied it to feral cats, right? And you've shown in this journal article that whatever the impacts are. So there's the journal. Put that on the table at the dentist's office. Write that same article. Put it in the journal. Put that on the table at the dentist office. Write that same article. Put it in the journal.

Put it in South Carolina Wildlife. And maybe you've been patient enough as a photographer. You've got a tabby with a male painted bunning in its jaws. And it's an 800-word essay. What gets read? Yeah. What gets read? Same yeah what gets read same data same data there's no statistical analysis presented really well maybe there is the results are presented in that in that south carolina wildlife magazine but that's the challenge right to how how do we get that science done? And from a conservation standpoint, I think, yeah, we got to chase,

we got to chase grant dollars. But to me, the, you know, the, the, the proof in the pudding at the end of the day is not just how many articles you've published, but what you've done for conservation beyond that, beyond those words, how do those words come into impact? And so sometimes those words come into impact and that scientist continues that work beyond the four year cycle. And that's where you see the love come out in the science. When people dedicate their lives to a question, you know, and they're really working to push that and to connect with the managers on the ground, that they haven't separated that science in a way so that they say, well, now I'm done with it. It's up to you. So to stay connected with it, I think is important. It's no different than some commander staying in connection with his or their

troops. To stay in connection with that science in some way to move it forward. Adaptive research and management. That's a cycle. And somewhere in that cycle of adaptive research and management, I think is love and care. I mean, that's just me, but I can't see conservation existing without love and care. That's just part of it. That wasn't a quickie, I know no that was a soapbox i but i do have one that i gotta hit okay is migration bird migration like what's the most compelling thing about how birds migrate that we know or research the most compelling thing is that, you know, to me is thinking about one, thinking about a warbler that weighs as much as, you know, a half handful of paperclips. That that bird launches off of the Yucatan and that that bird chooses to fly across the Gulf of Mexico, some 600 miles to the Gulf Coast cheniers of Louisiana. And I have seen some of these birds when they're coming ashore, like in Texas.

I've seen a Baltimore Oriole barely above the waves. In fact, you know that some of these birds get taken out by fish, right? Yeah. And so to me, that's this heroic story that's compelling. But the science of it, again, is how birds do it. The physiology to be able to flap nonstop for all those hours. And if you want to really get at some kids, you know, if you're ever talking about it in school, you'll tell kids this and they're like, oh, that's not such a big deal. And you say, OK, I'll give, I don't know, $20, whatever amount of money to anybody who can keep their arms going like this for the next hour. Nobody can do that. And a bird does it for a day. So, you know, that the capacity of birds to do what they do in migration is amazing

to me that, you know, our understanding of how they find their way and that, you know, we're our understanding of how they find their way in part, you know, it's a multiplicity of things by star compass, by polarized light, some birds by smell, by orienting to the earth's compass. All of that is extraordinarily compelling and that it's happening for songbirds, for example, and other birds's happening for songbirds, for example, and other birds too. But songbirds, we think of this is happening at night. Right. You know, you know, we've got our thumbs in our mouths and snoring and these birds are passing overhead. And then in the morning you wake up and there they are. And then.

I've never seen a migrating coot. Not once. And see, and that's the thing. That's the thing. Something like, you know, you think about rails.

Yeah. And how Sora just show up in the weirdest places. They'll show up in, you know, downtown Greenville, South Carolina. And you see a, and you see a Sora.

It's like, you got to force it to fly. But here, these birds are flying hundreds or thousands of miles, a black rail. I mean, a black rail, it looks, you know, almost like a, you know, a baby chick, like a, and, and, and here this bird is making its way through wetlands, we presume to some, to some choice place. So I'm always enthralled by what we know, but I'm also very inspired by what we don't know and then what we can never know because there are some of that stuff.

We can never know how that bird makes that decision, what goes off in its brain to say, and I'm sure somebody said, well, when tailwinds reach a certain speed, when the daylight or daylight hours are at a certain lumens, it's this time of year, the bird has this fat condition, then the probability of it rising in migratory behavior or to exhibit Zouganrou is this. Yeah, that data's out there. But then there's the part of this bird's brain we can't get into. And we can't know what that feels like to be a bird. Yeah. And we can know they do those things on a population level, but ultimately they're

individuals. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that one bird, you know, for a couple of years, there was a scarlet tanager that would show up. And notice I'm saying a scarlet tanager. I would say some scarlet tanagers. But this bird that shows up and it would sing from the top of this red mulberry tree. And it would sing into the sun. And I've watched this bird and imagine, you know, this bird is making a transition from the Peruvian Amazon to the Piedmont of South Carolina. Right.

You know, and you're sitting in one tree and sitting and you guys are talking about jaguars, you know, and it's probably looking down at jaguars. It's had to dodge forest Falcons at some point. It's passed by a harpy Eagle maybe. And now it's here in my yard. Yeah. Yeah. That's wild all right going like oh yeah remember what uh power lines are like oh yeah there's this other cat down there that's more likely to take me out than that jaguar yeah hey what's uh what's the latest thinking on whether

you're uh good or evil if you have a bird feeder. Well, I must be evil because I have bird feeders. Okay. Lay it on, lay it on. Yeah. I mean, you know, for me, I think you have to be, well, certainly when, if you have like avian flu, right. Or you have zoonoses that you notice around your feeder, or you get advisories. What are zoonoses? Diseases. Okay. You know, if birds are being impacted by some of these

being densely packed at feeders. Like you got dead birds laying over the yard. Yeah, and clean your feeder. You know, you shouldn't have so much gunk in your feeder that you can't tell what's in there other than sort of the mossy stuff that's growing on the outside of it that's also growing on the inside. So, if you're going

to have feeders, you have to be a responsible feeder keeper. Clean your feeders on the regular, clean the watering sources on the regular. I don't feed a whole lot in the summertime because those birds are going out and getting the protein that they need from soft-bodied insects and the like for their nestlings. So I'll ramp it up in the fall. But, you know, I really love feeding birds in transit. Part of it is in my head, in my head, I'm thinking, you know, as part of this patchwork of this miraculous deal of migration, I want to be a positive in that. So I certainly don't think it's an evil. Okay.

You know, I think it's a, I think it's a positive that people can do. It brings wildlife to them. It brings them closer, but I think you have to think about how you do it. Like anything, you got to be responsible with it. Don't just throw stuff out there and expect things to go well if you don't tend to it. Yeah. Because things can go sideways. You had years ago when, when Corinne and i were first talking about having you on we found a thing you'd done where it was uh like it was sort of the nine rules yeah of being uh of being a black birder

yeah or how to nine rules for birding while black when i watched the video like you know it's funny right it was like it was like it was like funny um you got it like the delivery was fun right yeah but i read interviews with you about when you compiled those and it definitely wasn't always fun and games no i you know when that was when you were in that space. No, you know. When you were in that space, right? Yeah, you know, I remember getting the email from the editor who said, you know, would you write something towards this?

And she didn't say nine rules or anything like that. I said, sure. And she said, you know, if you can get back to me in a couple of weeks, I'll be fine. And I had the draft back to her in a little over an hour. Because, I mean, I'd lived it. Right? I'd lived all this stuff. But, you know, my dad used to have a saying.

He'd say, he said, that's laughable but not funny. And so I remember I got a question. That's a good saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. He, so it's at a film festival and someone, and you could hear this, you know, you could hear the laughter come up and then you hear it go down. Right. And you could almost hear the uncertainty in laughter.

And somebody just asked, they said, you know, yeah, this was funny, but then I had, I laughed, but then I wasn't sure whether I should be laughing. And, you know, for satire, I think, which is what this is, the importance is that, you know, you laugh, then you think about why you laughed, then you got to think about why you think about why you laughed. So on those levels, you know, to get people to some point of sort of arcing head, because then again, what you're doing is you're arcing head to heart, you know, to get people to some point of sort of arcing head, because then again, what you're doing is you're arcing head to heart, you know, cause you're feeling some kind of way about what you see here. Maybe something catches in your throat and maybe it's funny, but then you're like, wait, but that's not funny because then maybe in your

mind with the whole thing about wearing a hoodie. Yeah. That was, I was going to have you hit a couple. That was one of the ones I remember is like, have you got a hood on? Yeah, have you got a hoodie on? But then that was connected. Don't pull the hood off. That was connected to Trayvon Martin, right? And so for people, because some people aren't going to, they're not watching that. And they might say, well, why would you say that? Well, and then, you know, I had somebody tell me, and I'd seen it.

And I don't know whether it happens here or not, but, you know, you go to certain stores and it will tell you, you cannot come in the store with a hoodie on. Oh, I've not seen that. You know, no hoodies allowed. I've seen that. or thinking about being confused as the other black birder, you know, to be called somebody else because maybe it's only two of you there and people haven't taken enough time to notice that you actually are in fact different. That one person's 5'10", the other person's 6'2", that one person weighs a lot and the other person weighs not so much.

You know, notice, because you're noticing all of these variations in birds. You can do it. You can do it. I promise. So thinking about those things wasn't hard, man. I was feeling all of them. I had lived most of them. And so when I was asked about doing it, you know, that just flew out of my hands. And then this very courageous

conservation organization out of Seattle, Bird Note, those people went to the next level. And Bird Note is great in promoting the science of, in promoting ornithology, the science of bird conservation and all of that. But they're also great at arcing. And so they were brave enough and they said, you know, would you consider doing a film? And the day that, the weekend that we were supposed to do the film, I was traveling up in the mid Atlantic and the producer actually had the date wrong originally so we started a day late but most of that stuff those nine rules one take oh yeah because well i mean what's the call for people to want to find it on youtube um nine rules for the black bird watcher here let's just let's listen to one

you know they're essential tools for birding. They're your binoculars, your spotting scope, your field guide. And if you're black, you're going to need probably two or three forms of ID. When I meet another black birder, it's like encountering an ivory-billed woodpecker, an endangered species, extinction looms. Did you do the list was it before or after the very high profile case where the gentleman in central park i believe it was christian christian cooper got he had like a woman was in had a dog in a leash area off the leash and he asked her to put a leash on the dog or go to this part of the park where you could have your dog unleashed she called the cops i was gonna say it was a dog leash issue it wasn't a birding issue yeah

yeah and he had he had his binoculars he was birding yeah yeah and then he recorded the whole thing and then oh yeah and then her i think her life kind of came apart after that yeah she got it back oh and her dog so she's all right yeah yeah. Yeah. You know, that was, that was some of that nine rules sort of in effect, you know, and how you approach people, you, you know, the skin you're in, in this country matters. And so where you are matters. And, you know, I'm a Southerner and, um, and, and, and we've got a, a bitter history in the South, of course, but then, you know, um, anything can jump off anywhere. And so when that happened to Christian, I was actually, um, up at a little, up at my little mountain place. And, and I remember coming back in the cell reception

and my phone was blowing up, you know, with people wanting to know about, you know, birding wild black and what's this about and this and that. And so Nine Rules was sort of revived at that point because people were like, so what is it like to live this way? Well-

So you'd already done it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's really funny.'d already done it. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, and that's, yeah,

that, that's really funny. That, that, that was, I'm sorry, laughable, not funny,

but it was honestly, and that, that was my whole thing. I'm like, wait, this has been out since 2013, but all of a sudden here it is again. So it was one of those things,

you know, I tell, you know, you tell folks, well, and folks would say, well, it can't be that serious. Come on, you're just birding. You're not going to, well, some people are just jogging and get shot. Right. So, and, and thinking about what, um, how those things intersect that again, Steve is where I come to this point of not leaving the science, but really wanting to try to make a difference in how we go about doing what we do, whether it's as a hobby

of birding or whether it's conservation, so that people become aware that it, unfortunately, it does make a difference who you are racially in this country. So, you know, my first research project, I had to give up because, well, I didn't have to give it up. But then I did have to give it up. And I say it that way because people would have said, well, if you're a real scientist, you'll go into, you know, this valley of the shadow of death where these white supremacists are deciding they're going to make it a homeland. So I had to make the decision, well, am I going to press that or am I going to leave that research project behind because I care about my life more than I do gathering data in this place? So I made the decision to move my research project really to

take up a whole new research project in a place where I felt safer. And that kind of stuff happens. So in bringing that to light, you know, it's sure there's science, there's sociology that can be done, there's behavioral science that can be done think about that, right, I think is part of – I see it as part of my mission to move the science that I do in a direction that has people feel about it and think about it. do you find yourself telling people that something to the equivalent of like, you should, you're not interested in nature. You're not interested in birds. You're not a birder, but you should be one. Oh no. Oh God. No, I know. I, you know, it, maybe it's boulders. Maybe it's butterflies. Maybe it's blue crabs. I don't know. But if it's something that gets you connected to nature, well, look, first of all, I try to get people to understand where their food comes from, right? That's the first science you ought to be concerned about. And I don't try to force,

ever force people into loving what I love. But to have some appreciation for a connection to nature, I think is important. Connection, and when I say nature, it's, to have some appreciation for a connection to nature, I think is important connection. And when I say nature is connection to air connection to soil connection to water. So if they understand that there's this connection, that their water just doesn't magically come out of someplace that makes it clean, then, then we're going to have an issue. So to get them to that point, you know, I listened to a report a few weeks back, and it was some incredibly disturbing percentage of children who think that bacon comes from plants.

Yeah. Right? And to me, that's disturbing. Or to talk to, you know, to talk to really intelligent students, really intelligent high school students. I was – they were in a camp I was doing, science camp, and I was teaching an ecology course. And when I teach my ecology courses, you come into Marvin Gaye's ecology. Of course, they didn't know who Marvin Gacy was when they were too young. But, you know, one of the students was in there and was eating a candy bar. And they're not supposed to eat there, but I really didn't care. But it was an opportunity.

He was eating the candy bar and he was kind of smacking it. So I'm like, okay, you want to eat this candy bar? I want you to tell me where the ingredients came from in that candy bar. The main ingredients came from in that candy bar. The main ingredients came from in the candy bar. And I will buy everybody in this class their choice of candy tomorrow. And he sort of rocks back, really arrogant. He's eating, I don't know, like a payday or something. I said, so where'd the peanuts come from?

Oh, and he just, man, he leans way back. And he's like, OK, everybody get your list together because all y'all getting candy bars tomorrow. And he tells me, of course, that these peanuts came off a peanut tree. I'm like, really? A peanut tree. So he had no idea that these were legumes. I didn't expect him to know that there was a legume plant, but that these things came out of the ground or that people think that potatoes come off of potato trees. That's a thing. I think I used to think that growing up in New York city,

maybe I probably, but then, but you're disconnected from it. Right. And, you know, marketing isn't going to show you a lays coming out of the ground. They just, they just, they, they just care that you eat the chip. So, um, but, but then that

people don't know again, where there is one of the things that I try to do when people ask why I hunt, um, you know, it, that's a whole foods market. And so to go to that level and think about, you know, you don't have to hunt, but you need to know that your meat blinked before it became a burger. And if you have that idea, if you know that, then it does give you a different appreciation for life. One of the things that is always funny to me is how, you know, you get challenged. Sometimes I, one of the times that I got booted a presentation was that there was, I had a picture of me with this, with this little buck that I'd killed and I had written a poem about it.

It's called Elegy for a Gut Pile. And well, and it's, and it's about being elbow deep in an animal, right? Can we license that for a t-shirt? We can talk. We can talk. But that whole idea, this was happening after Michael Ferguson's death. And so here I am in this gut pile, field dressing this deer, and I was overcome with still, first of all, this was a weird thing. After I'd shot this animal, I went down to it on this side slope, and I had never seen this muscle quiver, just under.

But it's like every fiber of this deer's body was going away. And you see movement, but I had never seen it this way. And I sat with this animal and then in field dressing it, was thinking about the appreciation for life. And so I tell folks when the day comes that there's not some minute of indecision that I have about pulling the trigger or loosen the bow, then loosen the arrow. Then it's time for me to stop. You know, it might be, it, it might not seem like I'm taking, but I'm taking a beat. And I don't think that we are, we are taught to, to take those beats. It's sort of been marketed out of us because people don't want to understand

that their meat blinks except for fish. And then they have no problem, you know, doing whatever they want to do to fish because they don't blink. So it's a disconnect from life that I think, you know, I try to get people to, whether it's through birds or butterflies or whatever else that it is, but nah But no, you must for anything. But it's kind of like, well, you better, if you don't pay attention to what's going on, then this is what happens. Years ago, we had a guest on,

an essayist novelist named Tom McGuane. He's been a lifelong hunter. And he said something about hunting or he said um you're trying to kill something that's trying to stay alive he said are you going to ignore that thank you and you know and i've in all honesty oftentimes i do you fall you know i mean like you lose sight of it. Then you, then something really reminds you of it. We had like a, just the other night, like a very visceral reminder of that.

It's like, that thing doesn't want this to happen. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the, but to recognize that, um, you know, I don't think maybe it's necessarily apparent, you know, if you're just playing life with your thumbs. But being out there in it, or at the very least, and for those of us who grew up on a farm, you know, and you make the mistaken name in that calf, you know, so what happens when it's sizzling on the plate? You're not calling that. My friend Doug Duren, he grew up near another dairy family, and he said they solved that because they were all named dinner. There you go. I mean, you got to think about that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. And I don't think we do that enough. You know, drinking crab-flavored whiskey makes me think of the briny deep and not in a great way. It's probably what it tastes like to drown, I would suppose. Thank you to Tamworth Distilling for the care package.

Hey, the castor was real good. Drew's going to wind up with an endorsement deal. No, I love the caster, really. But I just think, for me, I mean, birds are sort of at that place of being able to show the epitome of life. So, I mean, flight and the song and just their activity. And they're everywhere, Even if it's pigeons, even if it's pigeons, um, if you take a while to watch pigeons, I mean, you can't help, but be impressed.

You're there. They are common, but here are birds that have been symbols of peace. They've been symbols of, of, of, of life itself, but people just ignore them. So got a crazy way of flying their pattern of flights. Just bizarre. Exactly. But that you recognize that, right. That you just don't walk by and not see that happening, um, is, is to me when, when people

do that, then we're sort of at a dangerous place, you know, we're at a dangerous place in a disregard for, for life. So, you know, it's birds are, I mean, birds are it for me in that way. But, um, you know, being able to exercise that option of watching them and adoring them and, you know, making what's in the who's, uh, that's, that's kind of a dream come true for me. So here I am.

Well, thanks for being here. I appreciated it. Yeah, it took a while for us to get together, but I admire the work. I really do have for a while because I think it's important to, you're arcing head and heart. There's a lot of information that you're putting out and research and words and moving words in the direction for people to laugh at it, to think about it, and then hopefully do something about it. So I appreciate it. Thanks a lot for coming on. Hit him with your lineup of books and best way to find you. The Home Place, Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature. If you will,

find your indie bookseller somewhere. Sparrow Envy, Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts. That's a Hub City book that you can buy from Hub City Books. Forthcoming books from Farrar or book from Farrar, Strauss, and Guru is Range Maps, Birds, Blackness, and Loving Nature Between the Two. From Enchanted Lion will come Home Place Hues, where you can find colors like cow shit brown in my box of Crayola 64. And the bird I became, um, uh, black boys story of becoming a bird. Man, busy dude. Yeah.

And you got a course load at Clemson or no? Yeah. Yeah. I got a course load, not teaching so much this semester, but got lots of deadlines, including one on Monday. So lots of essays in the works, lots of poems. That's my last question for you. Okay.

We always, always come down to, you know how I know it's real? I found it on the Cornell Ornithological Lab. Is that the best birding resource out there? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Yeah. It's good to hear. I mean, that was my dream as a kid.

I wanted to go to Cornell. I wanted to be a Cornell ornithologist specifically. Ooh. So I get to work a good bit with Cornell and publish stuff in Living Bird. But, yeah, you can't do better than that. I feel that you dig them because they do a good job of putting stuff out to Joe Blows like us, right? There you go.

I mean, there's the science moving. Yeah. And nobody's going to discount that science. But more people know the science because Cornell values that aspect of it, of getting out there. They do a great job of getting people in a position to find it. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. This might not be the right way to put it, but I feel like it's like they seem to have a very good balance, too.

It's not like politicized. You know what I mean? It's just, it's very like, like good information for people that want to start understanding birds. It's digestible. From whatever route they're taking into it. It's just like helpful stuff, man. Yeah. That, uh, that Merlin app. That's incredible.

Yeah. That, and it's, and it's going to get better, you know, and I, and I turn people on to every, you know, when I teach ornithology in the spring, I also turn them on to the DU page and DuckCast and that. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I turn the students on to it because I want to cross-foster learning. So you're going to Cornell for some stuff. You're going to the DU site for other stuff to understand.

DU site's really good too. Yeah. It's really informative. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's a lot of resources out there, but those are two of the best. Awesome. Well, you got a standing invitation to come back.

I'll be back. As a matter of fact. Because you got enough stuff going on, you'll get re, you know, you'll get a new set of ideas working up pretty quick. We'll try. Yeah, you know. You know, this Montana has been in my uh

in my dream basket for all my life uh i wanted to be three things growing up i wanted to be an ornithologist a bird i wanted to be a yeah yeah i wanted to be i wanted to be a fighter pilot right and then i wanted to be a montana cowboy i didn And then I wanted to be a Montana cowboy. I didn't want to be. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. Not a Wyoming cowboy.

Nope. Nope. I wanted to be a. Because Montana for me defined the West. And I would look in the old encyclopedias that we had. And it just always pulled me in. And so now that I have the opportunity work down at, with Elk River Books, you know, it's a dream come true. So I appreciate you giving me the space.

Oh, thanks, man. You should come out and turkey hunt and watch some other birds while you're doing it. Okay. I was going to say, if you ever want to go shoot some ducks. You know, I'll be staying at a cabin. I was going to say, if you ever want to go shoot some ducks. You know, I'll be staying at a cabin. I bid on this cabin last night at the Elk River Book Festival, or I'm sorry, Elk River Writers Workshop, and won this cabin.

Good for you. So I'm going to try to make it uh in during elk season you guys can tell me about cow tags and stuff so i need to understand that um i don't know how accessible it is here but uh well unfortunately there's no last minute options yeah no there may be there might be there may be yeah yeah yeah but you There may be. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, but I also, you know, this is something, I mean, there's no time limit on it. So, you know, I can put in and, and get that work done. You can definitely get some deer tags. Sounds like you're coming back to Montana. Uh, yeah.

Yeah. Well, deer wise, I've always wanted to hunt the Milk River. Uh, you know, so that again, it's so white-tailed or white tails. You know, for me, that's still the beast of choice for me. But I have others in line that I'm going to get at. Stay in touch, man. Will do. Will do.

Thank you. Thank you for what you did. Thanks so bunch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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

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