The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 496: A Game Warden on Otter Attacks and Being Your Referee

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with Adam Pankratz, Janis Putelis, Ryan Callaghan, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, and Phil Taylor. Topics discussed: When the Tough Book laptop shatters the porcelain urinal; when you’re an outfitter and a game warden moves in across the street; get your protein and your vaccine at the same time; Chester the Midwester is performing at The MeatEater Live Tour; where’s Colorado getting its wolves for relocation; the attempt to ban mountain lion and bobcat hunting in Colorado; when your dad’s a vegetarian trapper in Alaska; the snowmobile that said “law enforcement” on it; herbicide; how, “I didn’t know I needed a license,” doesn’t cut it; how Adam doesn’t want to be your referee; getting charged by critters; investigating animal conflicts; when the feds want the state to have management authority; planning hunts to avoid bear areas; otter attacks; humans displacing wildlife; how you shouldn’t fight animals without legs; commercial harvest; the illegal “private menu” that might feature bear paw soup; unknowingly committing a crime while talking to a game warden and then getting ticketed; teaching vs. ticketing; entrapment and not trying to make people into poachers; creating good interactions between the public and game wardens; when you see something, say something; 1-800-TIPMONT; turning in poachers for cash or limited draw tags; listener Peter Block's "Fish and Game" outdo song; 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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Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com oh you know what i wish i could make you know um at the where the where matthew plays soccer yeah they have these bathrooms in there they're like the most indestructible like made out of some synthetic material. Oh yeah.

Like welded stainless urinals and like, like just like caulking. I mean, you could go near the pressure washer. Yep. That is a bathroom, man. Here's a quick urinal story for you. Oh, please. Love it.

Have you ever fished anyone out of a vault? This sounds like we should be recording. Oh, you are. We are recording. We are. Phil, can you turn the machine on? Machine's on. Not Phil's first day.

Can you make a point to start it with this urinal story? Will do. So the computers we use at work are tough books. So they're big tanks. They're 10 pounds. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Montana Game Warden Adam Pancratz telling you this story. We're going to do some more thoroughly in a minute. So these computers are, they're tough books.

You can supposedly drive a tank over them, shoot them, whatever. They're, they're, they're laptops that are meant to be used in the field. So if you drop your laptop, more than likely the screen is going to break. Ours, hopefully it won't. Well, we were doing training in a Montana city here in region three using a public meeting room and one of our wardens was using the bathroom, using the urinal.

And I think he had his Toughbook tucked under his, his arm as he was using the urinal standing there. At some point the computer slips from his hands, drops to the floor, bounces up so hard, hits the bottom of the urinal and shatters the porcelain urinal in the public restroom. Ladies and gentlemen, brought to you by Toughbook. That's a good twist. Yeah, that's great.

So then I had to go explain to the host, the person who runs the facility, thank you for letting us use your facility for our training meeting. However, we destroyed one of your urinals with our computer. A laptop destroyed your urinal. What's the laptop? That does not speak well. The laptop was fine, but urinal completely shattered. That does not speak well to the urinal company. We've never used that building since then.

I'm sure we're welcome back. Well, the problem you have that you might not realize is there's no way that they believe you that that's what happened. What? No, they immediately got on the radio. They're like, we got some vandalism. Yeah, then they kind of tried to tell me it was a laptop. Well, it's in the town of West Yellowstone. I think they're kind of used to it.

If you've ever been down there and you see some of the signs in the public bathrooms directing people like not to stand on toilets down there and stuff because of cultural differences and how they use toilets. And so they are constantly having toilets broken down there based on just people misusing or not using toilets correctly. Yeah, my culture is like that old SNL commercial where they're all disposable. So every time I use one, I then break it.

Joined today by Adam Pankratz, Montana game warden. Give your specific, do you guys call it rank? What do you guys call it? Yeah, we have ranks. Or title. Give me your official title. So I'm a game warden captain for Southwest Montana. There's eight captains that run different parts of the agency or different areas. So Southwest Montana is mine. Um, we have game wardens, we have regional investigators, sergeants, captains, uh, assistant

chief, chief. Um, those are kind of all of our ranks spread out through the state. Uh, if there's seven regions, why is there eight? Uh, the eighth one is our investigative unit. I see. So there's a captain who kind of runs our

investigative unit. So there's a captain who kind of runs our investigative unit. So there's regional investigators, which are kind of like detectives that work in the region. And then we have an investigative squad up in Helena too. And those detectives are playing some kind of like plain clothes detective. Yep.

Correct. And they work on more longer term. Yep. So, so longer term wildlife cases, commercial cases, those types of things. So we have field wardens are out there in the field in uniform. And then a plainclothes kind of unit that helps out with stuff long term. Takes over cases when they go multi-county, multi-district across the state.

Maybe multi-state, all those type of things. You know what I wish we would have done? I'll have to do this next time. We should do a thing. We've always talked about having call-in capabilities. We should do a thing, ask a game worker. Oh, yeah. Just have the lines open.

I was thinking we should have just solicited the whole office for questions and just did nothing but questions today. So a bunch of people would be, yeah, like we keep joking, like a bunch of people would be like, so a friend of mine. Hypothetically. An old friend of mine. I got one on the ass later. Yeah, you know, pulling into the parking lot and seeing that game warden truck, I about backed out.

I was like, oh, that's right. Well, how about our buddy Stuart down there at Crooked Sky? Remember who lives across the street? Yeah. Oh, we haven't talked about this. We need to talk about this. About that and then the other thing. Which is our big trip?

Yeah, the main thing is he's an outfitter. He's an outfitter and he literally is across the street. Did he choose that? Did he move there first? No, he was there before. Wasn't he there before they were? The boarder moved in. Yeah. So he says there wasn't he there before they were the warden moved in yeah so he says there's two ways looking at it one you got to keep um on the up and up or you're

just hiding in plain sight and they'll just assume well that guy over there there's no way he's gonna do something bad so you guys could prescribe to keep your enemies close is that what you're telling me when that that this but this happened to him did not pick the spot, but we had a good laugh about it. Uh, I, when I was, uh, doing a deal with Idaho Fishing Game a couple of years ago, they had a case study on, uh, using, um, like over the counter, uh, trackers, GPS trackers for the

first time. And, um, the, these research things out on the prairie kept uh disappearing very expensive plus they were there doing i think sage grouse research maybe and and um they put you know like an apple tracking device or you know one of the over-the-counter little trackers that you can keep on your phone and um the warden who was in charge of this case was super annoyed with it because it would go off any time there was like a strong wind on the prairie. You know, the piece of merchandise would shake and it would alert on his phone and he started going out there and nothing would happen.

And then sure enough, at like the very end of the the season like the onset of winter the thing goes off on his phone and he's like oh that is right next to my house and his next door neighbor was the person like the, like very rural part of Idaho. But like the third house up on the street is the person that this guy had spent like two years trying to catch and they go and it, what it was, it was a solar powered,

um, uh, hot fence units. Um unit um but had had some other fancy stuff in there for this research deal and this gentleman had decided they would be better served uh repurposed to run a hot fence around his chicken coop sure well years ago i was working on a story about livestock theft a magazine uh feature about livestock theft and i was with these rural crime investigators and when remember when scrap got super high like one of the times scrap metal super high it was so bad he said they would just go and throw tracking devices into irrigation pipe and just wait because you just knew yeah if you told a

guy like oh yeah just stack a bunch of irrigation pipe by the road and we'll throw a sensor in there sure enough it's like when it was hot it was hot on on uh real in the real crime task force uh oh no that we covered this years ago do you remember the guy that they had they were doing the turkey banding they had turkeys with tracking devices on them and they one day get a turkey you know going down the highway and he says it winds up they wind up tracking down this turkey and he's walking around and realizes that hey this turkey is hiding under a big pile of firewood it was their it was their dead turkey that something but some

guy must have realized they had the sensor and somehow thought that like burying it in firewood would take care of the problem on his own place yeah it was on his place and he got scared and buried in an under a pile of firewood like that would like disturb the transmission of the signal or something and there was another guy that wrote in at the same time. I think maybe it would have been the same turkey study. They found one of their turkeys. They tracked it to a hotel. And it was with a gentleman in a hotel. Picked it up off like Craig's book or Craig's list.

No, he had brought the turkey. No, you know how those seedy hotel things happen, right? That's how conspiracy theories about like people that are like oh they got trackers and the animals all over the place you hear like weird conspiracy theories but when people poach deer like they know where you know oh did you know there's a new one floating around out there right now that someone just asked me about this is the best one yet that they're in order to get conservative rural people to to take the vaccine they're actually getting they're putting the vaccine into deer oh yeah and then you eat the deer meat i'm like that's mighty efficient yeah get your protein and your vaccine at the same time very efficient way

to administer this. A buddy of mine texted me like, hey man, do you think this is true? Denver, Colorado, Meteor Live Tour. Some of this is going to be sold out by now, I think. Meteor Live Tour starts December 6th. Hold on, before you start this, do you have all your notes in front of you? It's pulled up.

This is going to be the best one I do yet I got it pulled up in front of me This is going to be a rousing one What is Meteor Live you might ask? Well, it's a bunch of things One thing it is, it starts out as a concert So you go down and Our very own Chester Floyd, Chester the Midwester

Who has opened now For Trampled by Turtles He's a famous musician Chester the who has opened now for Trampled by Turtles. He's a famous musician. Chester the Midwester is going to do a song and kick things off, like he did at the last live show he did. It was in Billings. We just did a one-off in Billings, Montana,

and we just had the random idea to have Chester open the show. So Chester's going to open the show. We'll have some Chester concert tickets there. We're going to talk about news, funny stuff, slide shows, trivia components. We have a guest joining us. We just signed up another great guest for one of the shows coming up. So we got like Kevin. These are all people I've sort of texted with, but we haven't finalized everything. So hopefully they're listening.

Kevin Murphy's going to be joining us on on some of the nights janice putell is there every night ryan callahan's there some of the nights clay newcomb's there some of the nights we got some one-off people we got uh derrick wolf jason fisher the you know i talked to him we haven't formalized it but uh the we got weights and fish walleye tournament administrator he's gonna join us in Cleveland. All kinds of stuff. I got buddies from back home. They're going to join us on some of our Michigan shows.

So every night there's stuff. There's trivia components. We decided on this last night. It's going to go like this. We're going to have audience members selected to come up and play trivia and win stuff so when you go there if you were going to sell our new trivia board game which is available right now you can go buy it right now we're going to sell our new trivia board game at the events select trivia board games

are going to have a secret thing if you get the select trivia board game with the secret thing you come up on stage and then you gotta win a casting contest. Spinning rod. We were gonna have multiple, we were gonna have fly, spinning, bait casting, but then thought it'd just be equal equipment. Yeah, not everyone can do all those.

Spinning rod, no, no, you can take your pick. Oh, you can take your pick. It's an accuracy contest. So you're gonna have a spinning rod, it'll be a light action spinning rod with a 3-8s casting plug and a galvanized wash tub. Nice. The victor in that will compete in trivia. And you're going to win stuff.

It's going to be a great night. The VIP stuff's all gone, I believe. The VIP tickets are all gone. So it's going to be a great night. The VIP stuff is all gone, I believe. The VIP tickets are all gone. So it's going to be a ton of fun. Denver, Colorado on December 6th. Mission Ballroom. Have we done the Michigan Mission Ballroom, Yanni? Not that I know of.

Folly Theater in Kansas City. Capital Theater in Dallas. So Kansas City is December 7th. Capital Theater, December 9th. That means we need to find something entertaining So Kansas City is December 7th. Capitol Theater, December 9th. That means we need to find something entertaining somewhere between Kansas City and Davenport on December 8th. It's still pheasant season. Yeah, I was going to say pheasants probably.

Something entertaining. Just pheasant, not a cow. Did you know that our most, I don't want to say the names, I don't want everybody to go be talking to her. We have a recent hire here who's from a farm in Iowa. Did you know that our most, I don't want to say the name because I don't want everybody to go be talking to her. We have a recent hire here who's from a farm in Iowa. I said, so what goes on at that farm? Like shockingly unaware of what goes on out at the farm in terms of hunting.

She was surprised. Some guys used to come from far away to hunt Turks, but they haven't been there in years. But there's dudes that hunt pheasants out there. But she said, her parents said, I don't care if you want to come out. Wait, who's I'm not telling.

It's not going to take you too long to figure it out though. Yeah. Cause it's just a quick zip on over to Iowa. Well, no, they're like here in the office. No, the ranch, the property to hunt. Oh the hunt oh well no you'd have to talk to her yes yeah yeah well i just gave the gender away you're gonna narrow it down you're

gonna narrow it right down you're gonna narrow this right down december did i davenport iowa december 9 kalamazoo michigan december 10 which is dang near sold out too detroit michigan royal oak music theater december 11th that's gonna be a fun one cleveland ohio agora theater december 13th means i'm gonna go visit my mom on december 12th pittsburgh pennsylvania carnegie Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall December 14 Oh, can we maybe sneak in a little ice fishing? Or would that be too early? That's early

Depends on the climate Which doesn't It's not an ice angler's friend these days You're a little too far south Philadelphia December 15th Keswick Theater Get your tickets and come on out

It'll be a very good time Um Okay Gotta do that Gotta do that Hang tight They're gonna struggle to find something cool to do in Philadelphia Why?

Come on. There's just not a whole lot going on. We'll do it on the other direction. You ever seen Rocky? Because Levi Morgan, the world's greatest archer, like categorically the world's best archer, is joining us for the Pittsburgh show. That's during Pennsylvania's rifle season, I'll let you know.

Yeah, but he's a big bow hunter, so maybe we can squirrel hunt his place. Squirrel won't be open because it's rifle season. I'll let you know. Yeah, but he's a big bow hunter. So maybe we can squirrel hunt his place. Squirrel won't be open because it's rifle season. What? Nope. Small game's not open in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania needs a new. I'm just letting you know. It's not like, don't yell at me.

How could like, how could Pennsylvania justify that? They're like, they're horrible improving, but horrible history on sunday hunting and then you can't hunt squirrels during deer season dude there's a lot of hunters in pennsylvania yeah i think it's just the amount of hunters in on game lands and public land at that point in time just like people also out there squirrel hunting it's just it muddies the waters, I think. Then it opens back up after Christmas. Yeah. We get stories now and then of bow hunters who will have the audacity to come in a cost. That might be a strong word.

Does that imply something physical happened? No, it could be a verbal. You say verbally a cost. To verbally a cost. I should look that up real quick. No, no, no. I'm with Brody. I'm 100% sure that you can just verb.

It does not have to be physical. But I will look it up. To verbally accost. Is it accost? Mm-hmm. Verbally accost squirrel hunters. Yeah, I've heard of that. As though they have a greater right to be in the woods.

Sure. And this Philadelphia or Pennsylvania deal lends credence to that. No. Pennsylvania's got a real short rifle season. It's like two weeks. Anyways. Who's smarter than me and can tell me

how to spell a cost? A-C-C-O-S-T. To approach and speak to someone in an often challenging or aggressive way is what Merriam says. Steve does that a lot. Steve accosts people a lot. Oh, sure. But not squirrel hunters. Man, that's a great definition.

It is. Because it conforms to what I thought it was, which makes it good. The meat eater calendar, this year's calendar is out. It's called the Dirty Dozen. Go and check that out. We put a lot of work into that calendar. Not as much as normal, but a lot. Yeah, it's nice to change it up too.

We'll go back to the old style next year. But like I said, this year's Dirty Dozen is 12 months. So there's 12 seasons of meat eater. It's 12 months in a year. Each month is a season. And guess what we did? January is the first season. A lot of Seth's pictures in there.

A lot of Seth Morris photography in there. Check that out. The trivia board game is out. The only board game where conservation always wins a dollar from every board game sold goes to conservation organizations. It's a great trivia board game. It's meant to be highly mobile. We kicked around different things with stupid boards and whatnot, but it's just the same setup we have.

It comes with hundreds of question cards. It comes with little mini dry erase boards, dry erase markers. It's travel friendly. It's a great gift. I have had, and we still have one at our fish shack, I have owned over the years the stupidest, worst outdoor trivia games where the makers wouldn't understand the difference between objectivity and subjectivity in questions, meaning a question would be like,

what's the best deer cartridge? That's not trivia. That's an opinion game, which if there was a way to have an opinion game, I would be all in. Well, there's an opinion game on Which, if there was a way to have an opinion game, I would be all in. Well, there's an opinion game on cartridges on the website. But everybody knows it's a.308 wind. I'll give this to you honestly. I think that we're going to get a lot...

People should send us pictures of playing the new board game at Deer Camp. Well, I was just going to ask if there's any prototypes around that we could take on the youth hunt. There are. I got one of my guests who can take. I gave one away a long time ago. I gave one away to a random person.

I said, don't show anybody that. But no one that works here, because they'll get mad that I gave it to you. It'd be fun with the kids. And then the guy probably runs and shows everybody, and then five people are like, did you give one of the board games away to some guy out in the parking lot? You were like, describe some guy.

Be more specific. Did you know, Brody, I met a Brody last night that beat your butt. Bad. I don't doubt it. He probably outweighed me by 150 pounds. More than that. No, he was 250 he said it's all 100 last night we went down and we cooked dinner for the local football team the msu bobcats that was fun 250 hot dogs yeah a lot of hot dogs a lot of wild 36 gallons of wild game chili enough for a

quart each yeah that was a lot of fun a big gulp of chili each. Yeah, they could have each had a big gulp of chili. Is a good reminder is they're kids. Oh, huge children. The disparity, right? Like you're talking to one kid who just happens to be built like a livestock animal. No cow. Peach fuzz. I don't know if that's proper. animal uh no cow peach fuzz proper um peach fuzz kind of like some acne and stuff going on he's playing right next to a person who looks like he's been like supporting a family of four

for a decade already right like and that just, what's so odd to me about that stage of athletics is, is like, here's somebody who's very physically gifted and it will continue to change dramatically. Oh, in this time, in this time. Yeah. Right. No, they're still like, like developing. And they're still playing at a very highly competitive level. And then right next to them, you're like, oh no, that is a fully developed

human. Yeah. And Bobcats are one of the best Division 1 AA teams in the country. I was impressed by the poise and politeness. Yeah. And I'll point out... I think that coach, he runs the tights well. You think he

disciplines on that level? I don't mean to talk about him like the little kids, but just very poised. I got the impression they had a lot of respect for their coach. That could be. And each other. I mean, they were all real. I was kind of mixing it up back in there,

and they all seemed to be real nice to each other too and not like real cliquish, which was real very impressive to me i was the only one that won uh we each had me and yanni and cal each had to do a compete in a physical feat not you know not surprisingly i was gonna say not surprisingly i was the only one that was able to best my opponent did you compete against i have a lot of respect the water guy or something? I'm not going to acknowledge Steve at all here. Ask some details. But I have a lot of respect for Giannis' physical capabilities.

But when the kid stood up to go against Giannis, it was just very clear that it was not going to. That was a dude named Brody. This guy floats. Yeah. Floats through the air. The vertical jump was unbelievable.

I would expect that from a skinnier wide receiver type where you're like, oh, you might have played basketball too, but this dude was a defensive end who floats. Our height, our 250 pounds, and yeah, my jump to get on that box

has a lot to do with how high I can get my feet up. I got to get up in with how high I can get my feet up. Right? I gotta get up in the air and then just lift my feet up and get them up there. He would land in the same posture that he took off in. Exactly. When you would jump, there's the jump

and then you actually watch the actual part of I guess the vertical propulsion where you're like, oh, he just floated six inches. It was funny too. It was even like, I'm not dogging on you because you did good. But when you maxed out, he was still like coming down on the mat. He was approaching the mat from, he was approaching the platform from above. Like, as though dropped.

Yeah. He had an easy six to ten inches to go until he was going to max. It was funny because everybody wanted to push him to the max, but the coach is like, we don't need to get anybody injured today. This is fun and all. That was neat, though. What I did for my tournament is I did a lot of pre-research and I asked around, what

position is least likely to be able to do a lot of pull-ups? And I kept getting the same answer. Punter? Kicker. Center. No, like the guys that protect the got you it's gonna be offensive line or defensive and everybody said i would talk to the i would talk to the guys that are you know the 300 plus guys so i took on one of them and pull-ups and honestly uh he you only bested him by one and i was surprised i mean that kid put up almost 10 pull-ups with, I mean, think about it.

You only got to pull up 140 pounds. He's pulling up 300 pounds. Yeah. Uh, but I did, I did best him. It was impressive. He used a different grip. I noticed. I did the traditional.

He did the, like, I don't know what you call it. I think it's because he had so much bulk in his arms and shoulders, he was pretty limited to where he could grab the bar, Steve. I don't know. I wonder if I could do more or less of that grip. Well, so probably averages out. He did like shooting pistols. Shooting two pistols.

Straight up in the air. Just for listeners at home. Yeah, which is the thing we do a lot, is two pistols straight up in the air. Just for listeners at home. Yeah, which is the thing we do a lot. Two pistols straight up in the sky. I start my morning. Okay, gotta hand it over to Brody for a newsflash. This is Brody's favorite subject. Back to Colorado. Brody's favorite subject.

His favorite two subjects come together. Yep. Colorado and wolves. Yep. Oh, I'm weighing in. Well, on the second one. Or on the wolves. I don't know. We got to like.

I talked to a game one for an hour yesterday. We touched on this a while ago. It's a Colorado twofer. Colorado, a couple years ago or whenever, had a ballot initiative to reintroduce wolves. It passed. to reintroduce wolves it it passed and the governor of colorado kind of mandated that they would have wolves on the ground in colorado by december of 23 now you're aware that it's colorado it's colorado um rocky mountain so colorado a month from when this podcast airs like there were supposed to have been wolves on the ground in Colorado.

The problem is they can't get wolves anywhere. Can we introduce the other wrinkle? That there are wolves. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Not only are there wolves, but there's wolves that are reproducing within the state of Colorado. So Colorado won. Yeah.

That's not true. That's not certain? Well, some of them got killed because they were wandering back and forth from Colorado to Wyoming. Got killed in Wyoming. Yeah, as soon as they crossed the border, kapow. By Coloradans? Out of state?

I don't know. But yeah, there are wolves that made their way in naturally. But it doesn't matter. They're still going to reintroduce them but they just don't have any montana wyoming idaho we're all like a hard no they're like we're not going to help you put more wolves on the ground because of what i i mean it could be a political thing like like demographically politically those three states are much different from colorado's administration but wyoming saying no and oregon saying no feel very different to me sure i like the montana wyoming and idaho like i think are just like we're just not interested in not participating yes o Oregon hasn't really given a reason why.

Washington is like, man, we're kind of interested, but it's just not the right time because the best time to trap wolves is later in the winter. So if we're going to help you, you're not getting these wolves until later and then you'll have to introduce them in your, your state later. So right now it's not looking great. Like there's no way they're going to get them on the ground in a month let me crystal ball this for you this is not an issue what do you mean

it's not an issue though them not getting wolves is not like actually a long-term problem no no they'll get i don't know what i'm talking about i I just know. I think they'll get them from Washington eventually. But it's just not going to happen on the timeline they wanted. It's an interesting wrinkle. Yeah. But this is not like, I don't think this is actually. You don't think it's mildly interesting that for months they haven't, they're like, we want wolves and nobody's given them to them? It would become more interesting to me if someone from each of these states

who made that decision would say why I made that decision. I mean, Greg Lemon from MFWP just said, we are not interested in participating in this process. Cause? I don't know. You'll have to infer. I think it's because they don't want to be held responsible for putting more wolves on the ground. They don't want to be held liable. They don't want to be held liable for their wolves.

Like when Colorado's wolf population explodes five years from now. And they're like, where did these wolves come from? And they're like, why the hell did you give us wolves? They're those super wolves from Montana. Yeah. And Canada's not even on the, was never even an option. What about Minnesota? Why is Canada not an option?

I don't know. Maybe they don't want those big, bad super wolves. What about an option to who? To Colorado. They haven't even like, Canada is not playing ball and Colorado hasn't. Why not Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan? Maybe because of the different type of wolf. You know, those wolves don't know what elk are, don't know what mountains are.

Maybe it's got something to do with that. I don't know. I feel like they'd figure it out pretty quick. Here's my take. It's unchanging. I think all the animals that are from somewhere should be able to be there but i think they should be i just really lean towards state management yeah well we'll see what happens eventually maybe they will be managed by the state okay guys we just wanted to give you a quick update since uh there was a lag time between

when this podcast was recorded and when it's going to air and in that time it turns out that colorado found a source for wolves which is the state of oregon uh which has agreed to supply 10 wolves to colorado that will then be reintroduced in Colorado. It looks like they're probably in the process right now of capturing those wolves and then they'll bring them to Colorado, check them for disease, injury, stuff like that, throw a radio collar on them, let them acclimate, and then they're going to plan on reintroducing those wolves around Vail, Aspen, Gunnison. They're not being too specific about the area they're going to release them in, but it's going to happen.

And we just wanted to keep you guys updated that there had been a change in what we had just talked about. Moving on. This one's serious. This one is serious it's the reason we're talking about it because it's another uh kind of ballot box example of wildlife management i think this one's more this in my mind is more serious than the other issue oh for sure it's especially if if you're a hunter um the the the kind of the same group of people that, that probably may have been involved when, in getting wolves back in Colorado or who

knows, maybe I'm, maybe that's not correct. Anyway. It's the people from the Whole Foods parking lot. Yes. And they tend to travel around the West. That's where these signatures get collected. Yes. They travel around the West a lot.

Farmers markets, Whole Foods parking lots. There's there's now a proposal well it's not a proposal it's it's in the works they're they're getting signatures and they're hoping to get enough signatures to get a ban of mountain lion and bobcat hunting uh uh get that on the ballot in colorado and they'll get i think they need like roughly 124 000 signatures yeah which is like not a problem it's going on listen it's going to be on unless there's some issue it's going to be on the ballot it will be and colorado is now like the kind of place where people got to pay attention because it it could like it could get banned in colorado like these ballot initiatives i mean ballot initiatives cut both ways right um like right to hunt and fish stuff i don't know if i don't know if one of those yeah those have come to ballot initiatives

and ballot initiatives don't always win like when they try to do a ballot what it is is basically like it's special interest groups i don't even mean that in a negative way. Because you have special interest groups on both sides. A special interest group will want to bypass the normal channels of lawmaking. In this case, bypass how wildlife gets normally managed.

Often probably because they've already tried numerous times to go through the legislative process and it hasn't worked. And they go, well, I'm going to take it to the voters. Yep. And then you, in order to get it on the ballot, it has to enjoy a certain level of popular support. So you write a really cockeyed, because you can't write the ballot cockeyed, but you can write the petition cockeyed. Sure.

So you write a cockeyed petition. With all kinds of like trigger words and stuff like that signs or in a case like this is just going to be too fuzzy slightly spotted kittens doughy eyed mountain lion kittens yeah sure saying oh do you think people can kill me you should well kill me they've gone so are you going to go as far as to say like what they're how they're actually um the trophy hunting aspect yeah and then the animals that are included under this trophy hunting ban you can if you go ahead well they're they're they've listed in they're gonna try to ban all trophy hunting and and then

they're what they're what they're doing with their messaging is they're defining what trophy hunting is by saying that it's mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx. Oh, yeah. They can't hunt lynx anyways. Exactly. It's a federally protected species, right? But again, like what you're saying is in this initial messaging, the petition, the propaganda, you don't have to talk in facts. Yeah, they did the same thing in arizona with jaguars

like they added jaguars onto the list yeah because it tricks people yeah that way some dude going in there to get uh some dude going in there to get his uh you know his his hamburger his wasabi peas and his hamburger at whole foods i imagine you probably get a lot of you know what's the place that does like the old timey posters they sell a lot of junk food trader joe's you probably get a lot of you know what's the place that does like the old timey posters they sell a lot of junk food Trader Joe's you probably get a lot of signatures outside of Trader Joe's so anyways you go in there and someone's like oh my

you know goodness good lord they're gonna hunt jaguars I better sign this petition not knowing that that's an impossibility yeah and the the the they're the trophy huntings are saying well they're you guys you're only out there killing it for its hide or for its head or for this trophy so you can you know get your cat what about cash money uh i don't

i don't know if that's in the in the wording but uh again that's illegal like in the state of colorado that meat has to be processed for human consumption on what on a mountain lion okay it does yeah so like they got a salvage requirement online i don't think i'm bobcats but lions for sure i like that um i like those i like those rules yeah colorado like has a history of this, like going back to the nineties. That's how they lost trapping. Trapping, leg hold and kill traps. Spring bear was 94. Spring bear, hound bear, like, and that was 30 years ago. Like the demographics in that state have changed a lot in 30 years.

So, you know, it doesn't take a whole lot of voters in Denver and Boulder and Fort Collins to kind of skew how the vote goes statewide you know like if if this was proposed in wyoming it'd be dead on arrival i remember someone with the trapping thing someone i remember someone saying the minute the population of the greater denver area surpassed the population of the state trapping was gone yeah yeah i i that wouldn't surprise me city slickers yep so they're back at it again in colorado but you guys can be if you're in colorado you can beat this they beat it in maine they beat the bear bane and ban in maine in montana we soundly beaded a public land trapping ban on the ballot 70 some percent um the same thing in arizona got beat yeah within the last couple years but in the end when when in the future in 100 years when hunting is

largely done in california not even 100 years 25 years when hunting is done in california done in washington done in colorado it'll be because of the it'll be because of ballots and then you'll have then it'll be like a different land it'll be a completely different vigilante landscape can we i don't want to talk about this with the game warden do we talk can we talk a little bit about like what what we can do about this yeah but can i first tell you well yeah you talk about that then i want to talk about a correlation i've found with the i'm just gonna throw this out there i have found it's your podcast go ahead there's a correlation between a state's

readiness to embrace legal weed here we go we already discussed this yesterday and shut you down. But that was a trivia show. A state's readiness to embrace legal weed and its readiness to ban hunting practices. This is not true. There is a very strong correlation west of the Mississippi.

You know that weed's legal in Montana, right? But it was slower to embrace it. A state that's quick and ready. No. Steve, you know why it is? You've spent time in Alaska, right? That's what I told him yesterday. Because that's where I grew up and, you know,

my parents had a greenhouse for vegetables and they had a greenhouse for other herbal supplements. And he was a traveler. Very conservative. We're going to get a list of the states and make a real comparison. I've been wrong about a lot of this kind of stuff. One of Spencer's statistics people

that help him out with the stats for the trivia, I'm hoping right now they're already working on this to come back and show you correlation. You want to know two things I was wrong about? That I was convinced I was right about? I was wrong. Only two? I thought that conservatives were less likely to believe

in ghosts. In fact, they're more likely to believe in ghosts. I thought that conservatives were less likely to have gluten intolerance, but in fact, it's like a statistical wall. That one is strange to me. Very, the gluten thing. Real strange. And I think that people, because here's my theory.

Hunters don't mind hiding in the bushes. It's a big part of hunting. It is. So they don't mind sneaking off in the bushes to, you know, indulge. Moving on. Go on, Deon.

It's a half-baked idea. Have you ever seen that movie? The what you can do part is the takeaway here, gang. So pay attention. Probably cut all that out because the more I think about it, I might not be right. Okay. Looking out for you. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try On x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all uh yeah and this uh there's a lot to be to be said here but it i think if it's left only up to the people that participate in hound hunting in colorado uh it's it's a lost battle now right like everybody's gonna have to chip in um and to me i think the the best way that we can do it is you can't shrug off or be flippant in conversations with non-hunters. The same way that the opposition is now swaying that middle 80% that's going to decide this vote in their direction, we have to be out there talking and messaging and talking to people about that it's not trophy hunting and all

the good things that are associated with this thing that they're trying to take away and explain to them about the rules and regulations that go into it. Explain to them that the meat has to be prepared for human consumption, et cetera, et cetera. And I think once once if you can i always tell the story i've told it multiple times on this podcast about my aunt who very liberal very hippie she chants every morning with her windows open i mean she just she'll rather pot person she would pot legalization she's not a pot smoker but she would rather escort ants out of her kitchen than stomp on them right she's really like one with with all living things she was not into hunting and not a supporter of hunting maybe even anti-hunter until i became of the age and old

enough to and she knew that i got that far into it and we would have conversations and I would explain to her what hunting was to me, how I did it, how I went about it. And that completely flipped her. And I can guarantee you right now, if she's in a room of people and there's someone talking bad about hunting, she will step in and on our behalf, speak positively about hunting and say that that, what that person is saying might not be exactly true and you might want to look into it farther and that just comes from having conversations so i think you gotta like have that same conversation around like hound hunting and lions with some hunters too because there are hunters who are like well it's not really fair you know you see that a lot yeah from yeah and i remember with the the public land trapping thing here i i heard um from multiple people who were upland bird hunters right who were pro trap

ban because they thought it was beneficial to them and uh and just not seeing the big picture about like do you honestly think you're immune from this? Yeah. Using dogs to chase down birds? Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. Right.

It's like, what's that sound familiar to? Yeah. It's like, yeah. And it's funny because people love dogs most of the time, right? Like, everybody loves dogs. But I spoke with a game warden yesterday from Colorado off the record. Um, and he's like, look, even in our agency, there's people that, you know, and their game wardens and Adam, you'll be able to speak to this, how it is set up here,

but there's, they really, they split it up between, I think like education, research and law enforcement, their game wardens do all three there that that you know what they have to do and so um to what he was saying he's like even if you don't think it's ethic ethically or personally you don't believe that you know hunting lions with hounds is the right thing to do it is a tool in the game management um officers or wardens toolbox and And when you take it away, it limits how they can, you know, manage it. Right. And I mean, it just compounds because now that they don't have that tool, those animals still have to be managed. They're still going to have to be dealt with. And he's like, you know, what's worse getting, you know, killed by a person out there hunting,

or when you get caught in a live trap and then some person walks up to you and that and he's like they are always thrashing around in that live trap right before we have to you know put one in their head or sometimes it's so wild they have to actually dart them first and then euthanize them which he said which is a bummer because i can't then donate the meat oh the meat is drugged up. Right. But it's, uh, you know, I think that people are easily swayed here because they think it's going to be better for the animal somehow, but it never is.

It's never going to be better for these animals when they can't be hunted and the hunting can't be used as a manager. There's still going to be a bunch of lethal control, more on lions and bobcats, but for sure. The thing I would point out is we're talking

about stable, we're talking about stable regulated wildlife populations. And it's definitely true. Agencies use hunting as a management tool. So whether the harvest is trapping or hunting, um, it's a huge part of the management tool to manage the population, to deal with conflicts and things.

And if, as, as Yanni said, if you take that tool away, then that burden usually goes on to the agency. And so a lot more, you'll see a lot more agency removals if hunting isn't an option. Now, how do you feel qualified to weigh in on something like that, Adam? Well, I've been a game warden for a while,

a dozen years or so, and in charge of a lot of management decisions in Southwest Montana. Let's back up to how you got in the biz. How I got in the business. How far back do you want to go? Born in Fairbanks. Correct. Born in Fairbanks, Alaska.

So, you know, you know, as a kid scale is different than an adult. And so we lived on what my dad called a homestead outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, no running water, no electricity for a good part of my life. And I felt I was way back in the bush and we went into town once, once a week for church, laundry, groceries, maybe the Sizzler or something like that, you know, in town, go out to the restaurant. But since going back there, it's not as far out as I remember it being. Oh, you remember being way out there, yeah.

Just, I remember. Well, town might've crept up on it a little bit. That's very true. You know, in the, you know, roads in Alaska have varying degrees of reliability or condition. And dad drove an old 1950s pickup. And I just remember always falling asleep on the way into town and just thinking that town

is brutal, but being back up there recently, it's a pretty quick drive into town. Um, so yeah, I grew up in, in rural Alaska, um, in, in the heart of, of the state. Uh. Was that something that your dad, uh, your dad trapped, but wouldn't, didn't eat game or something like that?

He did do some trapping. He was huge into furs and just making things out of furs. He just, just loved doing stuff with his hands and being able to make things from scratch. Um, um, you know, he, he definitely viewed that man was, he was here to kind of, uh, be the shepherd of wildlife or the shepherd of the natural world and resources. Um, you know, we had fur hats and

all sorts of stuff that he'd make, but he was a staunch vegetarian. Um, he did not eat meat, you know, every once in a while he'd eat some wild game that someone brought over and stuff, but he didn't hunt. You know, one of our most common protein sources was a, was a soy based hot dog called a Linkette. I don't know if you've ever seen those. No. Most stores have them. It's in the canned food section. I mean, just, I don't, I don't know how we ate

them now. I don't really care for them, but as a kid, just, just, just absolutely loved them. And that was a common snack or protein source. So did he trap the stuff that he used to make the- It's a mix. Yeah. But he never would consume the meat from what he trapped?

Nope. Didn't consume any meat. You know, just, I hated going to restaurants with him because there was always some sort of battle with the server over them not having good vegetarian dish options. Is this my meat or my meal going to be cooked on the same pan that, you know, that guy's getting a steak on? My mom would later tell me stories of her sneaking off to McDonald's in town because she wanted meat, liked to consume meat. You know, she's definitely a person who likes

her steak bloody rare. Um, but she was married to my dad or with my dad who was a staunch vegetarian. Hey, you know, I, there's lots of things I asked my dad on, on why he believed the things he did and never really explained it really well to me. So I can only guess, but you know, he'd eat fish though, but not red meat. Definitely not pork.

Is he still around? No, he's not. Yeah, he passed away a couple of years ago. So, yeah. So, at what age did you go in the law enforcement direction? So, early 20s. So, mom remarried. She married a guy who worked on the pipeline up there.

Uh, my stepdad who I call my dad, who, who really had a huge hand in raising me. He's a big game hunter in, in Alaska. We, we relocated later on to the Midwest of Minnesota in my teenage years. And, uh. Cause of pipeline work or what? Uh, he was up in Alaska for pipeline work.

He's from the Midwest, North Dakota, Minnesota ranching family and such. Moved up there with his brother for pipeline work and such. And I met my, met my mom. Uh, they, they had a couple of kids, my, my brothers who are half brothers, but I call them my brothers.

And, uh, they decided to move closer to his family, moved to the Midwest. So I went to high school in, in Minnesota, went to college there too. Um, really struggling with what I wanted to do for a profession. Um, you know, I think my two dreams as a kid was either to get paid to snowmobile or get paid to play with Legos. I think those were the two things that I just always dreamed of doing as a kid. And, uh, um, came out to Bozeman or West

Yellowstone actually for a snowmobile vacation, um, with my, with my dad and grandpa and a few other friends in high school. And I remember seeing a, a snowmobile drive by that said law enforcement on it. And that was like, holy crap, I could get paid to snowmobile, you know? Um, and so I started thinking about it, but it

took me a while to achieve that goal. Went to college, struggled, changed majors multiple times. You know, my first semester at MSU, I think I had a 0.75 GPA because I was skiing and fishing too much and just doing other things than going to class. That's pretty bad, right?

That's like less than a D? I think that was a W, W, D and an F maybe. That's hard to recover from. You want to start good and then it's harder to knock it down. Yeah. So, and, you know, like I said, I changed majors a bunch and eventually I took a justice studies

class in college and I got an A. I went to class, I was engaged, I got an A. And I thought maybe there's something to this. Maybe that because I'm into this, you know, subject, maybe this is a good profession for me. And that's some advice I give everybody who's struggling with, with what, what to pursue as a career. You know, I spent yesterday at MSU talking to a lot of prospective students and such and, and just, just start exploring different subjects. And when you find one, all of a sudden that becomes easy. You don't make excuses on whether or not you're going to class. You retain the information without studying too hard. Maybe that's a subject for you to pursue. And for me, criminal justice was the first one.

I never finished college early on, uh, just got frustrated. I was living in Minneapolis at the time, going to school there at the university of Minnesota, really struggling with living in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and just being in a big city. And one day I, I just kind of sat down and said to myself, if I could go anywhere and do anything, what would I do? And it was moved back to Montana where the outdoor stuff that I really loved was.

So I, I wrote myself a, a written contract, um, cause I, I toyed with going into the military too for direction. I wrote myself a written contract that said, you'll, you'll move to Montana, you'll get a job in law enforcement within two years, or you'll join the Marines. And I pinned that up on the wall and that was my

plan. And you signed it, witnessed it. Oh yeah. So moved to Montana. The first law enforcement job I got was in a detention center. So worked as a detention officer there for just under a year.

Oh, was that tough, man? It was different, pretty eyeopening to societal problems and, and just, just people in general, you know, a wide variety of people that get arrested, you know, people make mistakes and people have bad intentions. So, um, I was young, was 21 years old, you know, pretty green to the world and experience. Uh, it was eye-opening, but it did, it did further

my interest in law enforcement. Uh, so a year into that, I got hired with a municipal police department, worked there for seven years, did all sorts of things from drug task force work to traffic unit. Uh. That was in state. That was, yep.

That was here in Montana. And then just a couple of things started piling on. I never finished college, wanted to finish that, didn't have a job where I got paid to snowmobile like I originally thought, you know, conservation was still real important to me. And I, I just, city life was good, but I really

wanted to just be outside. And so went back to school. Uh, I was married then. Both my wife and I went back to school together. Um, she carried me through calculus and a couple other classes. She's definitely got the brains of the two of us. And, uh, and then, uh, started working some conservation jobs while in college. So I worked for the U S fish wildlife service doing, uh, upland game bird and waterfowl restoration work.

Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. In the Midwest of Minnesota, cause we'd moved back to Minnesota to go back to school. Um, uh, mostly cause we had kids and my parents were there and said they'd help if we want to go back to school. So it was nice to have that safety net. And, uh, yeah, then I worked as a wetland

specialist for the NRCS delineating and classifying wetlands in South Dakota and just kept wanting to get back to Montana. I, uh. That, that had to have been a semi-contentious gig, right? It was, so, you know, the, the wetland job you're talking about.

Yeah. I mean, when you got to go out and break the news. Definitely. To someone who's like, well, I'm going to drain the wetland job you're talking about. Yeah. I mean, when you got to go out and break the news. Definitely. To someone who's like, well, I'm going to drain all this. That's exactly was my role. So, so you had agriculture producers at a time when corn and soybean prices were really high. Yeah.

But it was also wet. And so they're looking at putting more acreage into production. So they want to tile everything. Yep. Tile, drain. And so there tile everything. Yep, tile, drain. And so there's a application process, a regulatory process. And so myself and others would go out and

we'd classify the wetlands by looking at historical data, aerial photography. We'd determine the hydrology, the soil type. We would. The vegetation regime too, right? Yep. Catalog the hydrophobic and hydrophilic plants, the invertebrates.

And then there's a whole process that kind of taking all those circumstances into it gives you a determination of what kind of wetland it is. And then it, then whatever rules or what they may be allowed to do with it, dry, drain it, tile it, or maybe leave it alone. They can't touch it. I was on a property recently and they had,

that work had just been done. Yeah. And I was surprised how like gnat's ass it was. I mean, they had things size of this table. Like, like contours, not things, it's not individuals, but the contour of the wetland was very precise. Oh yeah. Yeah use trimbles and arc gis that go out there by hand when we do the inspection and then because you want to get like a cross

section strata layer and then you can see like how long this has been a wetland yep and the changes that it's gone through and well i imagine people want to argue about it too. They're going to be like, shit. Right. When I was a kid. That popped up yesterday. When I was a kid, that was a, you know, dry as a desert. Well, and that's why the historical stuff came into effect. You know, you go back through decades of aerial photography.

Oh, really? And compare that to weather data to see, you know, in wet years, if it was wet, you know, if it was still wet and dry years and such like that. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. It was a really interesting job. Really loved it.

And then. Am I overblown the contentious aspect of it or was it more, was it more cooperative? It was more cooperative for sure. I mean, there was definitely instances where disagreements occurred, you know, where, where a producer might challenge the determination, you know, sometimes it got overturned, sometimes it didn't, but it was a collaborative effort between us and the producer.

We hunted on it. We had a hunting permission in Michigan's upper peninsula on a guy's place. And man, he got in a bunch of trouble for draining something he wasn't supposed to drain once. And his name was Herb. And for some reason we always called him

Herbicide. But it wasn't, but it wasn't even Herbicide. He just drained it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you know, so that was, that job led to the job I have now. So I started to miss law enforcement.

You know, you guys were talking about the respectful tight knit group of the football team you were interacting with last night. You know, I missed that brotherhood that law enforcement had, that group of people who were literally willing to sacrifice themselves for each other and, and experience a lot of stress together.

And when you experience stress together, you build bonds. You know, you guys probably have experienced it out in the field. If a hunt goes perfectly correct, it's fun, but the ones that are really memorable are the ones that go to crap, basically. And you persevere and you get through it. I miss that bond, miss that group of people, miss the law enforcement asset of public service, but wanted to stay in conservation and came out to Montana and became a game warden here.

Is that pretty competitive at the time? It is. It still is. Yeah. We definitely get a decent amount of applicants, but we have vacancies every year. So we're always hiring. From what I've seen, people stay longer in this profession than maybe some other law enforcement profession so is the flow does the flow normally go that people are in police work and go into game warden or is it like a two-way two-way door or both i've seen it go both ways have you like as a goal from game warden but man i'm just going back and straight up like highway patrol or whatever. Yeah. Part of law enforcement is it's really hard to do, to understand what it is until you're in it.

Uh-huh. And, you know, another piece of advice I give for people trying to figure out their career and they come to me and say, I want to be a game warden. I tell them, well, get a degree in whatever your second choice is. Get a degree in, don't get a degree in criminal justice. You know, maybe get a degree in wildlife management. You're really interested in conservation. That way, if the law enforcement side doesn't work out for you, you have a backup plan and you're not, now I have to go back to school because you don't know if it's a good fit for you until you

try it. And, um, we have a decent amount of people who wash out of training programs and we have a lot of people who, who just decide, I just, I just don't like this. I don't like being a referee for people's recreation and fun out there. And they decide to go into something else. That's interesting. Is that how a lot of people see it? Or is that, uh, Adam Pankratz original, a referee for other people's recreation? You know, my kids play a lot of high school sports and I have a lot of empathy for the

referees out there because I see connections for what they do. To me, you're in the public eye, you're correcting people's fun. And sometimes the correction and message you have and rules you're delivering. You're a buzz killer. Exactly.

You know, so I have a lot of empathy for them and, and I've asked a lot of, a lot of people who come to me who know sports, like, have you ever looked at a referee and thought that looks like a cool job? If they say no, maybe my job isn't the right one for you. It depends, you know, that's not all we do, but it's a part and you have to have that ability to be able to go into a group of people at a fishing access site and tell them what you're doing is illegal. You have to stop.

And you might get, oh, stop being a buzz killer. You know, you're ruining our fun. But the rules are there for a reason, for safety or for conservation and protection of habitat. This is a tricky one. This is going to be tricky for you to answer. You don't need to spend too much time on it.

But we got a ton of things I want to ask you about um there has to be how do you handle when there's rule like there's certain rules i imagine they're just like seem so concrete and if that rule wasn't in place the whole system would collapse okay but there's gotta be other rules where uh you might look and be like yeah you know it is confusing sure it it and you don't need to say which ones or it is poorly written or i really can't articulate to you the why this is the that way yeah is it hard to jump into that mindset of of having to be that i'm not here. I'm not like an arbiter. I'm not here to do value judgments. I'm here to be like, this is my code.

Sure. And I enforce this code and I, and it's not my, I don't need to morally wrestle with, you know. Yeah. What I'm up against here. No, I know what you're talking about. I mean, there's rules that are pretty black and white. I mean, anybody who's grown up around fishing knows you have to have a fishing license.

Yeah. It's just, it's just a general rule. It doesn't matter what state you go to. And so I have little patience for people's excuse of, I didn't know I needed a fishing license. Yeah. It's just nowhere in the United States that you

don't need a fishing license. Obviously there's age groups or groups that maybe don't need them from, from the elderly to the young, but everyone needs a fishing license. And so the excuse of, I didn't know, it doesn't hold weight with me. And there's a general acceptance of ignorance of the law is not a defense. Yeah.

Um, but, um, you know, as we create laws and regulations, sometimes we don't know the effects of them until we try and implement them. Got it. And our job in enforcement is to implement and enforce the laws. You know, if you have your three branches of government, legislature creates law, the courts interpret them and the executive branch, which we're part of enforces them or implements them. So that implementation, you know, you'll have decision makers up on high that'll give us a law or give us priorities.

And we'll implement them. But part of my role as an administrator is to send up feedback back up the chain of how that implementation went, how the enforcement went, were there issues, were we running into problems in the courts where the courts are interpreting it different than the maybe legislative intent. And so sometimes we use that implementation to clarify laws. That's why you may see laws change over time. Oh, because you just keep running into trouble every time you go to prosecute. Someone tries to prosecute and they run into trouble. A loophole is found or it's ambiguous.

You know, if we run into issues where the general public just is confused or our own staff, you know, that's a good feedback. If our own staff game wardens are confused what the role is in this, that's a good sign the public is too. And we'll try and fix that, you know, as soon as we can. Sometimes the government process is slow, but we have a lot of other tools in enforcement. Ticket is the last thing we want to do or take someone to jail. You know, officers have discretion and the way we look at discretion is what kind of action do we need to take to change behavior? If me just walking up to you and reminding you,

hey, put your dog on a leash in a state park is good enough and you do it and you comply and we never have to talk again, then there's no reason for a ticket. But if I tell you that and then you give me the finger and walk off and start, you know, playing catch with your dog, now we're going to have to step up to a higher level of enforcement. Yeah. And most people are compliant.

Most people, all it takes is the game warden driving by and everybody's like, oh, game warden's on. Hey, turn the radio on. Exactly. And now everybody's, you know, behaving. And so a lot of, a lot of our efforts are just being out there interacting with people and being present and and for the most part people don't need rules and laws because they're good they're good members of society and they want to do the right thing you get uh in the time i've known you you get i don't want to say wrangled and it's just part of

your job you get involved in animal attacks. Yeah. And here, because of the nature of where you are, you get involved in serious animal attacks. Get involved from a law enforcement point of view, not like you step out of the office. Oh, yeah, now you're getting attacked by animals. But when there's an animal attack, it's under your purview. Sure.

I've been charged by a few things, but I've never been injured by an animal yet. But yeah, so, you know, wildlife, human attacks, every state has some sort of process or role to play in that when it comes to wildlife management. And in Montana, you know, say a grizzly bear gets into a conflict and causes an injury or death of a human. Local law enforcement is there and responsible to, so the local sheriff's department, maybe the land management agency. So we have a lot of federal lands in Montana.

So Forest Service. I want to go back to some of the people who understand it. So let's say that a, let's say that a hunter on national forest land in the state of Montana gets killed by a grizzly bear. Correct. Walk through how that pie is divided up. Yeah. It's a lot going on. There is, there's a lot of agencies with a lot of responsibility. So for, for one, the most important thing for us is human safety, public safety. So when there is an

incident like that, we're going to respond with an effort to stop whatever danger is happening, uh, and make sure no one, you know, anybody injured gets the medical attention they need, and then to stop any further public safety issue. That's the priority of everybody. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction, what patch you're wearing on your shoulders. That's the priority of everybody. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction, what patch you're wearing on your shoulders. That's the first priority is to stop whatever bad thing is happening. In this case, meaning like assess whether this is correct. Going to happen like a second time someone walks into this area. Yep, exactly. So that could be closing an area until we figure out what happens. So it could

be a management action on the animal, all those types of things. And so the jurisdictions, you know, if it happened on US Forest Service land, their law enforcement division has jurisdiction over their property rules and regulations. The state of Montana has jurisdiction over wild animals in Montana. Grizzly bears, there's some nuance because they're federally protected.

The US Fish Wildlife Service still has general management authority, but there's an MOU sign between them and Fish Wildlife and Parks that where we do a lot of on the ground stuff, but the overarching. What's MOU mean? Memorandum of Understanding or Memorandum

of Agreement, MOA. So they basically sign off managing that situation to you. They're not like, wait till we get there. Yeah. So over some overarching decisions would, would be handled by the US fish wildlife service. Let's say we capture a live grizzly bear that

maybe were suspected to be responsible for the incident, the US fish wildlife service would be heavily involved in the decision making on that, the. On what to do with that bear in that barrel. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So, so like if you, if a bear kills someone, you

determine like you need to, you need to kill that bear, you have to run that past, um, fish and wildlife first. Correct. You can't make that decision. It depends on the situation. There, there could be an instance right on the ground where a person could.

Well, you've had that happen where you went to an attack site and the bear was still hanging could. Well, you've had that happen where you went to an attack site and the bear was still hanging out. Correct. Yep. Yeah. And then you don't need to like call someone. No, no, there's, you know, any person, you know,

which includes law enforcement has the right to defend themselves. I see. And there's decision-making on the ground that can occur where this animal is still a threat. Its behavior is predatory or someone's in danger and we have to make a management decision or defend life, you know, right there and there. I got it. Yeah.

That's, like you said, like any person, right? You're in a situation then which would be. Correct. Applicable to anyone. Correct. Anybody has the right to defend themselves from danger. And then the other big part of the jurisdictional thing is when you have a human that's injured or deceased, the sheriff's department or the coroner has jurisdiction over thatzzly bears, uh, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, and then local law enforcement, which sometimes could involve city, county, highway patrol, whoever's basically available.

Um, you know, our role as game wardens in the state of Montana is to investigate that scene and one, confirm if an animal is present or responsible. So it could be reported as an animal attack. But unless we have a dead grizzly bear right there, you know, in the middle of the attack, we don't know for sure. And so it's looking at DNA evidence, looking at surrounding evidence, looking for caches or bear dens, tracks, injury assessment, all those type of things to determine if an animal is involved, um, determine species of that animal, and then look at behavior also, or best interpretation of was it acting defensively? Was it acting predatorily? Is it diseased or something? It's just acting out of its nature, totally something wrong. Um, and then the next thing is that management decision.

What do we need to do for management on the situation of whatever animal is responsible? Do we leave it alone? Uh, do we haze it? Do we capture it? Do we euthanize it? Um, or, you know, thinking about, uh, location is in a remote location or is it right in the middle of town? Uh, if the behavior was defensive, it it's, it's

unlikely it's going to happen again soon. Um, if it's predatory and they've identified humans as food source, um, there's a current human threat or if the animal is habituated, um, you know, it's lost its fear of humans identified humans as a food source as in garbage and those things, then that's a problem also. I don't have an opinion on this meaning i see both sides of it but it surprises me

that you could have a uh it surprises me that you could have a grizzly kill a person and the decision might be made to let the bear walk or is that not really the right way of expressing it it and that's yeah the, there's a lot of factors in that. And like I said, remoteness and behavior are one of them. Um, there's also whether or not we think we can get the right bear.

Yeah. That, that, that, that I imagine is a big issue, right? Like time has gone by. In, in, in our experience, you know, I don't know what the percentage is, but 90 plus percentage of, of these incidents that we have with predatory animals that attack a human, it's defensive in nature. The animal is scared to death, hits the person in a defensive mode.

Just, I don't know what this is. It's a threat to me. I'm going to smack it around and let it know I'm tougher than it. And then it runs for the hills. It's really rare that we go into one of these attack scenes and the bear or whatever it is, is still there. And so the likelihood that we get the right bear, it's pretty low.

You know, we'll do aerial searches. We'll make sure it's gone from the area. We'll do ground searches. Sometimes we use houndsmen, we set traps, all those types of things. It doesn't mean we're going to euthanize it, but we're makingoundsmen, we set traps, all those types of things. It doesn't mean we're going to euthanize it, but we're making sure the bear has moved on and. But rolling through with a helicopter and gunning

a bunch of bears down isn't like a. No, we don't want to. And we don't, we wouldn't want to euthanize, you know, 10 bears trying to get one. That's, that's. Yeah, no, I understand. That's, yeah. How, like as far as, for the amount of, grizzlies are out walking around, whatever, April to December say, like, is there just a huge, I imagine when September hits, it's just like not many incidents and then spike and then it falls off like in November or something. Definitely the fall seems to be the highest density of attacks.

And a lot of that has to do with just hunters being in the field, being in places that there isn't a lot of people. And fresh meat laying around. That's part of it too. But people displace wild animals. So in our area, go to any trail that is really popular, lava lake, highlight, all those places. Not a whole lot of wildlife around.

That's because of the amount of people. Mountain bikers, dog walkers, cars, all those things displace animals. And so where do hunters go? They go where the higher density of animals are going to be. Higher density of ungulates means higher density of predators. There's less people displacing them. And what kind of behavior are going to be, higher density of ungulates means higher density of predators. There's less people displacing them. And what kind of behavior are they displaying?

They're not making a lot of noise. Oh, you sneak to the woods and you make a noise like a cow. Exactly. And you try to keep the wind to your face. And so, I mean, it just makes sense that you increase that type of human behavior out in the field, you're going to increase the interactions with wildlife.

Um, so, you know, we. Yeah. In terms of wildlife, that's the objective. Well, Bozeman. Like you're trying to increase interactions with wildlife. Bozeman, Montana is prime grizzly bear habitat, but how many grizzly bear attacks do we have on mainstream Bozeman?

None because of the high density of humans that are displacing grizzly bears they just aren't around this area because we get in their way they're afraid of us in a way and uh um it's just just not a good place for them to be and even if they even if they did want to be the likelihood that they're going to get in trouble and die from getting hit by a car from getting in trouble from getting into garbage whatever it's like even if they wanted to be it's still tough for them yeah absolutely but we have some that i don't know if they live full time but they certainly skirt with with town boundaries right and and particularly as this town grows you know that that urban to wildlands

interface grows or gets more complicated yeah dude there's a house it's like they backpack the parts that house that you can see from anywhere in town halfway up the bridges yeah the hell is that is that the one that reflects the sun off oh no he, he's like, man He said it was real, like, I want you to find The most conspicuous spot You can find in all of town Then I'd like you to find the most conspicuous material And I want you to Backpack all that material up to that spot

Helicopter So I can build a radar station And the builder's like, now you're gonna be looking at a lot of people And you're gonna have a good view of the airfield. Is that all right? What is that thing? Sure. Is it a house?

We had three forks and the sun's hitting something. Oh, yeah. Something right. I know what you're talking about. It's blinding. There's something halfway up the bridges that's like glowing. It's not a raptor friendly home. Oh, man. Um, along with people displacing wildlife,

there's, uh, plenty of folks that are moving into that urban wildlife interface too, that make an effort to attract wildlife. Sure. Uh, you know, wildlife is, is one of Montana's greatest resources. And so a lot of people visit here and move here because of those wild resources.

I did. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's something that. Cal's is real boring. Brought me here. Lazy about it. Just lazy about it. Yeah.

And so the, I can understand the appeal of the thought of buying a little mountain place and being able to look out your window and see bears and elk frolicking in your yard. And to Yanni's point, there's, there's still plenty of wildlife around this town. Um, and, and the towns that are closer to higher animal density.

So think about towns closer to Yellowstone National Park, um, West Yellowstone Gardner. They deal with grizzly bears going down main street all the time in those towns. Less people, but also they're in the heart of high density wildlife areas. Um, that change that's occurring around here definitely is increasing conflict.

Um, as we are seeing more people move into the area, more people, um, dis we are seeing more people move into the area, more people, um, displace wildlife, more habitat being developed and more people moving into that interface zone, you're seeing definitely conflicts on the rise. And more bears. Sure. Yeah.

I wanted to add. Wildlife are doing great. Like you said, you've been a game warden for 12 years and you hear all the time, like, oh, every year it's more grizzly attacks. Like is, do you feel that's the case or is it just like there's more exposure to the attacks

in the media or is it like actually an increasing number of attacks? You know, so my understanding from talking to our bear specialists and seeing their, their data is that the attack rate, if you compare it to population at the same time of the animal and population of humans, it's remaining steady. Oh.

So that, so the frequency's going up, but so is the bear population and human population. So it's not like it's just spiking crazy as an anomaly. It's not like bears have changed their habits. No. It's just that there's more of them and there's more people for them to attack. Correct.

And why do people move to this area? Get attacked by a bear. Well, to go outside, you know? I mean, it's crazy the amount of people that are citizens of this state that either hunt and fish or just recreate, period, out in the woods. I mean, we see it around this area. Explosion is, is, is huge. People typically vacation here, not for the cultural amenities of the town, which has

amazing ones, but it's because they want to see the outdoors and the, the, the wild resources we have. So. Let's move to otter attacks. Wow. Oh, come on. While we're on.

That's what I want to hear about. It's going to be good. I promise. But this follow-up question I think is good too. While we're on grizz's what I want to hear about. It's going to be good, I promise. But this follow-up question I think is good too. While we're on grizzly bears, there seems to be in our community an attitude every time you see a post about another grizzly bear attack. It's like, it's because we need a goddamn grizzly bear season.

And if we start shooting the bears, it'll cure all of our grizzly bear problems. What's your attitude, opinion about that? You asking me? Yeah. I mean, Montana has a plan where we would like to retain or take back grizzly bear management. Can I interrupt? Yeah, go for it.

The feds would like you to do it. Oh, there's an agreement there for sure. No, I just want people to, I'm not speaking as Adam Pankratz. I'm not speaking as Warden Pankratz. This is the point I like to clarify to people all the time. The federal agency that is in charge of taking care of grizzly bears,

the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they are the ones. They are the ones that propose delisting. This gets lost all the time. They say, of all the endangered species they administer, they say when it's time. They have said. Multiple times. For 13 years, they have said. Multiple times. For 13 years. They have said.

Hey heads up. It's time. It's them saying this. So go on. I just want to make sure that listeners at home understand. This isn't someone going and being like. Give me that. Give me that.

It's like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said. It is time now for us to hand over management of the grizzly bear yeah in this and then outside litigants block them from doing what they're trying to do this is not a tug of war right now go back to i just want to just make sure people understand this because this is not widely understood. Well, thinking about Yanni's question, um, you know, fish wildlife and parks and other state agencies utilize hunting as a management tool.

That's real critical to the North American model and to, to the way that we manage populations here. And so not having that tool for grizzly bears, uh, it's, it's just one less option for us to use. Um, the, the future is going to be really slow on any grizzly bear, state managed grizzly bear. You're not going to see wide open general tag

hunting on grizzly bears anytime, probably in our lifetime. Anytime in anybody's life. I mean, unless like all of a sudden everybody dies. That's so. Like most people die maybe. You know, if, if a season ever occurred, it's

going to be extremely limited. And, and for those who are saying, you know, we need to put the fear of man back into these bears, that's very unlikely that that is going to result from one, two, three super tags out there. It just, just isn't, you know. Can you explain, like people may not know what super tags are and the fact that if there was a hunting season, there's only ever going to be a few bears that would. Yeah, more than likely, you know, if, if the state gains back management, it's going to be limited. Any sort of hunt isn't going to happen right

away. And if it, if, and when it ever does, it's going to be very limited to a handful of tags, one or two statewide would be my guess. Yeah. I'd like to remind people what, I mean, we kind of got a glimpse of how it would go some years ago when delisting came close,oming was going to do 20 they were going

to issue 20 tags and they have the bulk of the the you know the way it's cut up they have the bulk of the bears in the greater yellowstone ecosystem which was going to get delisted um had they done the northern continental divide it might have played out differently but the way they were looking at delisting the greater Yellowstone area, Idaho was going to do a tag. I think it was one. Was it one? I applied for that because I was a resident. It was only

open to residents of the state of Idaho. Yeah, and Montana abstained. Montana was going to sit it out. Wyoming was going to do 20. So 20 in Wyoming, one in Idaho, zero. Now that wasn't Northern Continental, like it might've played out differently because

Northern Continental Divide, they're the state sitting on over a thousand there. But just to give you a sense of how limited it was going to be, it was going to be so limited that it was going to be none. Yeah. That was just first year. Yeah.

That was first year. And that was at that time, not this time. Yeah. The, the plan, you know, I'm not part of writing the plan. I'll help implement it and such, but, uh, it, it's going to be very limited. Um, the big thing is making sure the state and

the citizens of the state have tools to deal with conflict, tools to deal with management decisions. So, you know, grizzly bear populations are expanding, they're moving into areas they occupied a long time ago, but they haven't been for a hundred plus years. And so, so towns, landowners, ag producers are dealing with a new conflict they're not used to dealing with. And so what they want is tools. They want answers from, from the state management agency, from the local bear specialist, from the game war.

What can I do when this animal is in my front yard and I'm just trying to take the kids to school? What can I do when this animal's killing my livestock? You know, all those types of things. Um, how do we respond to it? And, and the agency's opinion always has been through state management is, is the best way to, to achieve those goals or to be able to have the most amount of tools in the toolbox to deal with those conflicts. Well, I think, you know, it's very interesting and I haven't looked at the exact numbers in, in a while, but, uh, if you look at like the black bear population and we have a black bear season and the increase year over year of, uh, conflict black bears that are, are killed by not hunters, right. By a state or federal employees at, at one agency or another. Um, that's a very telling trend, very telling number to me.

Right. It's like. Meaning here you have spring season, fall season. You can run them with dogs. And you still got bears coming through the screen door. Yep. It's a primary tool for us. So when our game wardens are responding or our bear specialists responding to a black bear conflict, for instance, around this area. And it's, you know, out of city limits in an area that hunting is currently open or will be soon or

something in the future. And, um, and it's safe. That's one of the first options or first solutions they present to the homeowner landowners. Can we get a bear hunter out here? Cause we would much rather a hunter harvest that than we harvest it ourselves. Oh, for a lot of different reasons, right?

Many different reasons. Yeah, absolutely. I never get any phone calls about this. Well, that one I spoke to yesterday said the absolute worst part of his job, and he believes many of his colleagues feel the same way, is to have to euthanize animals. Absolutely.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club club y'all. You know, the, the first time I, I, I killed an animal on duty and, and, and the first actual time was accidental. So I was doing wetland work over in Minnesota and I was driving a side-by-side across the prairie to do some, some restoration work. And I drove over a nesting duck, just didn't see it there, drove over it and upset me so much.

Cause here I am out here trying to manage these, save them, whatever you want to call it, you know, and I just drove over one and it was just this just moment for me of just, and I was with a, with a couple of high school kids on a crew who are working with me and I had them stand up in the forp side by side and their job now is to scout for ducks so we don't run over anymore because it's just totally disheartening for me. And it's the same thing here when we have to euthanize one, we have a lot of empathy for that

animal. We put a lot of effort, a lot of blood, sweat and tears into, to managing these species, caring for them, ensuring they're here for a long time. Um, the last thing we want to do is kill them. There's times we have to because of the conflict, but usually that conflict's preventable.

Usually that conflict has a lot to do with humans. Sometimes it doesn't. There's surprise encounters like we talked about out in the woods where you just, humans and bears or humans and whatever animal occupied the same space, and there's a fight over that space.

It's really nobody's fault at that point. The bear's defending its space and maybe you're defending your space. And those conflicts will always be there, but the preventable ones of keeping attractants clean, you know, not having fruiting trees in your yard, not having bird feed, uh, bird feeders, keeping your trash locked up until just before trash pickup occurs.

All those types of things are huge that will prevent a lot of these management removals of, of species like bears. Yeah. When I was working with the grizzly team in Idaho, which is like one of the coolest things I've ever done and will probably ever do. Uh, to Yanni's point, like he had, uh, this story about there's a bear, um, getting very familiar with a particular campground. Um, they had gone in into the campground, very popular one outside of Island Park, Idaho, and, um, which is part of the GYE and had gone to every single

campsite and said, Hey, there's a grizzly bear. You guys got to keep your trash locked up. Um, this, you know, very sophisticated, uh, established campground with bear, uh, proof containers, um, for storage and then bear proof garbage cans for disposal. And one particular campsite left all their watermelon out. Very identifiable food. The bear came in, got that, was basically camped out on the edge of the campground. These two folks who are absolute grizzly bear professionals and very invested in, in grizzly bears. Like we had to shoot that grizzly bear.

And when I took it upon myself to then inform the campers at that campsite, that the reason that we had to shoot that grizzly bear was because they couldn't bring it upon themselves to take their watermelon 35 yards to the garbage and put it away. They informed me that we had ruined their family vacation. Right. And this is like, it's the animal really i mean it is the animal in north america like it is the thing that's referenced uh it's a species that everybody's in awe of in one way or another um we're just at the talking back with the football players last night i was talking with a bunch of them you you know, I was like, you know, there's still a large population of hunters, uh,

in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, that they plan their hunts way around grizzly bears. Yeah. Like, oh,

this is a known grizzly bear area. We're not going to attempt to hunt there, fish there, or even apply for tags there. Good. And I'm like, we're, you know, but hunt there, fish there, or even apply for tags there. Good. And I'm like, we're, you know, but, um, there's, uh, plenty of people who don't think that way too.

So that's why we were talking about displacing animals, like a lot more people recreating in, in, in bear territory. But let's move to otter attacks. So you, let's say I have an otter attack and you're like, this isn't going to become a normal problem, but it gets a lot of public attention. It does. And it's, it's rare, but more common than you think. Oh, is that right?

In a way, you know, the statistics change every year, but when I look at the reports of human animal attacks, the top three species in Southwest Montana for just incidents reported to my staff, grizzly bears, number one. Okay. What's number two?

Black bear. Black bears. Moose. Otters. Moose. Oh, moose. Moose is number two.

And typically in most years, otters is number three. Are you serious? It doesn't mean there's dozens or hundreds of them, but just on average, there's a handful, a couple every year. You know, usually we run into around 10 grizzly incidents in this area.

Depends, changes every year that causes some sort of human injury or conflict or something like that. You know, a handful, three, four moose incidents where a moose stomps on somebody or kick somebody and then, you know, one to three otter attacks probably every year. I know Anchorage has some, had some real otter

conflict, like some otters took over a park. Yeah. You know. Oh, and there was those otters that were taking over that surf break somewhere. Oh, sea otters. On the West Coast. River otters. California. Sea otters that were taking over that surf break somewhere. Oh, sea otters. On the West Coast. River otters.

California. Sea otters, sorry. Yeah. So they're getting up on people's surfboards. Getting a lot of here. Oh, yeah. Man, otter gang violence these days. Yeah.

Outrageous. You did a lot of interviews about the otter. Oh, that's the thing they said was going to happen. Yeah. The test of the emergency alert happen Yeah Of course it happens Federal I left my cell phone in the truck And it was going to be a distraction in here

Well they really did that I remember reading that and being like that seems like a weird idea It works Yeah That should be the noise when an otter's coming out So there was an otter attack and you got, it became a national news story. The last one did, you know. That's the first time I've seen an otter attack for us become national news.

Yeah. I mean, interviews with the Washington Post, LA Times, it did an interview with Fox News Live and such. It was a pretty severe one. So what caught hold, like why did that grab the national attention the way it did? I think because of what you were kind of getting at is the perceived rarity of the event and then the severity of the injuries. And, you know, so I have an aunt who believes it's a conspiracy against otters. She believes that we're making up all these otter attacks

because how could such a cute, cuddly animal do such? She thinks you're trying to villainize the otter. Oh yeah, for sure. And when I send her articles or a time we post a warning at a fishing exercise about an aggressive otter,

she just thinks it's all a lie because there's no way that otters could ever do such a thing. Well, what do you have to gain in villainizing otters is what i'm trying to figure out well this is how i would do it okay uh it is so dangerous that you you can't uh have people floating in inner tubes or doing non-angling activities on rivers like that in fact they can't use the boat ramps uh they can't stand in the middle of the boat ramp while you're trying to back raft in.

Mm-hmm. All, all those. He's going to scare everybody away and then have the river all do himself. Mm-hmm. So like we talked about humans displace wildlife and you know, we have a section of a river, the lower Madison here that has a tuber hatch every,

every, every summer when the. It's so weird because that was not even sort of a thing. It word of mouth, you know, companies coming in and catering to it. Big business. That was, I mean,

I always try to tell my kids when I'm driving along, I'm like, this just was not a thing. I don't, but didn't you do that growing up in Michigan? That's what I tried to explain to him. It's big in the East. So, yeah. So I was, I was recently, I just had this conversation with my kids. I don't. But didn't you do that growing up in Michigan? That's what I tried to explain to him. It's big in the east. So, yeah.

So, I was recently, I just had this conversation with my kids. I'm like, there's certain things that, like, when I moved to Montana in 1996, there were certain things that were not part of the culture. Ice fishing, they were woefully behind in ice fishing technology. For sure. From a Midwest perspective. It was like, they just don't know about it. Yeah. And they did not know about tubing.

Now they do. Yeah. They did not know. It had not occurred to Montanans that you would float down a river in a tube. But where I grew up, you'd skip school to do that. Yeah. I mean, it was baked into the culture.

Tubing. Yep. Yeah. I remember. You could rig your cooler. You got to realize too that like the rivers, like a lot of the rivers kind of off limits to tubing, right? You'd just be doing pinball down whitewater rapids and hitting boulders and shit. Yeah, you drag your ass down a never ending gravel bar.

Like the Muskegon River, you could tube 10 miles and never hit a rock. Or the water temperature's really cold, makes it uncomfortable. Exactly too. And where I grew up, I mean, in August, and it's just like being in your bathtub. Well, the reason I bring it up is high concentration of tubers on that section of the river,

which means low density of river otters, which means very few incidents of attacks. And where we see the attacks happen is when tubers decide the lower Madison's too full and they go to other remote sections of rivers to get away from people, less density of humans, higher chance that they, that they might have an encounter with an, with an otter. What do you think the otters deal is? Again, I think it's very similar to what we talked about before.

Human and wildlife trying to occupy the same space. Is there always pups involved? There can be, but it could be a food source. It could be, you know, a den. It could be just a territorial attack. But it's humans and wildlife occupying the same space and the wildlife is saying, this is my, this is my area.

Get out of here. And what moves does the otter use? What are they doing when they're, you know. When they're attacking? Yeah. Like what is their sort of attack pattern? Well, I've never seen one happen myself. I've only helped clean up the mess afterwards

and thinking of otters are, they're predators. Yeah. You know, they got sharp claws, sharp teeth. I call them the wolves of the river. Oh, absolutely. Listen, I would never, ever, I was like, I believe that you don't want to fight any animal

that has no legs. Like a snake. Like an otter is like, you're not going to grab, you're going to grab my leg, that ain't going to do any good. Like a snake. Like a otter's like, you're not going to grab, you're going to grab by the leg, that ain't going to do any good. Like a snake-like body. Yeah, he's like, no leg.

Holding him by the leg and lifting him up, he's just going to be like mauling your arm and face. And how vulnerable are we in the water? That's not what our bodies are designed to be.

Yeah, someone sitting in a tube is not impressive as someone like standing up, walking down a trail, you know? I mean, do you remember when we saw the two sea otters mating in Southeast Alaska? No. Were you on that trip? No.

No? Well, never mind. If you saw them just doing their thing, you definitely don't want to get in a scrap with them, right? Oh, just the agility. Yeah. Oh, this year we saw like 30 sea otters all together. It's like, just, just thinking about it's

like, if those things want to come over here and tussle like 30 of them. You ain't stopping them. No. No. But they're primarily biting. Correct. So, so the last one, you know, it just

chance encounter. They, the, the ladies that were floating down the river weren't doing anything wrong The ladies that were floating down the river weren't doing anything wrong. They're just floating down the river. They occupied the otter space. They, you know, from their description, one to two otters, they're not sure,

but the way they were attacking multiple people, it made them think there was more than one otter. Typically they're attacking the tube itself or legs and buttocks that are suspended in the water when you're in a tube. Um, in this particular incident, one of the females fell off the tube or jumped off the tube. And as she was swimming, the otter came up and

attacked her face now that her face is down on the water and that's what caused the severity of the injuries and, uh. While swimming. Yeah. And she, she got to the other side of the river. Her two friends got to the, she, she got to the other side of the river. Her two friends got to the, she, she went to the

remote side of the river where the two friends went to the highway side. They called, um, 911, a highway patrolman showed up first. Uh, this highway patrolman jumped in the river, swam the length of the river with aggressive otters in the river and provided first aid to the severely injured gal on the

other side while the helicopter was called. And we, you know, we were the last ones on scene. By the time we got there, deputy sheriffs, the highway patrolman and EMS staff had kind of taken care of the situation and provided the lifesaving attention. Was there any concern with rabies there? There can be depending on the behavior, you know.

Um, there has been incidents where we've attempted to trap and test them. We did not in this one. I was going to ask, is there an expectation to treat that aggressive river otter like you would an aggressive grizzly bear? Sure. And like, I want that trapped or.

Well, again, it depends on behavior. If we, if it's, you know, if it's abnormal behavior, then yes, we're going to, we're going to probably take a hands-on management action against it. But if it's normal behavior, which wild animals like otters protecting their territory is normal, we may not.

Did you guys pull a DNA sample off that otter? No, we did not on that one. So you can't even compare them in a lineup later. There are so many good t-shirt designs going through my head right now i already sent an email to hunter i'm ahead of you can we move on from otters you go for it tell me about uh tell me about when when when you catch wind that wild game meat has made its way into the commercial market. Sure. Walk me through how you see that and how does that happen and what's that wind up looking like?

I think it's important to talk about why that's illegal first or a little bit about the history. You guys have talked a lot about market hunting and the history of that and what it did to wildlife in North America. I think that's one piece of the puzzle, but it's an important piece. You know, as the West was being settled, for settlement as part of the Homestead Act and also for gold extraction and exploration, all those types of things. And agriculture kind of, uh, was a step behind, you know? Got it. And so there's a lot of people moving into the area, a lot more people than there was before. You know, obviously there was indigenous tribes

here living in a sustainable nature, manner on the landscape, but as the Western culture moved West, um, you know, there, there, a food source was needed for all these people and wildlife was easily identified in the beginning as it was abundant, um, as a resource. And, and for different reasons, some of it was harvested through market hunting. Some of it was just, just, uh, um, subsistence, you know, huge amount of subsistence hunting

occurred in Montana and other Western states as gold panters and trappers and others were establishing themselves out here or agriculture was, was getting established. Um, that led to a severe decimation of wildlife. You know, you're talking by the late 1800s, there was hardly, hardly anything left in Montana. Um, elk herds. You know what's the interesting irony is, uh, I pointed this out on this project we're working

on about commercial hunters is that the Boone and Crockett Club takes its name from two commercial hunters. Yeah. But the first order of business for the Boone and Crockett Club was going after the commercial sale of game meat. Sure. It's like a weird. Absolutely. Sort of conflict built within the name. I imagine two commercial hunters had a good

perspective. I mean, they saw that their industry or livelihood was dying, you know, as just game became more scarce. Yeah. Well, it's definitely the, like the story of commercial waterfowl hunters were the ones who were like, do you know that there's no birds left?

Oh, they were, they pointed that out. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I, but I think also it is a livelihood lifestyle thing too, where it's like, we've been living this life for so long. You know, it's like, we got to figure out how to

make sure that it sticks around because I can't imagine, um, you know, going back to school and getting a desk job after running my punt gun every night for the last five years. You think about the, the first Western settlers that come to Montana and just the abundance that was here, you know, I, back in college, took a class where we just read the Lewis and Clark journals for a whole semester, every single page. And I was really stuck by a description at Pompey's Pillar, east of Billings on the Yellowstone River, where they described standing on that pillar and seeing the abundance of herds of elk, buffalo,

and wolves, just, just surrounded by them as they were looking out on the short grass prairie that surrounded that river valley. Um, you can go and visit that site now. And that day's journal from, I think, July of 1805, 1806, somewhere around there, um, is etched on Pompey's pillar. And when you read that and then look around and see the change in the landscape, you're not going to see any elk. You're not going to see any wolves for sure.

And you won't see buffalo unless they're ranch buffalo. Um, the landscape dramatically changed quickly in a hundred years. Um, and, and our agency, Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the, the statutes and rules that, that govern it. And that also led to this great resurgence of wildlife, were in reaction to basically that loss of wildlife. And set a lot of groundwork for the work that we do now to include investigating commercial harvest of, of, of wildlife and such. Um, you know, a, a, a quick

history of wildlife law, you know, 18, late 1860s is, is when the first kind of wildlife law was enacted in Montana. Yeah. Early 1900s, the Lacey Act, um, the Pittman-Robertson Act and such, but the history of conservation law and regulation in Montana starts with decimation, then laws created in response and then enforcement of those laws. So if you think about the history of the agency, it started with one game warden and some fishing game laws, and then slowly more game wardens were added. Game wardens who patrolled an area of like 18,000

square miles alone by themselves. But there was no wildlife staff. There was no management. You know, the local university, MSU, didn't start their wildlife management program until the 1930s. So you had this span of 30 years where the way we managed wildlife was just law and enforcement.

And then with Aldo Leopold and others, it switched to more of a management, habitat restoration. And through that, all this trial and error, those seven pillars of tenets of the North American model were developed. Not because one person wrote them down like the Ten Commandments, you know, up on high on a piece of slab of stone, but through trial and error, figuring out what worked. And one of those tenants is elimination of unregulated commercial harvest, commercial markets. Um, and why I say unregulated is there's still commercial markets for public resources, right? There's, there's, you know, ore and oil extraction that occurs on public lands. There's timber harvest. And there's also a huge fisheries industry in

many states that has a commercial aspect to it. You can sell wild mushrooms, you can sell elk antlers, you can sell coyotes. There still is a role for it. Regular old fire hood. Yep, exactly. Firewood. Exactly.

There's, there's all sorts of public resources that still can be extracted commercially and sold commercially. But there's resources that we've identified that can't sustain a commercial market. And large wildlife, ungulates and such is one of them that it's pretty universal. You know, there's game farms that have developed to meet that demand of people who don't hunt that do want to eat elk and buffalo and other things that, that they can't go out and hunt themselves. But for wild resources, um, that elimination of commercial markets was really key to allowing the restoration to occur. I don't know what the future holds. Maybe we get to a point where hunting participation is so low and wildlife populations are so abundant,

you could see commercial markets come back in a certain state. But right now for where we are, it's just, just not feasible. When I've tried to express this to people, um, like as many, as many deer as we seem to have, but then you try to express the, like the frailty of deer would be that if every American put a deer in their freezer tomorrow, we'd have a, I don't know, a 260 million deer deficit. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's not, they're not there. I think something really important to remember is, is the green revolution in agriculture has helped save wildlife in a way because we've found other food sources,

you know, 150 years ago when in Montana, the primary food source for protein at least was, was wildlife eat with a population, a human population, you know, a 10th or less of what it is now, it wasn't sustainable. We totally wiped it out. They ate them. Yeah, you're right.. We totally wiped it out.

Yeah, you're right. They ate them into oblivion. I mean, even just having like the gold mining towns. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, and obviously there was, there's other things, they were harvested for fur and things like that. There was predators killed just because they

were viewed as pests. There's, you know, and there's lots of other things that occurred from the use of pesticides, the habitat, fragmentation, all those types of things to, um, um, you know, the extraction of resources and the way it was done that changed habitats and healthy ecosystems. But a huge part of that impact was, was commercial markets for meat or, um, um, just people harvesting meat for food. Um, you think about the, how poor the, particularly the state was back then people escaping the

dust bowl, the, the great depression, um, you know, huge sections of drought, um, again, agriculture markets, not established. Another thing to think about is transportation. You know, a huge reason why we have cheap food now, or I know food prices have gone up, is huge, increased efficiencies in transportation and how, you know, we don't have to grow cabbage in the Gallatin Valley

anymore, sweet peas, because we can get it somewhere else where they can grow it more efficiently and it's cheap to ship it to us. Mm-hmm. Um, that's changed a huge amount. And if you think about transportation roles back then, you know, how long did it take you to get from Missouri to Bo. Um, that that's changed a huge amount. And if you think about transportation roles back then, you know, how long did it take you to get from Missouri to Bozeman, Montana?

You know, a whole season, a whole summer, and probably three of your party, your six person party died along the way. You know, it's the old Oregon trail, um, game we all played in, in, uh, in grade school. Um, all those things have changed to allow us to now have vibrant populations, sustainable populations that also have an intrinsic value.

Um, you know, 150 years ago, I, very few people probably looked at wildlife as just appreciating that it was there and the beauty of it. It was looked at as a commodity, as something that either could be sold and bartered with or something that could feed my family and make sure I didn't starve this year. And because we have all these developments in Western society and human culture, from transportation to agriculture, we can now take that item that was only viewed as just value commercially and now it has value for leisure or,

or just intrinsic value that exists. Um, we talked about grizzly bear conflicts and such, and every time we remove a species or not a species, but remove an animal from the population, there's people that disagree with that decision and a lot of them don't live here. A lot of calls and emails I get are from people from somewhere else that are upset. We killed a grizzly bear mountain lion that was in conflict.

Those people don't view that animal as a commercial commodity, but they have intrinsic value to it. They like the idea that it exists just to know that this wild animal exists in this wild, amazing place. Um, and that's something new in, in, in society that I don't think has really been here for a while. That's, that's really led to a lot of the foundation of where we are and the success of wildlife conservation.

Um, but yeah, uh, so getting back to commercial markets. Um, so in Montana is in most States, it's illegal to sell game meat. There are certain parts of animals that you can sell and trade in Montana. Now the rules are different for every state. In Montana, you could sell the hide, you could sell bones, you could sell antlers, but you can't sell meat, so commercially. So if you had a, had a restaurant that was advertising, come eat wild game meat. If it's truly wild, it would be illegal.

Is it ever as overt as that? It depends. It can be. We've seen some restaurants that have, uh, public, uh, menus. So if the group of us went in there, they'd give us the menu that's on their website. Um, and then we've seen restaurants that have a private menu.

Is that right? Yeah. We have restaurants that sometimes have contracted with tour companies and such, and they may shut down for the day. Maybe you go there and they're closed, but it's filled with a lot of people. Looks like a private party and there's a tour bus outside. They may be eating on a different menu.

It depends on the restaurant. Every restaurant's different. But we've investigated restaurants. Is there any chance you'd ever be able to slip me one of those menus? I mean, I just, I just like to see it. Like written down. Sure. You've seen like written down. Sure. You've seen it written down.

There's instances. Give me an example of what you've seen. I just want to know, like, you don't need to like the exact word, but give me an example of what you've seen, like actually written down on a menu. Wildfish is, is a really popular one. Okay. So wild trout. Yep.

It was just wild trout. Yep. Local river. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And we have had cases where we have, where we have, you know, it's a mix in how we get and start our investigations on these restaurants. Some of them is somebody sees that menu or is offered it and reports it to us.

Some of it's written down, some of it's verbal, you know, but someone gets offered a dish they know or thinks is illegal and they call us. We've also run into instances where we catch people fishing or hunting out there that are attached to a restaurant. They're keeping large amount of over limits. And once we dig into it, they're out there providing food for that restaurant. Got it. This is a long time ago hypothetically many of the people in the story have since passed away exactly seven years so a long time ago i had a friend that was approached about a um was approached about bear a bear paw. Mm-hmm. And they misunderstood, and they thought they wanted,

so they went and they had an old bear rug, and they brought him a claw off an old bear rug. Yeah. And the restaurateur was like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I meant. That's bear paw. And he's like, oh my goodness, that's what you mean? Bear paw soup is popular in a lot of Asian cultures.

Yeah. You know, same with dishes or powders or ointments made with gallbladders. Those are probably the two most popular trafficked items for bears. There's also a market for bear meat for sure. And there's legitimate places you can get bear meat. You know, a recent case we had. There are? Well, yeah, in some states you can, you can

legitimately raise, raise bears. So one case we had in a local restaurant. No kidding. Someone's commercially raising bears in the US. As far as I know, I don't remember what state this one was from, but we had a case that was referred to us where a USDA inspector or it was a health and human services inspector went to do their inspection of the kitchen and found packaged meat that was labeled bear and report it to us. And as we digged around, that bear meat had come from a legitimate source, which kind of shocked us at the time too.

You know, in other countries, there's definitely markets for it. Um, bear bile is a, is a huge industry in some other countries and there are really sickening bear bile farms. Yeah, I read about that. My kids told me about that. Showed me a thing about it.

Where does it stand right now? This is one of the more confusing things I found in, in, in terms of terms of uh trying to stop the commercial market is for a while it was you'll know this better than me but for a while it was that that you if you killed a black bear so you legally kill a black bear and you basically you have this like contract where you tag and, it becomes your property. It's transferred from, to your personal possession. But you couldn't have, you couldn't possess the gallbladder from the bear. Is that correct?

Not in Montana. So you can possess it, you just can't commercially sell it. So you haven't heard of like, I feel like there's some place you like. Could be. Okay. So you could, you could have your own and do with it what you will. Correct. And I could give it to a buddy of mine if he wanted it.

Okay. Just you cannot. Cannot sell it. Yeah. Yeah. And then. I got a Montana question. It's not about bears.

Since rabbits and squirrels aren't game animals. Yeah. Could I set up a rabbit and squirrels aren't game animals, could I set up a rabbit and squirrel taco stand and not be breaking the law? No, because you've got inspection problems. Yes. So I would not have any regulatory authority over it. You would not. As far as wildlife and parks.

But I imagine there are other agencies that would. I think that that's when it becomes the USDA's big business. Oh, yeah. Because they got inspected. Or FDA or USDAda because it's not because you're selling uninspected meat yep gotcha good idea though yeah what if you do get inspected what will they so i so let me tell you this years ago i was going through a fact checking process with a magazine and i pointed out that it's illegal to um it's illegal to sell dog meat in america and the fact checkers like show me where how that where that's true and it wound up being it's only illegal in two states it was illegal at that time it was illegal to sell dog meat by state law in new york and it was illegal to sell dog meat in california so

they're like well why isn't it for sale everywhere they won't usda is not going to inspect it and state inspectors won't inspect it and they say that they don't have any they don't have any sort of like inspection rules on it so if you wanted to bring it into the supply chain um they don't have a like what are they even looking for so if you somehow petitioned the usda successfully to establish dog inspection criteria and at that time in 48 states no one would be breaking a law and and and i and i even like this it'd be like that you could feasibly somehow you got it inspected you could walk into a grocery store and there'd be a pack of ground dog meat and it's not like actually breaking a law and And then the next legislative session,

it'll be illegal in the state. Well, that's what in my research about this, the reason it had turned up in New York and California is because it had become an issue. Yep, exactly. It had become an issue and someone had overcome whatever like inspection hurdles. Yeah.

So it might be that, you know, and I don't know at what point and, uh, production, I don't know what point in industry. I know that I remember 10 years ago when I was invested in this subject, the, um, the bison industry was an obstacle to its growth was inspection, right? Like getting their goods inspected for interstate travel. Interstate sales. Like Texas is, they're inspecting wild

animals. Yep, but a lot of that stuff can't leave Texas. Oh, okay. So they'll have, there's certain commercial, there's certain legitimately wild game resources like hogs, nilgai that can be inspected in Texas, but they're not suitable for interstate gotcha so

they're all consumed in state and in there the state has done like what we're talking about the state has built up capability and complied with demand of an industry that's like hey we have this resource we'd like to fit you to you know we're petitioning you to figure out how to inspect it but very it can be very expensive for the producer because you need to pay the inspector. Yeah. So that hasn't happened with. Squirrels and rabbits. Squirrels and rabbits.

I'm just trying to think about my retirement. So if you, let's say, let's say Brody starts this squirrel and rabbit place up and all of a sudden he's down there at that, what's that place? That gravel parking lot where all the food trucks are? Brody starts this squirrel and rabbit place up. And all of a sudden he's down there at that, what's that place, that gravel parking lot where all the food trucks are? Brody's down there, he's like, Brody's Wild Squirrel Tacos. And you're driving by and you see that,

you think to yourself, that's not my problem. But it could become. So, you know, it depends on how successful his business is and what impact they would have to the squirrel and rabbit population. So right now those species are unregulated. You know, you can hunt them 24, 7, 365 without a license with no bag limit right now. Because demand is so low.

Exactly. But if you. Hold on, is that the reason? I thought the reason is because they were non-natives and they're classified as rabbits. Snow-sheared, pine squirrels, cottontail rabbits.

Badgers. They're not non-natives. Red fox. You didn't mention all of those. You thought pine squirrels are non-native? No, I thought fox squirrels. No, he's having a pine squirrel tackle. Oh, fox squirrels too.

So, so to your point, like we may have a fishing regulation, uh, on a body of water where unlimited take of say Northerns or something like that. That doesn't mean they're there and there's a huge population. That's what sometimes the public thinks. That's because we don't want them there.

And so. Yeah. Harvest as sometimes the public thinks. That's because we don't want them there. And so. Yeah. Harvest as many as you want. The non-regulation, it just kind of depends. It's whether or not the public values it and what the interest is. You guys keep pushing squirrel hunting here as a great pastime.

Eventually squirrel harvest is going to increase, right? Yeah. Because all the people, you know, and maybe we might have to regulate it. Typically, you know, laws aren't created to anticipate a problem. It happens, but rarely.

It's usually in response to a problem. And so. Someone pointed out to me the inherent lag. Oh, there is for sure. There's a problematic lag where, especially with technological issues, someone once pointed out that like technologies are adopted quicker than legislation can address them, which

creates conflict. Sometimes they try and get ahead, but it's, I think it's hard to justify or garner support for a law that is addressing a problem that isn't there or isn't, you know, as prolific as we, as we think it is. Um, so it, government definitely in that way is slow to respond and there's a process. Our legislature only meets every two

years, you know, it takes building support and, and how it kind of works is typically the legislature makes a law, but it's not, it's not very descriptive or it's not very specific. It's saying we, we, a lot of times it's we authorize this executive branch department to regulate this thing, they need to make rules on how to regulate. So then the wildlife commission will create those rules and then we'll implement new laws

and then it'll change based on how that implementation went. So that lag or time it takes to implement or regulate something can take multiple years or a while. Yeah. And there's like a fine tuning and it gets frustrating to people. I remember the first time, this was long, long ago, the first time two-way communications. It was very blanket.

And it would have basically been that, I remember one of the arguments was i could be hunting with my 80 year old father and i can't put him in his blind and give him a walkie talkie to let me know if he's having a heart attack right and then the next year right they tweak it and eventually hit on a spot that everyone can agree with i think that some people look at those and they get mad sure and don't look at those as hey we're figuring this thing out and kind of fine tuning what we mean. Similar thing with trail cams. Like Montana, no mention of trail cams. Then it was, I think it went, no trail cams. Then it came back and clarified cellular trail cams, right?

And then people get like, well, by God, make up your mind. And you kind of be like, we're trying. We're trying to make up our mind and figure out where the technology is going, how people are using them. And we'll hopefully hit on a thing that's livable for everybody. And we don't want to change the rules every year. I mean, I, as a recreational hunter, don't want the rules to change every year because I get confused and it takes time to get updated on those and educated. And so those decisions where regulations are changed or tweaked, there's a lot of discussion and planning that involves attorneys, game managers, wildlife

commission, legislatures, all those, you know, involved in the decision making process, and there's a lot of feedback loop, most regulation changes that we implement, unless it's some, just a clarification, um, there's a whole public scoping effort that goes behind it too, where we get the public's opinion. If we were to make this illegal, if we were to put in this regulation, how would it impact you? What's your opinions on it? Do you support it? Do you not?

Should we tweak it? That's a huge part of the process also. But like I said, our job is to implement it, enforce it. And sometimes the feedback we get or the implementation goes sideways or it needs some tweaking, we send that back up and then laws can be changed or adjusted based on that. 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. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada.

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onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. You know, it bummed me out to see. I'm curious if it had any implications for you out in the field. The state relaxed its salvage requirements. Its game meet salvage requirements its game meat salvage requirements um on what well they went from so it used to be like bird a mallard size or bigger you had to retain legs and wings teal whatever however they spelled it out but basically if you killed a can and a goose at a time a few years ago, you had to keep the wing and the leg.

I think they brought everything to breast, right? I think it was, I thought it was just leg and thigh. Leg and thigh. If it was a duck size or bigger. It was spelled out. Teal size or bigger, I think is what it was. It was like, I kind of liked the precision of it. Was that a thing?

And specified like rib meat and neck meat. Yep. And that was an interesting one too, because I was living in Idaho at the time. They, all of a sudden it, you weren't required to keep rib meat or neck meat. And then I started digging into. You mean on a deer?

On a deer or a elk, yeah. Rib meat, neck meat on duck be tough. Yeah. There's some salvage requirements. Like there, there was, there was hunting units in Alaska. There was some salvage requirements like there there's there was hunting units in alaska there's a salvage requirement on the liver and there's a salvage requirement on you couldn't bone your meat in the field well i remember you were saying you just did something to destroy your microphone

you broke it i remember when we were in alaska one time because you have to salvage rib meat on caribou whatever you said they'll often fly oh they'll when they're flying they'll look down at the carcass to see if that rib meat has been stripped well i this is a long time ago hypothetically i used to hunt with a dude named. And Chuck had once had a job out on the Alaska peninsula, just a young kid. He didn't know what the hell was going on. And, um, he encountered folk whose practice was

to make it, the carcass look good from the air. Right. Because that could. Bone of topside. Real good. So that from the air, it looked like it had been cleaned up and that was, and then fling everything off and the outfitter was like just get make it look real good up there and just fling it in the bushes and then if someone flies over it looks like someone pulled

the rib meat off it yeah oh i worked under a outfitter in new mexico who one time showed up to help uh pack an elk out which he was not. And I, I had to ask him to just stop trying to bone the elk. And he explained to me two or three times the exact, uh, cuts that need to be taken in order to make it legal. Like, no, you need to take the loin that like basically, why are you taking all of this shit?

Yeah. Yeah. And was very frustrated that he thought at some point that would end up on his back. It was not, it was horrible. Did that, did that rule change have any real implications? Like, was that a thing you would encounter a lot in the field arguing with people about, well, you're supposed to take the leg on that one, but not the leg on that one. Or was it kind of a non-point for you uh i

mean it wasn't a huge issue but definitely cases where we'd find you know dozens of of whatever bird dumped in in in a dumpster and only breasted out okay it's really common you know and thighs not being taken or something and at a point in time that would have been that been your problem sure yeah absolutely you know yeah um i want to talk about entrapment for a minute uh this isn't even entrapment we had a guy right in uh so do you think about game warden in arkansas as your colleague or is that too far away oh sure okay sure yeah i mean we had a guy right and this this is just his version of the story. Everyone has a story like this of. His version of the story is that here he is.

This isn't a trap, but I don't know what it is. Here's his version of the story. I don't even know who the hell this guy is. He's cleaning a duck. Talking to a game warden. Let's just say this is true. He's cleaning a duck, talking to a game warden. And he gets to a part in his duck cleaning process where he's committing an illegal act because he needs to leave a fully feathered head or a fully

feathered wing attached to the carcass until he gets it to its final place to his abode so the warden watches him remove the wing and head and then says ha gotcha now how would you handle a situation like that? Like, would you have said, do you feel personally, you would have said, you know, the minute you do that... It's hard to Monday morning quarterback in a situation like this. I knew you were going to be evasive. I'm not there.

I knew you were going to be evasive. Because you don't want to sell this game warning that you don't even know. No, well, there's a lot of thoughts. One, every situation has a lot of nuance and detail. Uh-huh. Not this one. I just told you what happened. Well, how long?

No, you told him what this guy said happened. Did he grab that bird and just snap it right in front of him, or was he being meticulous and careful, and the warden was watching him for 20 minutes, really clean this thing up? Was he like, now I'm going to remove the head. Exactly. Game warden's like, all right.

What was he watching the prior hour or two hours or days about this group of hunters, you know? So it makes me, I've had a conversation with my son a lot lately as he complains about referees in football or teachers that now don't allow him to eat in class when he always used to be able to. Um, and, and I tell him, which I tell there's don't take my inaction or the person of

authority's inaction as permission. Okay. Don't, don't take just because the police officer didn't pull you over that one time or didn't give you a ticket last time. Meaning now you have permission to do this thing forever. It, but people get in this rut.

Well, like last time I did it and the cop didn't do anything. I always speed down this road. Yeah, exactly. You guys never seem to care about this rule in the past, you know. Do you get that argument from people? All the time, you know, you never cared that

we camped in this spot. Well, you know, now our priorities changed and we're addressing it because it's becoming a huge issue. But in that instance, again, I don't know the circumstance, how quick the interaction happened. It's definitely not entrapment. I mean, entrapment is something that you're- No, no, no. I was clarifying that I didn't think that was entrapment.

I have an entrapment question, but it's not like, I just have a philosophical question. There's, there's a, you know, I, I have, I have walked up on plenty of people that are gutting animals or tagging in the middle of tagging animals. The last thing I do is check someone's license while they're just getting ready to shoot. Like if Yanni's sitting in the bushes, I drive by, he's ready to shoot a mule deer. I'm not going to run out there and wave my hand and say, stop, before you shoot that, show me your license. I want to make sure you're legal. I'm going to sit there.

I'm going to let him harvest the animal. I'm going to let him do all the dragging work. So, you know, because I don't, I don't want to help with that. Right? No, I'm kidding. I'm going to let him get all that done. And then I'm going to make sure it's tagged.

And then I'm going to go over there and check his animal. And sometimes there may be issues. And sometimes based on the situation, we may educate, warn, guide them through the process. I can recall driving by on a state section and watching a guy kill a cow elk, walking out there, realizing this was a 19 year old kid that I just had in hunter education a couple of weeks before. And he was totally overwhelmed by himself. He had, he was just freaking out, sweating. He, he just driven by cow elk happened to be

running by, I mean, just luck. And now he didn't know what to do. He had the tag unvalidated stuff down the throat of the elk. He, he'd had no clue how to gut it, you know, and I could have easily wrapped him up for a few minor violations, but I took the time to show him how to gut it, you know, and I could have easily wrapped him up for a few minor violations, but I took the time to show him how to gut it, held the legs, made him do the cutting.

And then. That's way more valuable than ticketing him than he never would have hunted again. Right. But it depends on the situation. I mean, if, if, if your caller is a seasoned veteran, who's been hunting for 20 years and he knows the rules, he shouldn't

have to be reminded. He shouldn't need that, that education from the warden. He should just be able to do the right thing, especially when the warden's standing right in front of him. His brain should click and should go, man, warden's right here.

I should probably do this right. You know? Yeah. In that, I mean, in that bird instance. You Arkansas hillbill. Arkansans he had he just pulled out the hibachi and said sir get ready for a meal right so if he was gonna cook it right in that instance yeah just says this guy's writing the ticket he's like well i got a little something

for you i'm gonna eat this raw right now so think my favorite my favorite. When I was a city police officer, I wrote hundreds of tickets a year. I mean, absolutely hundreds. And the average game warden of Montana writes 50 to a hundred tickets a year. I mean, tell me this used to, it used to be good for 1500 tickets a year. Yeah.

You could easily as a traffic cop. I mean, as a traffic cop. Right. Cause that's all you're doing. You're out of the call rotation. Your job is to write traffic tickets and a traffic cop. I mean, as a traffic cop, yeah. Right. Because that's all you're doing. You're out of the call rotation. Your job is to write traffic tickets and force traffic law. And so, you know, I'd average 10, 12 tickets a shift, a 10 hour shift. You multiply it out.

There's some vacations and training in there, but you could easily go over a thousand tickets a year. Game warden, I think the most I've ever written is around a hundred. You know, most of our guys average less than that. Huge amount of education that occurs. huge amount of mentorship that occurs, warnings out there. Um, it just, we're, we're not out there to jam people up. We're out there to get you to do the right thing.

A good day for us is a day where we don't write any tickets because that means everybody around us was doing the right thing. I'd love for an instance where my job becomes obsolete. That would be amazing for society that law enforcement is no longer needed because that's far out as long as there's otters around man i know we'll be hunting grizzly bears before them i want to uh okay i got one more thing i want to ask about it's uh a colleague yours named eric crawford we discussed this one time an idaho warden we were talking about we spent I got one more thing I want to ask about. It's a colleague of yours named Eric Crawford. We discussed this one time, an Idaho warden. We were talking about, we spent a lot of time talking about the robo deer.

And he's got all these hilarious stories about robo deer. Sure. You know, including people who even when the warden shows up, he's still in disbelief that this is not an actual deer. But he had pointed out that they deliberately don't use they deliberately don't use trophy correct class animals yeah it's the same for us i disagree why in the world is it okay for a guy to like why not have it be a 200-inch mule deer? Because then you're really finding out what people are made of. True.

Because if not, you're just selecting meat hunters. You're just getting meat hunters in trouble. I mean, this is the idea. Everyone's going to be like, nah, this is too good to be true. His thing was that everybody's going to shoot at it if it's a 200-inch mule deer. Come on. That's like, you can't give up like that. Definitely, usually, we're targeting a specific violation.

So it typically doesn't have to do with trophy harvest. It typically has to do with shooting from the road, trespassing, shooting an animal that, uh, the season may be closed. Maybe, you know, there's no cow harvest. You haven't said anything convincing to me yet. Yep. And so typically that's what we're targeting. Uh, we don't have point restrictions in Montana in any of our districts.

And so, you know, you know, the thing we, we have used in the, before would be a spike would be the closest thing to a, a, a trophy, you know. That is just not, that's wrong. Does Montana have. Put a giant buck out there and see what happens. Does Montana have a version of the, the, I think it's called the Samson law, like where

if you poach an animal of a certain size, the consequences are greater. Yep. Absolutely. There is one. Absolutely. So, yeah. So there's trophy restitution.

Yeah. Built into our statute. You know, if you kill a trophy bull elk, it's $8,000. And that's excluding the cost of whatever violation, the ticket you wrote. So the state, like where they're like, we got 8,000 bucks into that thing. Yep. By this point. It's kind of, you know, when the legislature passed that, they looked at basically what it costs to replace the animal.

What's the value to society? What it costs if we were to try and replace it? You know, the smallest thing would be like a fish is $10 and the highest is a bighorn sheep is 30,000. Those amounts aren't automatic. The court would have to award it and we rarely see those top dollars, but. Really?

But I want to get back to this. Steve, I got to tell you this real quick. Help me understand why not a huge buck? Just real quick. Way back understand why not a huge buck? Just real quick. Way back when I was working construction in Missoula, my buddy and I go out hunting for the weekend. We'd already killed some elk during archery season, but we're driving out of this area and it's like, you know, kind of that November timeframe where there's just, there's a lot of people road hunting. And we look up on the hillside and there's a, uh, spike bull, spike bull elk sitting there like, oh, look at that.

And barely touched the brakes. Just kind of kept going. The next day on the job site, one of the, uh, kind of general, uh, foreman type dudes is complaining loudly to everybody that he and his wife were out hunting. And she swears she shot at a cow. Really? Off the road, out the window. And it was not as it seemed.

No kidding. Oh yeah. Steve, you've never gotten horn fever? Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, let's say I get horn fever. Stick it to me. But then we're starting to target people who normally would do the right thing.

And just in the moment. That's who you need to test. They make a bad decision. We're out there to get true poachers. We're not out there to make poachers out of people or people into poachers. Yeah, but like you know the whole thing in the New Testament about like Judas and stuff,

man, you got to test like the true believers. Well, and decoys do all the time. You know, it's amazing. Man, I think deer decoys should be huge bucks, Steve. Maybe they do use them. They're just not. Oh, they're being coy.

He's being coy. Or think of how many 200 inch mule deer racks you'd have to replace every year people shooting they're so buck fever they're gonna blow the tines have you have you tackled the open fields doctrine i think that would be a great one no go ahead i don't i don't even know enough about it to ask oh yeah go ahead ask him that Then I got a final thing I want to do, but do that. The grand scope of things, right, is wildlife belongs to all of us. Right. And it's managed by the states in like a trust fashion for the public. Wildlife spends a lot of time on public ground.

It spends a lot of time on private ground. It does not recognize the existence of a three-strand barbed wire fence that separates private from public. Um, however, on private property, private property rights are such that, um, the Montana is a different state, but the way, um, the law is interpreted in many areas is law enforcement can enter onto private property without the express permission of the landowner or the landowner's agent if they see illegal behavior or suspicious behavior in the open fields. Okay. Meaning something visible versus something they can't just like walk into your barn or your home. Yeah. Without a warrant to do so, signed by a judge.

Yeah. I mean, he's driving down the road and he looks out in a, in a picked cornfield and there's some guys with decoys set up and like they're blasting away before a legal shooting light or after legal shooting light. You have, you can go out there. Yes.

And the guy can't say, hey, you're trespassing, go get a search warrant. Right. Or whatever. Yes. Is that, is that, was that close enough? Kind of. So Montana still has plain view, basically.

Plain view. So as if something illegal is in plain view, we're in a place that we're allowed to be a public space and we can plainly see without any search or manipulation. Meaning like a county road. Yep. So think of, think of, you know, a traffic

stop or something like that, that a police officer does and they see contraband in the backseat of the car. They're in a public space. They're, they have the authority to be there and stop that vehicle. And there's something in the car that's totally illegal, maybe a big kilo of cocaine.

They could seize that in most areas without a search warrant. More than likely, they're going to get a search warrant to protect them. And it's the same way with hunting and fishing rules. If we were to observe from a public place, we're allowed to be of true articulable violation occurring in front of us, we could enter, stop

that season to conduct a search of the property or anything we'd have to search for. Or if we just see someone harvest, say an antelope on private property, we see no violation and we're in a public space. The thing you're thinking about is I couldn't enter that private property without permission just to check or regulate that hunter. You cannot. No, I would.

Because you didn't clearly see anything. I would have to see a violation or have permission to be on that. But if it was an antelope season. Correct. A clear articulatory violation. I got you. I could.

You know, an evolution, like we're talking about evolution of laws is, is across the United States, game wardens in many states were giving, uh, basically an exigency clause to search and seizure. Mm-hmm. Um, think about the first eight game wardens in the state of Montana.

Again, they lived up in a cabin in the middle of the woods, transportation was, was, uh, you know, uh, not, not very, uh, uh, efficient at the time, horseback or whatever they had. So their access to the courts was pretty limited. And so if they're way up in the middle of the woods and they, a violation occurs, they were given the authority to search tents, coolers,

all these things without a search warrant. Because one, the evidence was perishable and two, they didn't have good access to the courts. And so they needed to be able to seize things on the spot. Well, technology has changed. You know, we have, we have judges that are on call 24 seven. We can text and email them for search warrants and stuff. Uh, uh, you know, our transportation, we can easily, uh, get to the courts, uh, get to, um, our police stations or, or conservation stations very easily. And so as, as the technology has changed, the excuse or, uh, reason law enforcement uses to not get search warrants is diminished. Um, and the courts have continually protected personal property, um, at a higher value,

particularly in the West in Montana. And so it's difficult for us to say like, oh, we had to seize this thing because we couldn't get the search warrant because it's too inconvenient because when it is pretty easy for us to get one. Got it. And so in most cases now we're going to always

defer to that search warrant to protect the integrity of the case, um, so that there is no challenge to our search and seizure. Um, it's. It's a theme though that always comes up, right? It's, um, does the regulation of, of a public resource wildlife stop at the private property boundary? Yeah.

And the answer is no, but how do you regulate that resource in, and then still respect all the other laws that are in place regarding, uh, private property and everything else. And we run into that, take enforcement out of it and talk about just general management, you know, to be able to do surveys or go and respond to issues on private property where wildlife exists, there can be contention there if the private property landowner is not going to allow permission. But for the most part, we work with landowners, we get that permission, you know, we let them know the work we're going to do, the legitimacy of it. But it can get in the way if you were to have a landowner that said, no, no access.

And now you have a population of wild animals that it's difficult to get to, to, to manage. I want to close with a, with a game and I'll go and you go and then anybody else wants to go can go. I'm going to do a thing where I give you a tip as a game warden and you give me a tip as a hunter angler okay all right you already do this tip so i'm speaking in broadly to the profession uh i feel that you one of the reasons like like one of the things i appreciate about you as a person i feel like you are sort of like rooting for the the people that you you kind of you know that you're kind of rooting for people hunting and fishing you're hoping they're having a good time right yeah and i feel that you are open to um helping people interpret things trying to help them be on the right side

right uh i saw i have had encounters where i just haven't felt that that was the case trying to help them be on the right side. Right. Uh, I, so I have had encounters where I just haven't felt that that was the case. Sure. And I appreciate that. Um, I appreciate that. Like,

Hey, heads up or let me know if you have any questions or, you know, that you're really good about public communication and clarifying, um, and clarifying stuff. And I think that that's the thing that that i know a lot of hunters and anglers appreciate is that to be in a spot where

you know you when you run into a game warden you're gonna learn some things you know they might be like heads up like i remember yanni had a guy one time say that hunter's orange you have is getting pretty old uh i'm not gonna give you a ticket right now but if you wash that one more time i'm gonna call that not hunter's orange right and like i think that those exchanges are really valuable for people where you sort of get like oh these guys they're not like trying to you know they're not trying to throw me in jail man they're trying to be like a good referee yeah you. You know? So now you give me a tip.

Not me personally, but give hunters a tip. Uh. Like when you're walking up, how do you know when you're going to have a good interaction and how do you know when it's just not going to go good? Well, a good place to start is golden rule. Okay. You know, treat others if you want to be treated, you know, and, and that goes for us and the hunters. So we should walk up and treat people with respect and, and they need to do the same. You know, I, I think it's real important for, for everyone in society to have an outward mindset, to think of, to be able to put yourself in the other's shoes and understand their perspective that, that, you know, the position

they're in, um, and give them almost the benefit of the doubt until there is no reason that, you know, the position they're in, um, and give them almost the benefit of the doubt until there is no reason to, you know, I, I have a lot of faith in my fellow man, a lot of faith in humanity that most of us are trying to do the right thing. And so that's how I approach those interactions with hunters. Um, I'd like hunters, anglers, the general public to approach us the same way. There's a lot of stories of, of people in authority doing bad things. Yeah. But when you take the percentage of those compared to the

percentage that are doing good, staying out of the headlines, it's, it's the same as any other industry. There's bad doctors, there's bad lawyers, there's bad school teachers, there's bad humans, but most of us are doing the right thing and just trying to go day by day and do our jobs and make the world a better place. And that's what most law enforcement are doing. But thing and just trying to go day by day and do our jobs and make the world a better place. And that's what most law enforcement are doing. But so if we walk up and you start giving us a hard time or treating us with disrespect, it's, it's going to go bad for you.

We're going to, we're going to switch immediately from education to paying close attention to everything that's going on with you. And personal safety factors. Oh, absolutely. It's like, oh, hey, here's six guys. They all got guns. I'm going to go see how they're doing.

So I just, hey, we're all human. Treat each other with respect. That's huge. You know? Yeah. That's, that's one tip. Yeah. Has anybody got any more tips for him?

I think he does a pretty good job. Sure. Tell me, tell me what I'm doing wrong. No, no, no. Nothing. Nothing. I just really, like I said, I love those. And I'm not, you know, it's not a leniency thing.

It's just, I guess I'm maybe more than some. I like the feedback and the. If Steve was a game warden, he would be a hard ass. Oh, no, I wouldn't. He would just be like writing tickets. I'd just focus on kids, man. I'm like, how old are you again? You sure you're not 13?

Well, and as we talked about, there's been an evolution. You know, there's a starting of our profession to be very based on rules and enforcement. That's the way, you know, wildlife conservation started. And now it's more on management and there's also a huge education and mentorship part of it. And, you know, I think the reason why we have such high compliance is because of that relationship we've built, that trust, that mentorship. And again, that value that's been established or ingrained in society of, we value this resource. It's a

public resource, which means it's mine. I don't want to disrespect it. I own it. I don't want to break my own stuff. And I get really upset and protective when other people break my stuff. Yeah. You know, we don't view wildlife as the government's thing. As soon as it becomes the government's, plenty of people are willing to destroy it. Look at forest service signs out there all over on the property, you know, they just, they have no respect for it. But if you start thinking about those forest service signs as your own, if I shoot it, my tax dollars have to replace it. You might be a little bit more protective of it, you know? And that's same with

wildlife. Every time someone poaches, they're taking an opportunity away from everyone at this table and everyone who enjoys wildlife, whether or not you're a hunter or just a wildlife watcher. And, and as long as we can keep that attitude and instill it, I think we'll have very high compliance on our wildlife rules. Great. Well, my message to all the listeners out there is one, um, man, there's a lot of information available that you, it's good to find out ahead of time

information um which when i was a kid we did not do much of i remember being periodically shocked when someone says you know that's actually illegal right all the time man yeah um so i think finding stuff out and being not being afraid to ask well i don't think you should call them up personally but just ask questions. Yeah. The, you know, the last big thing that I wanted to mention here is a plug for public participation in the enforcement of wildlife laws. Okay. So, you know, every state has some sort of crime stoppers program where basically

there's hotlines and tip hotlines set up for various crimes, drug dealings, wildlife poaching, all those types of things across the United States and more than likely across the world. There's very few game wardens for how big this state is and for how big most other states are and how many hunters, anglers are and how much wildlife there is out there. Each game warden in Montana patrols a district on average of 2000 square miles. They can't keep an eye on everything. And so it takes public participation for us to be successful. And like we just mentioned, you know, you as the public own this wildlife resource.

The government doesn't, the elected officials don't, the agency doesn't, you own them. So take a hand in protecting it. What we need is, is, you own them. So take a hand in protecting it. What we need is good tips. We need public participation, people standing up when they see something wrong, they see a poaching happening, they call us and give us the information. In Montana, we have a program, we call it the Tipmont Program, Turn In Poachers Montana.

It's a 1-800 number, 1-800-TIP-M-O-N-T, Tipmont. Is that a pretty valuable tool for you guys? Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not a, as you just mentioned, call and ask a question on a regulation line. It's not a line to call and get your, um, your

bobcat tagged, but it's a line to, to report tips that can be anonymous if you want on wildlife poaching, um, wildlife crimes that are occurring. It could be the restaurants, commercialization, could be someone taking a trophy animal out of district, all sorts of things you could, uh, report to us. You can remain anonymous. Um, you can also be eligible for cash rewards. Um, if, if there's a conviction or an arrest that occurs with that case, um, some other states, interesting enough, like Utah are actually starting to award tags

for turning in poachers. So in Utah, yeah, you can, you can turn in a poacher on, on whatever, an elk or sheep tag. And as long as it's biologically sustainable

and the department supports it, you could skip the cash reward and get a limited draw tag for your reward for that area, for whatever species. That might be the fastest way to get a tag in Utah. That's going to perk some people up, man. Wow, really?

It doesn't exist in Montana right now, but we have cash rewards. And two, again, it's just, it's doing the right thing. That kind of brings up like, is it entrapment if it's all civilians involved? Well, you know. I'm going to put that big buck out in Steve's yard. So, so I think about, I don't have the exact

quote in my head, but Aldo Leopold wrote about how, you know, hunting and fishing is a sport in a way where you are your own referee. You know, when you're playing football or basketball, there's a referee walking around, following you, calling a penalty on you every time you do it. We don't have that in hunting and fishing.

We have to hold ourselves accountable and those around us to do it the right way, to protect it for the long term and to limit abuse. And also we talked about what is regulation, where do laws come from? Problems. So the more we can do the right thing, ethically sustainable, the less rules will be created that will interfere with our enjoyment of this resource. I got you.

Don't push everything to the. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Do it the right way. Help us out. But give us a call. If you know of some poaching that's occurring

in the area, please. We really need those tips and we've made some amazing cases based on citizen involvement. All right. Well, thanks for coming on, man. Absolutely.

We are going to start that ass game warden up. Just people live call in. See how it goes. Well, I'm sure it could get Western. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks Adam. This apt outro song was sent in by podcast listener, Peter block. I'm with fish and game. Be careful where you aim. Don't shoot a deer. That's tame.

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