The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 506: The Future of Alaska Hunting

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with Tyler Freel, Brent Reaves, Brody Henderson, Seth Morris, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Phil kissing; Tyler's Tundra Talk podcast; loud sandhill cranes; bull moose grunting; when Chris McCandless dies in your family's hunting camp bus; the crap people leave on public land; how the walleye cheater is also a deer poacher; cause for reflection on the things you did as a kid that were big no-nos; confessions; paying hunters to harvest bears in Japan; bounty fishing for pike minnow and winning $100,000; explaining "subsistence" hunting and who qualifies; the complexities surrounding land and resource management in Alaska; ANILCA; the Brooks Range; state vs. federal; and more.  Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

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-L-I-T-E dot com. To start off, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but we've been covering Phil's play. Yeah, people are definitely aware. Listen, man, I was sitting next to

a guy who was at that play because he heard about it on the podcast. Really? I was sitting next to him. Really? I bet the last thing that guy expected after hearing it on the podcast was like, I'm going to go down to that play and sit next to Steve Rinell. Well, he was actually next to my daughter, Rosemary.

It was me, my wife, my daughter, him. Gotcha. So they struck up a convo and then at the end of the thing we took a picture and he said yeah i heard about on the podcast came down oh nice and phil marketing and action right there phil does kiss someone in that show and crin painted it out like it was gonna be real seedy she said it made her uncomfortable. It was just a little peck. It was more than a peck, but it wasn't like a...

How would you describe it, Phil? On a scale from a peck to a passionate French kiss, I'd put it at, I don't know, a three. I was going to say a three. Yeah. Well, maybe it's different from show to show. Oh, do you bring it some... kiss i'd put it at like i don't know a three i was gonna say a three yeah yeah okay well maybe

it's different from show to show oh do you bring it some depending on how i feel y'all mix i'll slip in a little just i won't tell her so some nights you just bring it some nights you were like you weren't in the mood no that's that would be inappropriate so you would do it the same every time yeah mostly it made you uncomfortable yeah a little bit i said before it's like watching No, that would be inappropriate. So you would do it the same every time? Yeah, mostly. It made you uncomfortable. Yeah, a little bit. I said before, it's like watching your brother kiss someone. It didn't make me remotely uncomfortable.

No? No, Steve enjoyed it, I think. I did. And then I got home and I texted Phil. I said, I didn't think it was that sexy. And he said, if he ever gets cast in something NC-17 he'll let me know you'll be the first to know so are you happy with how it all went phil yeah i think so it's a lot of fun yeah those all those people i worked with are super nice and had a really good time yeah i can't i can't tell you what it was like to watch it but i hope it was okay

our kids even liked it don't you have another one come well the eight our eight-year-old he didn't give it the best review sure because he was ready to get going no he he probably wasn't interested in like the 1930s russian politics that make up a lot of the third act i could sense that he got a little lost yeah he got a little lost and the stuff about the russians are and everything so he probably wouldn't give it the best review, but the other ones really liked it. That's fine. That's good. To be fair, he'd rather be rolling around in the mud or something like that. It was cold outside, though, so I couldn't send him out there.

Getting his boots wet. And then I got in a fight with my kids up at the concession booth. About what? I embarrassed myself. At the concession stand. They wanted some candy you know like for whatever reason the movie theaters the candies are huge boxes yep they got every movie theater in the world has the same yeah big box yeah like what i don't know it's like good what's the good

and plenty's yeah racy's pieces so we go up there and i'm like well pick one box out and they all grab a box i'm like no agree on one box and then meanwhile there's people behind us in line so eventually i said never mind put all those boxes down hard bet went back to the seats they didn't like that well and their ma went up and got it it's just they won they wound up with i won essentially i won because they wound up with, I won, essentially I won because they wound up with one box. Okay. But I lost and won. You came out even. Mm-hmm.

Joined today by Tyler Friel, Alaskan hunter, trapper, podcaster, writer, guy that shoots bears with a stick bow. Yeah. Flesher. What else? I don't know, man. I do, I do have, do and have done, I guess, a little bit of everything. I, you know. You host Tundra Talk.

Host Tundra Talk. And you cover Alaskan outdoor politics and hunting and fishing. Yep. Yep. We're going to ask about a bunch of stuff like that. Yeah.

No, it's, we, I don't know, try not to take, take it too seriously, but we, you know, just a bunch of, uh, myself and a bunch of buddies who, um, you know, we live in Alaska and kind of offer a good perspective and talk shit about each other and, um, share hunting stories and tips. And I figure if it can be entertaining with

a little bit of useful information, then, uh, then that's a good goal. So. Yeah. And you guys mix it up pretty hard. Cause you guys are into, you're into a lot of the sophisticated stuff. Yeah. Which sheep.

Which, yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Which it makes it kind of tough. Cause a lot of those, you know, are super serious subjects and, uh, you can, you can dive way into any given one. And as a whole, it's all just, it's, it's really more than any one person can keep track of. Um, so you kind of, you know, you gotta pick your battles, but I do try to do my best to stay on top of, of what's going on, um, stuff that comes up. And, you know, I can write about that in my, my day job as a staff writer for outdoor life. So I, you know, cover, cover a lot of that stuff in there as well as, you know, all my

normal, my normal duties. Great. We're going to get into all that. We're going to cover a lot of stuff that's going on in Alaska today. So if you've got any kind of interest in hunting in Alaska, wildlife management in Alaska, we're going to get into that and hang

tuned. And we're going to talk about Alexander Supertramp's loss. This is the weirdest deal, dude. I've like, so I'm just going to tease this. Then we're going to tell the story in greater detail. Like everyone knows Crack Hour's John Crack Hour's Into the Wild, and they made that movie out of it.

Eddie Vedder made that song. Made that song. I read that whole book watching an avalanche slide for black bears one day. Read the whole book. I didn't read it until late in life. How did it pan out for the bears? Didn't get one, but there was a bunch of sandhill cranes. It was the weirdest thing.

I always remember that day because nothing was melted off except that avalanche chute and sandhill cranes walking up and down that avalanche chute. Those cranes are a pain in the ass, man, especially moose season, right about the time stuff starts popping off. Oh, my gosh. Then the cranes are a pain in the ass, man, especially moose season, right about the time stuff starts popping off. Oh my gosh. Then the cranes show up and you can't hear nothing.

All day. Isn't that wild? That's funny you mention that. Yeah. That's the only time I see that. It's a thing, man. Coming through some pass nearby, it's like, turn that off.

I've never seen that many sandhill cranes. And they do that dance. Oh yeah. Thousands of them. You're like, get out of here. It's so funny you mentioned that, man. Because like the last two times we've been moose hunting, it was just like, after a while, you're like, just stop that for a minute. Yeah.

Well, and especially, you know, you're working with limited time. And every dead ass calm morning and evening, you know, you're wanting to like, this is the time to get some sound out there and those cranes won't shut up. It's, it's really, it irritates a guy. Oh yeah, and you're hoping to hear that. Whoa. Way off.

A lot of times you hear them. Hit me with your bull grunt real quick. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a good one. Hit me with some volume though. All right. I gotta, I came unprepared I gotta sit up a little bit

I want you to do two things I want you to hit me with some volume And then I want you to do like our buddy Giannis can make a noise that sounds like an elk Way off You know how you feel that noise before you hear it I want you to hit me with some volume And hit me with a way off Alright let's see.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he's got the click. He's got the click. Now hit me with the shit. Is that a bull? Yeah.

That's good, dude. All right. So this bus, so everybody knows that this kid, Chris McCandless was his name. His nickname, his chosen name, as Brody pointed out earlier, was Alexander Supertramp, died in this damn bus. By MacArthur, right? No, by Healy. By Healy, okay. Right outside of-

Not MacArthur, yeah, what am I saying? By Healy. And the bus sat out there, and it became a tourist attraction. Yep. But yet that bus, your family had like camped in that bus. Oh yeah. Way before any of this stuff went down. Yeah.

So from the time, you know, that book became popular, I, I, I think it was maybe even, I can't remember what year the book was, but it was right about the time we moved to Alaska. Cause I, I, I was born in Colorado, but my dad was born and grew up in Fairbanks. And after his, after my grandpa passed away in like 71, my grandma moved them back down to Colorado. So that's kind of why we were not there. But as soon as that book became popular, my dad would just be like, oh yeah, that was our, that was our camp. Like we spent many nights in that bus.

That's so wild. And so that, that was all it was for a lot of years. And, um, yeah, became just kind of a deadly tourist attraction, which it's, it's sad. And I mean, not to make light of it, but, uh, like people were constantly having to be, get, get rescued trying to get out there. Cause they're crossing that river to get out there. Yeah. How did that bus get out there in the first place? Do you know?

All, all this is like this, this whole story. So after people were tired of this shit, um, they ended up making the decision to helicopter. It's like a Chinook and helicopter that thing out of there. And,

uh, the university of Alaska and Fairbanks got ahold of it and their plan is to display it at the museum there. And I had written a story about how that was like our family's hunting camp back in the day. And the gal that was in charge or is in charge of the bus for the museum got in touch with me. So, Hey, well, you guys want to come check it out. And, uh, so we did my dad and my uncle and I went over there and checked it out and it was pretty, you know, pretty cool. They hadn't been in it since I think 72. No way.

And my dad's like, oh, I remember when grandpa or remember when dad blew up the wood stove by starting my, by starting throwing gasoline there in there to get it going and blew the stack and blew the door off. And, um, anyway, so, uh, as we're sitting there talking to my, my dad's like, I know, I know mom, my grandma had eight millimeter footage of this somewhere. She had a bunch of eight millimeter videos that she had, uh, had taken and I ended up getting ahold of them and digitizing them. But, uh, so all this and learning from the, the, the kind of the history of that bus, they figured out, I don't remember the exact year. It was maybe like 60 or 61, early sixties. What year was the bus manufactured? Uh, I don't remember the exact year. It was maybe like 60 or 61, early sixties. What year was the bus manufactured? I don't remember. But it was a Fairbanks City transit bus for a while.

And it was part of a project to improve the Stampede Trail. They got a grant, which is a road that goes out across the Teclanica and goes out there. And so it was left out there by construction crew, road constructions. A guy had, that was working for that crew had bought it and outfitted it as like a bunkhouse to bring his family along for, it was like a whole summer project. Well, how did he get it in there though? They drug it out there on a road.

And the road. There's a road. Yeah. But what's the whole deal? Here's what I understand about it. What's the whole deal with you got to like cross the river to get to it? Yeah. So is a winter road or what? No, it was Here's what I understand about it. What's the whole deal with you got to like cross the river to get to it? Yeah.

So is a winter road or what? No, it was, I don't know what time of year they maybe got their equipment across there early in the spring or in the winter. But my dad, they used to just drive across it in the fall after, because it's a glacial fed river and after the water levels start going down, they just drive their pickups out there.

So it's like, yeah. So it's only tricky seasonally. Yeah. I understand. Which is kind of what got him in trouble. He came back and, you know, tried to get out apparently and surprised the river's too high. But yeah, so they drug it out there as part

of a bunkhouse for, for this guy's family. And it broke, axle broke or something happened to it and they just left it intact. And later in the sixties, my grandpa had been hunting up the Sties country in the 40 mile country and got sick of people, dealing with people. So he heard about this bus that was set up as a

bunkhouse and they started hunting out there. So through like the latter half of the sixties. No kidding. Yeah. And that dude died in that bus, right? In that bus. They found his body in that bus. So when did he stop using it as a hunting camp?

I think 72 was the last year because my grandpa passed away in 71 and I think it was 71. And my uncle has pictures where he went back out there the next, the following year. I think they'd see, said they skipped a year and then 72 was back out there and he has some pictures with like, you know, moose and caribou cut up all, you know, kind of right there. Yeah, I'm looking at some of the photos right now.

That's crazy, man. Looks like some people were using it for target practice for a while. Yeah, it, uh. Oh, people shoot. Where was I the other day? I couldn't believe the amount of things that had been shot. Oh, we're just driving on some, in like some BLM land. And I was like,

you don't have to plan ahead to shoot that much stuff. Yeah. Bring another ammo. Seemed like a 72 inch flat screen TV on public land just shot up. Oh, that's great. There was a trend for a while. We talked about this.

There was a trend for a while out. I noticed out in Missoula where people come and shoot trees down. Living trees. Shoot them until they fall over. So a couple of quick things, Tyler,, and we'll get back to this. The walleye, my favorite subject. Dude, I can't believe this.

I'm so sick of these dudes. We got weights and fish. What do you mean you're sick of these guys? Oh, just they just. I'm not sick of them. I just can't wait to hear what they do next. Well, here's the thing. This is what everybody thinks so everybody knows everybody

knows when we had the guy on um the walleye cheating scandal where the uh jason fisher who's been on the podcast is conducting a walleye tournament there's some fish that yeah do i really how to what degree do i explain this he looked at he looked at their bag knew they weren't four pounder like they weighed at seven he knew they were four cut them open and yeah the guy's weighing fish all day long at the end of a tournament you just know what fish look like like a 20 inch wall that weighs this 18 inch wall that weighs that and some guys bring some fish up you're like oh they got blank pounds of fish but they weigh them up and it's like wow that's really heavy takes a leather man which is sitting right behind uh uncle chesty in a display case takes that leather man and cuts open the walles and they're packed full of weights and fish fillets.

These two individuals, what are these fellas' names? Chase and, I don't wanna. I think really the most important one is Chase Kaminsky. Kaminsky and Runyon. Kaminsky is the,

these guys become real famous for this cheating deal. Then one of them gets in some other trouble soon after. He violates a restraining order, and he equips his kid with a bunch of fake $100 bills, and they go and send them down to the bowling alley to buy stuff with fake $100 bills. That makes the news. Now he's in the news all over again, including at TheMeatEater.com.

He's in the news all over again. Also deer poaching however this is old not new to your poaching stuff getting he's getting he's getting in trouble for stuff he did a long time ago like for instance let's say if i was 20 and i'd gotten in trouble for setting snares illegally and then all of a sudden my buddies are like oh you know what too one night we were out jack light and cottontail rabbits right and be like you know the guy that got in trouble for setting snares he's in trouble now for jack light and cottontail rabbits and i'd be like i did i did that before it's just everybody's telling on me now about everything that's the situation he's

in now and i think i'm not apologizing for i'm just saying Now it's like Now they're just You know what I mean But we've really established Like a profile All the secrets are coming out Yeah I thought I read something about this Where he had gotten in trouble for this

Prior to the The walleye stuff I think that's my understanding too And had his license revoked Yeah Do you mind if I jump it What are we buying with Hundred dollar bills

At a bowling alley That's a great question We're worried about All this stuff That's Yeah Bowling stuff Is cheap as it used to be

Yeah maybe there's some Other stuff in there too The real issue is He So What's incriminating About the counterfeit money Is they have

A text exchange Where His kid He gives his kid this money And it's like It says like Not actual money It says like

It's like movie money Yeah And like movie money kid this money and it says not actual money. It says it's movie money. And movie money looks pretty real, but it says, I don't know what the hell it says, movie money on it, something. Sends his kid down and then they text about it. He's like, dude, it worked great. Send someone. How old was his kid?

18. He's like, Bobby's going to come by and get some more. It worked. They're celebrating that the counterfeit money was accepted. was his kid 18 he's like bobby's gonna come by and get some more like it worked you know and they're celebrating that the counterfeit money was accepted but i just at this point you know it's not like a new you know i i thought there had been rumors about him being a poacher flying around for a long time and he was i, I think he was a convicted poacher. Yeah, and the scrutiny from everything else certainly didn't help his case any.

There's a lot of people eyeballing him. There's an age component because people in glass houses, right? So we broke all manner. As youngsters in high school, we broke all manner of laws. Let me tell you, for instance. Willfully or ignorantly? No, let me tell you, for instance. I'm going to tell this about a guy that's not alive anymore. Nothing that you can do to him.

Smelt dipping with Eric Kern. Okay. We were smelt dipping near White Lake Channel where some smelt were spawning up on a gravel bar no one knew about, not going in the creek, spawning along the shoreline.

And here comes by a salmon feeding on smelt. Eric Kern scoops it up and is in the smelt net. Now there's no way in hell he's gonna let it go but that's an illegal capture he puts the salmon down his waders you want to talk about a mess how old is he we're in high school we're old enough to drive so chase kaminsky is 36 and he's accused of deer hunting between 2013 and 2021 2013 is 10 years ago which would make him 26

too old too old for poaching i but let me just clarify like i'm not saying let me get to my broader point and this isn't about me this is eric well no because in our time we sold our smelt to a guy in high school 10th grade i think sold smelt that's illegal point being if i had gotten in trouble for something all these infractions that seem like just minor issues like eric caught a salmon put in his waders dip smelt with the salmon nose first down into the ankle of his waders for like whatever amount of time and then like took the salmon back out later okay all this like stupid stuff that i would never let my kids do but all this stupid stuff if you then got in trouble and all of a sudden all this came out you'd paint this really damning you'd paint this really damning portrait of an individual who just had to be around a lot of like dumb decision making around it or the ringleader of it i'm not talking about your buddy i'm not

condoning i'm saying like it makes reading this it makes me look and say, man, at a point when all the dirt comes out. When all the dirt comes out, it winds up looking. I just would invite people out there who grew up in a rural atmosphere and grew up like a redneck upbringing. To look at themselves in the mirror? To think pretty hard, okay? To think pretty hard, okay? To think pretty hard. They probably didn't, when they were that age, they probably just did shit and didn't even think about it.

They didn't think about it. I was on Onyx the other day looking at all the old spots I used to hunt when I was real young and realized that none of that shit was public. Yeah. I thought it was all public back then. We thought public was that no one yelled at you when you were there. Yeah.

You went there a couple times and never got yelled at. I was like, oh, I'm going to look at that old turkey hunting spot I used to go to all the time and realize it was deep into someone's private property. You know, Steve, we should start a new segment called Confessions. Confessions.

Oh. I don't and here I wouldn't even know where to begin but but here's the thing about it was so unusual about it so in those days like you would have your mom your mom would apply for a doe tag oh yeah that was very common in my circle so my mom might draw a doe tag and you'd get the the the dough for mom and i'm not like i'm not condoning it i just don't want to act like i don't want to sit here now and act like i don't want to sit here now and act like things didn't happen that happened so with this fella now with all this stuff coming on i just

be like it looks bad but just think about your own life and think about the things you've done. And once it came to be like, like, are you really telling me that if you like to drink, are you telling me you never drove home when you might've blown a drunk? But what does that look like when you get caught? I don't think that's the same as this guy though. Cause he's just kept doing that shit and knew it was wrong. Like what? This wasn't like, Oh,

back when I was a sophomore in high school. Yeah, I know. And, and cheating in a stuff and wall is full of wall. I plays is like on a whole other and like cheating people out of money. And winning a boat, winning boats.

I think it's fair to say this guy's like a criminal. A grade A dirt bag. Yeah. I got another confession for you. When I got my, when I, for Christmas, I got a Marlin for Christmas, I got that bolt action Marlin 22 mag that everybody had

for a while. And pulled a car over next to this thing called Tomahawla Lodge and saw a fox squirrel perched up on a tree and shot it out of the car window and then ran and got it and jumped back

over the fence. Do you feel a lot lighter right now? If someone had seen me do that, you know what the list of things would have been? Illegal discharge of firearm. I don't know. You'd want to have This insane looking rap sheet

But also back then Like maybe that would have happened But there was I also feel like There was a little bit more tolerance For that kind of stuff Oh that'd have been like That kid just shot a squirrel

Out of his car window Yeah Stay tuned for next week's Edition of I'll make a list. Because if I ever run for political office, I'm going to do this anyways.

Yeah, it's better to preempt it. First thing I'm going to do is here's everything bad I've ever said. Is that your plan, Steve? Is that what you're going to do? If I do, that's what I'm going to do.

No one's going to come and say like, he did, I'll be like, dude, I already told you about that. It's on my list of shit I did. It's real bad.

Ronella Petelis, 2024. here's the thing that's even more surprising than the fact that that fellow's been in a lot of trouble japan if i were to name for you place if i if i said you name for me countries that have a lot of bear attacks it goes something like this uh america and then they'd be like yeah canada and then they'd russia they wouldn't know what to say oh yeah you'd probably get russia russia japan has had 167 bear attacks this year that's a lot so you got to think about the positioning of japan what kind of bears are those brown bears oh okay think about the positioning of Japan. What kind of bears are those? Brown bears. Oh, okay. Think about the positioning of Japan. They are?

I thought they were black bears. They got both, I think. Do they have black bears too? I think they have black bears too. I don't know if they're not like American black bears, but some kind of. Someone should look this up. I'm pretty sure that's correct. But if you imagine the Aleutians, right?

Like when you look at, I wish we had this for scale i mean just how far the illusions stretch out sure like it's the width like imagine how big like you could fit texas california most of montana into alaska and then the illusions basically extend alaska by that distance it's distance all over again. Towards Japan. Yeah. Just looking at the map, it looks like it's about the same distance as it would be from the coast of California to Hawaii.

I mean, Japan gets a lot of the same kind of salmon runs. Yeah, that's what, it's like a Pacific Rim, you know, and so they have this like, this suite of wildlife. Do you remember we had the bear researcher and general all around good guy, Carl Malcolm on. And he talked about when he talked about being researching bears in China and

he was saying, he's saying, man, the weird thing about it is everything's kind of the same, but a little different. So he said, like, you look at a tree and be like man it's a lot like our beach tree and there'll be a grouse be like that's a lot like our grouse a little different that's a lot like our grouse and the bear is like it's a lot like our blackberry but a little

different he says but the whole thing would fly out the window when you're looking there's a big golden monkey because we don't have one of those but anyhow they got this bear like like such a bear issue in japan um yeah they look they're set to that they've exceeded their 2020 record 2023 has already passed up the 2020 record of 158 bear attacks in japan a woman was just mauled to death uh of these bear attacks three fatalities including a 79 year old woman mauled to death in her backyard bears um outskirts of tokyo they say there's a poor crop of beach nuts. This was reported in Bloomberg. A poor crop of beach nuts has led to more bear human interactions.

And they are offering like a compensation program to bear hunters. 5,000 yen for each bear they shoot. What does that mean? Why do you have $45, Corinne? That's not what they're paying them. Let me see. The yen is like, is like about 125 or so to the dollar. Let me just check that.

Well, you just got to watch Seinfeld and get the Kramer when he has the dudes that are millionaires that have a million yen. And he gets them to spend all their money and they end up sleeping in the chest of drawers. I would love to know like what their current management system is as far as hunting goes. Yeah, 5,000 yen is like 33 bucks right now. That's the bounty? And there's, yeah, and there's the Usuri brown bear and the Japanese or Asiatic black bear. What does the bear cause a lot of trouble? I remember Carl Malcolm saying the Asiatic black bear mixes it up a lot.

Scrappy little bear. Yeah, I can't, I don't see that. I'm guessing that's the one. I'm only saying that that's the one because Carl Malcolm was saying it. It's like a, it's like a, it's like a fighting little bear. Oh, there's a, there's a picture in the Bloomberg article of a group of hunters searching for a brown bear that was on the loose in Sapporo a couple years ago. So maybe it's about both of them. Both black and brown bears.

God, man, just don't picture it. Well, I think they have a commercial market for bear meat over there. Black bears anyway, yeah. Yeah, we covered that one. Remember they have a vending machine. There's a guy, you can buy bear meat out of a vending machine.

It was expensive. Yeah, I remember seeing that pop up. 5,000 yen just doesn't seem like a lot. I know that the dollar is strong to the yen right now, but still it doesn't seem like a lot. It's like, no man, 50 bucks like,

that'd be like a good price for like a raccoon bound, dude. I'm like, really? That's great. 50 bucks for a bear? That's a lot of work, dude. Yeah. So, but if you could turn around and also do the sale. Right.

Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, 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, 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 OnX out if you visit

OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Speaking of bounties, that was Corinne's transition like that.

Speaking of bounties, this is one of those perennial stories that pops up now and then but the numbers just keep getting higher yeah an angler earned can we get into the can we get into our personal connection to this or you think we should not if you want to i think that's fine An angler earned 100 grand Now Earned I don't know what he's got into this for overhead Let me back up

He's got a lot of time What kind of boat does he have So on the Columbia River As part of a salmon restoration program I'm going to back way up All the dam building we did on the columbia has the long-term impact of really imperiling a bunch of salmon runs and you know people say some people when people look at i've gotten into this before some people look at like

why did the u.s win world war ii you know and you could get in all these things like one way we we were able to produce more aluminum more quickly than anyone else so we're you know we want that that's the limiting factor that allows to win world war ii how'd they do that well because we had all these dams on the columbia which generated so much electricity and smelting aluminum requires a lot of electricity and so we're you know the long and short of it is they dam the shit out of that river. And it's just the salmon runs are basically not salmon runs anymore. And there's all these efforts now to try to find some possible way to begin dismantling some of these dams. But it has all this implication for agriculture and shipping.

It's one of the biggest problems that your kids will be hearing about. Your kids will probably hear a lot more about it than you will in your lifetime. As part of the salmon restoration program, they're trying to limit, they're trying to kill off predators of salmon smolt. And the dams also created ideal conditions for this pike minnow to fly. And the walleyeeye you build a giant structure that impedes the

movement of fish and on top of that you then create a reservoir system that gets loaded up with smallmouth bass and pike minnows and and that stuff just hammers all the salmon smell smolt that usually in the past wouldn't even really have to worry about passivorous predators. It's all part of a big mess. So there's like the elephant in the room. That's not really the accurate way to put it because people do talk about it. There's the core primary issue. The core primary issue is damming on the Columbia.

You can love the dams or hate them, but it's like an objective reality that the dams on the columbia are driving salmon runs to extinction you can be like oh price you pay or whatever but that's just the truth however you feel about it so since you can't take care of the main issue they're always trying to take care of like little minor issues and one of the minor issues is predation on salmon smolt by pike minnows. So they've set up a bounty program. What's a pike minnow worth? They set up a bounty program where

you can kill pike minnows. It's a varying rate. Um, six, six dollars a fish for the first 25 over nine inches, 25 to 200 fish, eight, 200 plus, 10. So a dude, Corinne talked to the guy that runs the program. A dude netted himself, he caught 10,000 northern pike minnows,

landed himself 100 grand. So that becomes the headline, but I don't know what he's got in it for expenses. Yeah, I mean. And we tried to get him to come on the podcast, but these guys that are making big, these guys that are making living fishing pike minnows. What's funny is you think that like they would be like, well, here's how I do it. Let's get them all to save the salmon. But he doesn't want to damage the resource. Right.

He wants to make sure he's got an income. He doesn't want anyone to know how he does it because he doesn't want to damage the resource. I'm sympathetic. There's supposed to be some steep competition and all kinds of drama around who's known locally to be one of the top guys. Sounds like a new reality show we should do. They've been approached, in fact.

But isn't it funny that this whole thing is to try to kill off pipe minnows, and there's a guy that figures out how to really do it, but he doesn't want to talk about it because he doesn't want everybody killing the pipe. Can Seth and I go do that? I was going to suggest that like they take off some time next season to see what they can reel in. You can do a little practicing for those things

right here in Montana. The weird deal is these Northern pike minnows are a native fish. Sure. And in like Colorado, Utah, they're like a protected, threatened, or endangered species. Like they can't have,

you know, they're doing very poorly there. 12,000 people are getting after it. 12,000 people are catching 156,000 pike minnows, but one dude is catching 10,000 pike minnows. What the hell is he doing? Do you know? Netting. You think he's netting?

Probably. It'd be a lot. What'd that guy say? Is he rodding and reeling them or what? That's the thing. I should have asked that. It's like, what's a legal method of take for this? Because netting, you'd have bycatch of salmon

and other, you know what I mean? Yeah, but if you can like purse, like purse sanum where you can safely release. I know, I think they're hooking line in a man. You think? Well, in Corinne's notes from her conversation, she uses the term reeled. Yeah.

Why are you not just hammering away with facts right now? You were on the phone with the guy. Yeah, but I just, I just put some bullet points in there. So I probably wrote reeled because he said real yeah i don't think i just pulled that out of thin air so that's not what you're gonna say i just for some reason i thought it was she said thin air i thought it was rod and reel catching for some reason i don't think i just pulled it out of

pull she was thinking thinking something else. Same thing went through my head. If it were rod and reel, I would run a fly rig on the river where you got flies off your leader and pull it slowly upriver. This is the first year that a single angler earned $100K. Yeah, got over six figures. The guy that earned $100K should really come on the show. I won't ask you any specific questions. He knows us.

He knows. He was flattered, right? Yeah. He just doesn't really want to. Come on the show, and we'll bleep out anything that you don't, any trade secrets. You know what we can do if we like record them in the studio, you know how like with those documentaries, they just kind of do a silhouette. Yeah.

Yeah. You can just totally obscure his identity. It'll be like you're a mob informant. Or like get in the picture with a bunch of special forces dudes, how they like blur out their eyes. We'll blur out your eyes. We'll give you a mob. We'll give you a mob. We'll give you a mob informant.

Keep a low profile at the boat ramp. We'll blur out your eyes. We won't ask you any specifics about where you go or what you do. And in terms of like word getting out, dude, word is out. This is a widely reported thing. We'll give you like a bunch of free clothes. Cook up some pike minnow. I'll have you for dinner.

I'll have you for dinner. We'll give you a brand new flay knife so you can flay your pike minnows up. And a wallet. You put all your money in. A meat eater brand. We'll get one of those FHF wallets. Oh, yeah.

Because you need it to haul around all that money. Give two wallets. You might need a backpack for all that money. We'll give you a backpack. Put all your money in. For a slight duffel. We'll give you a duffel to put all your money in. And you come on the podcast and talk to us.

In 2022, the rewards went like this so the rewards for to five anglers so the top five anglers in 2022 69k 63k 56k 54k 43k then it really drops off then it really Then it really, okay. Yeah. But I, I didn't know if it was like, then by like 20 grand, it drops off, but it drops off. So was the hundred K guy in that top tier last year? The hundred K, yes. Okay. Yes. So he's a command master angler. It's like the top couple are always, are trading places.

10% of the anglers catch 80% of the fish. Yeah, but that's true in general, man. Yeah, with hunting. Yeah. With. Yeah. Hmm. He's a command master angler.

156,000 of those things they removed in 2023. Wonder if it's doing any good. God, I love to have a guy on the show. A pike minnow's good. I just want to know what else he's catching. They used to eat them way back in the day, the mountain man era. You know what?

It looks like it'd be better than it is. It looks like a walleye had sex with a sucker. Hmm, yeah. They don't have teeth. Speaking of that. Sharp teeth. I wonder if you could turn around and sell those to like, like for trap and bait or something.

Trap and bait. They sell them for bait up in Northwest Colorado for Lakers and shit. Small ones. My boys didn't get into the soccer filet business. Um, speaking of which, a guy sent in a picture. I'm going to put this on. So we're trying to, we're trying to like get everybody's great cell phone or cell, not cell phone.

Trail cam. Get everybody's great trail cam pictures. You know, it's so funny. A guy sent, um, a picture of three wild hogs all lined up in a. Not exactly lined up. I'm being sensitive here to family listening. They're vertically lined up. In a copulatory posture. I'm being sensitive here to family listening. They're vertically lined up.

In a copulatory posture. Three in a copulatory train. Pile. And the caption he wrote, I can't get over it. The caption he wrote is, try that in a small town. But it looks like a small town to me. I mean, this is like a big city. It's like out in the woods. All right.

Back to our special guest, Tyler Friel. And here's where I want to start, Tyler. What in Sam Hill is going on with doll sheep okay doll sheep numbers and doll sheep closures and break the whole thing down to me in vast tracks of federal that you can't hunt tell us the whole damn story all right so i you've covered you've covered this heavily yeah i will I'll do my best and. And what's a doll sheep? Yeah.

Uh, well, they're Alaska's native, um, wild sheep, thin horn, uh, very similar to a stone sheep. They're predominantly all white is kind of their, their character, their defining characteristic. Um, they live in, I don't know whether to say like officially seven or eight mountain ranges in Alaska. Um, pretty widespread, all the, you know, pretty much all the suitable sheep habitat in Alaska has dull sheep on them and the population,

you know, goes over into Canada and then transitions to stone sheep and then, you know, uh, bighorn sheep down below. Yeah. That's a, that's a thing I'd read. There's a book that, that a biologist out of Fairbanks put out. Um,

it's kind of like it, like his magnum opus, one of the, there's some wildlife biologists, but he's kind of explaining that, you know, what's, what's the sheep in Siberia?

Snow sheep. Yeah. There's a couple of different subspecies. Yeah. You kind of have to imagine it's you kind of imagine it's like band of it's like band of sheep yeah right it would be uninterrupted yep so at a time like if you went back to the pleistocene when you could walk from siberia to alaska there's just like this band of sheep and it would go from siberia into mexico yeah right Right. All down through, like through Yukon territory,

all the, the Canadian Rockies down. And this thing would kind of like Peter out in Mexico and it would, they would, if you were to walk that journey, you'd, you'd probably recognize this, that they kind of like gradually changed. Yeah. You know, they started out big and burly and dark and they end up like gradually changed. Yeah. You know, they started out big and burly and

dark and they end up smaller and white. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cause the snow sheep are even smaller typically than doll sheep from what I understand. I, um, but, uh, which it may have been this guy here, Wayne Heimer, who was a long time sheep research biologist in Fairbanks was kind of like

the, you know, one of the original sheep management and research by biologists, uh, in the state of Alaska at all, you know. Um. Yeah. Tyler brought me this book, Doll Sheep Management in Alaska from Pleistocene to Present by Wayne E. Hymer. Yep.

So, uh, these sheep are all, all throughout Alaska and, uh, see where, picking a spot to start with, uh, with the way the situation now. Um, so it was a little bit of history, uh, after statehood, before statehood in Alaska was a territory, uh, fishing wildlife was managed by the feds because it wasn't, there was, state didn't exist then. And at statehood. Oh, what was the yeah that's yeah so so prior to statehood there was no sort of like territorial game management agency no it was all

it was all the feds and frankly like i mean he talks wayne talks in his book about how a lot of this management quote unquote was like guesswork like Like they didn't really know, nobody knew like what we really had except for certain, you know, certain areas closer to populations, uh, you know, towns and whatnot. And, uh, so they didn't know what we had in like the early on, uh, I think even in the territorial days, they had like a three quarter

curl rule for shooting rams, which that was just borrowed from bighorns. That's what they did for bighorns. So they just, this might work. And, um, over, you know, over and over Wayne's decades of research, they developed like the full curl mature ram theory that, you know, and kind of goes along with, uh, uh, Valerius Geist's, you know, sheep, sheep theories to, uh, develop the full curl, um, management strategy, which, you know, is kind of all kind of, if, if I don't

remember, touch back, I tend to, my brain kind of fires off in different directions a lot of times. No, you're good. Um, so, uh, Alaska becomes a state, gets, um, title to the wildlife and the duty to manage them. And, uh, the next, like probably the biggest, well, the biggest impact, you know, to hunters

was ANILCA, um, and ANSCA, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act, which those were a, from what I understand, a trade-off to get the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. So it was, uh, it was during the Carter administration, um, they wanted, they discovered oil in Prudhoe Bay, needed a way to get that oil to market. So the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was the solution.

And to get that, they, the Carter administration wanted all this federal land set aside, um, and, you know, for conservation purposes to protect it, which I think is, you know, a pretty good thing. So, and I don't know all the details. I wasn't, I wasn't around back then. This is, uh, I think it was finalized in 1980, but, um, our two senators, uh, Ted Stevens and, um, Gravel didn't like what Jimmy Carter wanted to take. I don't know all the details in that. But Carter basically told them, you're going to give it to me or you're going to come back in a year begging for me to take it. And they said, you don't have, as Wayne describes, they told Carter that you don't have the balls.

Well, he'd had the balls. And he signed an executive order. I think it was using the antiquities act, um, uh, labeling or, I don't, again, details, but, uh, basically took subsistence hunting as an, described it as an iniquity in this executive order and locked up huge portions of Alaska, um, immediately. Like, you know, you're going hunting there this

fall. No, you're not. And my uncle describes this, like he was going sheep hunting and he was going to go sheep hunting immediately. Like, you know, you're going hunting there this fall. No, you're not. Got it. And my uncle describes this, like he was going sheep hunting and he was going to go sheep hunting in the Wrangles in a certain spot. And this was a political move by Carter. Yeah.

To get Anilka, to get the land set aside that he wanted for Anilka from what I understand. Like actually leveraged. Oh yeah. Leveraged hunting access for a greater political victory. Yeah. And it was a big impact to the economy too.

You know, it affected outfitters, resident hunters, everybody. And so my uncle describes it as, you know, he heard about this and then, uh, you know, went to state fishing game and the state's official position was non-compliance. They told, you know, they told him unless a fed sees us, see you pull the trigger, have a

nice hunt. Oh, really? So these guys were in a real legit pissing match. Oh yeah. Big time. And, uh, after a year of that, they, really? So these guys were in a real legit pissing match. Oh yeah, big time. And after a year of that, they, yeah, they went and they gave him an Ilka. And so.

Really? Yep. They came back. He was right. You know, he took it. And that's how they, then they ended up settling where they got the corridor. I mean, they run that, I mean, just for, just people don't understand, like earlier we're talking about how big Alaska is.

I mean, I don't know what it is top to bottom. Well, the- I mean, just for, like, the Brooks Range is about the size of California. Yeah, it's five, like, 500 miles from Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks. Okay. And so that, then it's got another-

Yeah, another 300, you know, I mean, maybe 300-ish miles. It depends on where you're measuring from and to, you could really- But picture that you're trying to secure land, you're trying to secure rights to a corridor that is a thousand miles, you know, almost a thousand miles top to bottom. I think it's, I think it's eight, I think the

pipeline is 800 miles roughly. Okay, yeah. But, uh, so it was a big deal and they, they gave them a NILCA and then, so there were already some existing national parks, Denali, which was McKinley at the time and a few others. So this created a already some existing national parks, Denali, which was McKinley at the time, and a few others. So this created a bunch of new national parks, Wrangell-St. Elias and Gates of the Arctic National Park up in the Brooks Range. And created, I'll let you do that.

And it created a lot of, you know, also National Park Service managed preserve lands. It expanded, and I believe it also expanded uh anwar was in existence at the time but i think that expanded it and you know basically federalized or created all these refuges parks preserves all this stuff yeah is it kind of the way i've understood i never i never knew this thing about how they settled it but the way i've understood it is that like that move forced a lot of people to decide how they're going to carve the pie up yeah for sure right like and they had like formalized ownerships okay so all this federal land some will be this some will be, the state's going to get this.

And then the native Alaskans are going to get there. And it forced a sort of codification of who owned what in that state. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And then, and that's just the base layer to it. Then you get into another layer of like management styles and principles and what the word, you know, what, how to describe it. Um, you get into the preservationist versus conservationist mentalities. Uh, so Anilka effectively, like, I mean, a lot of, and there's still like the people that were around, like, do not like Jimmy, you don't want to bring up Jimmy Carter around them because they've got some pretty hard, very sore. And, uh, and a lot, a lot of people don't understand why, but that's, that's why they just took it.

And, uh, you know, the result of even just Wrangell St. Elias and Gates of the Arctic National Park, Gates of the Arctic at the time, they figure had 6,000 to 10,000 sheep. So just, they cut a huge chunk out of what hunters could access. The least visited national park. Yeah.

Dude, to be honest with you, it makes zero sense, but it's a national park. It makes zero sense. You know, and a lot of this country, I'm fully behind protecting it. You know, like I don't, I don't want to destroy or see all that stuff destroyed, but let us use the fricking land, you know?

Listen, man. Yeah, but, but it's been, I mean, hunting has nothing to do with that. No, no, it doesn't. It doesn't, you know, like let, let people use. It's like the most, most ridiculous land use. Oh, for sure. Would have zero implications.

You know, yeah. And in fact, you know, like where the world record doll sheep was killed is now in the hard park, Wrangell St. Elias National Park. And, um. Oh, is it really? Yeah. There's a guy, a ram glaciers where, where, uh, Swank killed that ram. And since then you would think, oh, oh, is it really? Yeah. There's a guy, a ram glaciers where, where, uh,

swank killed that ram. And since that you would think, oh, well, there's gotta be all sorts of those rams running around in there. And that's not the case anymore. Since that became a national park. I mean, people quit using it as much. You, there's still some assistance allowances.

Like if you live in Glen Allen or some of these other little towns, you can hunt the hard park, but you can't, the access is extremely restricted. Can you explain, this is the term I hear Alaskans use all the time. Can you explain hard park? Okay. So yeah, yeah.

No. So, so. Explain it like you taught, like explain it like if it was Yellowstone. Yeah. So Yellow, I know nothing about Yellowstone, but you have Yellowstone National Park, which is hard

national park. You cannot hunt there. Don't hunt it. You gotta have a bear proof food container in your backpack. You gotta, you know, all these, the list goes on for rules. It's the hard park.

The hard park. So the preserve is technically part of the park, but it has allowances for the general public to hunt. You know, they still got some, some pretty silly rules, but you can hunt preserved land. The takeaway is you can hunt preserved land. You can't hunt hard park land generally. Yeah.

I'm a soft park man myself. Oh, I, I, I'm all. The, you guys got so many terms that like. I'm just rattling off and you don't think about it. i love it but yeah so when i hear when i'm talking to friends of mine up there and i talk about like the hard part you know and i always look to people that i know have no idea what they're talking about and i'm like is or if they're gonna ask what he's talking about they never do no well that in that like i'm glad you asked that because with a lot of Alaskan issues, there's a big disconnect between understand like what some of the details in context of what goes on up there versus what the general. Sure.

Outside, as we call it. Yeah. Public knows. That's another term, the outside. Yeah. Like I'm a, like I'm a stranger in a strange land right now. I was talking the other day that this country has, I was talking to my buddy Danny, who's from Hawaii, Danny Bolton. I was telling him that this country hasn't effectively integrated Hawaiians and Alaskans yet because they're so bad at, they're so bad at lower 48 geography. Like, I don't know, I was like, give me a state that borders Illinois.

Idaho? I don't know. Yeah. Well, I would be at that point if my kids weren't learning some geography stuff. Oh yeah. You look over their shoulder now and then learn a thing or two about geography. They got this states game that we've been playing

and luckily it has a reference map. So anyway, so that's what a hard park versus soft park. Then you have wildlife refuges, which are, and all the parks and preserves are managed by the National Park Service. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages refuge lands, and there's a shit pile of those. About 13% of the state. A lot, a lot. That's been an issue we've spent a bunch of time on covering over the years is the whipsaw of the whipsaw of the feds overriding states wildlife management

practices on refuge land yep meaning refuge and preserved. Yeah. The whipsaw of the feds saying, well, we're going to, we're going to take away management practices you have traditionally exercised on portions of your land. Like Obama brought it in. Trump brought it out. That was the whole killing bears in their dens. It was just like the most. Yeah. It was like such a.

So steer me back to sheep. No, I want to get back to sheep but but no this is all essential to understand this whole thing which is a really complicated but interesting thing that i think remember earlier i was saying your kids are going to hear a lot more about the dams and on the columbia than you will because your kids are probably going to see a lot some of those dams come out um if you're listening now that's just my crystal balling my crystal balling is you're going to see that what tyler is talking about in alaska is going to become more and more of an issue in the american west and elsewhere yeah meaning this

like this sort of going from on an ethnic standpoint who has access to, you know. Well, and initially, you know, when I was, I was actually talking with Wayne about this the other day, um, when they were first drafting Anilka, you know, cause Anilka brings in subsistence use. Yep. And initially it was, I, Wayne said initially the language was race oriented for subsistence use. And then they're like, all right, well in our, in our modern world, like we, that's not okay. And so they basically, the primitive like search and replace with a location based or where, you know, where you live.

So a funny story, I, I actually was listening to that episode where you guys were talking about this, the latest back and forth. I was listening to it while I was sitting in a blind in Alberta over a bait pile waiting for pack of wolves. Oh. And I was interrupted by a pack of wolves that showed up. And despite my, you know, my, my delusions of being a Frank laser, I only hit two of them. But, uh, so, uh, so like one thing you, about the administration the administrations i think do have some to do with it but i think that it's more of a factor of what people in place

at the agencies in alaska are restricted from or allowed to do by an administration got it like i don't think joe b Biden's a mastermind, like deciding he's gonna push this. He's not sitting there like, yes, I'm den digging, you know, he's not like personally making these decisions. Yeah. And, but what it is, is I think, well, in this

case it was in the back of the back and forth is just exhausting. But, um, you know, when under, under the Obama Obama administration, it was all preserve National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service managed lands. And then it got reversed. And then this time I believe it was just the park service pushing it. Okay. But I think that's a matter of just the park service saying, look, we can get away with this right now.

Yeah. Because they generally, and I know there's a lot of good people who work for the federal agency, so take it with a grain of salt, but there's the axis of evil of sorts. The park service is kind of the most restrictive or worst one when it comes to allowing hunter access. And they've got a long history of, I'd say,

managing to, for minimum human interference with the landscape is like a politically correct way to put it, I think. And, uh, so they do that through regulation, you know, and some, some of it has, you know, there's stuff you'd see in U.S. Fish and Wildlife, but the key is, I think it depends. It's, it's more depending on the people that are in place in different positions at these agencies in Alaska than an administration telling them what to do. But there is a real trickle down because the heads of these agencies are appointed by the administration. The Department of Interior, Secretary of the Interior does have a lot to do with it.

And I'm sure there's some. And the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is an important team. Yeah, for sure, for sure. So, and this all, this whole like appointed position thing trickles down to the Federal Subsistence Board and the issues like we're dealing with with them. Yeah, we're going to get into that.

Yeah, so. That's where it all is headed. But you got to understand, this is great. Don't be embarrassed about the level of detail because this is a very complicated wildlife management thing and it's educational like sometimes i have to just take a break from it because it's it's just depressing and tired to keep to keep up with all of it and that's part of the the the tough thing about it like the fight is you can't you can't like it's too much for any one person to keep up with it It's like, speaking of the fight, is this like,

while all this is going on, like is Alaska fishing games perspective, like, man, this is just like not a fight we can win. Like it's not worth like. They're, they're trying, you know, like I think there are some, I'm not aware on specifics of them, but there are like, I know they have like lawsuits and they're like, that's their only recourse.

Right. But their position is that it's illegal what the feds are doing, that the state has title to all the wildlife and the responsibility for managing it. And it's just, to me, looking at as each one of these federal closures rolls out, it just, to me, it doesn't add up. And like, we can get into that too, but like the, the A plus B equals C, like does not equal C.

Yeah. Um, well, we'll get to the, get to the moves that are happening around doll sheep. So doll sheep. But,

but, but also get into the, you know, there's the issue of severe winners. Severe winners. Yeah. And low numbers. But then there's also the suspicion that that's being, there's also the of severe winners severe winners and low numbers but then there's also the

suspicion that that's being there's also the suspicion that that's being like exploited for political gain well i think it absolutely is but but tell that tell that story so um doll sheet and like you know backing up into the doll sheet management um i did recently go get to go to a presentation kind of on the status of everything and some of the history by one of our current sheep research biologists um he you know that he laid out the history of since you know since the data was being recorded of sheep hunter numbers and harvest harvest is basically the only hard data like that we could find in a lot of those years because it was before surveys and surveys is another is another um, kind of sidebar to that. But so sheep have had a lot, you know, the, the, like caribou, especially they'll have population swings or any other big game animal in a like relatively natural state. Um,

their populations oscillate and sheep are very sensitive to weather conditions. Um, they can't, they don't dig for their food in the snow. So they're, they're very dependent on windblown slopes for their feed in the, especially late winter. And populations have been like, you know, there was a big crash in the third, I think the 30s

and there's been isolated, just total crashes in 1990. There's an interesting diagram he gave of showing the, the number of sheep and sheep hunters climbing, climbing, climbing, basically to double what it is now of harvests and sheep hunters. Was it really?

Yeah. I mean, it was, well, in this year, the last two years have been really low harvests, but, uh, you know, the numbers climb, climb, climb of hunters and harvest. And then 1990, it just like, there was a huge crash in the central Alaska range in 1990. Oh, and you'll see that sheep population crash

reflected in the harvest and in, in, in, in participation as well. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like now there's, there's, there's half the sheep hunters participating now than there was like three or four years ago. And it was half the sheep or no.

Yeah. I mean, I it's, the numbers have taken a hit. So the winters between 20, 2021, 2022. No. So, so 2020, 2021, and then the following winter, um, both had like real, like pretty statewide tough condition, winter conditions. And it hit, hammered on a lot of sheep populations and, and it's not, it's not great news. Like they're the sheep populations are down

pretty much statewide. And there's, there's an additional, there's an additional irritant about this is you're talking about the way populations can recover, but, uh, it takes 10 years to grow a trophy. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?

It's like, it's like takes, I mean, you, you take a whitetail buck, you can have a smoker whitetail buck in four years. Yeah. But it's, it's a slow process. It's slow. And you know, in the way, you know, the full curl under what we'd call full curl management,

you know, whereas a ram is legal to kill once he's full curl or eight years old. And there's some other criteria, but basically eight year old rams are at the time in their life when they become dominant and take over most of the breeding. And then their mortality just shoots through the roof once they're eight. Yeah.

Steve has said it. They're like at their peak and then they're dead. Basically once they turn eight, they're on borrowed time. Yeah. Isn't that wild though? Yeah. Oh, it's crazy.

There's no like, there's no like old man period. No, no. You're like on top of your game? It'd be like if dudes died at like 38. Well, I just turned 38, so I, yeah. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end 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 hand-picked 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 OnX out if you visit onxmaps com slash meet.

Welcome to the to the on X club, y'all. So, Tyler, like with these cheap declines, is there anyone like pointing finger at a finger at Hunter Harvest as any kind of impact or is that like not. So that's yes and no. Yes and no. So that, that does play into some of the excuses used for closing these areas. And they're like, some areas got hit harder than others. And some areas already have been experiencing a ton of pressure, um, compared.

So like for the amount of hunters that are out there, like, yeah, there's fewer legal rams running around. Um, you know, what, Weinheimer, the fishing game, like all those biologists, they, and they are doing studies right now. Start, they started a study this year to compare, um, a hunted area versus a non-hunted area that are basically side by side to compare, um, a hunted area versus a non-hunted area that are basically side by side to compare this ram mortality. So some of these people are taking Geiss

theory and what Hymer kind of verified that if you remove all the mature rams from the landscape, as you know, we're in Hymer's study area in central Alaska range during the three quarter curl days, like there was not any full curl rams running around really. And they observed like a higher mortality in younger rams, understandably, because they did more, they're more disorganized.

They're less, you know, less, uh, well, I don't even know that they're less able to cope with the circumstance, the breeding because the older rams tip off pretty, pretty quickly too. But, um, they're, you know, nobody's buying it, you know, and the position is that hunting under a full curl regulation has zero impact on the recovery. That's what I was getting at. Has zero impact. And Hymer, even Hymer stuff showed it cause they went from three quarter curl to, you know, with a lot of resistance to seven eights curl, which was kind of a compromise between three quarters and full. And then they moved to full curl and then, you

know, people were afraid that you make these restrictions, there's going to be a lot fewer harvestable rams. Well, after a few years, boom, then you're at a different level. Yeah. And it's a lot healthy in like this. I've only ever known that world during the full

curl. Yeah, me too. Yeah, the full curl era. You know, it's, and I still kind of think of myself as a pretty young sheep hunter. I've been doing it for 20 years, every year. And, uh, I just feel dumber every year. I feel like there's more I got to learn about them. But, uh, so the hunt, like it's in the federal side, people will argue, which I'll get into that.

So you have the, the, the federal subsistence board, which I think is kind of, the more they get, the more the, the boxes opened up and they can, and you know, people are seizing these opportunities. So the Northwest Arctic Caribou herd, I don't know if you guys have talked about that, that closure, which that's a closure that doesn't make any sense. They closed it to non-locals because, um, and that's a whole nother layered thing. They closed it to non-local hunters because. Which is basically like a quadrant of the state. Oh yeah. Huge, huge.

I think they didn't get it in the northern 20, unit 26, but a huge area. Um, so they, they. We've hunted, yeah, I've hunted caribou areas that are closed now. Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, the excuse was because the population

is in decline and it hit the, you know, their survey conveniently with the margin of error or the degree of certainty of the survey hit it on just under 200,000 animals, which a whole nother entity called the work, you know, that Northwest Arctic herd working group, um, has in their kind of, they have like a rubric for different management levels and intensity of management and suggestions. They're just like a consultation group made up of a lot of different parties that can make recommendations for management. They don't have management powers, but, uh, so it hit this 200,000 level and you're getting proposals from this, you know, regional council that makes recommendations to the federal

subsistence board, which it's like a, it's like a carbon copy sort of, of the state's model where they have regional advisory count, uh, committees. These ones are councils. So they get this proposal to, and they've happened, but they get this proposal to close the area to non-local hunters because, you know, they cite because the herd's in decline, you know, so in theory, you know, a reason would

be to recover numbers and because they assert that non-local hunters are impacting and diverting the caribou's migration, which I, I, I wrote a story on this. I talked to the national park service biologist who did a lot of this study up there and, and he said, there's no evidence to support it. Yeah. And, uh, the driver, you know, if you learn anything about caribou herds and like a lot of animals, the drivers of populations are the mature cows, you know, mature cows have calves and calf recruitment. Those are the two most important things. So non-local hunters kill about 300 bulls per year, whereas they estimate, they don't know,

they estimate subsistence harvest at about like 10 to 14,000 animals, which that, you know, that subsistence resource is important. Don't get me wrong. I'm not, not knocking that, but just the equation doesn't make sense. Yeah. And, uh, so they, they, but they, they close it to non-locals, but they don't even make any recommendations to stop shooting cows and calves.

So it just doesn't add up. It's like the. You're like, you're taking advantage of the situation to remove an annoyance. Yeah, yeah. That has nothing to do with the resource. And you, you know, I could get my tinfoil. I could get my.

My life would be better. My life would be better if there weren't non-locals here. Yeah. And this, and this is getting a little, and I, I understand those sentiments and they exist in a lot of places out there, but. It's ubiquitous. You could get a little tinfoil hattie, but I've been told by guys like this that have been around and seen this whole process that, you know, you're not crazy to suspect that there's some interplay

between the agencies and these committees and crafting these proposals. Oh. You know, so, and it gets worse. So the Caribbean one happens, then, you know, all of a sudden sheep are in trouble. So just to put like a very clear point on it, just so people who don't follow this issue,

you're normally, okay, if you look at a normal wildlife resource, like from a lower 48 perspective, you look at a normal wildlife resource, you might imagine the pie being divided up between what we'll call, what they call recreational hunters and fishermen and commercial use. Okay. So let's say we're going to go out to the East coast. We're going to go to the East coast, Chesapeake Bay. We're going to look at like some fishery. Um,ake Bay, and we're going to look at some fishery. It'd be that there's the recreational harvest and the commercial harvest.

And those two on some resource. And those two entities are going to be at odds. They're going to be just generally going to be arguing over who gets a bigger piece of the pie. The commercial, the recreational industries are going to fight like, we want more fish fish you're messing up our fishing you're inflicting our our ability to

make a livelihood this tension always exists all over the place uh in the in the rocky mountain west and lower 48 there's there's constant tension between um you know it's not ugly necessarily but there's tension between outfitter okay and and non-outfitted so it's ugly necessarily, but there's tension between outfitter. Okay. And, and non-outfitted. So it's a, it's a minor issue, but there's outfitters who are like, we would like to have more permits so we can do more guiding and have more clients. And then non-guided hunters are saying, um, we would like to have greater animal tag allocation go to us and not peeling off so much for the guides or the conflict could be we have you have state residents and non-residents and that's the sort that's attention

meaning state residents like you're giving you're letting too many non-residents come in and hunt um it's setting aside x percent of tags for non-residents. Yeah. Like why would, why I've been applying for a sheep tag for 30 years. How could a non-resident get a sheep tag? And when I live here, I never got a sheep tag. All these sources of tension. In Alaska, you have this additional layer of subsistence. So, you know, the same way you have like local non-local commercial recreational you have this element of of people that live in rural areas having a right to subsist and and having a

different set of regulations that would govern um your fishing practices for instance where seth and i have shacks in in southeast al, and we fish under a set of regulations. But if we were to move there and live there and make that our legal address, we would all of a sudden fish under completely different. We can set long lines for halibut, right? Yeah, and keep species that we can't keep right now. We set like a 100-hook skate for black cod, whatever. And right now you're allowed 80 a year. But you could set, you have unlimited black

cod harvest if you live there. So it's just a, this added source of tension. Oh yeah, for sure. And like, like, like fighting over the pie. Yeah. And it's, you know, as an example of how silly some of it, like it has nothing to do with how much wild game you eat.

And I will, you know, I say again, like I think protecting. Nothing to do with your income. Protecting the subsistence lifestyle and, and just the ability to hunt is important, but I can't hunt spring waterfowl. I live right outside of Fairbanks. If I move 30 miles down the road, I can hunt

spring waterfowl. Wow. When they're all nice and fully plumed up and it's a sore subject. And I'm not even a duck hunter. At high level, like many issues, at high level, the sort of bifurcation of subsistence and non-subsistence makes, you get it, it makes tons of sense.

But like anything, when you get down into like, you mean so if I move across the road? Yeah, yeah, literally. I could have a salary of a million dollars a year and I could move across the road and I'd be subsistence. Yep. Yep. Exactly.

But I'm like dirt poor on this side of the road and I'm not subsistence. No, it's, that's exactly how it is. And to complicate that, well, there's what feds consider subsistence user and state, the state considers all residents as subsistence user, but they generally are, their goal is to satisfy the subsistence needs of state residents through

the sport hunting and fishing regulations. Yeah. So they closed this, you know, the Northwest Articard, you know, unit 23 for caribou and moose. It's not completely closed. Oh yeah, I was doing my big, big wrap up. My big explanation.

Oh, sorry. No, no, no. You brought me back on track. Okay. So, but like, I mean, thousands of square miles, big explanation. Oh, sorry. No, no, no. You, you brought me back on track. Okay. So, but like, I mean, thousands of square miles, right? Oh yeah. Yeah.

I can't remember. At one point I added it up. It was like 60 million acres or something like that. So meaning if you're. You said you, they closed it for moose too? Yeah. For, for moose, moose and caribou for non-locals

during, basically it's not year round. Cause like I, in the winter could go up there and hunt caribou, but during the time when everybody is wanting to travel up there and hunt in the fall. Yeah. And, uh. And they say moose are on the decline.

There's a decline out there, but in, you know, Corinne had given me an article, uh, by Seth. Seth. Seth Kantner. Kantner. Who I think he lives up on the Kobuk and he has, you know, has some books and like he offers like his perspective and you hear this a lot and like the anecdotal stuff and observations over time I think are important, but you also have to look at the, a larger context, you know, me being an outsider. And if, you know, I can understand someone living there who for years and years and years, there's thousands of caribou came right through this, down this

trail every single year. We could count on it. Um, like I would feel very strongly about it too, but being on the outside and not really having any, any fingers in that pie, you look at historically like, well, that herd wasn't always that big. Yeah.

And in 1975, there was only 75,000 of them. I think it was roughly date and number that I looked at. Cause there, you look at that, that working group has some newsletter publications and you can, you know, pretty easily skim valuable like details from that and some of the historical context.

But they, you know, they even have the, in some of their newsletters, they have quotes from some of the elders that talk about remembering when there was no caribou out there and they just had reindeer. And then the caribou started showing up and pulling the reindeer. They would start shooting all the caribou that came because they didn't want them to take the reindeer with them. And they did. But there, there never used to be caribou come out or at least for a, you know, X period of time, there never, there never was caribou that came out on the Seward Peninsula like that, out of that herd. Yeah.

And the park service biologist, um, Kyle Jolie, I think was his name. He told me that, you know, cause I, I kind of posed the question. I was like, well, what do you, what do you think when you're, or me? And he, and he was very tactful in how he answered, not like definitively, but just

giving me some context, you know, I'm like, well, do you, you know, half expectant to be climate change? Cause that's what a lot of people will dive onto, you know, as you guys have been talking about, uh, that's the, the popular, like monetarily beneficial, um, culprit. But it's, it's a catchall and is deserving

of a conversation. It is, it's become a catchall to explain everything and it doesn't explain, catch-all to explain everything. Yeah. And it doesn't explain, it doesn't always explain everything. No, no. And he, the way he put it was, he said, think about this.

He said, you know, he didn't blame climate change. He said, think about this. That herd changes in size and number. He said, when a caribou herd, you know, grows exponentially, it expands its range. When it shrinks, the range change, the range and migration patterns shrink too.

Yeah. So that's just, uh, you know, in a lot of these issues, like the overall length of time you look at in context, and I've learned a ton just by, you know, reading about some of the sheep, sheep management history. Um, but so this closure happens and then we have a couple of bum winters and the sheep are hurting.

And then up pops another proposal, which, you know, I want to be careful because I don't know the guy and I don't want to be careful. I want to be careful not to, not to just sling mud, but on paper, the Central Brooks Range closure is the result of one guy. And he, you know, he's kind of a leader of a small community and they're in Wiseman and their council wrote this proposal that is not scientific at all. Basically says, I drive the road and all the, and all the mature rams are gone. There's nothing left. And, you know, and I think they have, they have a pretty, you know, it's right next to Gates of the Arctic National Park. And this is, this is bordering hard park, national park land where only subsistence hunters can hunt. And I don't think, there's not very many of them that do it.

Only like in an isolate, like at an anectuvic pass, you know, I'm sure those guys, those guys subsistence hunt some sheep but um and so they formalize this proposal and the federal subsistence board passes it closing the whole central brooks range on federal land there's some small state land portions but um most of it just yeah it locked up and the only reason given is you know that the the sheep are on the brink and they need, you know, we surveyed them, which the state and the feds do their aerial surveys differently. Like that's a whole entire, another subject, but they close all this up, which includes, I mean, it's, it's the most like user-friendly.

I killed, I killed my first sheep hiking in up there. Oh, is that right? Yeah. On that path? In 2004 when I was 18. Um, and, uh, so they closed like the best, like walk-in access opportunity. It's not that walk-in guys are killing a bunch

of sheep. The success rate's low, uh, just in general. Um, and there's some areas that people will fly in that kind of within that area. And you see horse trailers parked. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but the opportunity is there.

And they also closed the five, the corridor, which extends five miles on either side of the Dalton highway that's bow hunting only. And that's the heart of where, like where he's talking about, there's no legal, there's no mature Rams left, at least the, you know, that's the way his proposal reads. For, for context, like how many sheep sheep how many doll sheep are in alaska and

how many get killed by hunters a year so i couldn't i don't know that the like current and historic population estimates but i can tell you at up to a peak in 1990 i want to say it was like a couple thousand sheep getting killed a year. And then it's gone down to this year. They don't know that it's even going to break 400. Are you serious? Yeah. But with that, you know, and it's like, the situation's not great.

It's, it's a hard time to be a sheep hunter in Alaska. Um, but the relationship between, there's a linear relationship between the number of hunters and the heart and the number of harvest, you know, uh, Wayne and in my discussion with him the other day, he talked to one of the wildlife troopers who, you know, take it with a grain of salt, but their impression was that the success rate in unit 20A, which is central Alaska range, you know, it's, it's a very hard hunted area, um, that the success rate was relatively pretty much like normal. Mm-hmm. You know, and the age structure of rams that's been getting killed is the same as it always has been. My brother who lives in Alaska and he likes to hunt sheep, he said when you look at harvest data, a lot of times it tells you more about the weather than it does sheep populations.

Absolutely, it can, yeah. Meaning, you know, we've hunted up there in years where you just have these massive systems that just make poor visibility. Oh yeah. And he's like, you'll, you'll then see that reflected and you'll see that reflected in how many rams are getting. Oh, for sure.

Brought in and you can't, and you look and you want to try to draw these sort of like population trends out of things that could have been like, it was cloudy. Yeah. Or it was smoky. Yeah. You know, like we had a lot of late wildfires this year and a lot of country was, was smoky. But, um, over time, like the data, it's pretty consistent. It's not like an enormous amount of younger Rams are getting clipped off or sub-legal Rams. Like the percentages are all pretty much in line with what they have been historically.

Do you think it would make it all if the stuff that is getting closed to if the stuff that's getting closed to hunters, do you think it'd make it like this discussion of moot point? If it actually, if sheep numbers improved and they actually opened this landscape back up again, or do you think this is just like a play and it's how it is now? I think it's a play. I think theoretically, if it, in most sheep hunters, any serious sheep hunter, if there

was strong evidence to show that, Hey, if we stop hunting these sheep right now, we're going to, that like the population is going to recover quicker now that, hey, if we stop hunting these sheep right now, we're going to, like the population is going to recover quicker. Now that, and you get into like, you have to, you have to kind of define what you're talking about because. Because they are still hunting them. Yeah.

Because, well, because talking to, talking to a biologist whose interest is like maximum sustainable yield, you know, just wanting to have huntable populations and, and looking out for the wellbeing in general of the, of the sheep as a whole. Um, he's going to be talking about one thing, the guy, you know, the one of like the, some of the very hardcore sheep hunters up there that are like intensively like self-managing sheep they find and have been, you know, in spots have been for years. You know, the guys that are saying like, I don't want to shoot a ram unless he's 10 years old and has reached his potential or he's genetically inferior.

Like, you know, they get really into it. You know, there may not be with a lot of pressure under the full curl rule, there may not ever be a huge abundance of giant rams, but there's going to be huntable rams. And even a lot of like, like Wayne and a guy named Joe Watt have been doing, um, age recording, like age studies for harvested rams to show that in the, you know, part of this age structure thing that if a, if a rams harvested when he was 10, he was legal the year before and

he was legal the year before that to kind of get an, you kind of, it's got an extrapolation, but you kind of have an idea of, all right, well, how many more legal Rams were out there after the season? They'd just been able to pretty much punch holes in the argument that we're killing every Ram as soon as it gets, we're clipping them all off. Let me explain a thing you just said, because this is interesting too.

A Ram can become legal. So in the general management areas a ram can be legal three ways he gets full curl what that means is if you're looking at him in profile his horn describes a 360 degree circle so like the imagine a curled ram's horn the tip comes around and appears from a side view to join up to the base. Or he's eight years old. And that would be that you count annuli because they don't always grow. They don't always grow in a tight curl.

They can grow in this wide spiral where they're never going to hit full curl. Or not never, but they'll be eight years old, but not full curl. And the only way you'd know he's eight is there's these things called annuli they have a growth ring and if you know what you're doing and you really need to know what you're doing this like to shoot a ram off of growth rings you gotta it's risky you gotta

study yeah you gotta look at a lot of sheep and really know how to use optics and all that but you can theoretically that's beyond theoretically you can count growth rings and kill a ram that's eight years old. Thirdly, that ram can braid off or snap off the tips of his horns. And it has to do it in a way that there's a thing on a ram's horn

called a lamb tip, so it's its first year growth. It used to not be clearly explained, but it's clearly explained in the regulation. It has to grind away or snap off that whole tip if he does it on both sides he's never going to become full curl and then he becomes legal but young ones don't really do that yeah or yeah or you can't count on them because you could never fairly judge whether they would have been full curl or not like there's some slack, but yeah, generally. And that's called a double broomer.

Double broomer. And it's, you know, a lot of times older rams will be like that. So what Tyler's talking about is if you go and you look and be like, people are shooting full curl rams, there's still legal, there's still legal lambs on landscape. And meaning if you shoot a full full curl and he's

and you count his age rings his growth rings he's got 10 annuli he's been legal and not dead yep for two years and they'll also they'll also measure horn segments to show you know to show that hey this ram has been full curl because you can look at him and judge like how long but yeah so so he slipped through the cracks as a they might look at a ram and be like, he was managing to slip through the cracks as a full curl ram. Yeah. Yeah. So every ram that's full curls, not getting killed. No, not, not, not even remotely.

You know, there may be on a macro level, there may be this Creek, there's no legal rams in right now, but, um, on a large scale. Yeah. That, that regulation protects that in, you know, younger age structure, younger rams generally. And, you know, like you get some weird, sometimes, you know, you get a real young ram that just has tremendous growth. And I've told myself, I don't want to shoot another seven-year-old ram. But if there's a seven-year-old ram that I think is over 40 inches, I'm probably going to pop him. I'll make that sacrifice.

You're not interested in a seven-year-old that had a think is over 40 inches, I'm probably going to pop him. Got it. I'll make that sacrifice probably. You're not interested in a seven-year-old that had a tight curl and threw a full curl. That's just legal. When these closures are happening on federal land, what's happening on state land with Alaska Fish and Game? Like, are there, have they adjusted their management style?

No, no. Or is there still, you know, they're, no, their management style is the same. And they're like, there's different issues that can be contentious, you know, like guy, you know, guy, different guy out on state land, outfitters are not held to their, an exclusive area where only they

can outfit there. Right. So you get some conflict like that. But the takeaway is that, that, you know, in these areas for decades, that full curl route through a lot of big population swings and crashes and booms, um, has shown but you have the opportunity to go and harvest a serp, like a ram that is a surplus to the population and not feel bad about it. Cause you're not, you're not having any, any sensible effect on the population itself. I want to hit another point here, which, which I think is a little bit to the crux of the issue and you've spoken on it a bit but um i'm going to tee this this comment up by talking about something that happens in our own state here in montana um in the early 2000s around 2000 there's a region of the state like

the state's broken up in these seven uh the state of montana is broken up into these seven, the state of Montana is broken up into seven regions. And then each region is broken up into all kinds of units. So they can manage wildlife on a very micro level. And these, you know, unit, they use the term unit, right? District. District, sorry.

Regions are broken up into districts. The district could be like a drainage, right? Yeah. So you have broadly, it's the state of Montana, 646 miles east to west. The state's divided into seven regions, and each of those regions has dozens of districts. Nah, sometimes dozens of districts.

Meaning there's micromanagement occurring. 2001, 2002 in region 7 they were giving out something like 13,000 pronghorn tags. Every one of those 13,000 people that would draw a pronghorn tag could buy up to two doe tags.

Pronghorn doe tags. So in those years I was going out pronghorn hunting usually with three tags in my pocket uh numbers are down they're not down because the habitat destruction down because of weather issues predation weather like variables right not like not like wholesale destruction of habitat and what is it now seven 7,000, 9,000. Okay. No one's walking around with two dough tags in their pocket.

Some number are walking around with a dough tag in their pocket, but they've cut almost in half the allocation. Now I'm not sitting here saying they're stripping my rights. It's like, I have a lot of faith that these allocations are reflective of the situation on the ground meaning i have state and i have faith in my state fish and game agency that my state fish and game agency is doing a a generally great job of counting wildlife making an assessment about what the harvest rate can be and doing it and i I would look and be like, hey, my prong

horn hunting opportunities, you know, they've been cut in half. Sure, but. But. Oh, go on. Well, it's, it's easy to look at it and be like, well, what, they've cut doe tags, right? So I'd be like.

And general tags. And general tags. Well, because the general tag is either sex. You can't just go buy doe, go kill those wholesale anymore, which is how you keep numbers where you want them, right? Yeah. But the point I'm making is there's been a massive reduction in the amount of pronghorn hunting opportunities, but it's reflective of the situation on the ground. Yep. Meaning if we get like prime conditions and pronghorn numbers skyrocket um i have a lot of faith

that tag allocation will skyrocket yep what we're talking about here with this is like is like a problem here is people don't have that faith because rather than being like oh it's going to a draw it's going to this is going to that it's just like shutting down huge chunks of ground yep and there's not a lot of faith that they're going to turn it back on no and that's and it winds up being like one of these situations where like as you demonstrated non-resident caribou hunters up in that northwest quadrant of state killing 300 bulls or something like that it's insignificant meaning someone's looking and they're saying there's a thing i want to happen. I'm going to use this. I'm going to bullshit everybody and use this thing. I want to happen and make a thing.

I want to happen, happen, but I'm going to do it under a dubious justification. Meaning I'm going to do it by talking about something other than what I'm talking about. I think that's exactly what's happening. And you don't, it's hard to have faith that sheep numbers will improve and that five years from now, they're going to be like, uh, welcome back hunters. Well, and even, and it was a two year closure. Well, I mean, anything could happen obviously,

but I don't think anybody's expecting it to open up because it's not, and people, hunters tend to, I think, you know, and sheep are like, we tend to want to grab any solution that's going to flip a switch and make, and bring it back, make it right immediately. And it's not going to happen like that. It's going to take a long time, but just by the nature of it. Yeah.

The only way to really find out on the issue is to wait and, um, get out of these sort of like dull sheep, dark ages and have some recovery and then stand back and say, okay, things are looking better. Yeah. What's going to happen now? But I think, um, as far as if you're looking at what, what we can look at to justify doing this or not doing this, we've been through sheep crashes and had even, even through like

more, you know, liberal hunting. You hunted your way through. They've hunted their way through sheep crashes. They've hunted their way through them and, you know, like hunting. You hunted your way through. They've hunted their way through sheep crashes. They've hunted their way through them and, you know, like it just, the data that we have show in or implies, shows whatever you want to say concludes that hunting is just not, doesn't have an impactful, doesn't play an impactful

part on the overall sheep as a whole. Yeah. Meaning you got, you're like, when you send a hunter into the mountains, that hunter can only get one thing. He can get a full crow ram. Yep. A full crow ram is a dead man walking.

The last. Exactly. It is not the thing that's driving that population. The last number I can find is like roughly 40,000 sheep. And if they killed 400. Yeah. And I'm sure it's not. That's 1%, right?

Yeah. No, it's a very small percentage of the sheep population that gets killed. And so if one guy, you know, and this is why it's all very suspicious to me. And I think there's some cahoots. My personal opinion is that the federal subsistence board had their mind made up before they ever even got the proposal. Sure. You know, at the recommendation of one guy who's just says, I drive the road and don't, and all the ramps are gone. I've read your writing about his report.

Yeah. So it does, it doesn't add up and you want to go a step further this year, 2023, a few days before the season, the feds surveyed the Yukon, Charlie, the 40 mile country, Tanana uplands. Um, and the park service comes out with this announcement that they're requesting an emergency closure of, um, the federal preserve lands on the Charlie river in the 40 mile country. And, uh, because they're. Getting mighty personal.

I know. And it was, uh, and it was a, you know, as a result. Closure for sheep. Yeah, for sheep, honey. Because their, because their survey numbers were so low. And I'll just hint at Wayne Hymer, who's done flown a lot of sheep surveys. And any guy that's flying surveys, or if you're flying around a cub looking for sheep, you are not seeing all the sheep that are there. Wayne, like he, you know, told me, estimates Wayne that in his sheep surveys, he figured he was seeing at most 60% of the sheep that are there. Wayne, like he told me, estimates Wayne that in his sheep surveys, he figured he was seeing

at most 60% of the sheep that were there. So there's that tidbit. There's just a lot of cards to consider. You got to make sure you're not flying into the side of a mountain. Yeah, yeah. You know, and they're like, I can sit at a mountain, look at a mountain or up a drainage

all day and not see a damn thing. And then eight o'clock in the evening, boop, sheep, sheep, sheep, you know, so it's fallible. But they, they do this survey. It's imperfect, but it's like the best you canop, sheep, sheep, sheep, you know, so it's fallible, but they, they do this survey. It's imperfect, but it's like the best you can do. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, uh, so they survey this and you, and for people that don't know that Yukon, Charlie area is kind of, it's marginal sheep country.

There's spots of sheep country in the population is historically like sparse. Like it's, there's been sheep there for as long as anyone has known, but they're not like concentrated. It's not like the Alaska Ranger. No, you'd think that there weren't. Yeah. I remember being surprised with pilots pointing and saying like, I saw a ram there

one time. Yeah. That's a bitch that had to walk through the timber to get there. Well, and, and that, and something to consider when you're saying, you know, you're seeing the conclusions they come to with this survey, those sheep are sparse and they're down in the trees a

lot and you just find them in like talking, you know, I know old timers that have hunted and flown it for 50 years and like they're there, you find them in the weirdest spots. So you have all that to consider, but we need to close this area and it averages 1.4 rams per year killed in the entire area. Basically averages 1.4 Rams per year killed in the entire area. Basically you can, you can.

They saved that 1.4 Rams. Yeah. It's again, like there's nothing. No. And not only, not only. It's a play dude. It's a play. Well, it is.

Cause not only it's an emergency closure, not that I, I don't believe that they give much about public input anyway, other than they have to sit and listen to it sometimes. No public input. They just closed it. It was funny. My buddy flying through that country one time, my buddy showed me a spot where he picked up two deadheads. Yeah. Because he saw all the blood and snow.

Yeah. And some wolves that killed two rams. It's funny. That little incident was more rams than hunters killed. Yeah. Yeah. How? No, it is.

Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law

makes it that they can't join, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, 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 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 OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. How much of an impact, mean this subject is like do you think wolves are playing on on

these sheep i think in real predation predation is is certainly an impact and fishing game is considering how how they do you know you talk to you know and and one of the things like that people ought to keep in mind they closed the game, state fishing game went along with closing the entire Western half of the Brooks range a few years ago due to, you know, they had a weather event and sheep were low. And, you know, at least, you know, you kind of got to take everything with a grain of salt, but now you talk to some old timers who talk, who remember, well, all the outfitters up there used to go airplane the heck out of wolves every spring. Mm-hmm. Whether it was legal or not at the time, they just did it. And, you know, whether that's the reason there was a big boom of sheep out there or not, you know, like, you can take it for what it's worth. But it does play a factor, but it's, that's kind of a case by case thing. You know, it, it, some coyotes in the Alaska

ranger, a big sheep predator, but, um, Brad Windling, our, our sheep, you know, that, uh, current research biologist talked about a study over a couple of years that a guy did observing lambs. One year, the leading cause of mortality was drowning because there was a lot of runoff. Oh, no kidding.

You know, and then the next year it was golden eagles. Wow. Yeah. Got it. You know, so it's, it it was Golden Eagles. Wow. Yeah, got it. You know, so it's, it all plays a factor for sure. And I think, you know, predator control is the

one button that could feasibly pushed. Although I don't think it would in every case would be, would make the difference. Yeah. It's not necessarily going to move the needle. But. So they closed, they closed it like a few days before the season for basically, and

there's not even an established subsistence sheep hunt in there. So why is the subsistence board closing an area that doesn't have a subsistence sheep hunt? They said for, you know, possible future subsistence, you know, just some bullshit reason. Yeah. And the subsistence board.

To basically keep, to keep some aspirational sheep hunter from basically wasting his time in there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, uh, aspirational sheep hunter from basically wasting his time in there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, uh, and you, uh, I hate when, man, I was on a roll, lost my train of thought. No, you're doing good.

So we, uh, you know, you close this area and, uh, boy, I'll get it. Reminds me of a sheep hunting presentation I gave one time where my computer quit working. Then you had to remember, you had to try to remember what you had to talk about. Yeah. It was sweating it then. reminds me of a sheep hunting presentation I gave one time where my computer quit working. Then you had to remember, you had to try to remember what you had to talk about. Yeah, it was sweating it then. But, uh, so where was that? Uh, we, you know, they closed this area. So the subsistence board, you might think, oh, well that's like some like democratically elected type of thing. All this federal subsistence board is the heads of, I believe, five agencies,

Park Service, Fish and Wildlife, BLM, Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs. And then I think it's three people that they appoint or someone at Interior appoints. So the voting majority of the federal subsistence board making these decisions is just the agencies. It's just them doing what they want to do, essentially. This is my last question on this subject. And this is like total gut. Do you think it's being driven?

Do you think it's being driven by anti-hunting sentiment? Like what we're seeing in Colorado, what we're seeing in Washington, um, like by an animal rights agenda, or do you think it's being driven by a agenda of, uh, I don't want to deal with other people?

I think, I think it's a little bit of both, but the, uh, and it goes back to this, um, seemingly longstanding mode of regulating to keep people like for regulating for minimal human use of the landscape. Got it. You know, there was a, excuse me, Dave's Killer Bread coming back to get me. Kill you. But, uh, so like years, I just, an anecdote, years ago, I remember one of the, uh, the refuge manager for ANWR was trying to ban Vibram boot soles in ANWR because they tear up the tundra.

Hmm. Yeah. I mean, the impalement, it's, it's just silly. Did he get anywhere with that? No. But, uh, no, he did not. But, um. Got it.

Yeah. Yeah. Like there's like a, like a sentiment like that, that like to look at the landscape and see human, however ephemeral. Yeah. And, and non-permanent, but like to see that level of human use is sort of like falls

outside of what they feel is the best. Yeah. I, I think that's see that level of human use is sort of like falls outside of what they feel is the best. Yeah. I think that's, that's probably the biggest crux of it. Which would be like a total preservationist. And it's a preservationist, you know, that's why you see kind of a, a tiering of it.

You know, the park service is the quote unquote worst than, you know, fish and wildlife, then BLM, unless you're, unless you're a small time miner. Yeah. But. But like hunting isn than, you know, fish wildlife, then BLM, unless you're, unless you're a small time miner. Yeah. But, uh. But like hunting isn't, you know, I don't even think like, like the kind of hunting we're

talking about isn't incompatible with like, unless you're 100% preservationist, hunting isn't incompatible with the preservationist perspective. You're preaching to the choir, man. But, but, but I want, but I want to have time to, I want to have time to i want to have time to to jump into another thing give me your take give me your take on what should happen

with anwar oh as far as the oil drilling stuff yeah give me your take on how how people in your view how should people sort of conceptualize anwar and what's your take on what should happen in anwar you know i'm not even convinced at this point that, that we need to, or should drill it. I'm kind of somewhere in the middle. I, you know, kind of undecided. I don't see an imminent need to drill it right now. So. You mean just, you mean from a national security perspective?

Yeah, I mean from. From an economy perspective? Economy, oil prices. I think there's, I think in Alaska, Alaska is a resource state for sure. And there's a balance to be struck between development of those resources and what we want to keep as untouched or is what we perceive it to be untouched. Yeah. You know, like the area in Anwar that they, you know, is kind of up for. So Anwar, just to clarify, Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

Yep. Yep. Yep. And so this. There's been a long simmering. The state, people from the state have been pushing to open this area, 1002, they call it, which was set aside as a, for potential oil exploration, um, and drill, eventual drilling. And I, I don't want to talk out of my ass because I don't remember a lot of the details, but there was a book on the creation of ANWR and how that area was not originally supposed

to be part of it. It could have been folded in there with Anilka, I don't know. Yeah. But, um. The 1002 area. Yeah, the 1002. So, um, and that area was, it was completely

seismic surveyed in the eighties. Like it was a lot of Alaska. People think of Alaska as being completely untouched, man, there's seismic lines running everywhere. Yeah. And, uh, so. Straight. Straight, yeah.

Well, excuse me. Tyler got into a bread seed stuck in his throat. It's ironic that we got a coffin shaped table here. So as, and as, well, my, my good buddy and hunting partner, I call him Dr. Frank Schultz. He's not really a doctor, but that's a whole nother story. He was, we recently discussed, he had talked to someone who was actually, I think it was

their, one of their family members were actually participated in this statewide survey, you know, seismic survey lines where they, in the winter, they wait for the ground to freeze and drop the dozer blade and go. Yeah. But different, different kind of subject.

So I think the important thing, whether we end up drilling it or not drilling it, is just to look at a little more, there's a little more context around than what the general public knows, you know. You get a lot of, or back when it, when it was like kind of the hot button issue, you get a lot of like emotionally driven pictures and arguments made to be like, well, you know, any reasonable person would oppose this. Um, but you know, they'll, they'll say like the caribou of great concern, which they are,

but you know, there's these theories that it's going to decimate the porcupine caribou herd if we move into that area. Well, there's drill pads like 50 miles away, and the data or any data we could look at 50 miles away, or I guess Prudhoe itself is more farther than that, but right next door, the central art occurred, exploded during the expansion of Prudhoe Bay oil fields and the pipeline. And there was a lot of worries. There's a lot of worries about what would happen with them. I mean, they built like sections of the pipeline that go underground for Caribou to cross,

because that was a big concern. They didn't know what, they'd never seen anything like that. What they would do with the overhead structure. Yeah. And as, you know, time has shown, they don't care. And they'll in fact like flock to the pipeline

and a lot of the oil field buildings, cause the windows run under them and keep getting out of the bugs. It's like a, it's like a, you'd almost take it like a, um, like a propaganda photo that came out of that time of B. Caribou getting in the shade of the pipeline. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. People like, they love it. You know, and even, even the, you know, Reardon, who wrote Alaska's Wolfman and wrote a lot of, a lot of stories for Outdoor Life over the years. I have the original copy of. That's one of my favorite books of all time. Of, oh, me too. It's, it's phenomenal. So one of, he wrote an article kind of pre-pipeline, like wondering what, what the heck's going to happen.

Jim Reardon did. Yeah, yeah. It was a two part story. I've got the original copies of them, but, uh, but the caribou that, I mean,

if caribou did well in Prudhoe Bay with the oil, it wasn't because of the oil. It wasn't. Just because it's a cyclical. Yeah, I think so. I guess someone could look and say it didn't have, it didn't have obvious negative impacts on an already cyclical thing.

And in fact, we saw the up down cycle continue. Yeah. I think that, I think that. And you still saw good peaks. Yeah. You know. Yeah. I think at the very least you could say that, that has shown that they're not incompatible.

Yeah. So there's, you know, and that's one of the big, one of the big arguments and, um, in kind of looking, researching this stuff, I, I, uh, a guy had sent me a, I think it was environmental impacts impact, environmental impact study by the American Ecological Society. Um, and their assertion was that the, the 3D seismic survey that would have to happen

would be the riskiest part of the whole. Got it. Because they've got to roll this equipment around, but they did concede that the environmental regulations for conducting that are so strict that they should, it should keep, you know, some of these things they're worried about happening from happening.

And that's another thing, like people don't understand quite how restrictive the rules are, even in existing oil fields and stuff. I haven't worked up there a bunch. Back in my, my pipe covering days. I, I was on jobs up there and saw some of it, but, uh, a guy put, put it to me. Um, it was pretty good illustration. He said, if you're up, you know, you're up there and you have a half million dollar piece

of equipment and a seagull lands and makes a nest on there, you can't touch that piece of equipment until that seagull's gone. It doesn't matter if you got to get another one shipped up there to use it for the time being, it doesn't matter. You can't touch that piece of equipment until that seagull's gone. It doesn't matter if you got to get another one shipped up there to use it for the time being. It doesn't matter. You can't touch it. You can't interact with it.

Whereas a reasonable person to be like, all right, sorry about your luck this year, Mr. Seagull, you know, or I guess it would be Mrs. Seagull, but. Mrs. Could be. Well, I don't know. I had to read up on seagull reproduction.

It's just strange times these days. Did the willow, did the fact that they expanded into that willow oil field, did that take pressure off of the anwar conversation about whether or not to move into anwar it may have um you know and i think a lot of the uh i think a lot of anwar is just like used for political jostling as much as anything i don't know that there's like a very real like realistic possibility that it's gonna happen anytime soon and I don't know that there's like a very real, like realistic possibility that it's going to happen anytime soon. And I don't know that it's needed, you know, so. So you feel it's like that argument is chilled out right now. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, there's always going to be

people that want it, but, and there's always going to be people who don't want it no matter what, but whether it even is a, like a relevant issue right now. Yeah. Like I think there's bigger fish. There's, it's a, it's a, to my opinion, it's kind of a distraction from, I think the loss of hunting opportunity that's just like cascading throughout the state.

No, I worry about. It's more of an important issue to me. Yeah. I worry about both those things. And the reason I worry about them in tandem, and I don't think it's like, I worry about them both, but I worry about them both from the same perspective is that, uh,

I want there to be as much wildlife on the ground as possible. And I want hunters and anglers to have maximum access to that wildlife. So the restrictions, the seemingly arbitrary kind of conniving restrictions on hunting access bothers me, as does the loss of wildlife habitat. So if I look at, like from my perspective, if I look at a thing where you have a chunk of land that's not exploited and it's cordoned off, there's a basic understanding of it being unexploited. Even outside of any like super detailed understanding of where the boundary lines and how the boundary lines are drawn and any fuzziness about that. I would just look and say, like, I will look from my perspective and say, theoretically, even though I'm,

even though I might not understand every nuance of every drainage and all that, I would say if there's chunks of ground that aren't touched, I celebrate not touching them. Yeah. And that's, and that's a logical thing in terms of just maintaining, in terms of maintaining wildlife habitat. Cause however you put it,

I don't think I, I like toy with the global perspective but i more imagine like i i look sort of my perspective is very american like like the united states of america right um and of course you know i pay extra concern around my immediate area and and i do a lot of hunting in a particular state so i look at the wildlife politics in that state i'm not an alaskan but i look at it as a place i love it's part of a country that i love and so i look at a thing like anwar i'm like man i don't i don't want to mess with it i don't want to mess because i don't want to mess with any of the areas we have that aren't developed yeah like

and it's just it's just for me it's as simple, it's just as simple as if there's big chunks of ground that aren't developed, I just hate to see them developed. Yeah. Because I think that down the road, 100 years from now, 200 years from now, I won't be around. But when looking at, when weighing it out, I'm like, 200 years from now now that'll be celebrated like that that decision of restraint and you look at like even to take something and i don't want to make too much of a point about this but you take something like what what wrote what uh theodore roosevelt did when he was creating the national forest system he pissed everybody off when he did the midnight forest which is what 20 some he created 20 some they didn't call him national force at the time

exact number uh he there there was a there was a bill moving through congress that was going to make it that was going to strip him of an ability to create national force and he was going to veto it but he knew sentiment against him was so high that if he vetoed his veto would be overridden so they call him the midnight forest because his ability to create these things would expire at midnight he then goes and creates like 24 or 27 more preserves and then wakes up in the morning and signs a bill saying he can't do it anymore and what happens they carve him on mount rushmore yeah so i'm just saying like like over long periods of time i think that that that that over long periods of time that that desire to create undeveloped areas and protect undeveloped areas um is celebrated but i'm so myopic in my interest

and so myopic in my views that if you do all that and make it that people can't hunt it i look it's not a win anymore no i i feel i mean i'd be like well yeah you did but you threw out the baby with the bath water well and and a lot of people man man. It's a win in some, like some hazy distant environmental way perhaps, but like, it's not the win I'm after. Yeah. The win I'm after is, is access for like access for people who hunt and fish.

Yeah. You know, and sometimes that access is going to be tough, but at least you have the, the opportunity. Theoretically, whether or not you go, whether or not you go there or not. Like, I don't know. I, I still, you have the, the opportunity. Theoretically, whether or not you go, whether or not you go there or not. Like, I don't know. I, I still, I never have hunted the Frank

church. Um, never hunted the Frank church, the celebrated wilderness area that we have in lower 48. I've never hunted there. I wouldn't be surprised if I died and never hunted there. Um, I like it being there.

I would be livid if they tried to strip hunting rights from it, but I've never been there. Yeah. Probably never, you know, it's just like, I like knowing it's there. Yeah. It's a win that it's there.

It's a win that you can hunt it. Yeah. I think that's a totally reasonable way to look at it too. I think just when, and not arguing for or against, because a lot of these projects, you know, these potential projects and whatnot that come up, I'm not even necessarily for them or against them.

I kind of lean, I lean that way where I don't want to see development that's not necessary or is going to be irresponsibly done or what that, um, but yeah, the, uh, I feel the same way that what good, you know, not necessarily that it's not good to have that land, but if I can't hunt it or you're taking my opportunity to hunt it. So, you know, so if you guys can have a private playground. Understood. Yeah. What was your take on, um, this is kind of

like another one that sort of went away. What was your take on pebble mine? That was the thing that generated enormous amounts of interest from out, from outsiders. Yeah, it was huge. Outside of Alaska. How did, how did you sit on that? I generally kind of, I leaned against it.

I didn't have like a firm, but it's like, eh, you know, it just, it seemed like talking to people who live in the area and like have a lot of vested interest, like personal interest. It probably was not the right thing to do. Yeah. So. But you didn't, you didn't view it as a, this is the thing that will break Alaska. No, no. No. So.

Now what's your, what's your take on, do you, what's your position on Ambler Road? I would, I'd say I'd lean more against it because, I mean, well, for one, they're not going to offer any public access supposedly, but they did say that with the pipeline or the, you know, the haul road. Initially that was not, not a public access

road. And initially it was not planned to ever be. No. Yeah. It was just strictly an oil, an oil company road, you know, or oil, oil resources road. So yeah, at that point, you know, my outlook is like, well, do we really need this here right now? And it's not going to increase your access anyway. It's not going to increase my access.

If there was like a firm plan to, you know, to allow some hunter access, you know, yeah, I'd be okay for it. I'd be, I would be more willing to. That tip you, that tip you more. It might, yeah. At least create like a win. Yeah, for sure. Like there's, there's a road outside of Fairbanks. You guys drove right by it to Pogo Mine.

Yep. And it's not near as long a road or through as controversial a territory. But I remember guys, when they first put that road in, would take their four wheelers up there and sneak, you know, you weren't supposed to, they would, they couldn't do anything to you if you're off the road. They just couldn't catch you on the road.

Speaking of some, you know, some, some sketchy stuff and the hunting was up, was pretty good up there for, you know, until they really cracked down on it. But there's still no public access to that road you know like the resources are important and access to them is important but you know it's just got to be balanced i think yeah so tell folks how to tell folks how to find all your work because if you if you're interested in you know i always use the term wildlife politics if you're interested in wildlife and management in Alaska,

plus we've spent all our time talking about like some controversial political stuff, but you're also very accomplished avid hunter. Do everything from fur handling, like I said, hunting bears with longbows. Yeah, we gotta have him back to talk about some fun stuff.

Talk about all the fun stuff. But tell people how to follow, like where to listen, how to follow your adventures. Yeah. So, I am staff writer for Outdoor Life. So, OutdoorLife.com. And you publish on what cadence? On usually a couple stories a week. I do like a tremendous, a lot of gun stuff, a lot of like gun reviews, stuff like that.

But I'll dip into important, you know, Alaska based issues and, and the odd, you know, hunting story. Like the narrative stories are like, are my favorite. I like your gun stuff. Most everything I read about the issues we've been talking about, most everything I read is

your work. I like your gun stuff. And you still have me here, so that's not too bad. Your gun stuff's good because it's no nonsense. No, and that's what, you know, which it's funny because I'm staying with my coworker, our shooting editor, John Snow here in town. He lives here in Bozeman and like's what, you know, which it's funny because I'm staying with my coworker, our shooting editor, John Snow here in town.

He lives here in Bozeman and like he's, he's put a tremendous amount of work into me and like, this is how we're going to be. This is the type of gun content we're going to do. And just, it's, it's a lot of fun. I love my job. So outdoorlife.com and I have it's called Tundra Talk.

And that's your own podcast? Yeah, that's mine. Okay. So it's, uh, it's a fairly like, it's just me and other hunters from Alaska. I mean, we talk about Alaska last, you know, what we've been up to this last week, how to fix, you know, I had to fix this generator. Here's how I did it. There's a whole variety of just kind of fix, you know, I had to fix this generator. Here's how I did it. Just a whole variety of just kind of, you know, loose, like casual stuff. But a lot of there's, there's so many people up there.

I'm not that special up there. Like I'm just a dude. There's a lot of cool people who do a lot of cool stuff up there. And that's kind of what I want to share in my podcast. So it's called Tundra Talk and it has some foreign language. I need to get one. You guys have that.

You still do that merch where you do those Mickey Mouse boots? I have some stickers at, I don't have them yet, but I have some here. Like the hoodies with the Mickey Mouse boots? What do you guys call the Mickey Mouse boots? Bunny boots. Bunny boots, yeah.

Yeah. No, I can, I've been getting bugged to do another order of those, so I'll make sure you get one. Right now you got your, you got your Tundra Talk snowmobile. This is how I get all my clothes is I just do bulk orders of clothes and sell some of

them and then I don't have to buy clothes. But that's the old Ski-Doo Tundra one cylinder. And Tundra Talk is anywhere you find podcasts. Anywhere you find podcasts. And you're on social media. Social media, Instagram primarily just at the Tyler Friel because I couldn't think of something more smart. Do you like or hate when people write you emails

and be like, hey, I want to come up. Where should I go? No, I get a lot. I get a lot of it. And that's kind of part of it. I mean, that's my station is, you know, the type of stuff I do and that's part of it. And I can't always get back, get to everybody,

but I try to give what help. I'm not going to tell you where I hunt, where I'm hunting sheep. You don't give coordinates. No, no. But. Guidance, but not coordinates. You know, logistical, I get a lot of logistical questions, stuff like that. So yeah, I'm happy to, happy to entertain that stuff as best I can.

Yeah. And yeah, I do piss some people off occasionally. You said, you mentioned longbows. You would think that shooting a grizzly bear with a stone arrowhead would be. Would be universally celebrated. All right. Am I me?

So you would think that would be more controversial than shooting one with a 6.5 Creedmoor, but you would be wrong. Seriously? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. People get more pissed about the 6.5 Creedmoor. Way more.

When it's on a video that I could tell you, hey, I shot this with a 338 and you would believe me. Anyway, that's a whole nother. No, that's funny though, man. People are, yeah. People get annoyed. Yeah. Well, we got to have you back on to talk about like the good, not the good stuff.

We have. The fun stuff. Yeah. The not depressing stuff. Talk about the hunting and fishing stuff. So I'm sorry if I was stuff yeah they're not depressing talk about the hunting fish is so i'm sorry if i depraved i was waiting like it's not depressing i think like i i watch with fascination because i think that they're so um it's just a really great lesson about um it's a really great lesson about land access land administration the push and pull of different interests. You can learn, you know, I mean, when it comes

to fighting about wildlife, uh, you'll learn the most watching Alaska. Yeah, I think so. It's still pretty raw. It's got like a dozen big game animals. I mean, it's just like, there's a lot, there's a lot going on up there. If you're interested in how these battles get

fought and won and lost, um, look to Alaska, man. You know, and following your work is a great way to follow it. So I appreciate you coming on, man. But Alaska sucks. Don't tell your friends. Sure. Yeah, you should have made it seem a lot worse than you did. Be like, and then they closed the whole state to non-residents.

All the sheep hunters died. All right. Next slide. Ladies and gentlemen, Tyler Friel. Check him out. He's at OutdoorLife.com, Tundra Talk, Instagram. Instagram. Like at Tyler Friel?

At the Tyler Friel. The one. Yeah. Don't go to some fake Tyler Friel bastard. All right. Thank you. I love those B-I-G big white tails.

Those stinky rug B-I-G big white tails. I love those B-I-G

big W-H-I-T-E tails. I love those B-I-G big white tails. Big white tails. Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great.

Oh what fun it is to sit in a freezing cold tree all day. Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great. Oh what fun it is to sit in a freezing cold tree all day. Dashing through the woods for the morning light turns gray. Across the fields and draws, creeping all the way. I climb into the tree. Big bucks are on the way. What fun it is to sit and wait for a gosh darn deer all day.

Oh, big, I'm sorry. What is this? Pizzicato strings? Who do you think I am? Enya? Get this out of here. I don't want to hear it. Thank you. Big white tails, big white tails, big white tails are great. Oh, what fun it is to sit in a freezing cold tree all day. My hopes and dreams are high. The rut is finally here. Mark said it's the most wonderful time to kill a white-tailed deer. Pinch points and pettings where you'll find me hanging twenty feet in a tree Grunt tubes, my bow, and specter camo

This really can't be me Blah! A day or two ago I thought that this was fun But now I'm frozen to my seat And the good times, they are gone I've ate up all my snacks my hands and toes are numb and when i climbed down from my stand that son of a butt decided to come

i love those big white tails those sneakyG Big white tails I love those B-I-G Big W-H-I-T-E tails I love those big white tails All day