The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 551: Old School Methods vs. New-Fangled Gadgetry

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Ryan Callaghan, Clay Newcomb, Randall Williams, and Phil Taylor. Topics discussed: Experiences had in and around The Wilma Theater; morels in moose tracks; “Ole Slew Foot��� performed by Clay and Phil the Quiet Man of Talent on the harmonica; banning sonar in WI?; drones and hunting; traditional use vs. technological advancement; what would the long hunters say?; poison arrows; genuine snake oil rendered off a Burmese python; habitat selection methods applied to hunters wearing GPS; and more.  Outro song: "Bo$$ Tom" by Jesse Collins Connect with Steve, MeatEater, and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com dude i'm up to my neck in nostalgia right now being here cal you're feeling it oh yeah missoula missoula guy for sure is there a reason you can't put that on your head? Well, because I'm supposed to be queued up to record Clay on the guitar. Oh. Put that on for a second.

Who's doing the run of show? How long is it going to take you to put that on? There we go. I'm just trying to be very respectful to our guys who are editing these things. We're like, don't touch the goddamn microphone. Oh. Yeah. I can tell you that that, guys, is me.

Yes. And this is a special case. Go ahead and touch the mic. Me and Cal spent, I mean, I lived here for almost a decade. Oh, yeah. Just this building alone, the Wilma, a lot of, we could do an entire podcast based off of experiences had in and around the wilma theater

i have spent nights in this building as have i yeah i had a old girlfriend that lived above us right now and she doesn't live there right now but she did live there right now and back in those days they didn't have a regular elevator there was an elevator man this is the late 90s there was an elevator man. This is in the late 90s. There was an elevator man that had to operate the elevator with a throw switch. His name was Scoot Newton. And anytime, if you came in at 2 in the morning

after the bars closed, you'd knock on Scoot Newton's door. He slept in his Chuck Taylors. He would come out and deliver you to your floor. And the hydraulics were a little weird in that elevator, so it would always settle. And Scoot Newton would like, he'd overshoot the room. He'd play the settle.

He'd overshoot the room, throw the switch, and you could tell that he'd always be looking at that crack. A man who knows his equipment. Yeah, he'd always be looking at that crack, and you could tell that he liked always be looking at that crack a man who knows his equipment yeah he'd always be looking at that crack and you could tell that he'd like to just layer in there right flush that's right it wasn't about customer satisfaction it was just about him being pro at his game yep i'm sure there's probably like weather changes would throw that thing off you know oh yeah but uh it's an old building yeah and then oh i saw steve earl here oh cool in my buffalo book i talk about a guy a very pinnacle like a like a a major player kind of a major player in buffalo restoration the animal

recovery of the species drank himself to death under the bridge that we're under right now when i was working on my first book scavenger's guide to oak cuisine the pigeons i was raising i caught under this bridge we'd come down here to an extension ladder at night hoping not get trouble with the cops and catch pigeons and collect eggs under here and raise them not far from here. The crayfish in that book came from under this bridge. One time I was walking over this bridge and saw a bike in the river and rode that bike for years until someone stole it, get this, at this building.

Yeah. I found it 100 yards from here and lost it 20 yards from here. I had two buddies that decided it would be a great idea, like the best idea ever to have rooms in this building. And then like very quickly decided that being in such tight proximity to all the bars and stuff was actually in fact, a bad idea to live in this building. So they vacated pretty quick,

but they, they lived here. And then my high school, Hellgate high school, we used to do like cleanups for, you know, civil service type of days that were always right down here, cleaning up,

you know, trash and all that stuff. The playground, I got some dirty stories about that playground but the clean ones it was like we came down and helped like it was like a habitat for humanity project or something that we chipped in and built part of that playground through the high school um and then yeah bartended at reds and missoula club, which is Stone's Throw from here. The first night I ever spent in Montana, I came in from the...

My brother Danny was doing a job working on a salmon project out of Walla Walla, Washington. He was working on a snake river. The city's so nice. Yeah, is that what it is? They named it twice. Oh, okay.

What river's right there? The Yakima, isn't it yeah okay is it what rivers right there is the salmon no no it's the salmon anyways he was working on a salmon project there i was still finishing up regular college in michigan i flew out here me and him went fishing all over hell we fished the saint joe's uh fished we fished the cordelaine we fished the cordelain around there we fished st joe's came in on 90 from the west okay and i just remember like kind of like entering this town and we decided to stop here for the night and we first thing we did was we went to this place that later became like a feels like a bar pizza joint well we found a hotel and we first thing we did was we went to this place that later became like a piece like a bar pizza joint well we found a hotel and we got a steep discount because some dudes had changed

the oil of their motorcycle in the hotel room it was a motel and there was a there was an oil stain the size of a bushel basket that sounds like the thunderbird and they gave us like they let us have it for next to nothing like well we have a room but we're not letting it out because this these assholes were changing their motorcycles oil in the room and spilled it over but you guys could take the room we got for next to nothing went down to that like pizza joint bar i can't remember oh rhino did the rhino have pizza i don't remember maybe later became p went to the rhino i know still the rhino went to charlie bees where i wound up spending like years of my life went charlie bees i remember seeing like there was a lot of girls there that had like uh like scabs on their elbows and knees like hard

hitting rafting guides right and i thought man i gotta come to school here and i'm not kidding you because i was fixing to go to graduate school. Went down to the university. This is like in the summer. Walked all around. Got a pamphlet. I mean, I got a pamphlet from the school. Simpler times. Yeah, I got a pamphlet from the school.

In a building that I later got a job scrubbing the toilets in when I first got into school. And at that point forward, pretty much had my mind fixed on moving to this town. And all those adventures, right? Like this is all happening like right here. Yeah, just something clicked with you. I'll tell you one last thing.

Missoula was way different. Way different. It was crazy. Yeah. Well, when the town changed a bunch as like the mills shut down because there was actually like shift work going on and uh this isn't like a point of pride or anything but you know people would probably think i'm lying if i was like well yeah there was a strip club on main street

like the main strip of downtown stores yeah dealt poker right brains and eggs yeah yeah people would be like no that doesn't know no like next to the wine bar yeah you know yeah it's just weird weird yeah what was that place called i've been in there the oxford is still there no they had the club the gentleman's club yeah and i can't remember the name of it at this point either but von richter uh my old manager at red's red's bar uh that's where he started bartending was down there one of my one of my pinnacle moments as a writer i was living i was living on the other side of the river more toward the university from here and i had just done this deal where i'd been up bear hunting um up on the north fork of the flathead and we're coming back and like it was so weird there'd been a big burn it was called the moose fire and there's just trucks lined up and down

the road trucks and campers and stuff there's a lot of glacier traffic right okay what's going on I remember guys like morels shit loads and it was just like on but like one of those burn sprouts or just you couldn't comprehend them amount of morels I remember there was a moose track like a moose had come through that burn after and when it was kind of wet and sooty and a moose had come through that burn and whatever his tracks had like done something magical to the ash and compressed it in some way yeah and his tracks were full of morels yeah morels everywhere and so i came home and there was a very influential it's still around but at the time the new yorker magazine was like a super influential magazine and i had like i knew some

guys that i met through school that wrote there and one ian frazier was like you should do a talk of the town these things these like little news bits in the front of the new yorker which were prestigious then he's like you should do a talk of the town on fires and morels. And I couldn't, and I knew I had a deadline. Like it had to be immediate, right? And I dropped everything and I worked on that thing. Like no one had, talk of the town is 800 words. I worked on that like 12 hours a day,

16 hours a day, whatever it was. It took me three weeks because I knew I had a chance and I knew they were interested in seeing it. It took me three weeks. Crippling anxiety. And the only break I would take, I'm not kidding you, is we would go in and we could walk down down kind of like go on one angle from our house and jump into the clark fork river with the inner tube it was hot that summer and you

could float through town and cool off and swim and whatnot and get out and walk at a different angle back to the house yeah i remember one time coming down and hitting this meaning because you floated down you kind of like float past your house and right you know you're coming like like you're like let's say your house is at the hub of a wheel you follow one spoke out of the 45 get in and come back at another spoke on a 45 super hot day i remember coming down there like trying somehow to get my article and getting out at the brit like getting out right where we're at and walking up higgins and getting a smoothie and having a laugh because coming back i could still see my wet footprints coming up out of the river got back in river and eventually got that thing done and

they published it and it was like something mental like something happened to me mentally and then i was you know i mean oh that's amazing something mentally happened to me after having accomplished that that's amazing and just think how much uh just straight up dicking around you did in this town that was wasting so much time unproductive compared to that wasted so much time what have you two crossed paths at any time oh i'm sure yeah i'm sure yeah for a while, I thought Steve was a teacher of mine. Like when we were first starting to get to know each other, I had this class. You know, it was all taught by grad students and it was a writing class.

And I was like, when we first started getting to know each other I was like oh my god this is just like we're gonna see each other eye to eye and make this connection of immediately disliking each other because I had a big blow up we were like setting trusses or something at the job site. I had an A in the class and the thing that was, I had an A in everything curriculum based. I had an F in attendance. And I was always like trying to make the case of like, well, I actually am working versus you, the graduate student who just sitting here and do nothing.

Don't say that say graduate students love that when they're in a teaching position no it wasn't me and i'll tell you how i know it wasn't me when i applied to come here there's a whole long story it even involves when oj was running away in his truck in his bronco i'm not kidding you i can still see my grandma just plugged in to that every day yeah this how i came to be here plays into oj's truck chase it's so weird i can't give you all the details i applied for a like a fellowship where you get a tuition waiver didn't get it they kind of like the program i was in was like a lot of like ivy league kids the kids from real highfalutin schools not from muskegon but they would roll the dice on like like now and then like roll the dice on an unexpected candidate and

like i later learned i was like the dice roll okay so i tried to get a fellowship and i didn't get a fellowship so i had to come anyway and pay tuition so i couldn't afford the tuition so i tried to get a fellowship and i didn't get a fellowship so i had to come anyway and pay tuition so i couldn't afford the tuition so i had to come and take a light course load in order to get residency yep later as i came to establish myself within the program they offered me a fellowship but out of pride because they didn't give it to me when i wanted it i wouldn't take it i love it because by then i was doing tree work anyways but the me when i wanted it i wouldn't take it i love it because by then i was doing tree work anyways but the first when i came i had to get like while i was trying to find a regular job i had to get a part-time job and so you could get a part-time

job through the school and they gave me a job my classes were all in the la building they gave me a job i'm not kidding you they gave me a job scrubbing toilets in the building where all my classes were and it would put these ivy league kids in this super weird situation they'd come in to take a piss and there i am their classmates scrubbing the toilet and i remember one of them was so like kind of like taken aback they put they put out that at least it must be convenient because you're right here you're like yep yep i'm glad we have that that's why i took the job yeah dude it was a wild wild time in my life man oh i love it yep so uh later tonight you're gonna hear uh we're gonna do a show up here i saw steve earl i can't even think of who all i saw we need to

get steve earl on the podcast he's he's a public lands dude uh loves to fish the reason i haven't is we just totally disagree on capital punishment but i just don't see that coming up i would love to have a feeling it would be a freewheeling conversation i would love to have them on i don't want to talk about capital point there's plenty of places we align i saw them in bozeman i saw them in missoula our playlist that we play before the live shows so when we turn our playlist on tonight has steve earl tunes on it uh huge steve you know what ticks me off about uh if folks who'd like don't listen to steve earl they're like yeah i'm going to steve earl concert they'll be like oh is he gonna play and they'll rattle off like one of his hits copperhead road i hope so like copper hits. Copperhead Road, I hope so. Like Copperhead, yeah, exactly.

And you're like, damn right he is. What I'd be wondering is he going to do I Feel Alright. Oh, that's good. That's my tune, dude. Galway Girl's great, too. No, man, I'd love to, he's a fisherman. Yeah, yeah. I just feel so strongly about capital punishment.

In favor of like lightening our tax load? No, just, and I don't think of it as like i don't think of it as uh deterrent i just think there's some things that are so heinous i just think of it like a revenge it's on brand that you supported the uh gravel pit dog killing then of uh christy gnome yes okay yeah that's they did that's on brand in the guardian article they did use the word execution sure which i go back and forth with like using that type of language which i feel is like typically reserved for uh humans well you remember when pebbles the bear was killed he was assassinated right yeah well that uh what i feel like is a grossly out of taste out of touch those billboards that are around bozeman which is like stop

the bison genocide oh yeah yeah that doesn't make a lot of sense yeah like wow like let's just round up a handful of tribes in montana and see what their association to genocide is like yeah that's pretty out of touch it's misleading word choice uh which is something i never engage in um we're gonna do a show tonight here in the willamette which is which is uh like i said heat with nostalgia and one thing we're gonna hear tonight is uh we're gonna hear clay and phil perform and phil do you got a mic on phil i do yeah phil has been playing so at all of our live shows phil's been playing his harmonica um which you're not a historic harmonica player no i uh i heard clay was playing playing the show and um i kind of wanted to just make myself more useful on this tour

because honestly, when I was asked to come, I didn't know what I was going to be doing. Is that right? Yeah. So I was like, well, I don't just want to be dead weight. So I asked Clay, like, hey, would you want some accompaniment? And he was super generous and said yes. So I was like, man, I got to learn an instrument I can play with Clay.

But I played music all throughout my childhood and high school. So it's like, I think I told you, I'm like master of none, jack of all trades. I can learn something quickly. I'm not by any means a great harmonica player, but I get the job done. Did you choose the harmonica for the ease of transport? That was definitely a factor. He blew one out on the tour. Really?

Yeah. I didn't know you could blow out a harp. He played so hot it only lasted him three nights. Before tonight's show, we need to get him one of those vests so he can have several harps. Just in case one goes down. A bandolier and a Bob Dylan holder.

Oh yeah, I love it. So his hands are free. Yep. I think you should do both the songs. Well, you don't want to do both? You don't need to do both. Yeah, I can. I just think it's a lot of live music for a podcast. Okay, let's just cut to the one where Phil plays his harmonica.

It's not your podcast, Clay. Yeah, let's cut to the one where Phil plays his harmonica. All righty. Yeah, it's kind of the showstopper, you know? Yep. The showstarter. Yeah, it's the showstopper. Don't stop the show with it.

Now, we need to sit down the show with it. We need to sit down. We need to sit down, Phil. Yeah, we do. Otherwise, I've got to make some camera adjustments. Phil's putting on his foot tambourine. Is this a foot stomper? Are we supposed to? Please don't.

The thing I've learned from musicians. They don't like when you join in. The audience gets going and they're not on. They started clapping a few days ago during your first song. And I was really worried, but it kind of died off. You know, when you're on stage, it's so loud, you can only hear yourself. Yeah, I got big monitors.

Also, they're not throwing you off. They probably would if all of them got to doing it. Most humans aren't good at keeping a tempo, especially when you've got like 500 of them all trying at the same time. This is a little bit harder because I can't really hear my guitar, but it's okay. We got it. Me and Phil.

Man, I've said it a couple times. I feel like Merle Haggard. I feel like I've been on the tour my whole life. All I think about is the music. Like Phil said last night, when you get home, the rest of the world will have moved on and yeah you're still there in the same place yeah all right uh can you quick give a little background on old slew foot so this is just an old folk song does that does it known who who is it does it known you know i don't even know i don't even know who

originally wrote it i don't know but. But all the folk bands sing it. It's a traditional song. It's a traditional song. And it's about a bear hunt with dogs, which is pretty cool. Have you listened to the Grateful Dead's album, Reckoning? I have not. It's like traditional songs? I have not.

You might like some of those. Yeah, I bet I would. All right, you ready, Phil? Let's do it. All right, this is Old Slewfoot. It's a great song. You're going to beller it, right? I'm going to. All right. You ready, Phil? Let's do it. All right. This is Old Slewfoot. It's a great song. You're going to beller it, right? I'm going to do my best.

It's a little bit harder sitting down. Yeah. High on the mountaintop, tell me what you see. Bear tracks, bear tracks, looking back at me. You better get your off those boys before it's too late bears got a little pig and he's headed for the gate oh he's big around the middle and he's brought across the front running 90 miles an hour taking 30 feet of jump he ain't never been caught he ain't never been treed

Some folks say he's a lot like me Here we go, foot tambourine I saved up my money and I bought me some bees Started making honey way up in the trees I cut down that tree but my honey's all gone. Old slew foot done made himself at home. Oh he's big around the middle and he's brought across the front running 90 miles an hour taking 30 feet of jump. He ain't never been caught, he ain't never been treated Some folks say he's a lot like me

Phil Taylor on the harmonica That's right Last verse Winners are coming And it's twenty feet low River's froze over So where can he go? We'll chase him up the holler And we'll put him in a well

Shoot him in the bottom Just to listen to him yell. Oh, he's big around the middle, and he's broad across the front, running 90 miles an hour, taking 30 feet of jump. He ain't never been caught. He ain't never been treated. Some folks say he's a liar like me Phil Taylor on the harmonica

And the flutemarie Phil That was delightful Phil Just a quiet man of talent Just, yep Thank you, Phil. Oh, thank you, Clay.

Okay. A handful of things to talk about. Cal, you want to kick us off with the Bruja in Wisconsin? Oh, sorry. It's like regulation, season setting for a lot of different states. Is it? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like we're going through season setting processes in montana and um so one of the things that and i know we're going to talk about washington this podcast too right so yeah that's another example but um so uh state of wisconsin uh somebody wrote in for the game commission to consider a proposal that would ban, uh, side imaging sonar and like 360 view sonar, which is Chester be damned. Yeah. Um, which is, you know, like crazy, awesome technology that's becoming more and more

available because the, the longer it's out the prices come down um so more folks can afford it and it allows anglers to target individual fish identify species identify fish in conditions that they typically would have to, you know, just blind cast or sit with a worm on the bottom and hope for the best type of thing. Insanely effective. I fished it. Yeah. You fished it.

And like, you know, one of my gripes with this technology is that like we did that Ducks Unlimited perch fishing tournament on Canyon Ferry a few years years ago which is super fun but as the day progressed i had like nobody to talk to because you guys were all huddled around that screen and it was like it was you may as i was a lonely man out there on the ice without couldn't couldn't join in on the fun not enough holes and sonar and stuff to go around and it's like this is yeah it's just kind of taking the

a big part of the fishing camaraderie out of it and it's like another excuse to watch tv that's one reason it is one reason it's yeah and and yeah I Yeah. So I had a camera for a while for ice fishing. Yeah. Kept breaking. But I had a camera. You lower the wire down the hole. And you can hook fish that don't hit. A thing you don't realize when you're ice fishing,

when fish are turned off, is they mouth it. They'll mouth it in a way that you've got a spring bobber. You don't register the hit. But on camera. You can be like oh it's in their mouth right you can zip fit you can hook a fish that would not register on a spring bobber yeah because you go like oh shit so this guy's uh argument is that the effectiveness of the sonar is going to increase the catch rate and more than likely the take home rate of fish. You know, probably like walleye, crappie, bluegill is what this person is probably real concerned about.

That impact is going to decrease the creole limits, your take home, how many fish you can take home yeah um when that happens the ripple effect is going to be fewer people buying your fishing license because they don't find it worth their while because they can't take home as many fish so it's going to uh hurt the whole system because fish are too easy to catch right now with this technology it's so easy it's going to hurt the population the hurt in the population is going to lead to a decrease in fishing licenses sold you think that's that's true it's extrapolated out pretty far i was gonna say listen to this i think that guys that grew up traditional fishing that really value being able to catch a big crappie you know a two and a half

pound crappie it's like that is like a gold bar to them yep when that guy gets the technology he loves it because he's catching this thing that's been so difficult to catch his whole life and he just goes nuts over it and there's a point to be made that it can still be difficult even though you've identified the fish in the spot but what happens to the to the generation down the line that grows up with this technology that catching a two and a half pound crappie is just like they'll be we do it every day they'll get old and they'll get mad about the next technology. Yeah. And they'll reminisce back when it was just the simple times of having live sonar. Yeah.

I mean, you have a strong point there, but we've never dealt with this level of technology before. So when we went ice fishing. Listen, man. You think so? Yeah. I mean, going from battle addles to bows. Let's go back in time. From bows to rifles.

Monofilament? Come on. What's wrong with braiding some roots? What's wrong with braiding some horse hair? Now the fish can't even see the line. Yeah, but at some point, all technology isn't the same though, right? Understood.

And I'm going to give a big spiel in a second. So, yeah, but wait. The reward of pounding a shoreline with a spinner, which has probably caught more records than anything, regardless of... Third on the list. The jig has caught the most records, Kel. Not the popper.

Not the popper. But popper fishing is a great example, too. The effort that you've got to put in to get that super rewarding strike throwing big streamers all that stuff because you're doing your best to do the mental gymnastics of covering the water column uh doing different presentations and then you get a fish and that a fish is is a huge reward because you've had to figure all this stuff out you know that accelerated learning curve of being like oh don't even touch a rod yep we're just

gonna go until the we can see the fish on the screen we're gonna get everything right and then you can cast to it yeah because it's it's 56 inches off starboard stern. Yeah. You see where the stick's pointing? Like right there, 10 feet. I think it would be super telling if Wisconsin were the state to do this, it'd be like if Texas outlawed cellular trail cameras

or something. Oh, yeah. Per capita, there's got to be more live scopes in wisconsin or like at least top five yeah that's why it's top of mind yeah i i just whenever there's a change proposed like this i wonder if there's the it's all based on a hypothetical like if there is a measurable impact from this technology then you get into what the which is gonna take years and years to demonstrate and i understand that you don't want to let these things get out of control right or have a population level impact but there's a lot of ifs and thens and that whole and when we talk about science-based management right it's like

you get to this frustrating thing with biologists who are like well show me the the science no there's no science yet right and there's no science yet so you can't be proactive yeah you can't go look here's a chart here's increase in usage of live sonar here's depletion of resource yeah no it's it's your you're enforcing here's the creel survey is here's the time on the water survey here's the yeah that's why anytime the whole follow the science thing and trust the science follow science people use that opportunistically when it benefits what they're saying this is not this is about managing um managing enforcing trying to find some kind of definition of like fair chase fair play fair share yep right um here's the spiel though i'm gonna give my spiel on this i think you should throw in also like you know because i think this ties in with what clay was kind of getting at and how you've talked

about like raising your kids right like getting them to play out in the rain so they're not like oh it's raining we can't go do anything like i think there's doing things the hard way can benefit our system but oh yeah i never finished my point earlier about that camera when that camera broke i'm not kidding when that camera broke my boy my older boy what he didn't want to go ice fishing because the camera was broke i'm not kidding you yeah yeah because it was how why would you you know did you want to go ice fishing oh yeah i was like who cares he's like wow we don't have the camera though well jay siemens and and mandy when we were

fishing with them i tried to sit next to mandy without she had a uh a screen going in her hole and i there was just an open hole next to her and i sat there and was just jigging off the bottom imagine that no flasher no nothing and she could not stand it she was like no no no what are you doing i'm like i'm fishing she's like no you're not and she had to go get at least a flasher put something in front of you yeah and then talking with jay i was like okay this side imaging live scope deal if you forgot it how far away like if you were heading to a tournament someplace or just going to fish what would be your point of going oh my god i forgot the live scope i gotta turn around and go back he said four to five hours if he was if he was within four or five hours of home he would turn around and go back and get the thing because yeah success feels good success is a drug dude 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 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, 24 K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. You were always talking about, uh, we're always talking about on X here on the meat eater podcast. Now you, um, you guys in the great white North can, 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. special offer. You can get a free three months to try on X out. If you visit on X maps.com slash meet on X maps.com slash meet. Welcome to the, to the on X club y'all. Uh, the other night I did, I I'm kind of nervous about it. did i did an interview with uh i did an interview with a journalist who normally covers she covers like olympics sports skiing

um well that's appropriate so far a lot of athletes in this room so and the the interview was set up around the publication of of our new cookbook so i thought we're gonna talk about that but she comes in and we sit down and she wants she has like six the six most controversial things in hunting like i'm not kidding you like she wanted to talk about uh regulatory structures around hunting mountain lions what do i think um like public lands divestiture uh hounds for bears okay i was like yeah surprising i don't know what she's gonna do like i was just like she caught me in a chatty mood did she ask you about the cookbook no not a single time caught me in a chatty mood too so now i'm nervous about what all i said but i i want to explain the thing to her, and I've talked about it before here.

I was avoiding conversations about specific state-by-state issues, and I was saying, here's my general perspective. I tend to look favorably upon traditional use practices where it's been demonstrated that that traditional use practice is compatible with sustainable wildlife management. Meaning if a state has always had hound hunting for bears and that practice, hound hunting for bears, has proven hound hunting for bears has proven to be compatible with responsible management of black bears as a renewable resource meaning a stable or growing population yeah so you've always hounded bears you have good bear numbers on the on the landscape they're not in decline um i would say that that that traditional use practice is warranted

now if aice states never had hound hunting for bears and they go to institute hound hunting for bears and i wouldn't look at it like a defending a traditional use practice where let's say for the last hundred years you haven't been able to you're you're introducing a new thing into the mix which requires special consideration and i was and i was trying to explain to her as well like where this becomes relevant is we always have been and always will be faced with new practices and we need to assess what we're going to do about new practices um enter like the drone okay years ago like when drones became just a whisper, a whisper, I remember it was like in one year, 13 Western states in one year came out and just wash their hands.

They immediately like, I don't know where this is going. I'm not going to let it go anywhere. Yes. Drones and hunting are out. Well, I think BHA, uh, RMEF, a bunch of conservation groups immediately i'm not gonna let it go anywhere yes drones and hunting are out well i think bha uh rmef a bunch of conservation groups immediately came out uh with policy statements like restricting technology you know but they were addressing drones specifically exactly and it was quick yeah it was quick would drones could you make a comparison between using drones

and live scoping for fish? Well, I can tell you this. There was a rumor. I can tell you one place that drones would be incredibly effective, and there was a rumor of being used this way. Hunting moose, putting up a drone in a willow flat. Giant black blob that's

six feet tall and a bunch of willows that are eight feet tall and it's like oh there he is right and there was a rumor of that being a coming a thing yeah immediately okay so here you took an emerging technology that you knew was going to be impactful on the resource and before it even had a user group there was no one to even bitch there was no one to bitch because no one was you know what i mean if you went if you had just held off and tried it now you'd already have resistance yeah yeah so like and look at what is happening right now because i mean this is a great like the

in other aspects game retrieval some of like the big evil drone technology things have are true yep but it's being used the other day no retrieval not true oh they're using so like using thermal imaging to detect game for hunting purposes the other day i was in the room i was in the room in mississippi and there was a conversation there was a guy that got the thermal drone thing for recovery and his buddies were saying now what he does is he flies to find where bucks that he knows about are bedded so he can set up on the exit trail that he knows that he wants to set up on because he knows that bucks bed in these certain areas and he knows where they bed and where they're going to leave

so he finds the buck and then makes his stand selection based on where he knows the buck is bedded right which doesn't guarantee how is that not illegal because every state didn't ban drones and hunting hmm right yeah and it's drones and scouting is it drones and hunting right it's like all the the things it also raised the, like if you're using the thermal drone for recovery, if you find that you didn't hit that deer and then all of a sudden you see another deer, do you just have to cover your eyes and walk out of the woods? That's why certain states. There's a real fuzzy gray area there.

But some states and it's not the softy states that's the thing with drones is it was like not not like the not animal rights states you know it was like montana alaska like not animal rights states that got out ahead of drones and it's not animal rights states they're getting out ahead of thermal arizona utah arizona recently trail cams on public land that's not coming from antis no no not at all this says 45 states have laws restricting the use of drones for hunting the only states that don't have specific laws banning drone recovery are kentucky m Delaware, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. So I think it does paint the picture though, like go back to the side imaging thing. And, and the fear is the technology is going to affect a population or spike a, uh, a harvest rate in such a way that it's going to impact the the length of a season or a means of take or

one of these things that we hold in higher regard than being able to use the technology does that make sense yeah and it's like it the conversation isn't just about live scope it's like do we we're in like an unprecedented a period of like unprecedented technological advancement right you go back to the 40s and it'd be like the the you know atomic and nuclear like just changed everything the internet age changed everything like unprecedented internet age changed everything. Unprecedented technological advancement. Who knows what's coming? There's guys that are messing with it.

This is not related to fisheries. There's people that are messing with this, that you'd be able to take a scoop of water out of a river and measure marine isotopes in the water and tabulate that to how many salmon ran up that river amazing okay so it's like there's crazy stuff is on the horizon yeah so never mind live scope but how are we going to respond to unforeseen technologies in the future that are going to completely rewrite hunting and fishing and how are we going to preserve traditional use?

You could take two ways. I feel like you either be like, I'm going to preserve traditional use, or you're going to be like, I'm going to preserve technological advancement. You can't, like, you have to be in one of those camps. There's not going to be room to not pick one of those camps. And you had that example of a laser range finder

the other day and it's pretty perfect it'd be harder it'd be hard to come up with something as a better example because it was like this thing the military had so i would say technological advancement and availability right have to be tied together. So the longer the technology is on the market, the more available it becomes because it gets more prolific and more available because that lower and lower price points. Yeah, it could have been, I don't know how many years ago it would have been like,

and I'm going to clarify, I use cameras i use a laser rangefinder okay i use i have i just shot two turkeys this spring with a red dot scope okay um i use technology so i'm not talking i'm not coming from a purist perspective there's probably things that if it wasn't illegal maybe i would use it i don't know but um picture that whatever it was 20 years ago with laser range finders i don't even remember picture that someone had said the minute the technology emerged and was finding military application or whoever the hell started it out picture the game agencies and said yeah this is going to really revolutionize shooting um it's going to change take uh Let's get away with it.

And you would just imagine this alternate reality where there had been no one to resist it. Because if you went in now and said, oh, you know what, we're going to back, we're going to back, we're going to do a time machine and back it up and no laser range finders. Dude. Right.

Like arcades. You'd have a civil, there'd be a civil war. Is it not, is it not, like if you looked at the at the the arc of technology and hunting even in this country i mean maybe we're we're this is like much ado about nothing because there's always increase of technology always and there's always a reduction a self-imposed reduction on the amount of take. I mean, because there was a time when, you know, they were using atlatls and I mean, they could kill all they wanted with an atlatl.

Then we had bows and arrows and then we had muskets and then we had repeating rifles and it got to the point where, you know, they were, they killed them all, you know, the extirpation. And then now the technology is so efficient that is it not just going to a place where where season dates are shorter sure i mean it's just it's just like okay if you want to play this game we're going to have to do it well that's that's what you're saying but is that not just like what happens the answer to what happened when i was talking to this journalist i was kind of like the second part of what i explained is let's just say you have a unit let's say there's

a there's a area of space a area a landscape area and it has um and and you determine that there's a hundred deer that live in this area of space and you determine that there's a harvestable surplus of 10 annually okay and you and you know that it's about a 10 success rate 100 that landscape have a 10 success rate that creates opportunity okay that creates opportunity for 100 people am i doing my math right yeah that creates opportunity for 100 people to pursue the resource. One in 10 chance they'll be successful. 100 people take a crack at it. Now, you introduce a bunch of

tools where all of a sudden now there's a 50% success rate. Okay? What does that do to the opportunity? Opportunity plummets. You can only now you got 20 guys we're gonna have 20 guys hunt because half of them are gonna bag out yeah and that in like

really abbreviated form like that is one of the things you're battling against i think there's something more nostalgic too that you're fighting against is you're fighting against like there is among the sporting community there's a reverence for woodsmanship right and and learned like learned skill that time spent pays off that learning about the resource you know learning about i mean this is a weird thing to say used to be because there's still nothing that can replace like ground truthing something meaning walking it um but the people who are really good at e-scouting looking at satellite imagery knowing uh the variety of maps and applications that are available online google earth cross-referencing all of it to get a better mental image and plan and then using software like onyx um they can do so much more that used to be, uh, only available to people who have been like, I have spent

a decade in this drainage and I know the spot that you have to hike to in order to actually be able to see this stuff. Right. Like all that barren stuff, actually, when you get up there, the tree line is so high that you can't actually see. So you have to be over here in this scree patch. And I know that because I actually walked up there and did it yep right it's like that stuff's to a large degree has gone away if you are effective at using all the tools that you're

uh to a large extent yes but you still like you still need to ground check. Yep. But you're right. So at what point do we fight the technology? I mean, that's the question that you're trying to answer. Man, I'll tell you, I don't. When it becomes self-aware. It comes after us. Yeah.

It's like early. Yeah, early is the simple answer for sure. You got to make managers in the public. You got to make managers in the public. You got to... Why was it so clear with drones? I don't know. Why were drones so clear and obvious? Well, it's funny because something like a laser range finder or GPS, like a laser range finder makes people more effective

and maybe encourages, I don't know if it encourages is the right word, but has led people to shoot longer and longer distances and become, have greater efficacy, but it's also made people more effective within traditional ranges, right? And so it has like an obvious benefit to the resource in that sense, in that there's less,

perhaps less wounding loss um and gps like it and it enables people to go further and further into the back country and have the impact on the resource over a wider area but it also has like an obvious safety use and i don't know what the redeeming quality of the drone is you know like there's those other ones sort of have um you can make an argument for them in terms of like the the benefit to the hunter outside of simply killing more stuff yeah people like with laser range finders people like the folk people like to focus on people making shots they shouldn't take right but you also can prevent you from making shots you shouldn't take because it puts a number to it yeah to the gut check yeah it's not like oh it's probably 300

yards you know you know and then you're you know with the drone you could you could make an argument that would help you with selection you know like like if you were hyper managing a place and like we're only taking this type of animal i mean i'm not for a drone but like you can say no you're absolutely right those drones help me to pick the animal for conservation that needs to be taken out so what would hunting be though okay like we ran things to the extreme because that's where we what we do with these conversations right so we we're in agreement that um increased technology can lead to increased uh harvest which leads to shortened seasons so what happens if a two hunting in general if yeah you can use everything at your disposal you name it technology wise weapon wise whatever uh but the season for that is one day right yeah i mean it changes the whole game right it changes

the lifestyle changes the lifestyle i think yeah i mean it really does because there's no yeah it changes everything but would they be and I mean this goes back to Steve's point like is that not what Daniel Boone and these long hunters would say about us would they be like you guys of course

but then we're sitting here and we're like man we're really we're woodsmen we've experienced the wild we're doing it we're woodsmen. We've experienced the wild. We're doing it the right way. I mean, it's like, it's, you know, I hate when people say it. It's all relative. Yeah. And it's, there's a change.

It's just like, do you do spikes? Because if we're going to go back historically, we would say, okay, the vehicle, I mean, the vehicles, huge impact on hunting. Yeah. I mean the vehicles huge impact on hunting yeah um as Randall pointed out in way long ago podcasts the advent of the freezer that used to not used to not have a freezer freezers changed how people hunt and fish the other the other one that I just thinking back on some of the research that I did, I remember looking at a field and stream from like the 70s. And there was an article sort of touting this new product, which is a poison arrow. Still legal in Mississippi. Yeah.

And so it was like. Poison pods. Yeah. And so it was just like, and this article talked about how some fish and game agencies were getting ahead of it and banning poison arrow but the advocates are saying well this this means if you just hit an animal it's gonna die and you won't wound a deer and have it run off so why wouldn't you poison i was with these guys in mississippi and they use them with their kids they said if that kid gets a piece of that deer anywhere that deer is dead in a doornail wild i i wonder anywhere but it's like

something that's so foreign to most people today but in that article it was sort of like what do we do with this technology you know and it's it is contact and there's a traditional use practice because they used to use strychnine even fur hunters used to use strychnine so uh what does it was a technology being able to develop and deliver poison was an emerging technology it became a traditional use practice and now everyone in the room would agree you shouldn't be able to poison fur bearing animals for the fur market everyone agrees well texas and oklahoma have both now certified a hog poison, a wild hog poison made by Kaput.

Kaput Industries. I heard that. East Tennessee bear houndsman one time, they take a lot of criticism for running bears with hounds and all this, and he said, yeah, I use hounds to all this and he said he said uh he said yeah i use hounds to to hunt bears here but and he was talking about criticism from inside the hunting community but he's like you'll get in your truck and drive 2500 miles in a pickup truck to go hunt an elk with a bow or you know with a rifle and he's like i thought it was a really good point it was like okay so

you're mad at me for using this ancient practice why didn't you point out the guy that flies across the country to hunt for the weekend yeah talk about technology yeah uh i i do want to know emails with his buddy about what weekend he should go yeah yeah if uh should use carrier pigeons for all uh hunting correspondents let me's what me and Randall do. Oh, frequently. If you could like magically transport Daniel Boone here for like, do you think he'd even give a crap about like the hunting side of things? Or you think he'd just be like, so you're telling me,

you guys are all sitting here. You've never survived a typhus outbreak, never survived yellow fever. You guys doing the wilma tonight he'd be he'd be horrified by the witchcraft we have wrapped around our heads right now yeah it's just or would he care or he'd be right in the middle of it i but i want to move on another subject but this is the best subject we've discussed on the podcast and but i don't okay we don't need to move on um sorry corinne but it's like it's when looking at this kind of stuff you can get you can wind up throwing your hands in the air you can be like well what about daniel boone and they used to use black powder now we got airplanes and throw your hands in the air yeah and just say whatever okay whatever it's all changed anyway or you can say yes i recognize that we've come a long long way in a couple hundred years and we've had

all these emerging technologies that have all rewritten stuff um and we've had to adapt along the way i get all that i get all that that when you look at it in a fine with like under a fine you know uh like a certain lens you look at it all it all seems ridiculous after all of this who cares about that right well i care about that like like yeah i get it but we're still here in the present day and we still have a changing landscape and we still have to make decisions and i don't think that looking at all the things that we didn't do and all the inevitability there still are some things like drones yeah like poison and i i'm in no way bucketing live scope i don't i don't really have a formed opinion about this yet i'm just saying we will have to deal with this and a lifetime worth of other things some

things that just might seem from sitting here today it might seem fantastical it might come up and it be that it takes a lifetime to learn a lake okay and now you can learn well side view and all that maybe it doesn't maybe in an afternoon you can grid a lake and be like i'll tell you how many fish are there i'll tell you where they're at right is that is that what we want or is that not think about this what if think about like what the Boone and Crockett Club did in 1887 when they kind of reformulated the way that our culture looked at and managed wildlife. You know, the simple version being going from market hunting

to the sport hunting, which like what if there's a time some decades from now when there requires that kind of paradigm shift? Sure. You see what I'm saying? What saying like paradigm shift that was and yeah yeah like there's there was a paradigm shift that had to take place honestly because of technology and markets and increase of people and all this stuff like it's hard to foresee what that would be but but what if the take and there was so much pressure on the resource and there was this group of people that were like, hey, what that shift would be? Yeah, it's funny because this is the thing I like to point out to people. How celebrated Teddy Roosevelt is today.

The car was facing Rushmore, right? Any politician would appreciate a favorable comparison to teddy roosevelt there's no politician that would turn down i take that back now because there's certain most okay most politicians would welcome a favorable comparison to the conservation record of theodore roosevelt but let's take a look at the the time, here's a guy saying, he proposed this whole paradigm shift. He's like, you know what? Let's not use wildlife for making money. Let's use wildlife as a recreational resource. Not only that, let's take huge chunks of the landscape and set it aside from industrial development

and industrial exploitation and take it off the industrial development and industrial exploitation and take it off the record. He would have been, he would have been a tree-hugging libtard. Right? Yeah. He would have sat somewhere below Gavin Newsom to propose that stuff today.

He's locking it all up. They would have crucified him today, but now there's a conservationist. I can. And when we talk about the guy that wanted to end market hunting and close off all the land, it's a good point. When we talk about the,

and that's why this is not simple in any way but when we talk about regulating a technology for wildlife we're also talking about regulating an industry right yeah right and because you know the live scope sonar boys aren't liking a live scope band right or just like just like e-bikes. The archery industry is like, no more bows, guys. The 2025 line of bows is it. Oh, this journalist wanted to talk about e-bikes too. Oh, really?

Holy cow. This technology. Or like the let off for compound bows. You can't be over a percentage. You know, there's all sorts of things that regulating technology would regulate industry, which is, you know, not something that we really want to do in, in America in general. Right. Here's one for you. How did it come to be? Maybe one of you guys knows the answer to this.

How did it come to be that you can't use a laser? You can't use something that projects light. Oh yeah. I don't know that. Why did no don't know that why did no one get there why did no one get uh worked up about that i don't know boy you talk to pilots they're sure serious about because people with lasers people like people saw it in the movies when the red dot appears and they're like that looks pretty pretty easy yeah no one raised the fuss when state said you can't use anything that projects a light and this uh

caught on the technology discussion happens with like every hobby that you could think of really yeah like right now in golfing they recently determined the last oh yeah golf balls have gotten too good and they're doing a rollback by 2028 professional golfers have to use like a more archaic golf ball than by 2030, if you're a recreational golfer, you need to start using a more archaic golf ball as well. That makes sense because otherwise they have to redo golf courses. Yeah. And they do.

I appreciate you bringing that up. All the numbers don't add up. Listen. But it's every hobby. Think about it. But that thing, the whole structure is make-believe. Well, there's like all make-believe. And you know.

This is like this is like yeah oh i appreciate the effort it's it's like maybe country music artist laser range finder yeah bushnell like created what about them to make songs or or country music artist clay maybe he doesn't like auto-tune he says, no more autotune. Got to tune it by ear. I like that little sports tidbit there. Here's one that's funny. Here's one that's funny. We had a podcast guest on a long time ago. Sorry, if you're in Wisconsin,

know that this is something that's coming up, and it's just something you should pay attention to. So if you want to go back in time and not listen to that whole thing there's your wrap up that's up wisconsin they're coming for your your walleye acquisition tools 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.

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onxmaps.com. meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the onx club, y'all. Here's a funny one. And I'm surprised that this guy liked it. So, in the past,

we had on Bob Reed, who's a Python expert. Bob Reed, I later learned. I don't know if you know this story. Dr. Bob? Yeah. The real doctor? he's a real doctor nice dr bob reed he's a he's like a herpetologist or something right yeah he

works on he's with the usgs he's working on birds now though oh at the time he was put on that he was doing a bunch of work around pythons in florida um we hunted with a guy in florida and the guy in florida was talking about his hunting mentor just hates me because i didn't push back on bob reed when bob reed explained that all this python catching python rodeos python super bowl python catching has zero impact that there's like when you look at the numbers like python go back and listen to the podcast so the guy who hates you is mad that you didn't make that point or that no that i didn't push back apparently he's maybe a python catcher i don't know if it's funny that he was so mad that I didn't push back on the guy who models Python populations.

He didn't like to suggest that he wasn't making a difference. For pointing out that mechanically removing Pythons has, and go back and listen to the episode, not my, you know, follow the science, like not my science. Bob Reed, a guy that models Burmese python populations in florida pointing out that that is all just whistling dixie has no implications driving up and down those levees picking up snakes doesn't mean anything just like anyone would admit shooting carp don't matter shooting carp don't matter um anyhow that guy bob reed who gave me sitting in my office is a one quart jar of genuine snake oil he gave me a jar of genuine snake oil rendered off burmese python i'm surprised bob this article tickled you the way that it did have you used that oil for anything yet? No, I'm saving it.

For? Toothaches, bad bowels, rheumatism, stuff like that. When I was in Guyana, it was frowned upon to kill an anaconda. But they said that two things they told me that was interesting. Old people can kill them to get the fat for arthritis. And he said that touching an anaconda with a bow is lethal to the anaconda, but it's a painful death and it takes a long time. But touching it with a different kind of stick will not kill it. But if you were to touch it with the limb of a bow, it will die later.

Do you think you're going to die with that quart of snake oil still there, not unused? Like it's going to kill me? No, no, no. Like are you ever going to use it? Would you ever be able to pull the trigger? Well, I think about putting it in the auction house of oddities. And I think about, I don't know, I haven't decided what I'm going to do with it yet. Probably going to, at some point it's going to go bad on me.

You just need to leave it in a jar. You can split it in two you know have like two small jars and put in the windows like decoration it'll last the rest of your life you may not be telling the weather with it eat uh clay pointed out earlier that yeah you should be rubbing that stuff in your hair yeah okay i mean bear grease cures balding obviously well look yeah look i believe that with your head yeah my goodness okay bob reed like this this is this like listen god bless these researchers just seems so silly so some researchers did a thing where they in california they put um gps okay GPS. Okay.

Our friend, this is Korean writing. Our friend Bob Reed sent this to us. It's very interesting. He says, I've never seen habitat selection methods applied to people, but it's a cool concept. Kind of a bummer that road hunters appear to have higher success rates. So these people did a study as though they needed to figure this out like you know how you look at you put radio collars on links like for

instance we've had a researcher on the podcast and they're wondering how do links use burned over territory meaning when you when there's a big giant forest fire in the northern cascades and you nuke the place critters leave uh let's take so that's narrowing look like okay let's take links at what point in succession does the link say i'm going to move back in it's now gotten to a point where i like it again right and they find that that as it grows it gets to a point where they weave in and out and they start utilizing it but they don't want to stay in it and then it gets to a point where they're like i'm moving back in and they move back in okay so that's like habitat use it's super interesting research um especially in the era of mega fires right so how will mega fires like what does it do for

wildlife and we all everyone watches it you a place will burn and we'll say man that's gonna be sweet deer and elk hunting insert time period right and then it usually gets to a point where it sucks it gets it like it's it's it's nuked it gets really good it gets no good and then eventually it returns just being normal you know well they're looking at how do hunters use habitat and i just don't think they needed to go through all the hassle they did to do it but they put gps monitors on hunter hunters and they found the hunters they found the hunters hunt three ways where is this um they hunt one second coursing stalking sit and wait they determine that hunters

course around they still hunt hunters will stalk stuff and hunters will sit and watch I'm like hmm now here's the breaking news it kind of depends where you're at Hunters will sit and watch. I'm like, hmm.

Here's the breaking news. It kind of depends where you're at. I've never heard of it referred to as coursing. I think it's a biological concept when they study how predators find prey. What does that mean? You're just wandering around? Basically moving, hoping to come across something. Now, what I want to know is,

is there some selection bias for the hunter that would volunteer to do this? Oh, yeah, like you're putting on a show? Well, yeah, maybe. Or think about... I think I better keep moving or they're going to realize I'm lazy. You are the hunter.

He's like spinning circles. They're like, man, this guy's good like man no the best hunters you know are they going to put a gps in their bag without incentive we all do well but like cal just held up his phone yeah yeah but like you know no but yeah that like who would be excited maybe some good hunters would be like yeah i'll be a part of your study. I'm not down on GPS on hunters for studies because you talk about Mike Chamberlain's work. Now here you got turkeys with tracking devices. And then you put a hunter on the turkey with a tracking device. And in some instances, you tell the hunter where that bird is. So he's like, he's roosted here.

I'll give you that. And then they watch what happens. Oh, that's fantastic. And they found birds that can't be killed. They just navigate around. Anyone who wants to hear it, go way back to Mike Chamberlain being on the podcast. They had a bird that couldn't get killed.

And eventually a guy killed it there's a guy got a fight with his wife and gets all pissed off and drives down to the state game area just drives right past the sign walks over a little hill sits down and kills the bird that can't be killed and they've been sickened hunters on that bird people couldn't kill that bird. Well, hey, that reminds me of Barry Newcomb's hunt the other day that he had on public land. He hunted for four days. Super short story. The morning that he killed his gobbler, he had four different guys.

He was sitting across this big ravine, and he saw headlamps coming down to this goblin turkey like before daylight and he and he heard a guy above him owling and he hears this one turkey and all these guys hear it and he knew what that turkey had done the day before and so he took off up the mountain and and he got pretty lucky but it was also informed luck. Yep. And I mean, basically bushwhacked that turkey. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that turkey heard those box calls going off at daylight and was just like, out of here. Too much. Don't sound right. He's like, a lot more hens in here

than there was yesterday. Yeah. And they're carrying headlamps. Pat Durkin just wrote an article. So here's the background. In a report published April 3rd, in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Conservation Science,

not familiar. You familiar? I've heard of it. Researchers from Cornell and University of Wisconsin at Madison came out to say the states have flubbed deer management. The states have blown it. Too many deer. They're managing deer for the benefit of too few people. Too many deer running around, getting too many car crashes.

Now we got disease issues. We should bring in the feds and hand deer management in the United States of America over to a federal agency. That's one of those just shot in the dark academic papers.

That's a news, that's like a, trying to be provocative. That's poking poking the who do you poke poke the bear bears not dragons that's a poke in the bear poke in the dragon it's a good one though because like you know darn good and well our buddy doug duran would be like you know his very informed argument, right. Is like,

look at the browse, look at the forestry correlation to deer populations. It's like, these are unhealthy for us caused by unhealthy deer numbers. You think he would argue on behalf of the feds managing deer? Is that what you're saying? I think he would, if it,

if it's saying it's going to be a stronger deer management that's more of a holistic landscape management then yeah he would be persuaded that way they say that they that um they say that current management agencies have allowed deer impacts to grow into nationwide into a nationwide conservation and human health crisis come on i mean i'm a little bit like come on my my knee jerk reaction i'm i'm typically always in favor of consolidating power at a higher level really no i was trying to i was like what can you say Sorry, sorry. We don't say that in Arkansas. Yeah.

My bad. Go on. My bad, guys. No, that was just a joke. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like calling, I feel like that sort of reflexively just goes against everybody's instinct, especially when it comes to wildlife management. It's like, we should just take this all away from the states and the way that things have

been going on and just centralize decision making if i was at the state level on this i would point out i would say that the states um they're they're the state the state's management policies are suffering from social issues meaning they're they're saying, please, kill does. Kill whitetail does. Please, please, please. We reported on it last year. The head of the Michigan State Agency came out and said, I don't know what to do. We can't get people to kill does.

Right? People aren't killing does. Hunters, I would almost look at it like a wake-up call. So unless the feds are going to come in and the feds are going to they're going to have to do one of two things the feds are going to come in they're going to have to make it that people have to kill deer which is going to go over well like like you get a letter in the mail it's like jury duty like it's like a jury duty summons saying you got to go kill those like what really are they going gonna do or this guy is or these researchers are

saying we're gonna bring in the feds and we're gonna bring in we're gonna you know remember all the black helicopters when they're gonna impose the new world order they're gonna get those black helicopters fueled up and the feds are gonna start a deer eradication program well maybe what are they gonna do maybe they're gonna bring in drones yeah just drone strike just drone them i mean i do wonder if the argument is the arguments that the federal government wouldn't be as constrained by social the social but they're not constrained the states are saying please kill those please what's gonna take how about we do this how about we make it that you can't kill a buck until you kill those well those programs don't work. How about we give you all the doe tags you want?

Try that. How about we let you hunt pretty much seven months out of the year? Try that. How about we make it where you can donate even an un-gutted doe to a food bank, and they do all the work for you? I mean, I think a lot of it's about work. It's like you're out there hunting, and it's like, do I want to shoot this doe?

What do you want to occupy your time with? Because I know when I shoot this animal, this starts a pretty big process. How about we let you use kind of a gun during deer archery season? It's like there's nothing. There's nothing. They're trying. Everywhere that has a, I don't know, like an over-objective deer herd.

They're trying. So bring in the feds, but until they're going to bring in like a punishment mechanism, like I don't really know. I haven't read the stupid article either. I know researchers literally wrote this, but it feels like a straw man argument. Like there are very, very few researchers or biologists, federal or state level, that would make this same argument. It's a bear poke. Yeah, like it's just – Poke of the bear.

There's not many folks that agree. What would be your letter to the judge? Be like, I got to get out of dough duty. You know, the boss. I travel a lot for work. I'm not going to be there. I'd be like, man, hey, I got a huge buck on camera. He's coming in to the corn like every afternoon.

But I keep getting busted by does. I can't do this right now. Last we're going to get into. This is a touchy one blm's gonna deny the permit for the ambler road project yep blm the blm bureau land manager oh first off here's the sorry not deny right they're they're just they're doing a no decision. No action, it says. No action, yeah. Meaning not issue.

Yeah. Okay. Ambler Road was, there's an ambler mining, there's a, what's the word for a whole bunch? There's like a pot of gold. Yeah, like untold billions, but estimated in the many, many billions of dollars worth of wealth in various ores. Yeah, high-end minerals. Yeah.

Stuff that be used for cell phones, stuff that be used, gold, in the Ambler Mining District. What's preventing extraction of those resources is they would need to build a 250 mile industrial corridor cutting through the southern face of the Brooks Range. It would cross

thousands of streams and rivers in an area that right now is an unroaded, you know's it's kind of like the biggest chunk of non-developed landscape we have on the continent you people would use the word pristine yeah right well if you're gonna apply it like it's not developed it would be baseline pristine right it would be like you know people love to argue about pristine versus daniel boone's first when people love to argue about you know definitions of wilderness and all that like you know that it's a human it's a made-up concept and to

native americans it was home and it's not well all that aside that would be if you're going to define wilderness i'd be like well let's start with that okay uh 250 mile corridor that would have been not open for public use that was part of the deal they were brokering so people were like what about all this penetration of all this vehicular traffic well we wouldn't use it for that it will only be used for mining there was a lot of people that wanted it a lot of the political establishment in Alaska wanted it there were native villages that were in support of it and a lot of people didn't want it uh i

i took a like a very like my look on it is real simple my look on it was i worry more about running out of wilderness than i worry about running out of roads and i didn't want to see it happen and that's how to trivialize the arguments that other people have about job creation and economics and like you know national security concerns about where we get your minerals from i look at it like in like 300 years down the road not even 100 years down the road whatever it is i think that most people would be glad we didn't do it just like now it was controversial it was it was as we talked about earlier when theodore roosevelt made the national forest system people were pissed they made legislation to prevent him from keep doing it

now we're like thank god he did that let's carve him in a big mountain next to george washington you know sure glad he thought to do that. Let's call a bunch of conservation groups, Theodore Roosevelt, this and that. No one is going to, I don't think anyone down the road would have been glad we done that. They were going to put a big mine,

they were going to put a big dam in Livingston at a time and flood that valley do you think anyone right now as pissed as they were when they couldn't do it is anyone right now saying god i really wish we'd damn that whole damn thing up the jet ski industry the jet ski industry industry is bummed there's just certain conservation moves that later people will look and be like wow glad we didn't do that i mean it's the same thing not the same thing but it's it it parallels in some ways the conversation we had about technology where it's like your frame of reference if

something happens 50 years ago you're like man obviously they made the right they made the right call then and now there's a similar question and it's not all the same but um in hindsight some of these things look like common sense but in the moment they're highly controversial yep and i could see like who like geopolitically you know who knows like who knows in the future what situation the nation might be in? And there could be a situation in the future where the nation's in a situation where we revisit it. And we're like, no, for real now? Like in terms of like real right now, here and now, national security issues? We have a serious problem?

I think it's going to be a different conversation. But the shit ain't going anywhere that goes back to the idea that that wilderness is is a luxury of a culture that has has a lot of strength and monetary value there's a lot of in the wilderness argument about you know part of the reason we've been able to preserve so much wilderness is because we didn't have to exploit every square inch of ground. There's some great quotes from some guys about like, we're a great nation because we didn't have to take every last stick of lumber and

every last mineral out of the ground. But yeah, it could be different. I mean, if we were, if the socioeconomic things flipped 100 years from now, 75 years from now, 15 years from now, it's like 15 years from now it's like we're in some like prolonged global war or some prolonged global standoff we might look and be like you know what

uh maybe the end maybe we should drill the npra maybe we should mine the ambler mining district maybe we need to move into the um uh anwar like, I like right now, look at it. I just don't, uh, in times of great, uh, in times of great conflict and necessity, Congress can make a decision, right? Like we, we have that in our history. That's an established ability that we have, right? Like a Japanese bomb, Pearl Harbor pearl harbor yep we made a decision as a nation real fast no one can buy silk anymore all the silk goes to parachutes

yep now if you'd done that before the war people have been like what or like there's food like whatever like in extraordinary circumstances so i don't really buy the i don't like i don't buy that argument right off the bat because i think that the whole conversation would change in a crisis it's not a crisis right now yeah we can we can still afford to have wild places yeah how much would you care about this topic if it was like in canada or russia very little well it'd be less because I'd feel like it was... I would care, but it...

But it's a little bit not your business. Not even not my business. I wouldn't have like a... I wouldn't feel that I had a voice that needed to be heard, but when it comes to federal lands, it's... As a United States citizen, you have a vested interest so you got a dog you have a right to speak about it i mean do i am i bummed that the amazon is disappearing

at the rate that it is of course do i feel like i have a a move to make not as readily as i have a move to make there yeah i'm like a like a, I don't know, I'm like an environmental nationalist. Right, tell people not to buy Argentine beef. Buy made in America beef, and you can help the Amazon. That's about. And help the American rancher. That's right. It's win-win.

Yep. But yeah, I mean, it is like, I love Canada. Love my time spent there. Um, they have some amazing wildlife, uh, opportunities and programs. Um, and I would be able to speak on the fact that like, boy, I hope they don't mess this up. Um, just, just because of whatever policy. Uh, but then I would only be able to fall back on the fact like

i don't know the whole picture because i'm not as invested but doesn't seem like a good idea whereas with this particular thing i'm like oh my god migratory birds fish uh port it's a porcupine porcupine caribou herd right on the yeah no it's western it's central or western um but we you know like we know these caribou herds are in decline we know that they absolutely to the east do not deal with change well it like to the point where it's such a hard concept for people to grasp when you talk about it like well what do you mean they just can't walk over a road i'm like well they can but to them like you know it's like it's a bizarre concept but yeah i think like we're all very much in a position to

weigh in and should weigh in on these things if they're important to us. I'll tell you, Seth Cantner's real happy right now. All right, we're going to wrap up. Thanks, y'all. Hey, Steve, I've got one thing. Going to go back to the beginning. May seem a little out of place. I think you need to talk about your old girlfriends less

i didn't say what are you talking about you're you're gonna hate the next podcast you're interviewing three of them first your opening line on this podcast you were talking about some old girlfriend you had and i i'm just saying i think you need to this is i think you need to dial a quarter a quarter century ago i think you need to let i think you need to let the past die we all think it we all know it we love you you need to you need to dial it back a quarter century ago, long before I knew my wife, who I've been married to for 60 years.

Your wife doesn't want to hear about this, though. Neither does my wife. She's grown up. No, she's not. She's a woman. Let's ask her together. I think I'd like you to talk about it more. I'll bring you that next time.

Every now and then. I'd like to further the conversation around it and I don't. I think I'd like more. Do you guys not agree though? Come on, Cal. I disagree. Me and my wife,

we're comfortable with the fact that we were alive a long time before we met each other. Can I ask you an ex-girlfriend question that I've had for a long time before we met each other okay can i ask you an ex-girlfriend question yeah look what you've done clay i'd rather you did but go ahead he just did the barbara strice you once uh talked about how somehow we were talking about corn smut on trivia i don't know what that is well let me tell the story you know you're okay uh an ex-girlfriend you said someone's got to turn their foot out i have a lot of tech problems

is that you over there yeah it's like you guys can't begin to tell you the steve's at a casino an ex-girlfriend once uh threw your keys into a cornfield yes what was the argument that's what that's the detail i detail. I've been hung up on that for a year. I have no recollection, but it was on Katy Road. Oh, no. Not far down from Ronnie Bame's house. And just took my car key. Never found him.

This is evil. And bombed him out into a cornfield. That's a good trick to do. I had to walk a few miles. Like, did you become, was she an ex-girlfriend at that moment? I don't even remember, dude. I don't know. It was like something just got mad about something.

It was like, I don't think she really thought of how hard it would be to find him out there. Out into a standing cornfield. See, that's a funny thing. You walked upon some corn smut in that search. Imagine if he couldn't tell that story and I don't think it can be confused with like wistfully looking back upon a time spent in another relationship Clay I'll tell you

I've taken every time I give my wife a tour of where I grew up and she's sick of it she's like how could someone as old as you be so surprised that things have changed since you were a little kid I usually this is part of my tour you'd be so surprised that things have changed since you were a little kid. Usually, this is part of my tour to her. I'm like,

somewhere out there. I'll be having a conversation with Katie about it. 79 Chevy. I'll be having a conversation with her about it. Are you okay with this? Thanks, y'all. Thanks, y'all. Yo, check it I'm a backwoods gangster, real job turkey Stay sharp cause I know murderers lurking

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